December 16th Book Releases

Outlander-meets-The Princess Bride plus Camelot in a fresh, big-hearted, feminist, timeslip adventure reimagining the epic saga of King Arthur, as told from the perspective of his spunky and surprising queen, Vera – complete with time travel and good running shoes!

⚔DELUXE LIMITED EDITION HARDCOVER with stenciled edges, a beautiful foil-stamped hardcover, exclusive interior design with full-color illustrated endpapers, and a reversible dust jacket!

Vera always knew she didn’t fit in. When she learns that she is meant to be in another time, she leaps at the chance to embrace a new life in a world of valor, intrigue, and unexpected magic in this bold and romantic retelling of Arthurian legend . . .

22-year-old Vera is at a crossroads: waiting tables, grieving her previous relationship, and jogging aimlessly each morning as if toward an uncertain future. Then an odd man shows up at her workplace, insisting that she was once the legendary Queen Guinevere of Camelot, and that her lost memories hold the key to changing both the past and the present. Somehow, it all feels like the direction she’s been looking for. But when she asks the mysterious man to tell her more about Lancelot, Arthur, and a faithless queen, he can only say that much of what she’s heard about Camelot is wrong. The truth, he claims, is something she must see for herself.

After jumping through a portal in Glastonbury’s historic center, Vera is not prepared for what she finds. Magic is everywhere, but a curse on the kingdom means it dwindles every day. She has no idea how to perform a queen’s duties. Her fast friendship with Lancelot sets gossip flowing, and the stranger she must call “husband” often refuses to meet her eye. Arthur is a puzzle: cold, forbidding, and, while angry to her face, keeps leaving secret tokens of tenderness in her chambers. Worst of all, Vera’s memories—and the answers locked within them—show no signs of returning. If Vera is truly destined to save Camelot, she’ll have to trust her instincts. And her king will have to trust her . . .

Twisted family relationships, sociopaths and conspiracy theories abound in the icy Cascade Mountains of Washington State in New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Zanetti’s heart-pounding series about an FBI profiler and her equally brilliant sister on the wrong side of the law.

Laurel’s family was never simple—but her half-sister, Abigail, a brilliant, unpredictable psychopath, just made it lethal. Accused of murdering their father, a man she always called a monster, Abigail claims self-defense. As the trial unfolds and long-buried family secrets explode into headlines across Washington State, Laurel’s hard-won privacy is shattered. And the nightmare is just beginning.

Even as Abigail’s trial consumes public attention, new dangers close in as the murder of a prominent scientist and the illegal poaching of a rare Pacific plant point to something insidious. Laurel turns to Washington Fish and Wildlife captain Huck Rivers, her partner in work and life, for help. But the deeper they dig, the more the case seems to echo the chaos unraveling Laurel’s world.

With danger tightening around her, Laurel faces an impossible choice: trust Abigail in one crucial, treacherous alliance, or risk losing everything. Her career, her relationships, even her life hang in the balance. The clock is ticking—and if the threat breaks loose, nothing will be fast enough to stop it.

With her brother’s grumpy best friend—and her longtime nemesis—as Beth’s flight instructor, her pilot lessons could be a plane disaster or their first-class ticket to forever.

Mayday. Mayday. Engine failure.

When flying with George Bunsen, the last thing Beth Lundberg wants is to be horny in the cockpit. But when her first ride-along dives toward disaster, the perpetually stoic George is forced to execute a skillful emergency landing, and Beth is horrified to find herself with an adrenaline-fueled crush on the pilot. She’s even more shocked when her brother’s best friend offers her discounted flight lessons—possibly out of guilt for almost killing them.

And despite George’s annoying habit of departing any room the moment Beth enters, she really wants to accept. No matter that it’s an egregiously expensive hobby, or that her waitressing wages go right toward her mother’s medical bills, or that she’s already in debt up to her eyebrows. Flying is Beth’s dream, and she could use her private license to earn real money.

The more time they spend navigating the sky, the more the turbulence between George and Beth dissipates. But Beth has seen the burning wreckage that comes from mixing business with pleasure—plus, she’s been keeping a secret that, once revealed, will send all her relationships into a tailspin. Can she really take a risk on romance when her pilot career isn’t even off the ground?

Rosewood River Series ~ Book 5

The king is dead, but Havlands is still in turmoil, plagued by distrust amongst the conquered rebels, shifters, Fae, and humans.

With the impending threat of the invading Oakgards’ Fae, Elessia and her friends find themselves in a race to unite their fractured realm. But as Elessia grapples with the deadly implications of her newfound powers, she and Merrick discover a devastating truth: the price of her new gifts may force them to leave Havlands and their friends behind to face the looming war alone.

As Elessia and Merrick journey to Vastala in desperate search of answers, their friends must survive the brutal politics of a collapsing realm on their own. Bonds are tested, loyalties shift, and the lines between ally and enemy blur. And with fate at the door, they each must decide whether answering the call of destiny is worth facing the shadows that haunt them—all before it’s too late.

This wry, big-hearted, noir brings 1950s New York to life from the tenements of Hell’s Kitchen to the mansions of Riverdale, from Sing Sing to City Hall, with a gripping murder mystery laying bare the explosive conflicts between its big wheels, its working stiffs, its gangsters, and its dreamers.

July 1950: Mick Mulligan has just hung out his shingle as a private investigator in New York’s sweaty Hell’s Kitchen. A former Hollywood cartoonist whose life fell apart when he was blacklisted during a communist witch hunt, Mick is broke, divorced, and in need of a paying gig to make his child support payments. But maybe not this gig. First off, it’s impossible. Worse, it’s liable to get him killed.

Last year, universally reviled cab company owner Irwin Johnson was murdered. One of his drivers, an African American Communist Party member named Harold Williams, was arrested, tried, and found guilty, despite scant evidence. Now his execution date is two weeks away. No one has come out to fight the miscarriage of justice—not the liberals, not the unions, not the Communists. New York City labor leader Duke Rogowski asks Mick to make one last effort on Harold’s behalf—can he find fresh evidence that might buy Harold a stay of execution?

Lots of people might have wanted Irwin Johnson dead—anyone from his cuckolded wife to his jilted mistresses’ jealous husbands to the mafiosi he was stealing business from or one of the workers he exploited—but no one has any reason to help Mick exonerate Harold Williams, and some of Irwin’s former associates are happy to take a blunt object to the head of anyone asking awkward questions. Yet Mick can’t abandon a potentially innocent man to the electric chair, and he agrees go to bat for a Negro Communist no one else wants anything to do with. Can he pull off a miracle?

For fans of Becka Mack and Ana Huang comes a heart-stopping and utterly romantic story about two people from opposite sides of the world who dare to risk the odds to be together.

She did everything right—until her life fell apart.
The last place Priya Solanki wants to be is back at the funeral home her parents have run for decades—a place tied to a caste legacy the world says is long gone, but that her family carried from India to Canada and never let go of. Her traditional parents call it fate—proof that her path was written in the stars, just like the generations before her. But to Priya, it’s a life she never chose, and one she’s spent years trying to outrun. Her plan is simple: regroup, reset, and finally break the cycle.

Then Ethan Knight reappears.
Once the reckless, motorcycle-riding boy next door, he’s now a full-blown Hollywood star—older, incredibly handsome, and impossible to avoid. Adored by millions and followed everywhere by flashing cameras, he’s renting out the funeral home to prepare for a role—and flipping every piece of Priya’s plan upside down.

And finally, the stars align.
Trapped in close quarters with the boy she once loved in silence, Priya can’t escape the heat, the history, or the ache she’s buried for years. But falling for Ethan doesn’t just mean risking her heart; it means stepping into a world that was never built for someone like her—and daring to believe she belongs in it anyway.

But even if she takes the risk, what happens when Ethan leaves? Because, inevitably, he will.

Loving him wouldn’t just destroy her—it would destroy everything she’s trying to rebuild.

In Ottoman Greece, a motherless girl named Daphne leads a suffocating farmer’s life. When her older brother dies after a short illness, her patriarch father curses God for leaving him with only a daughter. Unable to pay the local priest for his son’s burial, he compels Daphne to go to the village and beg for money. Daphne gets rejected and mocked by the villagers, and flees to the mountains, where she finds a gold pouch. She dares to dream — this could be her way out. But just before she’s about to carry out her escape plan, the Devil pays her a visit. These lands belong to him. And pay­ ment is due .

Black Mass Rising author Theo Prasidis and emerging artist Staš a Gacpar invite you to the mystical countryside of 19th century Greece, a land wreathed in legends and superstition. Inspired by actual folktales of the time, THE GIRL, THE PRIEST, AND THE DEVIL is a captivating graphic novel with the otherworldly quality of the weird folklore of old.

The “heir to Clancy’s throne” (The Real Book Spy) returns with his most compelling, explosive techno-thriller ever.

Despite decades of treaties, military missions, and covert actions devoted to preventing it, Iran has finally assembled its first nuclear bomb and the U.S., with UN backing, has decided it’s time to take direct action. The first move is to blockade the Persian Gulf with a carrier strike group, but Iran strikes back quickly. With Russia’s backing, Iran launches a devastating attack and now the U.S. forces are in a race against the clock to survive until reinforcements arrive and a counter-strike launched.

While events grow desperate in the Middle East, a plot to kill the President is unfolding. Jake Harrison, a now AWOL Navy SEAL, is lured back into action by his former partner Christine O’Connor to find and stop the freelance assassin, a man who has long been Harrison’s nemesis.

With a deadly war brewing on two fronts—both overt and covert—the uneasy allies of Jake and Christine must use all their resources to circumvent the coming war. And as tensions threaten to boil over, Jake will be faced with the ultimate what is he willing to sacrifice for the revenge he wants?

For a princess, becoming the savior of a nation could mean sacrificing love and life in this breathtaking conclusion to the epic Eye of the Goddess trilogy by USA Today bestselling author Sariah Wilson.

Princess Lia of Locris is the unlikeliest person to be Ilion’s defender. Once, she’d have gladly seen the entire adversarial nation burn. But much has changed. Ilion is home to too many innocents, including her sister. Besides, there is no escaping the goddess’s command. Lia is Ilion’s prophesied savior.

With that mortal obligation come She must never consummate her marriage to Xander, prince of Ilion, lest she lose her powers of divine magic when she needs them most. Physically bonded to share each other’s pain, these former enemies have grown from merely attracted to something more profound. But what future can they have when Lia’s destiny requires sacrificing her life?

As enemies close in and war threatens everything they love, Lia and Xander must find a way to follow the goddess’s laws while also accepting the truth in their hearts—before the prophecy demands its final, fatal price.

Cultivate lasting change with simple habits, from New York Times bestselling author Tal Ben-Shahar.

Do you struggle to make real change because you’re starting too big without building a foundation first—get a new job, lose twenty pounds, learn a new language? Maybe the tools at your disposal seem inadequate, the prospect of change overwhelms you, and you feel stuck.

In Small Habits, Lasting Change, happiness expert Tal Ben-Shahar provides accessible and easy-to-implement tools, and an easy-to-follow three step process, that can help you realize your goals, aspirations, and dreams.

He starts with simple intervention techniques to reset your mood in as little time as possible–what he calls Happiness Boosters in the form of MVIs–Minimum Viable Interventions, which
Taking three deep breathsWriting down five things for which you are gratefulReading a quote slowly and deliberately Vigorously climbing stairs for 45 seconds
From there, discover how to improve wellbeing–spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational, and emotional–and build a stronger base within yourself for committing to change, increasing your willpower, and finding joy in the journey.

The final step in Ben-Shahar’s guide will help you learn how to create the daily rituals that will help you turn goals into habits, and intentions into reality, using the 3 Rs of
RemindersRepetitionsRituals 
With concrete examples, practical, direct advice, and an easy-to-follow action plan, Ben-Shahar shows you that while cultivating lasting change takes motivation, it does not have to be a frustrating experience that is doomed to you’re just starting without the foundation you need for real change.

In this world, maids go about their everyday lives dressed in long black dresses, frilly aprons—and skate shoes?! Whether they’re running errands or hitting the half-pipe, these maids shred the town. Like witches have their brooms, these ladies have their boards. If one thing’s certain, these maids are totally Maid to Skate.