You Killed Me First
It’s 5 November, and a woman awakens to a nightmare. Bound and gagged, she lies trapped in the heart of a towering bonfire. As the smoke thickens, panic sets in – she’s moments away from being engulfed in flames. How did it come to this?
Rewind eleven months: Margot, a faded TV star, and her long-suffering friend Anna watch as glamorous Liv and her flawless family move into their street. The three women soon fabricate the perfect pretence of friendship, but each harbours her own deadly secret – and newcomer Liv senses something is terribly wrong beneath the polished exteriors.
As cracks widen in the veneer of perfection and lies escalate out of control, tension ignites. Bonfire Night is approaching and someone is set to burn…But who will it be?
What Wakes the Bells
Built by long-gone Saints, the city of Vaiwyn lives and breathes and bleeds. As a Keeper, Mina knows better than most what her care of Vaiwyn’s bells means for the sentient city. It’s the Strauss family’s thousand-year legacy―prevent the Vespers from ringing, or they will awake a slumbering evil.
One afternoon, to Mina’s horror, her bell peals thirteen times, shattering the city’s tenuous peace. With so much of the city’s history and lore lost in a long-ago disaster, no one knows the danger that has been unleashed―until the city begins to fight back. As the sun sets, stone gargoyles and bronze statues tear away from their buildings and plinths to hunt people through the streets. Trapped in Mina’s bell, the soul of a twisted and power-hungry Saint festered. Now free of his prison, he hides behind the face of one of Vaiwyn’s citizens, corrupting the city and turning it on itself.
Time is running out, and the only chance Mina has to stop the destruction and horrific killings is finding and destroying the Saint’s host. Everyone is a suspect, including Mina’s closest loved ones. She will have to decide how far she’ll go to save her city―and who she’s willing to kill to do it.
All the Other Mothers Hate Me
Florence Grimes, age thirty-one, always takes the easy way out. Single, broke and unfulfilled after the humiliating end to her girl-band career, she has only one reason to get out of bed each day: her ten-year-old son Dylan. But then Alfie Risby, her son’s bully and the heir to a vast frozen-food empire, mysteriously vanishes during a class trip, and Dylan becomes the prime suspect.
Florence, for once, is faced with a task she can’t quit: She’s got to find Alfie and clear her son’s name or risk losing Dylan forever—never mind that she has no useful skills (let alone investigative ones) and that all the other school moms hate her. Oh, and she has a reason to suspect Dylan might not be as innocent as she’d like to believe.
My Big Fat Fake Marriage
Connie has always distrusted nice guys. In her experience, they’re just waiting to reveal some horrible secret. And then she meets big, adorable, Henry Samuel Beckett—editor extraordinaire, lover of bow ties, sweet and so cheery she struggles to believe he’s real.
Until Henry Samuel Beckett—or Beck, as he’s known to most—tells her the secret underneath his sunny surface: He’s been single all his life. But in a moment of panic, he’s told everyone at his publishing house that he’s married. And when Connie, an aspiring writer herself, can’t help defending him, she ends up being the fake wife he doesn’t actually have.
When they head off on a writing retreat, surrounded by people convinced this must be a ruse, both of them can’t help but agree. Until they share their first kiss, their first touch, their first time in only one bed. Side by side, every night, as the simmering tension builds…Connie starts to wonder if this might be real after all.
Blood Beneath the Snow
Revna is no stranger to struggle. As the only member of the royal family without a magical ability, she is seen as an embarrassing mistake to her kingdom and a blight on her family tree. Luckily, Revna has found family in other outcasts in her kingdom. But when her two closest friends’ lives are put in danger, she is determined to save them by any means necessary, no matter the cost. The Bloodshed Trials—a competition where the last sibling in the royal family standing takes the throne—might just be the ultimate price.
Revna turns down her arranged marriage and commits to competing for the throne only to be kidnapped by the mysterious and terrifyingly powerful Hellbringer, the general of her country’s greatest enemy. He has the ability to rend souls with the flick of his wrist and is every inch as intimidating as the war stories say he is. But Revna wonders if there may be some humanity left in him—especially when he reveals there are other parties who want her on the throne for their own furtive reasons.
Fan Service
The only place small-town outcast Alex Lawson fits in is the online fan forum she built for Arcane, a long-running werewolf detective show. Her dedication to archiving fictional supernatural lore made her Internet-famous, even if she harbors a secret disdain for the show’s star, Devin Ashwood. (Never meet your heroes – sometimes they turn out to be The Worst.)
Ever since his show went off the air, Devin and his career have spiralled, but waking up naked in the woods outside his LA home with no memory of the night before is a new low. It must have been a coincidence that the once-in-a-century Wolf Blood Moon crested last night. The claws, fangs, and howling are a little more difficult to explain away. Desperate for answers, Devin finds Alex – the closest thing to an expert that exists. If only he could convince her to stop hating his guts long enough to help . . .
Once he makes her an offer she can’t refuse, these reluctant allies lower their guards trying to wrangle his inner beast. Unfortunately, getting up close and personal quickly comes back to bite them.
Homegrown Magic
Yael Clauneck is the only scion of an obscenely wealthy banking family with its fingers in every pie in the realm. They’re on the precipice of a predetermined life when they flee their own graduation party, galloping away in search of…well, they’re not sure, but maybe the chance to feel like life can still be a grand adventure.
Margot Greenwillow—talented plant witch, tea lover, and greenhouse owner—has never felt further from adventure in her life. She’s been desperately trying to keep what remains of her family’s magic remedies business afloat. So when her childhood friend and former crush, Yael, rides back into her life, she’s shocked. But perhaps this could be a good thing. After all, Margot could use an assistant in the greenhouses.
Yael has no experience or, honestly, practical skills, but they’re delighted to accept. They can lay low for a while, flirting with Margot while they figure out what to do next. Meanwhile, Margot has plans of her own—but plans are notoriously unreliable things, unlikely to survive a swiftly blooming mutual attraction, not to mention the machinations of parents determined to get their heir back . . . no matter the cost.
Claire, Darling
She’s been ghosted. But she won’t be forgotten.
Claire is excited to drop off a surprise workday lunch for her fiancé, Noah. It’s their anniversary, after all. But when the receptionist tells her that no one with Noah’s name works there, Claire thinks there must be a mistake.
Noah isn’t picking up her calls. Her texts go unanswered. It turns out Noah has a different life . . . one with a beautiful girlfriend, a beautiful house. Claire was never really in the picture.
Desperate to unpack all of Noah’s lies, Claire plunges into a nightmarish journey of obsession that submerges her deeper into the murky waters of her own past—a past dominated by a manipulative mother who shattered her sense of self.
Will Claire break free from the ghosts that haunt her? Or will they become more costly than any of Noah’s lies?
The Jackal’s Mistress
Virginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield.
And then she finds a gravely injured Union officer left for dead in a neighbor’s house, the bones of his hand and leg shattered. Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade is her enemy – but he’s also a human being, and Libby must make a terrible Does she leave him to die alone? Or does she risk treason and try to nurse him back to health? And if she succeeds, does she try to secretly bring him across Union lines, where she might negotiate a trade for news of her own husband?
A vivid and sweeping story of two people navigating the boundaries of love and humanity in a landscape of brutal violence, The Jackal’s Mistress is a heart-stopping new novel, based on a largely unknown piece of American history, from one of our greatest storytellers.
The Antidote
The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a “Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.
Russell’s novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.
Go Luck Yourself
Stag Dance
In Stag Dance, this collection’s titular novel, a Paul Bunyan-type lumberjack working an illegal winter logging outfit recounts how the lonely woodsmen entertain themselves with a dance at which some of the loggers must volunteer to attend as women. Obsession, repressed desires, and betrayal lead up to the big night, as The Lumberjack grows increasingly jealous of Lisen, the prettiest young man in camp, weaving a surreal tall tale that questions the nature of transition.
Three equally visionary novellas surround Stag Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones imagines a sci-fi future in which everyone must choose their own gender—the vengeful consequence of a rogue trio of charismatic trans women who destroy civilization as we know it. In The Chaser, a secret romance between roommates at a Quaker boarding school brings out intrigue and cruelty. In the last novella, The Masker, a party weekend on the Las Vegas strip turns horrific when a young crossdresser must choose between two a handsome mystery man who objectifies her in thrilling ways, or a cynical veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood.
Radical, witty, and gripping, these four narratives coalesce to form a portrait of identity-in-crisis that unsettles and delights.
Jane and Dan at the End of the World
Jane and Dan have been married for nineteen years, but Jane isn’t sure they’re going to make it to twenty. The mother of two feels unneeded by her teenagers, and her writing career has screeched to an unsuccessful halt. Her one published novel sold under five hundred copies. Worse? She’s pretty sure Dan is cheating on her. When the couple goes to the renowned upscale restaurant La Fin du Monde to celebrate their anniversary, Jane thinks it’s as good a place as any to tell Dan she wants a divorce.
But before they even get to the second course, an underground climate activist group bursts into the dining room. Jane is shocked—and not just because she’s in a hostage situation the likes of which she’s only seen in the movies. Nearly everything the disorganized and bumbling activists say and do is right out of the pages of her failed book. Even Dan (who Jane wasn’t sure even read her book) admits it’s eerily familiar.
Which means Dan and Jane are the only ones who know what’s going to happen next. And they’re the only ones who can stop it. This wasn’t what Jane was thinking of when she said “’til death do us part” all those years ago, but if they can survive this, maybe they can survive anything—even marriage.
Love and Other Paradoxes
Cambridge University, 2005: Student Joe Greene scribbles verses in the margins of his notebook, dreaming of a future where his words will echo through the ages, all while doubting it could ever happen.
Then, the future quite literally finds him—in the form of Esi. She’s part of a time-traveling tour, a trip for people in the future to witness history’s greatest moments firsthand. The star of this tour? Joe Greene. In Esi’s era, Joe is as renowned as Shakespeare. And he’s about to meet Diana, a fellow student and aspiring actress, who will become his muse and the subject of his famous love poems.
But Esi is harboring a secret. She’s not here because she idolizes Joe—actually, she thinks his poetry is overrated. Something will happen at Cambridge this year that will wreck Esi’s life, and she’s hell-bent on changing it. When Esi goes rogue from her tour, she bumps into Joe and sends his destiny into a tailspin. To save both their futures, Esi becomes Joe’s dating coach, helping him win over Diana. But when Joe’s romantic endeavors go off-script—and worse, he starts falling for Esi instead—they both face a crucial question: Is the future set in stone, or can we pen our own fates?
You Deserve to Know
The Anatomy of Magic
Lilian Estrada seemingly has it all: an ob-gyn star on the rise, a master at balancing work with whirlwind romances and part of a family of fiercely loyal and exceptional women, all bound together by an extraordinary secret. The Estrada women each possess a unique power, and Lily shines with the rare gift to manipulate memories. Yet not even her mystical abilities can shield her from a harrowing event at the hospital, one that sends her powers—and her confidence—spiraling out of control.
Seeking solace, Lily retreats to her family’s ancestral home in Mexico, only to find herself face-to-face with a ghost from her past—Sam, the first love she never forgot. Nearly a decade since she last saw him, Sam is hardly the boy she once knew, and as old flames spark to life, Lily must navigate the mysteries of their shared history and the depths of her own heart if she hopes to control her unpredictable magic.
A Gentleman’s Gentleman
The notoriously eccentric Lord Christopher Eden is a “man of unusual make” and even more unusual habits: he prefers to live as far from the prying eyes and ears of the ton as possible, and would rather have the comfortable company of his childhood cook and his aged butler, Plinkton, than the swarm of servants and hangers-on befitting a man of his station.
But Christopher’s pleasant, if occasionally lonely life is upended when he receives word from his lawyers that, according to his late father’s will, he must find a wife by the end of the Season if he intends to keep his family’s fortune and the Eden’s End estate. Christopher cannot imagine a worse fate: as he isn’t attracted to women, his chances of making a wife happy are slim. Furthermore, if his quest to marry has any hope of succeeding, he must move to London posthaste and acquire some more suitable staff.
Enter James Harding, Christopher’s new, distractingly handsome—if rigidly traditional—valet. After a rocky start, the two strike up a fragile friendship amid the throes of the London Season . . . a friendship that threatens to shatter under the looming shadow of Christopher’s impending nuptials—and the secrets both men are keeping.
With its heady combination of dry wit, slow-burn romance, and a nuanced, complex portrait of trans identity and relationships that’s as relevant now as it was during the Regency era, A Gentleman’s Gentleman stands to transform the historical romance genre as we know it.
The Trouble Up North
The Sawbrooks have lived on prime real estate on the lakes of Michigan since before there was prime real estate. A family of smugglers and bootleggers, every man, woman, and child in each generation has been taught to navigate the nooks and crannies of the rivers and highways that flow in and out of Canada. The hidden routes are the family’s legacy.
But today, the Sawbrooks are deeply fractured, and the money that’s sustained the family is running out. Edward, the Sawbrook patriarch, is dying from cancer, and his wife, Rhoda, is bitterly disappointed in her three adult children. The eldest daughter, Lucy, is now a park ranger, working to federally protect the land against her mother’s will; the middle son, Buckner, hasn’t been the same since he came back from the army suffering from alcoholism; and the youngest daughter, Jewell, is wasting her potential as a card player and bartender.
When Jewell is asked to commit a crime for a major insurance payout, she agrees, eager for the cash, but too late, she realizes that that the boat she torched wasn’t empty…
Together, the Sawbrooks will have to contend with the old, familial ways and the new, shifting world, and face each other—and their pain-filled past—to smuggle one more thing through and out of their land to safety.
Galaphile
One of the most iconic structures in the Four Lands is Paranor, the fortress home of the Druid Order. Legend holds that it was erected by an Elven leader known as Galaphile Joss. But who was this Galaphile, and how and why did he choose to establish this center of magic and learning?
Within these pages we meet the real Galaphile, following him from a friendless teenage orphan stranded in the Human world to a powerful adult and master mage, studying under the infamous recluse, Cogline. We learn of the forces that shaped him—those he loved, and those he lost; those who aided him, and those who stood against him.
Throughout it all, Galaphile’s goal is a noble one: to bring order to a chaotic world, and to make life better for those trying to survive it. To this end, he commences building the citadel which will one day be known as Paranor with the aid of the King of the Silver River. But there is one other who seeks dominion over the Four Lands—and for far less virtuous ends.
For this foe has been corrupted by an ancient evil—one that will not only reach out and touch Galaphile’s nearest and dearest, but also echo down through the centuries, sowing the seeds for some of the darkest times the Four Lands will ever face.
The Winter Goddess
Cailleach, goddess of winter, was not born to be a blight on humanity, but she became it. If anyone asked her, she would say with scorn that it was their own humans were selfish, thoughtless, and destructive, bringing harm to each other and the Earth without cause or qualms.
One day, Cailleach goes too far. Thousands die, lost to her brutal winter. In punishment, her mother Danu, the queen of the gods, strips the goddess of her powers and sends Cailleach to Earth, to live and die as the mortals she so despises, until she understands what it is to be a human. Though determined to live in solitude, Cailleach finds that she cannot help but reach for the people she once held in such disdain. She loves and mourns in equal measure, and in opening herself to humanity, hears tales not meant for immortal ears—and a secret long-buried, that will redefine what it means to be a god.
The Women on Platform Two
Dublin, 1969: Maura has just married Dr. Christy Davenport and they look forward to growing their family. But as her husband’s vicious temper emerges, Maura worries that her home might never be safe for a child. Meanwhile, her close friend Bernie, a mother of three, learns the devastating news that if she conceives again, her health complications could prove fatal.
Dublin, 2023: A close call makes Saoirse realize that she may never want to be a mother. Little does she know that only a few decades ago, a group of women made this option possible for her. And she’s about to meet one of them…
The Women on Platform Two is a haunting, powerful story of feminine resistance and resilience that reminds us all of where we started—and how far we still have to go.
Shoot Your Shot
When Jaylen Jones doesn’t secure an NHL contract at the end of training camp, he worries his hockey career is over. But after an anonymous one-night stand on his last night in town, his luck turns around and a last-minute roster spot opens up on the Seattle Rainiers. Connecting his fortune to the girl he spent the night with, superstitious Jaylen is suddenly desperate to keep her around.
Aspiring tattoo artist Lucy isn’t so sure about the proposition to remain Jaylen’s lucky charm—she’s been called a lot of things in her life, but good luck has never been one of them. But stuck in a career slump, Lucy has everything to gain. Hoping for an apprenticeship at a tattoo parlor hasn’t offered her much stability, and Jaylen is willing to pay any price to get Lucy to agree…so maybe sending him a routine text message before each game won’t be too hard.
What starts as an agreement to trade favors—a good luck text for an appearance at a charity event, or well wishes in exchange for prime game tickets—quickly turns into sizzling chemistry that’s too delicious not to give in to. But Lucy’s been in too many situationships to even think about getting attached again, and Jaylen is clearly only with Lucy as long as it’s helping his career…neither of them expecting getting lucky could be so complicated.
Goddess Complex
Sanjana Satyananda is trying to recover her life. It’s been a year since she walked out on her husband, a struggling actor named Killian, at a commune in India, after a disagreement about whether to have children. Now, Sanjana is struggling to resurrect her busted anthropology dissertation and crashing at her annoyingly perfect sister’s while her similarly well-adjusted peers obsess over marriages, mortgages, and motherhood. Sanjana needs to move forward—and finalize her divorce, ASAP.
There’s just one problem: Killian is missing. As Sanjana tries to track him down, she’s bombarded with unnerving calls from women seeking her advice on pregnancy and fertility. Soon, Sanjana comes face to face—literally—with what her life might have been if she’d chosen parenthood. And the road not taken turns out to be wilder, stranger, and more tempting than she imagined.
A darkly funny, vertiginous novel about the dilemmas of procreation, pregnancy, and parenting, Goddess Complex is both a twist-filled psychological thriller and a feminist satire of our age of GirlBosses turned self-care influencers, optimization cults, internet mommy gurus, egg freezing, and so much more.
The Tomb of Dragons
While his title may be gone, his duties are not. Celehar contends with a municipal cemetery with fifty years of secrets, the damage of a revethavar he’s terrified to remember, and a group of miners who are more than willing to trade Celehar’s life for a chance at what they feel they’re owed.
Celehar does not have to face these impossible tasks alone. Joining him are his mentee Velhiro Tomasaran, still finding her footing with the investigative nature of their job; Iäna Pel-Thenhior, his beloved opera director friend and avid supporter; and the valiant guard captain Hanu Olgarezh.
Amidst the backdrop of a murder and a brewing political uprising, Celehar must seek justice for those who cannot find it themselves under a tense political system. The repercussions of his quest are never as simple they seem, and Celehar’s own life and happiness hang in the balance.
The Californians
It’s 2024, and Tobey Harlan—college dropout, temporary waiter, recently dumped—steals from the wall of his father’s house three paintings by the venerated and controversial artist Di Stiegl. Tobey’s just lost everything he owns to a Northern California wildfire, and if he can sell the paintings (albeit in a shady way to a notorious tech bro) he can start life anew in a place no one will ever find him, perhaps even Oregon.
A hundred years before, Klaus Aaronsohn—German-Jewish immigrant, resident of the Lower East Side—inveigles his way into a film studio in Astoria, Queens. In love with silent cinema, Klaus restyles himself “Klaus von Stiegl,” a mysterious aristocratic German film director. In true Hollywood fashion he will court fame, fortune, romance, and betrayal, and end his career directing Brackett, a radical, notorious 60s-era detective show.
Weaving between the stories of Tobey and Klaus is that of Diane “Di” Stiegl: Klaus’s granddaughter, raised in Palm Springs, who carves out a career as an artist in gritty 1980s New York City. As America yields the presidency to a Hollywood cowboy, as Diane’s grifter father and free-spirited mother move in and out of her life, Diane will reflect America’s most urgent and hypocritical years back to itself, uneasily finding critical adoration as well as great fame and wealth.
Counting Backwards
Jessa Gidney is a woman on the edge. Passed over for partner at her Manhattan law firm, she reevaluates her priorities, focusing on her deep desire to become a mother and her newfound interest in pro bono work. Her first case? An incarcerated woman named Isobel Perez fighting against a deportation order. An unsettling revelation about Isobel’s health leads Jessa to uncover a horrifying pattern of medical malpractice within the detention facility. With her corporate law firm unsupportive and her husband, Vance, only concerned about the added stress while they’re trying for a baby, Jessa is torn about whether to intervene. But when a shocking secret about her own family history comes to light, she is propelled to fight for these women, no matter the cost.
Nearly a century earlier in Virginia, seventeen-year-old, real-life Carrie Buck dreams of escaping her life as an unpaid laborer for her foster family. She yearns for a family of her own, a dream that seems within reach when she attracts the attention of her foster mother’s handsome nephew. But he soon abandons her, and she’s cast out, pregnant and completely alone. As a ward of the State, she is designated “feebleminded” and left to the mercy of a corrupt and heartless legal system. Her courageous fight for her own destiny leads to a landmark Supreme Court case.
As the novel alternates between these two women’s stories, a startling connection is revealed. Tackling complex topics such as reproductive injustice, immigration law, eugenics, and societal expectations of women, the story is a compelling exploration of empowerment and self-determination. With a gripping investigation reminiscent of Erin Brockovich woven throughout, the tale is a testament to the courage it takes to stay true to oneself.
Malinalli
A real-life historical figure, the woman known as Malinalli, Malintzin, La Malinche, Doña Marina, and Malinalxochitl was the Nahua interpreter who helped Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés communicate with the native people of Mexico. When indigenous leaders observed her marching into their cities, they believed she was a goddess—blessed with the divine power to interpret the Spaniards’ intentions for their land. Later, historians and pop culture would deem her a traitor—the “Indian” girl who helped sell Mexico’s future to an invader.
In this riveting, fantastical retelling, Malinalli is all of those things and more, but at heart, she’s a young girl, kidnapped into slavery by age twelve, and fighting to survive the devastation wrought by both the Spanish and Moctezuma’s greed and cruelty. Blessed with magical powers, and supported by a close-knit circle of priestesses, Mali vows to help defend her people’s legacy. In vivid, compelling prose, debut author Veronica Chapa spins an epic tale of magic, sisterhood, survival, and Mexican resilience. This is the first novel to reimagine and reinterpret Malinalli’s story with the empathy, humanity, and awe she’s always deserved.
Vanishing Daughters
It started the night journalist Briar Thorne’s mother died in their rambling old mansion on Chicago’s South Side.
The nightmares of a woman in white pleading to come home, music switched on in locked rooms, and the panicked fear of being swallowed by the dark…Bri has almost convinced herself that these stirrings of dread are simply manifestations of grief and not the beyond-world of ghostly impossibilities her mother believed in. And more tangible terrors still lurk outside the decaying Victorian greystone.
A serial killer has claimed the lives of fifty-one women in the Chicago area. When Bri starts researching the murders, she meets a stranger who tells her there’s more to her sleepless nights than bad dreams—they hold the key to putting ghosts to rest and stopping a killer. But the killer has caught on and is closing in, and if Bri doesn’t answer the call of the dead soon, she’ll be walking among them.
The Filling Station
During Jim Crow America, there was only one place Black Americans could safely refuel their vehicles along what would eventually become iconic Route 66. But more than just a place to refuel, it was a place to fill up the soul, build community, and find strength. For two sisters, the Threatt Filling Station became the safe haven they needed after escaping the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
After looking in the face of evil and leaving her whole world behind, Margaret Justice wants nothing more than to feel safe and hold tight to what she has left. Her sister, Evelyn, meanwhile, is a dreamer who longs for adventure and to follow her heart, even though she’s been told repeatedly to not dream too big.
As they both grapple with love, loss, and racism, Margaret and Evelyn realize that they can’t hide out at the filling station when Greenwood and their father’s legacy needs to be rebuilt. Going back will take strength they’re not sure they have. But for the love of Greenwood, they will risk it all and just may be the catalyst to bring Black Wall Street back to its former glory.
The Usual Family Mayhem
Kasey Nottingham needs a splashy idea at her company where they find and develop the next big thing for investors—her job depends on it. Impulsively, she pitches Mags’ Desserts, a beloved small-town business run by her grandma Mags and live-in “best friend” Celia, two women who overcame deadbeat husbands and financial ruin to build a word-of-mouth clientele. Kasey expects her boss to say no. Instead, he sends her home to North Carolina to land the deal…and now she has a problem.
Mags and Celia aren’t interested, which isn’t a surprise, but something else is going on in their kitchen. Locked cabinets. Cryptic conversations. Unexpected notations on business records. The ladies have secrets and whatever they’re hiding is big. As reports of mysterious deaths of abusive men in the area surface—all in households that recently received a delivery from Mags’ Desserts—Kasey worries Gram and Celia have gone into the poison pie business.
As investors start circling, Kasey enlists Jackson Quaid, Celia’s nephew and Kasey’s long-time crush, as her reluctant investigation assistant. Jackson is practical. Kasey has a wild imagination. Together, they dodge Kasey’s boss and gather intel. And kiss. Lots of kissing, though probably not the best idea to start an unexpected romance. Doing it while keeping two feisty ladies from going to jail for knocking off bad husbands—even if those husbands deserve it—might be impossible…but Kasey never shied away from a challenge.
Luminous
In a reunified Korea of the future, robots have been integrated into society as surrogates, servants, children, and even lovers. Though boundaries between bionic and organic frequently blur, these robots are decidedly second-class citizens. Jun and Morgan, two siblings estranged for many years, are haunted by the memory of their lost brother, Yoyo, who was warm, sensitive, and very nearly human.
Jun, a war veteran turned detective of the lowly Robot Crimes Unit in Seoul, becomes consumed by an investigation that reconnects him with his sister Morgan, now a prominent robot designer working for a top firm, who is, embarrassingly, dating one of her creations in secret.
On the other side of Seoul in a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through scraps looking for robotic parts that might support her failing body. When she discovers a robot boy named Yoyo among the piles of trash, an unlikely bond is formed since Yoyo is so lifelike, he’s unlike anything she’s seen before.
While Morgan prepares to launch the most advanced robot-boy of her career, Jun’s investigation sparks a journey through the underbelly of Seoul, unearthing deeper mysteries about the history of their country and their family. The three siblings must find their way back to each other to reckon with their pasts and the future ahead of them in this poignant and remarkable exploration of what it really means to be human.
Vanya and the Wild Hunt
Eleven-year-old Vanya Vallen has always felt like she doesn’t fit in. She’s British-Indian in a mostly white town in England, her parents won’t talk about their pasts, and she has ADHD.
Oh, and she talks to books. More importantly, the books talk back.
When her family is attacked by a monster she believed only existed in fairytales, Vanya discovers that her parents have secrets, and that there are a lot more monsters out there. Overnight, she’s whisked off to the enchanted library and school of Auramere, where she joins the ranks of archwitches and archivists.
Life at Auramere is unexpected, exciting and wonderful. But even here, there’s no escaping monsters. The mysterious, powerful Wild Hunt is on the prowl, and Vanya will need all her creativity and courage to unmask its leader and stop them before they destroy the only place she’s ever truly belonged.
From the critically-acclaimed author of the Kiki Kallira series and The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches comes an action-packed and magical middle grade fantasy, perfect for fans of J.K. Rowling and Rick Riordan.
Rose of Jericho
The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart’s New York
At twenty-five years old, Michael Stewart was a young Black aspiring artist, deejay, and model, looking to make a name for himself in the vibrant downtown art scene of the early 1980’s New York City. On September 15, 1983, he was brutally beaten by New York City Transit Authority police for allegedly tagging a 14th Street subway station wall.
Witnesses reported officers beating him with billy clubs and choking him with a nightstick. Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital hog-tied with no heartbeat and died after thirteen days in a coma. This was, at that point, the most widely noticed act of police brutality in the city’s history. The Man Nobody Killed recounts the cultural impact of Michael Stewart’s life and death.
The Stewart case quickly catalyzed movements across multiple communities. It became a rallying cry, taken up by artists and singers including Madonna, Keith Haring, Spike Lee, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, tabloid legends such as Jimmy Breslin and Murray Kempton, and the pioneering local news reporter, Gabe Pressman. The Stewart family and the downtown arts community of 1980s New York demanded justice for Michael, leading to multiple investigations into the circumstances of his wrongful death.
Elon Green, the Edgar Award–winning author of Last Call, presents the first comprehensive narrative account of Michael Stewart’s life and killing, the subsequent court proceedings, and the artistic aftermath. In the vein of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace and His Name is George Floyd, Green brings us the story of a promising life cut short and a vivid snapshot of the world surrounding this loss. A tragedy set in stark contrast against the hope, activism, and creativity of the 1980’s New York City art scene, The Man Nobody Killed serves as a poignant reminder of recurring horrors in American history and explores how, and for whom, the justice system fails.
33 Place Brugmann
An extraordinarily accomplished debut novel—a love story, mystery, and philosophical puzzle—told in the singular voices of the residents of a Beaux Arts apartment building in Belgium in 1939
On the eve of the occupation, in the heart of Brussels, life for the residents of eight apartments at 33 Place Brugmann is about to change forever.
Art student Charlotte Sauvin, daughter of a prominent architect in apartment 4L, knows all the details of the building and its people: how light falls and voices echo, the distinct knock of her dearest friend, Julian Raphaël, the eldest son of an art collector’s family across the hall in 4R. But all that’s familiar for Charlotte and the other residents of 33 starts to fracture as whispers of Nazi occupation become reality. The Raphaëls disappear—becoming refugees, nurses, soldiers, reluctant heroes. Masha, the seamstress on the 5th floor, deepens a dangerous affair with a wartime compatriot of Colonel Warlemont in 3R, a man far less feckless than he’d have his neighbors believe. In the face of a perilous new reality, every member of this accidental community will discover they are not the person they believed themselves to be. When confronted with a cruel choice—submit to the regime or risk their lives to resist—each discovers the truth about what, and who, matters to them the most.
33 Place Brugmann is a deeply empathetic and disarmingly hopeful tour-de-force about love, courage, and the role of art in a time of threat
Wicked: The Graphic Novel, Part 1
Like Dorothy when she crash-landed all those years ago, prepare to be swept into a new and colorful world in this first-ever graphic novel adaptation of Wicked. While the long-running Broadway musical and major motion picture take inspiration from this iconic novel, this is Oz as Gregory Maguire wrote it—a fantastical story with dark edges that explores morality and ambition, love and friendship, and discovering one’s inner power.
Elphaba was born with emerald-green skin—no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to explain or overcome the natural disasters of flood and famine. Still, Elphaba is smart, and by the time she enters Shiz University, she becomes a member of a charmed circle of Oz’s most promising young citizens.
But Elphaba’s Oz is no utopia. The Wizard’s secret police are everywhere. Animals—those creatures with voices, souls, and minds—are threatened with exile. Young Elphaba, green and wild and misunderstood, is determined to protect the Animals—even if it means combating the mysterious Wizard, even if it means risking her single chance at romance. Ever wiser in guilt and sorrow, she can find herself grateful when the world declares her a witch. And she can even make herself glad for that young girl from Kansas.
Psychotic Obsession
The Flame King’s Queen
The Strawberry Patch Pancake House
Fall in love with the brand new spring romance set in Dream Harbor, from the bestselling author of The Pumpkin Spice Café.
As a renowned chef, single-dad Archer never planned on moving to a small town, let alone running a pancake restaurant. But Dream Harbor needs a new chef, and Archer needs a community to help raise his daughter, Olive.
Iris has never managed to hold down a job for more than a few months. So when Mayor Kelly suggests Archer is looking for a nanny, and Iris might be available, she shudders at the thought. But in need of money she reluctantly agrees.
As Archer and Iris get used to their new roles, is it possible that they might have more in common than they first thought, or is Olive just determined to play match-maker…
Tropes:
- single dad
- forced proximity
- slow burn
- found family
- one bed
Story of My Life
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Hazel is given a one-two punch when she’s forced to move out of her Upper East Side apartment and is given a final warning from her publisher.
If she doesn’t turn in a book by her next deadline, they’re cutting her loose.
Hazel rashly decides to leave what’s left of her city life behind and impulse buys a house in rural Pennsylvania sight unseen. How better to entertain the loyal readers she still has and rediscover her writing mojo than immersing herself in small-town life?
Too bad this town looks to be on its last legs. At least she’s finding swoon-worthy inspiration from her hot, grumpy contractor Cam and his animal-rescuing, community-involved family. It’s all just research. What could go wrong?
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A note from the author: This series is my love letter to every reader who said they wanted to move to a fictional town . . .
You picking up anything this week? Did I miss anything? Let me know with a comment below!









































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