May 13, 2025 New Book Releases

A shield maiden fights to break the shackles of prophecy—and to overcome the betrayal of the man who broke her heart—in this searing conclusion to the Norse-inspired fantasy romance duology that began with the bestselling A Fate Inked in Blood.

The secret of her divine heritage revealed, Freya finds herself on a path that will see thousands of lives lost to the magic in her blood. Desperate to avoid this dark fate, she risks an alliance with Skaland’s greatest enemy to seek answers from the seer who foretold her future—the same seer who sent Bjorn to kill her.

While Freya still seethes with rage over Bjorn’s betrayal, the blood oaths that bind her demand that she keep him close as she hunts for a way to avert the looming war. Her magic draws her to the front lines of an old enmity, embroiling her with Nordeland’s Unfated—children of the gods who serve the king she was raised to fear. The same king who, unlike Bjorn, is now willing to fight at her back. For despite the desire that burns hot between Bjorn and Freya, his growing distrust of her chosen path threatens to drag them further apart.

As war approaches, gods and mortals must choose their weapons. Yet the fiercest battle will be the one Freya wages within herself. With the magic of two goddesses burning in her veins, she must weave the threads of destiny to decide her own fate: Will she be the shield that protects her people or the curse that destroys them?

Ocean Vuong returns with a big-hearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Vuong’s writing – formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness – are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.

The latest gripping serial killer thriller from the New York Times bestselling author Alex North.

Dan Garvie’s life has been haunted by the crime he witnessed as a child—narrowly escaping an encounter with a notorious serial killer. He has dedicated his life since to becoming a criminal profiler, eager to seek justice for innocent victims. So when his father passes away under suspicious circumstances, Dan revisits his small island community, determined to uncover the truth about his death. Is it possible that the monster he remembers from his childhood nightmares has returned after all these years?

With his signature shock and suspense, Alex North brings us The Man Made of Smoke. In turn emotional, introspective, and utterly terrifying, this is a story of fathers and sons, shadows and secrets, and the fight we all face to escape the trauma of the past.

Once, I bartered my soul for my mate.

Offering Mab my bound allegiance was the only way to save Caldris’s life-the only bargain I could make to keep us both from the Void. After cruelly murdering the King of Summer, her own brother, Mab became unhinged and there was no telling what she would do. Caldris is safe for now because of my sacrifice, but at a cost. Queen Mab only wants one thing from me.

Then, I was banished to Tartarus, from where few ever return.

Mab has demanded a tribute-a snake from the crown of Medusa. Navigating through the horrors of Tartarus, I must pass the Trials of the Five Rivers to prove my worth to the primordials and steal the unthinkable. All without my magic.

Now, I must embrace my darkness, my past.

To survive, I must discover who I am-who I’m fated to be. Human, and Fae, and something… other. Embracing all the sides of magic, light and dark, is the only way to escape Tartarus and get back to Caldris. I will save him, the Fae, and the humans from Mab.

Even if it kills me.

The acclaimed USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author returns with a twisty thriller that probes how well we actually know the men in our lives.

Rowan Gallagher is a devoted single mother and a talented architect with a high-profile commission restoring an historic mansion for the most powerful family in Maine. But inside, she’s a mess. She knows that stalking her ex’s avatar all over Portland on her phone isn’t the healthiest way to heal from their breakup. But she’s out of ice cream and she’s sick of romcoms.

Watching his every move is both fascinating and infuriating. He’s dining out while she’s wallowing on the couch. The last straw comes when he parks in their favorite spot on the waterfront. In a weak moment, she leashes the dog and sets off to see who else is in his car.

Instead of catching her ex in a kiss, Rowan becomes the first witness to his murder—and the primary suspect.

But Rowan isn’t the only one keeping secrets. As she digs for the truth, she discovers the dead man was stalking her too, gathering intimate details about her job and her past.

Struggling to clear her name, Rowan finds herself spiraling into the shadowy plot that killed him.

Will she be the next to die?

“Kennedy Ryan pours her whole soul into everything she writes, and it makes for books that are heart-searing, sensual, and life affirming.”―EMILY HENRY, #1 New York Times bestselling author Hendrix Barry lives a fabulous life. She has phenomenal friends, a loving family, and a thriving business that places her in the entertainment industry’s rarefied air. Your vision board? She’s probably living it.

She’s a woman with goals, dreams, ambitions—always striving upward. And in the midst of everything, she’s facing her toughest challenge caring for an aging parent.

Who has time for romance? From her experience, there’s a low ROI on relationships. She hasn’t met the man who can keep up with her anyway. Until…him.

Tech mogul Maverick Bell is a dilemma wrapped in an exquisitely tailored suit and knee-melting charm. From their first charged glance at the summer’s hottest party, Hendrix feels like she’s met her match. Only he can’t be. Mav may be the first to make her feel this seen and desired and appreciated, but he’s the last one she can have. Forbidden fruit is the juiciest, and this man is off limits if she plans to stay the course she’s set for herself.

But when Maverick gives chase—pursuing her, spoiling her, understanding her—is it time to let herself have something more?


A deeply moving and personal novel about sacrifice, self-reliance, and finding true happiness from “one of the finest romance writers of our age.” –Entertainment Weekly

Another instant classic from Carl Hiaasen—laugh-out-loud funny, tackling the current chaotic and polarized American culture (following in the path of Squeeze Me), with two wonderful new Hiaasen heroes

“The afternoon of September first, dishwater-gray and rainy, a man named Dale Figgo picked up a hitchhiker on Gus Grissom Boulevard in Tangelo Falls, Florida. The hitchhiker, who reminded Figgo of Danny DeVito, asked for a lift to the interstate. Figgo said he’d take him there after finishing an errand.”

Thus begins Fever Beach, with an errand that leads—in pure Hiaasen-style—into the depths of Florida at its most a sun-soaked bastion of right-wing extremism, white power, greed, and corruption. Figgo, it turns out, is the only hate-monger ever to be kicked out of the Proud Boys for being too dumb and incompetent. On January 6, 2021 he thought he was defacing a statue of Ulysses S. Grant, but he wound up spreading feces all over a statue of James Zacharia George, a Civil War Confederate war leader.

Figgo’s already messy life is about to get more complicated, thanks to two formidable adversaries. Viva Morales is a newly transplanted Floridian, a clever woman recently taken to the cleaners by her ex-husband, now working at the Mink Foundation, a supposedly philanthropical organization, and renting a room in Figgo’s apartment because there’s no place else she can afford. Twilly Spree has an anger management problem, especially when it comes to those who deface the environment, and way too many inherited millions of dollars. He’s living alone a year after his dog died, two years after he sank a city councilman’s party barge, and three years after his divorce.

Viva and Twilly are plunged into a mystery—involving dark money and darker motives—they are determined to solve, and become entangled in a world populated by some of Hiaasen’s most outrageous Claude and Eletra Mink—billionaire philanthropists with way too much plastic surgery and a secret right-wing agenda—and Congressman Clure Boyette—who dreams of being Florida’s (and maybe America’s) most important politician. The only things standing in his way are his love for hookers and young girls, and his total lack of intelligence. We meet Noel Kristianson—a Scandinavian agnostic injured when Figgo thinks he’s aJewish threat to humanity and runs him over with his car; Jonus Onus—Figgo’s partner in white power idiocy; and many, many more. Hiaasen ties them all together and delivers them to their appropriate fates, in his wildest and most entertaining novel to date.

From beloved author Hannah Orenstein, this love letter to lake life is “the Parent Trap for adults,” the story of two half-sisters who meet for the first time at their father’s cabin in Maine after his unexpected death.

Every summer, Vivian Levy and Lucy Webster spend a month with their father at his lake house — separately. Raised in New York City, Vivian is an ambitious sommelier with a secret that could derail her future. Lucy grew up in a tiny Maine town, where she now teaches high school English while watching her marriage unravel. They’ve never met. While Lucy envied her half-sister from afar, their father kept Vivian in the dark.

When Vivian arrives at the lake to spread his ashes and sell his cabin, she’s shocked to find Lucy there, awaiting his return. In an ideal world, they’d help each other through their grief. Instead, forced to spend the summer together, they fight through a storm of suspicion and hostility to untangle the messy truth about their parents’ pasts. While Lucy is desperate to hold onto the house, Vivian is scrambling after a betrayal. After thirty years apart, is it too late for them to be a family?

For fans of Carley Fortune and Elin Hilderbrand, this sister story set on a lush lake brims with the undeniable heart, depth, charm, and humor that have endeared Hannah Orenstein to legions of readers.

Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series meets Plain Bad Heroines in this sapphic dark academia fantasy by instant national and international bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

“Look at you, eating magic like you’re one of us.”

Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school’s boundaries from demonic incursions.

Walden is good at her job―no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from―is herself.

The second in a witty, USA Today bestselling series following author Eleanor Dash as she goes from wedding guest to murder mystery investigator at her best friend’s wedding on Catalina Island.

Attending your best friend’s wedding should be a piece of (wedding) cake, but not for Eleanor Dash, bestselling author of the Vacation Mysteries series. Because murder seems to follow her every time she goes on vacation and is definitely her uninvited plus-one to the special occasion.

Emma Wood, Eleanor’s best friend since childhood, is starring in the movie adaptation of When in Rome, Eleanor’s first novel. Emma is also marrying Fred Winters, a major movie star and Emma’s co-star, who just happens to be playing Connor Smith, Eleanor’s ex and leading man of the series.

Filming wraps and they invite the whole cast and crew to their wedding at nearby Catalina Island. There may be a storm headed their way—because of course there is—but nothing will stop their nuptials . . . that is until Emma receives a note that says “Someone is going to die at the wedding.”

Eleanor is a professional at this point, and she’ll do everything she can to uncover the murderer so true love can prevail . . . before it’s too late for her and the rest of the storm-trapped wedding party.

Trapped on a remote island by a howling storm, nine people sit down to dinner.

One of them is about to die.

A group of international players has gathered in a tiny village off the coast of Iceland for a diplomatic dinner. There’s Kristján, the mayor reeling from a personal tragedy. Graeme, the ambassador with an agenda to push. Jane, his wife, along for the ride on another one of her husband’s many business trips. And several others, from Iceland and from abroad, each with their own reason for being there, their own loyalties and grievances. By the end of the night, one of them will be dead. And it will be up to the ambassador’s wife, Jane, to figure out how—and why.

What Jane soon comes to realize is that small communities can be the most dangerous of them all… and no one in their group is safe. With secrets around every corner and violent weather trapping the finite list of suspects together on the island, this locked-room mystery by internationally bestselling author Eliza Reid brings Agatha Christie and Nordic noir together in a brand-new twist.

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain

Ron Chernow, the highly lauded biographer of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and Ulysses S. Grant, brings his considerable powers to bear on America’s first, and most influential, literary celebrity, Mark Twain. Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, under Halley’s Comet, the rambunctious Twain was an early teller of tall tales. He left his home in Missouri at an early age, piloted steamboats on the Mississippi, and arrived in the Nevada Territory during the silver-mining boom. Before long, he had accepted a job at the local newspaper, where he barged into vigorous discourse and debate, hoaxes and hijinks. After moving to San Francisco, he published stories that attracted national attention for their brashness and humor, writing under a pen name soon to be immortalized.

Chernow draws a richly nuanced portrait of the man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune and crafted his celebrity persona with meticulous care. Twain eventually settled with his wife and three daughters in Hartford, where he wrote some of his most well-known works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, earning him further acclaim. He threw himself into American politics, emerging as the nation’s most notable pundit. While his talents as a writer and speaker flourished, his madcap business ventures eventually forced him into bankruptcy; to economize, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exile in Europe. He suffered the death of his wife and two daughters, and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache, political crusades, and eccentric behavior that sometimes obscured darker forces at play.

Drawing on Twain’s bountiful archives, including his fifty notebooks, thousands of letters, and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures a man whose career reflected the country’s westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars. No other white author of his generation grappled so fully with the legacy of slavery after the Civil War or showed such keen interest in African American culture. Today, more than one hundred years after his death, Twain’s writing continues to be read, debated, and quoted. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer’s talent and humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and often maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history.

A witch and a shifter get a second chance at love in this new paranormal romantic comedy from USA Today Bestselling author April Asher.

At the bright-eyed age of eighteen, witch Harlow “Harry” Pierce attended her first Fates Haven Finding Ceremony certain the Blue Willow Wisp would lead her to her Fated match, her cougar shifter boyfriend, Jaxon Atwood. But Fate had other plans, guiding her best friend to him instead. With a broken heart, all her belongings, and a vow to never return, Harry did the only thing a broken-hearted witch could do. Run.

Thirteen years later, she returns to her magical hometown—with her half-human, half-shifter goddaughter in tow—hoping that not only would the town work its magic on the troubled teenager, but that the local Alpha of the Rocky Mountain Pack could help Grace identify—and control—her fiery abilities.

Jaxon Atwood was a shifter of few words and even less patience… until his mother retired as Alpha of the Rocky Mountain Pack and left the running of things to him. It’s a headache he didn’t need, and one that brought the witch who’d ripped his heart from his chest knocking on his door.

Ever since the disappearance of the town’s Fate Witch over a decade ago, Fates Haven’s magic has been slowly going haywire. There hasn’t been a Fated Match made in thirteen years, putting the town in serious jeopardy of losing its title of Most Fated Mates Per Population. But now, something is stirring in Fates Haven, Colorado, and it smells like the past, tastes like change, and looks like A SIMPLE TWIST OF FATE.

The deeper you go, the darker you fall.

Phoebe “Phibs” Ray is never more at home than when she’s underwater. On a dive six months ago, she and her four closest friends discovered a handful of ancient gold coins, rocketing them into social media fame. Now, their final summer together after high school, they’re taking one last trip to a distant Australian island to do what they love most – scuba dive.

While diving a local reef, Phibs discovers a spectacular underwater sea cave, rumored to be a lost cave with a buried treasure. But when Phibs and her best friend Gabe surface from the cave, they notice that they’re undergoing strange changes. Oozing gashes that don’t heal. Haunting whispers in their heads… Something has latched onto them, lurking beneath their skin, transforming them from the inside out.

When treasure hunters arrive, desperate to find the location of the cave and hold Phibs’ group for ransom, she’ll do anything to keep her friends safe. In the process she learns that, of all the dreadful creatures of the sea, she might be the most terrifying of them all.

A small-town waitress and a Hollywood star’s worlds collide in this new romance by Ashley Herring Blake, USA Today bestselling author of Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date.

Once upon a time, Ramona Riley was a student at a prestigious art school, with dreams of landing in Hollywood as a costume designer to the stars. But after her father’s car accident, she had to quit and return to her small New Hampshire town, Clover Lake, to help take care of her younger sister. Twelve years later, Ramona is still working at the town’s café, all but given up on her dream. But when a big-budget romantic comedy comes to Clover Lake to film, she wonders if this could be her chance. There’s only one problem—Dylan Monroe, her first kiss and Hollywood’s favorite wild child—is the star.

Dylan Monroe has always lived an unconventional life, having famous rock icons for parents. But she wants to prove that she’s not some chaotic, talentless nepo baby, that she has actual skills, that she’s just a normal person. To do that, Dylan takes on a project at a charming lake town—she even works at the town’s café (very quaint), shadowing a local waitress there (very cute), and asks her to take Dylan around to do Normal People Things.

But Dylan soon realizes it’s not just some small-town waitress she’s getting to know—Ramona Riley is someone she’s met before, someone who remembers her even more vividly. Before long, however, reality hits them, and both women must decide if the spark between them can fan the flames of their individual dreams, or if it will extinguish their light.

From the author of Natural Beauty, set in the fiercely competitive art world, a novel about an obsessive friendship upended by a cutting-edge technology purported to enhance empathy and connection

Enka meets Mathilde in art school. Mathilde is a dizzyingly talented yet tortured artist whose star is on the rise—and Enka, struggling to make art that feels original, is immediately drawn to her. The two strike up an intense bond that soon turns codependent. But when Mathilde’s fame reaches new heights, Enka becomes desperate to keep her best friend close—no matter the cost.
 
Enka quickly falls in love with and marries a billionaire whose family’s company is funding an unconventional technology purported to heighten empathy, which could allow someone else to inhabit Mathilde’s mind and absorb the trauma from her brain. Soon, the boundaries between Mathilde and Enka begin to blur even further, setting in motion a disturbing series of events that forever changes their lives.

Blisteringly smart, thought-provoking, and shocking, Immaculate Conception deftly navigates big questions of art, technology, authorship, and what makes us human. Ling Ling Huang offers us a portrait of close friendship—achingly tender and twisted—that captures the tenuous line between love and possession that will haunt you long after you turn the final page.

From New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore comes a hilariously deranged tale of a mad scientist, a famous painter, and an undead woman’s electrifying journey of self-discovery.

Vienna, 1911. Gustav Klimt, the most famous painter in the Austrian Empire, the darling of Viennese society, spots a woman’s nude body in the Danube canal. He knows he should summon a policeman, but he can’t resist stopping to make a sketch first. And as he draws, the woman coughs. She’s alive!

Back at his studio, Klimt and his model-turned-muse Wally tend to the erstwhile-drowned girl. She’s nearly feral and doesn’t remember who she is, or how she came to be floating in the canal. Klimt names her Judith, after one of his most famous paintings, and resolves to help her find her memory.

With a little help from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Judith recalls being stranded in the arctic one hundred years ago, locked in a crate by a man named Victor Frankenstein, and visiting the Underworld.

So how did she get here? And why are so many people chasing her, including Geoff, the giant croissant-eating devil dog of the North?

Poor Things meets Bride of Frankenstein in Anima Rising, Christopher Moore’s most ingenious (and probably most hilarious) novel yet.

When a reality show about former child stars overcoming addiction culminates in murder, their therapist must take a closer look into their lives—and her own, from USA Today bestselling author Lucinda Berry.

Dr. Laurel Harlow can’t believe she’s agreed to do a reality TV show. But her years as a chemical dependency counselor and personal history with the show’s director make her the obvious choice. Treating a mansion full of former child stars on the road to recovery is the tallest order of her career—especially when one of them turns up dead while the cameras are still rolling.

In a house full of narcissists vying for the spotlight, everyone’s hiding something…including Laurel. An investigation could expose a past she’d rather keep buried. But among the attention-starved patients, only one of them is a predator. And Laurel is skilled at spotting a predator when she sees one.

As she hunts a killer in her present, the unsettling truths of Laurel’s past are forced into the light. But this time, she’ll face her demons head on. She’ll stop at nothing to expose a murderer, even if it means risking everything she holds dear.

An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for—two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave.

“An astonishing work of art…This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake.” —Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape—but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.

Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.

Return to the Jersey Shore with a new romance by Summertime Punchline author Betty Corrello in which a young woman recently diagnosed with lupus attempts a no-strings fling with a former television star, perfect for readers of Elissa Sussman or Tia Williams. 

Nadia Fabiola wants to lose herself in Evergreen—the Jersey Shore town where she grew up vacationing with her family—and never look back at her glamorous, gainfully employed former self. After a shocking lupus diagnosis turned her life upside down, she’s desperate for a sense of control over her body, her life, and her mental health. Nadia plans on keeping her life small and boring, while continuing to ignore her sister’s relentless questioning.

Nadia’s sister isn’t the only person worried about her. When her rheumatologist not-so-subtly sets her up with his infamous former-actor cousin, Marco Antoniou, Nadia is skeptical. But Marco is gorgeous—despite carrying his own baggage from a very public burnout. After a messy (but fun) first date, they decide that a May-long fling could be just what the doctor no commitment, no strings, just one month of escape.

Their undeniable chemistry starts to feel a lot like something more and while Marco pulls Nadia deeper into his life, she is dead set on keeping her diagnosis from him. But there are only so many days in May, and only so much pretending she can do. As the stress of their whirlwind romance takes its toll on Nadia’s health, she’s forced to decide if a chance at love is worth the risk of trusting someone new.

Travel from the Jersey Shore to Rome and back in this delightfully funny, beautifully honest exploration of love, intimacy, and vulnerability while living with a chronic illness.  

An unexpected road trip across America brings a family together, in this raucous and moving new novel from the bestselling author of Nothing to See Here.

Ever since her dad left them twenty years ago, it’s just been Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While she sometimes admits it’s a bit lonely and a less exciting life than she imagined for herself, it’s mostly OK. Mostly.

Then one day Reuben Hill pulls up in a PT Cruiser and informs Madeline that he believes she’s his half sister. Reuben—left behind by their dad thirty years ago—has hired a detective to track down their father and a string of other half siblings. And he wants Mad to leave her home and join him for the craziest kind of road trip imaginable to find them all.

As Mad and Rube—and eventually the others—share stories of their father, who behaved so differently in each life he created, they begin to question what he was looking for with each new incarnation. Who are they to one another? What kind of man will they find? And how will these new relationships change Mad’s previously solitary life on the farm?

Infused with deadpan wit, zany hijinks, and enormous heart, Run for the Hills is a sibling story like no other—a novel about a family forged under the most unlikely circumstances and united by hope in an unknown future.

Murder links past and present once again in this mind-boggling metafictional mystery from Anthony Horowitz—another tribute to the golden age of Agatha Christie featuring detective Atticus Pund and editor Susan Ryland, stars of the New York Times bestsellers Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders.

Editor Susan Ryeland has left her Greek island, her hotel, and her Greek boyfriend Andreas in search of a new life back in England.

Freelancing for Causton Books, she’s working on the manuscript of a novel, Pund’s Last Case, by a young author named Eliot Crace, a continuation of the popular Alan Conway series.  Susan is surprised to learn that Eliot is the grandson of legendary children’s author Marian Crace, who died some fifteen years ago—murdered, Elliot insists, by poison.

As Susan begins to read the manuscript’s opening chapters, the skeptical editor is relieved to find that Pund’s Last Case is actually very good. Set in the South of France, it revolves around the mysterious death of Lady Margaret Chalfont, who, though mortally ill, is poisoned—perhaps by a member of her own family. But who did it? And why?

The deeper Susan reads, the more it becomes clear that the clues leading to the truth of Marian Crace’s death are hidden within this Atticus Pund mystery.

While Eliot’s accusation becomes more plausible, his behavior grows increasingly erratic.. Then he is suddenly killed in a hit-and-run accident, and Susan finds herself under police scrutiny as a suspect in his killing.

Three mysterious deaths. Multiple motives and possible murderers. If Susan doesn’t solve the mystery of Pund’s Last Case, she may well be the next victim.

From a dazzling new talent, the story of a newly divorced young mother forced to reckon with the secrets of her own childhood when she brings her daughters back to the big house where she was raised.

Every parent exists inside of two families simultaneously – the one she was born into, and the one she has made.

Ten-year-old Margaret hides beneath a blackberry bush in her family’s verdant backyard while her brother hunts for her in a game of flashlight tag. Hers is a childhood of sunlit swimming pools and Saturday morning pancakes and a devoted best friend, but her family life requires careful maintenance. Her mother can be as brittle and exacting as she is loving, and her father and brother assume familiar, if uncomfortable, models of masculinity. Then late one summer, everything changes. After a series of confusing transgressions, the simple pleasures of girlhood, slip away.

Twenty-five years later, Margaret hides under her parents’ bed, waiting for her young daughters to find her in a game of hide and seek. She’s newly divorced and navigating her life as a co-parent, while discovering the pleasures of a new lover. But some part of her is still under the blackberry bush, punched out of time. Called upon to be a mother to her daughters, and a daughter to her mother, she must reckon with the echoes and refractions between the past and the present, what it means to keep a child safe, and how much of our lives are our own, alone.

Warm and generous, unflinchingly human, and ultimately joyful and empowering, SLEEP is about the cycles of motherhood and childhood, the cost of secrets and the burden of love, and what’s on the other side of the world, rich in possibility.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Jeanine Cummins comes a deeply felt multigenerational family story that asks: What does it mean to call a place home?

On her wedding day in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1968, Rafaela Acuña y Daubón has mild misgivings, but she marries Peter Brennan Jr. anyway, in a blaze of romantic optimism. She has no way of knowing how dramatically her life will change when she uproots her young family to start over in the American Midwest, unleashing a fleet of disappointments. Against the backdrop of her mother’s isolation in St. Louis, Missouri in the 1980s, Rafaela’s daughter, Ruth Brennan, longs only to belong. Eager to fit in, Ruth lets go of her language, habits, and childhood memories of Puerto Rico. It’s not until decades later, when Ruth’s own daughter, Daisy, returns to Puerto Rico that her mother and grandmother begin to truly reflect on the choices that have come to define their lives.

When a hurricane ravages the island in 2023, leaving Daisy critically injured, Rafaela and Ruth return to the city where it all began. As they gather at Daisy’s bedside, they’re confronted by the pasts that brought them to this point. We follow them as they come of age, fall in love, take risks, and contend with all the heartbreaks, triumphs, and reversals of fortune — both good and bad — that make up a meaningful life. As old memories come to light, so do buried secrets, leaving everyone in the family wondering exactly where it is that they belong.

A striking, resonant examination of marriage, family, and identity, Speak to Me of Home is ultimately a story of mothers and daughters that asks: how can three women who share geography and genetics have such wildly different ideas of where it is they come from? And more importantly, can they discover the common language to find their way home?

She’s read every romance…except her own…

Irene Park loves romance novels—so much so she’s made a career of them as an online book reviewer with a massive following. But Irene’s real life dating story? Non-existent. So when she starts her freshman year of college, she sets her sights on finding true love using the one thing she really understands…romance book tropes.

If only it were that easy.

Enter Aiden Jeon, Irene’s online book review rival and biggest nemesis. When Aiden challenges her to see who can find love-by-trope first, he becomes the one person standing in her way to getting everything she wants both professionally and personally, too. So when the competition takes an unexpected turn, forcing the two of them to have to partner in the ultimate trope, fake dating, Irene is not prepared for everything she believed about romance, and Aiden, to flip on its head.

As Irene tackles the challenges of college life, struggles to figure out what she really wants for herself, all while trying to win the race for love, Irene realizes the answers may not be found in a romance novel. Happily Ever Afters seem so easy on page. But for Irene to find her ultimate HEA, she’ll have to get her nose out of the book and become the main character of her own story.

A vibrant and intimate novel about growing up, first love, and all the joy and heartbreak of competitive high school basketball

“Brilliant … so alive and vibrating that it took my breath away.”—Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here

Star point guard Mack Morris’s senior year of high school begins with twin cataclysms: the death of Mack’s father and the arrival of transfer student Liv Cooper. Playing side by side for their high school basketball team, Mack and Liv discover an electrifying, game-winning chemistry on the court. Off the court, they fall into an equally intoxicating more-than-friendship—one that feels out-of-bounds in their small Pennsylvania town. Mack teeters on the precipice of adulthood as desire and grief collide with drugs, sex, and the looming college signing deadline. Caught between the dual impulses of ambition and self-destruction, Mack must decide what kind of life they want to fight for.

Written with the lush longing of Andre Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name,the obsessive attention of Jean Kyoung Frazier’s Pizza Girl, and with all the romance and feeling of the beloved 2000 movie Love & Basketball, A Sharp Endless Need is a stunning testament to the big feelings of coming-of-age, falling in love, and, of course, playing sports.

Everyone wonders about the one that got away . . . and thanks to an alternate reality tech project, one woman will get the chance to actually find out.

When Laurel Everett finds a ring in her longtime boyfriend Ollie’s sock drawer, she should be thrilled . . . so why is she left wondering “what if?” Specifically, what if she’d taken up her work crush, Drew, on his offer of a date just after she and Ollie got together? Thanks to her job at tech giant Pixel, she might have a way to answer that question through the AltR project, which promises users a glimpse of alternate realities. Or it will, once the quantum computers it relies on get more powerful.  

When the program actually works and Laurel wakes up five years into her life with Drew, she’s fascinated . . . then increasingly horrified as she continues to slip between that world and her “real” life seemingly at random. As she moves back and forth between the two worlds, Laurel realizes choosing the right life might not be as simple as deciding between two men and the different visions of happiness they offer. And if she doesn’t find a way to untangle herself from the quantum mess she’s unleashed, she might wind up stuck in the wrong life, or worse, deleted entirely like a faulty line of code. . . .

A riveting, deeply researched, blood-on-the-spurs biography of Belle Starr, the most legendary female outlaw of the American West.

On February 3, 1889, just two days shy of her forty-first birthday, Myra Maybelle Shirley—better known at that point by her outlaw sobriquet “Belle Starr”—was blown from her horse saddle and killed by a pair of shotgun blasts, delivered by an unseen assailant, only a few miles away from her home in the Indian Territory of present-day Oklahoma. Thus ended the life of one of the most colorful, authentic, and dangerous women in the history of the American West.

While today’s household names like Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane had dubious criminal bona fides, Belle’s were not in any doubt. She led a gang of horse thieves (a very serious crime in an era when horses were often the basis of one’s livelihood); was romantically involved with two of the West’s most legendary outlaws, Cole Younger and Jim Reed (her first husband); and participated in stickups and robberies across present-day Texas and Oklahoma. When Reed was murdered, Belle crossed into Indian Territory, where she assimilated into the Cherokee tribe, a matrilineal society, and soon married Sam Starr, a direct descendant of Nanye’hi, the greatest female warrior in Cherokee history.

Dane Huckelbridge, acclaimed author of No Beast So Fierce, probes a life rich in contradictions and intrigue. Why did a woman who had considerable advantages in life—a good family, a decent education, solid marriage prospects, a clear path to financial security—choose to pursue a life of crime? The life of Belle Starr is one of almost endless trauma: the horrors of the Civil War, which destroyed her hometown and killed her beloved brother, Bud; the untimely deaths of her first two husbands, both of them murdered; a stint in Detroit’s notorious women’s prison. Her career coincided with those of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and yet Belle Starr was a very different sort of feminist icon.

Queen of All Mayhem is a triumph of biography, revealing one of the most-mythologized figures of Western lore as she truly was.

“This is book club fiction at its finest!” —Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author

From New York Times bestselling author Mary Alice Monroe comes her highly anticipated Where the Rivers Merge, the first of two epic and triumphant novels celebrating one intrepid woman’s life across multiple generations in the American South.

1908: The Lowcountry of South Carolina is at the cusp of change. Mayfield, the grand estate held for generations by the Rivers family, is the treasured home of young Eliza. Free spirited, she refuses to be confined by societal norms. Instead, Eliza revels in exploring the golden fields and sparkling ponds of Mayfield, observing wildlife, and riding horses.

But her halcyon days are cut short by the Great War, coastal storms, and unexpected challenges to Mayfield. As Eliza battles personal pains and the ravages of family turmoil over the years, her love and devotion for the natural world puts her on a collision course with the patriarchal traditions of a bygone era.

1988: At 88, Eliza is the scion of the Rivers/DeLancey family. She’s fought a lifetime to save her beloved Mayfield and is too independent and committed to quietly retire and leave the fate of the estate to her greedy son. She must make decisions that will assure the future of the land and her family—or watch them both be split apart.  

Set against the evocative landscape of the twentieth-century low country, Where the Rivers Merge is a dramatic and sweeping multigenerational family story of unyielding love, lessons learned, profound sacrifices, and the indomitable spirit of a woman determined to persevere in the face of change in order to protect her family legacy and the land she loves.

For the first time in print, Skin and Bones features a collection of eight gripping original short stories in the bestselling Mike Bowditch series―including one brand new, never-before-published story―from Edgar-award nominated author Paul Doiron.

In THE BEAR TRAP, legendary Maine woodsman and bush pilot Charley Stevens tries to convince young Mike of the dangers awaiting rookie game wardens.

RABID draws Mike into the story of a gruesome case involving a bat with rabies from his Charley Steven’s past (2019 Edgar award nominee for Best Short Story).

When a visiting hunter goes missing in the middle of a snowstorm, a young Charley Stevens sets off to rescue him―but begins to suspect the man may not want to be found in BACKTRACK.

In THE IMPOSTER, Mike is confronted with a baffling case of stolen identity when he discovers a dead body whose driver’s license claims he is none other than Mike Bowditch himself.

Mike tracks down a sinister prowler who turns a couple’s dream vacation home into a nightmare in THE CARETAKER.

An investigation into the killing of a bald eagle in SKIN AND BONES unearths an old case of a missing young man whose physically abusive brother might have murdered him.

In SNAKEBIT, Mike must hunt down a killer who uses the unlikeliest of murder weapons: rattlesnakes.

(Brand New!) Mike suspects there’s more to a grisly murder-suicide than meets the eye in SHEEP’S CLOTHING.

Critically acclaimed for his brilliant crime novels, Paul Doiron proves he is also the master of short story in Skin and Bones.

Leah O’Connor is torn between the life she’s currently living and the allure of a phantom life that can no longer be hers.

Swept off her feet by the gentle charm of Lucas O’Connor, Leah’s unexpected pregnancy changes the course of her carefree and nomadic existence. Over a decade and three children later, Leah is unraveling. She resents the world in which her artistic aspirations have been sidelined by the overwhelming demands of motherhood, and the ever-present rift between herself and her mother-in-law, Christine, is best dulled by increasingly fuller glasses of wine.

Christine represents a model of selfless motherhood that Leah can neither achieve nor accept. To heighten the strain, Lucas’s business venture, a trendy restaurant that honors his mother, has taken all his attention, which places the domestic demands squarely on Leah’s shoulders. Seeking an ally in her sweet sister-in-law Amy, Leah shares a secret that, if made known to the wider family, could disrupt the curated ecosystems that keep the O’Connors connected.

As Leah dances with the devil while descending further into darkness, her behavior becomes more erratic and further alienates her from both Lucas and the wider family. Leah’s drinking threatens the welfare of her family, prompting Amy to turn to Christine for support. A duel for loyalty ensues. When the inevitable waves come crashing down, it’s the O’Connor women who give Leah a the truth of what they’ve all endured. But Leah alone must uncover the villain of her own story, learn how to ask for help, and decide if the family she has rejected will be her salvation or ultimate undoing.

This masterful blend of book club and literary women’s fiction offers a frank rebuttal to Wine Mom culture and is perfect for fans of Celeste Ng and Liane Moriarty.

A real-life Latin American haunted mansion. A murky labyrinth of family secrets. A young, aristocratic woman desperate to escape her past. This haunting debut gothic horror novel is perfect for fans of Mexican Gothic and The Shining.

In 1923 Soacha, Colombia, La Casona—an opulent mansion perched above the legendary Salto del Tequendama waterfall—was once home to Antonia and her family, who settle in despite their constant nightmares and the house’s malevolent spirit. But tragedy strikes when Antonia’s mother takes a fatal fall into El Salto and her father, consumed by grief, attempts to burn the house down with Antonia still inside.

Three years later, haunted by disturbing dreams and cryptic journal entries from her late mother, Antonia is drawn back to her childhood home when it is converted into a luxurious hotel. As Antonia confronts her fragmented memories and the dark history of the estate, she wrestles with unsettling questions she can no longer Was her mother’s death by her own hands, or was it by someone else’s?

In a riveting quest for answers, Antonia must navigate the shadows of La Casona, unearthing its darkest secrets and confronting a legacy that threatens to swallow her whole.

An audacious debut spanning eight generations of a Black family in West Tennessee as they are repeatedly visited by the Devil

Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the spirit of her dead sister as her only companion. Desperate to survive the hell that awaits her at their destination, Yetunde finds help in an unexpected form—the Devil himself. The Devil, seeking a way to reenter the pearly gates of heaven, decides to prove himself to an indifferent God by protecting Yetunde and granting her a piece of his supernatural power. In return, Yetunde makes an incredible sacrifice.
 
Their bargain extends far beyond Yetunde’s mortal lifespan. Over the next 175 years, the Devil visits Yetunde’s descendants in their darkest hour of need: Lucille, a conjure woman; Asa, who passes for white; Louis and Virgil, who risk becoming a twentieth-century Cain and Abel; Cassandra, who speaks to the dead; James, who struggles to make sense of the past while fighting to keep his family together; and many others. The Devil offers each of them his own version of salvation, all the while can he save himself, too?
 
Steeped in the spiritual traditions and oral history of the Black diaspora, All God’s Children is a baptism by fire and water, heralding a new voice in American fiction.

An unlikely assassin struggles to escape a legendary bounty hunter in this breakneck fantasy debut that will grab you by the throat—perfect for fans of Joe Abercrombie, R.F. Kuang, and Christopher Buehlman.

She killed for a cause. Will she die for it too?

Anji works as a castle servant, cleaning laundry for a king she hates. So when a rare opportunity presents itself, she seizes the chance to cut his throat. Then she runs for her life. In her wake, the kingdom is thrown into disarray, while a bounty bigger than anyone could imagine lands on her head.

On her heels are the fabled mercenaries of the Menagerie, whose animal-shaped masks are magical relics rumored to give them superhuman powers. It’s the Hawk who finds Anji a surly, aging swordswoman who has her own reasons for keeping Anji alive and out of the hands of her fellow bounty hunters, if only long enough to collect the reward herself.

With the rest of the Menagerie on their trail, so begins an alliance as tenuous as it is temporary—and a race against death that will decide Anji’s fate, and may change the course of a kingdom.

From the author of Some Girls Do comes a YA sapphic romance about two girls from different sides of the tracks.

Cass has a rule about dating summer girls—just say no. Every year the idyllic beach town Cass’s working-class family calls home is flooded with summer girls, the obnoxious daughters of the rich, who stay in their families’ summer homes, sail their yachts, and generally make things unbearable for townies like Cass.

Birdie is the ultimate summer girl. She’s the daughter of a wealthy real estate developer dad and a social media influencer mom, and this summer Birdie happens to be in big trouble for accidentally crashing her boyfriend’s very expensive car.

As punishment, Birdie must spend the summer with her father at the beach—but it won’t be a vacation. He’s enlisted the help of Cass, whose dad works for him, to keep Birdie on the straight and narrow, including getting her a job as a beach parking lot attendant.

As the summer heats up, Cass realizes some rules are made to be broken, and Birdie just might be different from other summer girls. Soon they can’t help falling for one another . . . But will the love the two girls have discovered be strong enough to overcome their differences?

One of the Gardin women must navigate a season rich with unexpected challenges in the follow-up to The Gardins of Edin, a heartwarming story about love, forgiveness, new beginnings, and what it takes to get there.

Martha Gardin is a mess. And everyone in the Gardin family knows it. A successful physician, Martha is usually the source of the Gardin family drama, but her heart is in the right place… sometimes. So, the Gardins are pleasantly surprised when Martha mellows out after she begins dating Oji Greenwald, one of the most eligible bachelors in town.

As Martha’s relationship with Oji deepens, she thinks she’s finally about to have the life she’s always wanted. But when Martha attempts to intervene in a health crisis in Oji’s family, she draws the ire of Oji’s mother, Eve Greenwald, which jeopardizes everything. Suddenly, Martha finds herself on a journey full of challenges that force her to deal with her previous mistakes, reconcile her past, and forge a path forward.

Will she be able to look beyond the superficial to find what she’s really needed all along?

When a charming billionaire and a reclusive lawyer tie the knot to outsmart an inheritance scheme, sparks fly and unexpected love blossoms in this sizzling romance from Ava Rani, author of The Spare and The Heir.

Sometimes love outsmarts the best laid plans.

Penelope Chen-Astor ran away from the stifling expectations of her wealthy family in Singapore for an independent life as a high-powered Manhattan lawyer. But familial duty comes crashing back when her grandfather’s will demands she be married for a year to claim her inheritance. She’d walk away from it all, but her mother’s assets are at stake too, and this is the only way Penelope can see to protect her.

Enter Xander Sutton, the billionaire co-founder of investment group Dawn Capital. With his effortless charm and easy smiles, he’s used to winning hearts, but Penelope’s always proven immune to him. When she’s backed into a corner and asks Xander to masquerade as her husband for a year, he sees a golden opportunity to finally win over the only person who’s kept him at arm’s length—but the closer they get, the harder it becomes to play pretend.

What begins as a strictly business arrangement quickly spirals into steamy encounters and genuine emotions. When meddling relatives, corporate espionage, and high-stakes legal battles come into play, Xander and Penelope will have to decide if the inheritance is all they stand to lose when the year is done…

From the bustling streets of Manhattan to the serene beaches of the Hamptons and the skyscrapers of Singapore, The Charmer is the third and final novel in the Biotech Billionaires universe.

A wildly inventive and entertaining novel about a sci-fi writing group whose fictional universe and personal dramas begin to collide and collapse from the critically acclaimed author of the “timeless and original” (The New York Times) The Body Scout.

Perennially single, socially awkward, and drowning in debt, Michael Lincoln’s life has turned out nothing like the intergalactic pulp heroes of his youth. But these are pedestrian concerns—he has a greater calling, and that is to preserve for all posterity the greatest series in the history of the written The Star Rot Chronicles. Written collectively by Michael’s best (and perhaps only) friend Taras K. Castle and his misfit sci-fi writing group, the Orb 4, the stories follow Captain Baldwin and his fearless crew on their mind-bending adventures across the Metallic Realms, from solar whales swallowing suns at the edge of spacetime to interstellar love triangles. These masterpieces have gone tragically unpublished—until now.

But the most urgent story Michael must tell takes place in the more intimate (if no less dramatic) confines of literary Brooklyn. Behind the greatest multiverse ever created, there are the all-too-mortal people who wrote it. As Michael chronicles the personal melodramas of the Orb 4 as well as the funhouse reflections in their fiction, the line between real and unreal becomes dangerously thin, and the true reasons for the group’s fallout begin to emerge. As he labors away in hiding, Michael has just one to bring the Metallic Realms to the world. No matter the cost.

Metallic Realms is a genre-breaking ode to golden-age science fiction, friendship, creativity, and the power and perils of storytelling.

A hilarious and surprisingly moving cozy fantasy novel from the best-selling author of Once Upon a Tome.

This debut novel by beloved rare bookseller and memoirist Oliver Darkshire reimagines the Decameron heroine Isabella (with her creepy pot of basil) in a world of sentient animals, talking plants, and shape-shifting wizards.

In a tiny farm on the edge of the miserable village of East Grasby, Isabella Nagg is just trying to get on with her tiny, miserable existence. Dividing her time between tolerating a feckless husband, fending off snide neighbors, and cooking up “scrunge,” Isabella can’t help but think that there might be something more to life. When Mr. Nagg returns home with a spell book purloined from the local wizard, she What harm could a little magic do?

As Isabella embarks on a journey of self-discovery with a grouchy cat-like companion, Darkshire’s imagination runs wild, plunging readers into a delightfully deranged world full of enchantment and folklore—as well as goblins, capitalism, and sorcery.

An NHL star could never fall for a girl like me…

I never wanted this life, but the choices I made led me here—caught in a world I can’t escape. Then Logan York, the Dallas Knights’ rookie sensation, spots me in the crowd.

When I refuse to date him, he hires me and promises I’ll fall in love with him.

Arrogant. Reckless. Completely impossible.

I tell myself it’s just another job, that I can keep my heart out of it.

But as the lines blur and the stakes get higher, I wonder if being his is the only choice I ever really had.

Logan isn’t just any man, though.

He’s relentless, possessive, willing to tear apart the world to keep me close. He tells me I’m his obsession, his only priority, and I want to believe him.

But the shadows of my past are always lurking, and Logan doesn’t play fair when it comes to keeping what’s his.

He says he’ll save me, even if he has to destroy everything in his path.

And maybe, just maybe, being his feels so wrong that it’s the only thing that’s ever been right.

*Note: Logan York is a morally grey antihero who is obsessed with his girl and will do anything to keep her. This is a darker hockey romance.


The Pucking Wrong Rookie is a hockey romance standalone from USA Today and International Bestselling Author C.R. Jane.

Of Flesh And Tears is a genre-bending psychological novel about a woman whose fragile mental health is thrown into turmoil by the aggression of man and beast. 

Following a painful divorce and a stint in a psychiatric hospital, Claire leaves Paris to take over the family farm. With neither support nor experience, she realizes that her fresh start won’t be as easy as she’d anticipated.

She searches for meager comfort in Lucien, a vegan activist, who entrusts her with chickens seized from an animal testing research center for her to hide. He even persuades her to participate in his militant group’s radical and dangerous activities. Claire’s already fragile equilibrium is thrown into turmoil by the aggression of man and of beast. She soon discovers these chickens might be dangerous, threatening any animal and human who gets too close…

Never before has the daughter of a great magician written with such candor and beauty about magic’s backstage—and onstage—world, where even the most outlandish dreams are possible.

The Magician’s Daughter—A Memoir is a coming-of-age story set within the motion and light of a traveling magic show. Fourteen-year-old Katy is the daughter of Lee Grabel, a former professional magician stuck behind a desk in the suburbs who yearns to rekindle the past fame of his old magic show. When he decides to hit the road again in a grand bid to be a Las Vegas headliner, Katy has her chance for the spotlight she yearns for as his stage assistant. With a truck full of wonderments, the Grabel family and their crew go on tour across the western states, where trouble quickly ensues along with the increasing unhappiness of her mother —The Beautiful Helene—who is disenchanted with the magic show even as she runs it with military precision from her table stage right. Setting up, performing, and packing out of town after town, tensions mount, and betrayal is in the air.

Through error and misstep, Katy struggles to free herself from the show’s intoxicating spotlight. Meanwhile, the Grabels and their crew are getting closer to their booking at the Las Vegas Convention Center, where the show’s ultimate fate will be determined.

Readers will be captivated by this page-turner where Penn & Teller meets Mission Impossible. It’s a tale that delves into the complexities of family dynamics and the enduring power of love, set against the backdrop of a mesmerizing magic show.

A brilliant, eccentric teenager must solve a series of puzzles left behind by her dead father in this debut that features codes, riddles, and a plot that ingeniously mixes fact and fiction.

When seventeen-year-old Arizona’s mother goes missing on a family trip, Arizona tells herself not to worry. Until she finds her family’s Airstream ransacked—and the ominous note on the counter. Incredibly, impossibly, her mother has been kidnapped.

Even more bizarre are the terms of the The kidnappers believe that Arizona’s dead father took some sort of great secret to his grave—and to get her mother back safely, Arizona must now uncover it for them. 

If Arizona were a “normal” teenager, she’d have no idea what to do. Luckily, Arizona’s anything but normal. Like her father, she’s more comfortable with books than with people, and inordinately fond of puzzles, codes, and riddles—and she soon realizes that the trail begins with a cipher that points her West, to the peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Her dog Mojo at her side, Arizona sets off in the Airstream to uncover the truth and pursue her mother’s return on her own terms. Yet her journey grows far stranger than she could have imagined, as she finds herself cracking codes and solving riddles, poring through pages of ancient texts, poking through forgotten corners of U.S. history, and uncovering mysteries hidden in plain sight in the Western landscape—all on the hunt for an impossible, centuries-old prize.

Even as she races to stay a step ahead of her adversaries and wonders at her father’s hidden life, she begins to realize that navigating the outside world on her own isn’t as terrifying as she thought—and finding other people who understand her isn’t so impossible after all.

A brilliant and bloody examination of the axe’s foundational role in human history, from prehistoric violence, to war and executions, to newspaper headlines and popular culture.

For as long as the axe has been in our hands, we have used it to kill.

Much like the wheel, the boat, and the telephone, the axe is a transformative piece of technology—one that has been with us since prehistory. And just as early humans used the axe to chop down trees, hunt for food, and whittle tools, they also used it to murder. Over time, this particular use has as the axe evolved over centuries to fit the needs of new agricultural, architectural, and social development, so have our lethal uses for it.

Whack Job is the story of the axe, first as a convenient danger and then an anachronism, as told through the murders it has been employed in throughout from the first axe murder nearly half a million years ago, to the brutal harnessing of the axe in warfare, to its use in King Henry VIII’s favorite method of execution, to Lizzie Borden and the birth of modern pop culture. Whack Job sheds brilliant light on this familiar implement, this most human of weapons. This is a critical examination of violence, an exploration of how technology shapes human conflict, the cruel and sacred rituals of execution and battle, and the ways humanity fits even the most savage impulses into narratives of the past and present.

A witty and lively memoir from food writer and New York Times contributor Besha Rodell, (formerly) one of the world’s last anonymous restaurant critics

When Besha Rodell moved from Australia to the United States with her mother at fourteen, she was a foreigner in a new land, missing her friends, her father, and the food she grew up eating. In the years that followed, Rodell began waitressing and discovered the buzz of the restaurant world, immersing herself in the lifestyle and community while struggling with the industry’s shortcomings. As she built a family, Rodell realized her dream, though only a handful of women before her had done to make a career as a restaurant critic.

From the streets of Brooklyn to lush Atlanta to sunny Los Angeles to traveling and eating around the world, and, finally, home to Australia, Rodell takes us on a delicious, raw, and fascinating journey through her life and career and explores the history of criticism and dining and the cultural shifts that have turned us all into food obsessives. Hunger Like a Thirst shares stories of the joys and hardships of Rodell’s coming-of-age, the amazing (and sometimes terrible) meals she ate along the way, and the dear friends she made in each restaurant, workplace, and home.