The September 2 new book releases are led by Wild Reverence from Rebecca Ross, already approaching 90,000 want-to-reads on Goodreads. We were lucky enough to receive an ARC, and it quickly became one of our favorite reads of the year. You can check out our full Wild Reverence review for more.
Born in the firelit domain of the under realm, Matilda is the youngest goddess of her clan, blessed with humble messenger magic. But in a land where gods often kill each other to steal power and alliances break as quickly as they are forged, Matilda must come of age sooner than most. She may be known to carry words and letters through the realms, but she holds a secret she must hide from even her dearest of allies to ensure her survival. And to complicate matters . . . there is a mortal boy who dreams of her, despite the fact they have never met in the waking world.
Ten years ago, Vincent of Beckett wrote to Matilda on the darkest night of his life―begging the goddess he befriended in dreams to help him. When his request went unanswered, Vincent moved on, becoming the hardened, irreverent lord of the river who has long forgotten Matilda. That is, until she comes tumbling into his bedroom window with a letter for him.
As Fate would have it, Matilda and Vincent were destined to find each other beyond dreams. There may be a chance for Matilda to rewrite the blood-soaked ways of the gods, but at immense sacrifice. She will have to face something she fears even more than losing her magic: to be vulnerable, and to allow herself to finally be loved.
Grab your favorite fall candle, cuddle into a comfy blanket, and travel back in time to 1997 autumn in Vermont in this cozy, slow-burn romance.
My new next-door neighbor seems to have everything figured out. Small town golden boy? Check. Single dad extraordinaire? Check. Hot baker forearms? I didn’t notice them, I swear.
I, on the other hand, don’t–at all–have anything figured out. Trust me, I didn’t think taking over my mom’s dream bed and breakfast in Copper Run Vermont was going to be easy. It should be a good place to heal after my divorce. But apparently my scones belong in the garbage with my small talk skills. As pointed out by none other than Cliff.
Cliff is inescapable. He knows exactly what people need–always. His charm, the way he wears flannel, and even his pastries, make not wanting to be friends with Cliff and his daughters pretty hard.
Friends? I can make friends. That’s safe. Except I’m leaving in three months to pass the inn off to my little sister and get the promotion in Seattle I’ve been working towards. So ask me why I’m thinking about kissing my hot neighbor.
Fearful
Set during the time of Fearless, a mysterious figure arrives in the kingdom of Ilya to witness the fight for the throne and the price it costs those sworn to defend the land in this beautiful and heart-wrenching story in the #1 New York Times bestselling Powerless trilogy.
Love too grand, it kills.
Mara never intended to set foot in Ilya again. But when the king makes a life-altering decision, her interest is piqued, and Death is determined to understand Kitt Azer’s mind if he is destined to join her in the Mors.
Spending time with the king while observing the castle’s inhabitants reminds Mara that there is more to life than just death. There is love. But even the purest of intentions spur revenge and the pursuit of power. And fate will have its way with all of them—to live, to rule, to love, and most certainly, to die…
A Land So Wide
From the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of House of Roots and Ruin, comes an irresistible blend of dark fairytale and romantic fantasy set in the beautiful but brutal Canadian wilderness.
Like everyone else in the settlement of Mistaken, Greer Mackenzie is trapped. Founded by an ambitious Scottish lumber merchant, the tiny town on the edge of the American continent is blessed with rich natural resources that have made its people prosperous—but at a cost. The same woods that have lined the townsfolks’ pockets harbor dangerous beasts: wolves, bears, and the Bright-Eyeds—monsters beyond description who have rained utter destruction down on nearby settlements. But Mistaken’s founders made a deal with the mysterious Benevolence: the Warding Stones that surround the town will keep the Bright-Eyeds out—and the town’s citizens in. Anyone who spends a night within Mistaken’s borders belongs to it forever.
Greer, a mapmaker and eccentric dreamer, has always ached to explore the world outside, even though she knows she and her longtime love, Ellis Beaufort, will never see it. Until, on the day she and Ellis are meant to finally begin their lives together, Greer watches in horror as her beloved disappears beyond the Warding Stones, pursued by a monstrous creature. Swiftly realizing that the stories she was raised on might be more myth than fact, Greer figures out a way to escape Mistaken for the very first time. Determined to rescue Ellis, she begins a trek through the cold and pitiless wilderness. But Greer is being hunted, not only by the ruthless Bright-Eyeds but by the secret truths behind Mistaken’s founding, as well as her own origins.
Playfully drawing from Scottish folklore, Erin A. Craig’s adult debut is both a deeply atmospheric and profoundly romantic exploration of freedom versus security: a stunning celebration of one woman’s relentless bravery on a quest to reclaim her lost love—and claim her own future.
Sisters in the Wind
From the instant New York Times bestselling author of Firekeeper’s Daughter and Warrior Girl Unearthed comes a daring new mystery about a foster teen claiming her heritage on her own terms.
Ever since Lucy Smith’s father died five years ago, “home” has been more of an idea than a place. She knows being on the run is better than anything waiting for her as a “ward of the state.” But when the sharp-eyed and kind Mr. Jameson with an interest in her case comes looking for her, Lucy wonders if hiding from her past will ever truly keep her safe.
Five years in the foster system has taught her to be cautious and smart. But she wants to believe Mr. Jameson and his “friend-not-friend,” a tall and fierce-looking woman who say they want to look after her.
They also tell Lucy the truth her father hid from her: She is Ojibwe; she has – had – a sister, and more siblings; a grandmother who’d look after her and a home where she would be loved.
But Lucy is being followed. The past has destroyed any chance of normal she has had, and now the secrets she’s hiding will swallow her whole and take away the future she always dreamed of.
The Hallmarked Man
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING SERIES RETURNS THIS SEPTEMBER
A dismembered corpse is discovered in the vault of a silver shop. The police initially believe it to be that of a convicted armed robber – but not everyone agrees with that theory. One of them is Decima Mullins, who calls on the help of private detective Cormoran Strike as she’s certain the body in the silver vault was that of her boyfriend – the father of her newborn baby – who suddenly and mysteriously disappeared.
The more Strike and his business partner Robin Ellacott delve into the case, the more labyrinthine it gets. The silver shop is no ordinary one: it’s located beside Freemasons’ Hall and specializes in Masonic silverware. And in addition to the armed robber and Decima’s boyfriend, it becomes clear that there are other missing men who could fit the profile of the body in the vault.
As the case becomes ever more complicated and dangerous, Strike faces another quandary. Robin seems increasingly committed to her boyfriend, policeman Ryan Murphy, but the impulse to declare his own feelings for her is becoming stronger than ever.
A gripping, wonderfully complex novel which takes Strike and Robin’s story to a new level, The Hallmarked Man is an unmissable read for any fan of this unique series.
Buckeye
One town. Two families. A secret that changes everything.
“A small-town novel of epic proportions” (Tom Perrotta), this captivating story weaves the intimate lives of two midwestern families across generations, from World War II to the late twentieth century.
“I love this book with my entire heart.”—Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful
In Bonhomie, Ohio, a stolen moment of passion, sparked in the exuberant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, binds Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, to Margaret Salt, a woman trying to obscure her past. Cal’s wife, Becky, has a spiritual gift: She is a seer who can conjure the dead, helping families connect with those they’ve lost. Margaret’s husband, Felix, is serving on a Navy cargo ship, out of harm’s way—until a telegram suggests that the unthinkable might have happened.
Later, as the country reconstructs in the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie—but nothing stays buried forever in a small town. Against the backdrop of some of the most transformative decades in modern America, the consequences of that long-ago encounter ripple through the next generation of both families, compelling them to reexamine who they thought they were and what the future might hold.
Sweeping yet intimate, rich with piercing observation and the warmth that comes from profound understanding of the human spirit, Buckeye captures the universal longing for love and for goodness.
Hot Desk: A Novel
Younger meets Writers & Lovers in this rollicking, sparkling, and funny novel that spans decades and generations of a family in the publishing industry.
In the post-pandemic publishing industry, two rival editors are forced to share a “hot desk” on different days of the week, much to their chagrin. Having never set eyes on each other, Rebecca Blume and Ben Heath begin leaving passive-aggressive Post-it notes on the pot of their shared cactus. But when revered literary legend Edward David Adams (known as “the Lion”) dies, leaving his estate up for grabs, their banter escalates as both work feverishly to land this career-making opportunity. Their fierce rivalry ultimately forces each to decide how far they’ll go to get ahead, what role they want to play in the Lion’s legacy, and what they mean to each other.
As their battle for the estate gets more heated, Rebecca learns of a connection between her mother, Jane, and the Lion. The story travels back four decades earlier to when Jane arrives in Manhattan and meets Rose, soon her best friend. Jane and Rose are two strong, talented young women trying to make their mark in the publishing world at a time when art, the written word, and creative expression were at their height. But one fateful day during the April blizzard of 1982 will change the course of Jane’s life, and of their friendship, forever…
By the Horns
In a world of magical artifacts and fantastical beings, a woman with a deadly magic secret needs the help of the minotaur she’s trying to forget in the sizzling sequel to Ruby Dixon’s New York Times bestseller Bull Moon Rising.
The special first edition hardcover will include a gorgeous, shimmering jacket with effects, brilliantly illustrated four-color endpapers, striking and detailed-stained edges, and a beautiful foil-stamped case.
Gwenna has always considered herself a normal person. A former servant, she wants nothing more than to land a steady job with the Royal Artifactual Guild so she can make some steady coin to send home to her mother. She’s not special. She’s certainly not a necromancer. That would be impossible, given how necromancing (or any ‘mancing) is forbidden upon penalty of death. So if the dead keep talking to her? Well, she’s going to keep on ignoring them. They’re not going to stand in the way of her dreams.
Also standing in her way? One big, arrogant, far-too-flirty Taurian named Raptor. They slept together once, and now he wants more . . . but she doesn’t have time for that. Her focus is on being a fledgling, a trainee for the Royal Artifactual Guild. But Raptor won’t go away. He’s on a secret mission for the guild to find an artifact thief.
Problem is, he thinks the thief is Gwenna.
How can she convince Raptor that he’s got the wrong girl when all the signs point to her? And how do you tell a Taurian you can’t date him because you hear dead people and it might cost you your life?
Breathe In, Bleed Out
“Brian McAuley keeps you guessing the whole gory, satisfying way through this one. Come to this retreat for the blood. Stay for the healing.”
―Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times bestselling author of I Was a Teenage Slasher
It’s a Midsommar night’s Scream in this blood-soaked thriller set at a remote healing retreat from horror author Brian McAuley.
Hannah has been running from her demons ever since she emerged from a harrowing wilderness trip without her fiancé. No one knows exactly what happened the day Ben died, and Hannah would like to keep it that way… even if his ghost still haunts her with vivid waking nightmares that are ruining her life. So when her friend group gets an exclusive invitation to a restorative spiritual retreat in Joshua Tree, Hannah reluctantly agrees in search of a fresh start.
Despite her skepticism of the strange Guru Pax and his belief in the supernatural world, Hannah soon finds healing through all the yoga, sound baths, and hot springs offered at the tech-free haven. But this peaceful journey of self-discovery quickly descends into a violent fight for self-preservation when a mysterious killer starts picking off retreat attendees in increasingly gruesome ways. As the body count rises and Hannah’s sanity frays, she’ll have to confront her dark past and uncover the true nature of a ruthless monster hellbent on killing her vibe for good.
Framed in Death
Death imitates art in the brand-new crime thriller starring homicide cop Eve Dallas from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author J.D. Robb.
Manhattan is filled with galleries and deep-pocketed collectors who can make an artist’s career with a wave of a hand. But one man toils in obscurity, his brilliance unrecognized while lesser talents bask in the glory he believes should be his. Come tomorrow, he vows, the city will be buzzing about his work.
Indeed, before dawn, Lt. Eve Dallas is speeding toward the home of the two gallery owners whose doorway has been turned into a horrifying crime scene overnight. A lifeless young woman has been elaborately costumed and precisely posed to resemble the model of a long-ago Dutch master, and Dallas plunges into her investigation.
Love Walked In
A sunshine American bookstore whisperer clashes with the grumpy British owner of the shop she’s trying to save in this winning opposites-attract romance for book lovers.
He has a struggling bookshop. She has a knack for bringing bookstores back to life. As soon as she walks into his store, all bets are off…
Mari Cole’s whole life is her dream job: rescuing and revitalizing indie bookstores. Friendship? Love? No thanks. After a hard childhood, she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone. Besides, books have never let Mari down the way people have. Then she gets the offer of a lifetime: rescuing Ross & Co. Once the most prestigious independent booksellers in London, the store is a shadow of its former self and needs an expert outsider to turn things around. But the offer turns out to be a double-edged sword: Leo Ross, the store’s new owner, is as cold and hostile as the British winter.
For as long as he can remember, Leo Ross has known his future is becoming the next generation to run Ross and Co. He’s sacrificed almost everything he cares about, but the bookshop is still failing on his watch, and now there’s an obnoxiously cheerful American woman convinced that she’s going to magically make everything better. Leo’s life is difficult and messy enough as it is, and he doesn’t want her help.
When Mari and Leo are forced to work closely together to bring the store back to life, Leo’s icy surface thaws to reveal the passionate man underneath. As winter gives way to the possibility of new beginnings, Mari begins to see that true love could be even better in real life than in the pages of a book. Can they put their pasts aside and learn to let love in?
To the Moon and Back
One young woman’s relentless quest to become the first Cherokee astronaut will irrevocably alter the fates of the people she loves most in this tour de force of a debut about ambition, belonging, and family.
My mother took my sister and me, and she drove through the night to a place she felt a claim to, a place on earth she thought we might be safe. I stopped asking questions. I picked little glass pieces from my sister’s hair. I watched the moon.
Steph Harper is on the run. When she was five, her mother fled an abusive husband—with Steph and her younger sister in tow—to Cherokee Nation, where she hoped they might finally belong. In response, Steph sets her sights as far away from Oklahoma as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing get in the way of pursuing the rigorous physical and academic training she knows she will need to be accepted by NASA, and ultimately, to go to the moon.
Spanning three decades and several continents, To the Moon and Back encompasses Steph’s turbulent journey, along with the multifaceted and intertwined lives of the three women closest to her: her sister Kayla, an artist who goes on to become an Indigenous social media influencer, and whose determination to appear good takes her life to unexpected places; Steph’s college girlfriend Della Owens, who strives to reclaim her identity as an adult after being removed from her Cherokee family through a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act; and Hannah, Steph and Kayla’s mother, who has held up her family’s tribal history as a beacon of inspiration to her children, all the while keeping her own past a secret.
In Steph’s certainty that only her ambition can save her, she will stretch her bonds with each of these women to the point of breaking, at once betraying their love and generosity, and forcing them to reconsider their own deepest desires in her shadow. Told through an intricately woven tapestry of narrative, To the Moon and Back is an astounding and expansive novel of mothers and daughters, love and sacrifice, alienation and heartbreak, terror and wonder. At its core, it is the story of the extraordinary lengths to which one woman will go to find space for herself.
Spider to the Fly
A true crime author helps in a desperate hunt for a killer in this dark and twisted thriller from the deviously inventive horror author that Peter Farris calls the “clear heir to Stephen King.”
Perfect for fans of cat and mouse serial killer thrillers like The Butcher and the Wren and The Jigsaw Man.
Ellie Isles first became obsessed with the I-64 murders when she saw her own face on one of the victims. Identical to every detail, the woman wasn’t her, but she could have been. Compelled to discover the story of her dopplegänger’s death, Ellie wrote a bestselling true crime book about the serial killer, dubbed “the Spider.”
Four years later, the Spider still hasn’t been caught, and his victim count is climbing. Many of the bodies remain unidentified, but with Ellie’s online network of true crime followers, that’s slowly changing. Together they’ve pooled information to create a massive database that tracks people at risk of becoming Jane and John Does–the homeless, the drug addicted, and the downtrodden–with the hopes that if they become victims, they might at least be identified.
Now that Ellie has successfully identified multiple victims, the law enforcement task force tracking down the Spider pulls her in to help–and after Ellie’s therapist is arrested for the murders, she is more determined than ever to help catch the Spider.
With striking prose and a horror flair, Spider to the Fly is an engrossing serial killer thriller, perfect for fans of The Whisper Man.
House of Hearts
Solving her best friend’s murder means infiltrating a secret society, resisting a forbidden love, and running from a vengeful ghost in this sophomore novel by the author of Together We Rot.
“An intoxicating blend of romance and horror, darkness and wit. With haunts and twists that leap off the page, this was a rabbit hole I was happy to fall down.” —Ava Reid, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Drowning
Violet Harper knows her best friend was murdered. Even if everyone else has labeled her death a “freak accident,” Vi is sure she’d been trying to tell her something right before she died. Cryptic messages about her friend’s elite boarding school, her whirlwind romance, and the mysterious secret society she was entangled in all point to a more sinister fate.
So, Violet does what no one else seems willing to do: She transfers to the same fancy school to dig into the society’s murky history and find out what really happened to her friend. She knows the truth might not be pretty, but what she doesn’t bargain for is the handsome boy at the center of it all—Calvin Lockwell, the brother of her prime suspect and descendant of the school’s founder. He’s obnoxious and privileged, and Violet can’t deny their haunting attraction. It soon becomes clear his family is hiding a dark secret that may not be of this world, and suddenly Violet’s following her friend’s doomed footsteps down the rabbit hole. Even as details emerge of a deadly curse plaguing the school, she can’t escape her true feelings for Calvin. But loving him may be the last thing she ever does.
Billion-Dollar Ransom: A Thriller
From #1 New York Times bestselling author James Patterson, six kidnappers pursue a whopping ten-figure payout in this thrilling novel featuring “breakneck pacing and loop-the-loop plotting” (Publishers Weekly).
Five members of a billionaire’s family. In different locations. All kidnapped at the same moment.
Two children taken from a private-school bus. A film producer and a movie star grabbed at a hideaway resort. A beautiful wife whisked off the streets of Beverly Hills.
A patriarch wants his family back. The cash, gold, jewels, are crypto are all ready.
There’s only one problem: a brilliant, very stubborn FBI agent. Special Agent Nicky Gordon doesn’t want to pay the kidnappers.
Not a dime.
Amity
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Sweetness of Water comes a gripping story about a brother and sister, emancipated from slavery but still searching for true freedom, and their odyssey across the deserts of Mexico to escape a former master still intent on their bondage.
New Orleans, 1866. The Civil War might be over, but formerly enslaved Coleman and June have yet to find the freedom they’ve been promised. Two years ago, the siblings were separated when their old master, Mr. Harper, took June away to Mexico, where he hoped to escape the new reality of the postbellum South. Coleman stayed behind in Louisiana to serve the Harper family, clinging to the hope that one day June would return.
When an unexpected letter from Mr. Harper arrives, summoning Coleman to Mexico, Coleman thinks that finally his prayers have been answered. What Coleman cannot know is the tangled truth of June’s tribulations under Mr. Harper out on the frontier. And when disaster strikes Coleman’s journey, he is forced on the run with Mr. Harper’s daughter, Florence. Together, they venture into the Mexican desert to find June, all the while evading two crooked brothers who’ll stop at nothing to capture Coleman and Florence and collect the money they’re owed. As Coleman and June separately navigate a perilous, parched landscape, the siblings learn quickly that freedom isn’t always given—sometimes, it must be taken by force.
As in his New York Times bestselling debut The Sweetness of Water, Nathan Harris delves into the critical years of the Civil War’s aftermath to deliver an intimate and epic tale of what freedom means in a society still determined to return its Black citizens to bondage. Populated with unforgettable characters, Amity is a vital addition to the literature of emancipation.
Rules for Fake Girlfriends
A charming and swoony YA rom-com debut from Raegan Revord, star of the CBS hit series Young Sheldon―about a young college student as she navigates her first year abroad, first love, first loss, and finding her place in the world.
Rom-com obsessed but perpetually single Avery Blackwell abandons her plans to attend Columbia in favor of spending her freshman year at her recently deceased mother’s alma mater in a seaside town in England. On the train, Avery makes a deal straight out of one of her beloved romance books with a charming local girl named Charlie: if Avery will pretend to be her girlfriend to make her ex jealous, Charlie will help Avery solve the scavenger hunt her artistic, free-spirited mother left behind on campus decades ago.
As their quest takes them all over Brighton, Avery finally starts to connect with the mother she always loved but never really understood. Before long, pretending to be Charlie’s girlfriend starts to feel like more than just an illusion. But when long-hidden secrets come to light, Avery grapples with an uncertain future and whether or not love is worth the risk.
Mother Mary Comes to Me
Finalist for the Kirkus Prize
A raw and deeply moving memoir from the legendary author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness that traces the complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, a fierce and formidable force who shaped Arundhati’s life both as a woman and a writer.
Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, is a soaring account, both intimate and inspirational, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as “my shelter and my storm.”
“Heart-smashed” by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022 yet puzzled and “more than a little ashamed” by the intensity of her response, Roy began to write, to make sense of her feelings about the mother she ran from at age eighteen, “not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her.” And so begins this astonishing, sometimes disturbing, and surprisingly funny memoir of the author’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to the writing of her prizewinning novels and essays, through today.
With the scale, sweep, and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity, and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace—a memoir like no other.
The Killer Question
Janice Hallett, “the new queen of crime” (Electric Literature), returns with a fresh, edge-of-your-seat mystery that takes place at a pub’s weekly trivia night, revealed through quiz categories, phone messages, and email correspondence.
Sue and Mal Eastwood run an isolated rural pub called The Case is Altered where a weekly trivia game has revived its flagging fortunes—that is, until a body is found in the nearby river. Soon after, a mysterious new team arrives and shakes up the diverse field of regulars by scoring top marks in every round…every week.
Meanwhile, Sue and Mal have a secret of their own. Before arriving here, they were caught up in a secret police operation which meant they had to leave town—and whatever happened back then seems to have finally caught up with them.
Five years later, the pub lies derelict, and their nephew Dominic is determined to make a documentary about their story. What happened at this unassuming pub? And can a single question really kill?
Crazy Spooky Love
A plucky medium, her fame-chasing ex, and an infuriatingly handsome skeptic reporter make for a complicated love triangle—and that’s before the ghosts get involved. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of One Day in December comes the first novel in a ghost-hunting series full of romance and humor.
Ghosts and spirits are business as usual, but love just might be enough to scare Melody Bittersweet.
In the leafy, charming town of Chapelwick, the Bittersweet family has been a fixture on High Street for as long as anyone can remember. Their rambling black-and-white building houses all three generations of ghost-sensitive Bittersweet women and their business, Blithe Spirits.
On her twenty-seventh birthday, Melody Bittersweet converts the disused back storeroom into her office and opens her own business. Unlike the rest of her family, she’s not taking down messages from ghosts—she’s taking them out.
Right away, the freshly minted Girls’ Ghostbusting Agency takes on its first case: a grand old house that won’t sell because a trio of incumbent ghost brothers raise merry hell whenever prospective owners arrive to view it.
It soon becomes clear that there’s a whole heap of unfinished business between the Scarborough brothers—including murder—and Melody isn’t the only one trying to unravel the mystery. Leo Dark, her rakish ex and business rival, is also on the case, along with the TV crew that trails him.
To make matters worse, the sarcastic and skeptical (and annoyingly good-looking) local reporter Fletcher Gunn has his nose in the story as well. Sniffing out a way to publicly discredit the Bittersweets is his favorite assignment—and has absolutely nothing to do with his inability to resist Melody.
With her business on the line, it’s up to Melody to work out the brothers’ issues, but can she protect her own very susceptible heart from Fletcher’s charm? Does she even want to?
Apostle’s Cove
The New York Times bestselling Cork O’Connor Mystery series—a “master class in suspense and atmospheric storytelling” (The Real Book Spy)—continues with Cork O’Connor revisiting a case from his past and confronting mysterious deaths in the present.
A few nights before Halloween, as Cork O’Connor gloomily ruminates on his upcoming birthday, he receives a call from his son, Stephen, who is working for a nonprofit dedicated to securing freedom for unjustly incarcerated inmates. Stephen tells his father that decades ago, as the newly elected sheriff of Tamarack County, Cork was responsible for sending an Ojibwe man named Axel Boshey to prison for a brutal murder that Stephen is certain he did not commit.
Cork feels compelled to reinvestigate the crime, but that is easier said than done. Not only is it a closed case but Axel Boshey is, inexplicably, refusing to help. The deeper Cork digs, the clearer it becomes that there are those in Tamarack County who are willing once again to commit murder to keep him from finding the truth.
At the same time, Cork’s seven-year-old grandson has his own theory about the investigation: the Windigo, that mythic cannibal ogre, has come to Tamarack County…and it won’t leave until it has sated its hunger for human blood.
The Rules of Falling for You
She thought she knew the rules of love. Turns out, love makes its own.
The perfect match can’t be far–certainly not at a Regency-themed singles’ retreat–or so podcaster Zoe Dufour believes. After years of creating content for her relationship podcast inspired by Regency etiquette and era-appropriate rules for romance, she knows her listeners have anticipated this retreat. But she also attends with expectations of her own: finding the ideal modern-day gentleman who can meet every one of the nonnegotiables on her checklist.
Harrison Lundquist, Zoe’s podcast producer and best friend’s brother, reluctantly agrees to tag along on the retreat to capture footage while seeking a career-advancing promotion. He views the retreat as ridiculous. And Zoe’s methods for finding her real-life Mr. Darcy? Downright absurd! But as he films her whirlwind dates, his growing feelings for her are sidelined by suitors vying for her attention. When Zoe realizes her checklist for the man of her dreams might be holding her back, she must decide if she’s willing to rewrite her rules and take a chance on the person who has been there all along.
“The writing is smart and sassy with humor and touching moments sure to please lovers of rom-coms, Regency romance, or Jane Austen period dramas.”–JULIE KLASSEN, bestselling author
This clean and wholesome romance presents a Regency-infused spin on a contemporary rom-com with the grumpy/sunshine, he falls first, and best friend’s brother tropes. Readers of Melissa Ferguson, Pepper Basham, and Julie Klassen will find this read delightful.
Every Step She Takes
A swoon-worthy sapphic romance following two women who are thrown together on a European adventure, from the Lambda Literary Award–winning author of the “sexy, insightful, and utterly charming” (BuzzFeed) Kiss Her Once for Me.
Thirty-five-year-old Seattleite Sadie Wells needs an escape. She’s desperate to escape her monotonous routines, the family business that has consumed her entire life, and the unexpected gay panic that has her questioning everything she thought she knew about herself. So when her injured sister offers Sadie her place on a tour along Portugal’s Camino de Santiago, she decides this is the perfect chance to get away from it all.
After three glasses of wine on the plane and some turbulence convince Sadie she won’t even survive the flight, she confesses all her secrets to her seatmate, Mal. The problem: the plane doesn’t crash, and it turns out Mal is on her Camino tour. Worst of all, Sadie learns that she is on a tour specifically for queer women, and that her two-hundred-mile trek will be a journey of self-discovery, whether she wants it to be or not.
Fascinated by the woman who drunkenly came out to her on the plane, Mal offers to help Sadie relive the queer adolescence she missed out on as they walk the Camino. As Sadie develops her newfound confidence, Mal grapples with a complicated loss and unexpected inheritance. But as their relationship blurs the lines between reality and practice, they both must decide if they will forever part at the end of the tour or chart a new course together.
With “funny, poignant” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) prose, Alison Cochrun explores the power of letting go of your past and realizing that it’s never too late to live as your authentic self.
Head Witch in Charge
When two witches with a tangled history are forced to team up, it spells disaster in this steamy rom-com from USA Today bestselling author Avery Flynn.
It’s the curse of every family’s heir to be the responsible one. My family being the most powerful family in all of Witchingdom doesn’t eliminate that fact, it only makes it worse—and that’s why I, Leona Amber Sherwood, never do the unexpected. Except for that one time I did.
Believe me, I have rued the day that I got married in a midnight ceremony under a full moon to Erik Svensen, the heir to my family’s deepest, bitterest enemies, and now, he won’t agree to a divorce unless we return an ancient spell book to his family’s secured facility.
But on our road trip to return the book, I learn more about Erik as we encounter trolls, nymphs, satyrs, and more. The longer we work together, the more I’m convinced that he might not be the evil trickster I assumed he was. Any more time together will leave me even more enchanted with my husband and that’s the last thing I want. And if I keep telling myself that, maybe I’ll start to believe it.
Witch You Would
When a young witch gets a life-changing chance to compete in a magical reality show, sparks fly as she’s partnered with a man she can’t stand.
In a Miami where enchantment is just another college major, the magic of television could change two lives.
Penelope Delmar, a broke salesgirl, has been chosen to compete on Cast Judgment, a spellcasting reality show. The winner gets a big cash prize, and for extra hype, this season is the Spellebrity Edition: every contestant will be paired with a celebrity teammate. Unfortunately, her partner, Leandro Presto, is best known for his goofy viral spell videos, not his skills.
Gil Contreras, alias Leandro Presto, has been crushing on his pen pal Penelope for months. Now they’re working together to win a contest that could save his grandfather’s charity—except he has to stay in character the whole time, so his dream girl thinks he’s a total loser.
Can they beat snobby rivals, fix spells gone wrong, and survive increasingly dangerous sabotage attempts to win the grand prize—and each other’s hearts? Or will Gil’s secret make both their magic and romance fizzle out?
TROPES:
- fake dating
- secret admirers
- enemies to lovers
- mistaken identity
- grumpy sunshine
Falling Like Leaves
For the first printing only! This paperback features stenciled sprayed edges while supplies last.
Gilmore Girls meets Jenny Han in this autumnal teen rom-com about a city girl stuck in a quaint small town who must confront her future and her old flame while the town prepares for an annual fall festival.
Ellis has a plan: spend her senior fall prepping her application for Columbia, get into their journalism program, and set the foundation for a respectable career. So when her parents announce that not only are they separating, but Ellis has to move with her mom from New York City to Bramble Falls, Connecticut, to live with her aunt and cousin, it couldn’t come at a worse time.
From past summers spent in Connecticut, Ellis knows Bramble Falls is idyllic and charming. But it also seems to be full of distractions. There’s local barista Cooper Barnett, Ellis’s one-time best friend and first kiss who now wants nothing to do with Ellis. And then there’s the Falling Leaves Festival, a local autumnal celebration run by Ellis’s aunt where people from all over come to see Bramble Falls’s beautiful foliage. The house is stuffed with decorations, and every conversation seems to center around the festival.
Dragged to every oh-so-charming event from apple picking to pumpkin carving, Ellis can’t stop bumping into Cooper…or falling for the quaint town and its quirky residents. As her return to Manhattan gets repeatedly delayed, Ellis finds herself caught between two very different places—and the futures they represent.
Learning Curves
From the author of Stars Collide and Cover Story comes a steamy will-they-won’t-they romance about a bright young teacher reconnecting with the jaded professor she once pined for.
For Audrey Lind, working with clay still evokes memories of her favorite professor. The woman’s zeal for art history ignited Audrey’s own academic career―and her tweed blazers and British accent kindled her first female crush. After fate brings Audrey back to Northshire University to teach, she’s thrilled to be working alongside her former mentor, but the grumpy woman she encounters upon her return is nothing like the dynamo she remembers.
Divorce and a stalling career have turned Dr. Michelle Thompson bitter and guarded. When Audrey swoops in to teach the Women in Art class Michelle’s been pitching for years, she longs to hate her. But her young rival is too kind, too enthusiastic, too irresistible. And her passion for life slowly reawakens Michelle’s own.
Wary of age gaps and workplace politics, they suppress their smoldering attraction―until one wine-filled night at the pottery wheel puts their romantic truce to the test. Will they keep things on the tenure track or risk it all for love?
Tuck Everlasting: The Graphic Novel
Celebrate Tuck Everlasting’s 50th anniversary with the stunning graphic novel adaptation of this beloved and spellbinding children’s classic that has sold more than 10 million copies.
What if you could live forever?
In this timeless story about immortality, friendship, and growing up, young Winnie Foster learns of a hidden spring in a nearby wood and meets the Tuck family, whose members reveal their astonishing discovery of the spring’s life-changing power. Now Winnie must decide what to do with her newfound knowledge—and the Tucks must decide what to do with her. But it’s not just the curious girl who is interested in their remarkable tale. A suspicious stranger is also searching for the Tucks, and he will stop at nothing until he finds them and uncovers their secret.
From Newbery Honoree and E. B. White Award winner Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting is a modern-day masterpiece that has been a staple on home bookshelves and in classrooms and libraries for half a century. Drawing closely from the original text, it is now brought to visual life in K. Woodman-Maynard’s gorgeous watercolor artwork. The perfect book for new readers and long-devoted fans alike, Tuck The Graphic Novel is sure to be an all-time favorite for every generation.
Praise for Tuck The Graphic Novel:
★ “As wise and wonderful as the original.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
★ “Woodman-Maynard achieves the seemingly impossible task of enhancing a much beloved classic . . . This faithful and beautiful adaptation is a must purchase.” —School Library Journal, starred review
The Girl in the Green Dress
From the author of The Lindbergh Nanny comes an evocative mystery about the 1920 murder of the gambler Joseph Elwell, featuring New Yorker writer Morris Markey and Zelda Fitzgerald.
New York, 1920.
Zelda Fitzgerald is bored, bored, bored. Although she’s newly married to the hottest writer in America, and one half of the literary scene’s “it” couple, Zelda is at loose ends while Scott works on his next novel, The Beautiful and the Damned.
Meanwhile, Atlanta journalist Morris Markey has arrived in New York and is lost in every way possible. Recently returned from the war and without connections, he hovers at the edge of the city’s revels, unable to hear the secrets that might give him his first big story.
When notorious man-about-town Joseph Elwell is found shot through the head in his swanky townhouse, the fortunes the two southerners collide when they realize they were both among the last to see him alive. Zelda encountered Elwell at the scandalous Midnight Frolic revue on the night of his death, and Markey saw him just hours before with a ravishing mystery woman dressed in green. Markey has his story. Zelda has her next adventure.
As they investigate which of Elwell’s many lovers―or possibly an enraged husband―would have wanted the dapper society man dead, Zelda sweeps Markey into her New York, the heady, gaudy Jazz Age of excess and abandon, as the lost generation takes its first giddy steps into a decade-long spree. Everyone has come to do something, the more scandalous the better; Zelda is hungry for love and sensation, Markey desperate for success and recognition. As they each follow these ultimately dangerous desires, the pair close in on what really happened that night―and hunt for the elusive girl in the green dress who may hold the truth.
Based on the real story of the unsolved deaths of Joseph Elwell and New Yorker writer Morris Markey, Mariah Fredericks’s new novel is a glittering homage to the dawn of the Jazz Age, as well as a deft and searing portrait of the dark side of fame.
The First Witch of Boston: A Novel
A gripping and intimate novel based on the true story of Margaret Jones, the first woman to be found guilty of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Massachusetts.
Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1646. Thomas and Margaret Jones arrive from England to build a life in the New World. Though of differing temperaments, cautious Thomas and fiery Margaret, a healer, are bound by a love that has lasted decades. With a child on the way, their new beginning promises only blessings.
But in this austere Puritan community, comely faces hide malicious intent. Wrong moves or words are met with suspicion, and Margaret’s bold and unguarded nature draws scorn. Soon, Margaret is mistrusted as more cunning woman than kind caregiver. And when personal tragedies, religious hysteria, and wariness of the unknown turn most against her, even the devotion Margaret and her husband share is at risk.
Inspired by actual diary entries and court records, The First Witch of Boston is at once the riveting story of a woman unjustly accused and a love story set amid the political and social turmoil of both Old and New England. Harrowing, and with a deep understanding of the human heart, history is brilliantly imagined.
Please Don’t Lie
In this stylish, twisty thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline and award-winning author Anne Burt, a young woman heads to the Adirondacks with her new husband for a fresh start―but the past won’t let her go.
Two years ago, Hayley Stone lost everything. First, her parents died in a devastating fire. Then, her sister overdosed, leaving Hayley alone and hounded by a media circus that turned her family’s tragedy into tabloid fodder. When her new husband suggests a fresh start in the Adirondacks, the promise of anonymity in an isolated mountain town feels like salvation.
But the mountains hold darker secrets than she ever imagined.
Her once-loving husband grows distant and volatile. The widow down the road keeps spewing vague accusations. Not even their new friends―a free-spirited couple living on the property―can help Hayley shake the creeping sense that something is off.
As winter edges closer, Hayley discovers that her sanctuary is anything but safe. Trapped and isolated, she faces a terrifying truth: in trying to escape her past, she may have run straight into something far more dangerous.
Bees in June
Set against the optimism and excitement of the first moon landing in the summer of 1969, a feat many said was impossible, one woman struggles to achieve something she thinks is impossible–living a happy and fulfilling life.
Rennie King’s world isn’t at all what she expected when she married the hotshot baseball player from her small town of Spark, Tennessee. Reeling from the loss of her newborn son, she desperately needs the support of her husband, but instead of providing comfort, he is becoming increasingly angry, often turning that anger on her.
When a glowing bee lands beside her, Rennie senses she needs to check on her beloved beekeeper uncle. The bee stirs long-forgotten memories of a childhood lived close to nature, a connection she lost over time. As the summer progresses, she finds both the bees and her uncle advising and encouraging her. While healing from her loss, she gains the courage to break free from the husband who is becoming increasingly violent.
With help from her family, her friends, and of course, the bees, Rennie dares to hope that she can build a happy life for herself and opens a business that could provide a path to independence. But starting over is hard, and as the heat rises that summer, so do tempers, until everything comes to a head the night the astronauts first step onto the moon’s surface.
Hope-filled and infused with magical realism, Bees in June captures Rennie’s journey back to her true self, creating a rewarding life that the bees showed her was possible if she only believed in herself and the magic that surrounds her.
Bad Date: A Short Story
An online flirtation between two apparent strangers takes a deliciously wicked turn in a twisty short story about love, obsession, and deadly deceptions by the author of The Club.
Fay Roper is a divorced single mom and a globally famous actress. She’s also unlucky in love. Maybe because the last thing Fay wants in a man is yet another superfan. But somehow, every time she has a boyfriend who isn’t a stalker, he abruptly disappears from her life. With the help of her best friend and right-hand woman, Poppy, Fay decides to change the game and join an exclusive new dating app under a false identity. A subscriber named Oliver takes the bait. But Oliver likes to play games too. And only one of them can win.
Cold Island
When the remains of a young murder victim on Nantucket Island are discovered after thirty-five years, a detective begins to unearth the dark secrets of a community gone silent.
Massachusetts State Police detective Tommy Kelly is called to Nantucket Island, where a boy’s skeletal remains have been discovered at a construction site―interred for thirty-five years. The crime is especially gutting for Tommy, the father of two boys. It’s also the beginning of a grim mystery. Because no child during that period was even reported missing.
Tommy is partnered with Nantucket PD’s best detective, Jo Harris, who first chafes at the idea of a mainlander encroaching on her territory. And their work together is only raising more troubling questions. Then a possible link is found to the decades-old case of a serial killer―a vigilantly hidden part of the past that this tight-knit community would prefer to forget and never speak of again.
The secrets in their silence are so shocking they soon pull Tommy into a very dark place. Suddenly, offseason on Nantucket has never felt so cold, so isolating, or so dangerous.
Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments down below.




































Leave a Comment