"Ana Blacksmith has gathered her closest friends and sister Vera for a brunch to celebrate her recent breakup from her boyfriend Paul. But when shocking news about Paul arrives, all eyes are on Ana, the angry ex with a bad reputation. Suspicions only intensify when Ana's best friend falls deathly ill after the brunch. But Ana is not the only one who had a score to settle with Paul. As the investigation unfolds, rumors of a secret network that uses ancient methods to obtain justice begin to emerge. Vengeance is sweet, but it can also be deadly. Ana and Vera are determined to find the truth before Ana takes the fall and their own long-buried history comes to light"--

"Anneke has a complicated relationship with her father, Abraham Van Helsing--doctor, scientist, and madman devoted to the study of vampires--until the night she comes home to find him murdered, with a surreally beautiful woman looming over his body. A woman who leaves no trace behind, other than the dreams and nightmares that now plague Anneke every night. Spurred by her desire for vengeance and armed with the latest forensic and investigatory techniques, Anneke puts together a team of detectives to catch this mysterious serial killer.Because her father isn't the only inexplicable dead body. There's atrail of victims across Europe, and Anneke is certain they're all connected. But during the years spent relentlessly hunting the killer, Anneke keeps crucial evidence to herself: infuriatingly coy letters, addressed only to her, occasionally soaked in blood, and always signed Diavola. The closer Anneke gets to her devil, though, the lesssense the world makes. Maybe her father wasn't a madman after all.Diavola might be something much worse than a serial killer ... and much harder to destroy. Yet as Anneke unearths more of Diavola's tragic past, she suspects there's still a heart somewhere in that undead body. A heart that beats for Anneke alone."--Provided by publisher.

"An electric debut from a rising-star screenwriter about a millennial antihero who seeks revenge on her ex-situationship with a drunken hex, only for him to actually die the next day. Lillian and Henry have very much been enjoying each other's company the last few months, and quite frantically in bed. Even though Lillian's plain Jane of a best friend Jamie still frustratingly calls it "a situationship," she doesn't know anything. Lillian will lock Henry down--and she has a plan. Everyone knows you have to be strategic about these things. After all, it's clear Henry's hooked on her sexually deviant ways. So when Henry blindsides her with a breakup instead of the love declaration she told herself was on its way, Lillian exacts revenge by performing a drunken hex. There's a little wrinkle, though: Henry actually ends up dead the next morning, and Lillian becomes a prime suspect in his murder case. As the Boston police begin investigating Henry's death, Lillian quickly learns she wasn't the only woman in his life--and to cope with this reckoning, she plunges into a new obsession: stalking the long-term girlfriend Henry left behind. Desperate to control the narrative around her relationship with Henry, her season of mourning, and where she was the night he died, Lillian's chaotic pursuit for recognition (but only in all the right ways) takes her to ever darker places, and slowly she begins to uncover a reality she dearly wishes had stayed under wraps"--

On an island where the dead once walked, seven noble houses fell to a conqueror's blade, their necromancy lost. Only the House of Teeth survives: heiress Marozia and her silent cousin Agnes, keeper of dark secrets. To reclaim their magic and avenge their family, Agnes must betray her heart - but love may doom them all.

"In the remote hills of western Ireland, fear spreads as the locals struggle to make sense of a killer who is seemingly one of their own... Dr. Alexander Gregory, a psychologist recovering from the collapse of a high-profile criminal profiling unit, wants nothing more than a quiet life to finally sit and think things through. But his rare ability to understand the minds of violent offenders makes him hard to ignore--especially when a small town is shaken by a brutal murder. Reluctantly pulled into the case, Gregory finds himself confronting not only a cunning predator, but the darker corners of his own mind. From internationally bestselling author LJ Ross comes a tense, atmospheric thriller that explores how far we'll go to understand--and survive--the darkness around us"--

"Mathilde 'Tilly' Crewson, a thirty-nine-year-old mother and art conservator, is tasked with restoring The Mother. The painting, believed to be the work of a female surgeon-turned-artist after a personal tragedy, is the rumored fourth piece in a collection of only three known works. But this newly discovered painting, scarred by fire, holds more than meets the eye. Soon after receiving the painting, Tilly discovers she's unexpectedly pregnant again, and strange, inexplicable occurrences begin: terrifying insect swarms, eerie visits from her long-deceased mother, and sinister whispers that invade her mind. As these malevolent forces intensify, Tilly comes to a harrowing realization that the only way to sever the perilous bond she shares with the painting is to destroy it. But The Mother has plans of her own--and they're darker than Tilly could ever imagine. As Tilly's obsession with the mysterious painting spirals into a nightmarish descent, the line between reality and the supernatural shatters, threatening both her sanity and her life"-- Front flap of dust jacket.

Written over the past two decades, Louise Erdrich's magnificent story collection features a range of characters--a tribal newsletter editor whose son tells her a story that nothing in her experience can encompass, immigrant farmers whose tenuous hold on the earth, and sanity, is challenged, and ordinary people, bird lovers, artists, grade-school teachers, and romantics. A girl decides to spend her life with a stone. A man is confronted with a folk-singing thief. A woman enters a corporately owned afterlife to seek revenge on her father. Accompanied by specially commissioned artwork by Aza Erdrich Abe--an intimate and revelatory creative collaboration between mother and daughter--these stories offer an oppor­tunity to celebrate the wisdom and brilliant, wide-ranging imagination of one of America's most important writers.

"Nona McKinley raised three boys in the Hester Gardens section of Medford, Michigan, an impoverished community divided by those who follow their faith in God and those who turn to crime to survive. With her drug dealer husband behind bars and her eldest son shot to death at eighteen, Nona has devoted herself to ensuring her other children escape their brother’s fate. Her second son Marcus is on the right path. He's a valedictorian heading to an Ivy League school. He can get out. But then, strange things start happening to Nona and other residents: mysterious footsteps are heard when she's alone, people have phantom encounters in the streets, unattended appliances go off at all hours. Even more concerning is the state of Nona's living sons. Her youngest, Lance, is hanging around with a bad crowd, and Marcus becomes moody and secretive. Sometimes he even seems to act like a different person entirely. Nona has her secrets too. Her affair with the married church pastor has been weighing on her conscience, but that's not the only guilt haunting her. She fears that someone--or something--is seeking revenge for an act she made in a moment of weakness to protect her family. And now everyone in Hester Gardens must pay the price... "--Description from author's website https://www.tamikathompson.com/the-curse-of-hester-gardens

Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard travels to England's windswept coastline to investigate a murder in a place where, several years after the end of WWI, the memory of the war still runs strong.

"Birdie Chang didn't know anything about Whidbey Island when she chose it, only that it was about as far away as she could get from her own life. She's a woman on the run, desperate for an escape from the headlines back home and the look of concern in her girlfriend's eyes--and from Calvin Boyer, the man who abused her as a child and who's now resurfaced. On her way, she has an unnerving encounter witha stranger on the ferry who offers her a proposition, a sinister solution and plan for revenge. But Birdie isn't the only girl Calvin harmed back then. There's also Linzie King, a former reality TV star who recently wrote all about it in her bestselling memoir. Though the two women have never met, their stories intertwine. Once Birdie arrives on Whidbey, she finally cracks the book's spine, only to find too much she recognizes in its pages. Soon after, on the other side of the country, Calvin's loving mother, Mary-Beth, receives a shocking phone call from the police: her only son has been murdered. Calvin's death sets into motion a series of events that sends each woman on a desperate search for answers..."--Provided by publisher.

"It's the night of November 4, 2008. America's first Black president has just been elected. And fifty-three-year-old Hollis Montrose--a Black ex-police officer from the suburbs of Chicago--has become the latest victim of a brutal attack. As the result of a traffic stop gone wrong, Hollis is shot ten times in cold blood, by four white men who could have been his colleagues back in his police days. Beau Lee Cooper was born serious, as if on an urgent mission with little time to waste. Raised in the tumultuous world of 1970s Texas, he always dreamed of becoming a lawyer and fighting for what's right, ever since he was a little boy reading To Kill a Mockingbird. And now, ten years into running his own law firm with his best friend and partner in crime, Nelson 'Nellie' Rivers, and his suave right-hand-man, Brent 'Cape' Capers, he feels he's finally making a difference. When Beau Lee learns about Hollis's situation, he's determined to help. Miraculously, Hollis survives the encounter, but the Chicago police department has already spun the narrative in its favor, and Hollis is given a wrongful prison sentence with an unreasonable bail. What really happened that night the car was pulled over? Was it random or was Hollis targeted? Beau Lee knows he's treading in dangerous waters, and finding evidence of the truth will be his biggest challenge yet, but with troubling powers at play, one innocent man's life hangs in the balance." --

"Aurora is caught between powerful alphas as they fight for the Wolf Throne. But darker forces are rising... Aurora may have survived the Wolf King, but his bite marks her skin. In accordance with wolf law, that makes her his property. Now, he wants her back. To beat him and take his throne, Aurora and Callum must form a dangerous alliance with one of the most feared Wolves in the Kingdom, Blake. He is their enemy, but he has entangled his life with Aurora's-meaning she cannot harm him without forfeiting her own life. As she fights to break their connection, she suspects Blake is keeping secrets about a dark power that rises in the north, and the unsettling nature of the bond between them. It seems there is a bigger game at play than who sits on the Wolf Throne-one that threatens both the Kingdom of Wolves, and the Kingdom of Men. With her wolf awakening, enemies closing in, relationships tested, and secrets revealed-Aurora may be the only one who can stop an ancient evil from rising. If she can figure out who to trust. If she can figure out where she, and her heart, belong. If she can stay alive"-- Provided by publisher.

"The most famous stories of the Trojan War and its aftermath are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. But these were not the only tales of the war sung to ancient audiences by bards-there were others, now vanished but for echoes and fragments, collected in what has come to be known as the Epic Cycle. In SON OF NOBODY, one such tale is the Psoad: an epic that follows the son of a goatherd, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight on the beaches of Troy. Psoas meets his doom, and the epic poem of his life is lost to time-until another man on a foreign shore, a Canadian academic studying at Oxford, discovers its relics thirty centuries later. A truly daring feat of imagination, SON OF NOBODY is a novel composed in two voices: the first, a series of fragments from antiquity that tell the story of Troy from a lost, alt-Homeric tradition; the second, the voice of a modern-day scholar, Harlow Donne, who assembles and comments on these fragments while navigating a conflict of his own. Obsessed with his discovery, Donne still can't seem to let go of his family's past-he weaves together the tale of uncovering ancient papyri, faded codices, and broken cuneiform tablets with memories of his daughter as a child and his wife before their separation. Donne translates and writes in the heartfelt modes of Aphrodite, goddess of love, and Ares, god of war, as the parallel stories offer a poignant glimpse into both the follies of failed relationships and of battle. SON OF NOBODY upends the regal perspective of traditional epics, and by grappling with questions of ambition, family, and responsibility in both the ancient and the modern worlds, it shows "that the past is never done with, that always there are parallels and returns and repetitions, always the song continues.""-- Provided by publisher.

"Upward Bound is not a place anyone dreams of spending their days. The dreary adult daycare center for Los Angeles's disabled community is, for many of its clients and staff, a place of last resort. This includes Carlos, a young aide who lost his mother as a boy and now works there alongside his beloved sister Delia; Jorge, the gentle nonverbal giant whom Carlos seeks to befriend (and prevent from escaping); Tom, a beautiful young man with cerebral palsy, who pines for Ann, the summer lifeguard at the center's pool who feels out of her depth; then there's Mike, Upward Bound's director who came to L.A. to pursue an acting career but now channels his passion into staging an impressive holiday show starring the center's sorely underestimated clients. Framing these interlocking narratives - and connecting them in surprising, shattering ways - is the riveting and sometimes ironic testimony of Walter, a recent community college graduate who, after a family tragedy, must return to the company of his disabled peers"-- Provided by publisher.

In 1843 New Orleans, the reigning Voodoo queen is Marie Laveau, feared by her enemies and followers alike. Her daughter, Marie "Ree" Laveau the Second, is everything her cutthroat and principled mother is not—spoiled and entitled, with a wickedly rebellious streak—and defies her mother at every turn. But Ree’s world is turned upside down when she finds Marie comatose in the bayou, cursed by exiled Voodoo king Jon the Conjurer—Marie’s former teacher, lover, and greatest enemy. As Marie hovers on the brink of death, Ree races to uncover the secrets of her mother’s life in search of a cure and gradually uncovers a web of alliances, dangers, and deception. What’s worse, Henryk Broussard, Ree’s long-missing childhood best friend, returns as a witch hunter of the Church, tasked with investigating her. With so many enemies circling, including a puritanical-minded Brotherhood of alchemists and the slave-holding mayor of the city, Ree must confront the past and face her mother’s demons that have now become her own—or die trying.

"Ireland, 1918. In a world brutalized by the Great War and devastated by the Spanish flu, twenty-two-year-old Rynn Carmichael is suddenly pulled into the war of independence when Donal O'Reilly, the boy she has loved for most of her life, takes up gunrunning in support of the rebellion. Raised in a small Irish village on the shores of Donegal Bay, Rynn is working as a nurse in a convalescent home for soldiers wounded in the Great War when she overhears a British officer gloating over the trap that has been set for Irish gunrunners bringing a boat full of smuggled arms ashore. Knowing that Donal must be involved, she rushes out at midnight to warn the incoming boat, only to find herself caught up in a terrifying and tragic series of events that take her from the glittering ballrooms of London to the narrow back alleys of Dublin as she and those she loves fight for their lives and their country. A bold, sweeping epic with an unforgettable heroine, bestselling author Karen Robards' latest novel is a powerful testament to love, courage, and the eternal struggle for freedom."--Provided by publisher.

"Wildlife biologist Alex Carter jumps at the chance to work with hawksbill turtles in Hawaii, only to face an unthinkable threat that endangers countless lives in the latest entry of the acclaimed series by Alice Henderson"-- Provided by publisher.

"DI Henley faces her darkest challenge yet...When a string of grisly murders begins painting the city in terror, DI Henley soon realise a vigilante killer is scalping their victims before leaving them for dead. Henley is thrust into a web of secrets, unravelling connections between the victims while battling demons from her own past. As the killer raises the stakes, the line between predator and prey begins to blur. With time slipping away and her own life in jeopardy, Henley must outwit a psychopath who views murder as an art form. Can she hunt them down before the final stroke of the scalpel closes the case forever?"--

"Skye MacKinnon is desperate for an escape. When she wins a lottery to buy a run-down cottage on a Greek island for only one euro, Skye jumps at the chance to get out of England and start over. As she unlocks the tattered blue door of her whitewashed new cottage, the sun-kissed sea glinting in the bay outside her windows, Skye immediately feels like she's found her true home. Skye and the other lottery winners--the first residents in these houses since the 1940s--form a tight-knit group, finding in one another the strong relationships they'd been missing in their own lives. When Skye and local contractor Andreas discover a set of mysterious letters, they begin to unravel the history of the prior residents and the truth about life on Folegandros during the Second World War"-- Provided by publisher.

After a violent car crash triggers the premature birth of her long-awaited child, Jane Whitefield hopes to settle into a quiet life with her husband and newborn. But the calm is short-lived. Nearly at once, enemies and desperate strangers begin moving toward her home in western New York--some seeking protection, others intent on exposing or capturing the woman known for making people disappear. As danger closes in from those who know how to find her, Jane must return to the skills she once used to hide fugitives and build new identities, now to protect not only her clients but her own family.

"When a Victorian fossil hunter discovers a baby pterodactyl, she vows to protect him, with the help of a fellow scholar--her former fiancé"--

"After a brutal breakup, college junior Blake Logan escapes to her family's lake house in Tahoe, determined to shut out the world. Her plan is simple: no men, no drama. Until Wyatt Graham shows up. Four years older and far too good at getting under her skin, Wyatt is the living embodiment of a "bad idea," and the guy who shattered her pride when she confessed her crush at sixteen. With his music career stalled, Wyatt has come to Tahoe for inspiration. The last thing he expects is to find it with Blake. He's spent years keeping his distance, convinced he's all wrong for her, but she's no longer the innocent girl he once knew. She's confident, captivating, and impossible to ignore. And the slow-burning tension between them? It's catching fire fast. They both know this can't last, but one reckless kiss turns into another, and soon they're tangled in something that feels dangerously like more. Just as they finally give in to the pull, tragedy tears them apart, leaving their hearts in pieces. But forgetting that one, nearly perfect summer? Not a chance. And when fate brings them together again, Blake and Wyatt must decide if this is a second chance or the final verse"-- Provided by publisher.

"Vera Van Valkenburgh hasn't been home in one hundred and eighty-eight years. But now Vera, forever twenty-six and able to heal from any wound, has returned to the Catskills. Whatever made her family immortal happened here, and if she can uncover it, maybe she can reverse it. After nearly two centuries--an endless sequence of unnoticed, meaningless lives and a soul-shaking incident in the desert--she longs to be released. Posing as a newly arrived forest ranger, she quickly blends into the upstate community and learns of something curious and disturbing. A mysterious, well-funded company is snapping uplocal property, no matter how high the asking price. But when her brother, a fellow immortal shows up, accompanied by a woman whose face is incredibly familiar to Vera, the purpose for her return gets clouded and Vera is in a race against time to find out what has caused her condition before someone else does."--Provided by publisher.

"Hundreds of years ago, a brutal war split a land in two. Starside is the realm of magic and immortals--the descendants of the gods, living in a power-rich paradise. Stormside is where mortals fight for scraps of that magic. Every fifty years, the gates between them open, and fifty challengers are allowed to journey across Starside ona deadly quest to access a pool of magic that can heal, grant wealth, or extend life. Everyone has their reasons for entering, but Aris has only one: vengeance. As a child, a goddess set fire to her village, killing her family. Aris isn't after the gods' magic--she's going to kill them. First, she must survive the Culling, the king's deadly competition to choose his fifty challengers. An orphaned blacksmith's apprentice, Aris doesn't have the superior weapons of the heirs from the Great Houses. But the greatest swords--ones that contain power--are not inherited or bought, they are claimed, by both sides. And when Aris claims a great sword, it makes her not just a real competitor--but a target. Getting past the gates is only the beginning. Starside is deadlier than it seems. If the ancient creatures, magic-wielding beasts, and bloodthirsty immortals weren't dangerous enough, a new peril has even immortals fearing what rises from the ground at night. With a blade most would kill to claim, Aris can't trust anyone. Especially not Harlan Raker, the merciless and mysterious king's guard who betrayed her years ago--and who may now be the key to her survival. But Aris is hiding a secret tied to her family's death. And when it's revealed, not even the gods will be able to stopwhat's coming..."--Provided by publisher.