Fiction

Welcome to the Felicity Complex! Constructed during the height of the Cold War, our unique hotel is prepared to protect you, the billionaire class, from nuclear annihilation! Shielded from radiation and supplemented with closed air systems and hydroponic gardens, this resort bunker offers a prime existence full gymnasium and spa, gourmet meals, top-tier medical care, and the best in entertainment. Meet Hallelujah! Grown in a lab and educated in the ways of concierge hospitality, she believes in her duty to comfort the Lord-anointed refugees of the apocalypse. Don't worry, everyone is safe from communists in the Felicity Complex! Look, Hallelujah, guests have finally arrived! Hallelujah and her sister specimens have waited ages for you.

In historic, Concord, Massachusetts, a centuries-old forest has been removed to make way for a new, eco-friendly housing development. The locals are upset by the destruction, but out-of-towners like Hazel Stoddard are flocking to put down roots in their new guilt-free dream homes. Soon a tragedy leaves Hazel unmoored in her new life, and she begins to feel the pull of the absent forest. And Hazel is not alone; her neighbors, real estate agent Stella Flint and teenage environmentalist Polly Bauer, each have their own trauma and relationship to the land. The three women are drawn together to save the last remaining oak tree, or they risk losing themselves to lingering shadows that only they can see.

Two centuries ago, the Inver clan conquered the nation of Honoria, ushering in an era of blood. Now, after a period of fragile peace, a king's whims may reignite the engines of war. At the last stronghold of Honoria's sun goddess, Fia, a young postulant, seeks safety for her child, but the price of the cloister's protection will tear her from what she loves and thrust her into a game of deception. Within the Inver's mountain fortress, Ariana is known as the apostate queen after abandoning her faith for a king. But old loyalties aren't easily severed. Ariana treads a dangerous path, striving for peace in a court made for conquest. Deep in the heart of the mountain, the Inver Priest bides his time with small acts of rebellion. Blinded in the fight for the throne, he harbors a grudge that could lead to Honoria's ruin or renewal.

Naples, 1940. The three Cozzolino sisters, Leta, Marcella, and Bianca live together in their small home during Mussolini's domination. Leta runs the De Rosa dress shop where she takes care of her mother-in-law while her husband is at war. Marcella is an apprentice to a midwife, bringing up the next generation of Italian soldiers, much to the pride of her boyfriend who is inspired by Mussolini's rule. But when their youngest sister, Bianca, decides to join the Italian resistance, the partigiani, after her childhood sweetheart is sent to war, familial tensions are brought to light. The sisters are soon at odds, questioning where they stand in the war effort. When Leta's old flame, Pasquale, asks if he can use the dress shop to send messages for the partigiani, she refuses. When Naples is bombed, the sisters are forced to reevaluate their stances and how far they are willing to go for each other and their country. With the threat of Nazism looming over the city after Mussolini is ousted, the Cozzolino sisters will have to confront what they are willing to sacrifice, and their loyalties to each other and to their country.

It's 1936 in Oxford, England, and when J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and their fellow literary masterminds, known as the Inklings, are called upon to catch a killer, they trade their pens for magnifying glasses. With time running out, they get a helping hand from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers to unravel a sinister web of secrets. These fantasy and mystery giants must confront a real-life menace in a race against the clock. Will dark forces prevail, or will these literary giants crack the case before the murderer strikes again?

After the death of his two oldest sources, Russell trades in his life as a former journalist turned private investigator for peace and quiet at home. Aside from the occasional reporting online under the safety of an alias, Russell is enjoying being a normal guy with a normal girlfriend and suburban bliss just within reach. Until his onetime mentor disappears. Russell soon learns that other journalists in the area have gone missing, too, all under mysterious circumstances. Unable to resist the pull of a good story, he quickly finds himself at odds with a violent band of conspiracy theorists and ex-cops convinced that reporters are the "enemy of the people." Russell sacrificed two careers to the belief in the power of truth. But now, face-to-face with an America where facts are more fluid than Newark's Passaic River, he must decide if the truth is still worth fighting for.

Betty Lou Dearden has been a member of the Ogden Quilters Association for more than twenty years. Then it is announced that the biggest quilting competition in the country is coming to Utah. With the clock ticking and a chance to finally beat their long-time rival quilting circle, the women welcome two young gay men to their group. With bickering steadily increasing, will this group make their way to an award-worthy entry in the cutthroat world of competitive quilting?

Bait doesn't remember a time before the dungeon. Before the dragon stole her from her cot. She doesn't know what her name was before she was handed over to the monstrous denizens of the dungeon beneath the sorcerer's tower. Luckily, they decided not to eat her. And so, she grew up in the dark, the goblins as her adopted family, a vengeful minotaur her protector, a sentient skull her tutor, and a faithful blob of corridor slime as her main source of nutrition. But the labyrinthine dungeon, with its haunted halls, buried temples and forgotten magics, draws treasure hunters like moths to flame. As the outside world starts to intrude, Bait will learn what it means to be monstrous, and she will have to decide where she truly belongs.

Late one night, a wounded man checks into a remote roadside hotel. He's running from something he can't explain or escape. And over the course of a night, he'll tell the hotel's proprietor how his life fell apart. It started with his wife. Subtle changes. Smiles that didn't belong to her. Then violence--sudden, intimate, almost casual. Therapy offered hope. Recovery seemed possible. Until it wasn't. He believes a hidden influence has attached itself to him, one that never forces, never commands. It whispers. It suggests. Nudges people toward their worst impulses. Now the man wanders the country as a fugitive, hoping to break free from the evil that's wormed its way into him. But as our narrator's story unfolds, he begins to question whether he's fled far enough.

It's rare for a room to open up in London's storied Columbia Mansions, and lonely Gwen is thrilled when her neighbor's new sub-letter, Pixie, brings a friendly breath of fresh air to its stuffy halls. Their unexpected bond soon becomes the bright spot in Gwen's quiet life. But Gwen can't help noticing cracks beneath Pixie's cheerful surface, especially when it comes to her questionable financial arrangement with her live-in landlord, Alec. As suspicions mount, Gwen's protective instincts go into overdrive, triggering a dangerous chain of events no one is prepared for. The last thing Columbia Mansions wants is a scandal on its hands, let alone a murder.

As a boy, Nico once accompanied his mother on a research trip to investigate a stalled migration of monarch butterflies. One night, upon hearing her sneak out of their rented cabin, he followed her to a clearing in the forest where a famed mansion once stood, and watched his mother climb a staircase and vanish, along with the stairs and the strange glowing door at its peak. No one believed his story, and as he grew older, he too stopped believing it was real. As an adult, Nico returns to his hometown to care for his ailing father, but something strange is happening to the town. There are unexplained power fluctuations, people are going missing, and, reportedly, phantoms are roaming the woods. When Nico finds his mother's field journal from the week she disappeared, including her account of the vanishing staircase, he begins to pick apart the mystery. All the tangled strings trail back to the same starting point: the Gilded Age family whose mansion burned down under mysterious circumstances in those very same woods where his mother vanished.

When Sally, an American living in San Miguel de Allende, meets Louise outside her children's school, she's eager to immerse herself more deeply in the city. Having lived in Mexico for a year with her architect husband, Sally is entranced by Louise, and especialy by her stories about Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac. The two become inseparable, and soon enough, Louise has begun calling her Mia and then playfully introducing Sally as her daughter to friends. Sally loves the idea of a new identity, but is troubled by Louise's hold over her, so attempts to keep the relationship a secret from her husband. But the specter of Sally's childhood looms, and Louise tightens her grip, leaving the two women testing the limits of reinvention.

Carwyn and his wife, Rhian, have been sheep farmers on his ancestral land in the Welsh mountains for decades. But recent years have taken their toll. They've lost friends lost to old age or rising prices, as well their own debts of farming. English tourists still come--littering, camping on private property, needing to be rescued when they misjudge the elements. Then Carwyn finds a stone head in a corner of the farm, realizing it must be one piece of something larger, and something old. Despite Rhian's protests, he becomes obsessed with unearthing the structure, neglecting the farm to dig. The sheep are falling, and an accident on market day threatens to leave Rhian with no way to pay creditors. But Carwyn is convinced that uncovering the site will be the key to solving everything.

For her entire life, Bridget "Big" Ackerman Petty has struggled to hold everything together. It all seems easy for her sister Lily, a woman with a magnetic personality, a thriving business, and adoring husband. When Lily uncovers a secret, her perfect life implodes. Devastated, she flees to Alaska to lose herself on a hardcore survival trek, dragging her reluctant sister along. No cell service, no easy exits. Just grizzlies, outdoor plumbing, and a group of strangers who know how to read a compass. As the sisters navigate freezing rivers, unmarked trails, and more than one near-death experience, the defenses they've used to protect themselves begin to crumble, and they're forced to face resentment, regret, envy, and the possibility that the other's life might not be as easy as it looks.

All throughout the week, customers flock to the Marble Café that's tucked away behind the trees--except when it's closed on Mondays, when the Matcha Café opens in its place, offering its clientele a warm cup of matcha and restoration to start the busy week ahead. On this one day of the week, people from all walks of life frequent this cozy haven and experience the joys of human connection. Among them include: a singer who has just broken up with his lover, an unsociable young owner of a tea wholesaler, a husband who has made his wife angry, a designer and owner of a lingerie shop, a Kamishibai artist who doesn't get along with his grandmother. Spanning Tokyo and Kyoto over twelve months, this novel brings together a community of untold unfolding lives.

Samuel Thomas is a young magician convinced that he is destined for greatness in a far-off land. He journeys from India to London to the fog-shrouded streets of Boston in 1816 -- the infamous Year Without a Summer. Samuel arrives in a city alive with ambition, contradiction, and tension. Enter Walter Mepham, a world away from Samuel, hailing from the upper echelons of Boston society, but also nursing a problem of his own. Proprietor of the New Boston Museum which is on the brink of bankruptcy, Walter is desperate to find ways to keep it open, and Samuel is an ideal fit for the first live addition to the collection. Though they solve each other's problems, the relationship between them becomes complicated as Walter is fascinated--obsessed--with the foreigner. As Samuel becomes more dependent on Walter, he learn what he's willing to give up for success.

Martha's Vineyard, 1923. Lena Jameson's father, Earl, is a successful rumrunner who's built a small fortune smuggling liquor. When he and his crew are lost in a shipwreck that some whisper was no accident, his loved ones are left reeling and penniless. Lena, weeks away from entering college, sees her future slipping away. She decides to take over the business, and finds a crew. There's Walter, her big brother, who leans too hard on the bottle. And Sam, her boyfriend, who wants her tethered to shore. Then there's Dee, a woman summering from Boston, offering Lena a glimpse of the future she wants. Their journey leads them through from the colorful streets of Oak Bluffs, gangland Boston, and the jazz-filled clubs of Harlem in its early Renaissance, looking for money--and answers. As secrets rise to the surface, and the criminal underworld pulls Lena in deeper, she fins herself precariously holding on to her heart, her family, and her place in a world ready to condemn women who want more.

Once upon a time, Walter was Hildy's favorite person, until he crushed her teenage dreams. A decade later, her beloved is the magazine she built from the ground up. But getting rid of Walter isn't as easy as shedding her romantic illusions. He's always around, vying for scoops on the wedding circuit and provoking her into unhinged public displays. When she scores exclusive access to the wedding of the season in southern France, it's a chance for her magazine to make its mark. Except Walter's right there in France, trying to steal Hildy's story. Again. It's a head-to-head battle to see whose coverage will make it to print. But between the champagne and the chateaux, it's easy to lose sight of the prize. Hildy doesn't believe in fairy tales, but Walter is doing his best to convince her they could have a part deux.-- Provided by publisher.

Do not go into the attic, the note warned. But that's what sisters Mickie and Delilah do when they inherit a distant relative's house in Savannah, Georgia. The plan is to sell the property, divide the proceeds, and go their separate ways once and for all. But 724 Hartford Street has other ideas. The sisters' past wounds fester and spill into the present. And tensions flare between the sisters and the community, who are keeping silent about the house's history. When Delilah's behavior turns strange and then alarming, selling the home is no longer an option. Mickie must fight to save her sister, or they will both succumb to the house and its hunger.

In April 1994, Zahara watched her twin sister, Annica, get hustled into a stranger's car and disappear--only to return to a world where no one remembers Annica ever existed. Not her mother. Not the police. Now, as the world braces for the looming Y2K crisis, Zahara finds evidence that proves her sister was real. Determined to uncover the truth, she hires a private investigator and begins digging into her family's shadowed past. When the investigation leads to two charismatic men who once served with her father in Vietnam, Zahara realizes she and her sister may be pawns in a dangerous power struggle. Zahara learns her reunion with Annica will come at a price, one with unthinkable implications.

Verdella "Dell" Rodgers is at the top of her game. She's a chef at San Francisco's hottest restaurant and on the cusp of marrying the mayor's son in the social event of the season. Then the week before her wedding she wakes up and find herself dead. Cole, a bumbling clerk in Afterlife Administration, has confused Dell for a 95-year-old woman with the same name, reaping the wrong soul. When he tries to fix his mistake, their worlds collide in life--and death--changing ways. Now in the city as a ghost only visible to Cole, Dell is frantic to get back to her life but soon learns some awkward facts, particularly when it comes to her fiancé and his high-profile family. And Cole has no memory of who he was before working for the Afterlife Administration. With time running out, they race to uncover Cole's past and remedy Dell's future, they realize the mistake that brought them together might just be the twist of fate she didn't know she needed.

Death pays well for Olive Hunt, a crime scene cleaner who channels her traumas into erasing the suffering of others. After nearly ten years, she's seen it all. Nothing rattles her anymore. Until now. Two back-to-back suicides, one at a seedy motel, the other a fancy Atlanta hotel. Apparently no connection, except Olive finds the same strange item at each scene. Then a third body appears. Olive knows these aren't suicides, they're murders staged to perfection. Then a vase of blood red blooms on her doorstep with an anonymous note: "Thank you." A serial killer is been leaving breadcrumbs for her. A killer who knows she'll clean up after him. A killer who wants her to follow. And follow she must, no matter how terrifying the trail becomes.

Jesuit priest Avelyn Brocken came from a mining family in Hreodwater, an isolated salt town in England. At 16, after a mining disaster killed his family, he left. When a fellow priest is miraculously healed only to then be turned to salt after a visit to Hreodwater, Avelyn is sent to investigate. The town's doctor, Jericho, tells him that there have been more strange cures, and he thinks people are in danger from something in the mine that they call "salt light." And strange happenings are occuring at mines around the world. At an archaeological dig on the Dead Sea, electrical devices froth salt, while at a huge salt works in Poland, communication is lost. As salt light devastates cities around the world, Avelyn must decide what to believe--and whether his faith is strong enough to withstand an apocalypse.

Cyprin grows perfect apples. But sick of living in a megacity where she's never alone, she dreams of a job in the Divine Gardens, tending to the plants overseen by God. The way in is winning an annual flower pageant, which has been dominated by the Divine Gardens' head gardener for five years running. When Cyprin plays dirty and wins, she jumps headfirst into the gardens, and her rivalry with the head gardener. Pranks, backstabbing, and a lot of heated glaring unite them, until they're both drawn into a plot to take down God. As they spiral through layers of the city's history and a rebel group, Cyprin and her rival will find they understand each other like no one else does.

Gwen Wexloff might be able to see the future, but not when it's useful. Which means--unlike most oracles--she's spent her life predicting for humans instead of power brokers. After a clutch of zombies escapes from their compound, Gwen experiences her first genuinely world-altering vision. Now she needs help. But that help comes from Hugh Blacke, the same demon who watched her bomb her oracle verification test decades ago. The two of them will need to work together to unravel the deadly conspiracy behind the zombie breach, despite their past and their secrets. But the clock is ticking, and with the fate of humanity at stake, Gwen and Hugh will have to decide how much they're willing to risk for a future that might prove very short indeed.

Steamy, seedy, swampy south-central Florida once again serves as the backdrop for the duo of tattooed, trash-talking Maggie Moore and laconic Detective Silas Gabriel Jackson, genius detective. Now operating their own agency and using their skills in forensic semiotics, and good old-fashioned observation, the pair decode clues embedded in words and symbols to uncover a sadistic criminal who preys upon unsuspecting men. The troubled and painful pasts of them both come into play as they try to track down bad guys and old friends, figuring out how to trust, and who to love.

Is home the place where we are born? Or is it the place where we die? These questions haunt Magnolia, a Haitian American real estate agent in Miami. Hearing gunfire at a shopping mall, she takes shelter in a restaurant, cowering with fellow shoppers and diners. Safely home, she keeps this experience from everyone. But now she sees everything more clearly: her bond with her daughter Z︠o︡; her relationship with Z︠o︡'s father; her troubled mother's mental health; her father's affair resulting in a child. Magnolia must come to terms with the losses that day, and nearly every day by her parents and sibling in Haiti. Can love protect us? Does optimism or fear win? These questions involve high-stakes choices, and Magnolia is a narrator flitting and shimmering between different worlds.

Jemma can't stop herself from thinking about murdering her stepmother, Marianne Upton. She decides to confess before she snaps and does the unthinkable. But while Jemma is still giving her statement, a call comes in: Marianne has just been found stabbed to death, killed in exactly the way Jemma described. The woman desperate to prevent a murder has an unshakeable alibi--as well as a disturbingly accurate description of the crime she couldn't have committed. Is Jemma an innocent bystander? Or a brilliant, cold-blooded killer who planned everything down to the minute?

Decades ago, Tess Wynne was attacked and at the brink of death. Desperate, she vowed she would do anything to live. The devil heard her and offered a bargain: she would be ageless, but tethered to the land at the edge of Burrsville in Appalachia. She turned her new home into a wildlife sanctuary, weaving spells to keep it safe. But when Tess saves a strange fawn, her protection of it puts her at odds with Burrsville's residents. Then a new pastor arrives, and he begins to chip away at the little trust she's gained. The sanctuary is now threatened, and Tess's world is beginning to fray. The devil, returns, offering another bargain, and Tess is caught between trusting her magic, or surrendering to his will.