Fiction

Turner Publishing is proud to present a new edition of Sandra Hochman's first novel, Walking Papers

First published by Viking Press in 1971, Hochman's widely-praised novel is about a messy divorce told with a poet's verve.

From the Viking Press edition: Diana Balooka: “Out of my womanhood is my madness woven." And, for Diana, out of marriage has divorce arisen. With four children, a pet Zulu-Terrier (a rare breed), and a wheeler-dealer love affair to boot.

Diana Balooka: "We are babies. Watched by our elders. Like the dangerously Insane and deaf we invent our own language We gesture in our own mudras. We understand each other." Breaking into herself, Diana is a sanity robber armed with cupfuls of tears and lots of laughs. How can pain be amusing?

Sandra Hochman's novel is how.

This is a madcap erotic journal of the very separate parts of one woman's life. It is played out with a great personal intensity, a kind of tape-recorded reality that stuns and amazes upon the sound of her own voice; fast forward to Juarez. Mexico; reverse to her flamboyant grandfather's used stageprop farm, or to life In Paris with a hypnotist; hold, for a moment of tormented reflection, on Jason, the nonhusband; then slowly spin forward again, frantic and funny, turn, turn, to everything there is a season . . . . Should the tape chance to break. she bends and splices it together, twists it and sets it to reel on a little further.

Miss Hochman pulls and tugs her heroine—a mother, tapdancer. writer, and partner in an affair that stretches from an ocean beach to real estate on Seventy- second Street—as she is caught to a bizarre parade of men on the hunt in New York City. Her invention, sensuality, and poetic gifts lend to Walking Papers a totally original novelist's voice belonging, in Diana's words, to "a woman obsessed with essentials." A women to be read.

In 1987, twelve-year-old Cooper Balsam's mother, Arden, disappears without a trace. Cooper's father, Percy, a Vietnam veteran struggling with PTSD, doesn't seem too concerned. "This isn't the first time. She's done it before." As days pass, Cooper begins to act out and withdraw from the world, and his growing animosity toward his father's ambivalence begins to escalate even as Percy and Cooper begin to actively search for the woman in their lives. From the hills of Southern California, to the deserts of Arizona, and down to the beaches of Mexico, the father and son will look for someone who may not want to be found for reasons they don't yet understand.

Turner Publishing is proud to present a new edition of Sandra Hochman's, Endangered Species

First published by Putnam in 1977, Hochman's third novel is the story of Kathy Kahn's tireless search for love and purpose through business ventures, poetry, activism, and doomed love affairs. Hochman's experimental and frenetic novel mirrors the soul's search for comedy in tragedy and meaning in the meaningless.

For as long as anyone could remember, the Schallers and the Newmans had been enemies. When the skeletal remains of a victim of foul play are discovered at the Schaller estate, a decades-old feud between the rival winemaking families is reignited and dark secrets begin to see the light of day. Set against the lush backdrop of the rolling hills of California's Central Coast, The New York Times best-selling author Barbara Wood's thirtieth novel is a generation-spanning saga of love, treachery, and bitterly held grudges.

Turner Publishing is proud to present a new edition of Sandra Hochman's, Jogging

First published by Putnam in 1979, Hochman's fourth novel is the story of a man always one step ahead of love.

From the Ballantine Books mass-market edition: Jerry Hess is a smooth millionaire in the priceless world of art. His life is fast and classy dinners on Monday, screenings on Wednesday, drinks on Friday. And sex—well, his wife Lillian, a brilliant lawyer, promises someday. So Jerry runs away. Step by step he crosses the landscape of his sexual fantasies. From the firm, youthful desires of Mary to the sophisticated, sinful wishes of Ursule to the liberating pleasures of Paris, the city where dreams come true, Jerry must choose between a new future with a new woman or the life he left behind.

Turner Publishing is proud to present a new edition of Sandra Hochman's, Playing Tahoe

First published by Wyndham Books in 1981, Hochman's fifth novel is an unsparing and no-holds-barred look at the music business through the eyes of a woman who bets it all.

From the Wyndham edition: At age forty she was Americas greatest pop lyricist. From rock and roll through new wave, Sylvia Lundholm and her composer-partner Nick Dimani made millions while creating the platinum records in which millions found the sound of their own longing and joy.

Set against the background of the rock and roll music business in New York City and the casinos and hotels and ski lifts of Lake Tahoe, Playing Tahoe captures that specific moment in Sylvia Lundholm's life when she recognized that love was the one song she could not write, and that only by breaking with the superhype celebrity of her career might she learn in the hands of her new lover.

In Tahoe, at Harrah’s, where Dimani is performing, Sylvia and Dimani meet to create a last great album that will cover the world with his music. But as the tendrils of Dimani's music threaten to clutch Sylvia back into the world she is so desperate to leave, the clash between her passion for Revson and Dimani's desperation for Sylvia’s poetry erupts into cold-blooded violence.

Playing Tahoe will give you insight into the world of rock and roll and big casinos. But above all it will teach you the games of a woman who, gambling for love, desperately wants to hold on to the richness of her own life.

Sandra Hochman has created a novel that explores the guts of a woman in the midst of a change, who will overturn the American Dream to follow a stranger, Revson, who is a new antihero of modern fiction.

Foreword INDIES Finalist

Library Journal Pick of the Month for November 2017

Crime. Vengeance. Love. Physics.

The infamous Deadbomb Bingo Ray is a high level fixer in the City of Brotherly Love. He’s the man you call when you’ve crossed the line into hopeless and there’s no way back to anywhere.

Three years have passed since Ray burned a hedge fund manager on behalf of a pool of retirees, and now the money man is back for revenge. While Ray unravels the plot and orchestrates some payback of his own, he unwittingly steps into the ultimate high stakes game. Falling in love with the beautiful physicist trapped at the edge of the burn was just bad timing.

When the fuse is finally lit, getting killed isn’t high on the list of the worst that could happen in this dark and stylish noir.

When Owen Webb, the son of working-class parents, receives a scholarship to the prestigious Rockcastle Preparatory Academy, the mysterious and enigmatic Carson Bly, an upperclassman from a wealthy and powerful family, befriends him. Their friendship, deepened through a love of basketball, becomes an obsession for Owen, who is desperate to avoid the growing trouble at home between his parents. When Owen's father is arrested for a shocking and unexpected crime, his family is torn apart, and Owen's anger and fear are carefully manipulated by Carson's mercurial and increasingly dangerous personality. Owen, who has fallen in love with Carson's beautiful but troubled sister, quickly finds himself caught up in a complex web of lies that threatens his once-promising future.

A new edition of Book 2 in the best selling Georgia Trilogy, presented by Turner Publishing

For more than twenty-eight years, Eugenia Price, America’s first lady of storytelling, has enchanted millions of readers worldwide with her gripping and evocative historical sagas. Now, with Where Shadows Go, the sequel to her bestselling novel Bright Captivity, Ms. Price re-creates life on a nineteenth-century plantation for her most dramatic and resonant novel yet.

After giving up a career as a British Royal Marine, John Fraser agrees to his wife Anne’s fondest wish: that they return from London to Cannon’s Point, her family’s plantation on St. Simons Island, Georgia. John learns about coastal planting from Anne’s father, Jock Couper, and her brother, James Hamilton, both world-renowned for their agricultural expertise. From day one it’s a struggle for John, for he must not only master the techniques of planting and harvesting, but he must—contrary to his deepest beliefs—become a slave owner. Anne, who grew up surrounded by slaves, comfortably resumes her way of life. As John works hard at settling into his new lifestyle, he and Anne begin to raise a family.

Enter the famous English actress Fanny Kemble Butler, who decides to pay a visit. She makes quite a splash on St. Simons, with her sophisticated ways, her outspoken opinions on the evil of slavery, and her stylish riding costumes. With the dynamic and fiercely abolitionist Fanny to influence her, Anne slowly starts to realize how immoral the Southern institution of slavery is. Reluctant to give up her familiar way of life, she is nonetheless forced to begin to rethink her beliefs—especially when it comes to Eve, her personal slave and best friend. For when tragedy strikes the Fraser family, it is Eve who provides Anne with the comfort and spiritual guidance that enable her to live through her life-shattering ordeal.

Filled with characters drawn from history, lore, and Ms. Price’s own vivid imagination, Where Shadows Go is a powerful story of love, courage, and friendship that is sure to capture the hearts and minds of new readers and devoted fans alike.

A new edition of the New York Times best seller, presented by Turner Publishing

The St. Simons Trilogy. . . the Florida Trilogy. . . the Savannah Quartet. . . For twenty-five years Eugenia Price has captivated millions of readers with her spellbinding historical sagas. Now, with Bright Captivity, the first volume of her eagerly awaited Georgia Trilogy, she returns for her most powerful and unforgettable story to the richness and color of life on Georgia’s St. Simons Island.

The story begins as the War of 1812 is in its final days. Anne Couper, the spirited young daughter of a prominent St. Simons family, is attending a house party at Dungeness, an estate on nearby Cumberland Island, when a contingent of British Royal Marines, on a mission to free slaves, invades the island. They make Dungeness their headquarters, and all its occupants, including Anne Couper, become their captives. From the moment Anne meets British lieutenant John Fraser, she knows her once-secure life as the sheltered only daughter of planter John Couper will never be the same. It isn’t. Within a year of their initial separation at the end of Britain’s war with the United States, John Fraser, no longer needed by the Royal Marines because his country has finally defeated Napoleon, returns to Georgia to make Anne his wife.

Eugenia Price has created her most complex and believable characters in John and Anne, who, in 1816, are caught in much the same tangled dilemma experienced today by any young couple attempting to stretch their love to cover almost contradictory backgrounds.

The couple must now decide where to live: at Cannon’s Point, Anne’s beloved family plantation in Georgia, or in London, where John can’t bring himself to relinquish the only life where he feels at home—as an officer in the Royal Marines. While Anne and John struggle with their decision, Ms. Price takes her readers on a moving journey from war-torn Georgia to the shores of England—and even to Abbotsford, Scotland, the country home of Sir Walter Scott.

Written in Ms. Price’s signature style—a seamless blend of keen imagination, meticulous research, and narrative artistry—Bright Captivity will capture the hearts and minds of new readers and devoted fans alike.

Inspired by Velázquez’s baroque masterpiece, Las Meninas, The Queen’s Prophet is an imagined account of the dwarfess Maribarbola of Spain (featured prominently in Velázquez’s painting) and her struggle for survival and self-determination at a time when dwarfs were kept by aristocracy as pets, prophets, and good luck charms.

When the Countess of Walther dies at her German estate, her loyal dwarfess Maria-Barbara is forced to work as a prophet for a traveling magician, who betrays her by selling her to the Queen of Spain. At the royal court in Madrid, Mari finds herself in a bizarre, enchanted world, a society culturally splendid but intellectually isolated. There she becomes Maribarbola, prophet to the Queen, and, her survival at stake, endeavors to outsmart the Spaniards.

Mari's wits and loyalties are tested as she becomes embroiled in palace intrigue alongside the politically embattled Queen. When Mari's carefully schemed prophecies dazzle all of Spain, she and the Queen climb to dizzying heights of power, a place as intoxicating as it is dangerous. But even as Mari survives and thrives at the Spanish court, the loss of identity she suffers from living a lie makes her question whether she is really surviving at all.

Foreword Reviews Starred Review

The world is a complicated place with lots of small moving parts. When someone moves one part just a little, it causes all the other parts to move in ways we can’t see coming.

Two men. One young, one old. Complete strangers who have made the same ultimate decision—that their lives are not worth living and it is time to take fate into their own hands. When their stories intersect on a single fateful night in West Texas, the ensuing friendship takes them down a perilous road neither imagined possible. As they contend with the police, horse thieves, and murderers, the two men forge an unbreakable bond, and together they discover that they each might have something to live for after all. Full of cowboy common sense that spans generations, SMALL MOVING PARTS explores the simplicities and complexities of love in its many forms and how a rare and remarkable friendship can change everything.

Nothing much grew in Bufort, Texas, but a few things did.

For fifteen years Anne Hathaway kept a diary. It was no ordinary diary, as Anne, an excellent writer of poems and songs in her own right, was also the wife of the world's most famous poet and playwright, William Shakespeare. In its pages she reveals the man she knew and loved and their shared life full of triumph and tragedy. Pulitzer-prize nominated poet Sandra Hochman's imagining of Mrs. Shakespeare is both a thoughtful take on one of the greatest mysteries in Western literature and the story of two people who would change the English language forever.

A new edition of Eugenia Price's final novel, presented by Turner Publishing

From one of America’s best-loved storytellers, The Waiting Time is an ambitious, romantic, historically rich epic, sure to delight new and loyal readers alike.

Spirited Abigail Banes dreams her newly married life coastal Georgia will be lived amid spreading magnolia trees, where lovers walk and whisper along blossom-lined paths. But her dreams are shattered when a fatal accident claims her husband, Eli, leaving her sole proprietor of their rice plantation—and the slaves that work the magnificent land.

Forging a new life for herself, Abby finds a new identity—as a feminist before her time, and abolitionist before there is a way to free slaves. As she struggles with her inheritance, Abby finds herself turning to her new overseer, Thaddeus Greene. And, at a time when love is forbidden to her, Abby realizes Thad is destined to take Eli’s place in her heart. Eli could never have known that by hiring Thad he had given a lasting gift to his beloved wife—for from the moment Abby gazes into Thad’s penetrating gray eyes, she knows she will never be alone again.

With The Waiting Time, Ms. Price felt she had found the perfect title for her book, as it captures the dual strands of this entrancing story: the wait for the beginning of the Civil War and for the end of the time custom dictates Abby must wait before she and Thad can be together. This compelling novel, which brings a human face to a nation braced for Southern secession, embraces the unrelenting passion that marks an incredible love story.

A new edition of the best selling third volume of the Georgia Trilogy, presented by Turner Publishing

For three decades, Eugenia Price has entranced millions of readers with her sweeping, romantic chronicles of life in the American South. In all its beauty, glory, infamy, and tragedy, Ms. Price’s South is at once mysterious and heartbreakingly familiar.

Beauty from Ashes is the long-awaited concluding volume in Ms. Price’s Georgia Trilogy, preceded by the New York Times bestseller Bright Captivity and Where Shadows Go. Again, she leads us through her South—by now an aching South that will soon be torn by pain and pride, riven by fierce principles and divided loyalties, but always guided by men and women of uncommon passion.

The sweeping saga of two families of St. Simon’s Island—the Coupers and the Frasers—resumes in 1852, as Anne Couper Fraser grieves the deaths of her husband and her parents.

But fate is as cruel to Anne as history itself would prove to be to the nation: Anne’s family, fallen on hard times, has lost its home. Anne has no choice but to seek refuge, and reluctantly resettles in Marietta, three hundred miles north of her beloved St. Simons Island.

As she begins to piece together her broken life, all around her the society she knows so well is falling apart. The roots of the Civil War are already evident. Anne’s family, like the South itself, seethes with internal conflict. Her son and grandson, who find it impossible to spurn their Southern heritage, enlist in the Confederate Army. Anne, in strong sympathy with the Unionists, finds her life disintegrating once again, and the family, the region, and the nation begin an agonizing collapse.

But Anne, like the Union, endures. She learns that even in life’s cruelest circumstances, there is always a place for the unquenchable human spirit to find a refuge, and to blossom anew.

Filled with characters drawn from history and from Eugenia Price’s rich imagination, Beauty from Ashes is a memorable finale to her admired Georgia Trilogy. An inspirational story of courage, love, and friendship, it will delight longtime Price fans and introduce the Georgia author to a new generation of readers.

"I'm a connoisseur of the unwanted; a sommelier of deformity; a coveter of the unloved. I am forever chased by the shadow of my ugliness. In darkness, no shadow remains, and it's all diamonds."

Buddy Hayes is an ugly, defiant little man, a would-be Don Juan trapped in Quasimodo's body. He lives with his mother and ailing grandfather in a decaying, post-industrial city. The mother is Emily Post with a color changing and a mood-indicating scar. The grandfather is a one-eyed double amputee, who spends his days happily dangling in a hydraulic patient lift. Their life is a working-class hallucination of blueblood extravagance. They luxuriate over gourmet meals and perform dramatic readings. At night, Buddy slips away for covert liaisons with women he meets on the internet. Buddy is at war with his neighbor over a stolen book. There are frequent outrageous acts of casual sex. There's a love interest, a librarian, who tempts Buddy with desires for the "normal" kind of love he knows he cannot have. So it goes, until a new nurse arrives to care for Buddy’s grandfather. Enter Terrance: a tall, impossibly handsome black man, a lapsed Broadway performer, virtuoso singer, and banjo player. Buddy and Terrance strike up an unlikely friendship that drives Yetto's surreal, tawdry, and poignant debut novel.

From the author of the critically-acclaimed debut People Who Knew Me comes the story of one man’s determination to abandon his will to live.

Jonathan Krause is a man with a plan. He is going to quit his advertising job and, when his money runs out, he is going to die. He just has one final mission: A trip to Japan. It’s a trip he was supposed to take with his girlfriend, Sara. It’s a trip inspired by his regrets. And it’s a trip to pay homage to the Japanese, the inventors of his chosen suicide technique.

In preparation for his final voyage, Jonathan enrolls in a Japanese language class where he meets Riko, who has her own plans to visit her homeland, for very different reasons. Their unexpected and unusual friendship takes them to Japan together, where they each struggle to make peace with their past and accept that happiness, loneliness, and grief come and go—just like the cherry blossoms.

Haunted by lost love, Jonathan must decide if he can embrace the transient nature of life, or if he must choose the certainty of death.

Can you imagine a world without wine?

Corvina Guerra is a flying winemaker who dreams of one day settling down in her native Italy on her family’s vineyard. On a visit to a vineyard in Italy, Corvina makes a startling discovery: Phylloxera, a menacing plant louse that devastated vineyards in Europe more than a hundred years ago, has infested the vines.

The deeper Corvina and Brian search, the more they become convinced that Universal Wines holds the answer to everything, and the harder they pursue their investigation the more surprises pile up for both of them.

In spite of devastating consequences, Corvina and Brian vow to continue their investigation and do what they can to contain the spread of the infestation – but time is running short and they always seem to be a step behind. Unless they can find a way to stop the Philomena – vineyards around the world will be ruined for decades; potentially causing the collapse of the wine industry. Can Corvina and Brian get to the root cause and save the international wine industry from ruin?

“What was this place? Was I crazy? Or was I crazy before, back in L.A.? Was my real life some sort of dream? Was this hell reality?”

Austin Lively is a struggling, disillusioned screenwriter whose life is suddenly changed forever when he opens a door and is unwittingly transported to a fantastical medieval realm. Austin finds himself wielding a bloody dagger while standing over a very beautiful and very dead woman. Bewildered and confused, he is seized by castle guards and thrown in a dungeon. Just when he begins to fear the worst, he is suddenly transported back to reality in LA.

Did that really just happened? Has he gone insane? Was it all a dream? Did he have a brain tumor? Desperate for answers, he sets out to find them and discovers that the mystery can only be unlocked by a strange piece of fiction that holds the truth about the magical kingdom. But he isn’t the only person searching for the missing manuscript, and his rivals will stop at nothing to get it first. To complicate matters more, Austin soon discovers that he has no control over when he passes between worlds and finds himself out of trust for even the simple things, like walking through doorways.

Stuck between dual realities –charged for a murder he doesn’t recall in one and running from a maniacal billionaire who’s determined to kill him in another– Austin’s monotonous life has become an epic adventure of magic, murder, and political intrigue in both the New Republic of Galiana and the streets of Los Angeles California.

Diabhal (Devil) is the story of cults, exorcisms and the devil in 1980’s era Los Angeles. Ceit Robertson, age ten, is the next Matrarc to the Society, a cultish, matriarchal group living in an inconspicuous cul-de-sac in Venice Beach. When Ceit’s mother is attacked by spirits from the old world, a failed exorcism results in Ceit’s exile into the foster care system in Los Angeles. She eventually lands in the infamous MacLaren Hall, a very real and historically auspicious center for disturbed and abandoned children in El Monte, CA. Diabhal is the sympathetic story of the devil in Los Angeles. The exploration of the true nature of evil and how intention colors what our definition of wickedness truly is. Ceit grows into a force of nature, as she contains the potential and mythology of the darkest degree, but discovers that perhaps the devil is not what we should truly fear.

"Intriguing and timely debut..." —Publishers Weekly

Elliott is a struggling musician who is trying to piece together enough cash every month to keep his dream of performing alive while also paying his rent. That’s when he discovered the new app TASK LYST. As a service provider, he sets his own hours, his funds are delivered covertly in bitcoin and the rates continue to grow…but so does his suspicion over the type of tasks that he is being asked to complete. Is the anonymous nature of app-based freelance work enough to abate Elliott’s suspicions…and conscience?

Meanwhile, the glossy new Task Lyst corporation is looking for start-up capital and perhaps an extra way to make the app profitable, by assisting the government in spying on users. Alice Seeger is a smart and beautiful executive who once had a promising future in Silicon Valley, but a few bad investments have put her on the edge of being fired and saddled with a lifestyle that she can no longer afford. At first glance, Task Lyst seemed like an app to pass on…until she discovers it’s dark underbelly which makes it more appealing financially while also being an enormous legal liability. She must test her own professional judgment against her morals in determining at what price she finds her own success.

This gig-economy thriller takes a look at the on-demand service industry, and it’s shady possibilities. Apps have become all-encompassing in our fast-paced modern lives and their utility is undeniable. In this gripping thriller, we follow the many sides, shades and shadows of the app economy and test the question: how far is too far?

"...a delicate, beautiful tale of sadness, recovery, and the role of hope in human resilience." —Publishers Weekly

In this poignant and uplifting story of hope, redemption and the power of the human spirit, Tiny follows the harrowing journeys of Nate, Annie, and Josh—three people unwittingly tied together by fate.

Nate and Annie Forester are faced with every parent’s worst nightmare when their three-year-old daughter, Penelope, is hit by a car. In the aftermath of her death, the distance between them grows. Nate just wants to return to some version of normal, while Annie finds herself stuck in the quicksand of her grief. Josh – third party to the nightmare – was behind the wheel on the fateful day Penny ran into the middle of the street. Unable to stop thinking about Nate and Annie, Josh has started to stalk them, thinking up ways to apologize when he witnesses Annie leave with her suitcase in tow.

Nate is trying to stay strong, but is slowly losing his mind as he faces the suspicions of Annie’s family and the police in the wake of Annie’s disappearance. Annie has run away in an attempt to start a secret new life in a 100-square-foot house in the middle of nowhere. And Josh, who desperately wants forgiveness, feels he is responsible for reuniting the people whose lives he changed forever. What unfolds is a beautiful and awe-inspiring tale of grace, forgiveness, and love.

Edgar Award-winning author J.W. Ocker spins a dark, psychological thriller about a travel writer who stays for 13 nights at the infamous Rotterdam Mansion unprepared for the horrors that lie within in this true love letter to the haunted house genre.

"It's easy to recognize Ocker as a future master of madness after this thrilling haunted house trip."—Fangoria Magazine

Felix Allsey is a travel writer with a keen eye for the paranormal, and he’s carved out a unique, if only slightly lucrative, niche for himself in nonfiction; he writes travelogues of the country’s most haunted places, after haunting them himself.

When he convinces the owner of the infamous Rotterdam Mansion to let him stay on the premises for 13 nights, he believes he’s finally found the location that will bring him a bestseller. As with his other gigs, he sets rules for himself: no leaving the house for any reason, refrain from outside contact, and sleep during the day.

When Thomas Ruth, Felix's oldest friend and fellow horror film obsessive, joins him on the project, the two dance around a recent and unspeakably painful rough-patch in their friendship, but eventually fall into their old rhythms of dark humor and movie trivia. That’s when things start going wrong: screams from upstairs, figures in the thresholds, and more than what should be in any basement. Felix realizes the book he’s writing, and his very state of mind, is tilting from nonfiction into all out horror, and the shocking climax answers a question that’s been staring these men in the face all along: In Rotter House, who’s haunting who?

“As screenwriter Austin Lively plunges back and forth between two dark, strange places―the fantasy kingdom of Galiana and the weirdness of contemporary Los Angeles―I turned the pages faster, faster, with growing delight. Scary, suspenseful, funny, wonderfully imaginative, Another Kingdom is pure, unadulterated fun.”― Dean Koontz, #1 New York Times Bestselling author

"This is a journey you won't want to miss." Gregg Hurwitz, New York Times Bestselling author of the Orphan X series

Austin Lively, once just an out-of-luck Hollywood screenwriter, is now a chosen hero caught between two worlds and dual quests in both Los Angeles, California, and the magical medieval world of Galiana. Tasked with taking a talisman across the Eleven Lands to restore the rightful queen to her throne, Austin must evade a murderous, vengeance-seeking wizard who seems to have the Eleven Lands under his control. But just how far does his influence reach, and how can Austin defeat him if the wizard also has access to his darkest memories?

Austin’s only hope is to find a missing manuscript by the title, Another Kingdom, but his sister Riley, the one person who may hold the key has gone missing too. With a deranged billionaire set on creating a “utopia” of anarchy and death also on the hunt for the manuscript, Austin must get to Riley before the billionaire’s assassins.

Trapped in a house of horrors in one world and a game of cat and mouse in the other, time is running out in both of Austin’s realities as he struggles to piece together the clues and find Another Kingdom. With higher stakes, darker secrets, and bigger monsters, there is no going back for Austin Lively and no guarantee he will escape the nightmare feast.

A Romantic Comedy about Death and Second Chances

30-year-old Nashvillian, Julia Holmes is just weeks away from becoming Mrs. Aaron DeMinthe. For as long as she can remember she’s dreamed of getting married at Whitfield Chapel and now her dreams are about to be realized. Julia has meticulously planned every detail of her big day from the flowers to her gown but the one thing she didn’t plan for is Aaron’s announcement: he needs to tick something off his bucket list before they tie the knot and that something is to hike the last leg of the Appalachian Trail; a project several years in the making. Julia is appalled by this idea and tries to dissuade him from going but his mind is made up and so, she reluctantly gives him her blessing. Less than 48 hours later, as he summits Mt, Katahdin, the last mountain of the trek, he’s struck by lightning and killed, effectively kicking the bucket while ticking something off his bucket list.

Julia is grief stricken and inconsolable and despite the fact that she’s surrounded by her best gal pals, her parents and Lincoln Douglas, who was on Mt, Katahdin with Aaron when he died, she loses her grip on reality and quickly starts unravelling at the seams. Returning to Whitfield in search of closure she happens upon the Chapel’s Wedding Director who offhandedly mentions that they’re looking for a Weekend Wedding Assistant and before she can even think about it she takes the job. As she ushers four brides a weekend down the aisle she was supposed to walk down herself, Julia tries to understand why she said “I Do” to a job she never set out to get, in a place she’d only meant to occupy for an afternoon and wonders if she’ll ever find true love again.

"The hope of love burns at the center of this remarkable collection.” —Melissa Pritchard, award-winning author of A Solemn Pleasure

In a style reminiscent of John Cheever and Alice Munro, Michael Nye's second collection of stories, Until We Have Faces, contends with transfixing themes: marital and familial estrangement, ways of trespass, the intractable mysteries and frights of modern life, the uncertainty of knowledge and truth, the gulfs between people and the technology we use, the frailty of our economic lives. Yet hope remains amongst these struggles. 

With his consummate skill, penetrating wit, and unfailing emotional generosity on full display in this fine new collection, award-winning storyteller Michael Nye brings together nine indelible short stories to provide an intimate look into the flawed nature of humanity, the universal questions of modern life, and the unending persistence of love amidst it all.

In this newest Awol hiking thriller, Karl Bergman, whose trail name is Awol, begins to thru-hike the 3,100-mile-long Continental Divide Trail at the Mexican border. By the time Awol and his dog, Blazer, reach the Colorado Rockies, he has uncovered information about a terrorist plot. Awol asks his son, a graduate student at UCLA, to give details to old friend, Detective Vincent Sacco. Awol tells his son he doesn’t want to get involved and continues his thru-hike. Awol is beyond annoyed when FBI agent, Diana Santos, finds him on the CDT and asks him to work with her and infiltrate.

Jake Lehman, fresh out of law school at NYU, finds himself swept into the political intrigue and moral dilemmas plaguing the nation’s capital when he lands in Washington, DC, for a clerkship with the venerable Supreme Court Justice White. As he begins falling for a fellow clerk--a brilliant and gorgeous Rhodes scholar from Stanford--a political scandal erupts, implicating the president and raising questions of Justice White’s bias toward the case. Set in America’s near future, Recusal provides an inside look into presidential pardons, censorship, and recusal issues, drawing on current events to show the gray spaces within judicial ethics.

They say never go into the woods at night…

School’s out for summer and that means one thing to Parker, Chloe, and their four friends: a well-deserved camping trip in the Pine Barrens, a million-acre forest deep in the heart of New Jersey. But when old grudges erupt, an argument escalates into the unthinkable, leaving one of them dead and the killer missing. As darkness descends and those left alive try to determine a course of action, the forest around them begins to change…

In the morning, more of the group has vanished and the path that led them into the woods is gone—as if consumed by the forest itself. Lost and hungry, the remaining friends set out to find help, only to realize that the forest seems to have other plans—a darker, ancient horror lies dead and dreaming in a lake in the center of the woods. And it’s calling to them.

Meanwhile, deep in the trees, the killer is still at large, and one of the group’s own has started to transform and warp into something other. Something inhuman. Something that wants to feast.

Banding together to survive, the friends soon begin to understand the true nature of the horror waiting for them in the Pine Barrens—and that not all of them will make it out alive.

A Suspense Magazine Best of 2020 for Thriller/Suspense

The Best Thriller Books 2021 Action Thriller of the Year

Feathered Quill Book Awards 2021 Finalist

“Sensational—new, fresh, suspenseful, and lead character Margo Fletcher is to die for. I loved this book.” –Lee Child,  bestselling author 

Margo Fletcher, eight months pregnant, is traveling by train from Chicago to Spokane, her childhood home. While passing through an isolated portion of the Rockies in blizzard conditions, the train unexpectedly brakes. Up ahead, deadly snow from a massive avalanche plummets down the mountain. Despite the conductor’s order for the passengers to stay seated, former Army Ranger Nick Eliot insists that survival depends on moving to the back of the train. Only Margo believes him. They take refuge in the last train car, which Nick heroically uncouples in time to avoid the avalanche. The rest of the train is hurled down the mountainside and is soon lost forever in a blanket of snow. Margo and Nick, the sole survivors, are stranded in the snowstorm without food, water, or heat. Rescuers might not arrive for days.

When the weather turns violent again, the pair must flee the shelter of the passenger car and run for their lives into the wilderness. They must fend off the deadly cold as well as predatory wild animals foraging for food. Eventually, Nick leads Margo to shelter in a watchtower atop a mountain. There, we learn that both Margo and Nick have secrets that have brought them together and threaten to destroy them.

Cover Your Tracks is a chilling story of love and hate, the devastating power of nature, and the will to survive.

Sinder weaves together the parallel stories of Ceit, grown to adulthood and having taken her rightful place as Matrarc of the Society, and her great-grandmother, Ainsley Robertson in 1924 Ireland, and the inception of the community that would come to inhabit Sinder Avenue.

In 1996, Venice Beach, Ceit struggles with the confines of superstition and tradition that have defined the Society since its start. As her younger brother, Alan, turns eighteen, Ceit enacts a plan to end the Society for good. And in doing so, releasing Alan from what she sees increasingly as a toxic and antiquated way of life as well as freeing herself from her mortal ties to the human realm.

In 1924, Ainsley Robertson lives in a secluded community outside of Cork, led by her father, an abusive and cruel ceannaire. Ainsley’s story opens with her expecting a baby in a world where being an unwed mother is a criminal act. Ainsley grows to realize her own gifts and connection to the world of the fae as she navigates a world dominated by dogma and oppression. As the sparks of what will become the Society grow to a flame, Ainsley becomes the Matrarc of her people, leading them to a new world, and a new tradition.

A 2021 INDIE NEXT Pick

A Women's National Book Association 2021 Great Group Read

"With this novel, Kim Hooper has created magic from the seemingly impossible. In her hands, the gossamer threads that tie three perfect strangers to each other following a shared tragedy, become nothing less than a transformative bond of human connection. Honest, brave, messy and unsparing, her characters are fearless pioneers in the darkness, and ultimately shed light for us on the most precious gift of all…life after loss." –Brad Silberling, Writer/Director of Moonlight Mile, Director of City of Angels

When Angie is awakened by a midnight call from an officer with the Boise Police Department, she thinks there must be a misunderstanding. The officer tells her that her husband was involved in a shooting at a local bar, but how can that be possible when her husband is sleeping right next to her? Except when she turns to wake him, he isn’t there.

Tessa is the twenty-three-year-old bartender who escapes to a backroom storage closet during the shooting. When it comes to light that five people were killed, she is burdened with the question of why she survived.

Joyce wakes up to a knock at her front door, a knock she assumes is her wayward son, Jed, who must have lost his keys. It’s not Jed, though. Two police officers tell her that Jed is dead, shot at the bar. Then they deliver even worse news: “We have reason to believe your son was the shooter.”

So begins the story of three women tied together by tragic fate—a wife trying to understand why her now-comatose husband was frequenting a bar in the middle of the night, the young woman who her husband was apparently pursuing, and a mother who is forced to confront the reality of who her son was and who she is.

In a poor West Virginia town decimated by the opioid epidemic, teenagers Henry and Jane have it worse than most. Their father is Hollis Lusher, a convicted serial killer known as “the Blind Spot Slasher.”

Despite being bullied and ostracized, the siblings maintain their father’s innocence. But now, a popular true-crime podcast is coming to town, and their presence turns all eyes to the Blind Spot Slasher’s case . . . and Henry and Jane.

Meanwhile, an eager young officer, Lieutenant Elena Garcia, is put on the case of a missing girl. Despite warnings from her superiors, Garcia begins to dig deeper into the case and realizes there may be other mysteries buried in the flood of opioid-related crimes. With many deaths quickly labeled as overdoses, or “No Human Involved,” she fears the drug epidemic has created the perfect storm for a Blind Spot Slasher copycat to thrive. Unless that is, they never caught the real Blind Spot Slasher.

An amateur private investigator is also on the case: Henry’s new friend, Otis. A home-schooled genius with his own family issues and a suspicion their father might be innocent, Otis makes it his mission to help Henry and Jane find the real killer. As the three probe into the evidence, they discover a possible connection between the killings and a doomsday, snake-handling cult—propelling them all down the dark backroads of Appalachia to find justice for Hollis and themselves.

"Venturini doesn't write in words and sentences. Instead, he lines the page with barbwire, concertina wire and spike strips that deliver the story deep into the reader's skin." –#1 New York Times Bestselling Author Chuck Palahniuk

A town ruled by evil. A man ruled by darkness. Only one can survive.

Curtis Quinn is a Chicago mob legend with a particular set of skills and a price on his head. When the woman he loves disappears, Curtis follows her trail to the occult town of Harlow, where no one is allowed to leave, and an enigmatic, sinister overlord known only as “the Mayor” rules by an autocratic regime.

Beth Jarvis is a plucky teenager unwrapping the secrets of her hometown—Harlow—and the mysterious ceremony that awaits her on her eighteenth birthday. What Beth doesn’t know is the truth about her sister Kate, who escaped their strange town over a decade ago and has evaded the Mayor and his disciples ever since.

What Curtis doesn’t know is that Kate is the woman he’s fallen in love with, and she’s running from a threat far greater than the mobsters who want to kill him. His fate collides with Beth’s as she tries to escape Harlow and the disgusting fate that awaits her, and Curtis finds himself unraveling a mystery that leads to an impossible and terrifying conclusion―that the Mayor of Harlow is more than just a man, and the hardest target he’s ever tried to kill.

Winner of the 2022 ThrillerFest Award for Best Original Paperback Novel

"[An] impressive historical thriller." —Publishers Weekly

Ellis Island, 1920.

New York Harbor's immigration and public health authorities are slowly recovering from the war years when a young, pregnant Irish woman disappears from the Isolation Hospital on Ellis Island.

Stephen Robbins, a specialist in finding missing persons, is assigned the case. Yet when he arrives at the isolation hospital, he discovers an inexplicable string of deaths and disappearances among immigrant patients...and a staff that seems to be hiding a chilling secret. Stephen finds an ally in Lucy Paul, an undercover nurse who is also investigating the mysterious incidents. Together, they begin to unearth a horrifying conspiracy masked beneath the hospital's charitable exterior. As Stephen and Lucy get closer to the truth and each other, they are swept directly into the danger haunting Ellis Island and become the next targets.

Amidst growing racial tensions in the wake of World War I, My Mistress’ Eyes are Raven Black explores the disturbing lengths to which people will go to protect racial purity and condemn those they fear.

Emily Morris got her happily-ever-after earlier than most. Married at a young age to a man she loved passionately, she was building the life she always wanted. But when enormous stress threatened her marriage, Emily made some rash decisions. That’s when she fell in love with someone else. That’s when she got pregnant.

Resolved to tell her husband of the affair and to leave him for the father of her child, Emily’s plans are thwarted when the world is suddenly split open on 9/11. It’s amid terrible tragedy that she finds her freedom, as she leaves New York City to start a new life. It’s not easy, but Emily—now Connie Prynne―forges a new happily-ever-after in California. But when a life-threatening diagnosis upends her life, she is forced to rethink her life for the good of her thirteen-year-old daughter.

A riveting debut in which a woman must confront her own past in order to secure the future of her daughter, Kim Hooper's People Who Knew Me asks: “What would you do?”

Ten years after the city of Los Angeles is nearly destroyed by a violent domestic terrorist attack, Esther Robertson struggles to reconcile her father’s culpability as leader of the deadly Son of Abraham cult. She grants CBS’s top reporter, Cooper Carlson, a rare interview and insight into her father, Alan Robertson, who sits awaiting trial for his crimes in federal prison.

A report of a horrific and seemingly natural disaster interrupts the interview. Another will follow and another after that. Are these increasingly violent and bizarre phenoms truly natural, or is there another force behind them?

In the epic conclusion of the story of the Society at Sinder Avenue, the end times–put into motion by a demonic deal made generations ago–are finally unfolding. Destruction, famine, war, and pestilence reign. But is it God who comes to answer the prayers of the suffering and dying world, or is it Ceit Robertson, the ascended matriarch of the Society, Goddess of the Dead, and Ruler of the Night Forest? Will they offer salvation or Armageddon?

2021 Indie Best Contest Winner

2021 Finalist for American Book Fest’s for Best Book Award

A 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award Winner for Best Cover Design

A 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist for Best Second Novel

Rural Missouri, a hot summer day on the Mississippi River during the Great Recession. The four Fehler sisters want to be more than “bug girls” in their family’s fourth-generation pest control business, but their path is fixed. When the patriarch suddenly dies, and his succession goes according to plan but not expectation, they each must plot a course for themselves in uncertain and changing times. Through it all, their mother, Grace, weighs her own choices, and whether her passion to save her family as a doomsday prepper also includes blowing up her world with a forbidden romance. 

"Andy Weinberger has done something extraordinary with his first novel: he’s written a truly great detective novel that is fresh and original, but already feels like it’s a classic. In the tradition of Walter Mosley, Raymond Chandler, and Sue Grafton, semi-retired private eye Amos Parisman roams LA’s seedy and not-so-seedy neighborhoods in pursuit of justice. I don’t want another Amos Parisman novel—I want a dozen more!”
— Amy Stewart

When a controversial celebrity rabbi drops dead over his matzoh ball soup at the famed Canter's Deli in Los Angeles, retired private eye Amos Parisman— a sixtyish, no-nonsense Jewish detective who lives with his addled wife in Park La Brea—is hired by the temple's board to make sure everything is kosher. As he looks into what seems to be a simple, tragic accident, the ante is raised when more people start to die or disappear, and Amos uncovers a world of treachery and hurt that shakes a large L.A. Jewish community to its core.

A 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award Winner for Best Regional Fiction

Growing up in Erob, Alabama, Nina "Little Bit" Barnes Enloe lived in the shadow of her imposing and harsh grandmother, Nina "Biggie" Barnes Enloe. If she wasn't being bossed around by Biggie, then the task fell to her best friend Win...who did win. At everything. Bit never seemed to share Win's lifetime supply of “lucky dust.” Perhaps the only thing Bit has ever chosen for herself is her friendship with Avery, the out-of-towner who showed up on the saddest day of her life—unpretentious and decidedly un-Southern—with a funeral casserole in hand.

Bit believes she can escape her grandmother’s controlling grip once and for all by moving somewhere where she is the only Nina Enloe listed: New York. Yet her world is turned upside down when an unexpected loss forces her to leave her new life in the city and return to Erob, where she must face everything—and everyone—she left behind. In the process, Bit discovers her true identity, learns the hard lessons of acceptance and forgiveness, finds herself falling in love in unexpected places, and finds comfort in the secrets of rainy days.

Leslie Hooton, author of Before Anyone Else, brings her signature wit and Southern charm to the page again in this triumphant coming-of-age story.

Think Jonathan Tropper meets Little Miss Sunshine.

When a Minnesota father of three awakens his children late in the night with news that their mother has left him and is bound for California, they set off on a hilarious, emotionally charged cross-country road trip to find her. That trip is just the beginning; it takes another decade for the mystery of what really happened to be revealed—and for the healing to begin. Odd One Out traces this compelling story in three parts, told from three points of view, and unravels the chain of events that forever changes this unconventional, brilliant, damaged, and loving family.

"Behind every great man there's a great woman . . . and in Noxon's telling, behind every great woman there's a charming, deeply conflicted guy (sometimes holding a very expensive handbag). Hilarious and unflinching, Plus One is a funny, sharply observed, heartbreaking look at love, power, and happily-ever-after in Hollywood."—Jennifer Weiner, author of Who Do You Love, The Next Best Thing, and Good in Bed

New in paperback after a successful run in hardcover, Christopher Noxon’s debut novel Plus One is a comedic take on breadwinning women and caretaking men in contemporary Los Angeles. Alex Sherman-Zicklin is a midlevel marketing executive whose wife’s fourteenth attempt at a TV pilot is produced, ordered to series, and awarded an Emmy. Overnight, she’s sucked into a mad show-business vortex and he's tasked with managing their new high-profile Hollywood lifestyle. He falls in with a posse of Plus Ones, men who are married to women whose success, income, and public recognition far surpasses their own. What will it take for him to regain the foreground in his own life? 

In this debut mystery set in Santa Barbara, movie stars are in town for the film festival, powerful business interests are at stake, and detective Nola MacIntire and her partner, Tony Angelotti, must solve the complicated puzzle behind three seemingly unrelated deaths in this idyllic beach town. This mystery has got it all: snappy dialogue, memorable characters, and a captivating web of intrigue to untangle.

The highly anticipated second Amos Parisman mystery

“Amos Parisman is one of the most unique PIs in literary history.”
— Gumshoe Magazine

Somewhat-retired L.A. private eye Amos Parisman is hired by lonely booking agent Pinky Bleistiff to find one of his missing singers, Risa Barsky. But what starts as a simple investigation turns into a complex puzzle when Pinky is murdered and Risa is still nowhere to be found. With suspects dropping dead at every turn, Parisman must act quickly to discover the truth about Risa's relationship with Pinky before an innocent person gets sent to prison.

Welcome to Shaky Town, a place invisible on maps and found only in the secret heart of its citizens.

An HR exec-turned-private eye goes deep into a rich LA family's dangerous secrets in this "crackling crime yarn" by the author of The Silent Second (Kirkus Reviews).

Corporate HR executive Chuck Restic found a new sense of purpose when he started moonlighting as LA's most unassuming private investigator. And when he's offered a hundred grand to find a rich old man's missing granddaughter, it seems like the kind of case even full-time PI's only dream about. Then reality sets in. It turns out real estate tycoon Carl Valenti has already paid a hefty ransom for his granddaughter's release—to no avail. Also, Valenti's chauffer Hector will be at Chuck's service throughout his investigation—whether he likes it or not.

The trail leads Chuck to a high-profile fight over a new art museum and a forty-year-old murder that won't stay in the past. As the list of suspects expands to include the girl's fitness-obsessed mom, her personal life coach, and even the girl herself, all roads seem to lead back to Valenti. And Chuck begins to wonder if this dream job is going to leave him sleeping with the fishes.

This is the second book in the Chuck Restic mystery series.

After two decades of working as an actor, Gina Sorell returned to her first love—writing.

A graduate with distinction of UCLA Extension Writers' Program, she is the author of Mothers and Other Strangers. Originally from Johannesburg, Gina has lived in New York and Los Angeles, and now lives in Toronto with her family. Gina balances the solitary hours of fiction writing with work as a creative director and brand storyteller under the banner of her own agency, Words Make The Brand.

The mystery novel visits the corporate world, bringing a fresh voice to the classic detective novel.

"A smooth noir vibe, and the additional wrinkle of an unreliable sidekick adds delicious tension to a plot that unfolds with a satisfying series of twists."
Kirkus Reviews

Chuck Restic, HR manager and part-time private investigator, has a problem: the consultant guru Julie St. Jean is the bane of his existence. Over his twenty-year HR career, he's been forced to partner with her on inane employee engagement programs whose only value has been to Julie's sizable bank account. When Julie is suddenly wanted for the murder of an associate, Chuck sees his chance to rid himself of her forever, until the corporate tables are turned on him and he must find the elusive figure or risk losing his job. The search uncovers a dark past of murder and stolen identity. And what begins as a search to save his corporate neck soon turns into one a lot more literal.

"Impossible to put down. Sparkling dialogue, references both musical and literary, and an offbeat cast of believable characters make the pages fly by."
—Library Journal STARRED REVIEW

Maggie Fiori uses her powers as a journalist to dig into the world of San Francisco's elite after a limo driver is convicted of murdering a socialite. Between managing her sons' soccer practices, saving her damaged marriage, and handling her maddening staff, Maggie fights to prove that the "Limousine Lothario" was guilty of no more than loving his mother.

"Vorhaus keeps things moving briskly, and Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen fans should be pleased."—Publishers Weekly

After pulling world-class cons in California and New Mexico, Radar Hoverlander and his crew, including girlfriend and master grift artist Allie Quinn and their hapless buddy Vic Mirplo, are back in action, this time in Austin, Texas. So many rich fools to bamboozle—but is Radar having a crisis of conscience? A smart, fast-paced, hilarious work—crime caper fiction at its best.

"Vividly real and quite compelling…fans of legal-thriller stars like John Grisham, John Lescroart, William Lashner, and especially Scott Turow will want to add this fine novel to their must-read lists."—Library Journal

This paperback edition of the fast-paced legal thriller set in the Mad Men era grabs you and doesn't let go. Gifted young New York lawyer Alec Brno gets the career boost of a lifetime: the opportunity to try a huge fraud case making international headlines. But he risks it all when he falls for an alluring young woman whose estranged husband is a sadistic Mafia don—and the criminal mastermind behind Alec's case.

They're underemployed. Underpaid. And trying to survive the end of the world while trapped inside an office complex. Who knew temp work could be this dangerous?

Jacob Elliot doesn’t want a temporary job in the mailroom at Delphi Enterprises, but after two post-college years of unpaid internships and living in his parents’ basement, he needs the work. Then, on his first day, the unthinkable happens: toxic gas descends on a meeting in Delphi’s outdoor amphitheater, killing all the regular employees and leaving Jacob stranded inside the vast office complex.

Wandering through Delphi headquarters, Jacob finds other survivors: Lauren, the disillusioned classics major who’s now writing online personality quizzes; Swati, the fitness instructor trying to escape a toxic relationship; and Dominic, the business school student who will do almost anything to get ahead. Stranded in the wreckage of the company that employed them, the temps band together to create a miniature world that’s part spring break, part office culture—until a shocking discovery disrupts the survivors’ self-made paradise and drives them to uncover the truth about the mysterious corporation that employed them and the apocalypse that brought their world to an end.

A surprising, profound tribute to the absurdities and paranoia of modern life, The Temps is an epic exploration of survival and human connection in the digital age.

“Hirahara has a keen eye for the telling detail and an assured sense of character.” —Los Angeles Times

At Dodger Stadium it’s Japan vs. Korea in the World Baseball Classic, but before the first pitch is thrown, Mas Arai finds himself in the middle of a murder. Mysteries layer atop mysteries in this sixth in the award-winning series featuring the most unlikely of sleuths, an aging, widowed, not-exactly-communicative gardener from Altadena, California.

Who is that unusual woman throwing knuckleball pitches to warm up the Japanese team? Who sent thugs to threaten Mas and accuse him of treason? And what were in the deleted files on the murdered sportswriter’s computer—and did they hold secrets that led to his death?

The more mysteries Mas uncovers, the deeper he gets drawn into a situation that soon grows dangerous—including the danger of losing the affection of the woman he might someday admit he loves.

“What makes this series unique is its flawed and honorable protagonist. . . . A fascinating insight into a complex and admirable man.” —Booklist (starred review)

A 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist for Best First Novel

“Debut novelist Tector captures European life and her characters beautifully as she interweaves the perspectives of four women seeking fulfillment and success in this satisfying adventure. Keep an eye on this author.” —Booklist

Alice Ahmadi has never been certain of where she belongs. When she discovers a famed emerald necklace while interning at a struggling Parisian magazine, she is plunged into a glittering world of diamonds and emeralds, courtesans and spies, and the long-buried secrets surrounding the necklace and its glamorous former owners.

When Alice realizes the mysterious Honeybee Emeralds could be her chance to save the magazine, she recruits her friends Lily and Daphne to form the “Fellowship of the Necklace.” Together, they set out to uncover the romantic history of the gems. Through diaries, letters, and investigations through the winding streets and iconic historic landmarks of Paris, the trio begins to unravel more than just the secrets of the necklace’s obsolete past. Along the way, Lily and Daphne’s relationships are challenged, tempered, and changed. Lily faces her long-standing attraction to a friend, who has achieved the writing success that eluded her. Daphne confronts her failing relationship with her husband, while also facing simmering problems in her friendship with Lily. And, at last, Alice finds her place in the world―although one mystery still remains: how did the Honeybee Emeralds go from the neck of American singer Josephine Baker during the Roaring Twenties to the basement of a Parisian magazine?

Eddie Morales finds his lowly R&D life completely upended when his Boise-based biotech firm dispatches him to Puerto Malogrado, a tiny but tumultuous country in South America where the international media is accusing their experimental potatoes of causing a bizarre medical crisis. 

Eddie unwillingly arrives in South America only to find his plans for a quick resolution thwarted when he gets caught between the two sides of an impending revolution, each hoping to capitalize on the potato scandal in order to seize power.

Eddie stumbles into a conspiracy that reveals just how far his company will go to advance its potato empire. He is forced to make a choice: what—and who—will he sacrifice to preserve his own future in this brave new world of biotechnology?

Darkly funny and compassionately rendered, One Potato charts the crooked line between nature and technology and takes a deep look into a future shaped by disasters both natural and devastatingly man-made.

Curmudgeonly Japanese American gardener and unwitting detective Mas Arai is back in this fifth in the Edgar Award–winning series. Naomi Hirahara has created a memorable protagonist unlike any other: a Hiroshima survivor, Los Angeles gardener, widower, gambler, grandfather, and solver of crimes. In Strawberry Yellow, he returns to the strawberry farms of his youth and encounters family intrigue, danger, and murder.

The series' most compelling and evocative mystery yet is set in the strawberry fields of Watsonville, California, where young Mas first arrived as a Hiroshima survivor in the 1940s. He returns for the funeral of a cousin and quickly gets entangled in the murder of a young woman. Was his cousin murdered, too? Mas has to figure out what happened, keep himself safe, and uncover the mystery of the Strawberry Yellow blight and a new strawberry varietal so important that it could be inspiring a murderer.

A 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist for Best General Fiction

Dave is a Dad with Asperger's.

He sees the world differently than most, and he feels like he has no idea what he’s doing when it comes to raising his 15-year-old daughter, Cleo. She also feels like he has no idea what he’s doing, especially now that her mom is gone.

They were both better off when Jana was around—Dave's wife, Cleo's mother. But now she's not, and they are left to figure out life on their own. Dave dedicates his attention to his newfound hobby of doomsday prepping, researching the various ways the world could end. Cleo feels like her world already has.

Everything changes when neighbors move in, threatening their isolation in the hills of San Juan Capistrano. Cleo is intrigued by the new girl, Edie, and soon finds out the intrigue is mutual. Dave, not at all intrigued, is forced to come to terms with everything he cannot control.

As they struggle to live in the present, both Dave and Cleo must dare to revisit the tragic past they share. What happened to Jana? Who was she, really? Who are they without her?

Ways the World Could End is a story of grief, friendship, and love—the love between parents and children, between spouses, between teenagers, and between strangers. It is a story that requires us to consider the bounds of forgiveness, what we’re willing and not willing to forgive, and reminds us that often the hardest thing to forgive is ourselves.

In the third installment of the Amos Parisman Mysteries series, Amos finds himself on the twisted trail of a dangerous killer as he enters the heart of inequity in his community.

Amos Parisman, L.A.’s oldest and most stubborn Jewish gumshoe, has never learned how to properly retire. He has little to do and his options are narrowing day by day, until he stumbles across the body of a local homeless woman in Park La Brea. Despite the instruction of Amos’ comrade, Lieutenant Malloy, who tells him not to get involved, the police find that they could use someone unconventional like Parisman, someone who knows the neighborhood and is willing to go the extra mile. As more homeless people begin turning up dead in the area, though, Amos soon realizes he is hunting a serial killer with a gruesome vendetta against the vulnerable and disadvantaged.

Battling moral and civil questions regarding the invisible class, The Kindness of Strangers is a gripping look into the lives of those who sleep in the dust, the value we place on those who aren’t like us, and the damage that homelessness inflicts on the human spirit.

“What appears to be a humorous story set in Indiana farm country becomes a thriller with multiple shocking twists. Fans of TV's Dexter might want to try this disquieting book from Scott.” —Library Journal

In the early 1980s, a tight-knit Indiana community is struck by a series of violent murders.

Father Solomon Lancaster—the town’s dry-witted sheriff and priest at the community Catholic church—finds himself on the forefront of the investigation. Soon, he’s fighting to match wits with the serial killer terrorizing his town while trying to justify his law enforcement credentials to the FBI as their analysts and profilers take Crooked Creek, Indiana, by storm.

But Father Solomon is hiding secrets of his own. Ones that threaten to rise to the surface as the murders continue and the investigation draws nearer to the truth. As the killer begins to escalate, Father Solomon finds that even the innocent have dark sides, and trust might be the deadliest weapon of all.

Praise for Linda Lee Peterson's The Devil's Interval:

"Impossible to put down. Sparkling dialogue, references both musical and literary, and an offbeat cast of believable characters make the pages fly by."—Library Journal, starred review

"A fast-paced, intelligent tale of intrigue that will keep readers guessing until the refreshing end."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

Maggie Fiori, San Francisco magazine editor and amateur sleuth, gets a package that leads her to investigate a family scandal going back to the Civil War. Why was her great-great-great grandmother imprisoned for bigamy and espionage? Was she a criminal or a hero? Did she support the Confederates or the Union? Maggie's husband, Michael, joins her on the trip to Oxford, Mississippi, to dig deep and solve the mystery.

Combining an engaging contemporary mystery with a carefully researched Civil War setting and nineteenth-century characters, The Spy on the Tennessee Walker will appeal to Civil War and American history buffs as well as fans of modern mysteries and historical fiction.

*A 2022 FOREWORD REVIEWS BOOK AWARD FINALIST*

A new novel by the award-winning author of Under the Mercy Trees.

Famed puppeteer and master manipulator Walter Gray surprises his three daughters by announcing there is a fourth at his 80th birthday party. An incomplete paternity test—and a will that places a condition on each daughter’s inheritance—suggest that the missing daughter isn’t a figment of his dementia. 

Jane, the eldest, is tired of her father’s eccentricities. She remembers the scarcity of her childhood and doesn’t want another sister to share the birthright. 

Rosie, born out of wedlock, sees the missing sister as her key to acceptance as a full member of the puppeteer’s family.

Cora, the youngest, born after Walter achieved fame and fortune, is most concerned with extricating herself from running Walter’s company so that she can pursue her own life. 

The sisters each knew a different version of their enigmatic father, but all grew up in the presence of fairy tales acted out with marionettes and shadow puppets. If they are to find the fourth daughter and claim the legacy their father has left them, the three must confront their fractured relationships with their father and each other. Infused with fairy tales that sometimes spill magic into the sisters’ real lives, The Puppeteer’s Daughters is a stunningly-woven family saga about the cost and rewards of claiming a creative life.

Silver Falchion Award Finalist

“The small-town nature of this mystery, with the requisite fish-bowl local politics, relationships, and grudges, makes it perfect for cozy lovers who want something more modern. Readers will enjoy Riley’s humor and determination even when things turn sad.”
— Booklist

Riley Ellison has taken a great leap of faith by giving up her comfortable job at the Tuttle Corner Library for the exciting world of print journalism. Except that so far it hasn't been very exciting. All that changes when Riley's former co-worker Tabitha finds her soon-to-be father-in-law dead on the floor of his office, and Riley is asked to write his obituary. And when they discover Tabitha's fiancé's knife sticking out of his father's chest, Riley finds herself with a murder investigation to cover as well.
With Holman out on leave and mounting pressure from her boss, the mayor, and a bridezilla facing the possibility of a conjugal-visit honeymoon, Riley is desperate to prove she can handle the increasing demands of her new job. Despite warnings from her new boyfriend Jay, Riley blurs the line between reporter and investigator. Will Riley's rookie mistakes lead to more than just her byline ending up on the obituary page?

"In range alone, Richard Thomas is boundless. He is Lovecraft. He is Bradbury. He is VanderMeer." —Chuck Palahniuk

With a Foreword by Brian Evenson

In this new collection, Richard Thomas has crafted fourteen stories that push the boundaries of dark fiction in an intoxicating, piercing blend of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Equally provocative and profound, each story is masterfully woven with transgressive themes that burrow beneath the skin.

• A poker game yields a strange prize that haunts one man, his game of chance now turned into a life-or-death coin flip.
• A set of twins find they have mysterious new powers when an asteroid crashes in a field near their house, and the decisions they make create an uneasy balance.
• A fantasy world is filled with one man’s desire to feel whole again, finally finding love, only to have the shocking truth of his life exposed in an appalling twist.
• A father and son work slave labor in a brave new world run by aliens and mount a rebellion that may end up freeing them all.
• A clown takes off his make-up in a gloomy basement to reveal something more horrifying under the white, tacky skin.

Powerful and haunting, Thomas’ transportive collection dares you to examine what lies in the darkest, most twisted corners of human existence and not be transformed by what you find.

Chuck Restic has achieved the American dream: a successful career with a large corporation, his own home, the best health care insurance and retirement package... but he's crumbling inside. Twenty years in Human Resources have pushed him into an existential crisis. He realizes there is so little value in what he does all day, and it is only when he embarks on a mission to find a missing employee from his firm that he truly starts to feel alive again.

This is Chuck's first step toward moonlighting as a private detective — a job in which he turns out to excel. Constantly balancing the inane demands of his office and the excitement of his new "job," he finally finds what he's been missing. By applying his HR skills and wit to his new passion for detective work, Chuck unravels a web of crooked real estate deals and three murders, staving off a fourth: his own.

The first in the Chuck Restic mystery series, The Silent Second began life as the novel Smile Now, Cry Later, a self-publishing success story that led to a series commitment from publisher Prospect Park Books. Thoroughly re-edited, improved, re-designed, and re-titled, this smart, witty crime novel introduces an engaging (if sometimes bitter) private eye for the corporate era.

In this new collection, Patrick Barb explores themes of family found and lost, media consumption and the dangers of runaway nostalgia, the supernatural in our lives, and the impact of violence in both the long- and short-term.

• A young couple's reunited with their lost son whose favorite fuzzy bear suit connects him to the ghost of a vengeful mama bear while he's alone in the forest.
• A jaded screenwriter can’t escape the haunted screenplay that’s ruined his career.
• A man returns to his small hometown, where the people are gone and the trees have taken over.
• A Slasher and Final Girl brother-sister duo match wits and blades against a sentient, dimension-hopping apocalypse at a never-ending summer camp.

From rural backwoods to Park Slope brownstones, Barb's characters face impossible, awful situations, testing their inner strength and understanding of reality. Covering quiet horror, weird fiction, supernatural horror, slasher horror, topical dark fiction, and more, these stories spotlight supposedly familiar terrors and fears in new and unexpected ways.

From the acclaimed author of Washing the Dead and Bertrand Court comes a satirical and chilling, yet deeply-sensitive, tale that captures the ethos and ruin of children’s competitive swimming, where parents must face the haunting spirits of their own tumultuous upbringings or risk losing their way and—in turn—themselves.

It’s June 2012. The magical and slightly cultish River Run swim club is alive with the spirit of fun competition when a perfect storm brews between team moms and best friends, Gillian Cloud and Kristy Weinstein. The ghost of family addiction has turned up, looming over their carefully planned pasta parties, tie-dye nights, and pep rallies, forcing them to face their unresolved childhood trauma.

Gillian responds by trying to control everyone around her, while Kristy relapses into her dangerous addiction to love. Real sparks fly on the night of the derecho—a freak land hurricane—which sweeps through Northern Virginia, knocking out power for days. The storm ignites a tinder box of secrets, leaving Gillian and Kristy alone in the hot dark—their shame their only company.

At times humorous and devastating, Swimming with Ghosts is a hauntingly dark, yet uniquely tender story of the various entrapments of addiction and lingering trauma, and what it takes to overcome our hidden legacies of disgrace and discover a once unimaginable freedom made possible by confronting life’s greatest storms with the people closest to us.

“With a scholar’s commitment to accurate detail, and the heart of a lover of beauty, Kathleen B. Jones’s engaging and well-crafted parallel story is as colorful and lucid as the illuminated manuscripts at the center of her novel.” —Laurel Corona, author of The Mapmaker’s Daughter

A deeply affecting dual narrative separated by several centuries, Cities of Women examines the lives of women who dare to challenge the social norms of their days, risking their reputations and livelihoods for the sake of their passions.

In the twenty-first century, we meet Verity Frazier, a disillusioned history professor who sets out to prove that the artist responsible for the illuminated artwork in Christine de Pizan’s medieval manuscripts was a remarkable woman named Anastasia. As Anastasia’s story unfolds against the exquisitely-rendered medieval backdrop of moral disaster, political intrigue, and extraordinary creativity, Verity finds her career on the brink of collapse by her efforts to uncover evidence of the lost artist’s existence.

Inspired by a decade of research, Jones has woven together a luminous and incisive masterpiece of historical fiction, evoking the spare joys and monumental pitfalls facing medieval women artists and a contemporary woman who becomes obsessed with medieval books.

An Amazon Editors' pick for Best Mysteries, Thrillers, and Suspense Books of 2024 So Far 

"A fast pace and a strong ending… Immersive and compelling—this neighborhood's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to die there." —Kirkus Starred Review

74th National Jewish Book Awards Finalist - Goldberg Prize for Debut Fiction

"I got completely and gratefully lost in its rich setting and memorable characters. You will, too." —Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Somebody’s Fool

Equal parts mystery and epic novel inspired by historical events, Foreign Seed plunges readers into the search for a man who seems to vanish out of thin air.

China, June 1918.

When the explorer Frank Meyer suddenly disappears from a ferry on the Yangtze River, American Vice-Consul Samuel Sokobin is tasked with finding the missing man. By the time Sokobin receives the case, four days have passed since Meyer was last seen on the vast river. With no clues to guide his search and fearing failure in his new post as a man of rank, Sokobin heads upriver with Mr. Lin, a Chinese interpreter he’s never met. The investigation soon turns deeply personal for Sokobin, who can’t help but conflate Meyer’s fate with that of his own daring younger brother—a fighter pilot gone MIA in the world war. As Sokobin continues to search for answers, this mental connection threatens to break him, and he’s forced to contend with the biggest question of all: what do we do when the answers we most desperately seek are the very ones that elude us?

A sweeping tale of loss and grief, Foreign Seed is a moving testament to friendship, faith, and the resilience of the human spirit. Allison Alsup’s exquisitely-researched debut novel will stay in readers’ hearts and minds long after they’ve turned the last page.

A comically unorthodox “biography”

Spanning from the birth of Ulysses S. Grant until his victory over the Confederacy, You, Me, and Ulysses S. Grant gives us an honest portrait of an American hero who struggled to balance love, soldiering, and the attainment of the American Dream.

Taking the accessible, pop history of Coe’s You Never Forget Your First and adding more of the nerdy, punk humor of Rainn Wilson or Judd Apatow, You, Me, and Ulysses S. Grant is for both history and humor readers alike. Examining the validity of biography by hilariously breaking all the form's rules, this book removes the pomp to deliver a hopeful message of human potential: that the heroes we now venerate were also flawed, flesh and blood individuals and that we, too, are never too small to achieve great things. 

In bringing Grant to life, Brad Neely may have created his greatest cult classic yet.

With Earth on the brink of total annihilation, can a new universal language unite the world enough to save it?

It’s 2489 and the world’s governing mathematicians have calculated that society’s struggles with rampant war and homicide have put humanity on a crash-course with extinction. With an estimated fifteen months left until humankind’s total annihilation, the World Council of Mathematicians (WCM) determine the only way out of the crisis is to create the optimum language for humans, creating common understanding across all cultures and allowing them to work together for their joint salvation.  

The WCM and Charles De Costa, a brilliant mathematics student, must rely on LIFT, a scientific breakthrough that allows them to enlist the aid of the greatest minds in history, to create this new world language based on mathematics, linguistics, and music. Can the great minds of the past help lead humanity to a better future? Can this new language be created in time? Or will society’s continued evil and miscommunication lead the world to an inevitable end?

The Arkansas Regulators is a rousing tale of frontier adventure, first published in German in 1846, but virtually lost to English readers for well over a century. Written in the tradition of James Fenimore Cooper, but offering a much darker and more violent image of the American frontier, this was the first novel produced by Friedrich Gerstäcker, who would go on to become one of Germany’s most famous and prolific authors. A crucial piece of a nineteenth-century transatlantic literary tradition, this long-awaited translation and scholarly edition of the novel offers a startling revision of the frontier myth from a European perspective.

Finalist for the 2023 Banff Mountain Book Award for Mountain Fiction & Poetry
An Anchorage Daily News Favorite Book of 2023

Kim Heacox, author of the National Outdoor Book Award-winning novel Jimmy Bluefeather, returns with a new, brilliant novel about family love and the lengths one will go to protect it.

"A sprawling novel brimming with suspense, ideas and unforgettable characters, On Heaven's Hill paints a captivating group portrait of a rebel alliance discovering their true selves in America's most glorious natural landscape. This book will appeal equally to aging idealists reared on Edward Abbey and adventurous kids hooked on Gary Paulsen. Oh, and it's laugh-out-loud funny, too."
—Mark Adams, New York Times bestselling author of Tip of the Iceberg and Turn Right at Machu Picchu

"Kim Heacox poses the age-old question—what price progress?—with new urgency in On Heaven’s Hill, his compelling novel of an Alaskan hamlet whose remote location is no defense against big-money development. All that stands in its way is a pack of wolves and the twelve-year-old girl determined to save them. Reminiscent of John Nichols' The Milagro Beanfield War, Heacox deftly weaves lyrical tributes to the healing power of nature with a fast-paced plot that builds to a heart-pounding conclusion."
—Gwen Florio, author of Silent Hearts and the Lola Wicks series

The small town of Strawberry Flats sits on a remote Alaska coast, peacefully left to itself—until controversial plans for a road and a bridge threaten to upend everything.

Former trapper Salt d’Alene never thought he’d find himself in the midst of such a dispute, but he’ll do anything to provide the best care for his son Solomon, recently diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. Eleven-year-old Kes Nash just wants her father—back from war in Afghanistan—to be normal again. And circling the perimeter of the town is a wolf, Silver, and his pack, quietly watching.

Told from three alternating perspectives, On Heaven’s Hill is a vividly powerful story about rediscovering hope and finding new life in the aftermath of trauma. Filled with humor and compassion, it depicts the best of America, a place composed of wildness and kindness.

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos’s Book of Water is a collection of short stories about desire, fear, life, care, and ecological anxiety, all narrated through the physical and metaphysical presence of water. This water is not the open, bucolic water of the romantic imagination. It is the claustrophobic water of the deep seabed, the flooded cities, the womb. It is a water that brings oblivion, serenity, and salvation.

At first impression, the stories are narrated by a multiplicity of voices preoccupied with everyday psychological situations. At some point, however, the quotidian withdraws and gives way to surreal and disorienting moments of ethical, political, psychoanalytical, ecological, and personal challenges. The book is a literary response to the current geological epoch of the Anthropocene, where the effect of the human presence on the planet and its various elements seems by now irreversible. The bodies in this collection are not limited to the human—nonhuman and inhuman alike centre in the stories. The protagonist, however, remains the body of water.

Maurice Saatchi is dead.

He is standing in front of the Gates of Heaven. Arrival halls worse than Heathrow Airport. Queues. Overcrowding. A tidal wave of Paradise seekers. ID scans. Voice and facial recognition. X-ray examinations. Background checks. It all seems like a bad dream.

His tests expose abnormalities. He is charged with multiple breaches of immigration law and detained pending a full jury trial.

The verdict will reveal the biggest secret of all time: why some people go to Heaven and others to Hell.

Do Not Resuscitate is a bold statement. Maurice Saatchi, a towering figure in the worlds of business and politics, frames his unsparing self-portrait with the conceit of a celestial trial in which his application to pass through the Gates of Heaven is heard before a jury featuring luminaries like Marilyn Monroe, Pablo Picasso, Chairman Mao, and Margaret Thatcher. In seeking admission to Heaven, Saatchi offers a defence like no other.