"A stunning, unforgettable, and deeply American novel." —Julia Phillips, National Book Award finalist and bestselling author of Bear and Disappearing Earth

"Maurer’s prose is undeniably beautiful and evocative." —Kirkus Reviews

A heart-wrenching coming-of-age debut novel by a stunning new voice in fiction, for readers of Barbara Kingsolver and Ann Patchett. 

Staying is his dream. Leaving is hers. One secret threatens them both. 

In the farm country outside Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan—a border town where life moves slow and dreams run fast—most kids want out. Not Everett Lindt. He’s set on staying put, rebuilding his family’s sheep farm, and carving a future from the land he loves. 

Then he meets Mary, a new girl in town with restless energy and bigger plans. When their relationship reaches a crossroads, Everett sees a life together. Mary, however, is desperate to find a way out. Together, they make an impulsive choice—one that could change everything. 

Tense, lyrical, and deeply felt, Sara Maurer's unforgettable debut breathtakingly captures the ache of first love, the beauty and brutality of rural life, and how one decision can echo through generations and shape who we become.

"One of the most iconic British fictional detectives of the 21st century . . . a delight." --Daily Mail

No fingerprints. No weapon. No witnesses. Can DS Cross prove it was murder?

When a young woman is found dead - with no fingerprints, no weapon, and no witnesses -the Bristol Crime Unit is ready to close the case as suicide, especially after the coroner cites the victim's long history of drug abuse. But her mother is convinced it was murder, saying that her daughter had been clean and sober for over two years.

DS Cross is determined to defy his bosses and re-open the case, even if it costs him his career. Soon he is mired in a labyrinth of potential suspects - but can he solve the case before his superiors shut it down for good?

"Marry or lose your inheritance." A commitment phobic heir in Detroit, Michigan faces the ultimate challenge from his powerful grandmother and family company CEO in this charming, irresistibly fun and flirty new contemporary romance from award-winning author Elle Wright.

Wesley Batchelor is desperate for an image reboot—stat. A mysterious social media influencer keeps revealing his many reckless romantic liaisons, putting everything Wesley has worked so hard for at stake. Worse, he’s in deep trouble with his grandmother and Batchelor Enterprises boss, Joyce, his one and only true cheerleader. So he’s stunned and relieved when his gorgeous ex, private detective Albany Keyes, is recruited to track down the leaker . . .

All Wes has to do is keep a cool-headed professional distance. Easy, right? Until the incendiary passion between him and Albany suddenly reignites. And he realizes he wants more from her—just like always . . .

For Joyce's sake, Albany reluctantly accepts the assignment to aid Wes. After all, she needs the money to regroup after a disastrous divorce. But this time, she's going to call the shots. She doesn’t need her heart re-broken by the only man she's ever loved. Yet she soon finds their differences are drawing them together again. And again. And again. Now, with both their careers and their hearts on the line, can they risk another chance on each other—this time, for keeps?

Combining the inventive worldbuilding of Philip K. Dick and the elegiac longing of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye and for fans of Ready Player One and Rabbits, The Halter by Darby McDevitt (lead writer for Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag) is a debut sci-fi novel that fuses cyber-noir, psychological suspense, and high-concept speculation in a breakneck search for truth inside a utopian metaverse on the verge of collapse

In a world where virtual addiction kills, Kennedy Stark is paid to pull the plug. A professional halter—part detective, part counselor—he trawls the world’s darkest surrogate-reality feeds in search of the lost. When he isn’t working, he’s dreaming of a one-way ticket to Mars, where a new colony has been established as a hopeful alternative to an Earth in the early stages of climate collapse.

One evening, after a botched rescue attempt, a mysterious client offers Kennedy a tantalizing new case: brilliant software engineer Delia Walsh, who Kennedy fell in love with years ago, has disappeared inside a surrogate reality project called The Forum. Entering under an assumed identity, Kennedy finds a simulation unlike any other. The Forum bills itself as a tool for cutting-edge scientific research and radical philosophical investigations, but the signs of its corruption are everywhere. As Kennedy investigates, he learns Delia had been working on a new simulation that could upend The Forum’s primary purpose, and that even in this prurient playground for the super wealthy, the dangers are very real. 

Brimming with black humor, hardboiled attitude, and a cast of endearing misfits lost in brittle fantasies, The Halter introduces a charismatic detective and heralds a unique and assured new voice in sci-fi crime.

As pregnant Siobhán O’Sullivan awaits bringing her new life into the world, she’s bringing new life to her village of Kilbane in County Cork, Ireland, with a music and matchmaking festival. But one matchmaker is about to find out that Cupid’s arrow can be fatal in the latest Irish Village Mystery from USA Today bestselling author Carlene O’Connor.

Siobhán loves to see the joy playing trad music brings to her brother Ciaran, but his concern that he’ll never find a mate pulls at her heartstrings. So she proposes that Kilbane host a music and matchmaking festival to draw single trad musicians. While renowned matchmaker Liam Noone plays Cupid with his Lucky Book, music—and hopefully love—will fill the pubs and the autumn air.

Turning over his precious Lucky Book to Siobhán for safekeeping, Liam takes the stage to introduce matched musician couples who will kick off the festival in the town square. Suddenly all goes black. When the lights come back on, the matchmaker has met his maker, impaled through the heart with an arrow made from the sharpened bow of a bass.

Was it the fiddle player, the flute player, the drummer, the piper, the squeeze box player, or the bass player who struck a sour note? Garda Siobhán and her husband Macdara must pick up the tempo to make whoever committed this crime of passion face the music…

A gripping novel of two young women fighting for survival on the edge of the wilderness, and the love that simultaneously sustains them and threatens their very existence, from the author of the Good Morning America Book Club pick River Sing Me Home. 

Nova Scotia, 1796. Cora, an orphan newly arrived from Jamaica, has never felt cold like this. In the depths of winter, everyone in her community huddles together in their homes to keep warm. So when she sees a shadow slipping through the trees, Cora thinks her eyes are deceiving her...until she creeps out into the moonlight and finds the tracks in the snow.

Agnes is in hiding. On the run from her former life, she has learned what it takes to survive alone in the wilderness. But she can afford no mistakes. When she first spies the young woman in the woods, she is afraid. Yet Cora is fearless, and their paths are destined to cross.

Deep among the cedars, Cora and Agnes find a fragile place of safety. But when Agnes’s past closes in, they are confronted with the dangerous price of freedom—and of love....

With evocative prose and immersive storytelling, Fireflies in Winter is a powerful novel about love—love for the wilderness in all its unforgiving beauty, and love between two women who risk everything to be together.

An outcast princess turned spy embarks on a mission to infiltrate a rival kingdom, but the secrets she uncovers force her to decide whether to follow orders or defy them.

**The dazzling first edition hardcover of Songbird of the Sorrows will feature intricately designed stenciled edges, an interior black-and-white map, and a premium jacket with gold foil—while supplies last!**

“An addictive new romantic fantasy that combines beautiful world-building, a thrilling combination of heist and trials, and a toe-curling forbidden romance.”—Demi Winters, author of The Ashen Series

Ask no questions. Obey your orders. Respect your masters. But most of all, love no one.

Spy. Thief. Princess. Songbird. 

Banished from the Palace of Sorrows as a child, Princess Aella was taken in by the Aviary, a secret intelligence network embedded throughout the Empyrieos that trains orphans as professional spies. Now twenty-three years old, she has finally earned her place as a Songbird on the most elite team of assassins, led by none other than her former flame, Raven. Everything about him calls to her—he’s brave, loyal, and lethal—but their relationship is also the greatest threat to her standing as a Songbird.

Before Aella can untangle her feelings, their team is sent on a dangerous mission to the eastern kingdom. Her role is crucial yet troublesome: Aella must assume her former title of Princess of the Sorrows to compete in a series of bridal trials. But when the trials turn deadly and the mission is threatened, Aella must decide whether to follow orders or defy them.

Songbird of the Sorrows is the first novel in the sweeping, romantic Myths of the Empyrieos series, following Aella through an epic journey of self-discovery, true love, redemption, and ultimately a great war that promises to upend the lives of everyone in the realm.

"From New York Times bestselling author Justin C. Key, a thrilling novel set in the near future where artificial intelligence runs the world, following a young doctor as he unravels family secrets In a year not so far from our own, society is run by the shepherds, a global AI system. The shepherds have controlled every aspect of Pok's twenty years of life-they decided what schools Pok went to, what jobs he was eligible for, what foods he ate, and even his medical care. He's content living a carefree life until his father is killed by a mysterious illness. Searching for answers, Pok decides to follow in his father's footsteps and travel to the very last hold-out city and train at the one hospital that still practices human-led medicine: Hippocrates. As Pok works his way through medical school, he's pulled into the terrifying mystery of a strange illness plaguing immigrants who grew up under shepherd rule. Will Pok be able to uncover what's truly going on in the inner sanctum of the shepherds? The Hospital at the End of the World is a medical thriller for the ages exploring the intersection of technology, health, and what it means to be truly free"-- Provided by publisher.

From the Bram Stoker award-nominated author of The Spite House comes a bone-chilling new novel about a private investigator hired by a mysterious billionaire to discover why he can’t die.

When private investigator Shyla Sinclair is invited to the looming mansion of eccentric billionaire Saxton Braith, she’s more than a little suspicious. The last thing she expects to see that night is Braith’s assistant driving an iron rod straight through the back of his skull. Scratch that—the last thing she expects to see is Braith’s resurrection afterward.

Braith can’t die, it turns out, but he has no explanation for his immortality, and very few intact memories of his past. Which is why he wants to pay Shyla millions to investigate him, and bring his long-buried history to light. 

Shyla can’t help but be intrigued, but she’s also trapped by the offer. Braith has made it clear that he knows she’s the only person he can trust with his secret, because he knows all about hers. 

Bold, atmospheric, and utterly frightening, Johnny Compton’s Dead First is spine-chilling supernatural horror about the pursuit of power and the undying need for reckoning.

Speculative fiction, set in the not-so-distant future, about family, scarcity, and what it means to sell out as the world ends.

The world hasn't quite ended, but it's getting there. Me and Mine brings readers to a not-so-distant future in pre-apocalyptic Chicago. The West has dried up, the watershed has been contaminated, and water scarcity has driven most of the population inward from the coasts. Here, real estate interests run rampant and the possibility of snagging a house close enough to the Great Lakes to get fresh water has realigned global financial interests. And, as always, the working class is still being pushed aside to make way for white, wealthy newcomers.

Amidst the chaos, three brothers try to navigate the swiftly changing landscape of this new Chicago. As one seeks influence in politics, the younger two are drawn into the dangerous, shadowy world of private security and militias. In the precarious new world that these three brothers navigate, J. M. Holmes offers a grim yet familiar future in which scarcity breeds resentment, resentment breeds extremism, and extremism ignites around the racial faultlines of our present.

 

“The tension, the atmosphere, the dread . . . This is a book that sticks in your head long after the last page.” —Lisa Jewell

“Extraordinary.” —Linwood Barclay

The heart-stopping second novel from the author of Nightwatching, in which a father-son ski weekend becomes a desperate fight for survival

Twelve-year-old Zach is cautiously optimistic. His father Bram, whose business is in dire need of cash, has put together a father-son backcountry ski weekend to wine and dine his biggest investors. Schooled in outdoor survival by his mother, Zach is eager to prove himself to the hypercritical Bram. Maybe if Zach shows how useful he is, he can earn his father’s love.

But Zach knows to be on high alert around Bram, and he sees the way the group ignores the increasingly threatening conditions. For the first time in his beloved mountains, he is faced with the unknown, convinced that something watches their cabin from the treeline. Something that leaves behind strange tracks and picks its prey clean.

As the adults recklessly test the limits of the outdoors, Zach worries he might be in even more danger than he realized. Could the men around him prove more violent than the unforgiving weather, and the strange creature lurking in the dark? Zach will have to rely on his wits if he hopes to make it home safely. But he knows all too well that the wilderness can be unpredictable even at the best of times. And at the worst? Deadly.

Two competing meteorologists are forced to find common ground in this opposites attract, When Harry Met Sally inspired romance, from #1 New York Times bestselling author B.K. Borison.

Jackson Clark and Delilah Stewart have had their fair share of run-ins over the years, often ending in disaster. While Jackson thrives on routine and organization from the comfort of his radio booth, Delilah loves the spontaneity and adventure out in the field. When they’re partnered against their will to cover a historic snowstorm, they find themselves scrambling to figure out how to work together.

Eager to be taken seriously as a journalist, Delilah offers Jackson a deal: If he can help her ace this assignment, she’ll help him rediscover his long-lost fun side. With unexplored chemistry burning beneath their clashes, the unlikely partnership quickly tumbles into an easy and surprising friendship.

But when other feelings start to enter the equation, can Jackson and Delilah withstand the storm? Or does what happens in the mountains stay in the mountains?

Nowhere Burning is a harrowing tale of survival that places the dark fairy tale of Peter Pan and the ruthless dangers of Lord of the Flies into the unforgiving maw of the Colorado Rockies.

"Gripping and beautiful, haunting and virtuously crafted...you won’t be able to stop reading."—Virginia Feito, author of Victorian Psycho

Secrets in the flames. Answers in the ashes. 

Riley and her brother Oliver set off in the pitch-black night, fleeing their troubled home. They are heading for Nowhere—an abandoned ranch, once the playground of its former eccentric movie-star owner, now a haven for runaways.

What awaits could be the freedom they crave.

But this mysterious clan guards dark secrets, and the scorched grounds hold the ghosts of the past. Riley quickly realizes that while she and Oliver may have escaped the devil they knew, something darker lurks in the burnt shell of Nowhere.

Something which asks a terrible price for sanctuary...

Also by Catriona Ward:
Looking Glass Sound
Sundial
Little Eve
The Last House on Needless Street

The vivid, immersive nature writing of William Kent Krueger and Peter Heller meets the taut suspense of Louise Penny against the lush, sprawling landscape of rural Wisconsin in the first of a new mystery trilogy by internationally renowned animal behavior expert Patricia McConnell, bestselling author of The Other End of the Leash and The Education of Will.

"Like All Creatures Great & Small meets Agatha Christie – only with more glorious writing, more training tips, and more border collies! I could not put this novel down – and when I did, I felt blessed by the company of great characters both human and canine, inspired to live lives of courage and hope." —SY MONTGOMERY, New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of an Octopus, What the Chicken Knows, and The Hummingbird's Gift

Maddie is living her best second life on a 40-acre sheep farm in the Wisconsin countryside. In addition to her passion for training sheepdogs—including her spirited border collie Jack—she sees all manner of dogs with behavioral problems ranging from biting to thunder phobia as part of her local practice. No stranger to trauma herself, Maddie has worked hard to recover from the ordeal of her previous marriage.

But things take a turn when Maddie’s friend and mentor, George, is inexplicably killed by a rifle shot fired from the woods during a sheepdog trial. Maddie is devastated and also baffled—it’s not hunting season, and who could mistake a man, standing alone in a field, for a deer?

She’s still reeling from George’s shooting when a shelter calls her for help with a German shepherd found half dead beside the highway who’s too aggressive to feed and care for. The dog flourishes at the farm, but when Maddie returns one day to find her house invaded, it’s clear that she has stumbled into a situation far more complex and sinister than she realized. And her romantic involvement with an enigmatic young shelter worker soon leads to even more trouble. As Maddie continues to search for answers to George’s death, it quickly becomes apparent that her own life is once again in danger . . .

A woman receives an unexpected gift from the man she loved and lost—a year of books, one for every month—launching a reading-inspired journey to live, dream, and love again in this glimmering and heart-stopping novel.

Twelve books. Twelve months. One chance to heal her heart…

When Tilly Nightingale receives a call telling her there’s a birthday gift from her husband waiting for her at her local bookshop, it couldn’t come as more of a shock. Partly because she can’t remember the last time she read a book for pleasure. But mainly because Joe died five months ago....

When she goes to pick up the present, Alfie, the bookshop owner with kind eyes, explains the gift—twelve carefully chosen books with handwritten letters from Joe, one for each month, to help her turn the page on her first year without him.

At first Tilly can’t imagine sinking into a fictional world, but Joe’s tender words convince her to try, and something remarkable happens—Tilly becomes immersed in the pages, and a new chapter begins to unfold in her own life. Monthly trips to the bookstore—and heartfelt conversations with Alfie—give Tilly the comfort she craves and the courage to set out on a series of reading-inspired adventures that take her around the world. But as she begins to share her journey with others, her story—like a book—becomes more than her own.