"The perfect blend of romance, mystery and thrills."—US Weekly
Diamond necklaces, billionaires, Mafia bosses, and student loans—it’s all in a day’s work for Simi Chopra and her ragtag heist crew in the next romantic-comedy caper from Sara Desai.
It’s been a year since Simi Chopra’s motley crew pulled off a high-wire diamond necklace heist with the help of sexy rogue Jack Danger. After living it up on the reward money, they're back where they started, struggling to pay their bills. So when a Chicago Mafia boss demands they return the jewels—plus interest, or else—they need to get the team back together…and fast.
Unfortunately, Simi soon discovers that the necklace is in the hands of Jack's nemesis, a highly-skilled and supremely vengeful master thief who is not above a little blackmail to get even. (Did Jack really have to piss her off?) Now, the crew is forced into her working her con in order to get the necklace back.
As if Simi needed any more complications while trying to rob a billionaire’s mansion, she and Jack are on the rocks, someone else is after her score, and a gorgeous detective is hot on her tail. Simi better be careful or she’ll end up in the less fun kind of handcuffs.
In H. B. Akumiah's lively and charming debut, three young women discover the unbelievable: they're witches, and their newfound magic may be the key to saving the world ...
The Witch Sphere is in turmoil. In the years since a stunning betrayal sent shock waves through society, the Sphere was hit with a crisis: witches are giving birth to more typics (non-witches) and their numbers are diminishing. Nadia is determined to help, but she finds her efforts at the Witch Health Organization entangled with the political machinations of her powerful mother.
A public relations assistant, a teacher, and a former child star walk into a bar bathroom ... on what happens to be all of their twenty-second birthday and, like many twentysomethings, they become fast tipsy friends. But unlike most twentysomethings, their night of partying ends with an accidental act of magic. Suddenly, Maya, Gabbie, and Delali find themselves thrust into a world of spells and potions with only a mysterious mentor as a guide.
As the girls learn to harness their new power, Nadia starts to notice spikes in the magic baseline and suspects an unknown cadre of witches may be the key to solving the Typic Crisis. Can this unlikely coven come together and save the Sphere, or are there darker forces at play? Either way these Bad Witches are going to find a way to have some fun.
Before love at first sight, there were things no one saw.
Annie never much believed in love. That is, until meeting Mark. After crossing paths on morning commutes, they connect at a group counseling session for trauma survivors. Each recognizes something in the other, though both hide their own troubled pasts.
It’s a whirlwind romance that propels Annie through their courtship, all the way to her wedding day—a day she couldn’t have predicted for herself once upon a time yet now feels surer about than anything in her life.
But as Annie stands at the altar, casting her eyes over the rows of well-wishers, she spots a stranger in the crowd, and she soon learns that her new life isn’t going to be the happily ever after that she had planned. Who is the stranger at the wedding? What really happened to Mark’s first wife? And was Annie and Mark’s meeting as random as it first appeared, or is something more sinister at work?
A sizzling thriller, A. E. Gauntlett's The Stranger at the Wedding will make you think twice before saying “I do.”
The heat is turned up for Hayley Snow and her friends in the next installment of the Key West Food Critic mystery series by USA Today bestselling author Lucy Burdette.
When food critic Hayley Snow receives an intriguing email about a mysterious, decades-old disappearance, her curiosity is piqued. Writer Catherine Davitt has returned to the Keys to research a book about Hemingway’s wives, but she’s also on the hunt for the truth about her missing friend. Hayley quickly agrees to help investigate and they hit the road to see what clues they might find.
Back in the late 1970s, Catherine and her friend Veronica were part of a group of lost souls camping in the mangroves of Big Pine Key, until Veronica vanished, and the sheriff’s office cleared out the camp. Catherine and Hayley begin interviewing Big Pine Key residents who were around at the time of Veronica’s disappearance, but uncover more questions than answers.
Catherine and Hayley stop to speak with a motel owner who frequented the fringes of the commune, but they find him stabbed to death. Then Catherine also goes missing, and signs point to a connection between the old case and the new murder. It’s up to Hayley to unravel the knot of secrets and lies before time runs out.
Librarian Carrie Singleton must catch a killer before she can say “I do” in the 8th delightful installment in Agatha Award-nominee Allison Brook’s Haunted Library mystery series.
Carrie Singleton is ready to kiss the single life goodbye. Her wedding to Dylan Avery is just a few weeks away, and a happy ending is about to be hers. But when a body is found on the lawn of their wedding venue, happily-ever-after is looking deadlier than ever.
The victim turns out to be Billy Carpenter, a young man recently released from prison after serving time for a bank robbery. The stolen money he’d buried is gone and Carrie and the police suspect Billy’s two alleged co-conspirators, his friends Luke Rizzo and Tino Valdez. But then Luke is murdered and Tino is nowhere to be found.
With no leads and only a week to go before her big day, Carrie is on the hunt for clues. She hopes to wrap up this investigation with a neat bow before she and Dylan tie the knot. Carrie has something old, something new, and something borrowed ready for her walk down the aisle. Now she needs to find the killer without becoming the ‘something blue.’
This gripping and emotionally riveting tale is a dark and timely retelling of The Wizard of Oz, where one little girl is forced to face head on the prejudices of the Midwest in the late nineteenth century.
Kansas, 1896. After a tornado destroys the Gale family farm, eleven-year-old Dorothy goes missing. As the days pass, the Gales are increasingly terrified the worst has happened. But when the girl turns up unharmed four days later, the townsfolk breathe a sigh of relief. That is, until Dorothy herself relates her account of the events that took place during her disappearance.
In vivid detail, Dorothy describes a fantastical land and its magical inhabitants: a scarecrow, a tin man, a cowardly lion, a wizard, a witch. Her recollections are not only regarded as delusional, but also as pagan and diabolical in nature, especially when the body of a local spinster is found matching Dorothy's description of a witch she claims to have killed. Authorities find incriminating evidence tying Dorothy to the real murder, and they sentence Dorothy to the Topeka Insane Asylum.
When twenty-eight-year-old psychologist Dr. Evelyn Grace Wilford arrives at the asylum to interview Dorothy, she begins to wonder if Dorothy truly committed the crime or if something unfathomable has really occurred.
In a small town full of insidious secrets, Evelyn sets out to save Dorothy from her terrible circumstances, but can't help but fear whether something menacing may be lurking just out of sight.
From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, a novel about two men—friends since boyhood—who emerge from the woods of rural Maine to a dystopian country racked by bewildering violence
Every year, Jess and Storey have made an annual pilgrimage to the most remote corners of the country, where they camp, hunt, and hike, leaving much from their long friendship unspoken. Although the state of Maine has convulsed all summer with secession mania—a mania that has simultaneously spread across other states—Jess and Storey figure it’s a fight reserved for legislators or, worst-case scenario, folks in the capital.
But after weeks hunting off the grid, the men reach a small town and are shocked by what they find: a bridge blown apart, buildings burned to the ground, and bombed-out cars abandoned on the road. Trying to make sense of the sudden destruction all around them, they set their sights on finding their way home, dragging a wagon across bumpy dirt roads, scavenging from boats left in lakes, and dodging armed men—secessionists or U.S. military, they cannot tell—as they seek a path to safety. Then, a startling discovery drastically alters their path and the stakes of their escape.
Drenched in the beauty of the natural world and attuned to the specific cadences of male friendship, even here at the edge of doom, Burn is both a blistering warning about a divided country’s political strife and an ode to the salvation found in our chosen families.
SHORT-LISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION. A timeless story of strife and hope set during the conflict in the Balkans in the early '90s—a searing debut novel about a woman who faces the war on her doorstep with courage, fierceness, and an unshakable belief in the power of art.
“A reflective novel about dark times that tells us life goes on, love stories develop, humanity remains in the most inhumane of times.” —Irish Independent
Sarajevo, spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect makeshift barricades, splitting the city into ethnic enclaves. Each morning, the people who live there—whether Muslim, Croat, or Serb—push the barriers aside.
When violence erupts and becomes, finally, unavoidable, Zora, an artist and teacher, sends her husband and elderly mother to safety in England. She stays behind, reluctant to believe that hostilities will last more than a few weeks. As the city falls under siege, everything she loves about her home is laid to waste, black ashes floating over the rooftops. Yet Zora and her friends find ways to rebuild themselves, over and over. Told with breathtaking immediacy, this is a story of disintegration, resilience, and hope—a stirring debut from a commanding new voice.
In Matthew Lyons' pulse-pounding crime horror, A Mask of Flies, a criminal on the run after a failed heist must confront dark family secrets and demons from her past made flesh.
THE PAST HAS TEETH
In the grisly aftermath of a botched bank heist, career criminal Anne Heller has no choice but to return to her family’s cabin – a secluded shack in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, and the site of her mother’s untimely death.
Along for the ride are Jessup, Anne’s badly wounded partner, and Dutch, the police officer she’s taken hostage. As they wait for help, Anne discovers strange relics from her mother’s past and begins to unfold the mystery of her childhood at the cabin.
Then Jessup goes missing, only to turn up dead. Anne and Dutch bury her friend, but that night, he comes back and knocks at the cabin door.
Not a dream, not a hallucination, but not exactly Jessup, either. Something else. Something wearing her friend’s face. Something hungry...
“An addictive thrill ride.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
In this dazzling historical romance, a Duke with a complicated romantic history and a bookseller with a family business to protect find themselves drawn to each other--even if their hidden secrets should keep them apart. Perfect for fans of USA Today bestsellers Lenora Bell and Sophie Jordan!
Dorian Whitaker, Duke of Holland, needs an heir after his so-called "fairytale marriage" ended in disaster. When the intriguing bookseller he's hired to liquidate his late wife's library finds love letters revealing an affair, he is drawn into a mystery alongside a lady whose sharp intellect dazzles him and dares him to imagine a new adventure outside the gilded cage of the Ton.
If anyone found out Caroline Danvers writes erotic novels under a pen name, she'd face utter ruin. Except her latest hero inspiration is none other than the Duke of Holland--a man with the power to destroy her family's bookshop. And yet the real man proves to be so much more than the character she created. Even as they expose the dark secrets of his past, she knows he can never discover her own. But the more time they spend together, the more tempting it is to rewrite their ending and turn fantasy into reality.
Finding a place to belong becomes a girl's ambitious quest in a thrilling epic about space, humanity, and self-discovery by S.B. Divya, Hugo and Nebula Award finalist and author of Meru.
Akshaya is the hybrid daughter of a human mother and an alloy, a genetically engineered posthuman--and she's the future of life on the planet Meru. But not if the determined Akshaya can help it. Before choosing where her future lies, she wants to circumnavigate the most historic orb in the universe--the birthplace of humanity: Earth.
Akshaya's parents reluctantly agree to her anthropological challenge--one with no assistance from alloy devices, transport, or wary alloys themselves who manage humanity and the regions of Earth called Loka. It's just Akshaya; her equally bold best friend, Somya; and a carefully planned itinerary threading continent by continent across a wondrous terrain of things she's never seen: blue skies, sunrises, snowcapped mountains, and roiling oceans.
As the adventure unfolds, the travelers discover love and new friendships, but they also learn the risks of a planet that's not entirely welcoming. On this trek--rapturous, dangerous, and life-changing--Akshaya will discover what human existence really means.
When someone dies to save your life, how do you ever forgive them?
A World of Hurt is Mindy Mejia's highly-anticipated follow-up to the "propulsive" USA Today bestselling thriller To Catch a Storm where an Iowa City police officer and a DEA informant must work together to hunt down the remains of a hidden drug empire.
Kara Johnson always knew she'd die young and violently. It didn't matter who delivered the final blow, she would deserve it--her years spent running drugs and spreading violence would guarantee it. But death doesn't always go as planned. When her girlfriend sacrifices herself to save Kara's life, Kara is left grieving and adrift. She doesn't know why she's alive until the DEA shows up and offers her a choice: go to prison or turn informant to lure out the last of the drug trafficking ring that murdered her girlfriend.
Max Summerlin is the kind of cop who needs answers--he's been shot twice in the last year while looking for them. Despite his family's objections and his struggle with chronic pain, he accepts an invitation from the DEA task force eagerly. That is, until he realizes he'll be babysitting reformed drug trafficker Kara Johnson as she goes undercover.
Max knows Kara is keeping secrets. Kara doesn't trust anyone, let alone Max. But the cop and the criminal will have to find a way to work together fast, because they aren't the only ones hunting down the remains of a drug empire. And the kingpin who lurks in the shadows will stop at nothing to win.
An airline captain crafts a riveting, adventurous novel inspired by the remarkable true life of pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman, a Black woman who learned to fly at the dawn of aviation and found freedom in the air
A few years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, Bessie was working the Texas cotton fields with her family when an airplane flew over their heads. It buzzed so low she thought she could catch it in her hands. Bessie was fearless. She knew there was freedom in those wings.
The daughter of a woman born into slavery, Bessie answers the call of the Great Migration. She moves to Chicago, where she wins the backing of two wealthy, powerful Black men—Robert Abbott, creator and publisher of the Chicago Defender, and Jesse Binga, the founder of Chicago’s first Black bank. Abbott becomes her mentor, while Binga becomes her lover. Her true first love, though, remains flying.
But in 1920, no one in the United States will train a Black woman to fly. So, twenty-eight-year-old Bessie learns to speak French and sets off for Europe. Two years ahead of Amelia Earhart, Bessie earns her pilot's license, and later she learns death-defying stunts from French and German dogfighting combat pilots.
While she finds no prejudice in the air, Bessie wrestles with other challenges on the ground. A plane crash nearly kills her, her brothers seem to be crumbling under the weight of Jim Crow, and, while grappling with tough truths about Binga, Bessie begins to wonder if the freedom she finds in the sky means she must otherwise fly solo.
With tenderness and mastery, Carole Hopson imagines the breathtaking moxie Bessie Coleman harnessed in order to lift herself out of poverty and become known as “Queen Bess.”
Dangerous secrets. A toxic workplace. And an unsolved murder. . . . A football professional reckons with the choices that made her career in the boys' club world of sports possible in this riveting and sharp Friday Night Lights meets I Know What You Did Last Summer debut
Poppy Benjamin, Media Relations Director of Syracuse's storied NFL team, the Bobcats, fought tooth and nail for her career. Ever since her intern season fifteen years ago, it's been nothing but early mornings, late nights, barely-dodged inappropriate advances, and relationships lost with boyfriends who didn't get it. That's why Poppy relies on the Women Against Groping Shitheads, a support network that knows her far better than her own family. In-house counsel for an NBA team, a celebrated reporter--all of the W.A.G.S. are high-ranking women in sports who need a release from the indignities and frustrations that come with navigating the ultimate boys’ club.
But on the very same morning that Poppy’s legendary head coach is found dead in his home, five notes threatening tell the truth or pay the consequences hit the W.A.G.S. like 300-pound linemen. Who's aware of the little group they've tried their best to keep under wraps, and what reason would they have to threaten it? As long-buried secrets are brought to light, Poppy is forced to revisit a dangerous mistake from the start of her career that puts everything she's built at risk.
An unmissable novel about responsibility, regret, clouded moral compasses, and the ins and outs of professional football.
"This novel is as chilling as it is poignant. My advice? Read it with the lights on." -- Megan Collins, author of The Family Plot
Three sisters. Three keys. Three unspeakable horrors.
The Finch sisters once spent long, hot summers exploring the dozens of abandoned properties littering their dying town--until they found an impossible home with an endless hall of doors...and three keys left waiting for them. Curious, fearless, they stepped inside their chosen rooms, and experienced horrors they never dared speak of again.
Now, years later, youngest sister Claire has been discovered dead in that old, desiccated house. Haunted by their sister's suicide and the memories of a past they've struggled to forget, Meg and Esther find themselves at bitter odds. As they navigate the tensions of their brittle relationship, they draw unsettling lines between Claire's death, their own haunted memories, and a long-ago loss no one in their family has ever been able to face. With the house once again pulling them ever-closer, Meg and Esther must find the connection between their sister's death and the shadow that has chased them across the years...before the darkness claims them, too.
As emotional as it is haunting, Through the Midnight Door explores the sometimes-fragile bonds of sisterhood and the way deeply rooted trauma can pass from generation to generation.
"A gorgeously realized, deeply affecting horror story about sisterhood, secrets, and all the things that can haunt someone."-- Layne Fargo, author of They Never Learn
A Chickasaw woman who can’t catch a break serves up a little white lie that snowballs into much more in this witty and irresistible rom-com by debut author Danica Nava.
Ember Lee Cardinal has not always been a liar—well, not for anything that counted at least. But her job search is not going well and when her resumé is rejected for the thirty-seventh time, she takes matters into her own hands. She gets “creative” listing her qualifications and answers the ethnicity question on applications with a lie—a half-lie, technically. No one wanted Native American Ember, but white Ember has just landed her dream accounting job on Park Avenue (Oklahoma City, that is).
Accountant Ember thrives in corporate life—and her love life seems to be looking up too: Danuwoa Colson, the IT guy and fellow Native who caught her eye on her first day, seems to actually be interested in her too. Despite her unease over the no-dating policy at work, they start to see each other secretly, which somehow makes it even hotter? But when they're caught in a compromising position on a work trip, a scheming colleague blackmails Ember, threatening to expose their relationship. As the manipulation continues to grow, so do Ember’s lies. She must make the hard decision to either stay silent or finally tell the truth, which could cost her everything.
A villainous, bloodthirsty heroine finds herself plunged into the dangerous world of power, politics and murder in the court of the vampire king in this dark romantic fantasy debut.
Fate is a cruel mistress.
The daughter of a powerful but disgraced Blood Worker, Shan LeC laire has spent her entire life perfecting her blood magic, building her network of spies, and gathering every scrap of power she could. Now, to protect her brother, she assassinates their father and takes her place at the head of the family. And that is only the start of her revenge.
Samuel Hutchinson is a bastard with a terrible gift. When he stumbles upon the first victim of a magical serial killer, he's drawn into the world of magic and intrigue he's worked so hard to avoid - and is pulled deeply into the ravenous and bloodthirsty court of the vampire king.
Tasked by the Eternal King to discover the identity of the killer cutting a bloody swath through the city, Samuel, Shan and mysterious Royal Blood Worker Isaac find themselves growing ever closer to each other. But Shan's plans are treacherous, and as she lures Samuel into her complicated web of desire, treason and vengeance, he must decide if the good of their nation is worth the cost of his soul.
Fans of From Blood and Ash and Kingdom of the Wicked will devour this decadent, bloodthirsty debut.
Detective Elise King’s investigation into a woman’s murder is getting derailed by a reporter who insists on doing her own investigation in this nail-biting mystery from the author of Local Gone Missing.
When Karen Simmons is murdered on Valentine’s Day, Detective Elise King wonders if she was killed by a man she met online. Karen was all over the dating apps, leading some townspeople to blame her for her own death, while others band together to protest society’s violence against women. Into the divide comes Kiki Nunn, whose aggressive newsgathering once again antagonizes Elise.
A single mother of a young daughter, Kiki is struggling to make a living in the diminished news landscape. Getting a scoop in the Simmons murder would do a lot for her career, and she’s willing to go up against not just Elise but the killer himself to do it.
From the award-winning, psychologically astute author of The Memory Police, a hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them.
“Yoko Ogawa is a quiet wizard, casting her words like a spell, conjuring a world of curiosity and enchantment, secrets and loss. I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.” —Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness
In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt’s family. Tomoko’s aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home—and handsome foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company—are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens and even an old zoo where the family’s pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion—Tomoko’s dignified and devoted aunt, her German great-aunt, and her dashing, charming uncle, who confidently sits as the family’s patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko’s cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling.
In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko’s life. Behind the family's sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand—her uncle’s mysterious absences, her great-aunt’s experience of the Second World War, her aunt’s misery. Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time—and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.
A gripping, enigmatic collection of linked short stories about the reverberations of a serial killer’s crimes in the lives of everyday people.
In the small town of Barrow, Australia, people go about their ordinary lives. They drive to work through the dense state forest. They raise their families. They flirt and yearn. They lie and confess. Some of them leave home. Some of them return.
Darkness thrums beneath the surface of these ordinary lives: the violence of one man, a serial killer whose murders made Barrow infamous. His twelve victims—women, men, mostly young—are long gone, but their deaths are felt, beyond the forest where they were buried, beyond this country, beyond even this time. In the past, where a young woman on a school trip to Rome sees something she shouldn’t have. In the present, where a man confronts an ancient grief on the suburban streets of Texas. In the future, in the hands of journalists and podcast hosts and television actors whose livelihoods hinge on the twin spectacles of loss and violence.
Highway Thirteen is a luminous wonder: a book about the collisions between public and private selves, between parents and children, between history and what comes after, between the living and the dead. Fiona McFarlane’s roving vision is itself a story about stories—those we tell, retell, forget, sell, disprove, inherit, live through—and a work of extraordinary power and magic.
The children investigate some mysterious happenings in their hotel in New York City.
Now with a reimagined look! Join Tim and his friends on a treacherous journey across the seas in the laugh-out-loud funny, highly illustrated third book of the New York Times bestselling Once Upon a Tim chapter book series from Spy School author Stuart Gibbs.
After helping Princess Grace foil the villainous Prince Ruprecht—twice!—junior knights Tim, Belinda, and Ferkle are on a new quest—this time to recover the Queen of Merryland’s precious golden fleece (and more importantly, the protective amulet in its pocket) from the Kingdom of Dinkum. The safety of all Merryland depends upon them.
But first, they must face the deadly Sea of Terror and the dastardly perils it contains. Tim and his friends will have to use every ounce of bravery, valor, and intelligence they possess to navigate the treacherous waters—or else risk becoming flotsam on the waves.
Jack and Annie continue their quest for the secrets of happiness–secrets they need if they’re going to save Merlin. But when the magic tree house leads them to a tiny deserted island in the middle of the ocean, they’re not sure who needs help more–Merlin or themselves! The brother and sister team are soon rescued by a ship of explorers and scientists. But the crew isn’t looking for the secrets of happiness. The crew is looking for . . . a sea monster!
The tale of the sea king's daughter Ariel is a beloved one of losing-and then finding-one's own voice. The story has been told many times and in many ways. But always the mergirl wants more than her world can offer, and her father demands that she live within the confines of his domain. Her rebelliousness costs the little mermaid her voice and nearly her soul. But the power of good prevails, and Ariel emerges proud and unchanged.
And yet this is only half the story. So what of Ariel's nemesis, Ursula, the sea witch? What led to her becoming so twisted, scorned, and filled with hatred? Many tales have tried to explain her motives. Here is one account of what might have shaped the sea witch into a detestable and poor unfortunate soul.
Jules Verne's classic science fiction fantasy carries its hero--Professor Aronnax of the Museum of Paris--on a thrilling and dangerous journey far below the waves to see what creatures live in the ocean's depths. In the process, Verne imagined a vessel that had not yet been invented: the submarine.
Set against the backdrop of Caribbean folklore, Lisa Stringfellow's spellbinding middle grade debut tells of a grieving girl and a vengeful mermaid and will enchant readers who loved Kacen Callender's Hurricane Child or Christian McKay Heidicker's Scary Stories for Young Foxes.
Ever since her mother's death, Kela feels every bit as broken as the shards of glass, known as "mermaid's tears," that sparkle on the Caribbean beaches of St. Rita. So when Kela and her friend Lissy stumble across an ancient-looking comb in a coral cave, with all she's already lost, Kela can't help but bring home her very own found treasure.
Far away, deep in the cold ocean, the mermaid Ophidia can feel that her comb has been taken. And despite her hatred of all humans, her magic requires that she make a bargain: the comb in exchange for a wish.
But what Kela wants most is for her mother to be alive. And a wish that big will exact an even bigger price...
Don't miss the novel that Newbery-winning author Kelly Barnhill calls "one of the most promising works of fiction in a long time"!
A dazzling story full of heart about how one twelve-year-old channels her rage into synchronized swimming dreams, from the author of The Education of Margot Sanchez and Never Look Back, Lilliam Rivera.
Natalia de la Cruz Rivera y Santiago, also known as Nat, was swimming neighborhood kids out of their money at the local Boyle Heights pool when her life changed. The L.A. Mermaids performed, emerging out of the water with matching sequined swimsuits, and it was then that synchronized swimming stole her heart.
The problem? Her activist mom and professor dad think it's a sport with too much emphasis on looks—on being thin and white. Nat grew up the youngest in a house full of boys, so she knows how to fight for what she wants, using her anger to fuel her. People often underestimate her swimming skills when they see her stomach rolls, but she knows better than to worry about what people think. Sometimes, she feels more like a submarine than a mermaid, but she wonders if she could be both.
Barely Floating explores what it means to sparkle in your skin, build community with those who lift you up, and keep floating when waters get rough.
A Printz Honor winner!
Ellie is tired of being fat-shamed and does something about it in this poignant debut novel-in-verse.
Ever since Ellie wore a whale swimsuit and made a big splash at her fifth birthday party, she's been bullied about her weight. To cope, she tries to live by the Fat Girl Rules—like "no making waves," "avoid eating in public," and "don't move so fast that your body jiggles." And she's found her safe space—her swimming pool—where she feels weightless in a fat-obsessed world. In the water, she can stretch herself out like a starfish and take up all the room she wants. It's also where she can get away from her pushy mom, who thinks criticizing Ellie's weight will motivate her to diet. Fortunately, Ellie has allies in her dad, her therapist, and her new neighbor, Catalina, who loves Ellie for who she is. With this support buoying her, Ellie might finally be able to cast aside the Fat Girl Rules and starfish in real life--by unapologetically being her own fabulous self.
For fans of Small Spaces, Doll Bones, and Mary Downing Hahn, a truly chilling (and historically inspired) ghost story from the award-winning author of The Forgotten Girl.
Celeste knows she should be excited to spend two weeks at her grandparents' lake house with her brother, Owen, and their cousins Capri and Daisy, but she's not.
Bugs, bad cell reception, and the dark waters of the lake... no thanks. On top of that, she just failed her swim test and hates being in the water--it's terrifying. But her grandparents are strong believers in their family knowing how to swim, especially having grown up during a time of segregation at public pools.
And soon strange things start happening--the sound of footsteps overhead late at night. A flickering light in the attic window. And Celete's cousins start accusing her of pranking them when she's been no where near them!
Things at the old house only get spookier until one evening when Celeste looks in the steamy mirror after a shower and sees her face, but twisted, different...
Who is the girl in the mirror? And what does she want?
Past and present mingle in this spine-tingling ghost story by award-winning author India Hill Brown.
Now a #1 New York Times bestseller! A touching and lyrical tale about a remarkable sea otter, from Newbery Medalist Katherine Applegate, author of Wishtree.
Meet Odder, the Queen of Play:
Nobody has her moves.
She doesn’t just swim to the bottom,
she dive-bombs.
She doesn’t just somersault,
she triple-doughnuts.
She doesn’t just ride the waves,
she makes them.
Odder spends her days off the coast of central California, practicing her underwater acrobatics and spinning the quirky stories for which she’s known. She’s a fearless daredevil, curious to a fault. But when Odder comes face-to-face with a hungry great white shark, her life takes a dramatic turn, one that will challenge everything she believes about herself—and about the humans who hope to save her.
Inspired by the true story of a Monterey Bay Aquarium program that pairs orphaned otter pups with surrogate mothers, this poignant and humorous tale told in free verse examines bravery and healing through the eyes of one of nature’s most beloved and charming animals.
The wilderness is a place of beauty and peace. But it is also filled with fierce predators, poisonous plants, and raging rivers. Will you: Try to survive the harsh mountains of Alaska after being abandoned during an outdoor training trip? Struggle to make your way out of the deep forests after becoming lost in Australia's Blue Mountains? Attempt to find help for your injured brother in Washington's Cascade Mountains?
The Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War have brought an official end to slavery, yet some Southern slave owners are refusing to comply. The road to freedom is still long and hard for many African Americans, but you're not giving up. Will you: Overcome obstacles as you make your way north from Texas, looking to begin a new life of freedom? Seek out your family, from whom you were separated as a child, after emancipation? Fight back when you take work as an apprentice but find that you're still treated as a slave? YOU CHOOSE offers multiple perspectives on history, supporting Common Core reading standards and providing readers a front-row seat to the past.
We've sent a man to the moon, but.....can human beings live in space? A global team of engineers and scientists combined forces to design and create a space station so that we could find out. You've always been excited by the idea of space exploration. Space jobs can be difficult, or downright dangerous. Do you have what it takes to join the crew? You can be a systems engineer and design the robots, fly to the station as a shuttle astronaut, or even live on the completed station. Will you make the cut?
You are a samurai warrior in medieval Japan. As one of the most feared and respected warriors in history, you are an expert fighter. You wield powerful weapons without fear. And above all else, you follow a strict code of honor, defending it even to the death. Will you: fight in the Gempai wars in the 1100s? stand behind your leader, Nobunaga, as he faces attack in 1560? search for enlightenment as a wandering ronin in the 1600s?
You are surrounded by the vast, unforgiving landscape of the coldest place on Earth: Antarctica. Even during the summer months, bone chilling cold, raging blizzards, and treacherous ice threatens human survival. Will you, Join the race to be the first to reach the South Pole? Attempt to ski across the continent as part of an all female expedition? Study Antarctic plant and animal life as a scientist at a research station? Experience the life or death dilemmas of a place few people ever see. YOU CHOOSE what you'll do next. The choices you make will either lead you to safety or to doom.
World War I has just exploded in Europe. The peace of the entire world is in danger. How will you help? Will you: Join the Belgian resistance movement? Fight as a British Army soldier? Serve as a volunteer with the American Field Service? YOU CHOOSE what to do next. The path you choose can lead to heroism, success, or death. The path you take is up to you.
Experience the Stanley Hotel as you've never seen it before up close and personal! YOU CHOOSE the path you take through this haunted hotel. Follow the path of a modern-day visitor in this thrilling nonfiction title.
You're living in the United States during the time of the Westward Expansion. Settlers are heading west on the Oregon Trail as they seek better lives. Will you: Go west with your family as part of a wagon train? Serve as a trail guide for a group of settlers? Try to cope with the changes in your way of life as a western American Indian? Everything in this book happened to real people. And YOU CHOOSE what you do next. The choices you make could lead you to opportunity, to wealth, to poverty, or even to death.
In the early 1900s, adults hoped to find parents for homeless city children by sending them west on trains. Most of these children had no idea whether they would find kind adoptive families or be forced to work like slaves. Will you: * Head west after living on the streets of New York City? * Search for a home for you and your three younger siblings? * Try to care for yourself and your baby sister on your own?
Experience Alcatraz as you've never seen it before--up close and personal! YOU CHOOSE the path you take through this haunted prison site. Follow the path of a modern-day visitor in this thrilling nonfiction title.
A mother's death forces a teen girl to reevaluate their tumultuous relationship in this powerful coming-of-age novel for teens. For fans of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter.
After years of physical and verbal abuse from her mother, fourteen-year-old Coi moved in with her father, and together they created a peaceful life. But now, four years later, that peace is shattered when her mother dies.
While Coi struggles to find kindness in her heart for the woman who did nothing but hurt her, her mother's passing does help reopen the door to her mother's side of the family. It's only through reconnecting with her estranged family members, especially her younger half-sister Kayla, that Coi's long-held views about her mother are challenged.
And when Coi begins to see visions of her mother in her dreams, she is forced to ask herself what it means to forgive and be forgiven, and, most importantly, what it means to be family.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Every Day, this is a queer love story set against the backdrop of the 2024 presidential election, in a reimagining of David Levithan’s 2004 novel Wide Awake.
When David Levithan published Wide Awake in 2004, he set it in an imagined 2024, where a gay Jewish man had just been elected president of the United States, until a governor decides that some election results in his state are invalid, awarding crucial votes to the other candidate and his fellow party member. What follows is the story of teens Jimmy and Duncan as they explore their relationship, their politics, and their country.
In Wide Awake Now, David Levithan is flipping the script and rewriting Jimmy and Duncan’s story in the real 2024, rather than his imagined version. This is a protest novel for today.
Once again, David Levithan proves the critical importance of standing up for what you believe in and the cost of apathy in today’s political climate.
INSTANT INDIE BESTSELLER
A YA anthology of horror stories centering Black girls who battle monsters, both human and supernatural, and who survive to the end
Be warned, dear reader: The Black girls survive in this one.
Celebrating a new generation of bestselling and acclaimed Black writers, The Black Girl Survives in This One makes space for Black girls in horror. Fifteen chilling and thought-provoking stories place Black girls front and center as heroes and survivors who slay monsters, battle spirits, and face down death. Prepare to be terrified and left breathless by the pieces in this anthology.
The bestselling and acclaimed authors include Erin E. Adams, Monica Brashears, Charlotte Nicole Davis, Desiree S. Evans, Saraciea J. Fennell, Zakiya Dalila Harris, Daka Hermon, Justina Ireland, L.L. McKinney, Brittney Morris, Maika & Maritza Moulite, Eden Royce, and Vincent Tirado. The foreword is by Tananarive Due.
From acclaimed author Makiia Lucier, a dazzling, romantic fantasy inspired by Pacific Island mythology.
In the old tales, it is written that the egg of a seadragon, dragonfruit, holds within it the power to undo a person's greatest sorrow. But as with all things that offer hope when hope had gone, the tale came with a warning.
Every wish demands a price.
Hanalei of Tamarind is the cherished daughter of an old island family. But when her father steals a seadragon egg meant for an ailing princess, she is forced into a life of exile. In the years that follow, Hanalei finds solace in studying the majestic seadragons that roam the Nominomi Sea. Until, one day, an encounter with a female dragon offers her what she desires most. A chance to return home, and to right a terrible wrong.
Samahtitamahenele, Sam, is the last remaining prince of Tamarind. But he can never inherit the throne, for Tamarind is a matriarchal society. With his mother ill and his grandmother nearing the end of her reign. Sam is left with two choices: to marry, or to find a cure for the sickness that has plagued his mother for ten long years. When a childhood companion returns from exile, she brings with her something he has not felt in a very long time-hope.
But Hanalei and Sam are not the only ones searching for the dragonfruit. And as they battle enemies both near and far, there is another danger they cannot escape...that of the dragonfruit itself.
New York Times bestsellers P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast return with Draw Down the Moon, the first book in a new duology set in a dark and magickal world filled with incredible danger and irresistible romance.
A mystical school. A mysterious death. A magickal romance.
Wren Nightingale isn’t supposed to have any elemental powers. Born of magickal parents but not under one of the four fated astrological full moons, she is destined for life as a Mundane—right up until she starts glowing on her eighteenth birthday. In a heartbeat, Wren’s life is turned upside down, and she’s suddenly leaving her home for the mystical Academia de la Luna—a secret magickal school on a hidden island off the Seattle coast.
Lee Young has always known about his future at the academy. He has three goals: pass the trials, impress the Moon Council, and uphold his family’s reputation. But he wasn’t expecting to be attending alongside the girl he’s been secretly in love with for as long as he can remember.
As Wren and Lee are thrown into the academy’s grueling trials, they quickly learn there’s something different—and dangerous—about the school this year. Wren will have to navigate a web of secrets, prophecies . . . and murder. And Lee will have to decide what to protect: his family’s legacy, or the girl he loves.
What if the witch gave Merida a different spell? This New York Times best-selling series twists Disney*Pixar's Brave into a fast-paced story in which Merida is sent back in time.
If you could change your fate, would you? Merida understands that as princess of Clan DunBroch, she has certain obligations--but that doesn't mean she has to like it. Especially when one of those obligations means losing her freedom by becoming betrothed to a man she has never met. Merida balks at this tradition, but her mother Queen Elinor insists that Merida must do this to embrace her role as future queen.
Determined to chart her own path, Merida follows magical wisps to a witch's cottage, where she is given a magic pastry and promised it will incite "a great transformation" in her mother. But instead of feeding Elinor the pastry, Merida eats it herself.
Merida awakens in the past, a now-teenage Elinor holding a knife to her throat and accusing her of espionage. She's been transported to a time when the Clans MacCameron and DunBroch are bitter enemies. And it just so happens that the timing of Merida's arrival has kept Elinor and Fergus from meeting.
Will Merida be able to bridge the rival clans, help her parents fall in love, and change her own fate?
Bookpage Most Anticipated YA of 2024
Shane works with her mother and their ghost dogs, tracking down missing persons even when their families can't afford to pay. Their own family was displaced from their traditional home years ago following a devastating flood - and the loss of Shane's father and her grandparents. They don't think they'll ever get their home back.
Then Shane's mother and a local boy go missing, after a strange interaction with a fairy ring. Shane, her brother, her friends, and her lone, surviving grandparent - who isn't to be trusted - set off on the road to find them. But they may not be anywhere in this world - or this place in time.
Nevertheless, Shane is going to find them.
Darcie Little Badger's Elatsoe launched her career and in the years since has become a beloved favorite. This prequel to Elatsoe, centered on Ellie's grandmother, deepens and expands Darcie's one-of-a-kind world and introduces us to another cast of characters that will wend their way around readers' hearts.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Downstairs Girl comes a YA murder mystery noir set in 1930s Los Angeles’s Chinatown.
“A captivating and crackling noir full of suspenseful twists. Readers will fall in love with the Chow sisters and their quest for the truth.” —Kathleen Glasgow, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces and The Agathas
LOS ANGELES, 1932: Lulu Wong, star of the silver screen and the pride of Chinatown, has a face known to practically everyone, especially the Chow sisters—May, Gemma, and Peony—Lulu’s former classmates and neighbors. So the girls instantly know it’s Lulu when they discover a body one morning in an out-of-the-way stable, far from the Beverly Hills home where she lived after her fame skyrocketed.
The sisters suspect Lulu’s death is the result of foul play, but the police don’t seem motivated to investigate. Even worse, there are signs that point to a cover-up, and powerful forces in the city want to frame the killing as evidence that Chinatown is a den of iniquity and crime, even more reason it should be demolished to make room for the construction of a new railway depot, Union Station.
Worried that neither the police nor the papers will treat Lulu fairly—no matter her fame and wealth—the sisters set out to solve their friend’s murder themselves, and maybe save their neighborhood in the bargain. But with Lulu’s killer still on the loose, the girls’ investigation just might put them square in the crosshairs of a cold-blooded murderer.
When girls in Gotham City go missing, Harley Quinn is determined to track down their kidnapper. But the only way to outsmart a villain is to engage in a little villainy herself. Don't miss the adrenaline-racing conclusion to the Harley Quinn trilogy.
In Gotham City even the heroes are wicked.
Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy can't wait to cross off the final items on their summer bucket list. They still need to:
But their to-do list gets more dangerous when young girls vanish from the streets of Gotham City. The only clues left behind are the dolls on Harley's doorstep from a mysterious sender known as the Dollmaker. The message is clear: come find me…if you dare.
Award-winning author Rachael Allen delivers the fast-paced and fiercely feminist conclusion to the Harley Quinn trilogy.
“Allen’s Harley is a fierce, righteous, brilliant, and preternaturally brace ball of chaos. I loved and feared every single minute with her.” –Dahlia Adler, author of Cool for the Summer
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of the multimillion-copy bestselling A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series and Five Survive comes a gripping mystery thriller following one teen’s search for the truth about her mother’s shocking disappearance—and even more shocking reappearance—during the filming of a true crime documentary.
Lights. Camera. Lies.
Eighteen-year-old Bel has lived her whole life in the shadow of her mom’s mysterious disappearance. Sixteen years ago, Rachel Price vanished and young Bel was the only witness, but she has no memory of it. Rachel is gone, long presumed dead, and Bel wishes everyone would just move on.
But the case is dredged up from the past when the Price family agrees to a true crime documentary. Bel can’t wait for filming to end, for life to go back to normal. And then the impossible happens. Rachel Price reappears, and life will never be normal again.
Rachel has an unbelievable story about what happened to her. Unbelievable, because Bel isn’t sure it’s real. If Rachel is lying, then where has she been all this time? And—could she be dangerous? With the cameras still rolling, Bel must uncover the truth about her mother, and find out why Rachel Price really came back from the dead . . .
From world-renowned author Holly Jackson comes a mind-blowing masterpiece about one girl’s search for the truth, and the terror in finding out who your family really is.