New Titles
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Where the rivers merge
From New York Times bestselling author Mary Alice Monroe comes her highly anticipated Where the Rivers Merge, the first of two epic and triumphant novels celebrating one intrepid woman's life across multiple generations in the American South.
1908: The Lowcountry of South Carolina is at the cusp of change. Mayfield, the grand estate held for generations by the Rivers family, is the treasured home of young Eliza. A free spirit, she refuses to be confined by societal norms and spends her days exploring the vast property, observing wildlife, and riding horses. But the Great War, coastal storms, and family turmoil bring unexpected challenges to Eliza, putting her on a collision course with the patriarchal traditions of a bygone era.
1988: At 88, Eliza is the scion of the Rivers/DeLancey family. She's fought a lifetime to save her beloved Mayfield and is too independent and committed to quietly retire and leave the fate of the estate to her greedy son. She must make decisions that will assure the future of the land and her family--or watch them both be split apart.
Set against the evocative landscape of the twentieth-century Lowcountry, Where the Rivers Merge is a dramatic and sweeping multigenerational family story of unyielding love, lessons learned, profound sacrifices, and the indomitable spirit of a woman determined to persevere in the face of change in order to protect her family legacy and the land she loves.
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The tenant
There's no place like home...
Blake Porter is riding high, until he's not. Fired abruptly from his job as a VP of marketing and unable to make the mortgage payments on the new brownstone he shares with his fiancée, he's desperate to make ends meet.
Enter Whitney. Beautiful, charming, down-to-earth, and looking for a room to rent. She's exactly what Blake's looking for. Or is she?
Because something isn't quite right. The neighbors start treating Blake differently. The smell of decay permeates his home, no matter how hard he scrubs. Strange noises jar him awake in the middle of the night. And soon Blake fears someone knows his darkest secrets...
Danger lives right at home, and by the time Blake realizes it, it'll be far too late. The trap is already set.
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The perfect son
"Mrs. Cass, we were hoping your son could answer a few questions about the girl who disappeared last night . . . " Erika Cass has a perfect family and a perfect life. Until the evening when two detectives show up at her front door. A high school girl has vanished from Erika's quiet suburban neighborhood. The police suspect the worst--murder. And Erika's teenage son, Liam, was the last person to see the girl alive. Erika has always sensed something dark and disturbed in her seemingly perfect older child. She wants to believe he's innocent, but as the evidence mounts, she can't deny the truth--Liam may have done the unthinkable. Now she must ask herself: How far will she go to protect her son?
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The locked door
Some doors are locked for a reason . . . While eleven-year-old Nora Davis was up in her bedroom doing homework, she had no idea her father was killing women in the basement. Until the day the police arrived at their front door. Decades later, Nora's father is spending his life behind bars, and Nora is a successful surgeon with a quiet, solitary existence. Nobody knows her father was a notorious serial killer. And she intends to keep it that way. Then Nora discovers one of her young female patients has been murdered. In the same unique and horrific manner that her father used to kill his victims. Somebody knows who Nora is. Somebody wants her to take the fall for this unthinkable crime. But she's not a killer like her father. The police can't pin anything on her. As long as they don't look in her basement.
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When we were real
From multiple award-winning author Daryl Gregory comes a madcap adventure following two friends on a cross-country bus tour through the mind-boggling glitches in their simulated world as they grapple with love, family, secrets, and the very nature of reality in a simulation. JP and Dulin have been the best of friends for decades. When JP finds out his cancer has aggressively returned, Dulin decides it's the perfect time for one last adventure: a week-long bus tour of North America's Impossibles, the physics-defying glitches and geographic miracles that started cropping up seven years earlier--right after the Announcement that revealed our world to be merely a digital simulacrum. The outing, courtesy of Canterbury Trails Tours, promises the trip of a (not completely real) lifetime in a (not completely deluxe) coach. Their fellow passengers are 21st-century pilgrims, each of them on the tour for their own reasons. There's a nun hunting for an absent God, a pregnant influencer determined to make her child too famous to be deleted, a crew of horny octogenarians living each day like it's their last, and a professor on the run from leather-clad sociopaths who take The Matrix as scripture. Each stop on this trip is stranger than the last--a Tunnel outside of time, a zero gravity Geyser, the compound of motivational-speaking avatar--with everyone barreling toward the tour's iconic final stop Ghost City, where unbeknownst to our travelers the answer to who is running the simulation may await. When We Were Real is a tour-de-force and exploration of what really matters, even in an artificial world.
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Sunrise on the reaping
As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.
Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.
When Haymitch's name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He's torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who's nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he's been set up to fail. But there's something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.
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Murder at Gulls Nest
From Jess Kidd, the bestselling author of Things in Jars comes the first in a cozy mystery series about a former nun who searches for answers in a small seaside town after her pen pal mysteriously disappears.
"I believe every one of us at Gulls Nest is concealing some kind of secret."
1954. When her former novice's dependable letters stop, Nora Breen asks to be released from her vows. Haunted by a line in Frieda's letter, Nora arrives at Gulls Nest, a charming hotel in Gore-on-Sea in Kent.
A seaside town, a place of fresh air and relaxed constraints, is the perfect place for a new start. Nora hides her identity and pries into the lives of her fellow guests. But when a series of bizarre murders rattles the occupants of Gulls Nest, it's time to ask if a dark past can ever really be left behind.
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The last session
From the instant New York Times bestselling author of The Writing Retreat, a white-knuckled locked-room thriller about a social worker who, after coming face-to-face with her dark past, must infiltrate a mysterious wellness center in the deserts of New Mexico. When a catatonic woman shows up at the psychiatric unit, social worker Thea swears she knows her from somewhere. She's shocked to discover the patient holds a link to a traumatic time in her past. Upon regaining lucidity, the patient claims she can't remember the horrific recent events that caused her brain to shut down. Thea's at a loss--especially when the patient is ripped away from her as suddenly as she appeared. Determined to find her, Thea follows a trail of clues to a remote center in Southwestern New Mexico, where a charismatic couple holds a controversial monthly retreat to uncover attendees' romantic and sexual issues. Forced to participate in increasingly intimate exercises, Thea finds herself inching closer not only to her missing patient, but also to tantalizing answers about her harrowing past. However, time is running out, and if she stays for the last session, she too might lose her mind...or worse.
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The Griffin Sisters' greatest hits
One of the most anticipated books of the year, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner, a glimmering novel set in the world of pop music about sisters, motherhood, young love, and the dreams we chase.
Sisters Cassie and Zoe Grossberg were born just a year apart but could not have been more different. Zoe, blessed with charm and beauty, yearned for fame from the moment she could sing into a hairbrush. Cassie was a musical prodigy who never felt at home in her own skin and preferred the safety of the shadows.
On the brink of adulthood in the early 2000s, destiny intervened, catapulting the sisters into the spotlight as the pop sensation the Griffin Sisters, hitting all the touchstones of early aughts fame--SNL, MTV, Rolling Stone magazine--along the way.
But after a whirlwind year in the public eye, the band abruptly broke up.
Two decades later, Zoe's a housewife; Cassie's off the grid. The sisters aren't speaking, and the real reason for the Griffin Sisters' breakup is still a mystery. Zoe's teenage daughter, Cherry, who's determined to be a star in spite of Zoe's warnings, is on a quest to learn the truth about what happened to the band all those years ago.
As secrets emerge, all three women must face the consequences of their choices: the ones they made and the ones the music industry made for them. Can they forgive each other--and themselves? And will the Griffin Sisters ever make music again?
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The corruption of Hollis Brown
From acclaimed author K. Ancrum comes a queer romantic thriller in which the lives of Hollis, a boy in search of meaning, and Walt, a spirit with unfinished business, collide when Walt takes possession of Hollis's body...and maybe his heart. For fans of Adam Silvera and Aiden Thomas!
Hollis Brown is stuck. Born to a blue-collar American Dream, Hollis lives in a rotting small town where no one can afford to leave. Hollis's only bright spots are his two best friends, cool girls Annie and Yulia, and the thrill of fighting his classmates.
As if his circumstances couldn't get worse, a chance encounter with a mysterious stranger named Walt results in a frightening trap. After unknowingly making a deal at the crossroads, Hollis finds himself losing control of his body and mind, falling victim to possession. Walt, the ghost making a home inside him, has a deep and violent history rooted in the town Hollis grew up in and he has unfinished business to take care of.
As Walt and Hollis begin working together to put Walt's spirit to rest, an unspeakable bond forms between them, and the boys begin falling for one another in unexpected ways. But it's only a matter of time before Hollis's best friends begin to notice that something about Hollis isn't quite...right.
With the threat of a long-overdue exorcism looming before them, will Walt and Hollis be able to protect their love and undo the curse that turned their town from a garden of possibility into a place where dreams go to die?
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What time the Sexton's spade doth rust
Flavia de Luce has taken on the mentorship of her odious moon-faced cousin Undine, who has come to live at Buckshaw following the death of her mother. Undine's main talent, aside from cultivating disgusting habits, seems to be raising Flavia's hackles, although in her best moments she shows potential for trespassing, trickery, and other assorted mayhem. When Major Greyleigh, a local recluse and former hangman, is found dead after a breakfast of poisonous mushrooms, suspicion falls on the de Luce family's longtime cook, Mrs. Mullet. After all, wasn't it she who'd picked the mushrooms, cooked the omelet, and served it to Greyleigh moments before his death? "I have to admit," says Flavia, an expert in the chemical nature of poisons, "that I'd been praying to God for a jolly good old-fashioned mushroom poisoning. Not that I wanted anyone to die, but why give a girl a gift such as mine without giving her the opportunity to use it?"But Flavia knows the beloved Mrs. Mullet is innocent. Together with Dogger, estate gardener and partner-in-crime, and the obnoxious Undine, Flavia sets out to find the real killer and clear Mrs. Mullet's good name. Little does she know that following the case's twists and turns will lead her to a most surprising discovery--one with the power to upend her entire life.
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Count my lies
Sloane Caraway is a liar.
Harmless lies, mostly, to make her self-proclaimed sad, little life a bit more interesting.
So when Sloane sees a young girl in tears at a park one afternoon, she can't help herself--she tells the girl's very attractive dad that she is a nurse and helps him pull a bee stinger from the girl's foot.
With this lie, and chance encounter, Sloane becomes the nanny for the wealthy and privileged life of Jay and Violet Lockhart. The perfect New York couple, with a brownstone, a daughter in private school, and summers on Block Island.
But maybe Sloane isn't the only one lying, and all that is picture-perfect harbors a much more dangerous truth. To say anything more is to spoil the most exciting, twisty, and bitingly smart suspense novel to come out in years.
The thing about lies is that they add up and form their own truth and twisted prison of a world. And in Count My Lies, Sophie Stava spins a breakneck, unputdownable thriller about the secrets we keep and the terrifying dangers that lurk just under the picture-perfect images we spend so much time trying to maintain.
Be careful what you lie for.
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Any trope but you
A bestselling romance author flees to Alaska to reinvent herself and write her first murder mystery, but the rugged resort proprietor soon has her fearing she's living in a rom-com plot instead in this earnestly spectacular debut by a stunning new voice. Beloved romance author Margot Bradley has a dark secret: she doesn't believe in Happily Ever Afters. Not for herself, not for her readers, and not even for her characters, for whom she secretly writes alternate endings that swap weddings and babies for divorce papers and the occasional slashed tire. When her Happily Never After document is hacked and released to the public, she finds herself canceled by her readers and dropped by her publisher. Desperate to find a way to continue supporting her chronically ill sister, Savannah, Margot decides to trade meet-cutes for murder. The fictional kind. Probably. But when Savannah books Margot a six-week stay in a remote Alaskan resort to pen her first murder mystery, Margot finds herself running from a moose and leaping into the arms of the handsome proprietor, making her fear she's just landed in a romance novel instead. The last thing Dr. Forrest Wakefield ever expected was to leave his dream job as a cancer researcher to become a glorified bellhop. What he's really doing at his family's resort is caring for his stubborn, ailing father, and his puzzle-loving mind is slowly freezing over--until Margot shows up. But Forrest doesn't have any room in his life for another person he could lose, especially one with a checkout date. As long snowy nights and one unlikely trope after another draw Margot and Forrest together, they'll each have to learn to overcome their fears and set their aside assumptions before Margot leaves--or risk becoming a Happily Never After story themselves.
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The story she left behind
In 1927, eight-year-old Clara Harrington's magical childhood shatters when her mother, renowned author, Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham, disappears off the coast of South Carolina. Bronwyn stunned the world with a book written in an invented language that became a national sensation when she was just twelve years old. Her departure leaves behind not only a devoted husband and heartbroken daughter, but also the hope of ever translating the sequel to her landmark work. As the headlines focus on the missing author, Clara yearns for something far deeper and more insatiable: her beautiful mother. By 1952, Clara is an illustrator raising her own daughter, Wynnie. When a stranger named Charlie Jameson contacts her from London claiming to have discovered a handwritten dictionary of her mother's lost language. Clara is skeptical. Compelled by the tragedy of her mother's vanishing, she crosses the Atlantic with Wynnie only to arrive during one of London's most deadly natural disasters--the Great Smog. With asthmatic Wynnie in peril, they escape the city with Charlie and find refuge in the Jameson's family retreat nestled in the Lake District. It is there that Clara must find the courage to uncover the truth about her mother and the story she left behind. Told in Patti Callahan Henry's lyrical, enchanting prose, The Story She Left Behind is a captivating novel of mystery and family legacy that captures the profound longing for a mother and the evergreen allure of secrets.
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Open season
People come to Los Angeles to chase their dreams. Sometimes they find themselves cast into a nightmare. And sometimes, the most ardent dreamers turn out to be the most vicious monsters. The body of an aspiring actress is found dumped near a hospital emergency room. She's been drugged and murdered and the motive for the callous crime remains maddeningly out of reach. Until, a prime suspect materializes. Another Hollywood hopeful. Only to be shot dead by a sniper using a weapon that turns out to have been catalogued in a previous murder. And another, before that. It's not long before more bodies begin piling up. What makes the murderous spree baffling is the apparent lack of connection among the victims. Is this the work of a random thrill killer, the toughest of all cases to unravel? But as Alex and Milo dig deeper they're faced with an even knottier scenario: a highly complex killer with deep-seated motivation that will require all of their highly honed skills to decipher. The latest page-turner from #1 New York Times bestseller Jonathan Kellerman, is a tale of psychological complexity, dark suspense, and shocking surprises. A wild ride through L.A.'s surreal underbelly climaxed by an edge-of-the chair conclusion.