Doctor Kal Anderson assumes his heart worked at some point. But now his cold, emotionless existence gives him an edge as a fixer and in-house physician for the Mafia. After admiring the heartless doctor from afar most of her life, Elena catches him in a moment of weakness, and the pair shares a night of passion. Only, the night seems to have the opposite effect. Elena is no longer a simple temptation to Kal, but a necessity. An obsession. One he won’t let anyone stand in his way of—even if that means crashing her wedding to another man, forcing her hand in marriage, and stealing her away to the corrupt island he resides on.
This excerpt includes author footnotes from Sav R. Miller.
More than a million people lose a pregnancy each year, whether through miscarriage, stillbirth, or termination for medical reasons. For most, the experience often casts a shadow of isolation, shame, and blame. Rebecca Little and Colleen Long, childhood friends who grew up to be journalists, both experienced late-term loss, and together they take an incisive, deeply reported look at the issue, working to shatter taboos that have made so many pregnant people feel ashamed and alone. They trace the experience of pregnancy loss and reproductive care from America’s founding to the present day, exposing the deep impact made by a dangerous tangle of laws, politics, medicine, racism, and misogyny.
Isolde, newly coronated queen, has finally found a king worthy of her in the vampire Adrian. But their love for each other has cost Isolde her father and her homeland. With two opposing goddesses playing mortals and vampires like chess pieces against one another, Isolde is uncertain who her allies are in the vampire stronghold of Revekka. Now, as politics in the Red Palace grow more underhanded and a deadly blood mist threatens all of Cordova, Isolde must trust in the bond she’s formed with Adrian, even as she learns troubling information about his complicated past.
Sixteen-year-old Koral and her older brother Emrik risk their lives each day to capture the monstrous maristags that live in the black seas around their island. When the last maristag of the year escapes and Koral has no new maristag to sell, her family’s financial situation takes a turn for the worse and they can’t afford medicine for her chronically ill little sister. Koral’s only choice is to do what no one in the world has ever dared: cheat her way into the Glory Race. As a rebellion rises and rogues attack Koral to try and force her to drop out, she must choose—her life or her sister’s—before the whole island burns.
Author Erika Bolstad was shocked to learn she had inherited mineral rights in North Dakota in the throes of an oil bonanza. Determined to unearth the story behind her unexpected inheritance, she followed the trail to her great-grandmother, Anna, who her family had painted to be a courageous homesteader who paved her way in the unforgiving American West.
But, Bolstad discovers a darker truth about Anna than her family had ever shared. With journalistic rigor, she unearths a history of environmental exploitation and genocide as well as the modern-day consequences of the Great Plains Dream: we could be rich.
In the winter of 1969, the bodies of four young women were discovered in a cemetery near the tip of Cape Cod. In a place once known as Helltown, the victims had been shot, stabbed, dismembered, and mutilated. As investigators would soon learn, the perpetrator was a young, handsome, serial killer named Tony Costa. A bizarre former taxidermist with a split personality and penchant for violence, Costa ultimately mobilized friends in the hippie community for support and retribution and captivated literary icons and rivals Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer. Costa embarked on a daring cat-and-mouse game with investigators, who—as the body count kept growing—were desperate to put an end to the killing season on Cape Cod.
Wren Roland has never been kissed, let alone been in love like all the characters in his favorite movies. On the eve of going home to help run his hometown drive-in, he drunkenly send emails to all the boys he (ahem) loved before he came out. It only makes sense that Derick Haverford, Wren’s #1 pre-coming-out-crush and the drive-in’s new social media marketing intern, is a recipient of one of those emails. And to make matters worse, he doesn’t even remember the infamous high school almost-kiss that Wren’s been pining away over. Now Wren must team up with Derick to make a big promotional push for the drive-in’s annual Dusk-til-Dawn Moviethon. But what started as a professional partnership helps rekindle their old friendship, which might just be Wren’s first step towards finally getting his magical kiss-before-the-credits.
Liesl Weiss has been (mostly) happy working in the rare books department of a large university, managing details and working behind the scenes to make the head of the department look good. But when her boss has a stroke and she’s left to run things, she discovers that the library’s most prized manuscript is missing. Liesl tries to sound the alarm and inform the police about the missing priceless book but is told repeatedly to keep quiet to keep the doors open and the donors happy. But then a librarian goes missing as well. Liesl must investigate both disappearances, unspooling her colleagues’ pasts like the threads of a rare book binding as it becomes clear that someone in the department must be responsible for the theft. What Liesl discovers about the dusty manuscripts she has worked among for so long—and about the people who preserve and revere them—shakes the very foundation on which she has built her life.
The hunted becomes the hunter in this ferocious tale of atonement ideal for readers who connected with the issues of grooming and trauma raised by novels like My Dark Vanessa, Age of Consent, and Trust Exercise. This carefully plotted thriller flips the narrative and eviscerates the notion that a powerful man may simply apologize for his transgressions. Told in dual timelines that collide in a shocking conclusion, Dark Things I Adore paints a deliciously dark picture of ambition, narcissism, and revenge set deep in the Maine wilderness where a brilliant art student’s masterful final thesis will blow her professor’s mind. She isn’t the first student to capture his interest outside the lecture hall, but after a carefully planned weekend at her luxe private home, she intends to be the last.
For fans of Radium Girls and history and WWII buffs, The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line takes you inside the lives and experiences of 15 unknown women heroes from the Greatest Generation, the women who served, fought, struggled, and made things happen during WWII—in and out of uniform, for theirs is a legacy destined to embolden generations of women to come.
