Adults

An intimate look into the life of a legendary mythical villain who has so often been stripped of her voice and humanity in this debut novel, perfect for fans of Madeline Miller's Circe and the works of Jennifer Saint.

You know how Medusa's story ends, but you've never heard her tell her own story... until now.

The only mortal daughter of two sea gods, and a priestess of Athena, Medusa was a woman who thought she had found her place in the world. But when Medusa suffers a horrific violation at the hands of Poseidon, Athena is outraged over the desecration of her name and sends a message by transforming Medusa into the snake-haired monster of legend. With one look, any who meet her gaze is turned to stone. Word of her monstrosity travels fast, igniting a king's fear so greatly that he commands the boy-hero Perseus to bring him her head. With a power that will spare no one, Medusa begins to wonder if this is a blessing or a curse. Medusa only knows that she must leave the city she has come to call home before she harms another soul.

Searching for a haven free from mortals, anger buoying her every step, Medusa journeys across ancient Greece. Her eyes are hidden beneath a blindfold, with nothing but the snakes for company. Through her travels, Medusa discovers solace and understanding in the mythical figures she stumbles upon: A debaucherous wine god, an alluring nymph, and a three-headed dog. But one cannot escape fate forever. As Perseus closes in, Medusa faces a choice: become the monster everyone expects her to be, or cling to the last piece of her humanity. 
 

In this stunning culmination of the award-winning Highway 59 trilogy, Detective Darren Mathews is pulled out of an early retirement to investigate the case of a missing black college student from an all-white sorority and soon finds a town that will stop at nothing to keep its secrets hidden​.

Texas Ranger Darren Mathews isn't sure he's been a good cop, but believes he's got a shot at being a good man--if he manages to dodge the potential indictment hanging over his head and if he, from here on out, pledges allegiance to the truth. It's a virtue the country appears to have wholly lost its grip on, but one Darren sees as his salvation. He is in the midst of remaking his life with the woman he loves, hoping for the peace of country living at his beloved farmhouse, when he is visited by someone who couldn't hold the truth on her tongue if it was dipped in sugar, a woman who's always been bent of tearing his life apart. His mother. Armed with a tall tale about a missing Black college student, Sera (whose white sorority sisters insist she isn't missing at all). Darren must decide if his can trust his mother is telling the truth--and what her ulterior motive may be, and what if that motive has to do with a grand jury deciding his fate.

Darren gets his hooks into the investigation, along the way discovering things about Sera's family and her hometown that are odd at best, vaguely sinister at worst. Hamstrung by local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers who likewise doubt the account of a missing girl, if Darren wants answers, he'll need help from the person whom he swore to never trust again--his mother.

In this emotionally stirring conclusion to the singular Highway 59 series, set three years after the events of Heaven, My Home, Darren reckons with his life's purpose as he's forced to choose between his own peace and the higher call to do good.

After being recruited to pose as a secret agent, a single mom finds herself on an unexpected adventure in this fast-paced and deliciously witty spy romcom, perfect for fans of Finlay Donovan Is Killing It.

Meet Gabby Greene: Housewife. Glorified taxi driver and maid. Burner of meatloaf. Recently divorced Gabby Greene spends most of her days listening to self-help books while wrangling her loving yet erratic kids. Having been married for over a decade, Gabby has shoved aside her career and ambitions to make room for mountains of laundry, running errands, and investigating the case of the missing socks. Her number one suspect: their horny Bichon Frise, Mr. Bubbles. All that changes when a secret government agency comes knocking on Gabby's door. 

At first, she thinks some reality show is pranking her, but the truth hits home when they announce they need her to go undercover and finish a mission that one of their-now-dead-agents started. While she can't deny the uncanny resemblance to her apparent doppelgèanger, taking agent Darcy Dagger's place won't be easy, though, and hilarity and hijinks soon ensue as Gabby contends with juggling her responsibilities and trudging through a crash course in Spy 101 with a handsome James Bond-type who has secrets of his own. 

As Gabby embarks on a dangerous mission involving money laundering, a Russian oligarch, and an unfortunate incident with a prosthetic nose, she begins to realize that she is far from the invisible housewife she once believed herself to be, and that maybe, just maybe, she might be capable of saving the day

THE USA TODAY NATIONAL BESTSELLER!
The author of sales sensation If We Were Villains returns with a story about a ragtag group of night shift workers who meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave.

Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story.

One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?

Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks—and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought.

Atmospheric and eerie, with the ensemble cast her fans love and a delightfully familiar academic backdrop, Graveyard Shift is a modern Gothic tale in If We Were Villains author M. L. Rio’s inimitable style.

Palliative-care physician and award-winning author Anna DeForest returns with an ode to life and to death, and the ways we care for ourselves and others on our long, marvelous walk toward the end.

In a pandemic-hushed city, a young doctor lives a life of insecure attachments: to a distant partner in an untended marriage, to a loaner child who stirs up hurts from the past, to houseplants wilting in a dark apartment on a once-vibrant street. 

Through a yearlong fellowship caring for the dying and their families, death is impossible to ignore, and still more endings loom at every turn--endings made worse by wounded, avoidant doctors who don't know how to let go. But after the sudden loss of a long-estranged father, our unnamed narrator's work is thrown into painful relief, and we see, under threats large and small, how far we will go to hold on to our lives--no matter how little we live them. 

Lyrical and with piercing insight, Our Long Marvelous Dying is a meditation on the twin drives of life and death--and how all of us reckon, day by day, with their ecstatic, inevitable collide.

From the author of White Trash Warlock and Dark Moon, Shallow Sea, Rogue Community College is a delightful fantasy full of magic and mayhem ...

Isaac Frost is an assassin. Raised in the Graveyard of the cruel and mysterious Undertaker, he has mastered the deadly art of the knife and the skill of survival, together with scores of others just like him--young men taken from their families to become the most infamous killers throughout the realms of elves and humans. But Isaac is unique: a single drop of another's blood can confer upon him the knowledge and power of friend and foe alike.

After crossing paths with the elf queen Argent, Isaac is sent to a strange magical school for wayward practitioners in the hopes that he can learn where he--and his unusual talent--fit in the world. Isaac is charmed by the school's chaotic nature and finds himself unexpectedly drawn to Vran, a Sea Elf haunted by secret knowledge.

But Vran isn't the only one with secrets, and Isaac's arrival is no accident. The Undertaker has charged him with infiltrating the school for the purpose of destroying it utterly, and his future rests on completing his mission--before the Undertaker takes matters into his own hands.

A new novel set in the world of the Adam Binder series!

A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF 2024
“Scary and hard to put down. You might be advised not to read it at night.” —STEPHEN KING

A group of students encounter a supernatural terror while on a road trip through Appalachia in this chilling new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the “unforgettable and scary” (Harlan Coben) Chasing the Boogeyman.

1983: Three students from a small college embark on a week-long road trip to film a documentary on roadside memorials for their American Studies class. The project starts out as a fun adventure with long stretches of empty road and nightly campfires where they begin to open up with one another.

But as they venture deeper into the Appalachian backwoods, the atmosphere begins to darken. They notice more and more of the memorials feature a strange, unsettling symbol hinting at a sinister secret. Paranoia sets in when it appears they are being followed. Their vehicle is tampered with overnight and some of the locals appear to be anything but welcoming. Before long, the students can’t help but wonder if these roadside deaths were really random accidents…or is something terrifying at work here?

THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“This story is my latest obsession.” —USA Today bestselling author, Devney Perry

The gods love to play with us mere mortals. And every hundred years, we let them...

I have never been favored by the gods. Far from it, thanks to Zeus.

Living as a cursed office clerk for the Order of Thieves, I just keep my head down and hope the capricious beings who rule from Olympus won't notice me. Not an easy feat, given San Francisco is Zeus' patron city, but I make do. I survive. Until the night I tangle with a different god.

The worst god. Hades.

For the first time ever, the ruthless, mercurial King of the Underworld has entered the Crucible—the deadly contest the gods hold to determine a new ruler to sit on the throne of Olympus. But instead of fighting their own battles, the gods name mortals to compete in their stead.

So why in the Underworld did Hades choose me—a sarcastic nobody with a curse on her shoulders—as his champion? And why does my heart trip every time he says I’m his?

I don’t know if I’m a pawn, bait, or something else entirely to this dangerously tempting god. How can I, when he has more secrets than stars in the sky?

Because Hades is playing by his own rules...and Death will win at any cost.

In this lush and lyrical fantasy debut, Ryan Graudin transports readers to the hidden magical pockets of early 1900s Paris, a place of enchanted salons, fortune tellers who can change your stars, and doorways that can take you to the most unexpected places--and introduces readers to the delightful Céleste Artois, a con artist who will make a deal with the devil in exchange for her life...and change the fate of the world.

Once, Céleste Artois had dreams of being an artist. But when the creative elite of Paris dashed those plans, she turned her talents to forgery and cons. She and the Enchantresses--her two fellow thieves and best friends--see Paris as a rich hunting ground for marks. Yet even though their hideout in Père Lachaise cemetery is bursting with francs, Céleste cannot rest. There is always more to take. And the blood she has begun to cough into her handkerchief means her time is running out.

But everything changes when she encounters Rafe, a mysterious and beautiful stranger who leads her to an enchanted salon--a place where artists can bring wondrous imaginations to life. Céleste is captivated by this establishment, and learns of the existence of magical Paris, hidden in the pockets and alleys of the ordinary world, if one only knows where to look.

Rafe offers Céleste an irresistible deal: the gift of time in exchange for lending him and his benefactor her forging talents. But one must be careful making deals with devils, and there's more to this hidden world than meets the eye. Shadows have begun to circle Paris. And soon, the Enchantresses will find that true magic is far more powerful, and deadly, than they ever imagined.

From the bestselling author of The Pale Blue Eye, Louis Bayard, comes Atonement meets The Paris Wife, a brilliantly original, profoundly empathetic story about Oscar Wilde's wife Constance and their two sons in the aftermath of the famous playwright's imprisonment for homosexuality, told against the backdrop of Victorian England and World War I.

In September of 1892, Oscar Wilde and his family retreated to the idyllic Norfolk countryside for a holiday. His wife, Constance, has every reason to be happy: two beautiful sons, a stellar reputation as an advocate for progressive causes, and a delightfully charming and affectionate husband and father, who is perhaps the most famous man in England. But as an assortment of houseguests arrive, including an aristocratic young wannabe poet named Lord Alfred Douglas, Constance gradually-and then all at once-comes to see that her husband's heart is elsewhere and that the growing intensity between the two men threatens the whole foundation of their lives.

The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts revolves around that fateful summer: what happened, and what might have been. When it was exposed, Oscar's affair with Lord Alfred Douglas-Bosie, as he was known-led to Wilde's imprisonment for homosexuality, and the financial and emotional ruin of his family. In Act Two, Bayard reveals Constance and their sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, in exile, forced to sell their possessions, leave England, and hide their identities. Act Three, from the perspective of Cyril, brings readers into the French trenches of World War I, where Cyril must grapple with the kind of man he wants to become, while Act Four reveals Vyvyan in London, years after the war, searching for answers from those who knew his parents. And in a brilliant act of the imagination, Act Five brings the entire cast back together in a surprising, poignant, and tremendously satisfying tableau.

With Louis Bayard's trademark sparkling dialogue, paired with his deep insight into the lives and longings of all his characters-and based on real events-The Wildes could almost have been created by Oscar Wilde himself: lightly told but with hidden depths, it is an entertaining and dramatic story about the human condition.

Set against the brooding landscape of the Hebrides, Peter May returns to the territory of his bestselling Lewis Trilogy, and his much-loved detective, Fin Macleod.

When the lifeless body of eighteen-year-old Caitlin is discovered on a desolate beach by the Black Loch, questions of murder and secrecy shroud the tight-knit community. It soon emerges that the young woman was in an illicit relationship with Fionnlagh Macleod, a married teacher at the Nicholson Institute where she was a student. Her lover becomes the prime suspect in the murder investigation. He is also Fin's son.

Despite leaving the island a decade earlier to escape the haunting memories of his past, Fin is compelled to return to Lewis in a desperate attempt, despite the evidence, to clear his troubled son's name. He will discover that the crime is connected to his own teenage years, in a tragic salmon fishing accident that had led to two deaths, and in the growth of a multi-billion pound industry on the island.

The Black Loch takes us on a journey through family ties, hidden relationships and unforgiving landscapes, where suspense, violent revenge and revelation converge in the shadow of the Black Loch.

Winner of the 2020 Mauricio Achar Award

Does evil lurk in the shadows of the forest or within the human heart? Eduardo Sangarcía's tale of one woman's trial opens the door to deeper horrors.

Anna Thalberg is a villager shunned for her red hair and provocative beauty, so when she is dragged from her home and accused of witchcraft, her neighbors do not intervene. Only Klaus, her husband, and Father Friedrich, a priest experiencing a crisis of faith, set out to Würzburg to prove her innocence. There, locked in a prison tower, Anna faces isolation and torture while anxiety builds over strange happenings within the city walls. Can the two men convince the Church inquisitors to release Anna, or will she burn at the stake?

The Trial of Anna Thalberg is a tale of religious persecution, superstition, and suffering during the Protestant Reformation. While mapping the medieval fear of occultism and demons, it delves into enduring human concerns: the oppression of women, the inhumanity of institutions, and the question of God's existence. Frantic in pace and experimental in form, this is an unforgettable debut from Mexican author Eduardo Sangarcía.

In Michelle Chouinard’s clever mystery The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco, the granddaughter of a serial killer shows readers another side of the beloved city.

Welcome to San Francisco, a city with killer charm.

The chill of a San Francisco summer can be deadly. No one knows this better than Capri Sanzio, who makes her living giving serial killer tours of the city. Capri has been interested in the topic since she was a kid, when she discovered she’s the granddaughter of serial killer William ‘Overkill Bill’ Sanzio. She’s always believed in his innocence, though she's never taken the leap to fully dive into the case.

But now an Overkill Bill copycat has struck in San Francisco. And Capri’s former mother-in-law, Sylvia, just cut off Capri’s daughter’s tuition payments. Needing cash, Capri wonders if this is the time to exonerate her grandfather. The case is back in the news and the police will be looking to understand the past to catch a present-day killer. Capri could finally uncover the truth about Overkill Bill—documenting the process with a podcast and a book—and hopefully earn some money.

Before Capri can get very far, the cops discover the copycat’s latest victim: Sylvia. Capri soon finds herself at the heart of the police’s investigation for an entirely different reason. She and her daughter are prime suspects.

This adult epic fantasy debut from Sarah Rees Brennan puts the reader in the villain's shoes, for an adventure that is both "brilliant" (Holly Black) and "supremely satisfying" (Leigh Bardugo). Expect a rogue's gallery of villains including an axe wielding maid, a shining knight with dark moods, a homicidal bodyguard, and a playboy spymaster with a golden heart and a filthy reputation.

When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at living: a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of her favorite fantasy series.

She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. He's impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she's not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor's tale.

So be it. The wicked are better dressed, with better one-liners, even if they're doomed to bad ends. She assembles the wildly disparate villains of the story under her evil leadership, plotting to change their fate. But as the body count rises and the Emperor's fury increases, it seems Rae and her allies may not survive to see the final page.

THIS IS A TALE FOR EVERYONE WHO'S EVER FALLEN FOR THE VILLAIN...

A New York Times Notable Book of 2023

A Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker, L.A. Times, Boston Globe, NPR, The Guardian Author Pick, and Today

Finalist for 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize

Longlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award

“A heart-rending book, but also a beautiful celebration of ‘the glorious pleasure of erecting something new,’ be it a work of art or a human connection.”—The Wall Street Journal

From “one of the finest and bravest novelists at work today,” (Vulture) award-winning writer Idra Novey has conjured a novel of “astonishing and singular” honesty (Rumaan Alam) with two determined, unforgettable female voices.

Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, Take What You Need traces the parallel lives of Jean and her beloved but estranged stepdaughter, Leah, who’s sought a clean break from her rural childhood. In Leah’s urban life with her young family, she’s revealed little about Jean, how much she misses her stepmother’s hard-won insights and joyful lack of inhibition. But with Jean’s death, Leah must return to sort through what’s been left behind.

What Leah discovers is staggering: Jean has filled her ramshackle house with giant sculptures she’s welded from scraps of the area’s industrial history. There’s also a young man now living in the house who played an unknown role in Jean’s last years and in her art.

With great verve and humor, Idra Novey zeros in on the joys and difficulty of family, the ease with which we let distance mute conflict, and the power we can draw from creative pursuits.

Take What You Need explores the continuing mystery of the people we love most with passionate and resonance, this novel illuminating can be built from what others have discarded—art, unexpected friendship, a new contentment of self. This is Idra Novey at her very best.