List

Bestselling and award-winning author David Ellis delivers a fast-paced, twisty thriller that will surprise readers at every turn.

Leo Balanoff is a diagnosed pathological liar with unthinkable skeletons in his family's closet. He's also a crusading attorney who seeks justice at all costs. When a ruthless drug dealer is found dead and Leo’s fingerprints show up on the murder weapon, no one believes a word he says. But he might be the FBI’s only shot at taking down the dealer’s brutal syndicate.

Risk his life going undercover for the feds or head straight to prison for murder? Leo accepts the FBI’s offer—but it comes with a price, including a collision course with his ex, Andi Piotrowski, a former cop and “the one who got away.” Forced to walk a tightrope between an ambitious FBI agent and a cruel, calculating crime boss, Leo’s trapped in a corner. But he has more secrets than anyone realizes, and a few more cards left to play …

An “action-packed [and] profoundly stylish” (Los Angeles Times) epic from Keanu Reeves and China Miéville, unlike anything these two genre-bending pioneers have created before, inspired by the world of the BRZRKR comic books
“[The Book of Elsewhere is] a pulpy, adrenaline-fueled thriller, but it’s also a moody, experimental novel about mortality, the slippery nature of time, and what it means to be human.”—The New York Times

“An exceptionally innovative collaboration from two remarkable minds.”—William Gibson, author of Neuromancer

She said, We needed a tool. So I asked the gods.

There have always been whispers. Legends. The warrior who cannot be killed. Who’s seen a thousand civilizations rise and fall. He has had many names: Unute, Child of Lightning, Death himself. These days, he’s known simply as “B.”

And he wants to be able to die.
 
In the present day, a U.S. black-ops group has promised him they can help with that. And all he needs to do is help them in return. But when an all-too-mortal soldier comes back to life, the impossible event ultimately points toward a force even more mysterious than B himself. One at least as strong. And one with a plan all its own.
 
In a collaboration that combines Miéville’s singular style and creativity with Reeves’s haunting and soul-stirring narrative, these two inimitable artists have created something utterly unique, sure to delight existing fans and to create scores of new ones.

The déjà vu is strong for 25-year-old former kid detective Charlotte Illes when she lands back in Frencham Middle School – this time as a substitute teacher with a sideline in sleuthing – in the second zany mystery based on the much-loved TikTok web series from @katiefliesaway.

For fans of “Poker Face,” “Knives Out,” Elle Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan Series, and anyone seeking to satisfy their Harriet the Spy, Encyclopedia Brown, or Nancy Drew nostalgia!

Mention “returning to the scene of a crime,” and people don’t usually picture a middle school. But that’s where kid detective Lottie Illes enjoyed some of her greatest successes, solving mysteries and winning acclaim—before the world of adult responsibilities came crashing in . . .

Twentysomething Charlotte is now back in the classroom, this time as a substitute teacher. However, as much as she’s tried to escape the shadow of her younger self, others haven’t forgotten about Lottie. In fact, a fellow teacher is hoping for help discovering the culprit behind anonymous threats being sent to her and her aunt, who’s running for reelection to the Board of Education.

At first, Charlotte assumes the messages are a harmless prank. But maybe it’s a good thing she left a detective kit hidden in the band room storage closet all those years ago—just in case. Because the threats are escalating, and it’s clear that untangling mysteries isn’t child’s play anymore . . .

From the acclaimed author of A Cosmology of Monsters ("I loved it" —Stephen King) comes an epic contemporary fantasy, a mixture of The Magicians and It: a story of dark magic, terrible mistakes, and second chances.

"You can never go home again," the saying goes—but Hal, Athena, and Erin have to. In high school, the three were students of the eccentric Professor Marsh, trained in a secret system of magic known as the Dissonance, which is built around harnessing negative emotions: alienation, anger, pain. Then, twenty years ago, something happened that shattered their coven, scattering them across the country, stuck in mundane lives, alone.
But now, terrifying signs and portents (not to mention a pointed Facebook invite) have summoned them back to Clegg, Texas. There, their paths will collide with that of Owen, a closeted teenager from Alabama whose aborted cemetery seance with his crush summoned something far worse: a murderous entity whose desperate, driving purpose includes kidnapping Owen to serve as its Renfield. As Owen tries to outwit his new master, and Hal, Athena, and Erin reckon with how the choices they made as teens might connect to the apocalyptic event unfurling over the Lone Star State, shocking alliances form, old and new romances brew, and three unsuccessful adults and one frightened teen are all that stand between reality and oblivion.
From one of the boldest, most brilliant voices in modern fantastical horror, The Dissonance is a thrilling and beautifully written story of magic and monsters, forgiveness and friendship.

From the award-winning and bestselling author of Feed comes a raucous and slyly funny adult fiction debut. Based on a bizarre but true quest to steal the mystical corpse of a long-dead saint, Nicked is a fantastical, genre-defying, and delightfully queer historical romp

"Miracles, marvels, saints, sinners, love, plague, and treachery! M. T. Anderson has laid out a medieval feast of a novel, stuffed with everything I could have wished for. If I could canonize him for it, I would. But I’ll settle for shouting about how much I love this book."—Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

"M. T. Anderson is one of our greatest and most precious voices. His books aren't just brilliantly witty and vastly entertaining, they're fixed stars of wisdom and sanity in our increasingly unhinged universe. When lost, I use them to steer by."—Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians Trilogy

The year is 1087, and a pox is sweeping through the Italian city of Bari. When a lowly monk is visited by Saint Nicholas in his dreams, he interprets the vision as a call to serve the sick. But his superiors, and the power brokers they serve, have different plans for the tender-hearted Brother Nicephorus.

Enter Tyun, a charismatic treasure hunter renowned for “liberating” holy relics from their tombs. The seven-hundred-year-old bones of Saint Nicholas are rumored to weep a mysterious liquid that can heal the sick, Tyun says. For the humble price of a small fortune, he will steal the bones and deliver them to Bari, curing the plague and restoring glory to the fallen city. And Nicephorus, the “dreamer,” will be his guide.

What follows is a heist for the ages, as Nicephorus is swept away on strange tides, and alongside even stranger bedfellows, to commit sacrilegious theft. Based on real historical accounts, Nicked is a swashbuckling saga, a medieval novel noir, a meditation on the miraculous, and a monastic meet-cute, filled with wide-eyed wonder at the world that awaits beyond our own borders.

A July 2024 LibraryReads Pick! 

By the acclaimed author of Moxie, a funny, bighearted adult debut that is at once an ode to educators, a timely glimpse at today’s pressing school issues, and a tender character study, following a sprawling cast of teachers, administrators, and staff at a Texas high school

With its ensemble of warm and unforgettable characters, The Faculty Lounge shows readers a different side of school life. It all starts when an elderly substitute teacher at Baldwin High School is found dead in the faculty lounge. After a bit of a stir, life quickly returns to normal—it’s not like it’s the worst (or even most interesting) thing that has happened within the building’s walls. But when, a week later, the spontaneous scattering of his ashes on the school grounds catches the attention of some busybody parents, it sets in motion a year that can only be described as wild, bizarre, tragic, mundane, beautiful, and humorous all at once.

In the midst of the ensuing hysteria and threats of disciplinary action, the novel peeks into the lives of the implicated adults who, it turns out, actually have first names and continue to exist when the school day is done. We meet: a former punk band front man, now a middle-aged principal who must battle it out with the schoolboard to keep his job; a no-nonsense school nurse willing to break the rules, despite the close watch on their campus, when a student arrives at her office with a dilemma; and a disgruntled English instructor who finds himself embroiled in even more controversy when he misfires a snarky email. Oh, and there’s also a teacher make-out session in a supply closet during a lockdown.

As these people continue to manage the messiness of this school year, there is the looming threat of what will become of their beloved Baldwin High. Ultimately, at the heart of this unconventional workplace novel is a story of the power of human connection and of the joy of finding purpose in what it is we do every day.

One unidentified skeleton. Three missing men. A village full of secrets. The best-selling author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna brings us a sparkling—by turns funny and moving—novel about a young American woman turned amateur detective in a small village in Southern Italy (“Terrific” –Boston Globe).

Calabria, 1960. Francesca Loftfield, a twenty-seven-year-old, starry-eyed American, arrives in the isolated mountain village of Santa Chionia tasked with opening a nursery school. There is no road, no doctor, no running water or electricity. And thanks to a recent flood that swept away the post office, there’s no mail, either.

Most troubling, though, is the human skeleton that surfaced after the flood waters receded. Who is it? And why don’t the police come and investigate? When the local priest's housekeeper begs Francesca to help determine if the remains are those of her long-missing son, Francesca begins to ask a lot of inconvenient questions. As an outsider, she might be the only person who can uncover the truth. Or she might be getting in over her head. As she attempts to juggle a nosy landlady, a suspiciously dashing shepherd, and a network of local families bound together by a code of silence, Francesca finds herself forced to choose between the charitable mission that brought her to Santa Chionia, and her future happiness, between truth and survival.

Set in the wild heart of Calabria, a land of sheer cliff faces, ancient tradition, dazzling sunlight—and one of the world’s most ruthless criminal syndicates—The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia is a suspenseful puzzle mystery, a captivating romance, and an affecting portrait of a young woman in search of a meaningful life.

A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulnerable student at an elite college, forced to navigate an opaque past, an uncertain future, tragedies on two continents, and the tantalizing possibilities of love and freedom

“Diabolically charming and magnetic. I enjoyed the hell out of this little exploding geyser of a book.”—Ira Glass

When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her own complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world that has no place for the undocumented; her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties and secret societies—which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper’s skepticism: she is both fascinated and repulsed. Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?

Brash and daring, part campus novel, part hagiography, part pop song, Catalina is unlike any coming-of-age novel you’ve ever read—and Catalina, bright and tragic, circled by a nimbus of chaotic energy, driven by a wild heart, is a character you will never forget.

New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh takes us into a family dark with shadowy secrets, as the world of the Psy teeters on the edge of a final catastrophic collapse. . . .
 
Daughter of two ruthless high-Gradient telepaths, Auden Scott is not the child her Psy parents wanted or expected, even before her brain injury. Her thoughts are scattered, her memories fuzzy—or just terrifyingly blank. The only thing she knows for certain is that she must protect her unborn baby . . . a baby she has no recollection of conceiving and who draws an unnerving depth of interest from her dead mother’s closest associates.
 
Leopard alpha Remi Denier is a man driven by the primal instinct to protect. Protect his pack, protect his allies . . . and protect the mysterious woman who has become a most unlikely neighbor. With eerie eyes that see too much and a scent that alters in ways disturbing and impossible, Auden Scott is the enemy . . . but nothing about this strange Psy is what it seems, and Remi’s feline heart is as fascinated by her as his human half.
 
Then Auden asks Remi to help her shatter the wall of secrets that is the Scott bloodline. What they unearth will reveal a nightmare beyond imagination. This time, the battle is to the death. . . .

An “eviscerating” (The New York Times) novel about being a wife, a mother, and an artist, and how marriage makes liars of us all—from the author of Very Cold People and 300 Arguments

“Painful and brilliant—I loved it.”—Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and Either/Or

“A bracing story of a woman on the verge.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A nuclear family can destroy a woman artist. I’d always known that. But I’d never suspected how easily I’d fall into one anyway.

When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful, creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including—a few years later—all the attendant joys and labors of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.

As Jane’s career flourishes, their marriage starts to falter. Throughout the upheavals of family life, Jane tries to hold it all together. That is, until John leaves her.

Liars is a tour de force of wit and rage, telling the blistering story of a marriage as it burns to the ground, and of a woman rising inexorably from its ashes.

Diana Bishop journeys to the darkest places within herself—and her family history—in the highly anticipated fifth novel of the beloved #1 New York Times bestselling All Souls series.

“The Black Bird Oracle deftly explores the nexus of memory, history, and parenthood—the magic, pain, and promises mothers pass onto their children.”—Jodi Picoult

The stunning hardcover of The Black Bird Oracle features a custom-stamped case, beautiful endpapers, and a premium dust jacket!

Deborah Harkness first introduced the world to Diana Bishop, an Oxford scholar and witch, and vampire geneticist Matthew de Clermont in A Discovery of Witches. Drawn to each other despite long-standing taboos, these two otherworldly beings found themselves at the center of a battle for a lost, enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Since then, they have fallen in love, traveled to Elizabethan England, dissolved the Covenant between the three species, and awoken the dark powers within Diana’s family line.

Now, Diana and Matthew receive a formal demand from the Congregation: They must test the magic of their seven-year-old twins, Pip and Rebecca. Concerned with their safety and desperate to avoid the same fate that led her parents to spellbind her, Diana decides to forge a different path for her family’s future and answers a message from a great-aunt she never knew existed, Gwyneth Proctor, whose invitation simply reads: It’s time you came home, Diana.

On the hallowed ground of Ravenswood, the Proctor family home, and under the tutelage of Gwyneth, a talented witch grounded in higher magic, a new era begins for Diana: a confrontation with her family’s dark past and a reckoning for her own desire for even greater power—if she can let go, finally, of her fear of wielding it.

In this stunning new novel, grand in scope, Deborah Harkness deepens the beloved world of All Souls with powerful new magic and long-hidden secrets, and the path Diana finds at Ravenswood leads to the most consequential moments yet in this cherished series.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Tessa Bailey returns with an all-new sports rom-com about a burly, surly, single dad who falls head-over-hockey-stick for his quirky live-in nanny...

Tallulah is smart, vivacious, and studying to be a marine biologist. She's also twenty-six and broke. So when Burgess, a battle-scarred hockey veteran and newly single dad, offers her a job as his live-in nanny, she jumps at the opportunity to get paid while living in a super fancy neighborhood and being around Lissa, his cool but introverted tween.

Her tween charge isn't the only one who could use some help fitting in, though. According to...well, everyone except Burgess, he needs to get back on the dating scene, and adventurous Tallulah is just the girl to show him how. But as boundaries are slowly crossed and Burgess finds himself pulled between his daughter, who wants her parents back together, and his insane chemistry with Tallulah, a huge rift is formed, and Tallulah does the "right" thing--breaks her own heart and walks away.

Though Burgess knows it's for the best--he's too jaded, with too much baggage--a chance meeting, and a new push from his daughter, forces him to put everything on the line and fight to prove he learned his lessons well and is worthy of a happily ever after with Tallulah.

When secrets from Bourne's past come to light, he may be the next thing that's buried in this latest entry in the legendary New York Times bestselling series.

It's been over a decade since Nash Rollins recruited a brilliant, talented, but disaffected young man named David Webb to join Treadstone. Webb became the agent known as Cain—and later took on the identity of Jason Bourne.

That violent winter—which included Cain’s first mission for Treadstone—was also a story of betrayal in ways that David never knew. So after the injury that erased Bourne’s whole life, Nash lied about the circumstances of David’s recruitment to Treadstone. He was afraid that learning the truth might drive Bourne out of the agency forever.

But now, when Bourne meets a woman who recognizes him as David Webb, the secrets of those days begin to come out—and Bourne is forced to confront the dangerous ghosts of a past he doesn’t even remember.

“Grossman, who is best known for his The Magicians series, is at the top of his game with The Bright Sword.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A thrilling new take on Arthurian legend. . . . Marvelous.” —The Washington Post

“If you love King Arthur as much as I do, you’ll love Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword, a fresh and engrossing take on the Matter of Britain featuring a colorful cast of Round Table knights who don’t often get as much story time as they deserve. The creator of The Magicians has woven another spell.” —George R. R. Martin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Game of Thrones

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Magicians trilogy returns with a triumphant reimagining of the King Arthur legend for the new millennium

A gifted young knight named Collum arrives at Camelot to compete for a spot on the Round Table, only to find that he’s too late. The king died two weeks ago at the Battle of Camlann, leaving no heir, and only a handful of the knights of the Round Table survive.

They aren’t the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They’re the oddballs of the Round Table, from the edges of the stories, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight, and Sir Dagonet, Arthur’s fool, who was knighted as a joke. They’re joined by Nimue, who was Merlin’s apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. Together this ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.

But Arthur’s death has revealed Britain’s fault lines. God has abandoned it, and the fairies and monsters and old gods are returning, led by Arthur’s half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms are turning on each other, warlords lay siege to Camelot and rival factions are forming around the disgraced Lancelot and the fallen Queen Guinevere. It is up to Collum and his companions to reclaim Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this ruined world and make it whole again. But before they can restore Camelot they’ll have to learn the truth of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell, and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and of Britain’s dark past.

The first major Arthurian epic of the new millennium, The Bright Sword is steeped in tradition, full of duels and quests, battles and tournaments, magic swords and Fisher Kings. It also sheds a fresh light on Arthur’s Britain, a diverse, complex nation struggling to come to terms with its bloody history. The Bright Sword is a story about imperfect men and women, full of strength and pain, who are looking for a way to reforge a broken land in spite of being broken themselves.

Inspired by C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes—just in case—from the author of The Wishing Game.

“This is the book you’ve been waiting for.”—Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls and the North Bath Trilogy

As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.

Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons’ investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy.

Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find Emilie’s sister. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets comes to an end as the quest for Emilie’s sister begins. The former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories.

Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy must return to the enchanted world they called home for six months—for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.

From New York Times bestselling horror writer Stephen Graham Jones comes a classic slasher story with a twist—perfect for fans of Riley Sager and Grady Hendrix.

1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, the unfairness of being on the outside, through the slasher horror he lives but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.

“This is the one: the next must-read, must-recommend, must-discuss, must-re-read novel. A miraculous literary thriller, shocking, daring, moving, haunting, infinitely rewarding—as though Kate Atkinson and Ruth Rendell had joined forces.”—A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window and End of Story

ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST’S 12 THRILLERS TO READ THIS SUMMER • ONE OF BLOOMBERG’S TOP NEW BOOKS FOR YOUR SUMMER READING LIST

A heart-wrenching mystery about sisters, lovers, and a dinner party gone wrong.

Twenty-five years ago, a young girl left home to walk to school. Her younger sister soon followed. But one of them arrived, and one of them didn’t. 

Her sister’s disappearance has defined Willa’s life. Everyone thinks her sister is dead, but Willa knows she isn’t. Because there are some things that only sisters know about each other—and some bonds only sisters can break.

Willa sees fragments of her sister everywhere — the way that woman on the train turns her head, the gait of that woman in Paris. If there’s the slightest resemblance, Willa drops everything, and everyone, and tries to see if it is her.

When Willa is invited to a dinner party thrown by her first love, she has no reason to expect it will be anything other than an ordinary evening. Both of them have moved on, ancient history. But nothing about Willa’s life has been ordinary since the day her sister disappeared, and that’s not about to change tonight.

Sarah Easter Collins has written an extraordinary novel about memory, lost love, and long-buried secrets that sometimes see the light of day.

A palace the size of a city, ruled by giant Ladies of unknowable, eldritch origin. A land left to slow decay, drowning in the debris of generations. All this and more awaits you within The West Passage, a delightfully mysterious and intriguingly weird medieval fantasy unlike anything you've read before.

"The West Passage is a dangerous book of secrets." --Travis Baldree, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Legends & Lattes

"A weird and wonderful tale, rich with imagination and utterly unique." --Sunyi Dean, author of The Book Eaters

"One of the finest fantasies of this decade, a sweeping swarm of fiercely human creativity." --Indrapramit Das, author of The Devourers

When the Guardian of the West Passage died in her bed, the women of Grey Tower fed her to the crows and went back to their chores. No successor was named as Guardian, no one took up the fallen blade; the West Passage went unguarded.

Now, snow blankets Grey in the height of summer. Rats erupt from beneath the earth, fleeing that which comes. Crops fail. Hunger looms. And none stand ready to face the Beast, stirring beneath the poisoned soil.

The fate of all who live in the palace hangs on narrow shoulders. The too-young Mother of Grey House sets out to fix the seasons. The unnamed apprentice of the deceased Grey Guardian goes to warn Black Tower. Both their paths cross the West Passage, the ancient byway of the Beast. On their journeys they will meet schoolteachers and beekeepers, miracles and monsters, and very, very big Ladies. None can say if they'll reach their destinations, but one thing is for sure: the world is about to change.

Everyone’s favorite moral philosopher and amateur sleuth, Isabel Dalhousie, is back and once again finds herself facing a number of tricky situations and philosophical questions, both public and private.

“McCall Smith’s assessments of fellow humans are piercing and profound . . . [His] depictions of Edinburgh are vivid and seamless.” —San Francisco Chronicle

It seems as if Isabel’s life has fallen into a comfortable and tidy rhythm. Well, as tidy as things can be with two small boys wreaking havoc around the house. But when her husband, Jamie, invites a woman named Dawn—recently embroiled in a contentious affair with a member of Jamie’s orchestra—to stay with them, things begin to go awry. Strange noises can be heard from the upper floor, even when Dawn is supposedly at work, and the couple wonders whether something more nefarious may be afoot.

If that weren’t enough, Professor Robert Lettuce is staging an academic conference and has asked Isabel to publish the conference papers in a special issue of the Review of Applied Ethics. But something is definitely suspect about the funding, and it will be up to Isabel to sort it out. As the truth comes to light, Isabel must once more rely on her kindness, powers of deduction and philosophical expertise to navigate these sensitive matters.

A young widow grapples with the arrival of a once-in-a-lifetime comet and its tumultuous consequences, in a debut novel that blends mystery, astronomy, and romance, perfect for fans of Emma Cline’s The Girls and Ottessa Moshfegh’s Death in Her Hands.

Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness—until she meets Theo St. John, the discoverer of a rare comet soon to be visible to the naked eye.

As the comet begins to brighten, Sylvia wonders what the apparition might signify. She is soon drawn into the orbit of local mystic Joseph Evans, who believes the comet’s arrival is nothing short of a divine message. Finding herself caught between two conflicting perspectives of this celestial phenomenon, she struggles to define for herself where the reality lies. As the comet grows in the sky, her town slowly descends further and further into a fervor over its impending apex, and Sylvia’s quest to uncover her husband’s killer will push her and those around her to the furthest reaches of their very lives.

A novel about the search for meaning in a bewildering world, the loyalty of love, and the dangerous lengths people go to in pursuit of obsession, Bright Objects is a luminous, masterfully crafted literary thriller.

In this high-stakes thriller by three-time Edgar Award winner and New York Times bestselling author T. Jefferson Parker, ("A marvel...hits the high-water mark for crime fiction every time out." —Gregg Hurwitz), a big wave surfer and her sons compete in the same contest that killed her husband many years before.

Jen Stonebreaker hasn't entered into a big-wave surfing competition since witnessing her husband's tragic death twenty-five years ago at the Monsters of the Mavericks. Now, Jen is ready to tackle those same Monsters with her twin sons Casey and Brock, who have become competitive surfers in a perilous sport.

When he’s not riding waves, modeling for surfing magazines, or posting viral content for his many fans, Casey Stonebreaker spends his days helping with the family restaurant — catching fish in the morning and bartending at night. Casey’s love for the ocean and his willingness to expose illegal poachers on his platforms puts him on a collision course with a crime syndicate eager to destroy anyone threatening their business.

Outspoken Brock Stonebreaker couldn’t be more different from his twin. The founder of Breath of Life, a church and rescue mission that assists with natural disasters that no one else will touch, Brock has lived an adventurous and sometimes violent life. Not everyone appreciates the work that Brock's Breath of Life mission accomplishes, and threats to destroy his mission—and his family—swirl around him.

As the big-wave contest draws closer, a huge, late fall swell is headed toward the Pacific coastline. Jen's fears gnaw at her — fear for herself, for her sons, for what this competition will mean for the rest of her life.

In the wake of tragedy, a group of friends makes a pact that will cause them to reunite a decade later and embark upon a life-changing adventure together—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Meant to Be.

Four freshmen arrive at college from completely different worlds: Lainey, a California party girl with a flair for drama; Tyson, a brilliant scholar and aspiring lawyer from Washington, D.C.; Summer, an ambitious, recruited athlete from the Midwest; and Hannah, a mild-mannered southerner who is content to quietly round out the circle of big personalities. Soon after arriving on campus, they strike up a conversation in their shared dorm, and the seeds of friendship are planted.

As their college years fly by, their bond intensifies and the four become inseparable. But as graduation nears, their lives are forever changed after a desperate act leads to tragic consequences. Stunned and heartbroken, they make a pact, promising to always be there for one another, no matter how separated they may become by circumstances or distance.

Ten years later, Hannah is anticipating what should be one of the happiest moments of her life when everything is suddenly turned upside down. Calling on her closest friends, it soon becomes clear that they are all facing their own crossroads. True to their promise, they agree to take a time out from lives headed in wrong directions and embark on a shared journey of self-discovery, forgiveness, and acceptance.

In this tender portrayal of grief, love, and hope, Emily Giffin asks: When things fall apart, who will be at our sides, helping us pick up the pieces?

The New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code returns with a haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.

Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation's capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman's daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women's baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy's Red Scare.

Grace's weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?

Capturing the paranoia of the McCarthy era and evoking the changing roles for women in postwar America, The Briar Club is an intimate and thrilling novel of secrets and loyalty put to the test.

Chief of Police Kate Burkholder investigates a gruesome murder that reveals a little-known chapter of early Amish history in this next riveting installment of the bestselling series by Linda Castillo.

Newlywed Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is awakened by an urgent midnight call summoning her to a suspicious fire in the woods. When she arrives at the scene, she discovers a charred body. According to the coroner, the deceased, an Amish man named Milan Swanz, was chained to a stake and burned alive. It is an appalling and eerily symbolic crime against an upstanding husband and father.

Kate knows all too well that the Amish prefer to handle their problems without interference from the outside world, and no one will speak about the murdered man. From what she’s able to piece together, Swanz led a deeply troubled life and had recently been excommunicated. But if that’s the case, why are the Amish so reluctant to talk about him? Are they protecting the memory of one of their own? Or are they afraid of something they dare not share?

When her own brother is implicated in the case, Kate finds herself not only at odds with the Amish, the world of which she was once a part, but also the English community and her counterparts in law enforcement. The investigation takes a violent turn when Kate’s life is threatened by a mysterious stranger.

To uncover the truth about the death of Milan Swanz, Kate must dive deep into the Anabaptist culture, peering into all the dark corners of its history, only to uncover a secret legacy that shatters everything she thought she knew about the Amish themselves—and her own roots.

An exhilarating novel about one American family, the dark moment that shatters their suburban paradise, and the wild legacy of trauma and inheritance, from the New York Times bestselling author of Fleishman Is in Trouble
“A big, juicy, wickedly funny social satire . . . probably the funniest book ever about generational family trauma.”—Oprah Daily

“Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?”

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.

But now, nearly forty years later, it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything, after all. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three grown children aren’t doing much better: Nathan’s chronic fear won’t allow him to advance at his law firm; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything—substance, foodstuff, women—in order to numb his own perpetual terror; and Jenny has spent her life so bent on proving that she’s not a product of her family’s pathology that she has come to define it. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives’ successes and failures.

Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives’ tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Windup Girl and The Water Knife comes a sweeping literary fantasy about the young scion from a ruling-class family who faces rebellion as he ascends to power.

"Steeped in poison, betrayal, and debauchery, reading Navola is like slipping into a luxurious bath full of blood." —Holly Black, #1 New York Times best-selling author

"You must be as sharp as a stilettotore’s dagger and as subtle as a fish beneath the waters. This is what it is to be Navolese, this is what it is to be di Regulai."

In Navola, a bustling city-state dominated by a handful of influential families, business is power, and power is everything. For generations, the di Regulai family—merchant bankers with a vast empire—has nurtured tendrils that stretch to the farthest reaches of the known world. And though they claim not to be political, their staggering wealth has bought cities and toppled kingdoms. Soon, Davico di Regulai will be expected to take the reins of power from his father and demonstrate his mastery of the games of Navolese diplomacy: knowing who to trust and who to doubt, and how to read what lies hidden behind a smile. But in Navola, strange and ancient undercurrents lurk behind the gilt and grandeur—like the fossilized dragon eye in the family’s possession, a potent symbol of their raw power and a talisman that seems to be summoning Davico to act.

As tensions rise and the events unfold, Davico will be tested to his limits. His fate depends on the eldritch dragon relic and on what lies buried in the heart of his adopted sister, Celia di Balcosi, whose own family was destroyed by Nalova’s twisted politics. With echoes of Renaissance Italy, The Godfather, and Game of Thrones, Navola is a stunning feat of world-building and a mesmerizing depiction of drive and will.

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK * Award-winning writer Kevin Barry's first novel set in America, a savagely funny and achingly romantic tale of young lovers on the lam in 1890s Montana.

October 1891. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city of Butte, Montana is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and ballad-maker of the town, but also a doper, a drinker, and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the extremely devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington. A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho, and briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunmen are soon in hot pursuit and closing in fast. With everything to lose and the safety and anonymity of San Francisco still a distant speck on their horizon, the choices they make will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

In this love story for the ages--lyrical, profane and propulsive--Kevin Barry has once again demonstrated himself to be a master stylist, an unrivalled humourist, and a true poet of the human heart.

"This Great Hemisphere is an inventive and immersive epic that follows its brave invisible protagonist as she navigates a futuristic new world that often mirrors our own. A thrilling page-turner." —Brit Bennett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half

From the award-winning and bestselling author of Black Buck: A speculative novel about a young woman—invisible by birth and relegated to second-class citizenship—who sets off on a mission to find her older brother, whom she had presumed dead but who is now the primary suspect in a high-profile political murder.

Despite the odds, Sweetmint, a young invisible woman, has done everything right her entire life—school, university, and now a highly sought-after apprenticeship with the Northwestern Hemisphere’s premier inventor, a non-invisible man belonging to the Dominant Population who is as eccentric as he is enigmatic. But the world she has fought so hard to build after the disappearance of her older brother comes crashing down when authorities claim that not only is he well and alive, he’s also the main suspect in the murder of the Chief Executive of the Northwestern Hemisphere. 

A manhunt ensues, and Sweetmint, armed with courage, intellect, and unwavering love for her brother, sets off on a mission to find him before it’s too late. With five days until the hemisphere’s big election, Sweetmint must dodge a relentless law officer who’s determined to maintain order and an ambitious politician with sights set on becoming the next Chief Executive by any means necessary.

With the captivating worldbuilding of N. K. Jemisin’s novels and blazing defiance of Naomi Alderman’s work, This Great Hemisphere is a novel that brilliantly illustrates the degree to which reality can be shaped by non-truths and vicious manipulations, while shining a light on our ability to surprise ourselves when we stop giving in to the narratives others have written for us.

"A riveting and suspenseful debut. Copeland's contemporary take on the balance of power in relationships, and the desire for control, is not to be missed."--New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Karin Slaughter

A gifted new suspense writer makes her sizzling debut with this serpentine tale exploring all the ways in which men enact violence on women, how women try to reclaim their own sense of self, and the lingering effects on their children's lives.

2019. Stella Parker has the life she's always wanted: a loving husband, two happy children that she gave up her thriving law career to raise, and a beautiful house in the tony suburbs of Washington, DC. But when her neighbor Gwen shows up at her door, claiming to know things about her, Stella's life is thrown into turmoil and she's forced to reckon with the dark secret upon which she's built her life.

1987. Julie Waits yearns to be a cheerleader--a gateway to a world of normalcy with best friends and sleepovers, and an escape hatch from life with her widowed mother, the terrible men she attracts, and the upheaval caused by their abrupt and constant moves. But when her mother decides those relationships are over, the past becomes a forbidden subject that Julie can never revisit.

As Stella probes deeper into what brought Gwen to her door, the answer--and who Julie is to her--become increasingly, terrifyingly, clear.

Filled with shocking twists and turns, this is a book that both asks what it means for a woman to be in control of her life while also highlighting the impact of small daily violences upon women, and the connection between physical and psychological harm.

THE #1 KOREAN BESTSELLER WITH OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD

For fans of magical realism and the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series by Toshikazu Kawaguchi comes this cozy fantasy debut.

What if there was a store that sold dreams? Which would you buy? And who might you become when you wake up?

In a mysterious town hidden in our collective subconscious there's a department store that sells dreams. Day and night, visitors both human and animal shuffle in to purchase their latest adventure. Each floor specializes in a specific type of dream: childhood memories, food dreams, ice skating, dreams of stardom. Flying dreams are almost always sold out. Some seek dreams of loved ones who have died.

For Penny, an enthusiastic new hire, working at Dallergut is the opportunity of a lifetime. As she uncovers the workings of this whimsical world, she bonds with a cast of unforgettable characters, including Dallergut, the flamboyant and wise owner, Babynap Rockabye, a famous dream designer, Maxim, a nightmare producer, and the many customers who dream to heal, dream to grow, and dream to flourish.

A captivating story that will leave a lingering magical feeling in readers' minds, this is the first book in a bestselling duology for anyone exhausted from the reality of their daily life.

Enter a world ruled by dragons...

The Sky on Fire is a daring new fantasy heist adventure that will thrill fans of Temeraire, Fourth Wing, and Dragonriders of Pern

Anahrod lives only for survival, forging her own way through the harsh jungles of the Deep with her titan drake by her side. Even when an adventuring party saves her from capture by a local warlord, she is eager to return to her solitary life.

But this is no ordinary rescue. It’s Anahrod’s past catching up with her. These cunning misfits—and their frustratingly appealing dragonrider ringleader—intend to spirit her away to the dragon-ruled sky cities, where they need her help to steal from a dragon’s hoard.

There’s only one problem: the hoard in question belongs to the current regent, Neveranimas—and she wants Anahrod dead.

From Jenn Lyons, the acclaimed author of the Chorus of Dragons series, this soaring standalone fantasy combines conniving dragons, lightning banter, high-stakes intrigue, and a little bit of heat.

Lenny Marks is excellent at not having a life.

She bikes home from work at exactly 4pm each day, buys the same groceries for the same meals every week, and owns thirty-six copies of The Hobbit (currently arranged by height). The closest thing she has to a friendship is playing Scrabble against an imaginary Monica Gellar while watching Friends reruns.

And Lenny Marks is very, very good at not remembering what happened the day her mother and stepfather disappeared when she was still a child. The day a voice in the back of her mind started whispering, You did this.

Until a letter from the parole board arrives in the mail--and when her desperate attempts to ignore it fail, Lenny starts to unravel. As long-buried memories come to the surface, Lenny’s careful routines fall apart. For the first time, she finds herself forced to connect with the community around her, and unexpected new relationships begin to bloom. Lenny Marks may finally get a life–but what if her past catches up to her first?

Equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming, Kerryn Mayne’s stunning debut is an irresistible novel about truth, secrets, vengeance, and family lost and found, with a heroine who's simply unforgettable.

Names a Most Anticipated Book by TIME, Oprah Daily, The Boston Globe, ELLE, Bustle, and Lit Hub

"A brilliant ghost story and a profoundly moving and atmospheric meditation on place, memory, and the very nature of reality, where everything is truly not as it seems." —Mona Awad, author of Rouge

"A wholly original and epically engaging novel from a master of episodic oddity." —Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch

A heart-racing fun house of uncanniness hidden in Florida’s underbelly from the celebrated Laura van den Berg

Along with her husband, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author returns to her mother's house in the Florida town where she grew up. As the summer heat sets in, she wrestles with family secrets and memories of her own troubled youth. Her mercurial sister, who lives next door, spends a growing amount of time using MIND’S EYE, a virtual reality device provided to citizens of the town by ELECTRA, a tech company in South Florida, during the doldrums of a recent pandemic. But it’s not just the ominous cats, her mother’s burgeoning cult, or the fact that her belly button has become an increasingly deep cavern—something is off in the town, and it probably has to do with the posters of missing citizens spread throughout the streets.

During a violent rainstorm, the writer’s sister goes missing for several days. When she returns, sprawled on their mother’s lawn and speaking of another dimension, the writer is forced to investigate not only what happened to her sister and the other missing people but also the uncanny connections between ELECTRA, the famous author, and reality itself.

A sticky, rain-soaked reckoning with the elusive nature of storytelling, Laura van den Berg’s State of Paradise is an interlocking and page-turning whirlwind. With inimitable control and thrilling style, she reaches deep into the void and returns with a story far stranger than either reality or fiction.

A novel of family, secrets, ghosts, and homecoming set on the seaside cliffs of Maine, by the New York Times best-selling author of Friends and Strangers

“A stunning achievement, and J. Courtney Sullivan’s best book yet. Sullivan weaves a narrative that’s fascinating and thought-provoking. I literally could not put this book down.”
—Ann Napolitano, New York Times best-selling author of Hello Beautiful

On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother.

Twenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career and her marriage. Jane is horrified to find the Victorian is now barely recognizable. The new owner, Genevieve, a summer person from Beacon Hill, has gutted it, transforming the house into a glossy white monstrosity straight out of a shelter magazine. Strangely, Genevieve is convinced that the house is haunted—perhaps the product of something troubling Genevieve herself has done. She hires Jane to research the history of the place and the women who lived there. The story Jane uncovers—of lovers lost at sea, romantic longing, shattering loss, artistic awakening, historical artifacts stolen and sold, and the long shadow of colonialism—is even older than Maine itself.

Enthralling, richly imagined, filled with psychic mediums and charlatans, spirits and past lives, mothers, marriage, and the legacy of alcoholism, this is a deeply moving novel about the land we inhabit, the women who came before us, and the ways in which none of us will ever truly leave this earth.

“The God of the Woods should be your next summer mystery.” —The Washington Post

“Extraordinary . . . Reminds me of Donna Tartt’s 1992 debut, The Secret History . . . I was so thoroughly submerged in a rich fictional world, that for hours I barely came up for air.” —Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, NPR

“Riveting from page one to the last breathless word.” —Rebecca Makkai, New York Times bestselling author of I Have Some Questions For You

When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK

"This book has it all. Humor, heart, and a heroine I was desperately rooting for. Kirsty Greenwood has a new fan!”
—Colleen Hoover, New York Times bestselling author

A recently deceased woman meets “the one” in the afterlife waiting room, scoring a second chance at life (and love!) if she can find him on earth before ten days are up…

If she wasn’t dead already, Delphie would be dying of embarrassment. Not only did she just die by choking on a microwaveable burger, but now she’s standing in her ‘shine like a star’ nightie in front of the hottest man she’s ever seen. And he’s smiling at her.

As they start to chat, everything else becomes background noise. That is until someone comes running out of a door, yelling something about a huge mistake, and sends the dreamy stranger back down to earth. And here Delphie was thinking her luck might be different in the afterlife.  

When Delphie is offered a deal in which she can return to earth and reconnect with the mysterious man, she jumps at the opportunity to find her possible soulmate and a fresh start. But in a city of millions, Delphie is going to have to listen to her heart, learn to ask for help, and perhaps even see the magic in the life she’s leaving behind…

"Absolutely perfect." --Booklist
"Fresh, lively, insightful--astonishing." -- AJ Finn

In her most imaginative novel yet, #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell (None of This Is True) launches the Marvel Crime series of thriller books for adults with an original story starring the private detective Jessica Jones.

Meet Jessica Jones: Retired super hero, private investigator, loner. She tried her best to be a shiny spandex crimefighter, but that life only led to unspeakable trauma. Now she avoids that world altogether and works on surviving day-to-day in Hell's Kitchen, New York.

The morning a distraught mother comes into her office, Jessica would prefer to nurse her hangover and try to forget last night's poor choices. But something about Amber Randall's story strikes a chord with her. Amber is adamant that something happened to her teenage twins while they were visiting their father in the UK. The twins don't act like themselves, and they now have flawless skin, have lost their distinctive tics and habits, and keep talking about a girl named Belle. Amber insists her children have been replaced by something horrible, something "perfect."

Traveling to a small village in the British countryside, Jessica meets the mysterious Belle, who lives a curiously isolated life in an old farmhouse with a strange woman who claims to be her guardian. Can this unworldly teenager really be responsible for the Randall twins' new personas? Why does the strange little village of Barton Wallop seem to harbor dark energies and mysteries in its tight-knit community?

A mother's intuition is never wrong. And Jessica knows that nothing in life is perfect--not these kids, not her on-again, off-again relationship with Luke Cage, and certainly not Jessica herself. But even as she tries to buy into the idea that better days are ahead, Jessica Jones has seen all too clearly that behind every promise of perfection trails a dark, dangerous shadow.

Breaking the Dark, the first book in the brand-new Marvel Crime series, introduces fans to a grittier, street-level side of the Marvel Universe, and will continue with original novels featuring fan-favorite characters like Luke Cage, written by S.A. Cosby, and Daredevil, written by Alex Segura.

From the nationally bestselling author of the “powerful, heartbreaking” (Shelf Awareness) The Stationery Shop, a heartfelt, epic new novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran.

In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation.

Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.”

But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls’ high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.

Written with Marjan Kamali’s signature “evocative, devastating, and hauntingly beautiful” (Whitney Scharer, author of The Age of Light) prose, The Lion Women of Tehran is a sweeping exploration of how profoundly we are shaped by those we meet when we are young, and the way love and courage transforms our lives.

"This is such a love story to cities & people & heartbreaks, death & loss. It's not at all corny, it's smart. But I just finished it & it made me cry." -- Eileen Myles

"A bit like the book version of a Richard Curtis film, but with more grit, more bathroom sex and a literal beached whale." --GQ

For fans of Sally Rooney and Torrey Peters, a stunning debut that follows a vibrant multi-generational cast of characters through a London heatwave as their simmering tensions and secrets come to a head over a feverish, life-changing weekend.

Summer in London stops for no one. Not the half-naked drunks and stoners, the bachelorette parties glugging from bejewelled bottles, the drag queens puffing on hurried cigarettes. It's June 2019, and everyone has converged on the city's parks, beer gardens, and street corners to revel in the collective joys of being alive.

Everyone but Maggie. She's 30, pregnant, and broke. Faced with moving back to the town she fought to escape, she's wondering if having a baby with boyfriend Ed will be the last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, meanwhile, is trying to run from his past with Maggie's best friend Phil and harboring secret dreams of his own.

Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend, while falling for his housemate, Keith. But there's a problem: Keith has a boyfriend and there might not be room for three people in the relationship. Then there's Rosaleen, Phil's mother, who's tired of feeling like a side character in her own life. She's just been diagnosed with cancer and is travelling to London to tell Phil, if she can ever get hold of him.

As Saturday night approaches, all their lives are set to change forever. Temperatures are soaring and the weekend is about to begin...

Strikingly heartfelt, sexually charged, and disarmingly comic, Oisín McKenna's debut is a mesmerizing dive into the soul of a city and a searing look at what it takes to build a life there.

The special first edition hardcover will include a gorgeous, shimmering jacket with effects, brilliantly illustrated four-color endpapers, striking and detailed-stained edges, and a beautiful foil-stamped case.

Infused with magic and romance, this sweeping fantasy adventure inspired by the legend of Mulan follows a young woman determined to choose her own destiny—even if that means going against everyone she loves.

The Three Kingdoms are at war, but Meilin’s father refuses to answer the imperial draft. Trapped by his opium addiction, he plans to sell Meilin for her dowry. But when Meilin discovers her husband-to-be is another violent, ill-tempered man, she realizes that nothing will change for her unless she takes matters into her own hands.

The very next day, she disguises herself as a boy and enlists in her father’s place.

In the army, Meilin's relentless hard work brings her recognition, friendship—and a growing closeness with Sky, a prince turned training partner. But has she simply exchanged one prison for another? As her kingdom barrels toward destruction, Meilin begins to have visions of a sea dragon spirit that offers her true power and freedom, but with a deadly price.

With the future of the Three Kingdoms hanging in the balance, Meilin will need to decide whom to trust—Sky, who inspires her loyalty and love; the sea dragon spirit, who has his own murky agenda; or an infuriating enemy prince who makes her question everything she once knew—about her kingdom and about her own heart.

Agents Savich and Sherlock are back in the latest installment in Catherine Coulter's #1 New York Times bestselling FBI Thriller series, where the past refuses to stay buried.

A year has passed since Elizabeth Palmer was nearly killed with hundreds more in the attempted bombing of St. Paul's in London, believed to be a terrorist act until the police discovered it was a cover for something even more sinister. For Elizabeth, life is finally back to normal. She's optimistic, her painting is getting accolades, when suddenly her world changes in a flash. With three new attempts on her life, and her connection to the terrorist attack, MI-5 gets involved to find out who is trying to kill her and why.

Autumn Backman, twelve years old, begrudgingly accepts a summer job to shepherd Tash Navarro, a shy, bullied little boy. He's staying with his uncle while his father and stepmother go on a honeymoon in Europe. Then the unexpected happens. Autumn learns Tash is gifted psychically, like her, and Tash's father, Archer Navarro, is suspected of embezzling from his own firm. The FBI and Interpol are on the case, but Archer and his new wife have disappeared. Tash is scared and convinced his father needs help, so Autumn reaches out to Dillon Savich, the only person she knows who can find them.

Desperate for answers, Elizabeth flies to Washington, D.C., to seek out Savich and Sherlock and is assigned Special Agent Rome Foxe for protection. With deadly assailants in terrifying pursuit, Elizabeth and Rome soon find themselves neck deep in danger and in a race for survival.

Buckle up for a nonstop, action-packed thriller from the one and only Catherine Coulter.

From the acclaimed author of The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks and Must Love Books comes a heartfelt bookclub read following one woman's journey to reconnect with her estranged Black family in the south, just as it's on the brink of falling apart, perfect for fans of The Chicken Sisters and The Last Summer at the Golden Hotel.

One estranged family. One lost recipe. One last barbecue on the line. Mae is about to learn what happens when things go south...

Mae Townsend has always dreamed of connecting with her estranged Black family in the South. She grew up picturing relatives who looked like her, crowded dinner tables, bustling kitchens. And, of course, the Townsend family barbecue, the tradition that kept her late father flying to North Carolina year after year, despite the mysterious rift that always required her to stay behind.

But as Mae's wedding draws closer, promising a future of always standing out among her white in-laws, suddenly not knowing the Townsends hits her like a blow. So when news arrives that her paternal grandmother has passed, she decides it's time to head South.

What she finds is a family in turmoil, a long-standing grudge intact, a lost mac & cheese recipe causing grief, and a family barbecue on the brink of disaster. Not willing to let her dreams of family slip away, Mae steps up to throw a barbecue everyone will remember.

For better or for worse.

“The World After Alice is a lovely debut novel that glimmers with fine writing and notes of human insight. There's a quiet beauty to Lauren Aliza Green's work, and I am now a fan.”
—Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful

“A page-turner of a family drama. The World After Alice is at turns brutally honest, funny, and deeply empathic.” —Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake

Named One of Forbes’s 2024 30 Under 30 in Media

For readers of Seating Arrangements and The Most Fun We Ever Had, a gorgeous and gripping story of two families brought together to celebrate an unexpected marriage, twelve years after a devastating tragedy upended their lives

When Morgan and Benji surprise their families with a wedding invitation to Maine, they’re aware the news of their clandestine relationship will come as a shock. Twelve years have passed since the stunning loss of sixteen-year-old Alice, Benji’s sister and Morgan’s best friend, and no one is quite the same. But the young couple decide to plunge headlong into matrimony, marking the first time their fractured families will reunite since Alice’s funeral.

As the arriving guests descend upon the tranquil coastal town, they bring with them not only skepticism about the impromptu nuptials but also deep-seated secrets and agendas of their own. Peter, Morgan’s father, may be trying to dissuade his daughter from saying “I do,” while Linnie, Benji’s mother, introduces a boyfriend who bears a tumultuous past of his own. Nick, Benji’s father, is scheming to secure a new job before his wife—formerly his mistress—discovers he’s lost his old one. Morgan, too, carries delicate secrets that threaten to jeopardize the happiness for which she has so longed. And as for Benji—well, he’s just trying to make sure the whole weekend doesn’t implode.

As the whirlwind weekend unfolds, old passions reignite, deep wounds resurface, and unearthed secrets threaten to shatter the fragile peace the wedding promises. With each new revelation, the to-be-weds and their complicated families are forced to question just how well they know the ones they hold dear.

Cyrus Haven and Evie Cormac return in Robotham’s latest psychological thriller, which finally unlocks the secrets of Evie’s past and reaffirms why Stephen King has proclaimed this author “an absolute master.”

The mystery of Evie Cormac’s background has followed her into adulthood. As a child, she was discovered hiding in a secret room where a man had been tortured to death. Many of her captors and abusers escaped justice, unseen but not forgotten. Now, on a hot summer’s day, the past drags Evie back as she watches the bodies of seventeen migrants wash up on a Lincolnshire beach.

There is only one survivor, a teenage boy, who tells police their small boat was deliberately rammed and sunk. Psychologist Cyrus Haven is recruited by the police to investigate the murders—but recognizes immediately that Evie has some link to the tragedy. By solving this crime, he could finally unlock the secrets of her past. But what dark forces will he set loose? And who will pay the price?

Lessons in Chemistry meets Mad Men in this wildly entertaining debut novel, set in glamorous Rome in the late 1960s, which follows the free-spirited wife of an American diplomat as she desperately tries to contain a scandal of her own making.

It is the summer of 1969 and Rome is awash with glamour and intrigue: the stars of Cinecittà are drinking and dancing along the paparazzo-lined Via Veneto, where royalty, American expats, and the occasional Russian spy rub shoulders.

Teddy Huntley Carlyle has just arrived in Italy from Dallas, Texas, eager for a fresh start with her new husband, a diplomat assigned to the American embassy. After years of "spoiling like old milk," in the words of her controlling, politically-minded uncle, Teddy vows to turn over a new leaf. She will be the soul of discretion; she will be conservative, proper, and polite. She will be her most beautiful, luminous self, wearing the right clothes and the perfect lipstick, and she will be good. She will charm her husband's colleagues at the embassy, and no one will have a word to say against her.

Teddy keeps her promise, more or less--until the Fourth of July, when her new life explodes as spectacularly as the colorful fireworks lighting the Roman sky over the embassy grounds. Now, Teddy is in the middle of a mess that even her powerful connections and impeccable manners can't contain . . .

The haunting, vivid story of a nun whose past returns to her in unexpected ways, all while investigating a mysterious death and a series of harrowing abuse claims

A young nun is sent by the Vatican to investigate allegations of misconduct at a Catholic school in Iceland. During her time there, on a gray winter’s day, a young student at the school watches the school’s headmaster, Father August Franz, fall to his death from the church tower.

Two decades later, the child—now a grown man, haunted by the past—calls the nun back to the scene of the crime. Seeking peace and calm in her twilight years at a convent in France, she has no choice to make a trip to Iceland again, a trip that brings her former visit, as well as her years as a young woman in Paris, powerfully and sometimes painfully to life. In Paris, she met an Icelandic girl who she has not seen since, but whose acquaintance changed her life, a relationship she relives all while reckoning with the mystery of August Franz’s death and the abuses of power that may have brought it on.

In The Sacrament, critically acclaimed novelist Olaf Olafsson looks deeply at the complexity of our past lives and selves; the faulty nature of memory; and the indelible mark left by the joys and traumas of youth. Affecting and beautifully observed, The Sacrament is both propulsively told and poignantly written—tinged with the tragedy of life’s regrets but also moved by the possibilities of redemption, a new work from a novelist who consistently surprises and challenges.

A harrowing historical novel of the extraordinary acts of ordinary people in Nazi-occupied Italy.

Italy, 1943. Luca Benedetto has joined the partisans in their fight against the German troops ravaging the shores of his town on Lake Como. While risking his life to free his country, Luca is also struggling to protect Sarah, his Jewish lover who's hiding in a mountain cabin. As the violent Nazi occupation intensifies, Luca and Sarah fear for more than their own lives.

In the heart of their village, their mothers have also found themselves vulnerable to the encroaching Nazis. But Luca's mother, undeterred, is devising her own revenge on the occupiers. With Mussolini deposed and Allied armies fighting their way up the peninsula, the fate of Italy hangs in the balance, and the people of Lake Como must decide how much they're prepared to sacrifice for family, friends, and the country they love.

The most trying of times will create the most unexpected heroes and incredible acts of courage in this stirring narrative as seen through the eyes of those devastated by war-torn Italy.

Set against the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963, Annette Hess's international bestseller is a harrowing yet ultimately uplifting coming-of-age story about a young female translator--caught between societal and familial expectations and her unique ability to speak truth to power--as she fights to expose the dark truths of her nation's past.

If everything your family told you was a lie, how far would you go to uncover the truth?

For twenty-four-year-old Eva Bruhns, World War II is a foggy childhood memory. At the war's end, Frankfurt was a smoldering ruin, severely damaged by the Allied bombings. But that was two decades ago. Now it is 1963, and the city's streets, once cratered are smooth and paved. Shiny new stores replace scorched rubble. Eager for her wealthy suitor, Jürgen Schoormann, to propose, Eva dreams of starting a new life away from her parents and sister. But Eva's plans are turned upside down when a fiery investigator, David Miller, hires her as a translator for a war crimes trial.

As she becomes more deeply involved in the Frankfurt Trials, Eva begins to question her family's silence on the war and her future. Why do her parents refuse to talk about what happened? What are they hiding? Does she really love Jürgen and will she be happy as a housewife? Though it means going against the wishes of her family and her lover, Eva, propelled by her own conscience , joins a team of fiery prosecutors determined to bring the Nazis to justice--a decision that will help change the present and the past of her nation.

Thomas Keneally, the bestselling author of The Daughters of Mars and Schindler’s List, returns with an exquisite exploration of community and country, love and morality, taking place in both prehistoric and modern Australia.

An award-winning documentary filmmaker, Shelby Apple is obsessed with reimagining the full story of the Learned Man—a prehistoric man whose remains are believed to be the link between Africa and ancient Australia. From Vietnam to northern Africa and the Australian Outback, Shelby searches for understanding of this enigmatic man from the ancient past, unaware that the two men share a great deal in common.

Some 40,000 years in the past, the Learned Man has made his home alongside other members of his tribe. Complex and deeply introspective, he reveres tradition, loyalty, and respect for his ancestors. Willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good, the Learned Man cannot conceive that a man millennia later could relate to him in heart and feeling.

In this “meditation on last things, but still electric with life, passion and appetite” (The Australian), Thomas Keneally weaves an extraordinary dual narrative that effortlessly transports you around the world and across time, offering “a hymn to idealism and to human development” (Sydney Morning Herald).

An unprecedented behind-the-scenes portrait of the Trump presidency from the anonymous senior official whose first words of warning about the president rocked the nation's capital.

On September 5, 2018, the New York Times published a bombshell essay and took the rare step of granting its writer anonymity. Described only as "a senior official in the Trump administration," the author provided eyewitness insight into White House chaos, administration instability, and the people working to keep Donald Trump's reckless impulses in check.

With the 2020 election on the horizon, Anonymous is speaking out once again. In this book, the original author pulls back the curtain even further, offering a first-of-its-kind look at the president and his record -- a must-read before Election Day. It will surprise and challenge both Democrats and Republicans, motivate them to consider how we judge our nation's leaders, and illuminate the consequences of re-electing a commander in chief unfit for the role.

This book is a sobering assessment of the man in the Oval Office and a warning about something even more important -- who we are as a people.

For readers of Lawrence Hill and George Elliott Clarke, a ferociously talented writer makes his stunning debut with this richly woven tapestry. Set in the small Nova Scotia town of Africville, settled by former slaves, Jeffrey Colvin depicts several generations of one family bound together and torn apart by blood, faith, time and fate.

A richly woven story, structured as a triptych, Africville chronicles the lives of three generations of the Sebolt family—Kath Ella, her son, Omar/Etienne, and her grandson Warner—whose lives unfold against the tumultuous events of the twentieth century, from the Great Depression of the 1930s, through the social protests of the 1960s, to the economic upheavals of the 1980s.

A century earlier, Kath Ella’s ancestors established a new home in Nova Scotia. Like the lives of her ancestors, Kath Ella’s is shaped by hardship as she struggles to conceive and to provide for her family during the long, bitter Canadian winters. She must also contend with the locals’ lingering suspicions about the dark-skinned “outsiders” who live in their midst.

Kath Ella’s fierce love for her son, Omar, cannot help her overcome the racial prejudices that linger in this remote, tight-knit place. As he grows up, the rebellious Omar refutes the past and decides to break from the family, threatening to upend all that Kath Ella and her people have tried to build. Over the decades, each successive generation drifts farther from Africville, yet they take a piece of this indelible place with them as they make their way to Montreal, Vermont and beyond, to the deep South of America.

As it explores notions of identity, passing, cross-racial relationships, the importance of place and the meaning of home, Africville tells the larger story of the black experience in parts of Canada and the United States. Vibrant and lyrical, filled with colourful details and told in a powerful, haunting voice, this extraordinary novel—as atmospheric and steeped in history as Any Known Blood, The Known World, George & Rue, The Underground Railroad, Homegoing and The Book of Negroes—is a landmark work from a sure-to-be major literary talent.

In A Small Town, twelve conspirators meticulously plan to throw open all the gates to the prison that contains them, so that more than a thousand convicts may escape and pour into the nearby small town. The newly freed prisoners rape, murder, and destroy the town--burning down homes and businesses. An immense search ensues, but the twelve who plotted it all get away.
After two years, all efforts by the local and federal police agencies have been in vain. The mayor and city attorney meet, and Leah Hawkins, a six-foot, two-inch former star basketball player and resident good cop, is placed on sabbatical so that she can tour the country learning advanced police procedures. The sabbatical is merely a ruse, however, as her real job is to track the infamous twelve. And kill them.
Leah's mission takes her across the country, from Florida to New York, from California to an anti-government settlement deep in the Ozarks. Soon, the surviving fugitives realize what she is up to, and a race to kill or be killed ensues. Full of exhilarating twists and surprisingly resonant, A Small Town will sweep readers along on Leah's quest for vengeance.

New York Times bestseller M. C. Beaton's cranky, crafty Agatha Raisin—now the star of a hit T.V. show—is back on the case again.

When private detective Agatha Raisin comes across a severed leg in a roadside hedge, it looks like she is about to become involved in a particularly gruesome murder. Looks, however, can be deceiving, as Agatha discovers when she is employed to investigate a case of industrial espionage at a factory where nothing is quite what it seems.

The factory mystery soon turns to murder and a bad-tempered donkey turns Agatha into a national celebrity, before bringing her ridicule and shame. To add to her woes, Agatha finds herself grappling with growing feelings for her friend and occasional lover, Sir Charles Fraith. Then, as a possible solution to the factory murder unfolds, her own life is thrown into deadly peril. Will Agatha get her man at last? Or will the killer get her first?

A masterful thief plots an impossible crime—stealing the Iranian Crown Jewels.
 
From the author of the wildly successful Dexter series comes a new, mesmerizing bad guy we can root for: Riley Wolfe. He’s a master thief, expert at disguise, and not averse to violence when it’s needed. It’s no accident, though, that Riley targets the wealthiest 0.1 percent and is willing to kill them when they’re in his way: he despises the degenerate and immoral rich and loves stealing their undeserved and unearned valuables.
 
In this series launch, Riley aims for an extraordinary target in a heist that will make history. Riley will try to steal the Crown Jewels of Iran. Yes, these jewels are worth billions, but the true attraction for grabbing them comes down to one simple fact: it can’t be done. Stealing these jewels is absolutely impossible. The collection is guarded by space-age electronics and two teams of heavily armed mercenaries. No one could even think of getting past the airtight security and hope to get away alive, let alone with even a single diamond from the Imperial Collection.
 
No one but Riley Wolfe. He’s always liked a challenge.
 
But this challenge may be more than even he can handle. Aside from the impenetrable security, Riley is also pursued by a brilliant and relentless cop who is barely a step behind him.
 
With the aid of his sometime ally, a beautiful woman who is a master art forger, Riley Wolfe goes for the prize that will either make him a legend—or, more likely, leave him dead.

In this perfectly-paced new novel from Sara Shepard, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Little Liars, the women of a tight-knit college town learn through gossip, scandal, betrayal, and even murder, who their neighbors and husbands really are.

Aldrich University is rocked to its core when a hacker dumps 40,000 people's e-mails--the entire faculty, staff, students, alums--onto an easily searchable database. Rumors and affairs immediately leak, but things turn explosive when Kit Manning's handsome husband, Dr. Greg Strasser, is found murdered. Kit's sister, Willa, returns for the funeral, setting foot in a hometown she fled fifteen years ago, after a night she wishes she could forget. As an investigative reporter, Willa knows something isn't right about the night Greg was killed, and she's determined to find the truth. What she doesn't expect is that everyone has something to hide. And with a killer on the loose, Willa and Kit must figure out who killed Greg before someone else is murdered.

Told from multiple points of view, Reputation is full of twists, turns, and shocking reveals. It's a story of intrigue, sabotage, and the secrets we keep--and how far we go to keep them hidden. Number one bestseller Sara Shepard is at the top of her game in this brand-new adult novel.

Jeff VanderMeer's Dead Astronauts presents a City with no name of its own where, in the shadow of the all-powerful Company, lives human and otherwise converge in terrifying and miraculous ways. At stake: the fate of the future, the fate of Earth—all the Earths.

A messianic blue fox who slips through warrens of time and space on a mysterious mission. A homeless woman haunted by a demon who finds the key to all things in a strange journal. A giant leviathan of a fish, centuries old, who hides a secret, remembering a past that may not be its own. Three ragtag rebels waging an endless war for the fate of the world against an all-powerful corporation. A raving madman who wanders the desert lost in the past, haunted by his own creation: an invisible monster whose name he has forgotten and whose purpose remains hidden.

The first behind-the-scenes look at the life of the most enigmatic First Lady in U.S. history

Melania Trump is an enigma. Regardless of your political leanings, she is fascinating—a First Lady who, in many ways, is the most modern and groundbreaking in recent history. A former model whose beauty in person leaves people breathless, a woman whose upbringing in a communist country spurred a relentless drive for stability, both for herself and for her family. A reluctant pillar in a controversial presidential administration who speaks five languages and runs the East Wing like none of her predecessors ever could—underestimate her at your own peril (as a former government official did and was summarily fired). But who is she really?

In Free, Melania we get an insider's look at Melania Trump, from her childhood in Slovenia to her days in the White House, and everything in between. We see the Trump family dynamics that Melania has had to navigate, including her strained relationship with Ivanka. We get a rare glimpse into what goes into her famous and sometimes infamous clothing choices (including perhaps the real message behind Melania’s controversial jacket, “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?”, which she wore while visiting the U.S.-Mexico border), and how a publicly quiet Melania actually speaks very loudly—if you just know where, and how, to listen. And we get a behind-the-scenes look at her often eyebrow-raising relationship with Donald Trump, from their beginnings to becoming the most unusual First Family in modern history.

Looking at Melania in the pantheon of historic First Ladies, Kate Bennett shows just how different Melania Trump is and why she matters. Bennett, an expert on First Ladies, has unparalleled access to Melania’s very small and loyal inner circle. As she shows in this page-turning book, the seemingly most reluctant First Lady is, in many ways, the most compelling and complex First Lady, ever.

New York Times-bestselling author Robin Cook takes on the ripped-from-the-headlines topic of harnessing DNA from ancestry websites to catch a killer in this timely and explosive new medical thriller.

When the body of twenty-eight-year-old social worker Kera Jacobsen shows up on Chief New York City Medical Examiner Laurie Montgomery's autopsy table, at first it appears she was the victim of a tragic yet routine drug overdose. But for Laurie and her new pathology resident, the brilliant but enigmatic Dr. Aria Nichols, little things aren't adding up. Kera's family and friends swear she never touched drugs. Administrators from the hospital where Kera worked are insisting the case be shrouded in silence. And although Kera was ten weeks pregnant, nobody seems to know who the father was--or whether he holds the key to Kera's final moments alive.

As a medical emergency temporarily sidelines Laurie, impulsive Aria turns to a controversial new technique: using genealogic DNA databases to track down those who don't want to be found. Working with experts at a start-up ancestry website, she plans to trace the fetus's DNA back to likely male relatives in the hopes of identifying the mystery father. But when Kera's closest friend and fellow social worker is murdered, the need for answers becomes even more urgent. Because someone out there clearly doesn't want Kera's secrets to come to light . . . and if Aria gets any closer to the truth, she and Laurie might find themselves a killer's next targets.

The latest book in Alexander McCall Smith's popular 44 Scotland Street series is a sheer delight.

Summer has come to Scotland Street. The long days have prompted its denizens to engage in flights of fancy. Some, like the Duke of Johannesburg's plan to create a microlite seaplane, are literal flights, and some, like the vain Bruce Anderson's idea of settling down with one of his many admirers, are more metaphorical.

With the domineering Irene off pursuing academic challenges, Stuart and Bertie are free to indulge in summer fun. Stuart reconnects with an old acquaintance over refreshing peppermint tea while Bertie takes his friend Ranald Braveheart Macpherson to the circus. But their trip to the big top becomes rather more than the pleasant diversion they were hoping for.

Once again, Scotland Street teems with the daily triumphs and challenges of those who call it home, and provides a warm, wise, and witty chronicle of the affairs in this corner of the world.

FINALIST FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
The New York Times Bestseller

"A fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made." --Neil Gaiman

"Gripping, action-packed....The literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

The epic novel, an African Game of Thrones, from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings

In the stunning first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child.

Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.

As Tracker follows the boy's scent--from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers--he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying?

Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.