This post is sponsored by Lucy Linne in honor of her cozy Sapphic horror, Mist in the Willows, on sale for Pride for $1.99!
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The Brides by Charlotte Cross (July 7th)
“Come to me, and be mine for eternity.”
1884. When Mafalda journeys to Budapest to care for her grieving aunt, her secret love, Lucy, hurries from London to comfort her, with chaperone and lady’s maid in tow.
But lady’s maid Alice, blessed and cursed with the Sight, is tormented by terrifying visions. When chaperone Eliza falls prey to a disturbing wasting illness, the women hope to seek the healing waters of Transylvania. At a nobleman’s invitation, they set out for Castle Dracula.
In the depths of the forest, miles from civilization, their host reveals his true intentions; a monstrous ambition which will tear the women apart.
And not all of them will survive.
The Last Soldier of Nava by Yejin Suh (July 7th)
In this Korean mythology inspired sapphic fantasy, a young woman with shadow magic is awakened after a thousand years to heal her nation and her own troubled memory, even as she falls for the sister of a saint she killed in her past life.
According to legend, the Soldier drowned entire kingdoms in darkness.
Yet, the Soldier was only a girl, robbed of her will and raised as a weapon for her power-hungry father. When she awakens years later, freedom takes the form of a hidden life and a new name: Shadow.
As war brews and magical dead zones devour the natural world, Shadow is captured and pulled back into court life by her immortal father’s new prodigy, Scarlet, a diabolical woman obsessed with her sister’s murder. A murder Shadow herself committed in a past life.
Shadow’s control over darkness holds the key to restoring the balance of their world, but a serpentine court hides greed, corruption, and her father’s new plot to resurrect his fading magic.
If she’s to survive and save her nation, Shadow will have to hide her past and rely on the woman who captured her—even as they unwind the legends that brought them together and face their growing attraction.
Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle (July 7th)
Poppy Stringer was born to be a star.
An aspiring fashion influencer by day, Poppy moonlights as a grave robber to make ends meet, wheeling and dealing dead bodies across Palm Springs.
When her hero, the flamboyant, piano-slamming rockstar Eddie Michaels, unexpectedly dies, Poppy gets a call to retrieve his body from the medical examiner’s office for a lucrative sum. It could be the last job she’ll ever need―if everything goes to plan. But the night’s delivery quickly veers off course when Eddie wakes up.
Now Poppy must fight for her life if she hopes to survive this blood-soaked joyride of carnage and extravagant entertainment.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | Libro.fm
The Red Sacrament by Sara Hinkley (July 7th)
Paris, 1869. The Théâtre Saint-Siméon is the place to be, if you can get in. The black slips of paper that guarantee entry are rare and highly desired, and given only to certain persons. The actors on stage are magnetic and ageless, performing only at midnight and never seen during the day…
Arnault and his clan of vampires have survived for as long as they have by observing a rigid set of rules. At night, they perform on stage at the Théâtre Saint-Siméon, picking off just enough people in the audience to survive. But they understand the city, and how to live in it without being noticed.
Their peace is shattered first with a visit from Béatrice, a witch who forms a strange connection to Arnault; then with the arrival of Victor de Rouvray and his sister Françoise, vampires from a very different world. And, as Arnault grows closer and closer to the beautiful, enigmatic Victor, he risks becoming distracted from the constant bickering of his immortal friends, from the daily running of the theatre, and worse, from the premonitions of blood, death and starvation that he receives at night.
For a terrible change is on the horizon, revolt and revolution are brewing in the streets and soon, the city, and Arnault will never be the same again.
Good Morning Means I Love You by Kendra Allen (July 7th)
“A couple years after Noon and I fall in love, we fall in love with Micah—and a couple years after that, I have both of their babies. We choose, this land and this life. We share, ourselves and our sons. We name them, Morning and Night.”
In her arresting first novel, Kendra Allen investigates love, partnership, motherhood, pleasure and the pursuit of freedom in one young woman’s defiantly unconventional terms. Rae has just returned to her family after leaving for a stretch and suddenly – that family being her two male partners and the sons, named Morning and Night, that she has mothered with each of them. In the span of one year, they will experience unfathomable depths of devastation—and joys they could never predict.
The Revenant of Surolifia by Florence Chien (July 7th)
Secrets are often liabilities, but sometimes they are power.
Lucas Rhine has seen enough violence. When the Empire of Colours slaughters 17,000 of his silver-eyed kin, Lucas buries his hatred, hides his eyes behind coloured lenses, and vows to become the imperial gendarmerie’s commander. He will liberate his annexed island home through a diplomatic secession.
Usurped prince Faye Phlorik wants his throne back. When violent revolutionaries help him escape from prison, he joins them. They need a silver-eyed champion to rally the people, and he needs their resources to defeat the gendarmerie protecting the usurper.
When Faye’s escape costs Lucas his promotion, Lucas adds revenge to his list of reasons to stop the bloody revolution. While the two hunt each other across the country, the Empire’s warships are landing in two weeks to exterminate everyone with silver eyes. If Lucas and Faye can’t unite their forces against the imperial fleet, there will soon be nothing left of the people they’re both trying to liberate.
Perverts: Stories by Mac Crane (July 7th)
An employee at a hunting ground where people pay to act out hate crimes prepares to meet their girlfriend’s parents for the first time. A self-destructive client engages in an affair with their therapist, careening their relationship toward its inevitable breaking point. At a theme park where men pay to ogle women dressed as sirens, a mild-mannered boat attendant gets engaged to the star performer. And in the title story, a pregnant internet sex worker blackmails her clients into attending a disastrous party.
Nothing is off limits for Mac Crane as they rework classic stories of rejection, isolation, and connection to suggest that the so-called pervert, by existing in the margins of society, may be the one who sees the world most clearly. Crane brings their keen eye for the unsavory to seventeen transgressive stories that are as tantalizing and addictive as the characters’ experiences. A provocative and uproarious collection about pleasure, performance, and pain, Perverts is an exaltation of the awesome depravity of queer modernity.
Misery’s Wife by Joan Tierney (July 14th)
A queer and cli-fi reimagining of a Portuguese folktale about a young trans woman who must save her elder sisters from the King of the Air, the King of the Sea, and the King of Misery
Elixane lives in a village ravaged by waves, storms, and the encroaching forest. When she was too young to remember, her elder sisters each picked a flower and were whisked away: Borboleta to marry the King of the Air, Adelina to marry the King of the Sea, and her favorite sister Dores to marry the King of Misery, who promised: No one will ever love you as I will.
So when Elixane receives a mysterious message from a toad, she sets out to rescue Dores from the Kingdom of Misery. She is aided by the jester-like Marquês of Luck and his sister Jinx, the contrary and beautiful Marquesa of Misfortune. On the way, she’ll have to reunite with her sisters and their magical husbands, break several unbreakable curses―and, perhaps, find a magical love of her own.
Chosen Family by Madeleine Gray (July 14th)
Nell Argall and Eve Bowman are both brilliant, odd, and friendless. When they meet on the brutal battlefield that is their posh all girls’ high school during their first year there, both their lives are changed forever. From school, to university, to careers, Nell and Eve’s relationship is a life raft that is also a poison apple that is also a Medusan stare, frozen in time.
When the passion, guilt, shame, and joy that perpetually twists and turns between them finally implodes, Nell abruptly walks away, leaving Eve alone at the helm of the gloriously unorthodox family they’ve built with their seven-year-old daughter, Lake. Eve finds herself left wondering: Can the wounds of adolescent betrayal ever really heal? Can we ever really understand what’s going on in someone else’s head? And what’s love got to do, got to do with it?
The Malign Ghosts of Summer by Ann McMan (July 14th)
Told through the interwoven perspectives of four unforgettable characters—Meg, a gifted chef whose culinary journey anchors the story; Camille, her childhood best friend and unrequited love; Laurent, a sharp-tongued food critic and steadfast confidant; and Kip, a fearless documentary photographer who challenges Meg to live out loud—this richly layered novel spans decades, continents, and the full spectrum of human longing.
From postwar Paris to mid-century New York City to the quiet beauty of Vermont’s Lake Champlain, The Malign Ghosts of Summer traces how the pursuit of love—in all its forms—can shape a life. As each character navigates loss, belonging, and the search for meaning, their voices converge in a story of reinvention, chosen family, and the radiant triumph of becoming who you were always meant to be.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N
How to Date a Fanatic by Aruni Kashyap (July 14th)
As political tensions rise precipitously across India, Rohit returns to Delhi University to teach and gets caught in a web of unrequited love with his friend Dhruv. To alleviate his inevitable heartbreak, Rohit seeks relationships with other men in the city, until he meets and embarks on a delicate new romance with the effervescent Sayan, a literature student he hopes will be the answer to getting over Dhruv.
Rohit’s life soon becomes more complicated as the country’s political tensions erupt on campus, sparking a turbulent student-led movement that entangles Rohit when Dhruv joins the fray, a tipping point that changes Rohit’s life forever. Set against the vibrant, volatile tapestry of modern India, Rohit and his friends must learn to navigate the challenges and triumphs of queer life to survive in an unpredictable political landscape.
The Dragon Has Some Complaints by John Wiswell (July 14th)
Garrodigh was once a four-headed dragon, among the most powerful in Kardoša. After an unfortunate incident, he now has three heads, one stump, and a daily whirlwind of internal bickering. Centerhead wants to rain death upon all humanity, Bottomhead is like a feral cat, and Upperhead is under the delicate delusion that he is, in fact, human.
When a nearby battle goes awry, Garrodigh sneaks into an elite dragon rider academy, pretending to be tame to get free food and a warm bed. Lucky for him, rider Rania Charvátová is desperate enough for a dragon of her own that she overlooks his eccentricities.
As Garrodigh recovers under Rania’s care, all three heads start to turn, for the first time, in the same direction. Each wants to protect her from the invaders who killed their fourth head—the same invaders who seek to conquer Kardoša. When the academy comes under attack, can this wild dragon and his wilder rider save their homeland together?
A Fate Worse Than Drowning by Sarah L. Hawthorn (July 21st)
One deal with the devil makes a fool. Two? A villain…
A year ago, Elle made a deal with the devil to save her sister. Now, they live on a desolate spit of land beyond Halifax harbor. Elle, as lighthouse keeper, steers unsuspecting sailors to their destruction; those are the terms of her bargain. Liney need never know the cost. Her safety is worth every drop of blood.
But a sinner’s pact is not so simple. When the devil returns, demanding more – more shipwrecks, no survivors – Elle knows what she must do to keep Liney safe…
Another ship. Another crew killed in the devil’s name.
Then a woman washes ashore. Is she a soul to be sacrificed, or part of a darker design? As Liney and the stranger grow closer, Elle faces an impossible choice: kill, and break Liney’s heart, or forfeit her own soul.
Danger arises from all sides: the merciless sea, ruthless men on the mainland, and the infernal bargain itself…
Souls and sisterhood, fate and fire – what must be sacrificed for the devil to get his due?
The New People by Andrea Uptmor (July 21st)
Months after the housing bubble bursts, newlywed Chicagoans Emma and Rachel move into a charming little house in a conservative Indiana college town, hoping for a fresh start after a painful miscarriage. As Rachel immerses herself in her new role as a tenure-track professor and bestselling novelist, adjunct Emma struggles in the shadow of her wife’s success. Desperate to build something of her own, Emma secretly pursues IVF, even as Rachel insists they wait to have children. The house, initially a symbol of new beginnings, becomes a refuge for Emma from the town she’s convinced is set against her—until strange occurrences make her question whether she and her wife are truly alone.
They aren’t.
Charlotte and Dirk, the former homeowners, are secretly living in the attic above Emma and Rachel’s attached garage. Dispossessed by the recession and anxious about her husband’s declining health, Charlotte listens to the interlopers below, and her resentment steadily grows. What starts as small acts of defiance—missing food, flipped breakers in the fuse box, subtle scratches in the furniture—soon becomes sabotage. But when her campaign to drive out the couple goes too far, Charlotte’s and Emma’s stories converge in an explosive climax that will reveal the lengths people will go to reclaim what they’ve lost.
Give Me Everything You’ve Got by Imogen Crimp (July 21st)
In the middle of an unrelenting heat-wave, up-and-coming filmmaker Ruby arrives at the country house of her idol, Ellen. An iconoclastic feminist director, Ellen has offered Ruby mentorship and a room of her own in which to write her next film. Ellen’s home is like something out of a dream―grand and imposing, with sprawling gardens and a shimmering swimming pool. But tension thrums beneath the picture-perfect surface. Ellen’s reputation is under fire, and she chastises Ruby for refusing to turn her trauma into art. Meanwhile, Ellen’s mercurial twenty-year-old daughter, Lara, lounges by the pool under the blistering sun, drawing her mother’s latest houseguest towards her like a moth to a flame.
As her hopes for an artistic summer retreat unravel, Ruby finds herself entangled in a dangerous dynamic between mother and daughter, waiting for the heat to break. Ellen and Lara seem to be playing games with her, and only they know the rules. Soon the house itself begins to feel haunted, and Ruby has the unnerving sensation that she’s not the first promising young woman to fall under its spell.
The Flayed Man by Chloe Lauter (July 21st)
Ellis Karsten spends nights working triage in the ER and days having the same conversation with her mom. The early onset dementia is exhausting, but the real challenge is their curse—Ellis’s family must feed daily on blood, or risk becoming mindless, skinless killing machines. When Ellis’s uncle, who supplies their blood, vanishes, she takes it upon herself to find a new source, aided by a prickly paramedic who’s equal parts unpredictable and intoxicating. But as Ellis fights to balance her bloodthirsty nature with a new relationship, her mom’s impossible demands transform into panicked warnings that a fabled monster, “The Flayed Man,” is stalking them.
As she traverses the desert in search of blood, Ellis risks her safety and her family’s secret, until it becomes clear that her mom is right: something ancient and hungry is hunting them, and it has come for her mom. Blood hunger begins to overtake Ellis, transforming her body into something ghoulish and frightening—exactly what The Flayed Man wants. In the end, she must decide who to trust, what she’s willing to sacrifice, and whether she is worthy of a life, and love, beyond her curse—or if she’s going to succumb to instinct and ravage the world.
The Lord of the Wood by E.M. Anderson (July 21st)
Clockmaker Arthur Throckmorton lives a quiet life with his sister and her children, only dreaming of adventure. So when a wealthy client offers him a job that involves traversing Shiftleaf—an enchanted forest that claimed his father decades ago—he reluctantly accepts. The forest is treacherous, but the money will change his family’s lives.
The journey quickly turns perilous. Fleeing from monstrous birds, Arthur stumbles upon a hidden vale where he meets the Lord of the Wood—a figure from his father’s many stories. Instead of the fairy prince Arthur always imagined, Ira is a morose man, slowly transforming into a beast, his power over a dying forest waning.
Arthur enjoys the safety of the vale, and Ira’s company. But he yearns for his family. To safely return home and rescue Ira from a cursed and lonely existence, Arthur and Ira must reach the heart of the wood to heal the forest. Except the further they venture from the vale, the more beastly Ira becomes. If they can’t complete their mission before he turns completely, Arthur could lose the man he’s falling for—and never see his family again.
I Do Not Apologize for My Position on Men by Rae Wilde (July 21st)
A collection of standalone sapphic horror short stories, a quadrilogy of connected stories, and an interactive pick-a-path novelette.
A woman forms an electric bond with the cosmic terror behind a gloryhole. Another falls in love with a hurricane. A nihilist and her obsessive paramour find a child after a catastrophic fire. People seduce monsters, monsters seduce people, and the line between person and monster loses meaning.
And that’s all before an interactive pick-a-path survival horror novelette based on the tragedy of the whaling ship Essex.
Finally back in print, this edition includes a brand-new bonus story, previously unpublished.
Null Entity by Seth Haddon (July 21st)
In Null Entity, sequel to Seth Haddon’s bloody and sapphic Volatile Memory, Wylla and Sable take their revenge to the very corporation keeping the galaxy turning.
With her identity erased from the Corporate Federation, Wylla is a ghost in the machine: untraceable, unpredictable, and fueled by vengeance. She fights alongside Sable, the digital consciousness she loves in ways no system could ever define. Together, they’ve built a reputation for tearing through VisorForge’s carefully constructed lies.
But notoriety has a cost.
When one of their attacks draws the attention of the Edenic Order―a clandestine eco-resistance whose insurgents bloom with Old Earth flora―Wylla and Sable are offered something more than revenge: a chance to dismantle VisorForge from the roots up.
As they fall deeper into the Order’s radical vision, tensions rise. Wylla: aching to change the world yet seduced by thoughts of a quiet life, free of bloodshed. Sable: pushed to her moral limits when what she’s wanted since death is at her fingertips.
To survive, they’ll need to embrace what makes them dangerous: two minds, one body, and a shared resolve to bring down a corporatized dystopia―no matter the cost.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | Libro.fm
Eight Tastes of Treachery by Ryan Rose (July 21st)
This is the sequel to Seven Recipes for Revolution
Three years after eating the rich, Paprick Bessa is an infamous warchef known as the Butcher. Numbed by grief and war with the ousted rulers, Paprick no longer enjoys cooking and can’t create new recipes. So when Ranch finally reaches a tenuous ceasefire with the Rare, Paprick seizes the chance to reheat his passions, opening a restaurant with a menu all his own.
But conspiracy interruptsthe opening night, his own emphon destroy the restaurant, and all signs point to the neighboring Empire of the Badgeboar. Whoever orchestrated this threatens to destroy everything Paprick and Ranch’s common fought for, and the Butcher leaves no threat breathing. To find the attacker and stop another all-out war, Paprick, his partner Cori, and his kitchen brigade journey west to curry favor with the Empire’s questionable elite and investigate its mysterious religions.
Treacherous forces and dire prophecies lie in wait for Paprick’s arrival, and all the while, the Rare re-arm in the east. Facing magics and flavors unlike any he’s ever tasted, Paprick will have to choose what matters most – his people, his passions, or his partner. He can’t save all three.
Buy it: Amazon
The Felicity Complex by august clarke (July 28th)
Welcome to the Felicity Complex! Constructed during the height of the Cold War, our unique hotel is prepared to protect you, the billionaire class, from nuclear annihilation! Shielded from radiation and supplemented with closed air systems and hydroponic gardens, this resort bunker offers a prime existence underground: full gymnasium and spa, gourmet meals, top-tier medical care, and the best in entertainment.
Meet Hallelujah! Grown in a lab and educated in the ways of concierge hospitality, she believes in her duty to comfort the Lord-anointed refugees of the apocalypse. (Even if her lover Anastasia disagrees. Even if her creator Dr. Younghusband is disappointed in her.) Don’t worry—everyone is safe from communists in the Felicity Complex!
Look, Hallelujah, guests have finally arrived! Hallelujah and her sister specimens have waited ages for you. Never mind the secrets other rich survivalists may be hiding. Just make sure they don’t notice the violent intentions behind our staff’s wide, wide smiles…
The Harpy Knight by Sara Omer (July 28th)
This is the sequel to The Gryphon King
With Bataar’s campaign to conquer Dumakra victorious, he turns his eyes to Aglea in the north, where pagan berserkers rule over inhospitable marshes and ritualistically butcher unicorns. Prince Nassar and his entourage have also fled to Aglea to rally his supporters—taking the ghoulish variant of vermilrot they unearthed from the abandoned depths of Anhabar with them.
Nohra and Bataar are soon to be married. Nohra has not forgiven the rhah’s sins against Kalafar or her family, but her thirst for vengeance wars with her feelings for Qaira. Bataar’s supernatural gifts are increasingly powerful, and his hold on Dumakra more secure by the day. Serving him is now the only path Nohra can see that ends with her younger brother one day restored to Kalafar’s throne.
The power struggle between Bataar and Nassar fast becomes a swirling conflict of religions and gods: the Agleans revere Darya for her demonic powers; Nohra and Qaira are heralded as the two manifestations of Dumakra’s Goddess; and Bataar is the walking embodiment of his people’s Preeminent spirit. In this febrile atmosphere, the ghoul sickness is spreading rapidly, and monsters continue to encroach on human towns, causing violence and dismay.
The war, and the world, hang in the balance. Just one wrong move could tip everything into chaos.
Appetite by P. Paramita (August 4th)
How far will you go to feed your ambitions?
Zarina, a prep cook at a fancy New Haven restaurant, is underpaid, overworked, and might as well be invisible. The only upside: they get to take home leftover ingredients. Every night, Zarina whips up modern spins on the Bangladeshi dishes she grew up eating, all while enjoying her second greatest passion: professional wrestling. Namely, Zarina’s hero Sierra Myst—the massively successful, high-flying heel who’s built like a superhero and is every bit as confident and daring as one.
One night, Zarina posts online about one of Sierra Myst’s wins, and the most improbable thing happens: Sierra reaches out to Zarina. She’s elated at the chance to become closer with her idol, and at first, their friendship is everything Zarina’s ever dreamed of. Zarina’s confidence grows, their world gets bigger, and opening their own restaurant doesn’t feel quite so impossible. But as the weeks fly by, Zarina starts to feel more like Sierra’s unpaid personal assistant and relationship counselor—and her desire to make Sierra happy eclipses their own goals and threatens everything they’ve worked for.
Fruit Fly by Josh Silver (August 4th)
Go gay. Go sad. Go dark.
A washed-up author will stop at nothing to claw her way back to relevancy—even if it means appropriating a young gay man’s tragic story.
Mallory Maddox is buried under seven years of writer’s block. With her status as a literary sensation fizzling, she’ll do anything she can to resurrect her career. Inspiration needs to strike—and fast.
Enter Leo. He’s a struggling addict sleeping under bridges and trading sex for survival. He’s vulnerable. He’s enigmatic. He’s exactly what Mallory has been looking for.
Mallory needs Leo if she wants another bestseller. The world needs Leo’s story right now, and Mallory believes she deserves to tell it. Really, it’s her story—she’s the one who wrote it, after all.
But as secrets threaten to unravel more than just her career, Mallory must decide how far she will go to pen the perfect story.
All We Hide by Robyn Gigl (August 4th)
A trans detective working for the District Attorney’s Office takes on the twisty, poignant cold case murder of a local trans woman, and her investigation unravels the threads of a mystery that’s haunted her since she was a child: her mother’s disappearance.
When Lieutenant Lauren Kelly is exiled to the Homicide Cold Case Unit at the DA’s office, she knows her superiors are sticking her there as punishment until she can quietly retire in two years. That way, no one can claim they discriminated against the only trans detective in Donn County.
Even though Lauren has enough on her plate already—a teenage daughter struggling with Lauren’s transition, an ex-wife Lauren hasn’t gotten over, a former detective father with Alzheimer’s—she starts looking into the murder of Sherry Darling, a trans sex worker and Lauren’s former high school classmate. As Lauren looks deeper into Sherry’s case, she finds evidence of a cover-up with far-reaching implications that may or may not be tied to her own mother’s disappearance four decades before.
Be Still My Unbeating Heart by Josh Winning (August 4th)
A cozy vampire vacation mystery set in a seaside Italian village, featuring a reformed vampire, his magical talking cat, and a handsome, brooding detective.
Bastian may be a vampire, but he doesn’t bite.
. . . Not anymore, at least.
These days, Bastian just wants to live his best undead life: visit charming Italian villages, maybe dance in the square with a cute boy, all with Whitby, his best friend (and magical talking cat) by his side. What he doesn’t want? To stumble across a dead body on the beach, a girl who appears to have been killed by a vampire.
It wasn’t Bastian. He swears—on his own grave.
But the local police chief doesn’t trust Bastian, or any vampire, for that matter, so he assigns detective Nico De Luca to keep an eye on him until his trial. And while Bastian normally wouldn’t complain about having a gorgeous, mysterious man by his side, he has more important things to worry about, because the police chief has called the Vampire Council, and if the real killer is still at large when they arrive, the whole town could be in danger. As more bodies begin to pile up, Bastian, Whitby, and De Luca must get to the bottom of who in Vernazza is framing vampires, before it’s too late.
Intrusive Intentions by Sebastian J. Plata (August 4th)
Life back home might’ve been boring and predictable, but it was safe…
Coming to terms with his sexuality and craving adventure, twenty-one-year-old American Daniel begins a semester abroad in Kraków, Poland. It’s not only a stunning city full of culture, but Daniel also hits the jackpot with his host family.
Young couple Henryk and Aneta Lis, and their little son Kuba are wonderful―and ultra-wealthy! Daniel can’t believe his luck. But the more time he spends with beautiful and charismatic Aneta, the more he senses that his fairy tale experience is turning dark . . .
He’s soon sucked into a powerful and dangerous web of obsession, deceit, and connivance that will make him wish he’d never left his quiet hometown . . .
Meet Me in the Garden by Nina LaCour (August 4th)
New Orleans, 1944. Odette has always been one of the Honore sisters, glamorous and admired in their Creole community. But while Odette’s older sisters are content to be wives and mothers, Odette has always wanted something else. It is only with her beloved cousin, Delphine, that Odette can tell her secret: she is in love with a woman, and she longs to be an artist. Delphine has a secret lover, too, a white man. In the hidden garden they’ve discovered, Odette and Delphine can dream of futures full of passion and freedom.
But five years later, Odette’s life is nothing like what she’d planned. She’s a widowed mother, living in Los Angeles, and she and Delphine, who is passing as white, have spiraled away from each other. When Delphine reaches a breaking point, Odette must make a shattering choice to try to hold her family together.
Sunsplitter by S.A. Maclean (August 4th)
This is the sequel to Voidbringer.
Sunsplitter is the epic conclusion to S. A. Maclean’s spicy monster romance duology in which a cross-dimensional smuggler and her immortal partner must defend their home from dangerous beasts.
Fi has toppled immortal beasts. Antal welcomes being conquered. After helping the Lord Daeyari reclaim his territory, semi-reformed smuggler Fi dons a daunting new role: rebuilding a city alongside her monstrous partner, a haven free from bloody sacrifice.
So when Antal’s father unexpectedly summons him home, Fi’s first instinct is to ready her claws. Only, claws won’t be enough for this adversary. Antal faces his first homecoming in five decades, dreading two truths. From his father’s seat on the governing council, he could undo everything Antal has built. And their last argument ended with Antal’s lover dead on the floor. But a greater danger lurks: the appearance of a creature that even the daeyari fear, burning its way through the Planes.
With Antal’s father leading the hunt, he and Fi must ally with a team of immortals who could turn fangs on them at any moment. Or worse, strain their still-fresh love until it snaps.
For the Love of the Quest by Alexandra Ammon Parthun (August 11th)
Lady Edith Darling is supposed to live a quiet life in her family’s manor. She is not supposed to go unchaperoned on a quest to find Excalibur. Determined to honor her beloved grandmother’s dying wish, Edith packs her satchel with Arthurian legends, pastries, and her grandmother’s ashes and runs off to hire a mercenary.
Thomasin Shaw leads the most feared gang in London. For years, she had the constabulary safely in her pocket, until a scandal involving was brought to light. Now they’re demanding an enormous sum of money—without which Thomasin will lose the protection of the police along with her criminal empire. But when the rich Lady Edith waltzes into her life seeking an escort for a treasure hunt, Thomasin sees a willing kidnapping victim and a massive ransom.
As Edith’s clues lead them to underground chambers booby-trapped with arrows, doors locked with arcane puzzles, and even Arthur’s fabled round table, Thomasin finds herself swept up in the quest—and in Edith herself. Every legendary quest has an ending, but finding Excalibur might not be enough to make this a happy one.
She Haunts Me Still by De Elizabeth (August 11th)
These violent delights have violent ends.
After surviving a shadowed childhood, Mallory Webb is ready to start fresh as a theater major at her mother’s alma mater, a sanitarium turned liberal arts university in Rhode Island. Landing the lead role in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet feels like a dream—until the blood-soaked wraith that caused her mother’s death resurfaces after years of quiet. With nothing to go on but cryptic symbols in an old college notebook, Mallory hopes the reason behind her mother’s haunting lies somewhere on campus, and resolves to find answers before she meets the same fate.
She’s surprised to make an unexpected ally in Ezra Pierce, the magnetic fourth year directing the play, and takes solace in their undeniable chemistry. But Ezra is a master secret-keeper, and it’s clear he knows more than he’s letting on about Saskia Garin, Mallory’s elusive understudy whose past eerily mirrors her own.
When an ancient, bloodthirsty evil calls to collect on a bargain that dates back to the New England vampire panic, Mallory, Ezra, and Saskia will have to untangle the tragic ways in which their histories are linked—and face the devastating consequences of their own star-crossed love story.
Don’t Cross Mo Ellery by Birdie Horne (August 11th)
Mo Ellery’s 29th birthday is a disaster. After one small accident—the exposure of her boyfriend’s genitals (well, maybe not that small) on a work video call—she manages to get fired, dumped, and kicked out of their overpriced Chicago apartment. Luckily, a sign appears to guide Mo to her new life: “Looking for flexible part-time work? Become a school crossing guard!” It’s everything Mo has been looking for: health insurance. How hard can it be?
A few weeks later, Mo is adjusting to her new low-paying job, her bisexual reawakening, and her new neighborhood’s wacky characters. There’s Claudia, an old woman who refuses to let Mo help her cross the street, and Marlowe, a tween cell phone prodigy whose antics terrify her. But Mo’s greatest nemesis is Poodle Dude, a guy with an SUV full of poodles who speeds through her intersection each morning. . . until the day he speeds into a sinkhole. Mo tries and fails to shield innocent eyes from his bloody corpse, but succeeds in accidentally becoming the guardian to his three poodles.
And that’s not the worst of it: some of the locals are convinced that Poodle Dude was murdered. Their allegations are obviously ridiculous, but Mo, desperate for distractions—and for several hot neighbor-suspects—reluctantly agrees to help. But Mo the detective is just as chaotic as Mo the underemployed adult, and the three entitled poodles are not helping. When a second local dies under mysterious circumstances, it’s going to take all of Mo’s broadly applicable and transferrable skills to find the killer.
Murderers beware. . . DON’T CROSS MO ELLERY!
Stay Buried by Jennifer McMahon (August 11th)
Some towns stay isolated for a reason.
1919: Frankie O’Massey has always been the black sheep of isolated Boone’s Ferry, Vermont. Her uncle, Dr. Thomas Endicott, has been training her in the science of medicine, something the townspeople are wary of. When a mysterious illness strikes the town, and the community suspects supernatural forces, the two desperately search for a logical explanation. Patient zero seems to be the town’s knackerman—a recluse who collects dead and dying farm animals to make use of their parts.
2016: Siblings Ashley and Malcolm lost their mother two years ago. When their grandmother dies, they inherit a property in Boone’s Ferry—a place they’ve heard of but their grandmother has always refused to talk about—and embark on a trip to their ancestral home. The idyllic town is full of autumnal décor, picturesque farmland, and small-town charm. But some of the townspeople aren’t very welcoming—and they have some unsettling traditions, like leaving offerings to a vengeful spirit four times a year.
The Witch Queen by Heather Walter (August 11th)
This is the sequel to The Crimson Crown
The wicked queen’s story did not end with a happily ever after. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.
With the king bound to her magic mirror and Princess Blodwyn, the rightful heir, hidden away in the countryside, Queen Ayleth has the kingdom entirely at her command.
Despite her ultimate power, Ayleth finds herself consumed: With fears that the witches from her former coven will return to depose her. With the dread that someone at the palace will discover her secret. With her own deepening dark magic.
And with thoughts of her lost love, Jacquetta—the witch whose betrayal still haunts Ayleth as stubbornly as the lingering scent of juniper.
But Ayleth’s carefully built world begins to unravel when Blodwyn returns from exile accompanied by Margaret, the king’s scheming sister, and reveals a plan of her own: to invoke Braxos’s Trials, a contest of bravery, wisdom, and justice that could allow Blodwyn to retake the throne. Ayleth suddenly discovers she is in danger of losing the crown she sacrificed everything to win—and she will do anything to retain control.
And Ayleth isn’t the only one struggling with her altered position. Blodwyn’s homecoming soon proves more difficult than she imagined. Embroiled in Ayleth’s viperous court, Blodwyn is surrounded by enemies and plagued by rumors of a long-buried curse come to life. As family secrets resurface, the princess isn’t sure who—or what—she can trust. Especially when she may be falling for one of her rivals in the trials.
As the battle for the realm intensifies, both Ayleth and Blodwyn find themselves fighting not only for the throne but for the truth of their own souls. Soon, they must each decide: What price are they willing to pay to wear the crown?
The Halls of the Dead by S.M. Hallow (August 18th)
London, December 1849
Irene Shallcross Haley has dedicated her life to necromancy, a forbidden, reviled art that is passed along through sentient grimoires bound in human skin. With her undead husband St. John—a marriage of kindred spirits and platonic convenience—she has been protecting the knowledge of generations of witches that came before her. Like any magic, it has come at a cost: her reputation, her relationship with her sister, and her soul. But when Irene’s love, Agnes, is hanged for witchcraft, Irene refuses to let Agnes be one more thing that is taken from her.
A true resurrection has not been achieved in two thousand years, but Irene is determined. With the help of St. John, Irene bangs on the doors of the Halls of the Dead, demanding the third part of their triumverate back…or did she? Because the Agnes that awakens comes with both a hunger for raw flesh and a malignant ghost tied to her soul.
Necromancy is the art of saying no—no, I won’t let you go; no, I won’t let you be destroyed—and Irene’s work is not yet done. She must find a way to bring Agnes back to her true self, she must navigate her feelings for her resurrected lover as well as St. John, and she must do all of this without catching the attention of Sir Silas Underhill, the man who sentenced Agnes to death.
Death is not the end of love. But Irene may realize it can actually be the beginning.
The Salt King by Natasha Pulley (August 18th)
Jesuit priest Avelyn Brocken was born into a mining family in Hreodwater, a small, totally isolated salt town in the Fens of England. At age 16, he fled, abandoning his faith in the god of the mine-the Salt King-and the mythology that killed his whole family.
When a fellow priest is miraculously healed only to then be turned to salt after a visit to Hreodwater, Avelyn is sent by the Vatican to investigate. But in Hreodwater, the town’s gentle doctor, Jericho, tells him that the priest is not the only one experiencing strange cures-and may not be the only one in danger from a substance in the mine that the locals call “salt light.”
Avelyn and Jericho team up to protect the world from the salt light-but they may already be too late: strange happenings are occurring at mines all around the world. At an archaeological dig on the Dead Sea, electrical devices froth salt; at another salt mine in Russia, a KGB officer finds the bodies of five tourists who seem to have turned to salt; and at the huge salt works at Wieliczska in Poland, all communication is lost, and rumors circulate of total annihilation.
As salt light spreads, devastating cities around the world, Avelyn must decide what and who to believe-and whether his faith is strong enough to withstand an apocalypse.
Unpredecented Times by Malavika Kannan (August 18th)
Which comes first: experience or narrative? Rishi thinks she knows the answer as she arrives on campus for her first year at Stanford. A burnt-out youth climate activist, she used to want to save the world, but now she just wants to have gay sex. Her plan is set―she’s going to leave behind the strict trappings of her Indian American childhood in Florida, study literature, experiment with love, and write all about it. Within a few months, she makes her first best friend, falls in love with her situationship, and promptly gets her heart broken.
What is not a part of Rishi’s plan is the onset of the COVID pandemic. As the outside world becomes a terrifying place, she increasingly finds solace in the friendships she’s made. Instead of virtual college, however, Rishi and her classmates join a farm collective, where their political discussions and growing disillusionment collide with sexual tension and responsibility. It’s only when those relationships start fracturing under the stress of careless decisions, unrequited crushes, jealousies, and, yes, unprecedented times, that Rishi begins to question her own story.
The Divine Gardener’s Handbook: Or What to Do if Your Girlfriend Accidentally Turns Off the Sun by Eli Snow (August 18th)
Cyprin grows perfect apples.
No other worker tends the orchards like she can. Sick of living in a Jenga-esque megacity where she’s never alone (there’s always a rat), Cyprin dreams of a job in the Divine Gardens, tending to the plants overseen by God.
Her only way in is winning an annual flower pageant―one that’s been dominated by the Divine Gardens’ head gardener for five years running: an insufferable woman with an undeniable affinity for plants. When Cyprin plays dirty (criminally dirty) and wins, she jumps headfirst into life in the gardens and her rivalry with the head gardener, who she just can’t stop thinking about.
Pranks, backstabbing, and a lot of heated glaring unite them, until they’re both drawn into a plot to take down God―who’s really just some guy with a great garden. As they spiral through layers of the city’s history and underground rebel group, Cyprin and her rival will find they understand each other like no one else does, even if there can only be one head gardener in the end.
But rise or fall, at least Cyprin will always have the rats.
The Minimalist by Kailee Pederson (August 18th)
As the last and greatest student of famed minimalist composer Ryder Wakefield, Mia Voss’s rise to prominence in the insular world of classical music has long been assured. When Ryder dies unexpectedly, she inherits everything―including the unfinished manuscript of his final composition, the mysterious Death Fugue: Music for Orchestra.
Haunted by memories of her tragic romance with Ryder’s late son, Oliver―like Mia, an Asian American adoptee―Mia leaves her girlfriend behind and returns to Ryder’s home to finish his last work. There, Mia is forced to confront her complex relationship with Ryder, who hid his Jewish and gay identities to become one of the most important twentieth-century American composers; her lingering guilt over Oliver’s suicide; and her own musical ambition as the manuscript begins to exert a disturbing, mesmerizing hold over her.
Drawn from the author’s own experiences as an adoptee and classical musician, The Minimalist is a harrowing examination of loss, torment, mental illness, self-harm, and artistic self-destruction.
The Blue Moon Café & 24-Hour Occult Emporium by Lexie Sharabianlou (August 18th)
A magical witness protection program, a town in need of saving, and a sorceress-in-training . . . oh, and the human woman she’s not supposed to fall for. The Blue Moon Café has a little bit of everything (except, you know, decent coffee).
In the tiny town of Pine Hollow, barista and fledging sorceress Talula Smith runs The Blue Moon Café & 24-Hour Occult Emporium, aka the worst coffee shop in town. The café’s horrible reputation hides its true purpose: providing new identities and safe passage to at-risk magical beings while keeping humans far, far away. That is, except for town local Dahlia. Dahlia’s devastating dimples, addiction to Talula’s cocoa recipe, and keen observation skills keeps the smitten barista scrambling to ensure that her magical abilities (or, lack thereof) stay a secret.
But when big game hunters start preying on magical beings, her powerful sorceress mother is called away to track them down, leaving Talula and her barely-there magic in charge of The Blue Moon. With the impending Samhain festival to organize, magical refugees to help, half of the town turning against her, and her ever-growing feelings for Dahlia, Talula’s magical destiny feels further away than ever. But as the hunters set their sights closer to home, it’ll be up to Talula to master her craft, trust her heart, and bring her magical and human communities together . . . before she loses everything she loves.
Crocodilopolis by John Manuel Arias (August 25th)
Once a powerful, cold-blooded politician in Costa Rica, Seth Oreamundo is now living in exile in Washington, DC – and his younger brother Osario is to blame. Born into a corrupt political dynasty and raised on a seemingly idyllic coffee estate, the Oreamundo brothers were destined for greatness. But a dark family secret and a scandalous double crossing sent their lives into a tailspin, changing the country forever.
Osario must pay, and Seth decides the only way to do so is to return home to Costa Rica and feed his brother to the infamous river of crocodiles from their childhood. What follows is a spellbinding story of revenge alternating between Seth’s murderous plans and memories of the brothers’ upbringing.
Summer Coven by Kat Hillis and Rosiee Thor (August 25th)
This is the second book in the Dead & Breakfast series
Arthur Miller (no relation to the playwright) and his beloved, Salvatore Conte, are settling into their (para)normal lives in Trident Falls. Finally, everything seems to be going swimmingly…business is booming at the inn and Arthur is hard at work on his first case as a private detective: finding their friend Brody’s missing mom.
But when a pet psychic is felled by a poisoned potion she (somehow) didn’t see coming, Arthur’s investigation takes an enchanting turn – and not in a good way. It turns out the psychic was a member of the Celestine Coven, a powerful group of witches who sell their charms for a price. Did the pet psychic find herself on the wrong side of the coven? Or did she trigger someone’s pet peeves with her predictions? It will require all of Arthur’s wit and Sal’s whimsy to solve this murder, find their missing person, and avoid becoming part of the witches’ wicked brew.
Daggerbound by T. Kingfisher (August 25th)
This is the second book in the Swordheart series
Learned Edmund, a disillusioned scholar, is transporting yet another precious relic from one stuffy temple to a different stuffy temple. Another great adventure for the ages…
But when Edmund is set upon by bandits, in desperation, he breaks the cardinal rule and grabs for the relic, an ancient sword. To his surprise, instead of unsheathing a rusty, ancient weapon, an alarmingly handsome man appears, wielding daggers of blue steel and cutting the thieves down.
This man is the Dervish, an immortal warrior who’s been trapped for centuries in a sword of enchanted steel, and is angry as hell about it. He hates the curse that put him there, and he wants to hate Edmund, just as he has hated every wielder before him.
But the damned scholar is just so sweet and clever and kind. And while the Dervish may be able to protect Edmund from bandits, cultists, dragons, and strange inhuman diplomats, he may find it much harder to protect his own heart.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N
The Haunting of Avis Lovelock by MK Hardy (August 27th)
Avis Lovelock is a professional sceptic. Using her sharp insights and powers of observation, she sets out to debunk every nefarious spirit medium and psychic she can find. When American businessman Carlton Brooksbank invites her aboard the ocean liner Excambion to take her skills to America, Avis discovers she has been hired to prove to potential buyers that the vessel is not haunted.
As she begins her investigations, she runs afoul of the famous twin spiritualists onboard, Gideon and Rachel Duquesne. They are her polar opposites, and Rachel especially has a knack for getting under her skin. The more Avis works to discredit her adversaries and absolve the ship of its haunted reputation, the more she starts to have visions of water filling her cabin, drowned bodies on decks, and flickering lights on the sea. Then someone is found dead.
To discover the truth, Avis must join forces with her opponents, and confront some haunting secrets of her own.
Buy it: Blackwell’s
The Disappearers by Marlon James (September 1st)
In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica, begin rehearsals for a play. The men are strangers to one another and each has a different reason for being involved. But they all share one inescapable truth: All of them are gay―a “battyman” in Jamaican argot―and all of them must contend with the dangers that such a truth lays bare.
One night a mob savagely attacks them, killing one of the men. For the survivors, their recovery is as much emotional as it is physical. As their bodies heal, each man grapples with the violence, the hatred, and the rage that the attack made plain. Some try to ignore what the attack has unearthed, while others double down on retribution.
Vulture Gold: Stories by Micah Dean Hicks (September 1st)
Welcome to a dark country of sadness and wonder. Where a wedding dress turns a reluctant bride into a flock of birds, and families put on their wolf coats before devouring one another. These growling, prickly-feathered stories blur the lines between human and animal, living and dead. Teenage spirits are condemned to drive around their hometown forever. Five brothers learn that they were once crows. The bank hires a man to go into foreclosed houses and kill their monsters. Two sisters find an oven that can resurrect the dead. Plumbers kidnap mermaids trapped in a city sewer system. A mockingbird sings a woman’s sins. A boy with a single swan’s wing yearns to fly. And watching over all of them is the queen of the dead, who sends her vulture men to scavenge the bones. The characters in these modern fairy tales challenge expectations and norms in a dark and magical shared world.
Big Man by Dean Atta (September 3rd)
BIG MAN follows the life of Big, a middle-aged, Black British gay man who lives a gentle life with his boyfriend, Little, in their home in East London. Big and Little enjoy evenings out and group holidays with friends, as much as practising yoga together at home, and running side by side along the Hackney canals.
Big came of age in the club scene under the watchful eye of Mother, an African American trans woman who made a home and a name for herself in London, her house a refuge for wayward queer youth like Big. When he finds out Mother is releasing a memoir, the two reconnect after decades of distance, and Big finds himself having to confront a long-repressed assault that opens old – and new – wounds.
Buy it: Blackwell’s | Cipher Press
A Snake Among Swans by Hannah Kaner (September 8th)
“Death is come to take you home, death of blood and thorn and bone…”
Tilde has always heard the whispers of the kithwood, the voices of her ancestors speaking through the mysterious forest of her homeland. But now both the kithwood and her kingdom are in danger, for Tilde is the only surviving heir of a conquered land. To stop the bloodshed, she must marry the aging Swan King, Liran, and bear him a son.
But the king’s court is dangerous. Liran’s older sons will do whatever it takes to remove Tilde. And her presence stirs conflict in the heart of Liran’s daughter, the princess Elise, who has only ever known loyalty to her family.
Yet none of them know that Tilde is a snake in their midst, with allies on her side and dark, forbidden power of her own. She wants her kingdom back, and she will sacrifice everything to claim it.
For the queen to rise, the swans must fall.
She’s a Doll by Barbara Truelove (September 8th)
Lucy isn’t a normal girl. Ghost. Victim. Killer. She’s a doll on a mission—to find the man who killed her and return the favor.
Lucy McQuinn has been murdered, but she’s not about to go quietly.
If she doesn’t get to keep breathing, then neither does Kyle, her killer. Possessing the body of an antique doll, she sets out on a quest for revenge. But it’s hard when you’re eighteen inches tall and made of porcelain.
For help, she turns to Nicola, a human and fellow outsider with her own reasons to hate Kyle. But in their small idyllic town, no one wants to hear the truth, especially not about such a promising young man. If they can’t expose his crimes, Lucy will have to roll up her lacy little sleeves and teach him a lesson the old-fashioned way—as slowly and painfully as possible.
The Living Realm by Jordan Tannahill (September 8th)
While cruising one evening by Teufelssee, a small glacial lake in the Grunewald forest on the edge of Berlin, a man spots a handsome stranger who bears an uncanny resemblance to his former lover. Only, Lukas died nearly thirty years ago. Yet the man cannot shake the feeling that it was really Lukas he saw. As the man spends a long, hot summer by the lake, he continues to encounter Lukas, and then other lost lovers as well. As he attempts to make sense of the strange occurrences and learns more of Teufelssee, he finds himself venturing deeper into the mystery of the forest, leading him to question not just his sanity but the nature of time itself.
Strange Lights by Mira
Parenting is never easy, but it’s a hell of a lot harder when your toddler is a chupacabra.
Paranormal investigator and cryptozoologist Reggie has embraced her fate as parent to an adopted toddler, Eldi—a bloodsucking chupacabra with a fondness for goats. Reggie wants nothing more than to put her complicated past in the rearview mirror and fade into as much obscurity as her toddler will allow. But a rash of UFOs in the night sky and a couple of crop-circle-carving Roombas force Reggie into an investigation that attracts the attention of an old enemy, an anti-supernatural agency hunting for creatures like Eldi. To outwit them, Reggie must team up with Calvin, a podcaster-turned-werewolf whose charm is a real threat to Reggie’s rule against romantic attachments.
With Reggie’s history quickly catching up to her and Eldi in the agency’s crosshairs, any shred of normalcy evaporates. Reggie must decide: Can she confront her dark past to save Eldi—and an entire alien species—from getting wiped out of the universe?
A Beautiful Lie by Tanya Grant (September 8th)
Every one of my home organizing clients is a fabulous liar.
They tell themselves they need to keep clutter in their lives for rainy days or just-in-cases. They hold onto things too tightly. Most people don’t know how to cut to the heart of what’s important and purge everything that’s not.
That’s where I come in. I can look into my client’s lives and see exactly what’s weighing them down, and I get rid of it for them.
It sounds easy, but I’ll let you in on a secret: I have trouble letting go of things, too.
When Cap slides into my life with her neon signs and velvet hair bows and magnetic energy, I know I can’t just let her walk away. Because one of the first rules of home organizing is that like belongs with like. And Cap and me? We’re destined to be together.
She may not know it yet, but that’s okay. I’d be lying if I didn’t say the challenge is part of the thrill. And luckily for Cap, I’m not afraid of a little hard work.
Spoilt Creatures by Amy Twigg (September 8th)
This is the US release of the 2024 UK title.
They thought they knew everything about us. The kind of women we were.
When Iris—newly single and living at home with her mother—meets the mysterious and beguiling Hazel, who lives in a women’s commune, she finds herself drawn into the possibility of a new start away from the world of men who have only let her down. Here, at Breach House, the women can be loud and dirty, live and eat abundantly, all while under the leadership of their gargantuan matriarch, Blythe.
But is Breach House truly the haven it seems? And just how much can Iris trust her new family? When an unforgivable transgression threatens the commune’s existence, Iris and the other women find themselves hurtling towards an act of devastating violence.
Thoughts Be Bloody by Auden Patrick (September 15th)
The summer before his sophomore year, Horatio Bithersea walks into the university library to find Carson Hamlett, resident golden boy and master magician, cradling his father’s dead body. Life at Elsinore, one of the most prestigious universities in the secretive magical world, simply goes on when the professor’s death is ruled an accident—despite the mysterious circumstances and the bloody scene.
A year later, Horatio is keeping his head down, attempting to graduate without his out-of-control magic harming his classmates. That changes when the ghost of Hamlett’s father appears and places a curse on Horatio and Hamlett: avenge his death by destroying Elsinore and its heart, lest the ghost robs them of their minds, memories, and their very souls.
Elsinore has given Horatio everything—knowledge of his magical ability, an escape from his abusive family, and freedom to pursue his life as a transgender man—and now he’s to be its doom. As the two uncover more of Elsinore’s secrets Horatio finds himself becoming more and more ensnared in Hamlett’s dark but charismatic web.
The question is not if Horatio will manage to destroy Elsinore. The question is if Hamlett will destroy him first.
A Thousand Monstrous Forms by Saratoga Schaefer (September 15th)
Bluebeard gets a gothic horror and sapphic romance twist in this fairytale retelling from the author of Serial Killer Support Group and Trad Wife.
A young ceramic artist moves into her new wife’s isolated manor and gets drawn into dark discoveries that stain her marriage—and her very soul.
Artist Poppy Reed doesn’t care if others think her marriage to Celia Marie Fox, a wealthy art dealer, is impulsive. Sure, they’ve only known each other for six months, and Celia has an infamous romantic reputation, but Poppy is brimming with excitement when she moves across the country to Celia’s home: a formidable, isolated, and art-filled manor called Busirane.
As Poppy tries to celebrate her first weeks of marriage and enjoy her new home, Busirane seems intent on rebuffing her every attempt to settle in. Strange noises and confounding occurrences lead Poppy to believe the house is haunted, a suspicion worsened by Celia’s insistence that Poppy avoid the locked basement.
When Celia leaves for a work trip, Poppy is left alone in the house, then finds herself snowed in. Surrounded by secrets, stalked by faceless statues, and beset by bodiless whispers, she struggles to trust her wife—and her own mind. When Poppy is eventually drawn to the forbidden basement, dark truths shatter everything she thought she knew, throwing her into a desperate bid for survival.
Drenched in dread, this contemporary gothic folktale retelling will have you checking all the locks. Twice.
Bodies of Magic by Freya Marske (September 15th)
At the Academie of the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerr, every mage with the healer’s gift has five years to master their power and to prepare for the infamous Grand Exam―a five-day trial whose results will determine their entire future.
The list of exam rules includes:
• You will perform five practical cases.
• Your exam group is chosen at random.
• You pass together, or fail together.
It does not include:
• On the first day, your exam group will find a classmate’s dead body in the exam hall.
And as they will soon discover, this particular group all have something to hide… and all have a connection with the dead girl, a brilliant scholar who would have been first in their class.
Five scholars. Five secrets. Five days in which to solve a murder, pass the most important exam of their lives, and uncover a secret larger than all of their own combined. One with the potential to change the world.
Are you ready?
Let’s begin.
This Movie Doesn’t End the Way We Want by Hailey Piper (September 15th)
In November 1994, three girls visit their local movie theater to see an obscure film. Only one of them is ever seen again.
Thirty years later, Val McQueen has never forgotten the day she lost her little sister and best friend, but she’s closed the curtain on it, certain she’s moved on despite her parents’ resentment and hounding by true crime enthusiasts.
That is until a stranger’s murder brings it all screaming back—a terror she’s tried to tell herself is only a movie. Enlisting the help of cinephile and former classmate Roxie de la Fontaine to find the film, Val soon realizes that hers is not the only pursuit. Someone, or something involved with the movie is on the hunt, too…
… For the girl who got away all those years ago.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | Blackwell’s
Half Light by Mahesh Rao (September 15th)
High up in the misty mountains of Darjeeling, a landslide cuts off a crumbling hillside hotel from the outside world. Trapped together with other guests and staff, 2 men begin to exchange lingering glances. For Neville, a charismatic student, such encounters are nothing new—urgent kisses in stairwells, fleeting encounters in parked cars. But for Pavan, a shy hotel employee accustomed to hiding in plain sight, their growing connection threatens to upend the careful life he has built in secrecy.
Years later, the men meet again by chance, this time surrounded by the towering skyscrapers and ghostly smog of Mumbai. Neville is now a restless graduate, trying to find his footing in the city. Pavan has long since fled the hills and begun a new life for himself working in a luxurious city hotel. As their renewed flirtation quickly turns fraught, long-buried secrets from their shared past threaten to tumble into the light.
Locusta by Emily Dexter (September 15th)
Born in the ancient region of Gaul, Locusta is the last of her kind—a Druid whose communion with the spirit world grants her the dangerous gift of identifying and wielding deadly substances. When Roman soldiers attack her home and slaughter her mother, Locusta is captured and enslaved, taken to the heart of the empire where political plots abound and death commands a high price. Guided by Arawn, the god of death, she must learn to survive within the brutal, glittering world of ancient Rome.
Her strange talents soon catch the attention of the Roman elite, and she becomes ensnared in a double life—poisoner by night for the cunning Antonia Augusta, and lady-in-waiting by day to Livia, the Emperor’s ambitious cousin. As Locusta plants the seeds of revenge against those who destroyed her home, her connection with Livia deepens into a passionate, forbidden romance that threatens them both. Surrounded by danger and deceit, Locusta’s poisons become their only protection against the increasingly unstable Emperor Caligula and the enemies lurking in every shadow.
A Spell of Heart & Havoc by Kristen Vale (September 15th)
Maerryl Kirim, a surly half-dwarf with the world on her shoulders, will do anything to save her deathly ill brother. Joining a guild of thieves to gather enough coin for his cure, she agrees to infiltrate a noble family. But acting as bodyguard for their haughty, spoiled daughter is no walk in the enchanted forest.
Dove Wistrallo yearns for independence, not a babysitter. As the uncouth Maerryl loves to remind her, she lives a charmed life … though few know of the risky magical ability that Dove hides. Spending every moment together is infuriating―at first. But before long, the friction between the rogue and the lady becomes a spark they can’t ignore.
Yet the clock is ticking for Maerryl to secure the family’s riches. Does their growing love stand a chance against Maerryl’s ruse, Dove’s secrets, and a den of thieves?
A Deadly Entanglement by Cathy Pegau (September 15th)
This is the second book in the Harriman & Mancini Mysteries
The truth isn’t always easy…
Margot Baxter Harriman has just survived her deadliest scandal as President of B&H Foods, and now there’s nowhere to go but up. Which is why she’s organizing a fundraiser for the crowded, overworked city charity hospital, where she hopes to do good and give back–until a body falls past a second-floor window.
The nurse’s death is quickly ruled a suicide, but fellow nurse CeeCee Foxmoor, Margot’s friend and the live-in partner of investigator Rett Mancini, isn’t so sure: this isn’t the hospital’s first suspicious death. CeeCee’s concerns draw both Margot and Rett into an undercover scheme to untangle the threads behind the deaths everyone else is ready to overlook.
Then another death catches their attention: Margot’s old classmate checked into the Caspian, a luxury clinic catering to the New York elite, but never checked out. And the circumstances surrounding her death feel eerily familiar…
As both the secrets and bodies pile up, Rett and Margot realize that while money can buy anything, behind ward doors, everyone pays a price. This time, their search for the truth might cost the people they love.
The Fractured Life of Lucy Hughes by Annie Morgan (September 22nd)
After a surprise proposal fractures her life into two parallel timelines, a speech pathologist must learn to trust her own inner voice in this hopeful and inspiring story about identity and belonging.
Lucy Hughes has never loved being the center of attention, so she’s shocked when her boyfriend proposes via jumbotron. Frozen under the stadium lights, Lucy’s hesitation fractures her future into parallel lives:
No. A video of Lucy’s refusal goes viral, and the backlash is swift and brutal. Unemployed and sleeping in her best friend’s guest room, she slowly rebuilds her life. She’s barely back on her feet when she’s asked to advocate for victims of online harassment. But it would mean finding the courage to step back into the spotlight.
Yes. Lucy, who grew up in foster care, adores Matthew’s large, loving family. But burying her troubled childhood and her bisexuality to better fit into their Southern political dynasty is causing her to lose her grip on her own identity.
To create a future where she can be her authentic self, both versions of Lucy must confront the childhood trauma that shaped her adult relationships and find her own voice.
Witches of the Wheel by Lindsay Merbaum (September 22nd)
Gold grows up knowing only a few things about herself: something lets her see ghosts and read her neighbors’ secrets, and her mother seems to hate her. But when she strikes out on her own, she stumbles into a job at The Wheel, a literally-underground lesbian bar where a coven gathers every Thursday and each entrance requires a painful sacrifice. It feels like the first place she’s belonged.
But the bar, its patrons, and its history are more complicated, and more dangerous, than Gold ever realized. As she entangles herself in her new community, she learns more about herself than she wanted to know―and attracts an ancient goddess’s deadly attention.
The Darkness Bites Back by Ben Alderson and Laura R. Samotin (September 29th)
Centuries ago, Tobias Osian had his mortality stolen from him when he was unwillingly turned into a vampire. Ever since, he’s been consumed by the need for revenge against the monster who took his humanity – Vladimir Damianos, the head of Britain’s most powerful vampire clan.
Now, Tobias is finally ready to enact his plan for vengeance, using Vladimir’s son Alexander to infiltrate the family and bring down the entire clan. But what he doesn’t expect is that Alexander has rebelled against his bloodthirsty father by protecting mortals instead of hunting them. When the two meet, Alexander is instantly enamoured with Tobias. And as a string of attacks rocks the city of Oxford, Alexander proves himself committed to protecting Tobias, unaware that Tobias is just as much of a monster as he is.
With his attraction to Alexander growing, Tobias must decide what means more to him: vengeance, or a love growing from the most unexpected of places.
Carrying by Samantha Josephs (October 6th)
Everything Martha’s wanted, she’s made for herself.
Meet Martha: perfect wife, perfect stepmother, perfect woman. She’s got an adoring husband who wants more kids with her, a loving stepdaughter who looks up to her, and a body to die for. She’s an absolute pro: Salon-quality blowouts at home? Done. Perfectly plated meals on the table every day? Effortless. Meticulously faked miscarriages so her husband won’t suspect the truth? Just hand over the Oscar now.
Martha is trans, so stealth even her family has no idea. She carved the woman she is out of the marble of a boy, and she’ll do whatever it takes to protect what she’s built. When a mysterious chronic illness and its debilitating symptoms threaten to upend her existence, she starts experimental treatments and gives in to her new, unsettling cravings. She’s even more shocked to discover that she’s undeniably, impossibly pregnant.
With her body changing rapidly outside of her control and her choices dwindling, Martha struggles to maintain the life she’s fought so hard to live while preparing for the motherhood she never thought she’d have.
The Finalist by Faith Gladwin (October 6th)
Seven ballerinas. One fallen primadonna. The audition of a lifetime. And a mysterious house that swallows the weakest one by one . . .
There is no performance art as punishing as ballet—and no top-tier ballerina is as punished as Eden. While others practice their steps over and over, Eden waits, knowing her body can perform only so many times before it breaks.
But Eden will need to be perfect—or even better—at Deveraux Manor, secluded amid snowy mountains, where she and six other hopefuls are sequestered in a month-long audition for the mysterious, alluring, tragic former ballerina Leanora Karagianni. Only one finalist will join Leanora’s company and dance the lead.
Eden wants it more than anything, but not more than anyone. Her competitors will take every advantage they can. And the cursed house twisting around them will push each ballerina to the bloody edge—and over it. As Eden fights her attraction to the seductive Leonora and the stakes turn lethal, she’ll discover that only the dancer who pays the house’s terrible price can become the finalist.
Quaint Folk by Bitter Karella (October 6th)
From the outside, it looks like Jessica has the perfect life. She’s a stay-at-home mom, married to a man with a respectable job, raising a son they adore. Her family is as wholesome as all-American pie. But deep down, Jessica knows there’s something wrong with her; she knows she can’t escape her past.
When her husband’s job has them move abroad, Jessica thinks this is her chance for a fresh start. On the remote island of Hasenhurst, the modern world can’t get in. The people there grow their own herbs, make their own jam, and mind their own business. They believe in folk tales and the power of dreams. They tell visitors, we’re a quaint, quiet people.The right sort of family would do well here.
Jessica is determined to be the right kind of person for a family—and a life—like this. But as she tries to befriend the townsfolk and learn their ways, she soon realizes that beneath the town’s cozy idyll, something sickly-sweet and rotten lays buried…
The Angels Came to Sodom in the Evening by Paul Russell (October 6th)
In 1970s Memphis, two boys lock in battle. They’re best friends, but when your body floods with longing, sometimes all you can do is fight. Then one summer, at a Christian camp, Rory Singleton meets a fellow teenager who shows him the wonders of dragonflies and sex— episodes of stolen pleasure that awaken a hunger he’ll spend a lifetime trying to bury.
As an adult, Rory is the pastor of a thriving megachurch, his life built on secrets, careful silences, and furtive encounters. But when he’s sent to Africa to promote a homophobic crusade, the contradictions become unbearable. A reckoning begins—one that will take him from the pulpit to underground queer spaces, from respectability to radical honesty, from denial to a raw, dangerous freedom, and finally to a confrontation with everything he’s built and everyone he’s betrayed.
Your Beloved Remains by Quinn Connor (October 6th)
Archivist Celia Kiel has spent her life on the remote campus of Basin College in the Southern Ozarks. Once a jewel of women’s higher education in the South, the school now molders on its mountaintop, its endowment thinly supported by the bequeathed estate of 19th century writer, Beatrice Donahue. Celia guards the legacy of this venerated, yet scandalous author, who has been the object of her illicit desire since childhood.
When the administration announces the college’s imminent closure, Celia discovers a manuscript pickled in formaldehyde, and with it, a chance to save the only home she’s ever known. She will forge Beatrice’s infamous lost work, a spellbinding horror written toward her life’s tumultuous end. To do it, she is forced to recruit her professional rival, literature postdoc Joan Harriot, who has both an astounding talent for mimicry and a dark secret of her own. As their world closes in and the ghosts of the Victorian past encroach, their creative collaboration spirals into an obsession more twisted than even their beloved Beatrice could have penned.
Rottenheart by Kat Dunn (October 13th)
Revenge me. For I am murdered . . .
Odette and her best friend Cecilia live between their grand homes in Hampstead and the imposing, ancient Herne House in Suffolk. Odette’s mother, Lydia, is almost parasitic in her neediness, but despite her, Odette and Cecilia come of age together—free to roam, to learn, and to love. When Lydia inexplicably sickens and dies, a dark veil falls. Odette’s father retreats to his study, while her aunt—the cold and cruel Claudine—increasingly takes charge of the household. Lost in grief and spiraling into madness, Odette disappears into the shadows, leaving Cecilia alone and with her affections tested.
As Claudine is announced as Odette’s new stepmother, the girls reckon with this final betrayal, and a sinister presence awakens. To her horror, Odette realizes that her mother never truly left. She now haunts the manor, ready to drag long held secrets into the light and exact revenge against those who thought her dead and gone.
As You Wake, Break the Shell by Becky Chambers (October 13th)
Life on the resource-poor planet of Fortune is challenging, but for its inhabitants, it’s home. For two of them, Signy and Cora, this home might no longer be enough.
Signy is a brilliant but reclusive botanist who bio-prints medicine from her small plant shop, often bending the rules to help those the system leaves behind. Her life is filled with the green of her store, the warmth of her one elderly friend, and the quiet determination to help others without putting herself in danger.
Cora is a rorqual pilot, one of the few with the unique ability to navigate the massive, living ships that connect the scattered settlements of their solar system. Her bond with her rorqual, Colibri, is profound—a connection that is both her greatest gift and a threat to her career.
It is that threat—the “mindbleed,” a dangerous side effect of her piloting—that brings her to Signy’s shop, and her appearance puts Signy in the danger she so fears. But it’s soon apparent it’s not just about losing her license—this delicate balance between risk and trust has the potential to change everything for them.
What a Nightmare by Rebekah Faubion (October 13th)
They called her a nightmare, so she became one.
Haven Powers has spent years trying to disappear. Once a loud, troublemaking girl who defied every expectation in her small town of Friendship, Texas, now she’s learned to hide her fire behind a quiet receptionist’s smile. It’s safer that way—for her, and for everyone else.
When an unsettling encounter with her predatory boss cracks open the tightly locked box inside her, Haven dreams a terrifying dream about him, only to wake up and discover it’s come true; he’s dead. Desperate to gain control of this deadly power once and for all, Haven returns home.
Welcomed suspiciously with open arms, Haven is immediately met with the ghosts of her past. Under the suffocating pressure of the town and her family who believe obedience is next to godliness, Haven soon finds herself on a path to revenge. She’ll show them what happens when the girl they called too much, too loud, too everything, finally lets her demons loose.
Monstera by Delilah S. Dawson (October 13th)
A reclusive young woman moves into what seems like the perfect apartment and is obsessively drawn to her mysterious neighbour, who keeps a lush garden and is hiding a deadly secret…
When Lucy McClintock moves into a dreamy Victorian in downtown Savannah after years of suffering under the rule of her overbearing grandfather, she feels like she’s won the lottery—well, outside of the creepy landlord. She soon notices a glorious green haven in the backyard and meets her downstairs neighbor, Saskia, a weightlifter who lives in a magical apartment overflowing with plant life and beautiful artwork. Naïve and lonely Lucy is drawn to strong and secretive Saskia, and as the two women grow closer, they discover they share more than just an apartment building…
The Tulip Poplars by Silas House (October 13th)
Amos and Tom fall in love while working in the tobacco fields during the hot summers of the early 1900s, yet Tom cannot shake his strict religious upbringing nor the responsibilities of his family’s farm. His longtime friend Maeve also pines for a man she can’t have, lest she endanger his already tenuous life in a town and world shaped by racial lines. How do you live a life that feels untrue, and at what point do you risk everything?
As We Fall Through Time by Claire North (October 13th)
In the beginning, the world will end. This is the story of what happens next.
When Cal meets a soldier of the French Revolution, he knows his lover is destined to die. But what’s the point of being a time traveler if you can’t make a few small tweaks to the course of history? A little paradox here, an alteration there—nothing Cal can’t fix, to save the man he loves.
When Fadimatu walks into a museum in 2018, she stumbles upon her own mummified corpse, setting her on the path to a betrayal that has already killed her, and a murder that has not yet come to pass.
And when a sudden rupture in the fabric of history rips through the lives these travelers have built, breaking both past and future, they must reckon with death foretold, love forsaken, and a secret that will shatter time itself.
Return to Breakneck Island by Tom Ryan (October 13th)
This is the sequel to The Treasure Hunters Club
Breakneck Island: nestled precariously off the coast of Maple Bay, the lighthouse atop this rocky outcrop is all that stands between safe passage and nautical disaster.
For generations, the MacLeary family lived on Breakneck Island in an isolated and physically-demanding existence. One night in 1932, after a ruthless storm battered all of Maple Bay, the MacLearys disappeared without a trace, leaving behind only whispers of a missing fortune.
Nearly a century later, three people are drawn to Breakneck Island and its perplexing past: Peter Barnett, a recent Maple Bay transplant who’s piecing his life back together and possibly catching feelings for a charming professor; Dandy Feltzen, a wistful teenage girl searching for new beginnings while juggling the arrival of an unexpected visitor; and Cass Jones, a successful author given a cryptic tip for a haunting new story.
As Peter, Dandy, and Cass are drawn into the orbit of one of Maple Bay’s darkest mysteries, dangers past and present collide on the rocky shores of Breakneck Island, and the real story of the MacLearys finally comes into focus. But if the island is to reveal its oldest secrets, it may demand fresh bodies in return.
Lethal Kiss by Taylor Grothe (October 20th)
Something ravenous lurks below the marble floors of Preston University…
Marcella might be a monster, but she’s careful. After getting hired at Preston University, she intends to lay low and keep her meals discreet.
Trapped in the rat race of academia, all Lacie wants is to make tenure. This will be her year, and nothing is going to stand in her way.
That is, until bodies start dropping.
Marcella swears it isn’t her doing―as if she’d be that sloppy. Whatever’s killing their coworkers is older, and far less restrained. Lacie doesn’t know who to trust, but better the monster you know…
The deeper they dig, the more they’re drawn to each other… and the more something else is drawn to them.
After all, desire has teeth of its own.
Goblin Market by A.J. Hackwith (October 20th)
Being a changeling is hard enough, but Toast was older than most changeling children when her goblin parents stole her back from her human family and returned her to the harsh, bustling world of the Goblin Market, where anything from your fondest dream to your strongest talent can be bought—or sold.
Nearly a decade later, Toast has grudgingly cobbled together a life there as the Market’s guide for mortal visitors. But when the next arrival is her long-lost sister and the ancient beast whose magic the Market depends on disappears under strange circumstances, everything starts falling apart.
Now the Market itself is dying. With the Summer Court of noble fey plotting to claim the weakened Market for themselves, Toast, her friends, and an infuriatingly charming fey knight with an agenda of her own must negotiate their differences to make the trade of a lifetime and win back the Market’s future. To do so, Toast will have to decide what home–and the flawed community within–is ultimately worth.
Monster in the Mirror by Janasha Prabhu (October 20th)
Her uncle was a serial killer. The town whispers, could she be a killer too?
On the night Jiah Rai was found cradling her girlfriend Georgia’s dead body at the bottom of Wailing Cliff, everyone suspected her. There wasn’t enough evidence to charge her, but the town refuses to forget. Murder must run in the family. Jiah’s uncle was a convicted serial ekiller, and while he died behind bars, his legacy lives on in Jiah and her sister. It doesn’t matter that they’ve lived in Dumont their whole lives―they have never fit into the insular white community, and perhaps they never will
But legacy isn’t done with Jiah just yet. A few years later, a threat from Georgia’s brother threatens to crumble the shaky peace Jiah has rebuilt. Desperate to feel safe again, Jiah decides to take matters into her own hands and seeks support from her best friend, Estrella. After all, Estrella has been there for Jiah ever since they met after Georgia’s death. But when Estrella never shows up to a dinner party, a series of texts lead Jiah to the beach below, where she finds a body positioned exactly how her uncle displayed his victims over a decade ago. The killer mocks Jiah, hinting they know about her secrets, too. But is Jiah really the monster Dumont thinks she is? As Jiah hunts the killer, she begins to realize she might be unable to save the next victim…and that she may not want to.
Paradise Burns by Pol Guasch (October 20th)
In a rapidly deteriorating world, two best friends pursue a future worth believing in.
When Rita and Líton meet at a party, they quickly form a bond that will indelibly shape their lives. Theirs is not an easy world: most wildlife is extinct and the earth is tormented by drought and floods; the last vestiges of natural life are kept under lock and key in a mysterious greenhouse a day’s travel away. Like the other young men of the Service, Líton is frequently enlisted to put out the seemingly never-ending fires that tear through the valley; Rita lives perched on a hill in the Colony, where other men, including her father, empty an almost barren mine. Yet their bond grounds them. They navigate the love affairs, setbacks, and thwarted idealism of their twenties together, finding in each other a vital reprieve for their disillusionment―that is, until Líton, like other gay men, falls deathly sick.
Public Access Afterworld by Jane Schoenbrun (October 27th)
Find the receiver. Make it real.
At 5:35pm on September 3rd, 1988, Dallas weatherman Ray “Can You Say Sunshine” Davino makes passing reference to Public Access Afterworld during a rambling monologue, right before he puts a gun to his head on live television and pulls the trigger.
On June 12th, 2009, David Sawyer and Erin Morrison, two lonely, TV-obsessed suburban teens who might be falling in love, gather in Erin’s basement to watch TV’s analog-to-digital transition. But in the static that follows, Erin witnesses surreal broadcasts from a pirate TV network called Public Access Afterworld and their lives are changed forever.
Seventeen years later, Bethany Peters toils through the night shift at megacorp GlobalVill’s bleak Austin campus. A trans content moderator, she spends her evenings reviewing an endless stream of horrific videos. But then a young streamer begins to crop up in her feed calling out to Public Access Afterworld.
But what is Public Access Afterworld?
Upstate by Kim van Alkemade (October 27th)
Thirty-four-year-old writer Audrey Beacon is grieving alone during lockdown when a post about a bookshop for sale in upstate New York pops into her social media feed like a lifeline. Enthralled by the historic house and the massive barn bursting with books, Audrey impulsively makes an offer. Soon, she’s cashing out her savings, loading her possessions into her dead husband’s van, and fleeing Manhattan for the village of Schuywich, determined to outrun the ghosts of her past.
In 1956, it’s love at first sight when Schuywich librarian Hazel McIntyre meets dashing magazine writer Evelyn Cabot at a summer camp in Maine that discreetly promises a “different vacation for professional women.” By summer’s end, Evelyn has left Greenwich Village to move into an old farmhouse she’s bought in Hazel’s hometown. In her new column, “The Upstate Dispatch,” Evelyn writes about her adventures renovating a house, tending to sheep, and opening a bookshop in her barn with help from the woman readers know only as her “roommate.” Privately, Hazel chronicles their six-decade love story in a series of letters that abruptly end when they’re forced to abandon the bookshop in 2015.
Reopening the bookshop in the summer of 2020 attracts a quirky community of villagers who continuously interrupt Audrey’s solitude: An unemployed Broadway set designer. An ambitious teenage entrepreneur. A story-telling Adirondack grandmother. Then there’s Sam Rensselaer, the distractingly handsome representative of the agriculture extension. Past and present begin to converge when Audrey finds “The Upstate Dispatch” in a stack of old magazines, but it’s the discovery of Hazel’s letters that brings hidden love and long-buried family secrets to light. Will Audrey find the courage to heal the wounds of the past—including her own?
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | Northshire
The Killing of a Chestnut Tree by Oliver K. Langmead (October 27th)
Be gay, solve crimes! The Killing of a Chestnut Tree introduces Havelock Harper, an all-new queer gentleman detective in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes, with a cozy, fantastical mystery.
“I loved this book! Havelock and Sebastian are such great company, brilliant, approachable, fascinating, their relationship is real and touching and relatable. And the mystery is riveting.” ―#1 New York Times bestselling author LOUISE PENNY
Everyone in England knows Havelock Harper, the celebrated consulting detective, from the cases published in the papers. If any of them read his secret files, they would discover a very different man. His most fantastical cases must never reach the public eye, and nor must the love he shares with his stalwart companion, the formidable Major Sebastian Wright.
The Duke of Farleigh has been killed, and Havelock Harper summoned to the secluded Farleigh Forest to solve his murder. When he and Sebastian arrive, they discover a greater mystery. The trees of Farleigh have begun to speak, writing words into their leaves and bark. The victim is one of those trees: an ancient chestnut, cruelly chopped down.
Why has the forest begun to speak? Why would anyone cut down the Duke? And how can Farleigh’s gentle, quiet paradise survive this crime?
The Stolen Women by Alysandra Dutton (October 27th)
A case of missing noble women and a determined young warrior who sets out to bring them home in this new and exciting ancient historical set just before the founding of Rome, for fans of The Song of Achilles, Circe, and A Thousand Ships.
Safinia is fine to focus on her training as a warrior, providing for her sisters, and minding her own business. She feels no great need to meddle in anyone else’s, until women in her town, including her former lover, begin disappearing. Quietly, at first, but disappearing just the same. All of the missing women have vanished from powerful households, but their formidable fathers are in utter denial, claiming their daughters are off on trips, sure to be back shortly, with perfectly reasonable explanations for their absences.
Dissatisfied with the half-hearted attempts to hand wave away the alarming and mysterious cases of the vanishing women, Safinia takes matters into her own hands, embarking on a journey to a neighboring village in search of answers or at the very least clues that might unearth threads she can begin to pull at. Along the way, she meets an unlikely yet helpful search partner, a historian who calls himself Livy. But despite his eerie sense of knowledge, Safinia is unable to uncover to missing women, thwarted more often than not by the girls’ fathers themselves. As war with Rome looms on the horizon, Safinia must face the reality that the only one she can trust to bring them home is herself.
Venus Vanishing by Rebecca Birrell (October 27th)
In raucous 1928 Berlin, Hannah Sherman has deviated from the traditional narrative arc of a woman’s life. After rejecting an arranged marriage, she leaves home to join the city’s underground art scene, reveling in its clubs and galleries with newfound friends and lovers. Working as a tailor while studying art in every spare moment, Hannah comes to know women and their bodies, first with measuring tape and silk, and later through sensuous layers of paint.
Hannah feels like she can finally call herself an artist when a wealthy female art collector commissions her to make an elaborate series of nude portraits. But after Hannah finishes the acclaimed Venus paintings, she discovers that her work is being tampered with and exhibited under a man’s name. When lines between artist and muse are crossed in an intoxicating but perilous affair, Hannah transforms her art into an act of revenge, finding herself caught up in a devastating game of survival.
There Used to Be People Here by Kennedy Cole (November 3rd)
In 1970s Mississippi, a Black detective and his temporary partner are assigned to a case that shifts from murder to paranormal conspiracy with life-altering repercussions.
Wenton, Mississippi: A man enters the bathroom of a local gay bar and doesn’t come back out. Instead he’s found cold, on the floor, and facing the wall. And no one seems to know how this happened.
Samuel Barkley is Wenton’s only Black detective. Assigned to the case, Samuel’s one goal is to keep his head down with eyes on moving up in the police ranks. But it’s not easy with Harvey, a new, temporary partner who Samuel can’t seem to like…or hate. Nor with the cold, questioning eyes and fake smiles from those in town. Persistent. Judging. Wrong. Samuel is reaching his breaking point.
As his investigation leads him to a curious plane crash cover-up, Samuel’s placid existence is turned on its head. Because what crashed in Wenton isn’t a plane. There are others here. They like it here. And if Samuel can’t stop them, they will find a way to stay.
This Knight Topples Empires by Ry Herman (November 3rd)
Jules is tired of running low-stakes errands with their five magically mismatched sisters, whose skills include killing plants, inducing sneezing, and making smaller windows … slightly larger. Blessed with a poorly controlled ability to make flowers bloom, Jules longs for a mission where they can actually prove themself. And when the siblings stumble upon a rival kingdom’s plot to overthrow their royal family, Jules sees an opportunity.
What follows is a whirlwind of botched disguises, accidental heroics, talking animals with surprisingly strong opinions, and one very inconvenient crush on the most sought-after princess in the land. And through all this, Jules learns that happy endings are indeed possible, even if you’re not quite Prince Charming. A cozy yet epic retelling of a Romanian fairy-tale, This Knight Topples Empires proves that the greatest victories of all are love and self-acceptance.
The Drakon King by Terry J. Benton-Walker (November 10th)
Two princes, born to a world at war.
Heir to a kingdom built on lies and stolen magic, Prince Reverie has one goal: avoid the crown. Raised by a cruel and violent king, Reverie’s real life begins after curfew―bottle service, masked revelries, and anonymous rooftop liaisons. But when his king plots to seize dwindling majikal resources from the Drakon King, Reverie hits his limit―he casts aside his royal obligations and gets the hell outta town.
Heir to a kingdom banished into the sky, Prince Xandreth has one goal: find a missing friend. His brother, the Drakon King, stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that their people keep going missing, so Xandreth takes it upon himself to hunt down answers.
A meeting that will change them both.
Having abandoned their kingdoms, both princes end up stranded in the dangerous and bewitching Wraithwood, and out of desperation, agree to help each other and then go their separate ways.
A love that will save their world.
But when a myth as old as the world―a bird on fire in the belly of a massive volcano―is whispered from Human lips to Drakon ears, Reverie and Xandreth are suddenly at the heart of a crisis so much bigger than a missing friend or even freedom.
If they can’t come together, the world itself may go up in flames.
Dead New World by Lin Darrow (November 10th)
Technology has raised the dead, but their new lease on life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, in the first book of this cozy cyber-noir duology.
Hildy Doval is dead—and still unemployed . . .
Humanity wasn’t quite ready for immortality, even in 3025. Ever since the Flicker/Helix company “cured” death with technologically advanced holographic hardware, flicker ghosts have been secondary citizens, lacking purpose and agency.
Spending her afterlife in a boarding house in Hypatia City, Hildy is the least-requested flicker-ghost at Carlotta Sun’s Purgatory House for Spectral Services. At Carlotta Sun’s, Hildy competes daily for ghost gigs against her more marketable housemates: the flighty musician Eyvind, desperate to compose the masterpiece he never got to in life, and Anjali, an imperious silent-film extra whose single surviving motion picture shot her to post-mortem stardom despite it being based on a lie.
Meanwhile, a shadowy, headless ghost called the Graverobber has been spotted emerging from holographic billboards, snatching the resurrected from their so-called lives and sowing chaos throughout the city. When one of their fellow boarders goes missing, Hildy and her friends find themselves at the center of a highly publicized mystery. With only two months to go before a crucial election that’ll decide the future of all specters, they must determine who the Graverobber is―and, more importantly, where they belong in this dead new world.
Song for Medusa by Grace Desmarais (November 10th)
Song for Medusa is a sapphic exploration of the petrifying gorgon, Medusa, as she falls in love with a blind princess, who isn’t affected by her curse.
Medusa has lived in her temple prison for years, turning the men who seek glory and her head to stone. Her only comfort is the mysterious songs that come from the villa palace above. Who is the mysterious woman behind Medusa’s only joy? After a chance encounter with Princess Cyrene, whose blindness spares her from turning into stone, the two women find kindred spirits in their loneliness and soon, fall in love. With a cast of characters both from the heavens and humanity, this story will take readers to a world both familiar and fantastical.
The Last Star in the Void by Melissa Caruso (November 10th)
This is the final book in the Echo Archives trilogy
Kembral Thorne is back on the job. Everything is going great—she hasn’t been in mortal peril for months, her daughter is learning to crawl, and she’s thinking about getting serious with her girlfriend, cat burglar Rika Nonesuch. But then a simple mission goes wrong, and a mysterious Echo hires her for her most dangerous case yet.
This time, the murder Kembral must solve is her own.
Her first warning: Watch out above you. It won’t be her last. The cryptic messages give Kem an edge against her would-be murderer—but there’s more at stake than her own survival.
Rips in the very fabric of reality are spreading through the Echoes, and Kem’s blood is the only thing that can close them. A traitor among her allies is willing to kill to stop her. To save all the worlds, Kem must figure out who she can trust—and Rika must decide how much of her humanity she’ll sacrifice for the power to protect the woman she loves.
Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N
Tonight, I Blaze by Katharine J. Adams (November 10th)
This is the final book in the Witches of Halstett trilogy
Three lives. One fate.
Penny Albright lit the match that sparked a war. Now, she holds the one that will end it.
In defeating the Warden, she and her friends released a deadlier foe—and the Sorcerer will stop at nothing to reclaim magic and destroy witchkind. But Penny will do anything to protect the people she loves, even if it means joining forces with Malin’s morally questionable brother, Dante.
With Alice held captive in the Sorcerer’s city, forced to spin the evil aimed at Halstett’s heart, and Malin inside Halstett, rebuilding the army to protect their walls, Penny’s only hope is to play the Sorcerer’s games—and she needs Dante to win. As the veil unravels, Penny, Malin, and Alice each fight their own demons to face the end together, side-by-side.
In this searing series conclusion, Penny must claim her fate as the witch she was always destined to be—and the only way to defeat a god might be to become one.
Nanny Nanny by K Chiucarello (November 17th)
After years of caring full-time for the children of the rich and the famous, our narrator has been struck, finally, with baby fever. Over a drink with sympathetic friends, she lists all the reasons why she wants to have a baby, beginning with a story about the intoxicating, abusive relationship with an ex-wife that she barely survived. She ponders how to fill the gaping void left in the wake of such horrific domestic violence. What’s the next most violent thing a woman can do to herself? she asks. Have a baby.
Soon, her story opens other doors to the past—the seemingly idyllic childhood she spent under her father’s roof; the mentorship, and judgment, of female writers whose children she has reared; and the man, her first love, who now seems to be offering her a second chance. Each unraveling thread reveals the complex tangle of thrill and pain, tradition and progress that has led her to this moment, this calling. Is it time for her to become a mother?
A World Apart by Meghan Nesmith (November 17th)
Star-crossed lovers bound by magic. But will their devotion set them free-or doom them forever?
London, 1866.
All Kit Finchley wants is to master the magic that keeps eluding him – and to live a life not dictated by title or expectation. Duty presses in from every quarter, but the one thing that quickens his pulse is the promise of real power.
When a miscast spell tears open a doorway into the Veil – a liminal realm where Wilfrith and his family have been trapped since a fateful bargain with the Faerie Queen 800 years ago – Kit stumbles into a love he never imagined. Their connection is immediate, impossible, and undeniable. Determined to free Wil, Kit hunts for the spell that could bridge two worlds.
By night, Kit risks everything to reach the boy between worlds, desperate to bind the realms without breaking them. But by day, Kit finds himself intrigued by a young bohemian woman of a very wealthy, aristocratic family. She’s unlike any woman he’s ever met: rebellious, clever, and best of all, she believes in magic.
Torn between first love, magic and duty, Kit will be forced to make a decision that will change all three of their lives forever.
Murmuration by T.J. Klune (November 17th)
A bookseller, a waiter, and the best little town there is!
On a temperate morning in 1954, Mike wakes up in the idyllic town of Amorea.
Amorea is perfect.
Mike works his dream job at the local bookstore, where he leads lively discussions of literature with the local women’s club. At the diner, the walls are plastered with beaming photos of the residents, and all the staff know his order―especially Sean, the waiter who has a special smile just for Mike and, after years of anticipation, is ready to take the next step in their burgeoning romance.
Everything is perfect.
But the edges of the town are beginning to fray. Odd things catch Mike’s attention, things no one else seems to notice or care about. There are no children or parents in Amorea and no one who’s left town for the far mountains has ever come back. There are subjects in the diner photos that only a few people can remember.
One night, Mike wakes up to a stormcloud of uncanny starlings blackening the sky. And soon enough, he begins to question whether his name is even Mike.
As violent memories of another life interfere with everything good about Amorea and Mike loses hold on his identity, he will do whatever he can to keep Sean from the darkness that is coming.
Nothing here is perfect, but there is someone worth saving.
The Education of Imryn Dyre, Wizard’s Apprentice by Artemis Whelan (November 24th)
A luckless healer who begrudgingly accepts a magical apprenticeship must race to find a cure for his charming mentor’s fatal affliction―before it’s too late.
Half-goblin Imryn “Imi” Dyre hasn’t had an easy life. Born into a poor family and now a student on scholarship, he’s marked as an outcast amongst the wealthy magical families. So despite studying and honing his craft for years, it’s no surprise when he’s rejected from joining the ranks of healers. Just like that, his dream of opening a clinic in his impoverished neighborhood dies.
Out of options, Imi has no choice but to accept an apprenticeship under the master wizard Elim Greenwood. Wise beyond his years and, to Imi’s dismay, indisputably handsome, Elim seeks a cure for a spell that’s slowly killing him. And though many before have failed, Imi’s magic might actually be the one solution to his mentor’s fatal affliction.
There’s no time to waste, but Imi’s troubles continue as Elim’s cousin, Freddie, approaches them with a new problem. Her husband has been cursed to feed on souls, and his ravenous need to attack others is growing. Now, Imi must grapple with the search for two separate remedies―all the while contending with his forbidden feelings for Elim.
Happily ever after has never felt more out of reach, but if Imi can save the man―and the family―he’s come to love, he might finally find the place where he belongs . . .
Call Me Traitor by Everina Maxwell (December 1st)
En is a weapon.
Battle spells are carved into her skin, she’s trained to work through pain, and she’s magically compelled with loyalty to the archmagi. When she’s sent on a mission to retrieve a group of infamous traitors from exile in a land of unpredictable and deadly magic, she’s forced to team up with a common soldier to have any chance of success, or survival.
Tamol is a disaster.
En isn’t fooled by the soldier’s silver tongue and good looks. Tamol is flighty, cowardly and the worst soldier En has ever met. But she’s also brilliant at magic and kinder than En has any right to expect. When she saves En’s life, it takes everything En has not to start falling for her. That is, until En discovers Tamol is one of the very traitors she seeks.
The empire never forgets.
Years ago, the exiled traitors were just normal students with a vision for a better kingdom. They put their lives on the line fighting for it and lost. So they were exiled to the Far Peninsula to die. But now, the empire discovers the traitors may yet live, and they’ve unearthed something in the wilderness that the archmagi will pay any price to get.
But the might of an unforgiving empire isn’t the greatest force in all the land. Something monstrous is living in the Far Peninsula that does not discriminate between soldiers, traitors, and kings.
The future of the empire is unexpectedly in the hands of En and Tamol. At least the perfect soldier would never betray her orders, no matter how much she starts to question her command. Would she?
Dreamslayer by A.K. Mulford (December 1st)
She was meant to become a dream. Instead, she fell in love with a nightmare.
Acolyte Praer Dundariff is only one year away from her ascension to the dream world, but when her friend dies with a chilling warning, Praer’s world fractures. Praer seeks comfort in the one place she can be her true self: her dreams. Inspired by a beautiful statue in the temple gallery, Praer imagines being in the arms of a dream warrior named Reverie.
But instead of the normal sleepy comfort of Reverie’s embrace, Praer loses control of her dream and Reverie gives her a violent warning never to return. As more temple secrets emerge, Praer abandons Reverie’s wishes and seeks her out in sleep. After all, Reverie is just a figment of Praer’s imagination, isn’t she? But when Praer returns to her dream, she discovers she’s not asleep at all but rather she’s portalled herself, not to the dream realm, but to Hell. Worse, the woman she’s fantasized about for years isn’t a dream at all, but a nightmare incarnate.
Trapped in Hell, Reverie knows that Praer is the only way to break her curse. Along with her other nightmare companions, Reverie drags Praer on a harrowing journey to the gates of Hell. On a death-defying quest to assemble the key to the gate, Praer finds herself caught between destruction and desire. Reverie is her sworn enemy and Praer knows if she can’t resist the pull of her nightmare, more than her heart will break.
Possession Island by Sarah McCarry (December 1st)
It wasn’t easy for Angela Bell growing up on Possession island, the remote Pacific Northwest setting of her late mother’s wildly popular vampire novel. When she returns home from college and her estranged best friend, Mo, is murdered, she’s forced to reckon with yet another loss―and finds herself in the crosshairs of the bungled police investigation.
Sally Raleigh has longed to leave the island for years, but she’s trapped by her father’s declining health and her devotion to her charismatic twin brother Adrian. The last thing she needs is her high-school nemesis Angela back in town. But Sally is also devastated by Mo’s death, and finds herself forging an unlikely alliance with her former enemy to find Mo’s killer.
As Angie and Sally delve deeper into the island’s sinister underbelly, they must confront just how far they’re willing to go to protect the people they love. And they’ll soon find that the secrets they’ve been keeping from each other won’t stay buried for long…
A Mermaid in Marketing by Juliet Brooks (December 1st)
Half-mermaid Coral Waters has wanted to be in marketing ever since she was hit by an errant billboard during a storm at sea. And despite the occasional (literal) road blocks, she’s now exactly where she wants to be: on land, six months into a marketing job, and only mildly in love with her boss, Ali.
Meanwhile, Ali has been very stable for the past few years, thank you very much. She has a steady job, no friends to speak of, and an unfortunate habit of staring at Coral’s collarbones in meetings. But when she and Coral are put into their own supernatural-specific marketing group and their first clients are a pair of faeries opening a cat cafe… Getting the business going is harder than, well, herding cats. Coral and Ali need to make this first launch a success and continue ignoring their feelings for each other, or they won’t have jobs to come back to after the holidays. What could possibly go wrong?
The Misfit Caravan by K.D. Edwards (December 8th)
This is the fourth book in the Tarot Sequence
Rune Saint John is the last scion of the Sun Throne—one of New Atlantis’s ancient ruling Arcana, a spell-caster of terrifying power, and, right now, the man trying to pack two luxury RVs with his entire found family for an American road trip. What starts as a chance to heal and put recent losses behind them becomes something far more dangerous: a reckoning with new and organized enemies, murdered fae, and truths that refuse to stay buried.
Racing from one mystery to the next, Rune and his companions follow a trail of violence toward Sanctuary City, the secret underground stronghold of the mainland fae. There, Rune confronts revelations that crack his world open. As loyalties are tested and safety unravels, he realizes the most dangerous lies aren’t the ones told by enemies—they’re the ones stitched into the lives of the people he loves most.
Paperback Rereleases
No Body, No Crime by Tess Sharpe (July 14th)
Murder either bonds you or breaks you.
Rural PI Mel Tillman knows this well. She’s seen her fair share of bloody cases and botched cover-ups. But killing with someone? That is a different kind of mess all together, and Mel’s got real experience with it.
No one’s heard from Toby Dunne since Chloe Harper’s sweet sixteen party―because the birthday girl and sixteen-year-old Mel buried him so deep in the backwoods, no one’s ever finding him. Mel loses little sleep over it―Toby had been terrorizing them.
What she does lose sleep over is Chloe, the girl with whom she survived that horrible night in the woods. Chloe, the girl she fell in love with. Chloe, the girl who disappeared and hasn’t been seen in more than six years.
Tasked with locating Chloe by her family, Mel can’t resist the call of a good chase, or finding the one who got away with her heart (and with murder). When Mel finds an armed and vigilant Chloe living off-grid in a highly booby-trapped patch of Canadian wilderness, she realizes that Chloe had been expecting someone other than her ex to come looking for her. The thing that’s kept Chloe going for years is that she’s kept Mel safe by running. Now, the truth must come out as they run for their lives once again.
Because when they buried Toby Dunne in the backwoods, they buried something else, too. Something Toby took. And the powerful family he stole it from? They’ll do anything to get it back.
Her Wicked Roots by Tanya Pell (August 4th)
In this queer retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne classic gothic horror story, Rappaccini’s Daughter, a young woman is lured to a lush estate owned by a botanist who might be hiding dark secrets.
Cordelia Beecher is on the run. In search of her missing brother Edward, she has fled the oppressive charity school she was raised in, desperate to find the only family she knows. Using clues from his past letters, she sets off for the sleepy town of Farrow, but everyone there claims to have never heard of Edward—not even the man he was supposedly working for as an apprentice.
With nowhere to go, Cordi turns to Lady Evangeline, a local female botanist who owns the magnificent Edenfield estate. The benevolent lady of the manor has made it her mission to take young, often traumatized, women into her employ and protect them from man’s world of wicked desires and deceits. Hired as a maid and companion to her enigmatic daughters, Prim and Briar, Cordi quickly settles into Edenfield. Even as her relationship with Briar blossoms, Cordi can’t help but suspect that there are secrets in the estate…and when she stumbles across evidence that Edward was once there, she’s determined to find answers.
Mazeltov by Eli Zuzovsky (August 25th)
At a banquet hall, at the onset of war, Adam Weizmann’s bar mitzvah party turns into a glorious catastrophe. On the cusp of manhood―and the verge of a nervous breakdown―Adam has been bracing for his special day, mired in family neuroses and national dysfunction.
In a chorus of voices, a fractious cast of well-wishers narrates Adam’s coming-of-age in Israel: his newly devout father and the mystic rituals he practiced on his young son; his best friend, Abbie, who points the way to joyful transgression; Khalil, a Palestinian poet, who offers a glimpse of a different way to be; and Adam himself, filled with shame and desire as he faces the brokenness of his world.
The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri (September 22nd)
In an England fuelled by stories, the knight and the witch are fated to fall in love and doom each other over and over, the same tale retold over hundreds of lifetimes.
Simran is a witch of the woods. Vina is a knight of the Queen’s court. When the two women begin to fall for each other, how can they surrender to their desires, when to give in is to destroy each other?
As they seek a way to break the cycle, a mysterious assassin begins targeting tales like theirs. To survive, the two will need to write a story stronger than the one that fate has given to them.
But what tale is stronger than The Knight and the Witch?
The Irish Goodbye by Heather Aimee O’Neill (September 29th)
It’s been years since the three Ryan sisters were all together at their beloved family home. Two decades ago, their lives were upended by a fatal accident on their brother Topher’s boat. Now the Ryan women are back and eager to reconnect, but each carries a heavy secret. The eldest, Cait, still holding guilt for the role no one knows she played in the boat accident, rekindles a flame with her high school crush. Middle sister Alice has been thrown a curveball that threatens the career she’s restarting and faces a difficult decision that may doom her marriage. And the youngest, Maggie, is finally taking the risk of bringing the woman she loves home to meet her devoutly Catholic mother.
When Cait invites a guest from their shared past to dinner, old tensions boil over and new truths surface, nearly overpowering the flickering light of their family bond. Far more than a family reunion will be ruined unless the sisters can find a way to forgive one another―and themselves.
Herculine by Grace Byron (October 6th)
Herculine’s narrator has demons. Sure, her life includes several hallmarks of the typical trans girl sob story—conversion therapy, a string of shitty low-paying jobs, and even shittier exes—but she also regularly debates sleep paralysis demons that turn to mist soon after she wakes and carries vials of holy oil in her purse. Nothing, though, prepares her for the new malevolent force stalking her through the streets of New York City, more powerful than any she’s ever encountered. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to rural Indiana, where her ex-girlfriend started an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods.
The secluded camp, named after 19th-century intersex memoirist Herculine Barbin, is a scrappy operation, but the shared sense of community among the girls is a welcome balm to the narrator’s growing isolation and paranoia. Still, something isn’t quite right at Herculine. Girls stop talking as soon as she enters the room, everyone seems to share a common secret, and the books lining the walls of the library harbor strange cryptograms. Soon what once looked like an escape becomes a trap all its own.
While trying to untangle the commune’s many mysteries, the narrator contends with disemboweled pigs, cultlike psychosexual rituals, and the horrors of communal breakfast. And before long, she discovers that her demons have followed her. And this time, they won’t be letting her go.