L. S. Stratton

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Minnesota

One fateful encounter upends the lives of two women in this tense domestic thriller, a modern spin on Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers On A Train that flips the script on race and gender politics.

 

"I'm a big believer that women should help each other, Tasha," she says. "Don't you think?"



Tasha Jenkins has finally found the courage to leave her abusive husband. Taking her teenage son with her, Tasha checks into a hotel the night before their flight out of D.C. and out of Kordell Jenkins's life forever. But escaping isn't so easy, and Tasha soon finds herself driving back to her own personal hell. As she is leaving, a white woman pounds on her car window, begging to be let in. Behind the woman, an angry man is in pursuit. Tasha makes a split-second decision that will alter the course of her life: she lets her in and takes off. 

 

Tasha and Madison Gingell may have very different everyday realities, but what they have in common is marriages they need out of. The two women want to help each other, but they have very different ideas of what that means . . .

 

They are on a collision course that will end in the case files of the D.C. MPD homicide unit. Unraveling the truth of what really happened may be impossible‒and futile. Because what has the truth ever done for women like Tasha and Madison?

Not So Perfect Strangers

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Juno Dawson

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A Novel

"Superb and almost unbearably charming, Her Majesty's Royal Coven... expertly launches an exciting new trilogy." --The New York Times Book Review
 
"Talk about a gut punch of a novel. ...A provocative exploration of intersectional feminism, loyalty, gender and transphobia [that] invites readers into an intricately woven web of magic, friendship and power." --The Nerd Daily

A Discovery of Witches meets The Craft in this epic fantasy about a group of childhood friends who are also witches.

If you look hard enough at old photographs, we're there in the background: healers in the trenches; Suffragettes; Bletchley Park oracles; land girls and resistance fighters. Why is it we help in times of crisis? We have a gift. We are stronger than Mundanes, plain and simple.

At the dawn of their adolescence, on the eve of the summer solstice, four young girls--Helena, Leonie, Niamh and Elle--took the oath to join Her Majesty's Royal Coven, established by Queen Elizabeth I as a covert government department. Now, decades later, the witch community is still reeling from a civil war and Helena is the reigning High Priestess of the organization. Yet Helena is the only one of her friend group still enmeshed in the stale bureaucracy of HMRC. Elle is trying to pretend she's a normal housewife, and Niamh has become a country vet, using her powers to heal sick animals. In what Helena perceives as the deepest betrayal, Leonie has defected to start her own more inclusive and intersectional coven, Diaspora. And now Helena has a bigger problem. A young warlock of extraordinary capabilities has been captured by authorities and seems to threaten the very existence of HMRC. With conflicting beliefs over the best course of action, the four friends must decide where their loyalties lie: with preserving tradition, or doing what is right.

Juno Dawson explores gender and the corrupting nature of power in a delightful and provocative story of magic and matriarchy, friendship and feminism. Dealing with all the aspects of contemporary womanhood, as well as being phenomenally powerful witches, Niamh, Helena, Leonie and Elle may have grown apart but they will always be bound by the sisterhood of  the coven.

Her Majesty's Royal Coven

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Isle McElroy

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

From the acclaimed author of The Atmospherians--"a Fight Club for the Millennial Generation" (Mat Johnson)--a gender-bending, body-switching novel that explores marriage, identity, and sex, and raises profound questions about the nature of true partnership. When Eli wakes up alone in the cramped Bulgarian apartment he shares with Elizabeth, his more organized and successful wife, he discovers that, somehow, he's in her body. His male body has vanished, and the personality that once resided in Elizabeth's is gone without a trace. What follows is a search across Europe to America for his missing wife--and a roving, no-holds-barred exploration of gender and embodied experience. As Eli comes closer to finding Elizabeth--while learning to exist in her body--he begins to wonder what effect this metamorphosis will have on their relationship and how long he can maintain the illusion of living as someone he isn't. Will their new marriage wither completely in each other's bodies? Or is this transformation the very thing Eli and Elizabeth need for their marriage to thrive? A rich, rewarding exploration of ambition and sacrifice, desire and loss, People Collide is a tender portrait of shared lives that shines a refreshing light on everything we thought we knew about love, sexuality, and the truth of who we are.

People Collide

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Like Happiness

Lisa Childs

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

A Chilling Novel of Suspense

In the tradition of Brenda Novak and Karen Rose, the latest in award-winning author Lisa Childs' dark romantic thriller series is laden with Gothic atmosphere and brilliantly plotted twists and turns, as Halcyon Hall, a former insane asylum-turned-luxury resort on a remote island off the coast of Maine becomes the setting for grisly crimes...

"Grips you from the beginning and refuses to let you go until the very end." -Elle James, New York Times bestselling author

Drawn to the former Bainesworth Manor in the wake of a murder, reporter Edie Stone wants answers. It's been over forty years since the psychiatric hospital on Bane Island shut down, and the mystery of women vanishing there remains unsolved. But the exclusive retreat isn't just protected by the dark pine forests and crashing waves of Maine's rocky coast-it's surrounded with silence. Everyone on the island is keeping secrets.

Especially Dr. Elijah Cooke, grandson of the man who headed Bainesworth Manor and the psychiatrist-proprietor of a new wellness resort on the same premises. His desire to help people seems at war with his fierce loyalty to his family. He's sure the world is out to get him. And as the accidents and coincidences pile up, Edie becomes convinced someone is trying to kill them both. But if she's close enough to be a threat, she must be close to the truth . . .

PRAISE FOR LISA CHILDS

"Atmospheric, emotional, and well-told." -New York Times bestselling author Lori Wilde on The Runaway

"Grabs you from page one . . . Lisa Childs paints an eerie, haunting suspense that will keep you riveted until the very last page!" -Rita Herron, USA Today bestselling author on The Runaway

"Page-turning...Bane Island may be a dangerous place, but readers will look forward to coming back." -Publishers Weekly on The Hunted

The Missing

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In The Event of Love

Last Call at the Nightingale

Tracey Rose Peyton

A gripping, radically intimate debut novel about a group of enslaved women staging a covert rebellion against their owners

On a struggling Texas plantation, six enslaved women slip from their sleeping quarters and gather in the woods under the cover of night. The Lucys--as they call the plantation owners, after Lucifer himself--have decided to turn around the farm's bleak financial prospects by making the women bear children. They have hired a "stockman" to impregnate them. But the women are determined to protect themselves.

Now each of the six faces a choice. Nan, the doctoring woman, has brought a sack of cotton root clippings that can stave off children when chewed daily. If they all take part, the Lucys may give up and send the stockman away. But a pregnancy for any of them will only encourage the Lucys further. And should their plan be discovered, the consequences will be severe.

Visceral and arresting, Night Wherever We Go illuminates each woman's individual trials and desires while painting a subversive portrait of collective defiance. Unflinching in her portrayal of America's gravest injustices, while also deeply attentive to the transcendence, love, and solidarity of women whose interior lives have been underexplored, Tracey Rose Peyton creates a story of unforgettable power.

Night Wherever We Go

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Pay Dirt Road

Dawn Winter

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

An exuberant dark comedy about love, grief, sex, guilt, and one woman's harebrained scheme to tranquilize her voraciously amorous girlfriend for a few days so that she might pay off her drug dealer, make soup, and finally get some peace and quiet.
 
"A brilliantly quirky, surreally funny story.... An intriguingly headstrong yet vulnerable character with an astonishing talent for making the worst possible life-decisions." --Sarah Haywood, best-selling author of The Cactus

Frances was not looking for a relationship when she met Elaine in a bar. She was, in fact, looking to drown her sorrows in a pint or twelve and nurse a broken heart, shattered by the gorgeous, electric Adrienne. But somehow (it involved a steady stream of beer and weed, as things often did with Frances) Elaine ended up in Frances's bed and never left. Now, faced with mounting pressure from her drug dealer, Dom (and his goon, Betty), Frances comes up with a terrible idea: She asks Elaine to move in with her for real. Unfortunately, this seemingly romantic overture makes Elaine even more sex-crazed and maniacal with love. Frances fears she may never escape the relationship, so, given no choice, she makes the obvious decision: She will sedate Elaine.
 
A story as enthusiastically madcap and funny as it is smart and emotionally surprising, Sedating Elaine introduces a roster of unforgettable characters and an indelible, wildly exciting new voice in fiction.  

Sedating Elaine

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All The White Spaces

Henry Winkler

The Fonz ... and Beyond

A forthcoming memoir published by Celadon Books.

Being Henry

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Eloghosa Osunde

"If you read one debut novel in 2022, this should be it." --Los Angeles Times

Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, Harper's Bazaar, Buzzfeed, Ms. Magazine, Lit Hub, The Millions, and Electric Literature

In the bustling streets and cloistered homes of Lagos, a cast of vivid characters--some haunted, some defiant--navigate danger, demons, and love in a quest to lead true lives.
 
As in Nigeria, vagabonds are those whose existence is literally outlawed: the queer, the poor, the displaced, the footloose and rogue spirits. They are those who inhabit transient spaces, who make their paths and move invisibly, who embrace apparitions, old vengeances and alternative realities. Eloghosa Osunde's brave, fiercely inventive novel traces a wild array of characters for whom life itself is a form of resistance: a driver for a debauched politician with the power to command life and death; a legendary fashion designer who gives birth to a grown daughter; a lesbian couple whose tender relationship sheds unexpected light on their experience with underground sex work; a wife and mother who attends a secret spiritual gathering that shifts her world. As their lives intertwine--in bustling markets and underground clubs, churches and hotel rooms--vagabonds are seized and challenged by spirits who command the city's dark energy. Whether running from danger, meeting with secret lovers, finding their identities, or vanquishing their shadowselves, Osunde's characters confront and support one another, before converging for the once-in-a-lifetime gathering that gives the book its unexpectedly joyous conclusion.
 
Blending unvarnished realism with myth and fantasy, Vagabonds! is a vital work of imagination that takes us deep inside the hearts, minds, and bodies of a people in duress--and in triumph.

Vagabonds!

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Carlyn Greenwald

An unputdownable queer coming-of-age rom-com about life and love in Hollywood. * "Both an irresistible love story and a riveting exploration of Hollywood dynamics." --Rachel Lynn Solomon, New York Times bestselling author of The Ex Talk

For aspiring cinematographer Luna Roth, coming out as bisexual at twenty-four is proving more difficult than she anticipated. Sure, her best friend and fellow queer Romy is thrilled for her--but she has no interest in coming out to her backwards parents, she wouldn't know how to flirt with a girl if one fell at her feet, and she has no sexual history to build off. Not to mention she really needs to focus her energy on escaping her emotionally-abusive-but-that's-Hollywood talent manager boss and actually get working under a real director of photography anyway.

When she meets twenty-eight-year-old A-list actress Valeria Sullivan around the office, Luna thinks she's found her solution. She'll use Valeria's interest in her cinematography to get a PA job on the set of Valeria's directorial debut--and if Valeria is as gay as Luna suspects, and she happens to be Luna's route to losing her virginity, too . . . well, that's just an added bonus. Enlisting Romy's help, Luna starts the juggling act of her life--impress Valeria's DP to get another job after this one, get as close to Valeria as possible, and help Romy with her own career moves.

But when Valeria begins to reciprocate romantic interest in Luna, the act begins to crumble--straining her relationship with Romy and leaving her job prospects precarious. Now Luna has to figure out if she can she fulfill her dreams as a filmmaker, keep her best friend, and get the girl. . . or if she's destined to end up on the cutting room floor.

Sizzle Reel

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Bart Yates

When his difficult mother is diagnosed with ALS, a sharp-witted yet sensitive artist named Noah York reluctantly returns to his New Hampshire hometown - and all the ghosts he left behind. Fans of Andrew Sean Greer, Jonathan Tropper, and Armistead Maupin will adore this outrageously funny, deeply touching, buoyant new novel from the award-winning author of Leave Myself Behind.

As it turns out, you can go home again. But sometimes, you really, really don't want to . . .

Home, for Noah York, is Oakland, New Hampshire, the sleepy little town where Noah's mother, Virginia, had a psychotic
breakdown and Noah got beaten to a pulp as a teenager. Then there were the good times-and Noah's not sure which ones are
more painful to recall.

Now thirty-seven and eking out a living as an artist in Providence, Rhode Island, Noah looks much the same-and swears just as
colorfully-as he did in high school. Virginia has become a wildly successful poet who made him the subject of her most famous
poem, "The Lost Soul," a label Noah will never live down. And J.D., the one who got away-because Noah stupidly drove him
away-is in a loving marriage with a successful, attractive man whom Noah despises wholeheartedly.

Is it any surprise that Noah wishes he could ignore his mother's summons to come visit?

But Virginia has shattering news to deliver, and a request he can't refuse. Soon, Noah will track down the sister and extended
family he never knew existed, try to keep his kleptomaniac cousin out of jail, feud with a belligerent neighbor, confront J.D.'s
jealous husband-and face J.D. himself, the ache from Noah's past that never fades. . . . All the while, contending with his
brilliant, unpredictable mother.

Bittersweet, hilarious, and moving, and as unapologetically candid and unforgettable as Noah himself, The Language of Love and Loss is a story about growing older, getting lost-and finding your way back to the only truths that really matter.

The Language of Love and Loss

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A novel 

Beneath The Stairs

The Selfless Act of Breathjng

Emma Lucy Knowles

Tune in to Yourself, Transform Your Life

Your healing journey of self-discovery starts here!

When there is so much going on in our lives how do we filter out what feels right from what feels wrong? How do we become more in tune with who we really are and what we really need?

The answer is intuition. The Life-Changing Power of Intuition is your guide to finding and following your own inner voice. Full of practical advice, exercises, and meditations, author Emma Lucy Knowles will show you how to develop your intuition and deepen your connection to your authentic self. Learning to be guided by your intuition creates positive change in all areas of your life, from improving your relationships and healing your stresses and anxieties, to nailing that big work presentation, to achieving your fitness goals or breaking bad habits.

The secret to changing your life is already inside you!

The Life-Changing Power of Intuition

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Light Watkins

Spiritual Minimalism to Live a More Fulfilled Life

"Watkins shares his surprising discovery that being a "spiritual minimalist" means you don't focus on material objects. What matters more than clearing out your closets is how much trust you have in your inner guidance"--

Travel Light

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Jess Walter

And Other Stories

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins and The Cold Millions comes a stunning collection about those moments when everything changes--for the better, for the worse, for the outrageous--as a diverse cast of characters bounces from Italy to Idaho, questioning their roles in life and finding inspiration in the unlikeliest places. We all live like we're famous now, curating our social media presences, performing our identities, withholding those parts of ourselves we don't want others to see. In this riveting collection of stories from acclaimed author Jess Walter, a teenage girl tries to live up to the image of her beautiful, missing mother. An elderly couple confronts the fiction writer eavesdropping on their conversation. A son must repeatedly come out to his senile father while looking for a place to care for the old man. A famous actor in recovery has a one-night stand with the world's most surprising film critic. And in the romantic title story, a shy twenty-one-year-old studying Latin in Rome during "the year of my reinvention" finds himself face-to-face with the Italian actress of his adolescent dreams. Funny, poignant, and redemptive, this collection of short fiction offers a dazzling range of voices, backdrops, and situations. With his signature wit and bighearted approach to the darkest parts of humanity, Walter tackles the modern condition with a timeless touch, once again "solidifying his place in the contemporary canon as one of our most gifted builders of fictional worlds" (Esquire).

The Angel of Rome

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Erin Slaughter

Stories

A debut, interlinked collection of stories exploring the primal nature of women's grief--offering insight into the profound experience of loss and the absurd ways in which we seek control in an unruly world.

Seamlessly shifting between the speculative and the blindingly real, balancing the bizarre with the subtle brutality of the mundane, A Manual for How to Love Us is a tender portrait of women trying their best to survive, love, and find genuine meaning in the aftermath of loss.

In these unconventional and unpredictably connected stories, Erin Slaughter shatters the stereotype of the soft-spoken, sorrowful woman in distress, queering the domestic and honoring the feral in all of us. In each story, grieving women embrace their wildest impulses as they attempt to master their lives: one woman becomes a "gazer" at a fraternity house, another slowly moves into her otherworldly stained-glass art, a couple speaks only in their basement's black box, and a thruple must decide what to do when one partner disappears.

The women in Erin Slaughter's stories suffer messy breaks, whisper secrets to the ghosts tangled in the knots of their hair, eat raw meat to commune with their inner wolves, and build deadly MLM schemes along the Gulf Coast.

Set across oft-overlooked towns in the American South, A Manual for How to Love Us spotlights women who are living on the brink and clinging to its precipitous edge. Lyrical and surprisingly humorous, A Manual for How to Love Us is an exciting debut that reveals the sticky complications of living in a body, in all its grotesquerie and glory.

A Manual for How to Love Us

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Robin Yeatman

"Imagine if Patricia Highsmith had written The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and instead of heroic daydreams she gave her protagonist murderous ones--that would be Bookworm. Robin Yeatman's story is subversive, surprising, and satisfying in a way that only the best comic noir can be."--Claire Oshetsky, author of Chouette

A wickedly funny debut novel--a black comedy with a generous heart that explores the power of imagination and reading--about a woman who tries to use fiction to find her way to happiness.

Victoria is unhappily married to an ambitious and controlling lawyer consumed with his career. Burdened with overbearing in-laws, a boring dead-end job she can't seem to leave, and a best friend who doesn't seem to understand her, Victoria finds solace from the daily grind in her beloved books and the stories she makes up in her head. One day, in a favorite café, she notices an attractive man reading the same talked-about bestselling novel that she is reading. A woman yearning for her own happy ending, Victoria is sure it's fate. The handsome book lover must be her soul mate.

There's only one small problem. Victoria is already married. Frustrated, and desperate to change her life, Victoria retreats to the dark places in her mind and thinks back to all the stories she's ever read in hopes of finding a solution. She begins to fantasize about nocturnal trysts with café man, and imaginative ways (poisoned pickles were an inspired choice in Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres) of getting rid of the dread husband. 

It's all just harmless fantasy born of Victoria's fevered imagination and her books--until, one night, fiction and reality blur and suddenly it seems Victoria is about to get everything she's wished for . . . .

Bookworm

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Camilla Sten

Alexandra Fleming

"Come for the mounting horror and scares, but stay for a devastating examination of the nature of family secrets." —New York Times book review "[A] scary, highly entertaining debut...that pays homage to Shirley Jackson." —South Florida Sun Sentinel A Most Anticipated Book Goodreads * Publishers Weekly * Crime Reads * Popsugar * Bookish * Book Riot * #1 Loanstar Pick in Canada An Indie Next Pick and Library Reads Pick The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar in this brilliantly disturbing thriller from Camilla Sten, an electrifying new voice in suspense. Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed “The Lost Village,” since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother’s entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left—a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn—have plagued her. She’s gathered a small crew of friends in the remote village to make a film about what really happened. But there will be no turning back. Not long after they’ve set up camp, mysterious things begin to happen. Equipment is destroyed. People go missing. As doubt breeds fear and their very minds begin to crack, one thing becomes startlingly clear to Alice: They are not alone. They’re looking for the truth... But what if it finds them first? Come find out.

The Lost Village

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Kathryn Holmes

Blending elements of Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak and Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, debut novelist Kathryn Holmes delivers a gripping story that author Richard Peck calls a "page-turner about several kinds of survival." Sophomore Hallie Calhoun has just endured the most excruciating six months of her life. Once the rumors about her and the preacher's son, Luke, made their way around school, her friends abandoned her, and Hallie has completely withdrawn. Now, on a hike in the Smoky Mountains with the same people who have relentlessly taunted her, Hallie is pushed to her limit. Then Hallie, outgoing newcomer Rachel, and Jonah—Hallie's former friend—get separated from the rest of the group. As days go by without rescue, their struggle for survival turns deadly. Stranded in the wilderness, the three have no choice but to trust one another in order to stay alive . . . and for Hallie, that means opening up about what really happened that night with Luke. From the catty atmosphere of high school to the unpredictable terrain of the mountains, this novel is a poignant, raw journey about finding yourself after having been lost for so long.

The Distance Between Lost and Found

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Bailey Rae

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