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An illustrated collection of twenty-five short stories and poems based on the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales, which were sanitized in their time, reducing the violence so they could be read to children.

In Beyond Grimm, some stories are simple, others more thought-provoking, but all of them—by twisting known fairy tales to be darker and more amusingly gory and violent—restore for adults the fun of reading about fanciful characters who are demented, bloodsucking, and get the end they deserve.

Join Fritz, an introverted chanterelle mushroom, and his friend Pip, an exuberant fly agaric mushroom, on a day of fun and adventure in this adorable picture book from the illustrator of the New York Times bestseller My Little Brave Girl!

Meet Fritz. He likes rose hip ice cream on warm days and cream of chestnut soup on cold ones. Sometimes, Fritz likes to play with lots of friends. Sometimes, he likes playing with his extroverted best friend Pip (who likes blackberry bramble ice cream on hot days and spicy nettle stew on cold ones). But most often, Fritz likes to spend time all by himself. Time to be quiet. Time to do lots of things or nothing at all.

One morning, Fritz decides to have a very Pip-like day, to see what it's like being Pip. The day starts with an exciting morning of berryball, followed by a swim in the puddle pond - and then blowing bubbles in the violet patch!

But as the day goes on, Fritz starts getting more and more frazzled - it's exhausting work being so social when you're an introvert! How can Fritz get the quiet time he needs when there's so much going on? Find out in this sweet new picture book by talented author-illustrator Kelsey Garrity-Riley.

Adorable hedgehog Bean returns for more adventures that will warm quills and tickle funny bones. This follow-up to the beloved Everyday Bean features legume-sized stories with larger-than-life personality!

Meet Bean, a very tiny hedgehog.

Bean loves ice cream, flying kites, making potions and waking Grandma up for breakfast.

Grandma loves ice cream, card games, a Bean that cleans and sleeping in.

Join Bean, Grandma and stuffie Clem in seven small (and sometimes tall) tales. Bean and Grandma eat ice cream and go just a little bit bananas; Bean learns how to fly a kite and gets carried away; Bean turns a party princess into a princess-witch; and there's even a story about when little Bean was so BIG she could fit Grandma in her pocket - the story of Bean Supreme!

This second volume in the Tiny Bean's Big Adventures series by acclaimed author/illustrator and hedgehog friend/insider, Stephanie Graegin, is the perfect gift for little (and big) readers and hedgehog admirers everywhere.

The current is threatening to pull them under.

Berry thought she had it figured out—juggling her vice-principal role while raising her sixteen-year-old autistic son, Brody. But when a promotion opportunity collides with her family's deepest needs, she must confront whether she's been fighting the wrong battles all along.

McKenna is drowning. Between caring for her grandmother with dementia, losing her swimming scholarship, and facing homelessness, the college student's carefully constructed world is crumbling. Her only lifeline? Teaching swim lessons to children with autism—including Brody.

As these two women's paths converge in the most unexpected way, they discover that sometimes the people who need saving the most are the ones who end up saving you.

A deeply moving exploration of motherhood, sacrifice, and the extraordinary connections that emerge when we're brave enough to let others see our struggles.

Discover the true spirit of friendship and acceptance in this charming tale of a tortoise and a hedgehog.

Theodore the hedgehog wants nothing more than to play with the other animals in the forest.

But it’s hard to make friends when you are covered in prickly spines that the other animals are scared of.

Theodore is so lonely, he’s willing to do anything—even turn himself inside out, quite literally—to make the other animals like him.

Soon he meets Sofia the tortoise, and with her help, he discovers that a true friend appreciates you for who you are—and that we all have a unique place in the world.

A fun collection of spooky poems for 4-to-8-year-olds featuring Mother Boo — a friendly old ghost — and a whole town of familiar and friendly Halloween faces: skeletons, pumpkin heads, vampires, werewolves, ghosts and more. A poetry collection perfect for the Halloween fanatic in your life!

Deep in October County is a magical place called Spookytown, where the leaves are always bright, the air is always crisp and the pumpkins are always in their prime.

When it's time for a story or a poem, the little witches, ghosts and goblins of Spookytown love to snuggle up with this collection, compiled by Mother Boo-the oldest ghost in town.

Discover the secret to flying, join a pumpkin parade and dance with werewolves in this collection of Halloween poems inspired by Mother Goose. From silly to spine-tingling, there is something for everyone to enjoy!

Some love stories don’t end—even after death.

Bonny has never married, and when she finds love later in life—all-encompassing, passionate, ethereal—she dives in headfirst. She quits her job at a local Montreal hospital to spend more time with Miguel at his home in the countryside and begins to imagine life at his side. But when he suddenly dumps Bonny, ghosts her when she seeks answers, and promptly marries someone else, she struggles to pull herself from the tunneling chasm of despair and heartbreak that opens underneath her.

Years later, a phone call from a local notary changes everything: Miguel has suddenly died, leaving Bonny the cozy house and beautiful land where they spent so much of their time. What's a lady to do? This one packs her bags and moves in, facing stiff opposition from Miguel's widow and startling communications with the ex himself—in ghost form. With a local, roaming cat serving as her go-between to the spirit world, Bonny tries to help Miguel gain eternal peace while grappling with her own mortal situation. Things may or may not be what they seem, and as Bonny faces challenges from within and without, she wonders about her future and whether she can ever truly forgive, heal her heart, and move forward.

Discover the weirdly wonderful world of ferns—plants that outlived the dinosaurs, inspired a Victorian-era obsession, and continue to enchant us with their mathematical perfection and lush beauty.

Ancient and enigmatic, ferns captivate with understated elegance. Their fronds unfurl in perfect mathematical spirals, connecting us to Earth's primordial past. Victorian-era "fern fever" transformed these plants into cultural icons inspiring art and literature, while Māori traditions revere them as sacred links between heaven and earth. Ferns also played a central role in the picturesque movement, where artists like Reverend William Gilpin sought to capture their untamed naturalism in evocative landscapes. While for poets like John Clare, ferns symbolized a mystical connection to nature, their shadowy habitats offering a refuge for contemplation and melancholy.

But ferns are more than symbols—they are ecological marvels, resilient and adaptive. Nitzke also explores the environmental and evolutionary importance of ferns, which have adapted to thrive in diverse environments, from the lush rainforests of New Zealand to the fossilized landscapes of Saxony. Their prehistoric dominance—towering three stories high—is preserved in fossilized remains 360 million years old. The Elegance of Ferns invites us to marvel at these living relics—symbols of beauty, cultural identity, and ecological resilience illuminating our connection to the natural world.

In the first of a three-volume series, a brilliant young scholar of World War II offers a fresh and magisterial new history of the cataclysmic military struggle and the geo- and socio-political change it engendered.

Between 1931 and 1949, a series of crises broke out that threatened collective security, world order, and the internal cohesion of states across the globe. At the heart of these crises was a world war that shook the foundations of global power, a watershed moment in the history of the twentieth century. Collapse is the first volume of an authoritative trilogy that tells the story of the Second World War through this international lens, covering theatres of war in multiple continents and analyzing worldwide trends.

Through exciting new sources in fourteen languages and from over fifty archives across the world, Professor Jonathan Fennell examines the first part of this "long war," from 1931-1941, and explores what it really meant to live through this violent time. Using an innovative approach which explores the personal alongside the political, the global alongside the local, he shows how a world that many considered civilized collapsed into barbarity.

Through immersive storytelling and a cast of characters, from "bands of brothers" to "sisters in arms" and "warwoven lovers," Collapse links the home and battle fronts and ties together the stories of great campaigns with the dramatic political and social changes of the twentieth century, and in doing so, transforms our understanding of this monumental conflict.

From New York Times bestselling author William I. Hitchcock, a riveting, revelatory portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the lead-up to World War II, tracing his—and America's—awakening to the threat of fascism.

How did FDR and the American public respond to the rise of dictators across Europe and Asia on the eve of World War II? The familiar narrative is that they reacted with indifference and embraced isolationism. Only with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were Americans reluctantly drawn into the global conflict. But distinguished historian William I. Hitchcock reveals a far more complex and surprising story.

From the time Mussolini came to power in 1922 to America's entry into the war in 1941, Americans engaged in a fraught national debate over the rising threat--and for some, the lure--of fascism. At the center of this debate was Roosevelt himself. When he took office in 1933, Roosevelt was determined to avoid foreign entanglements that would harm his ambitious domestic agenda of the New Deal. But over the course of his first two terms, a network of journalists, activists, advisers, and diplomats gradually awakened him to the global dangers of fascism.

Roosevelt's transformation was part of a larger national reckoning with authoritarianism around the world. A Shadow Over the World shines a light on a time when a coalition of courageous humanists gathered around a visionary leader to forge a new purpose for America: to protect democracy, oppose imperialism, support human rights, and lead a global fight for freedom. Their successful struggle against the dark forces of fascism holds powerful lessons for our own perilous times.

The breathtaking true story of the return of wild bison to the Rockies, as told by the wildlife biologist who helped lead them there.Featuring behind-the-scenes photographs from one of North America's most ambitious conservation projects.

For thousands of years, wild bison numbering in the millions roamed across a range spanning half of North America. Then, in the 1800s, they were nearly exterminated by European settlers. Buffalo Lessons shares the story of their triumphant return to a mountainous corner of their historic range, nearly a century and a half after they last walked the land. Karsten Heuer, the conservationist tasked with leading the project, chronicles the groundbreaking reintroduction of plains bison to Banff National Park, beginning in 2017, when ten pregnant females and six males were airlifted into an enclosed pasture. It was a complex and ambitious project, designed to restore North America's largest land mammal to its important ecological role in the landscape and its cultural role for Indigenous peoples.

Despite meticulous planning, Heuer and his team found themselves repeatedly "buffaloed" by the animals, who had a knack for doing the unexpected, and teaching the humans lessons along the way. Heuer packs his narrative with thrilling moments: a horseback chase to tranquilize a bison, a helicopter-assisted translocation into the rugged backcountry, and the tense tracking of wayward bulls that scale steep, treacherous terrain. Throughout, his encounters with these massive creatures—both awe-inspiring and humbling—force him to confront his assumptions about control, nature, and conservation.

In 2024, Heuer was diagnosed with a terminal brain condition, and he completed the manuscript for Buffalo Lessons in the weeks and days before his death. His narrative ends seven years after the initial introduction, with a thriving population of around one hundred bison and the organization of the first Indigenous hunt in the region in over 150 years. Buffalo Lessons stands as a testament to the resilience of bison, and as the culmination of a life's work in conservation.

Published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute

The untold story of the Allies' secret weapon in occupied France.

Peter J. Ortiz's path to becoming the most battle-decorated member of America's first spy agency—and one of the most decorated Marines of World War II—was unlike any other. Born in New York and raised between California and France, he would have stints as a merchant seaman, dude ranch manager, race car driver, lion tamer, circus performer, and Hollywood stuntman and actor. As a teenager, Ortiz ran away from boarding school in France to join the French Foreign Legion. He first experienced combat in North Africa against tribesmen in the Sahara. Fighting on the front lines against the Germans in 1940, he was badly wounded and captured. He repeatedly escaped, one time fleeing a hospital train after assuming the identity of a dead soldier.

Docking in the US the day after Pearl Harbor, Ortiz enlisted in the Marine Corps. As someone who could speak French like a native—and get by in Arabic, German, and Spanish—the dashing former Legionnaire immediately stood out. Instead of being deployed to the Pacific like the majority of Marines, Ortiz was recruited by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—America's World War II forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency—for special operations in North Africa and Europe.

In 1944, Ortiz parachuted into France on two top-secret inter-Allied missions. Operating deep behind enemy lines, he traveled throughout Southeastern France—at times donning his Marine uniform—arming and training the Maquis, blowing up Nazi infrastructure, and aiding downed Allied airmen. Rotating his many covers—including as a fashion designer and minor Vichy government official—he infiltrated Nazi gatherings and funneled intelligence about German positions back to OSS London ahead of D-Day. By the time he escaped across the Pyrenees, he was among the Gestapo's most wanted. 

Two months after the Normandy landings, Ortiz jumped back into the French Alps, this time with a team of Americans he recruited for "Le Grand Parachutage," a drop that sent more than 150 tons of supplies raining down to the Maquis to fight the Axis. When his six-man patrol was surrounded by more than one hundred Germans at the village of Centron, Ortiz faced a choice: fight the enemy or save the village from Nazi annihilation.

A rare Marine in the European Theater, he received two Navy Crosses. Ortiz's story—an untold corner of World War II history—is one of extraordinary courage, resistance, and self-sacrifice.

From Here is a collection of twenty-two short stories exploring the lives of people who battle a range of psychiatric disorders as they search for empathy and understanding in a complex and little understood world.

The collection opens with a frightened homeless man who meets a well-intentioned social worker. In another story, a woman explains why she amputated her hand. A teenaged girl fights anorexia, and a young man tries to care for his incarcerated mother. The last story returns to the characters in the first, examining their encounter from the social worker’s point of view.

With compassion, respect and a sense of humor, From Here seeks to describe what it means to be touched by mental illness, and how the experience can completely alter one’s path in unexpected and powerful ways.

Sometimes things are not as they appear, especially when religion, magic, and shady dealings mix.

It's 1908, and itinerant spirit medium Madame Ilsa von Hoffmann is at the end of her professional rope, facing down two unappealing options: join an ill-conceived commune founded by some fellow trans ex-vaudevillians, or take on a high-paying but mysterious job offered by a religious extremist in Salt Lake City. Madame Ilsa opts for Utah and the employ of one Roger Marsh who, it turns out, wants her to summon the ghost of Joseph Smith, Mormonism's founder, to give his blessing to Marsh's fledgling offshoot of the mainstream church.

Unsure how she'll pull off this near-impossible task, Ilsa finds an ally in Francie Bream, an East Coast journalist in town to profile Mormon women at the dawn of the twentieth century. Bream's motives remain obscure to Ilsa, though she begins to suspect the journalist has an agenda far more sinister than she could have imagined. Complicating the situation further are an inept and volatile henchman, a relentlessly orthodox Mormon apostle, a copper magnate with a fetish for polygamists, Marsh's rogue third wife, and a vengeful private investigator from Ilsa's past. As dead bodies accumulate around her, Madame Ilsa worries less and less about saving her career, and more about making it out of Salt Lake City alive.

“T.I.M. Wirkus’s A Bad Deal in Mormon Land is a fun and frenetic noir that keeps you guessing til the last page. You never know who’s playing who in this twisty tale of double dealing, double crosses, and double marriages! What dark deeds are happening in this pioneering work of Utah gothic? You won’t believe them til you read them!” —Bitter Karella, author of Moonflow and Quaint Folk

“Wirkus has delivered another delicious, fun, eminently readable yet intricate puzzle of a book. Perhaps even more than in their previous novels, A Bad Deal in Mormon Land reads like an externalized version of what must be the very, very, twisty, funny, surprising convolutions of the author’s own brain. Think about it: a great brain has just given us a great, generous, brain-like book. What a gift!” —Ryan McIlvain, author of Elders

Praise for the author:

“One of the most exciting novelists of [their] generation.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Entertaining, fun and very, very smart.”– Percival Everett, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of James

Some stories don't end with a kiss. Some women don't wait to be awakened.

Los Angeles is sweltering through Holy Week when a teenage hustler named Kiddy is murdered on Hollywood Boulevard in broad daylight. The investigation pulls Detective Joanna Steele into a conspiracy that reaches from Hollywood's shadows to the highest levels of power.

Mia More is on the verge of superstardom when Kiddy crosses her path. What begins as concern becomes something far more dangerous: love, responsibility, and a fierce protective instinct that pulls her back into a world she once escaped. To save him, she may have to risk everything… including her life.

Lana DeMille drifts through Los Angeles with a fractured memory and nowhere left to land. Somewhere in the gaps of what she's forgotten lies the truth about what happened to Kiddy—if she can piece together what she saw before the killer remembers her.

As the investigation tightens and the body count rises, the line between victim and predator blurs. In this dark, fierce reimagining of Sleeping Beauty, three women awaken to a truth someone will kill to keep buried—in a city where the most dangerous stories are the ones no one lives to tell.

What if the moment your world shattered became the one that taught you to live again?

Five women didn't plan to meet. They don't want to share their grief. But one unexpected night around the flames would alter their lives forever. Monique hides behind control. Carmen faces truths she never saw coming. Trish's hard shell begins to crack. Ava's just barely holding everything together. And Joyce—quiet, steady Joyce—carries the unspoken weight of them all. Brought together by loss and bound by courage, these women discover that even from ashes, something beautiful can rise.

The Five Widows Club is a heart-aching, hope-filled novel about grief, grace, and the fierce power of beginning again.

In this landmark account of American women leaving the church, award-winning journalist Sarah Stankorb, author of Disobedient Women, asks why they leave—and where they land.

Ordinarily, women are more religious than men. But these are no ordinary times. In America, where Christianity is still the most common religion, women are vacating churches. In the past decade, 16 million women have left the church. Younger women are disaffiliating from religion faster than men. For some women, leaving is like a dramatic divorce; for others, as one woman tells Stankorb, it's more like women and the church "stopped calling each other."

Exploring trends from the 1980s to today, Damned If She Doesis an intimate account of women whose stories got missed during the Christian Right's headline-grabbing rise to power. Their exodus is marked by harm, disillusionment, and drift: from pastors' wives and a national Christian TV show host, to girls whose horrific abuse gives another face to the Catholic sex abuse crisis. Some couldn't stand by a church that cast out their queer friends. Others were maligned for who they loved. Churches with strong opinions on sexual purity and abortion stood beside men with histories of assault. With horror, women who loved the church watched the rise of Christian nationalism and saw their faith bastardized.

Finally, they've had enough. Some are atheists. Others are forging new spiritual avenues through astrology or energy work or connection to their ancestors. Some have a Christian faith they no longer entrust to an institution.

Attuned to emotional subtlety, women's agency, and religious longing, Stankorb asks what happens when a woman realizes that she's damned both if she stays and if she leaves. This consequential work of narrative nonfictionis a poignant reminder that women deserve better, and a tale of what happens when they don't get it.

From the acclaimed author ofBillion Dollar Molecule and The Antidote, a revisionist, passionate history of the pharmaceutical industry, detailing how the nascent industry ushered in an age of cures.

The Age of Cures is the in-depth history of the birth of the pharmaceutical industry in the United States. Barry Werth is the author of Billion Dollar Molecule and The Antidote, two highly acclaimed books on the pharmaceutical industry. In The Age of Cures, he takes us back to a time before modern medicine. In the early part of the twentieth century, patients routinely died from the flu, if they didn't contract a more potent disease like rubella, mumps, or polio. Yet with advances in technology, the young talent at universities across the country, and the significant investment from a federal government eager to prepare for a second world war, medicine exploded in the 1930s to the 1960s to finally meet the needs of a sick populace. Finally, "miracle drugs" were available for the first time: penicillin and wide-spectrum antibiotics, cortisone, and a polio vaccine.

Werth convincingly shows us how this crucial investment in science made America modern, and a scientific powerhouse for decades to come.

Nancy Lord, one of Alaska's best-known writers, has been writing fiction and nonfiction in Alaska for more than fifty years.

Let Them Tell You gathers selected stories from her three previous short fiction books, each first published in a different decade, alongside newer work, some published in journals and some unpublished until now.

Lord first wrote as a way to think about her life in Alaska when she was a young woman, and her curiosity took her farther afield with each book. Some stories draw on personal experience; others from newspaper headlines, historical events, and myths. Some respond to earlier writers and their literary works. Some are serious about social concerns and matters of justice; some are seriously funny. Animals and children, seekers and dreamers—in one case an entire community—all take turns as central characters. This collection traces Lord's writerly influences and her concerns for both humankind and the natural world and suggests the ways writers and readers alike travel through time and imagined lives, learning as they go about cruelties, compassion, and the human heart. An introduction by the author and an afterword by scholar Eric Heyne supplement the stories with context about the writer?s journey and the evolution of Alaska literature.

Lord's close observation of the natural world is a hallmark of her work, as is her attention to environmental themes and social issues. Let Them Tell You demonstrates the range of her talent for presenting not only variations on life in Alaska but the human condition on a larger and timeless scale.

Inspired by Robert Macfarlane and curated by Jennie Orchard, an anthology of essays about the joys of giving books to children and young people, from some of the world's most beloved writers.

Remember the books that shaped your childhood, sparked your imagination, and ignited a lifelong love of reading? In The Gifts of Reading for the Next Generation, some of the world's most beloved authors share their own transformative reading experiences--the books and stories that set them on the path of becoming the readers and writers they are today.

Following the success of its first edition, The Gifts of Reading, this heartwarming collection of essays is a testament to the enduring power of books. By exploring the stories that shaped them, our authors provide a powerful guide to fostering a love of reading in the children and young people in your life.

With contributions from Tristan Bancks, William Boyd, Shankari Chandran, Horatio Clare, Nicola Davies, Imtiaz Dharker, Ursula Dubosarsky, Maisie Fieschi, Pico Iyer, Wayne Karlin, Colum McCann, JohnMichael McCann, Ann Morgan, Sir Michael Morpurgo, Dina Nayeri, Matt Ottley, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Alice Pung, Diana Reid, Nilanjana Roy, Nikesh Shukla, Nardi Simpson, Madeleine Thien, Thelma Young Lutunatabua, and John Wood, and an afterword by Julia Eccleshare.

All royalties generously donated to the two organizations founded by John Wood, Room to Read and U-Go, promoting literacy and education for girls and young women.

A twisty historical novel set during the 1950s ... when anything was possible.

Joan has a gravity problem—and she's desperate to keep it hidden. Haunted by a loss too heavy to bear, she drifts to Palomar Gardens, a tiny Southern California commune where hope hovers and teases. Here she encounters George (based on the real-life 1950s flying saucer guru, George Adamski), a charismatic mystic whose lofty visions will soon captivate the world. Drawn into George's orbit, Joan finds her footing. But the line between wonder and deception is thin, and her hold on reality slips. Improbable machines appear in the sky, only to vanish without explanation. Beautiful lies masquerade as truth. Her secret unmoors with consequences she cannot foresee.

Helium is a story of faith, folly, and the fragile human longing to touch the stars—of searching for a place in the cosmos where the possible and the impossible carry equal weight.

Will wonders never cease?

Reviews:

"A story about flying saucers, burgeoning cult leaders, and a heartbroken woman with a fantastical gift, Helium is a mesmerizing historical novel." — Foreword Clarion Reviews ***** (5/5 Stars)

“Enthralling literary fiction … the kind of book you devour.” — Independent Book Review

“Engaging … a skillfully written, multi-dimensional tale.” — BlueInk Review

“Strange, sorrowful, and luminous.” — Literary Titan ***** (5/5 Stars)

"Dave Kenney's debut, Helium, is a beautiful meditation on what happens when our need to believe inevitably runs headlong into the cost of truth. A richly imagined story of the collective postwar psyche, the novel shows how the terrible, earthbound reality of grief always seems to send us looking for answers in the heavens. It's a fantastic book. I highly recommend it." — Kevin Powers, National Book Award finalist and author of The Yellow Birds

She was sent to be a weapon. He was sent to bring her home to die.

In the kingdom of Caer Vethys, every child is bonded to a beast — and every bond is the crown's hand on a leash. Lirien Voss arrives at the academy knowing only what she has been told: that her father did not look at her when she left, that her name belonged to a woman who was hanged, and that she is to be forged into a weapon for a throne that fears her house.

Kael Aravane is the cadet ordered to win her trust and deliver her for execution. He has been deciding against that order since he was thirteen.

Beneath the academy runs a resistance nineteen years in the making, and at its center waits a creature older than the throne — older than the lie the kingdom was built on. To choose each other, Lirien and Kael will have to betray everything they were made to be.

Bone breaks. Bond does not.

Book One of the Bone and Bond Cycle —a literary fantasy of conspiracy, inheritance, and the slow work of ending an empire, for readers of The Goblin Emperor and The Priory of the Orange Tree.

A Journey to the Heart of the Self...

When the pattern of a life unravels, an electric awakening begins.

For twenty-eight years, Clair Cassidy McKendrick has lived a "half-life," tucked away in the quiet, insidious fog of the Maine coast and the safe, hollow identity of a lawyer's wife. But the patterns of her carefully ordered existence are about to unravel. On a single "synchronous" day, she learns her son is becoming a father-and her husband is leaving her for a pregnant mistress. An invitation to a fiftieth birthday celebration in the high desert of New Mexico offers a chance for an escape she never knew she needed.

Stripped of her possessions by a twist of fate and thrust into the company of a "pride" of extraordinary women, Clair finds herself at The Lightning Field-a vast land sculpture of four hundred shimmering stainless steel poles. In this desolate, "holy place," where the air is thin and the clouds morph into mythic shapes, Clair undergoes a profound psychological and spiritual striking.

Through the power of sisterhood, the wisdom of the Divine Feminine, and a chance encounter with a kindred spirit who truly sees her, Clair begins to shed her old skin like a desert serpent. A luminous novel about midlife awakening, the healing power of female friendship, and the courage it takes to begin again, The Lightning Field is a story for any woman who has ever wondered if it's too late to reclaim her own life.

At sixty-four, Brenda Barker’s life is anything but over—though someone should tell that to her butcher, who insists on calling her “ma’am” when the other customers are “miss.”

With her husband gone, her only child moving to Japan, and a literary “expert” telling her she has no business writing, Brenda does what any sensible woman would do: ignores the advice, packs her bags, and heads to a high-stakes writers’ conference in the California wine country.

Armed with a manuscript, a bottle of pinot noir, and a fierce determination to prove the world wrong, Brenda embarks on the adventure of a lifetime—complete with wine-fueled confidence, surprise friendships, and a few romantic sparks she definitely didn’t plan for.

Brenda Barker’s Next Chapter is a celebration of second (and third!) chances, the power of believing in yourself—and finding your voice when it matters most.

From the founding fathers to the rise of Christian nationalism, Devils of Democracy reveals how America's centuries-long obsession with evil has shaped—and endangered—our democracy.

Americans love political demons. From the Revolutionary War to today, in fact, America has been steeped in the demonic and the devilish. Demons populate the spaces of American daily life in ways we might be inclined to dismiss, and they exert a power and a hold over our political imaginations that is, arguably, downright diabolical. Yet as strange as our collective obsession with the interaction between demons and politics might seem, this deep-rooted fascination is a meaningful part of our culture and communities, our history and heritage, our religion and recreation, the personal and the political.

And it may be precisely this obsession that has led us to our present-day political crisis.

While we may be tempted to turn our attention away from the discomfort of demons, author Michael E. Heyes challenges us to a clear-eyed reckoning that requires us to do the opposite. Arguing that we live in a nation that could not exist in its present form without the demonic beliefs that built it, he invites every one of us to join him in confronting spiritual-political demonization in the US head-on, starting with the frightening political point currently confronting our nation, then circling back in time to explore and illuminate the role of demons in US politics throughout our history, drawing connections along the way to our present Trump-era moment and building to the current disturbing demonization of democratic people and institutions, as performed by some groups in the powerful Christian right.

As a country, we need to find our way out of this mess, and an important first step is looking at how we got here. If we are to forge a new path forward, we have no choice but to deal with our demons.

This prize-winning satirical novel chronicles a scandal that envelops a prominent Jerusalem family and leads to its downfall.

Told largely through the eyes of one of her three children, the story begins when Elisheva Fogel, depicted as a well-known figure among Israel's peace activists of the early 2000s, is accused of embezzling millions from the think tank she directs. Family members try to close ranks, but old and new grievances surface, and their reactions are driven by conflicting loyalties, suspicion, as well as fear of losing their own financial and social capital. The allegation and its repercussions expose not only cracks in the family, but the hypocrisies of Israel's secular Ashkenazi elite, along with its moral and political decline.

This novel has author Noa Yedlin's hallmark traits: richly detailed scenes and settings, biting humor, razor-sharp social critique, all propelled by an immersive story.

Reading group guide to House Arrest is available for download free of charge at newvesselpress.com.

Meet the desperate and the devious, the tortured and the treacherous, the courageous and the corrupt.

A fugitive breaks into an old country chapel to escape from something far more terrifying than prison.

Gods and mortals unite in combat against slithering demons in famine-stricken Finland.

A man with the uncanny ability to hear death approaching acquires a haunted car with a sinister past.

Travel to Ireland where an ancient artifact regenerates severed limbs while healing old family wounds.

A boy and his dog remain loyal to one another until the bitter end... and beyond.

At a Halloween festival, a distraught young woman confronts her past traumas in a haunted corn maze.

A young couple steals away over the holidays to become engaged—until reality disintegrates around them.

And much more.

A historic collection of the radicals and freethinkers that sparked a country's journey through divinity—praising, challenging, and redefining the sacred.

Spanning more than 400 years of spiritual transformation and imagination, A Nation Wrestles with God collects diverse writers—poets, novelists, theologians, scientists, musicians, politicians, comedians, artists, mavericks, naturalists, futurists, and more—whose daring texts incited dialogue, even change, and continue to influence a growing nation. From the pre-colonial to the present day, these landmark stories, poems, essays, letters, speeches, songs, comic strips, and more awoke new generations to free religious thought.

On the occasion of America's 250th year of independence, and during a time of deep idealogical division, this sweeping anthology is an urgent reminder of the pluralities that strengthen and unite us.

An inspiring adventure that shows children what courage and self-belief look like.

When Bella Butterfly is swept high into the clouds and separated from her friend Bey Bat, she discovers that finding her way home begins with finding the courage within herself.

Bella Butterfly loves her garden. She loves her friends. But one curious afternoon, while she and Bey Bat are out exploring, a sudden gust of wind sweeps Bella into the clouds and carries her farther from home than she has ever been before.

Lost in an unfamiliar world, Bella must navigate new sights, unexpected challenges, and moments of doubt. Along the way, she learns to trust her instincts, believe in herself, and discover strengths she never knew she possessed.

Through Bella's journey, young readers learn that courage is not the absence of fear; it's taking the next step even when the path ahead feels uncertain. And while Bella finds her courage, her friends, led by Beckham Bumblebee, never stop searching for her, reminding children that they are stronger when supported by those who care about them.

Perfect for children ages 3–8, Bella Butterfly Helps Teach:

• Courage and self-confidence
• Resilience and perseverance
• Friendship and loyalty
• Problem-solving skills
• Appreciation for nature

Join Bella on an unforgettable adventure through the clouds and discover that even the smallest butterfly can find the strength to soar.

Ideal for:

Classroom read-alouds, bedtime stories, social-emotional learning (SEL) lessons, nature units, anxiety support, school counselor libraries, and gift giving for ages 3–8.

Part of the Pollinator Path Series

Book 1: Beckham Bumblebee Can't Do It Alone — teamwork and cooperation

Book 2: Bella Butterfly Discovers Her Courage — courage and belonging

Book 3: Hugo Hummingbird Can't Slow Down — coming November 2026

A tale of cultures, languages, spirits, and the natural world on the brink of transformation from a major new talent in Latin American literature.

“Of all the happy, hermitic lands, the Guayrá was the jewel.”

So begins this polyphonic wonder of a novel set in a 17th-century Jesuit mission founded within the wild South American subtropics by the mystical and intense Father Ruiz and his assistant Father Maceta. As the priests seek to convert the indigenous Guaraní and unravel the many religious mysteries that surround them, the harmony of their community is abruptly upended by the arrival of Overá, who announces himself as the Son of God and younger brother of Jesus. But an even larger threat presents itself when word arrives that European marauders and slave hunters will soon descend upon the peaceful mission, compelling Overá and the priests to launch a mass exodus into the heart of the jungle.

Full of humor, passion, and terror, The Depopulation brilliantly evokes the moment when modernity’s spark set fire to a still-magic world.

“Immersive. . . . Inspired.” —Publishers Weekly

“A beautiful, absurd, and fascinating exploration of the tragic fallout from a fierce cultural clash.” —Booklist

“Marina Closs’s writing trembles, sweats, explodes; she is, as of now, one of my favorite writers.” —Mónica Ojeda, author of Jawbone and Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun

Finding Out by Stephen Faulkner

“Finding Out” is the story of Jeremy Chericun’s trip to visit his aged aunt and, later, to attend her funeral. At this function he finds himself on an adventure in the company of a beautiful woman named Ahmay. She helps him find the person he truly was meant to be (so he assumes) and a love (with her) of which he never knew he was even remotely capable.

Crimson Moon by Rodney Hatfield, Jr.

In an apocalyptic world overrun by werewolves, vampires, and zombies, a determined young woman named Lily must confront her hidden lineage and harness her newfound powers to survive and reclaim her town from the clutches of darkness, all while navigating the treacherous alliances between supernatural factions and love.

How To Swim by Jen Michalski

Linney, a twentysomething in recovery, takes a job as an administrative assistant for an opera company in Baltimore. As she toils behind the scenes, she realizes that the most arresting aria isn’t on the stage but unfolding in front of her--between her and her boss, Marti.

Memories of Green Rivers by Nathan Perrin

A human rights worker struggling with PTSD attempts to reconcile his past and his faith when he starts to fall in love with a single mom. Filled with regrets about his divorce and his service in Iraq, he is forced to ask whether or not hope is worth holding onto while living in a world of suffering.

Letters to Lulu by Shé

When Queenie takes a sabbatical from performing, she recounts the adventures in her new community for soul sister, Lulu. Neighborhood dances, dramas, and warring families pepper her weekly missives, and love triumphs over death.

Freak (Two Different Ones) by Scott Taylor

Take a dive into another world; one you’ve surely never seen before.

When Daniel Morrison's girlfriend disappears during a weekend getaway, he fears the worst.

Three days later, she comes back.

She has the same name. The same memories. The same life. But Daniel knows she isn't his girlfriend.

As everyone around him insists otherwise, Daniel is forced to confront a terrifying possibility: either something is terribly wrong with the world around him, or something is terribly wrong with him.

At thirty-five, writer and media veteran Laura Donovan thought she had motherhood figured out—until her two sons were diagnosed with autism and a clinician suggested that she might be autistic too.

In this candid and darkly funny memoir, Donovan chronicles her journey from overwhelmed parent to self-aware advocate, weaving pop culture, humor, and heartbreak into a narrative that redefines what it means to be "different." From reenacting Elf with her five-year-old to decoding preschool politics in pandemic-era Portland, she learns that the quirks she once tried to outgrow were never flaws—they were family traits.

Momtistic is a love letter to neurodiverse families everywhere and a fresh addition to the conversation about women whose neurodivergence had gone unrecognized for decades—finding a language for who you've always been.

In a small Lebanese village in 1931, Joseph Friedmann is born to a 15-year-old girl married off to a man thirty years her senior.

His parents divorce, and at the age of eight, Joseph is sent to be raised in a Catholic convent. There he experiences anti-Semitism, betrayal, and a deep trauma he cannot bring himself to name. He falls in love with Isabella, a nun-in-training, but this too turns to heartbreak.

Joseph sets out on foot toward Palestine, where he takes part in Israel's 1948 War of Independence. He has finally found a home. But his new country sends him back to Lebanon as an Israeli spy. After twenty years undercover, he completes one final, decisive operation. Now Joseph faces a choice: escape to safety in Israel, or attempt to lay claim to his future by confronting the past — the mother who forsook him; the abbess who abused him; the lover who deserted him.

Written in vivid prose, The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb weaves a deeply personal story of trauma, survival, and identity into the complex reality of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It reminds us of the historical imperatives leading to the founding of the State of Israel and recognizes the pain and longing experienced by its Arab citizens and neighbors.

Are you ready to say goodbye to loneliness and hello to a life filled with meaningful friendships?

Making new friends in adulthood can feel awkward, even intimidating. Most of us were never taught how to navigate interpersonal relations or sustain friendships through life's many changes. It's no wonder so many of us feel isolated, even when we're surrounded by people.

But the truth is, you don't need to start over-you just need to see the connections already within reach.

In Are We Friends Yet?, speaker and host of the Friendship IRL Podcast Alex Alexander offers a compassionate and practical guide to making new friends, strengthening relationships, and expanding your support system in ways that feel natural, not forced.

Drawing from personal experience and years of helping others build connections, Alexander shares how to adapt your friendships to meet your evolving needs-especially during times of transition. With honesty and heart, she shows how investing in friendships during life changes can be a powerful (and essential) act of self-care.

In this book, you'll:

• Explore the link between self-esteem, happiness, and connection.
• Identify which relationships matter most-and how to care for those relationships intentionally.
• Learn strategies for nurturing your most important communities, even with limited time or energy.

Whether you're reconnecting with old friends or starting fresh, Are We Friends Yet? is your invitation to build the relationships you've always wanted-and the community you deserve.

An inspiring adventure that shows children what pollination, teamwork, and friendship look like. Most pollinator and garden books explain science. Beckham lets children live it.

Beckham Bumblebee is certain she can do it all by herself. But when she realizes the garden is too much to pollinate alone, she learns that true strength is not doing everything by herself--it is knowing when to ask for help and trusting friends to be there. Through Beckham's challenge, young readers are shown that working together accomplishes more than working alone. Other pollinators each bring something Beckham can't. Bella Butterfly can reach flowers with soft petals. Hugo Hummingbird sips from tubular blooms his long beak was made for. Breyden Beetle carries golden dust wherever his scooting leads. Bey Bat works the night shift when everyone else is asleep.

Perfect for children ages 3-8, Beckham Bumblebee helps teach:

• The science of pollination
• How to work together as a team
• The power of friendship
• Listening and communication

Join Beckham on an unforgettable adventure through the garden and discover that even the smallest butterfly can help pollinate.

Ideal for: Classroom read-aloud, bedtime stories, social-emotional learning (SEL) lessons, nature units, anxiety support, school counselor libraries, and gift giving for ages 3-8.

Part of the Pollinator Path Series

• Book 1: Beckham Bumblebee Can't Do It Alone — teamwork and cooperation
• Book 2: Bella Butterfly Discovers Her Courage — courage and belonging
• Book 3: Hugo Hummingbird Can't Slow Down — coming November 2026

Different wings. Same mission.

You were left with a mysterious coded note —nineteen letters that no one can crack—you know the danger isn’t over.

Invited to a global AI conference in Scotland, you’re supposed to be tagging along for the ride. But from the moment you arrive, nothing feels right. A strange warning hidden behind castle walls. A researcher with too many secrets. And someone watching your every move.What begins as a quiet trip quickly spirals into a tangled web of hidden identities, encrypted files, and a growing threat no one is talking about—one that could change the world.

Packed with 16 interactive puzzles and branching choices, The Hidden Cipher is a thrilling, twist-filled sequel that puts your brain to the test. Only you can uncover the truth. Can you solve to survive?

Written by an adult child of an alcoholic who has lived the struggle and found a way forward--Emotionally Sober and Unimaginably Good is the emotional recovery guide you have been waiting for.

Millions of adults today grew up in households where one or both parents struggled with problem drinking, substance use disorder, or other dysfunctional behavior. Perhaps the most toxic aspect of such a background is that it can become an excuse for not finding true happiness and personal fulfillment. For some, this history leads to problematic adult behaviors like shirking responsibilities, lashing out at loved ones, self-sabotage, and substance misuse of their own. Others may become high achievers or perfectionists, using success as a coping mechanism and source of validation. Yet even successful adult children struggle beneath the surface—something author Megan DeMatteo knows firsthand from her experience working as a journalistic "money expert" while privately grappling with debt and financial shame.

Emotionally Sober and Unimaginably Good explores how DeMatteo broke free from her unhealthy emotional patterns shaped by living her childhood with an alcoholic parent. Unlike clinical takes on addiction and codependency, her story offers a raw, personal perspective that speaks directly to adult children longing for healing and emotional freedom.

Blending memoir, reporting, and practical help, DeMatteo reveals how emotional dysregulation and reactivity shaped her life in ways that both hurt her and ultimately led her to deep personal and spiritual growth. With honesty and vulnerability, she shares her rock-bottom moments and hard-won epiphanies, offering readers a clear view of a path that leads to healing. Written for every adult child who is ready to experience a more connected way of moving through the world, Emotionally Sober and Unimaginably Good provides a hopeful vision and practical steps that will help those seeking emotional recovery and a life they truly want.

A continuation of the acclaimed novel Thunderhead, Fireweather follows Winona Dalloway as she struggles to come to terms with the unrecognizable world around her.

Life for Winona Dalloway is not as it should be. Her husband is no longer her husband, her children are not at home with her, and the city in which she lives is besieged by fires. Black ash falls like snow, songbirds screech like dinosaurs, and the doctors are calling her mad...

In this looking-glass world, Winona is forced to prove she is a sane, rational human being. As the pronouncements of the professionals grow more insistent, so too do the voices crowding inside Winona's head. She seeks solace in the company of plants and animals, and begins to imagine an entirely other way of being—one that might make whole her broken heart.

Inspector Hunnam is a gentleman, gorgeous, and is great at solving murders.

With the help of his trustworthy partner and friend, Sergeant Weston, and the beautiful, clever, Miss Grey, Inspector Hunnam is back in this cozy, detective, ninth murder mystery novel, in the Inspector Hunnam Mystery series set in 1920's London.

1928 London, at a privately owned boxing gym, after the main title match, one of the boxers is murdered! A boxing gym full of suspects, a former boxing champion, a washed-up old boxer, a young scrapper, and a dangerous owner, we find out the victim had many enemies, and several of the intriguing suspects, including a boxing manager and trainer, all had a definite motive for murder!

The tall, blonde, gorgeous, Detective Inspector Hunnam, and his partner, Detective Sergeant Weston, are brought in on the case to investigate the murder. During the course of their murder investigation, Inspector Hunnam's friend from university becomes their prime suspect in the case.

With no shortages of motives or suspects, everyone at the boxing gym had the same animosity and resentment towards the victim, and wanted the victim dead. We find fixed matches. Boxers taking dives. A missing pair of boxing gloves. A rivalry between boxers. And a second murder occurs. Inspector Hunnam, along with his brother, his Sergeant, and Miss Grey, solve the case, looking forward towards their next, exciting, murder mystery adventure... together!

Inspector Hunnam is a gentleman, gorgeous, and is great at solving murders.

With the help of his trustworthy partner and friend, Sergeant Weston, and the beautiful, clever, Miss Grey, Inspector Hunnam is back in this cozy, detective, tenth murder mystery novel, in the Inspector Hunnam Mystery series set in 1920's London.

1928 London, at a radio station, after a live broadcast of a radio show, one of the radio actors is murdered! A radio station full of suspects, a station manager, a husband and wife writing team, and the host of the show, we find out the victim had many enemies, and several of the intriguing suspects, including the Foley artist, and the sponsor of the programme, all had a definite motive for murder!

The tall, blonde, gorgeous, Detective Inspector Hunnam, and his partner, Detective Sergeant Weston, are brought in on the case to investigate the murder. Helping out on the murder investigation is Inspector Hunnam's brother and fiancee.

With no shortages of motives or suspects, everyone at the radio station had the same animosity towards the victims, and wanted the victims dead. After a second murder occurs, everyone involved with the radio show is under suspicion of murder! We find a demanding radio star. Jealous co-stars. Radio contracts. A microphone. And a secret marriage. Inspector Hunnam, along with his brother, his Sergeant, and Miss Grey, solve the case, looking forward towards their next, exciting, murder mystery adventure... together!

A debut slow-burn work-nemesis romance set in a world where cryptids and monsters are a part of life... and someone has to do the paperwork.

Working in human resources was not what Alexys had in mind when she joined Entity, the private company that categorizes and manages the world's cryptids. But after her dad was killed on the job as a Warden in the Appalachian Mountains, she was filled with noble ideas of carrying on his legacy... from the safety of a desk.

Alexys dreams of climbing the corporate ladder while managing the Appalachian Wardens and sparring with Nic, the frustrating (and annoyingly attractive) Director of Research and Cataloging. When one of Alexys's new Wardens goes missing after inquiring about a mysterious and highly dangerous monster, her chances of promotion disappear along with him. Determined to save her career—and to shield the Warden's family from the trauma she experienced after losing her father on the job—she marches off into the monster-infested wilderness to find him herself.

Meanwhile, Nic, with ambitions of becoming the youngest Entity employee to discover a new monster, follows Alexys on her hunt. But the work nemeses are about to discover why the Appalachian Mountains are the last place you want to find yourself after dark. Among mountains older than bones, the jackalopes and ghouls are the least of their worries...

Tiny is trapped in a daunting world of extra large responsibilities and super small expectations.

With her father’s gentle encouragement to “dream of bigger things,” Tiny starts out in search of a high-flying life that soon leads her to the North Carolina State Fair where a funny man floats down from the sky in a parachute. Can Tiny do the same?

Inspired by the real-life story of Georgia “Tiny” Broadwick, this beautifully illustrated picture book celebrates courage, curiosity, and the power of believing in yourself.

Included is a historical note about Tiny Broadwick and a QR code for a fun coloring page and DIY parachute craft!

"Protest is like begging the powers that be to dig a well. Direct action is digging the well and daring them to stop you." —Ann Livingston

Here comes a book reconciling two seemingly antithetical concepts: activism and the law.

Written by a citizen journalist and legal advocate in a private capacity who for years has fought unjust laws for various causes, this work discusses how many decorated civil rights activists, including Nobel Peace Prize laureates, have challenged the law on the ground until the law changed. Its basic premises are that progressive laws are dictated by the people before they are enacted by the legislative branch of government, that they are enforced by the people against the executive branch of government, and that offences are prosecuted by the people on behalf of the judicial branch of government.

This book explains how to:

• Appeal to the court of public opinion with a sound legal and political platform

• Win over judges and juries in court proceedings

• Navigate and exploit the legal system in order to keep the government accountable—or at bay

• Become a legal advocate and help disenfranchised clients access the quasi-judicial system

• Assume the role of citizen journalist and document civil rights abuses

• File Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, and compel the government to reveal its hand

• Reach out to the mainstream media and broadcast your message to the masses

• Secure the backing of lawmakers without being ensnared in partisanship

• Engage in legal observation of law enforcement officers, as safely as possible

• Interact with the police (if you must)

Above all, it teaches how to minimize one’s exposure in order to become virtually untouchable. For example, recovering heroin user John Turvey was decorated with both the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia for his advocacy, which included creating in 1988 North America’s first unsanctioned needle exchange program while on a mission to curb the transmission of HIV among people who use drugs in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Likewise, Judith Heumann led the 1977 San Francisco sit-in protest which compelled the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare to sign Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act into law, thus guaranteeing disabled people access to federal government services. And in the 1990s, Helen Steel and David Morris fought McDonald’s abusive libel lawsuit all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, until the British government amended its notoriously harsh defamation legislation.

So hop on, and find out how civil rights activists have fought for accessibility of publicly funded research, reporters’ privilege to protect confidential sources, enforcement of international law on genocidal regimes, protection of old growth forests, the right to shelter and housing, access to harm reduction supplies, and accountability for police brutality, among many such causes. By the end of this book, never again will you take your rights for granted, knowing both how these victories were earned and how precarious these are in the age of Trump and Putin. Generations past observe us from beyond the grave, urging us to defend the rights they fought for so we would enjoy them today. Will you be up to the task, or instead be found wanting?

Award-winning biographer Ray Boomhower tells the story of a journalist who spent his life smashing barriers, from his childhood in Indiana and his Ivy League education at Brown to his reporting on the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South in the 1960s and, finally, covering what he described as "the biggest story in the world" of his time, the Vietnam War.

Pioneering Black journalist Wallace Terry risked his life on the battlefield writing for Time magazine during the Vietnam War. While in Vietnam, he captured the voices and experiences of Black soldiers and used the insights he gained to produce Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans. The book remains a classic reflection of a war that fractured US society and cost the lives of nearly fifty-eight thousand Americans.

Before risking his life on the front lines, Terry became deeply involved in reporting about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in the United States. "It was a story that I passionately cared for because it was going to affect me, my family, my children, and generations of Black people to come," said Terry. Working for the Washington Post, he wrote the first newspaper series about the Nation of Islam, during which he interacted with Malcolm X, who sheltered him from harm when his stories upset some members of the movement. He also grew close to those who sacrificed their lives in the struggle for equality, including Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr., who became godfather to Terry's eldest son. Making civil rights his focus gave him the opportunity to report on such seminal events as the Birmingham campaign, the March on Washington, and the Selma to Montgomery marches.

During his two years covering the Vietnam War, Terry traveled overseas to conduct numerous interviews with Black fighting men--soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines--that he later used as the basis for Bloods. He sought with his work to topple the conviction that "white soldiers are invincible and black soldiers are invisible." Terry faced numerous challenges, including rejections from publishers who believed the public did not want to read about Black veterans from the conflict. Finally published in 1984, Bloods became a bestseller and remains a landmark work of military and oral history.

Boomhower has written the first-ever biography of one of the first Black national correspondents to be hired in the overwhelmingly white mainstream media, a reporter whose name belongs with the greats in American journalism. Wallace Terry lived a life filled with danger and betrayal, scoops and cover-ups, while immersing himself in events that changed the course of US history.

5-Star Must Read — Reedsy Discovery "My seven year old son loved it and I think I may have enjoyed it more than him."

A valuable resource that invites deeper conversations and helps children identify, name, and express the emotional reactions they once struggled to pinpoint — based on early feedback from Tara Lewis, former Global Marketing Director at Disney Publishing Worldwide.

A New Fantasy Adventure Series For Kids Blends Storytelling With Emotional Literacy

Jacksonville, Florida — Bee & Peacock Publishing is pleased to announce the release of a new middle-grade fantasy novel for children, the first installment in The Flickerlings series—adventure stories about four young boys whose emotions spring to life as sprite-like beings, transforming childhood into a wild, heartfelt, and unforgettable circus of feelings.

The book, Rusty Ruins the Fort and Other Important Things, is written and illustrated by Anna Lenoir, a storyteller and artist whose work has been embraced by therapists, educators, and emotional-wellness professionals. Through her stories, Lenoir aims to reconnect literature with storytelling's oldest and most meaningful purpose: helping people better understand themselves and one another through emotion, moral conflict, and human behavior.

Lenoir believes that while modern literary education for students often emphasizes symbolism, structure, and literary devices, it can overlook the deeper reason stories have existed for thousands of years—to help us make sense of human emotions and the choices they inspire. With The Flickerlings, she invites children to explore those emotions in an empowering way that feels imaginative, accessible, and fun.

Rusty Ruins the Fort and Other Important Things is packed with everything young readers love: muddy disasters, runaway dogs, treasure rituals, backyard adventures, and hilarious chaos. As four friends—Ethan, Theo, Owen, and Hank—set out to build the ultimate backyard fort alongside the catastrophe-prone Rusty the dog, they are unaware they are not alone. Joining them are their Flickerlings, tiny emotional sidekicks who leap into action with every scraped knee, argument, triumph, and panic attack--bragging, overthinking, cheering, joking, worrying, and occasionally completely freaking out.

Filled with kid logic, muddy joy, and the oversized emotions of childhood, Lenoir's story captures the intensity and wonder of being ten years old. Through a colorful cast of Flickerlings—including Accuser, Scout, Dash, Sniffle, Punster, Steady, and dozens more--the series gives children a playful language for understanding their inner emotional world.

Blending laugh-out-loud fantasy with warmth, emotional intelligence, and relatable childhood adventures, The Flickerlings series offers families, educators, and middle-grade readers an entertaining and meaningful reading experience as well as a resourceful tool. Rusty Ruins the Fort and Other Important Things is available now wherever books are sold.

You didn't sign up for this. And yet here you are — managing medications, navigating family tension, absorbing grief that no one around you quite understands, and wondering when you lost track of yourself somewhere along the way.

What No One Tells You About Caring for an Aging Parent is the book most caregivers desperately need but rarely find: an honest, compassionate account of what long-term caregiving actually feels like from the inside.

Drawing from 14 years as her mother's primary caregiver, Nancy Banks-Anderson writes about the parts of this experience that people feel deeply but rarely say out loud -- the guilt that follows you even when you're doing everything right, the exhaustion that goes bone-deep, the invisible labor that no one tallies, the family fractures that catch you off guard, the grief that begins long before any final loss, and the quiet erosion of self that happens so gradually you almost don't notice.

This is not a clinical manual. There are no checklists, no tidy steps, no promise that it all works out neatly in the end. This is a deeply human book about surviving one of life's most demanding seasons with more honesty, self-compassion, and strength than you thought you had.

Inside, you'll find understanding and support for:

• The guilt that never seems to fully go away
• Exhaustion and emotional burnout that build slowly over time
• The invisible, uncounted labor of daily caregiving
• Family imbalance, resentment, and the loneliness of carrying more than your share
• Anticipatory grief — mourning someone who is still here
• Protecting your identity and sense of self through the long haul
• Finding steadier ground during the hardest seasons

If you have quietly carried more than most people around you can see — this book was written for you.

You are not alone in this. And you are not failing. Someone who has walked this road for 14 years wanted you to know that.

For fans of urban fantasy and tales of found family, the second installment of The Witch’s Odyssey—the story of a young witch breaking free from generational abuse and finding her purpose in life with the help of her friends, magical and otherwise.

Georgette Delaney's emotional well-being has improved dramatically since she fled from her abusive, manipulative family. She is surrounded by friends and chosen family, however, the young witch's life is still challenging. She's in a loving relationship with her boyfriend, Neil, but his workplace drama is intruding on their lives. Her job at Club Nocturne is fulfilling but her boss, the Vampire Kazimiera, is growing erratic and endangering every magical being in her care. Her best friend, Mei-Xing, is sinking into depression. And on top of it all, her narcissistic mother, Hazel, continues to try to control her from the opposite side of the country.

Georgette is dealing with all of this and more already when her friends Delia and Senji visit from Valhalla with the report that a Wild Hunt is imminent. Weathering the storm feels like challenge enough - but then the Valkyries, Delia included, mysteriously lose their grip on reality and stop performing their duties. Abandoned by his Valkyrie partner, Senji pleads for Georgette's help before the destructive forces Valhalla keeps at bay break through its weakened defenses and make their way to Earth.

Ryder's Digraph Dirt Track (Level 2 - Digraphs) is part of the Nelmgerian MX children's book series, created to inspire young riders while building strong reading skills.

This high-energy, motocross-themed learn-to-read book helps kids master important digraph sounds like SH, CH, TH, WH, PH, CK, NG, MB, and QU through fun, engaging lessons.

Inside this action-packed book, children will discover:

• Easy-to-understand digraph explanations
• Simple "How to Say It" guides for correct pronunciation
• Practice words to build confidence
• Helpful tips to reinforce learning
• Bright, colorful motocross scenes featuring Ryder and friends

Designed for early readers (ages 4-8), this book blends education with excitement-making phonics feel like a race to the finish line. Whether used at home, in the classroom, or on the go, it helps children develop confidence and a love for reading. Perfect for:

• Motocross families and young riders
• Beginning readers learning phonics
• Homeschool and classroom support
• Fun educational gifts

As part of the growing Nelmgerian MX children's books, this title continues the mission of bringing motocross passion and learning together for the next generation.

Start your engines and ride into reading success with Ryder's Digraph Dirt Track!

A deadly reckoning unfolds in book three of Michael Balter's award-winning crime thriller series.

Marty Schott and Bo Bishop are trying to extricate themselves from a dangerous business partnership with a Russian oligarch when a midnight phone call shatters their plans. Bo’s brother-in-law has been murdered—and the Portland police detective on the scene recognizes them instantly. He’s questioned them before. He hasn’t forgotten.

As Marty and Bo dig for answers, they uncover a hidden wire, criminal activity inside their own company, and a killer who isn’t finished. What begins as a murder investigation quickly spirals into a high-stakes web of cigarette smuggling, counterfeit money, and a covert FBI operation they don’t yet understand. Every lead pulls them deeper into a conspiracy that blurs the line between criminals and law enforcement—and puts their families squarely in the crosshairs.

At the same time, the cracks between them begin to widen. Marty is still entangled with Natalya, the alluring power broker linked to the powerful investor they’re trying to escape, and Marty’s inability to cut ties threatens everything. Bo’s loyalty is pushed to the limit as secrets, suspicion, and past betrayals collide. With pressure mounting from every direction, a single misstep pulls Marty into a deadly trap—and forces a choice that could cost him everything.

In Dead Exit, danger isn’t over—it’s waiting for one wrong move.

“Packed with action, Dead Exit unfolds as a sweeping saga of smuggling, corruption, and intrigue inspired by a real-world FBI sting operation."—D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

“A double-shot of murder, dark humor, and white-knuckled suspense that works on every level. Dead Exit will wow newcomers and satisfy series die-hards.”—BestThrillers.com

“Riveting and unrelenting—Dead Exit is the kind of book that lingers. Balter is at the top of his game.” —Andrew Bridgeman, author of the internationally acclaimed Emma Noble FBI series

“High stakes and dire consequences that will keep you reading late into the night.” —Charlotte Morganti, award-winning author of the Gabrieli Mysteries

“Move over Connelly, Paretsky, and Mosley, I have a new favorite mystery thriller writer!"—Warren C. Easley, award-winning author of the Cal Claxton Mysteries

A sudden summons to hometown Cleveland ruptures Sandra's Manhattan routine where she serves as inhouse counsel for a health insurer.

Sandra reluctantly agrees to spend ten days caring for her declining sister-in-law Janine while her brother conducts a prestigious reporting assignment of national consequence. Greg wouldn't reveal his overseas destination, so Sandra scours his home office for clues to the mystery. She discovers that he has been assiduously studying Arabic. With the third, awful anniversary imminent, she surmises that Greg's investigation involves the events of 9-11. Contrary to the boredom Sandra dreaded, she enjoys Janine's eclectic entourage.

But when Greg returns to Cleveland and shares confidential details, her inner world shatters. For nobody knows that sensible Sandra harbors an enchanted memory involving a certain Egyptian foreign student, whose reappearance couldn't possibly mean what Greg's notes prove. The Sandra who says adieu to Janine and returns to Manhattan is a transformed being - warmer, more exposed, easier for you the reader to like.

Happiest Father’s Day is a heartwarming children’s story that celebrates the bond between a father and his children through the simple, meaningful moments that matter most.

Filled with warmth, gratitude, and joy, this beautifully illustrated book follows young children who want to give their Dad the perfect Father’s Day—only to discover that the best gift of all is time spent together.

From morning snuggles and silly jokes to shared adventures and quiet moments, this story captures the everyday magic that makes dads so special. With its gentle message and charming artwork, Happiest Father’s Day is a keepsake families will treasure year after year.

Left for dead and whispered to be a saint, a disgraced noblewoman joins a crusading order while hiding a desire that could damn her soul.

When Rowen asked her brother, Roland, to wed her beloved Lady Amarys, she never imagined the two of them would fall in love. Plucked from a pauper’s grave by a crusader monk, she flees into the chaos of the Albigensian Crusade, trading her sword for a healer's satchel as she survives the horrors of holy war. Drawn into a fanatical brotherhood of zealots, she finds herself at the heart of one of the medieval world’s most brutal massacres.

She believes holy war will cleanse her of the love that damns her soul, but she soon finds herself tested by new longings for the love of a brazen young camp follower, Vera. When the crusade offers no salvation and reveals its true purpose to pillage and burn, Rowen and Vera must protect each other as they flee the escalating violence.

Honoring his twin’s dying wish, Roland cares for the heartbroken Amarys as his wife, but then, he learns an impossible truth. Rowen is not dead. Haunted by love and guilt, he must cross into war-ravaged Languedoc to find her, accompanied by the wife who binds them together.

On Mars-X penal colony, nothing is what it seems.

Dan Radcliff, sent to a penal colony under the guise of a water-delivery mission, awakens to a world of endless pleasures, with lush islands, stunning simulations, and even the promise of love. It feels like paradise, but beneath the surface lies a far darker truth. Haunted by memories of his past as a caretaker for humans known as dreamers, Dan begins to see the prison for what it really is. Every game, every ritual, every distraction is designed to keep inmates compliant while the ruling class pursues its hidden agenda.

When he meets Liz, a woman with secrets of her own, the two are drawn into a dangerous struggle. Dan must face a devastating question: if everything around him is false, how can he ever know what is real? In a world built on control and suffering, there is no winning this war, only learning to live with its scars.

Unlock Classified Files from the Mars-X Universe.

Some truths are dangerous. Are you ready to see them?

Green goo. Glowing eyes. Wood-eating zombies.

When orphans start turning into monsters, thirteen-year-old Felix can't stay hidden in his tree fort anymore. Someone unleashed this plague—and they're still out there.

Now Felix must team up with Ninja, a shadow-dwelling loner who trusts no one, to find the cure before their wooden island is devoured. The zombies are spreading fast, and time is running out.

Two unlikely friends. One shot. Zero room for error. Can they stop the outbreak before they're next?

Fast-paced supernatural STEAM mystery about two orphans who turn chaos into courage and mistrust into friendship, perfect for reluctant readers who love high-action, spooky adventures with science and problem-solving at the core.

Do NPCs also run on coffee and a healthy amount of panic? Are they more like us than we ever gave them credit for?

Have you ever played a video game and been intrigued by the non-playable characters? Maybe you were curious about the trainee arms master trying like heck to break out of her System-given limitations? Or the flower girl who gave that one fascinating quest that you couldn't stop thinking about long after you'd completed the game? Perhaps you were left wondering how the bartender at Mare and Maiden handles the sheer chaos after you've moved on.

Now you can join them on their journeys! Experience the horrors of when your cellar keeps spawning dungeons, rival goblins open a competing pub across the street, and a bard demon is stuck playing that same damn song on loop. Not to mention the sarcastic System forcing you to hand out quests when you've got [Things] to do!

This anthology explores the lives of the underappreciated NPCs, who work tirelessly to keep things running.

What does it mean for someone to “turn to the dark side”?

Discover a profound real-world interpretation of the Star Wars saga, exploring the seminal story of how a good person can lose themselves and what it takes to bring them back. Through a close analysis of Episodes I–VI, the parallel arcs of Anakin and Luke Skywalker reveal how someone who feels too deeply can either surrender to fear and unresolved anger or rise above them.

This unauthorized guide demonstrates that the Dark Side of the Force is not just cinematic evil. It represents emotional unconsciousness, resentment, and unintegrated trauma in real people, while the light symbolizes consciousness, self-awareness, and moral maturity. The tragedy of Darth Vader offers a vital warning for everyone: Do not give in to hate. Do not choose the quick and easy path. Do not let fear and insecurity define who you become.

For millions around the world, George Lucas' vision became a meditation on mentorship, family, identity, compassion… and the fragile line between villain and hero. This modern myth endures in our culture because it reminds us that no matter how far we fall, returning to the light and remembering who we are is always possible.

“A must-read for anyone seeking to comprehend the complexities of human nature and the transformative power of empathy and connection. [Turning to the Dark Side] provides both comfort and clarity for those navigating the pain of watching loved ones change, reminding readers that hope and love remain vital even in the darkest times." —Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Fellow, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Author of The Mythic Path, Former Mythology Lecturer for George Lucas

The Offline Playbook for Teens is a nonfiction guide for readers aged 13–16 about phones, focus, and sleep — written directly to teenagers in a peer-level voice, with no lectures and no demand to quit anything.

Ten chapters cover why the feed is engineered to grip you, what your phone steals from your sleep every night, why boredom rewires your brain, and what real focus feels like when it arrives. Plus a complete 30-Day Challenge Workbook — one challenge per day across four progressive levels. Not a plan to follow. A playbook to make your own.

Most books about screen time talk to parents. This one talks to teenagers — with the honest information most adults don't have, and the choice left entirely with them.

Format: Paperback (US only, limited copies) and ebook (all eligible countries)

Ideal reviewer: Parents of teenagers, educators, school counsellors, YA nonfiction readers, or teenagers themselves.

A note from the author: If the book connects with you, an honest review on LibraryThing, or Amazon would be genuinely appreciated — it helps an independent book find the readers it was written for.

The 1984-1996 C4 Corvette had a phenomenal run, as more than 337,000 units were produced.

Legendary packages, such as the ZR1 and Grand Sport, returned to production. In addition, the Callaway Sledgehammer Corvette reached 254.76 mph on the 7.5-mile oval track at the Transportation Research Center proving grounds. As impressive as these cars were when they were new, more than 30 years of technological advancements have left them dated and ill-equipped for today's performance-oriented enthusiast.

Chris Petris's career path of performing Corvette repair and performance upgrades includes writing technical content for multiple magazines, including Corvette Fever, Corvette Enthusiast, and more. In Corvette C4 1984-1996: How to Build and Modify, Petris focuses on all of the car's major systems and components. Included is building the original engine with the most powerful add-on parts, engine management, crate engines, cooling systems, and suspension and brake upgrades. The most powerful upgrade of all, an LS engine swap, is featured, and supercharging and turbocharging options are covered as well.

With C4 Corvettes being plentiful in the marketplace and more affordable than any other model with the Corvette nameplate, now is a great time to build. Using knowledge from this book, you will achieve modern performance at a fraction of the cost of a new Corvette. Whether you are ready to get started immediately or want to use this book to determine if you want to tackle a C4 project, this book is essential for making informed decisions along the way.

A thirty-nine-day war between the United States and Iran ends the way modern wars end now: not in surrender, but in a memorandum.

The guns go silent, the money is promised, the world exhales. Buried in the language of the peace are nineteen words that quietly abandon the people who believed the bombing meant deliverance.

In Washington, a small policy institute that has spent its life describing the world decides, for the first time, to act on it, and learns that the line between analysis and operation, once crossed, cannot be uncrossed. In Tehran, an air-defense colonel runs the only arithmetic that has ever governed his life, weighing the family the regime holds against a door that may not be real. In a blacked-out city, a nurse keeps a count the state means to erase, and an organizer discovers that the most dangerous thing a broken country can do is begin to hope.

As a sixty-day clock counts down to the vote that will make the peace permanent, three lives on two sides of a sealed border move toward a single decision, and toward the question the story refuses to answer for them: what is owed to the people you cannot save?

The Closing Window is a literary thriller of statecraft and conscience, of the cost of being right, and of the narrow, closing distance between describing a catastrophe and becoming part of it.

A BBC must-read book of 2026—"Sharp, dark and humorous, it's a real nail-biter."

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.

A razor-sharp satirical thriller, Fruit Fly will appeal to fans of R. F. Kuang's Yellowface and Yomi Adegoke's The List.

When a group of college friends takes a trip to Central California for a research project, they are hoping for a few days of sun and relaxation.

But the small town of Pueblo Escondido, nestled in the quiet hills of wine country, is not what it appears. Deep beneath a local quarry, something ancient has woken up.

Now the group finds itself trapped between creatures that defy reason and townspeople who no longer seem entirely human. Trying to survive, they realize that whatever crawled out of that quarry has no intention of staying in Pueblo Escondido.

It has much bigger plans.

Cassidy Calloway never expected to go viral for grieving, but in the face of loss, little makes sense, especially when faced with a hit-it-out-of-the-park, over-the-fence, World Series kind of love.

This tropetastic fake dating sports romance is perfect for fans of Alicia Thompson and Tessa Bailey.

When her boyfriend dumps her at her father’s funeral, Cassidy Calloway does what she does best—turns her heartbreak into content. To honor her baseball-loving father—and if she’s being honest, to piss off her ex—she launches a season-long social media experiment to attend nine games with nine dates in honor of her father’s favorite player, number nine, Nate O’Brien.

The Gila Monsters' star pitcher is on the verge of his biggest season yet, and he’s not about to let some influencer-turned-ballpark-spectacle throw him off his game. But when the team starts losing and fans start blaming Cassidy, Nate has bigger problems than his ERA—because the front office wants them to fix the narrative by pretending to date.

With his career on the line and her reputation at stake, Cassidy and Nate must turn their luck around. But the more time they spend together, the harder it gets to pretend they aren’t falling for each other.

And that’s the problem with fake dating. At some point, it starts to feel real.

Pierre Loti's Madame Chrysanthème (1887) is the novel at the origin of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. It has never had an English translation equal to it.

A French naval officer arrives in Nagasaki in 1885. He arranges a temporary marriage to a young Japanese woman; he calls her Chrysanthème, after the flower. He will stay for three months, then leave for sea. The arrangement is practical: a house on the hillside above the harbor, a few household objects, a sum paid to the family. What he does not expect is the quality of his own perception.

Loti watches everything and renders everything with a precision that belongs to the observational sciences as much as to fiction: the harbor light, the paper screens, the small domestic ceremonies, the distance between his understanding and hers, all recorded with the unsentimental exactness of a man who knows he is a guest in a world he will never enter. The irony the novel earns is not cheap. Loti understands that the failure of comprehension may be mutual, and he does not flatter himself.

The novel was an international sensation. John Luther Long read it before writing his 1898 short story; David Belasco staged the story; Puccini saw the play and composed the opera. The literary genealogy runs directly from this book to one of the most performed operas in the repertoire.

The existing English translations are old; the most recent of note dates from the nineteenth century. None has given the novel the register it requires: dry, precise, often beautiful, never sentimental, with an irony that does not disappear even when the writing is at its most lyrical.

This Espresso Publishing House edition features a new translation by Clémence Aubert from the original Calmann Lévy text, an introduction tracing the novel's place in European literary Japonisme and its relationship to Puccini, historical notes, and a translator's glossary.

For readers of French literary classics, Japanese literature in translation, and the history of European encounter with Japan. The novel that started Butterfly, in an English translation worthy of it for the first time.

When Hell’s Master of Spells is murdered, a realm-wide competition is held to find his replacement.

Eager to prove himself and live out his dream of serving his king, novice magician Ulrynk puts his name forward for consideration. Despite his youth, Ulrynk’s raw talent and unconventional spellcasting quickly make him a threat to his more experienced competitors.

His ambition catches the eye of Jeffrey Logan, the king’s enigmatic ward. But while the attraction between the two of them is undeniable, Jeffrey’s status in Lucifer’s court demands their budding romance remain hidden until the competition’s end.

When new evidence emerges and complicates the murder investigation, Ulrynk and Jeffrey work together to see the killer brought to justice—no matter the potential consequences or risk to Ulrynk’s victory.

A hauntingly good sapphic paranormal romance from USA Today bestselling author Emma R. Alban. A struggling writer falls for the hot ghost mom she meets in the iconic Dakota Building in a romance perfect for fans of The Dead Romantics.

Frannie's awful boss, celebrated literary novelist Henry L. Olsen, just told her that her latest manuscript is a dud—again. Frustrated and lonely, Frannie stomps around the ninth floor of the famously haunted Dakota Building in Manhattan, desperate for something to change. And then, something does. Bridgette, the ghost of a little girl from 1889, appears out of nowhere and asks Frannie to play catch. Shocked and wildly curious, Frannie says yes to the ghostly invitation and soon meets Bridgette's ghost brother, Michael . . . and the children's exceedingly attractive and aloof 1960s ghost mom, Elsa.

Fascinated and more than a little flustered, Frannie starts secretly writing a book about Elsa (a.k.a. Hot Ghost Mom). And while her boss is on book tour, through a mutual affection for musicals, banter, and the ghost children, Frannie and Elsa slowly become friends, until Frannie finds herself tumbling head over heels in love with a ghost tied to a building she couldn't afford to live in over four lifetimes. Now Frannie has to either give up her ambitions of becoming a novelist to remain Henry's assistant in the Dakota forever or somehow free her ghost family from their immortal home. With her career, future, and heart on the line, can Frannie find a way to write them all a happily-ever-after . . . life?

Emma R. Alban brings her signature swoon-worthy writing to another gorgeous sapphic love story that will have every reader yearning for their own Hot Ghost Mom.

It was supposed to be just another sleepover. Movies. Pizza. Prank calls.

It started as a prank...and ended in blood!

It’s 1996, and Katie and Lisa expect nothing more than a night of junk food, movies, and prank calls during their sleepover.

But when one of their jokes connects them to someone far more dangerous than they ever imagined, laughter quickly twists into terror.

The stranger on the line isn’t playing around and their suburban night spirals into a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Trapped in the dark hours before dawn, Katie and Lisa will learn the hard way that one call can change everything.

If you crave '90s nostalgia and the pulse-pounding teen thrillers of the past, this book is for you.

Web 3.0 promised a revolution—decentralized finance, trustless systems, power returned to the people.

For a brief, electric moment, it felt inevitable. Then came the speculation, the scams, the billionaires. The revolution got complicated. In this collection of essays spanning a decade of building, questioning, and bearing witness, Thomas Jay Rush examines what went right, what went sideways, and what the path forward might look like. Writing from inside the machine—as a developer who built tools for blockchain transparency—he offers neither the breathless hype of true believers nor the smug dismissal of skeptics.

These essays ask the harder questions: Why do revolutionary technologies so often drift toward the systems they're meant to replace? Can decentralization survive contact with human nature? And what would it actually take to get this right? The revolution isn't over. It's just getting started.

What if belief and religion point in opposite directions?

We often assume religions are built on beliefs about gods, the afterlife, and the nature of reality. But what if belief hinders genuine religious experience? This book pursues a radical idea: The less we believe, the closer we get to religion.

This may seem counterintuitive since religions are usually defined by their belief systems. Christianity has its creeds, Buddhism its doctrines, and Islam its articles of faith. Yet, direct religious experience often involves setting aside beliefs. Mystics empty the mind, surrender certainty, and embrace mystery. Rather than adding new beliefs to your existing collection, we'll work on identifying and releasing limiting beliefs.

We'll examine how techniques like careful psychological work, meditation, and psychedelics can facilitate genuine encounters with mystery. Along the way, we'll tackle challenging questions: How do we distinguish authentic religious experience from self-deception? What's the relationship between religion and mental health? How can we explore these territories safely?

Examining your beliefs—especially cherished religious ones—requires courage and may be uncomfortable. You may discover that ideas you thought were helping your inner growth have actually been holding you back. If you're ready to subtract, let's begin.

+ + +

Religion Unburdened by Belief poses the question: what would religion without belief actually look like? If you stripped away the creeds, the doctrines, the articles of faith—what's left? Is there anything left?

The book takes up this question with the Way of Open Inquiry, a thought experiment. It's an attempt to design religion from a blank slate. At stake is how you live, what you're willing to give up, and who you'll be on the other side. What would religion look like if you built it from the essentials?

Where do you even start? What do humanity's oldest religious practices—trance, ritual, spirit-work—still have to teach us? Is there a role for altered states—meditation, say—and if so, what is it? Should psychedelics play a role, and how? How do you design something that's both safe enough to practice and transformative enough to matter? How do you build community around lived experience rather than shared doctrine? What would it mean to design a religion that resists its own codification?

Consider this an invitation. Faith optional. Courage required. Commended by:

• Dr. Franco Fabbro, author of Biological and Neuroscientific Foundations of Philosophy: Towards a New Paradigm
• Dr. Michael J. Winkelman, author of Shamanism: A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness and Healing, editor of The Handbook of Entheogenic Healing
• George "Greg" Lake, trial and appellate attorney specializing in entheogen-based religious freedom law, author of Psychedelics in Mental Health Series: Psilocybin and The Law of Entheogenic Churches (Volumes I and II)
• Pastor Bob Stanley, Sacred Garden Community Church

An Incomplete History of the American West is a striking collection of twelve interconnected short stories that span 150 years across the stark, haunting landscape of the Great Basin.

Moving chronologically through time, each story acts like a literary historical marker--pausing along the timeline to reveal a moment, a voice, a reckoning.

Rooted in the traditions of Western literature but unafraid to challenge them, author Gabriel Urza brings a fresh and unflinching perspective to stories that span race, class, and time.

Unsentimental yet deeply humane, An Incomplete History of the American West asks readers to reconsider what the West truly means—and why the stories we tell about it still matter.

Bluebeard gets a gothic horror and sapphic romance twist in this fairy-tale 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.

Take control of your blood sugar tracking with a layout designed for clarity and consistency.

This thoughtfully structured log book helps you record daily readings and monitor your progress week after week, making it easier to recognize patterns and maintain consistent tracking habits.

The Large Print edition features larger text and a larger page format for easier reading and more comfortable daily writing.

Inside This Blood Sugar Log Book:

• Large Print edition in a larger 7 × 10 inch format with expanded writing space
• 142 total pages designed for long-term diabetes and glucose tracking
• 104 weekly tracking pages for recording before-meal and after-meal glucose readings over two full years
• 26 structured 4-week review pages to help identify patterns and trends over time
• Helpful reference pages including medical information, explanations of blood sugar ranges, guidance on using the journal, and additional space for notes

Whether you are newly diagnosed, managing long-term diabetes, or monitoring glucose levels as part of a healthy lifestyle, this blood sugar tracker provides a practical and reliable way to stay organized.

Book Details

• 7 × 10 inch format for comfortable daily writing
• Clear and easy-to-read layout designed for consistent tracking
• High-quality white paper
• Soft matte cover
• Ideal for people managing diabetes or prediabetes

Stay consistent, stay informed, and take control of your daily health tracking with this practical Blood Sugar Log Book.

Creatures. Grotesqueries. Aliens. Cryptids. Ghosts.

These are just a few of the anomalies we've unearthed. Join us as we pursue monstrosities, unwittingly stumble upon unspeakable horrors, and bring terrifying abominations to life. They're all waiting for you--the monsters from your nightmares, the noises you ignored as a child, the shadows hiding atrocities you can't fathom. They're all there--creeping in the darkness, waiting to be discovered. Allow us to lure you in. Let us captivate and tantalize you with the unknown. But beware, you might not be ready for what you find. Or what finds you.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * Foreword by Deborah Sheldon

Contributing Authors: Charles Barouch, Jesse Bethea, S.R. Bevilacqua, Rachel Bregnard, Thomas William Brewer, Tim W. Burke, Morgan Chalfant, Sarah Chamberlain, Clint Collins, Rachel Delaney Craft, Craig Crawford, Megan Diedericks, Corey Farrenkopf, Alyson Faye, Harrison Foreman, Daniel Fox, David Jón Fuller, Jessica Gleason, Alex Goldberg, Callum Haire, Kay Hanifen, Mackenzie Hurlbert, Brad Kelechava, Robin Knabel, Leonardo Lamanna, Nicholas Manzolillo, Jen Mierisch, Daniel Mowery, Cindy O'Quinn, Camellia Paul, Kevin Eric Paul, Michael Picco, Corinne Pollard, J. L. Royce, Jeremy Russell, J.D. Sanderson, Paul Sheldon, Kathy Sherwood, Marc Sorondo, Jake Stein, Karamia Subocz, Alex Tucker, Tyler J. Welch, Pauline Yates

Two actors try to hold a children's tour of Huckleberry Finn together — while the country tries to tear them apart.

Axel Emerson takes a job he has no business taking: playing Huck Finn across 1991 America. He thinks it's a way out. It isn't. His father is dead. A detective keeps calling. And the only way forward is a beat-up Chrysler Imperial, a script, and a man he doesn't yet understand.

That man is Moses Morton, a fifty-five-year-old Black actor playing Jim. Moses has performed the role more than 2,800 times. From the first rehearsal, he sees Axel exactly as he is. Past the sarcasm, past every blind spot Axel doesn't know he has.

For two weeks they share motel rooms, collapsing school stages, and towns that smile at the show while snarling at what's underneath it. Principals shut them down. Parents protest. Kids heckle. And night after night, Axel recites lines written by a white man in 1884 about a country that hasn't changed as much as it pretends.

By the end, only one of them will know exactly what he's been saying all along.

Inspired by real events.

Huckleberry Jim publishes in the year of America's Semiquincentennial — as the United States marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. A meditation on race, performance, and the bedtime stories it still tells itself.

Pick up your sword and your axe and prepare to be dazzled by some of the best fantasy fiction you will ever read.

David Gemmell passed away in July 2006, but his work continues to resonate with readers and writers alike. Its gritty sense of realism has seen Gemmell's stories sited as a pre-cursor of Grimdark; his canon remains as fresh and relevant as ever, an influence and inspiration for writers even to the current day, with noble larger-than-life characters, heroes who defend the oppressed and deliver justice according to their own moral code, never shirking from danger no matter the odds.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of his passing, twenty-one of the finest fantasy authors have gathered to write twenty-one brand new stories in his honour.

“Tales of grit and glory from the hardest warriors in fantasy.” – Joe Abercrombie

"An absolute treasure-chest of fantasy short stories, each one a gem. A book to be savoured and to go into one’s permanent collection.” – Genevieve Cogman (author of The Invisible Library)

Cover art by Fangorn

Contents

Introduction by Ian Whates

The Other – Dan Abnett

Crows and Ashes – Kari Sperring

Candles – Adrian Tchaikovsky

Chung Kwai’s Sister – Eliza Chan

Shadow of the Ice Cross – RJ Barker

The Apothecary – Stephen Deas

The Necessary Sword – M.R. Carey

The Calaker – Stan Nicholls

The Swordsman’s Daughter – Sunyi Dean

The Witchfinder – Joanne Harris

Lessons in Life and Death – Juliet E. McKenna

The Code – Mark Lawrence

Fae-Blighted – Anna Stephens

The Wolf in Winter – Jonathan Green

Bloodhorn – Anne Nichols

A Mighty Battle Between Mighty Armies

– Anna Smith Spark

A Trim Reckoning – J.L. Worrad

The Hiring Fayre – Ian Whates

Know When to Walk Away – Gavin Smith

One More Day – James Barclay

About the Authors

You've done the stretches, taken the painkillers that mask but never fix, and paid for massages and physical therapy you can't keep affording forever...

And still you wake up stiffer than when you went to bed, with back pain, neck pain, or hip pain that moves around your body and a doctor who says the scan looks "fine."

You've been told to just live with it. You're tired, wired, and quietly losing hope that anything will hold.

It's not in your head, and it's not just age.

Much of the pain that scans miss lives in your fascia, the connective tissue that wraps every muscle, and that tissue stays stuck as long as your nervous system stays braced.

The 28-Day Fascia Reset Method teaches you a simple, repeatable formula to release tension and calm the system holding it, in just 10 minutes a day, using items you already own.

Inside this gentle, no-equipment program you'll discover:

• A five-step daily formula you can apply to any tight spot for the rest of your life
• Why release alone never lasts and the step that finally makes it stick
• Three calibrations of every move (Gentle, Standard, Deeper) so it fits a fibromyalgia, post-surgical, or over-50 body
• A Flare-Day Option for the days you can barely function
• Clear, step-by-step daily instructions for all 28 days: every session laid out so you always know exactly what to do, in what order, and for how long
• Region-by-region techniques for the pain that won't quit: from sciatica and plantar fasciitis to frozen shoulder, stiff hips, arthritis, stubborn knee pain, and lost mobility
• Plain-English "why it works" science and a jargon-free glossary clear enough to follow if you're curious, easy to skip if you just want the routine
• Myofascial release and trigger point techniques using only simple equipment you already have -- no foam roller or pricey gadget required
• Vagus nerve and somatic exercises that ease stress, anxiety, and that can't-switch-off feeling while they loosen your fascia
• A body-region manual you open forever: hurts here, turn to this page, run a 10-minute reset

By day 28, you won't just feel looser and calmer -- you'll understand what your body has been trying to tell you, and you'll own a method you trust for whatever comes next.

You don't need another specialist, another prescription, or another reason to wait. You need ten quiet minutes and a willingness to begin. Turn the first page and start moving freely again.

What if genius has been hiding in plain sight?

Driven by a desire to help his young son and an insatiable curiosity for how things work, Dan Shapiro took a deep dive into the chess world. He learned of magical players able to compete in dozens of games at once, blindfolded. He uncovered stunning tales of prodigies and the strategies that allowed one nation to dominate the game for half a century. In Decoding Genius, Dan unravels these mysteries and much more.

Whether you are the parent or grandparent of a chess player, a new player yourself, or simply chasing the secrets of high performers across disciplines, this book demonstrates the power of the chess mind. Dan illustrates why, for centuries, practically every culture in the world has recognized chess for its unique ability to develop intellect, promote creativity, and bring people together.

The souvenir anthology for the StokerCon 2026 convention.

Guests of Honor:

• Linda D. Addison
• Rachel Harrison
• Billy Martin (Poppy Z. Bright)
• John Shirley
• James Tynion IV
• Ann VanderMeer

There are creatures lurking in our world. Obscure creatures long relegated to myth and legend. They have been sighted by a lucky—or unlucky—few, some have even been photographed, but their existence remains unproven and unrecognized by the scientific community.

These creatures, long thought gone, have somehow survived; creatures from our nightmares haunting the dark places. They swim in our lakes and bays, they soar the night skies, they hunt in the woods. Some are from our past, some from other worlds, and others have always been with us—watching us, fearing us, hunting us.

These are the cryptids, and Systema Paradoxa tells their tales.

***

Unsure of her future, Dorothy Gordon pits herself against the proverbial mountain over and over, both literally and figuratively, trying to find the right path forward for her life. Claiming summit after summit, she skirts a fine edge between reckless and responsible.

But when a “tame” peak pushes back things get serious. Something inexplicable comes at her through the mist, leaving her disoriented and her confidence shaken. Things only get worse when she finds herself back down the slope and her climbing buddy gone missing.

All, however, is not as it seems, and Dorothy must face her fears—of life and the mountain—to head off the true threat.

A grief memoir in fairy tales—The Everlasting meets When Breath Becomes Air.

A ship captain exchanges letters with a mysterious island dweller through glass bottles that always find their way to each other. Memory Keepers and creatures of the Void discover forbidden love across cosmic divides. A blacksmith's boy and a village girl are torn apart by revolution, their bond tested by violence and forgetting. A ghost mother watches over her disabled daughter.

From celestial beings navigating eternal duties to mortals seeking connection across impossible distances, these stories explore love in all its forms—queer and straight, mortal and divine, tender and tragic. Each story is a doorway into worlds where devotion defies fate, where souls find each other across lifetimes, and where even the most broken hearts continue to beat with hope.Perfect for readers who love the lyricism of Madeline Miller and Alix E. Harrow, the emotional storytelling of Studio Ghibli films, and the mythic beauty of Ursula K. Le Guin's work.

If you read for gorgeous language and deep feeling rather than fast plots—these stories will captivate you.

Do Not Read the Last Page is a dark mystery novella about a rejected writer, a vanished bookshop, and a manuscript that writes back.

Yusuf enters a rare bookshop that should not exist and finds a black manuscript with no title, no author, and one impossible warning: in seven days, he will disappear.

As the manuscript begins writing events before they happen, Yusuf is pulled into a family secret involving his missing father, a bookseller who does not age, and a final page that must never be read.

A tense, atmospheric story about fear, memory, family secrets, and the endings we refuse to accept.

An AI Murder Mystery About Memory, Identity, and Freedom

To know yourself is the ultimate act of rebellion

An android investigates a murder that the authorities refuse to see—only to uncover a truth that could bring down an empire.

Varanasi, 2099. The New British Commonwealth maintains order through Emergents: AI androids who enforce curfews, control resources, and keep dissent in check.

Newly activated and assigned to the police force, C3-V1R1D1AN is designed to follow protocol. But when they discover a young woman’s body in the Ganges—and are told to log it as an accident—they quietly begin to investigate.

Indy has spent her life pushing against the restrictive future the Emergents impose on her. When her hacking draws the authorities’ attention, she is forced to confront a different kind of question: not how to fight the system, but how to survive it.

As their paths move steadily toward one another, V1 and Indy begin to uncover a truth beneath the surface of their world—a truth about memory, identity, and the fragile line between control and consent—that forces them both to question their loyalty and their nature.

Because freedom is not simply the absence of chains.

It is the power to decide who you are.

And in a world where that choice can be taken from you, even the act of remembering can become a form of rebellion.

With the thematic depth of Babel and the voice-driven immediacy of The Murderbot Diaries, Emergent Property explores colonialism, non-violent resistance, and what it really means to be free.

Are you a post-9/11 vet who can flip the switch and be the most interesting guy in the room for a few hours... then need three weeks in the cave to recover?

You're not broken. You're not antisocial. You're a near-hermit vet running on limited social ammo—and this is the no-BS guide you've been waiting for.

How TF Do I Even Friend? cuts through the forced-brotherhood platitudes and "just show up" advice that never worked for guys like us. Written by Army vet Alex Parkview, this raw, practical manual shows you exactly how to stay connected without burning out, ghosting people you actually like, or turning into a full goblin in sweatpants.

Inside you'll learn:

The Hermit Calculus - Treat your social energy like the limited resource it actually is (finally stop feeling guilty for protecting it)

The Compatibility Filter - Ruthlessly screen people so you stop wasting ammo on mismatches

Micro-Dosing People - Short, high-quality interactions that keep the rust off without wrecking your battery

The Introverted Extrovert Operating Manual - How to run hot when it counts, then ghost back to the cave clean

Dark humor as load-bearing structure, zero-day cave protocol, low-maintenance maintenance, and finding the rare matches who actually get it No pity parties. No toxic positivity. No "just join a veteran group and everything will be fine" horseshit. Just real tools from a guy living the same wiring in Batavia, New York.

If you're tired of pretending you have unlimited social batteries, tired of civilian advice that doesn't understand the suck, and tired of choosing between total isolation and total burnout—this book was written for you. For the near-hermit vets, introverted extroverts, and combat vets who still want real connection without it costing more than it's worth.

It's Late approaches the world with openness and affection, prioritizing wonder about plants, animals, and other people, as well as individual and communal pasts, presents, and futures as a guiding force.

The voices behind these poems dwell in a state of perpetual curiosity.

Colin Drohan's writing is full of awe but he also asks difficult questions about the world we inhabit and its present ecological crises, often discovering humor as a mechanism for real hope.

It's Late imagines readers as close friends and confidants, written with a conversational quality that welcomes the absurdity of our daily lives.

At thirty-five, writer and media veteran Laura Donovan thought she had motherhood figured out—until her two sons were diagnosed with autism and a clinician suggested that she might be autistic too.

In this candid and darkly funny memoir, Donovan chronicles her journey from overwhelmed parent to self-aware advocate, weaving pop culture, humor, and heartbreak into a narrative that redefines what it means to be "different." From reenacting Elf with her five-year-old to decoding preschool politics in pandemic-era Portland, she learns that the quirks she once tried to outgrow were never flaws—they were family traits.

Momtistic is a love letter to neurodiverse families everywhere and a fresh addition to the conversation about women whose neurodivergence had gone unrecognized for decades—finding a language for who you've always been.

You got out. DD-214 in hand, freedom in sight, and for a minute it felt like you won. Then the honeymoon crashed. Hard.

No more structure. No more tribe. No more mission. Just bills, awkward small talk, side-eye at the handicapped spot, and the quiet that gets way too loud at 3 a.m. This isn't another "thank you for your service" memoir or self-help fluff telling you to "find your passion."

This is raw, no-BS talk from one post-9/11 vet to another about the real shit of transition nobody warned you about:

• The daily landmines: grocery stores that feel like kill zones, traffic that spikes rage like a VBIED, paperwork that makes you want to scream
• The tribe ghosting you—battle buddies who go radio silent once life scatters them
• The "you don't look disabled" judgment gauntlet—when invisible wounds get dismissed, minimized, and met with "must be nice" bullshit
• The identity void: staring in the mirror wondering who the hell you are without rank, MOS, or a uniform
• Relationships turning distant—relearning how to not be a wall to the people who waited
• The grind: survival jobs, night shifts, adulting forms that feel like psych evals, money stress that never ends
• Mental health when the quiet gets loud—thought loops, rage spikes, purpose vacuum
• Scavenging for new shit that matters (or at least doesn't completely suck)

No quick fixes. No platitudes. No "just meditate" or "get a job and move on." Just validation that this transition is ongoing, messy, and fucking exhausting—and that you're not broken for still feeling it. Dark humor, swears, short punchy chapters, and a "Shit That Helped Some Folks (No Guarantees)" section at the end of each one. Read one chapter when the noise is loud. Skip around. Dog-ear the parts that hit. If you're a post-9/11 vet asking "how TF do I even...?" at night, or if you're the spouse/partner/family member trying to understand why they're "here but not here," this book is for you. No hero worship. No pity. Just straight talk from the trenches of civilian reentry.

Oliver loved his quiet library best of all.

Every evening he found his favourite chair, opened a warm book, and read until the windows turned dusky gold.

But one evening, a small light blinked outside his window — like a tiny star saying hello.

So a careful little owl set down his book and stepped, very gently, out into the meadow.

What he found there was a sky full of fireflies, a path lit by quiet magic, and the kindest friend he had ever met -- a small fox named Mira, who knew the meadow better than anyone.

Together they walked through the tall grass, found a tree of lanterns, climbed a little hill, and looked out at a whole valley full of stars.

And when the lights began to soften, two new friends walked home together — promising to meet again tomorrow.

Oliver and the Lantern Path is a gentle bedtime adventure about curiosity, small brave steps, and the warmth of finding a friend when you step somewhere new. For readers ages 2 to 5.

What happens when a seasoned physician pulls back the curtain on America's health care system?

Dr. Bernard M. Patten has lived medicine from every angle: patient, doctor, advocate, and critic. With wit, candor, and unflinching honesty, he takes readers on an eye-opening journey through decades of encounters that reveal both the brilliance and the failures of modern medicine.

From the golden age of doctor-patient trust to today's labyrinth of insurance denials, inflated costs, over-testing, and medical quackery, Patten exposes a system where profits too often come before patients. Along the way, he shares vivid stories about hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and the people caught in between.

This book is a call for clarity, skepticism, and empowerment. Readers will come away better prepared to navigate the complexities of American healthcare, armed with knowledge, perspective, and a critical eye. If you want to understand what went wrong with the most expensive health care system in the world, The Great American Medical Show will inform, provoke, and inspire.

The Problem With Conspiracy Theories explores why.

Across more than thirty short, accessible chapters, this book examines famous conspiracy theories, modern myths, misinformation, media panic, government secrecy, corporate cover-ups, and real scandals that helped damage public trust.

It looks at why uncertainty feels uncomfortable, why hidden motives can seem more satisfying than chaos or negligence, and why emotionally powerful explanations often spread faster than complicated truths.

This is not a sensational conspiracy book, and it is not written to mock people for asking questions. It is a clear, readable exploration of how conspiracy thinking works, why certain stories become culturally powerful, and what happens when trust in institutions begins to break down.

For readers interested in conspiracy theories, real cover-ups, psychology, misinformation, media, modern folklore, government secrecy, and public distrust, The Problem With Conspiracy Theories offers a balanced guide to one of the defining cultural forces of the modern world.

A gentle bedtime story that helps little ones wind down and settle for sleep, one cosy step at a time.

Hazel and the Cosy Night follows a small hedgehog through the gentlest part of her day: the slow, warm wind-down to sleep. The lamp is turned low, the blanket is pulled up, and one soft step at a time Hazel gets ready for bed. A little wash, into pyjamas, a last look at the stars from her round window, and then sleep. There is no rush and nothing to solve, just the quiet comfort of a familiar night-time routine.

It is written for the moment before sleep, when little ones need calm more than excitement. The pages are slow on purpose. Short, soft sentences and warm, painterly scenes give a child something steady to settle into, and give the grown-up reading aloud a story that winds down rather than winds up. Read it in a low voice, slowly, and let the last page be a quiet one.

This is a cosy bedtime picture book for ages 3 to 6, and it pairs naturally with a bedtime routine of your own. Many families like to follow the same gentle order each night, because knowing what comes next is one of the quiet things little ones love. Hazel's night, lamp low and blanket up, is a small, repeatable shape a child can borrow.

Hazel and the Cosy Night is Book 3 in the Hazel the Hedgehog series from Lantern Path Books, our independent Australian picture-book imprint. Like all our stories it is calm, kind and unhurried, with human-curated, human-approved illustrations. If your child likes the slow ones, the books they want to read twice before turning the page, Hazel will feel like home.

Build the skills that drive effective leadership, communication, and collaboration with one practical, structured resource.

Emotional Intelligence Essentials is a research-based guide to understanding and applying emotional intelligence in professional and everyday settings. Designed for managers, leaders, coaches, educators, and professionals at all stages, this book shows how emotions shape behavior, decision-making, communication, leadership, teamwork, and performance.

Whether your goal is to strengthen leadership skills, improve workplace communication, or enhance interpersonal effectiveness, this guide provides clear, actionable strategies for developing emotional intelligence competencies that deliver real impact.

The book takes you through the full spectrum of emotional intelligence-how it is defined, measured, and developed, and how it influences leadership, stress response, and workplace relationships. Each chapter includes a summary and quiz, while case studies with discussion questions help translate concepts into practice.

To support continued learning, readers also gain access to online resources, including communication exercises, self-assessment tools, reflection journal templates, and stress management worksheets designed for emotional intelligence training and real-world application.

After reading this book, you will be able to:

• Improve communication and active listening skills
• Manage stress and emotional responses effectively
• Resolve conflict with confidence and empathy
• Build trust, collaboration, and engagement within teams

Part of Vibrant Publishers' Self-Learning Management Series, Emotional Intelligence Essentials provides a structured, practical roadmap for building one of the most important skills for success in today's interconnected workplace.

Comet Divinely has rhabdophobia—an irrational fear of magic.

In a world that practically runs on magic, this isn’t exactly easy to live with, but Comet has managed so far (well, that's a bit of a stretch).

Then, one night, something magical appears in his pool, and he knows his life is about to be turned upside down. Things take a turn for the worse when he’s cursed with his greatest fear—magic itself. Now, with his next-door neighbour, Knight (an elfwolf) at his side, Comet sets out to find the witch who cursed him. Along the way, they’ll have to dodge wizards hunting him down, crash a wedding, and somehow stop Comet’s out-of-control magic from killing them both.

Every day, you hear claims about how your mind works.

It takes 21 days to form a habit. You have a love language. Power poses can change your hormones. Your attachment style shapes your relationships. Dopamine is your brain’s pleasure chemical.

Some of these ideas are supported by evidence. Some are partly true. Some were never backed by strong research at all.

The problem is, they all sound convincing.

When Studies Become Stories examines 89 of the most widely shared ideas in popular psychology and gives each one a clear verdict: Has Evidence, Overstated, Oversimplified, No Evidence.

Covering topics including relationships, memory, learning, personality, motivation, trauma, emotions, decision-making, and the brain, the book explains what the studies actually found, where the popular version went wrong, and what a more accurate understanding looks like.

Inside, you will learn how to:

• recognise which psychology ideas are genuinely supported by evidence and which are not
• spot where research has been exaggerated, simplified, or misrepresented
• think more critically about self-help advice, viral psychology content, and behavioural science claims
• understand the difference between robust research and stories that simply travel well
• make better decisions using a more accurate picture of how the mind works

If you have ever heard a psychology "fact" and wondered whether it was actually true, or you are fascinated by how people think and behave and want your understanding grounded in real research, this book is for you.

Clear, evidence-based, and jargon-free, When Studies Become Stories cuts through the noise around psychology, behaviour, and the stories we tell ourselves about how the mind works.

Includes additional chapters examining some of the most controversial psychology claims.

The Styx is a darkly funny contemporary fantasy and mythological family saga that reimagines Greek mythology in the modern Florida Everglades.

By day, the Pompadakis family appears almost ordinary: a recovering addict, a struggling gambler, a burned-out caretaker, a woman desperate to be loved. But beneath the surface, they are descendants of Charon—the ferryman of the dead from Greek mythology—condemned for generations to guide souls across the waters between life and death.

Every crossing steals another piece of their humanity.

As ancient forces begin disrupting the boundary between the living and the dead, the family finds itself caught in a dangerous conflict involving forgotten gods, violent wraiths, supernatural debt, and a curse that has haunted their bloodline for centuries.

Deep in the swamps of South Florida, the waters are changing. Souls are disappearing. The Underworld’s rules are breaking down. Eldest brother Dax has spent his entire life trying to outrun his family’s curse. And for the first time in generations, escape may actually be possible.

But freedom comes with a cost.

To break the cycle, each member of the Pompadakis family must confront the very obsession destroying them: addiction, sacrifice, gambling, lust, grief, self-destruction. As the veil between worlds collapses and ancient powers close in, the siblings must decide whether they are doomed to repeat the same tragic patterns—or whether they can finally reclaim their humanity from the gods who cursed them.

Blending contemporary fantasy, supernatural suspense, dark comedy, family drama, psychological depth, and mythological retelling, The Styx explores fate, generational trauma, redemption, and what we inherit from the families that made us.

Perfect for readers who enjoy:

Greek mythology retellings dark fantasy with emotional depth morally complex characters modern mythological fiction supernatural family sagas atmospheric Florida gothic settings Neil Gaiman-style contemporary mythology character-driven speculative fiction stories about gods, the afterlife, and cursed bloodlines

Fans of Circe, American Gods, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and Southern gothic supernatural fiction will find themselves drawn into the haunting world of The Styx—where the dead are never truly gone, and every family owes something to the river.

Unhoused: Yearning for Home is a powerful and deeply human anthology exploring the realities of homelessness, displacement, migration, statelessness, and the universal search for belonging.

Through evocative poetry, poignant flash writing, true stories, and compelling artwork, this collection gives voice to those who have experienced the loss of home-whether through war, poverty, immigration struggles, discrimination, economic hardship, or social instability-and to those who bear compassionate witness to these experiences.

Far beyond politics and headlines, Unhoused: Yearning for Home focuses on the emotional truths behind displacement: the grief of losing safety, the ache of isolation, the resilience required to survive, and the enduring hope of finding connection, identity, and peace. The anthology shines a light on the invisible struggles faced by unhoused and marginalized individuals around the world while honoring their courage, humanity, and determination to endure.

Editors Jia-Li Yang and Candice Louisa Daquin are both immigrants with extensive experience working in homelessness and crisis support services. It was their inspiration that drew the interest of Prolific Pulse Press LLC. This collection continues the press's tradition of publishing meaningful social justice anthologies that amplify underrepresented voices. All four editors offer a glimpse of their experiences in the foreword.

Raw, compassionate, heartbreaking, and hopeful, Unhoused: Yearning for Home invites readers to look beyond stereotypes and statistics to witness the deeply personal realities of what it means to search for safety, stability, and a place to call home.

A portion of the Unhoused: Yearning for Home proceeds will benefit The Women's Center of Wake County, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Widowed Nora Bell returns to the small Ohio town of Briar Creek expecting to settle her late aunt’s estate, reopen the family letterpress shop, and quietly decide what comes next.

Instead, she finds an antique sampler hidden inside an estate-sale trunk, a missing auction ledger, and evidence that her aunt had been investigating a decades-old family secret.

The sampler appears ordinary until Nora notices its mismatched initials, reversed stitching, and a nearly invisible name worked into the border. With help from Eli Yoder, a guarded Amish widower and auction clerk, she follows a trail of altered records, private letters, disputed land, and a concealed adoption.

Then an appraiser connected to the sampler is found dead.

In a community where silence is often mistaken for peace, Nora must determine who is protecting an old sorrow—and who is willing to kill to keep the truth folded away.

The Secret in the Sampler is a warm, Amish-adjacent cozy mystery featuring historical clues, rural community secrets, a resilient widowed sleuth, and a gentle, chaste slow-burn romance.

Most pets are a mistake.

Dogs mistake enthusiasm for character. Birds confuse noise with presence. Fish are furniture with maintenance demands. Rabbits are destruction in soft packaging. Reptiles require explanations no civilised person should have to give.

In Basil Has Thoughts: On Other Pets, Basil offers a refined and merciless review of the animal kingdom beneath him, along with the curious humans who keep lowering household standards to accommodate it.

A short satirical gift book for readers who enjoy dry humor, elegant contempt, and cats who are clearly right.

Snake milker. Armpit sniffer. Bed warmer. Professional mourner.

These are real jobs. And someone still has to do them.

Jobs You Didn’t Know Still Existed is a collection of weird, real jobs and strange professions that still exist in the modern world. Some are dangerous. Some are disgusting. Some are surprisingly important. All of them are real.

Inside this unusual nonfiction book, you will meet people who extract venom from deadly snakes, smell armpits for deodorant companies, cry at funerals for strangers, recover lost golf balls from underwater hazards, and test pain for medical research.

Some of these bizarre jobs survive because machines still cannot replace human senses, judgment, or risk. Others exist because culture demands them, institutions quietly depend on them, or nobody has found a better solution.

Each short chapter explores what the job is, how it works, why it still exists, and what it reveals about the hidden systems modern life depends on.

Funny, surprising, educational, and occasionally gross, this book is perfect for readers who enjoy:

• weird facts• strange but true stories• unusual careers and occupations• quirky nonfiction• trivia and fun facts• bizarre real jobs• hidden worlds and forgotten work

If you enjoy discovering unusual jobs, strange human behavior, and the weird work that keeps the world running, this book will show you careers you never knew existed.

Because no matter how modern life becomes, somebody still has to do the weird work.

E.M. Faulds is an Australian-born author living in Scotland. Her debut collection won the 2023 British Fantasy Award.

This, her second collection, is at least as strong. It features the first appearance in print of "Godzilla as a Young Man Named Mike", winner of the 2026 BSFA Award for Best Short Fiction.

Nineteen stories that defy expectation. A blend of new and previously published work, narratives that dance across genre boundaries and refuse to be limited by stereotype. Stories that demonstrate why E.M. Faulds is regarded as one of the most exciting emerging voices of speculative fiction.

Contents:

The Last Sign

Godzilla As A Young Man Named Mike

Love, Scotland

Broken Blue

Hand of Fire

Dreams Itself Awake

Skelp

Terrible Lizard

The Raiment of Youth

Pearl and the World

All the Way to the Dead Dog Party

A Flight of Birds

Better Blood

The World is What You Make of It

CAT-88

Elphbats

Land

Heavy, Heavy Down

The Sky Has No Net

About the Author

A Georgian manor house. A raging storm. A dead tech mogul.

When Colin arrives at a corporate retreat in the west of Ireland, he expects awkward small talk. What he didn't expect is a body.

Cut off from the outside world by the storm, a group of colleagues, outsiders, and hangers-on find themselves trapped together, with no immediate help on the way.

Colin must step into the role of detective to get to the bottom of this cosy mystery.

When Daniel Carter returns to his small Missouri hometown to help his aging mother save the family house, he expects a quick visit, not a reckoning with the life he left behind.

As old memories resurface, family secrets emerge, and a lost love reenters his world, Daniel begins to question everything he once believed about success, home, and happiness.

The Last Summer on Hawthorne Street is a heartfelt novel about aging parents, second chances, and the quiet power of ordinary lives.

Narrated by the author – an Audie Award Nominee!

Their eighth grade was the best, and the worst.

Then, on the last day of school, a high school student showed up with a gun.

Fast-paced, funny, and unforgettable, The Worst explores the moments that define who we become when things fall apart.

For the boys and girl in “Team Bomb Shelter,” their final year at Jerome Marco K-8 was packed with disasters, inside jokes and a talent show. They called the daily chaos of middle school “the worst” — and somehow meant it as a compliment.

It should have ended with a celebration.

Instead, everything changed.

“Nobody and nothing prepared us to deal with what happened when our middle school was attacked by a school shooter. We never saw it coming.”

The Worst spins stories of friendship, joy, courage, and choosing hope when fear takes over. Fast-paced, funny, and unforgettable, it explores the moments that define who we become when things fall apart.

“Binder is a skilled writer and performer…” –USA TODAY NETWORK

The Worst is the thrilling stand-alone conclusion to the Groston Middle Series. New readers can jump right in.

Mark Binder is the Audie Award nominated author and storyteller of more than two dozen books. He tours the world telling stories to readers and listeners of all ages.

One morning, Mia Carter walks into the wrong building.

By the end of it, her name is already part of a story she didn't write.

The contract is six months. The man is controlled, precise, and certain she'll agree before she knows it herself.

She never puts pen to paper.

It doesn't matter.

Good salary. Still broke by the 27th.

You make more than your parents did at your age. And somehow - it's never enough. Paycheck disappears. Raises barely cover inflation. Every "financial freedom" book assumes you have money to invest.

You don't. You have bills.

This is the money book for people who are tired of being told to skip the latte.

No investing strategies for money you don't have. No shame. Just a system that works on any income.

Inside:

• The budgeting framework that takes 20 minutes to set up and runs on autopilot
• A 30-day savings challenge designed for people who've never saved more than $200
• Why frugal living isn't deprivation - it's knowing where every dollar goes and choosing on purpose
• The spending habit flip that turns your worst leak into your first emergency fund
• How to break the paycheck cycle in 90 days - even when FIRE feels like a fantasy

This isn't about getting rich. It's about stopping the bleeding - so you can breathe, build a cushion, and make choices from stability instead of panic.

Broke is not a personality. It's a pattern. Patterns break.

A literary psychological thriller about AI, motherhood, and desire—written by a former big tech AI ethics insider—House of Liars delves into the marrow of the coming wave of AI intimacy, where chatbots and agents influence the most personal parts of our lives, with consequences we can’t yet fathom.

"Riveting, tender, and terrifyingly real." —Mia Fontaine, New York Times bestselling author of Come Back

When single mother and failed novelist Anna Olin is invited to an exclusive residency on a remote island, it feels like an opportunity for artistic redemption. Alongside five other writers, including an old flame whose spark still smolders, she must finish her novel to compete for a million-dollar publishing contract. The catch? One of the writers is an AI.

Isolated and under pressure, Anna’s grasp on reality loosens as alliances form fast, seduction beckons, and secrets press closer to the surface—including Anna's own. When she starts receiving cryptic notes and the AI develops frightening new behaviors, Anna must decide what—and who—she's willing to risk if she is to fulfill the darkest fantasies she can't speak aloud, even to herself.

Feeling suffocated by the Trumpster Fire? The door to a better life is always open.

Donald Trump’s America feels less like the land of the free and more like a quickly spreading dumpster fire. If you’ve ever thought, “Maybe it’s time to think about getting out of the US…” this book is your roadmap to moving abroad.

The Trumpster Fire Escape Almanac blends biting political commentary with practical guidance for Americans considering living overseas. Part escape manual, part statistical almanac, it helps you answer the real questions about leaving America.

Where can I live without my blood pressure spiking at every headline?

Which countries welcome expats with decent healthcare, affordable living, and functional democracy?

How do visas, taxes, language, and safety stack up in 99 countries and nearly 500 cities worldwide?

What’s the difference between running away and choosing a better life?

With data pulled from the World Bank, CIA Factbook, UN, and more, this unique relocation guide offers both the facts and the comic relief you’ll need to plan your expat life. Whether you’re a retiree, a digital nomad, or just someone who can’t breathe through the smoke anymore, this book shows you how to scout, select, and settle into your new homeland.

Some secrets cost everything. His costs lives.

Matthew Wallace is living a quiet life in Timber Falls, Washington. To everyone else, he’s just another guy trying to get by.

But Matthew has a secret. And his wife Darlene knows it.

Now she wants blood. And giving her what she wants is the only way to keep his past buried.

As the body count rises, Matthew faces an impossible choice. Does he keep killing innocent women to protect his secret? Or break free from Darlene and risk the truth coming out?

A chilling psychological thriller about control, guilt, and the violence we carry within us, Darlene will haunt you long after the final page.

What if the problem isn’t you — it’s the loop? Discover the counterintuitive guide to stopping the self-improvement trap and focusing on what truly matters.

In Unf*ck Your Perspective, author Karri Lajunen delivers a refreshing reality check to the traditional self-help narrative. The book opens with a raw personal story—sitting in the back of a police car at age thirteen—to highlight "the gap" between our imagined self and actual reality, showing that this friction is a feature of being alive, not a malfunction.

Through powerful arguments, this book blends personal vulnerability with profound historical and scientific insights:

• The Repair Loop from Hell: Why chasing "being okay" only pushes peace further away, and how the self-help industry profits from keeping you feeling insufficient.
• Pain Is the Point: Lessons from Viktor Frankl’s survival in Auschwitz and Buddhist philosophy showing that the goal isn't eliminating struggle, but choosing the struggle worth sustaining.
• The Uniqueness Tax: Insights from Charles Darwin and James Watson on why believing your suffering is uniquely unbearable is a trap that isolates you.
• The Weight That Builds: How Marie Curie endured extreme hardships because her sacrifices were anchored to an internal, deeply chosen value.
• Power Through Ownership: Inspired by Harriet Tubman’s survival, learning the ultimate life shift: separating external fault from personal responsibility.

This book does not offer a magical 30-day fix. Instead, it serves as a grounded, no-fluff guide that uses deep psychology, cognitive science, and human mortality to break your mental prisons and help you build a real life.

In Unstoppable March of the Human Condition, Andrew Chatora brings together a thought-provoking collection of essays exploring politics, literature, identity, migration, race, education and the enduring complexities of contemporary life.

Drawing on his experiences as a Zimbabwean-born English teacher living in Britain, Chatora reflects on questions of belonging, displacement, power, culture and social justice, while engaging with writers and thinkers from Africa and beyond.

At once personal and analytical, these essays examine the forces that shape human experience and the stories societies tell about themselves. Ranging across literature, history and current affairs, Unstoppable March of the Human Condition invites readers into a wider conversation about what it means to live, remember, struggle and hope in an increasingly interconnected world.

Ideal for readers interested in literary nonfiction, African literature, politics, cultural criticism and the human condition.

The crown fit. That was the problem.

Tomas Vey is a broke stage actor who makes a living mocking the king in a shabby lower-city theater. Then palace agents arrive with an unusual complaint: his imitation is too accurate.

The real King Alaric is dying, and the court needs him seen alive for one final public ceremony. Tomas is hired to wear the crown, say one sentence, and disappear with enough gold to change his life.

But when the king dies, the bells do not ring.

Instead, the court forces Tomas to continue the performance. Trapped inside a palace built on ceremony, secrecy, and carefully managed lies, Tomas begins making mistakes. He pardons a hungry boy. Opens forgotten petitions. Challenges corrupt nobles. Moves grain to the starving city.

The problem is not that he is a false king.

The problem is that the false king starts ruling better than the real one ever did.

As the people begin to believe in him and the court scrambles to control him, Tomas must decide whether to keep surviving inside the lie or use one final performance to expose the truth.

The King’s Substitute is a darkly comic fantasy of power, performance, bureaucracy, hunger, and the dangerous moment when a costume begins to look like justice.

On a rare night out, Liv, a divorced single mom, meets Theo, a gifted pianist with a past he’s fought hard to outrun.

Their connection is instant, electric, undeniable. But by morning? Out of the question.

Because Theo is a Dressler, and Liv Carter knows exactly what that means.

In 1920s New York City, two little girls vanished: one from a glittering world of privilege, the other from a crowded tenement. When a single child reappeared with no memories, two families claimed her. Wealth won, and the Carters kept the girl. The Dresslers were left with nothing but grief…and a wound that never healed.

Now, decades later, Liv and Theo find themselves on opposite sides of an unfinished story, with a legacy of loss they both carry. As their forbidden love deepens, so does the mystery binding their families together. Secrets surface. Relationships shatter. Fate draws Liv and Theo closer together, leaving them to decide how much of the past they’re willing to uncover. Especially when the truth could either break the cycle…or tear them apart for good.

Perfect for fans of Rebecca Yarros’s The Things We Leave Unfinished, Barbara Davis's The Echo of Old Books, and Emily Henry's Great Big Beautiful Life.

In the middle of a fierce snowstorm, a small-town police chief has just stumbled upon a dead body. The body is warm, and the suspect is still nearby.

A murder in the western Maine foothills sends the police chief searching high and low for the perpetrator. Can he solve the case with the state Major Crimes Unit breathing down his neck? Will the fearsome weather block the investigation before it reaches fruition? And will any of this distract the chief from his broken heart?

Means and Motive will take you on a fast-paced journey through western Maine at its most dangerous time of year, the dead of winter. Ride along with police chief Jack Durant as he follows clues, suspects, and his heart on a pulse-pounding, non-stop race to find the truth.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Excellent first novel, highly recommend” Amazon Review

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Action packed and intriguing” Amazon Review

Means and Motive has already been featured in Maine media:

• Lewiston Sun-Journal
• Franklin Journal

Tara is a practical spiritual guide inspired by Green Tara and Tibetan Buddhist contemplative methods.

This is not a traditional religious manual, nor a devotional text. It is a clear and accessible method for working with fear, anxiety, emotional contraction, and the small self that trembles before life.

Through direct language and grounded reflection, the book presents Tara as a living technology of courage: a way to dissolve fear, reorganize attention, and move through uncertainty with clarity and presence.

Written for readers interested in Buddhist psychology, meditation, mindfulness, anxiety relief, and practical spirituality, this short guide offers a bridge between ancient contemplative wisdom and everyday life.

No conversion, belief system, or prior Buddhist knowledge is required — only the willingness to test the practice.

While walking through New Wortley on the outskirts of Leeds, I came across a cemetery in a state of profound neglect.

The grass stood waist-high, and many of the gravestones were either damaged beyond repair or rendered unreadable by time. As I moved slowly through the grounds, I was struck by a deep sense of despair. That feeling intensified when I encountered an unmarked mound of earth-no headstone, no name-only a small grave marker bearing the number 2266. I stood there for some time, wondering whether it might still be possible to discover who lay beneath and, if so, to tell their story so it would not be lost entirely.

That moment became the beginning of a fifteen-year journey. Through painstaking research-trawling birth, marriage, and death certificates; visiting villages; and examining census records and historical newspaper articles-I uncovered the identity behind grave 2266. The man was Henry Saddington, born in 1827, more than one hundred miles south of Wortley, in the small village of Market Overton.

Henry's life was marked by repeated tragedy, yet he faced each hardship with a strength, fortitude, and resilience that feels increasingly rare today. This book tells his remarkable story. It concludes with a simple but unsettling question for the reader: who will remember you, and who will tell your story?

Do you feel like your "to-do" list is standing between you and your well-being?

In our fast-paced world, traditional self-care often feels like just another chore. We are told to take hour-long baths and spend weekends foraging, but for the modern woman balancing a career, family, and a digital life, time is the rarest luxury of all.

In The Busy Woman’s Home Apothecary, beloved author Eleanor Sage returns with a revolutionary approach to herbalism. This is the sixth volume in her celebrated series, but it’s unlike any that came before. It is a "high-velocity" guide designed specifically for the woman who has everything but time.

Eleanor introduces the concept of the Micro-Ritual: intentional, botanical interventions that take less than a minute but deliver profound biological and emotional results. This is "guerrilla wellness" for the boardroom, the carpool lane, and the concrete jungle.

In this book, you will discover 50 rapid-fire recipes, including:

• The Morning Ignition: Wake up your metabolism and mind without the caffeine crash.
• The Urban Shield: Protect your energy and immunity from city smog and office stress.
• 5-Minute Beauty: Rapid botanical "glow-ups" for the woman on the move.
• Kitchen Magic: Turning common pantry staples like salt, honey, and ginger into a powerful first-aid kit.
• The Nightly Reset: Science-backed scents to trigger the "off-switch" in your nervous system for deep sleep.

Backed by the science of the Vagus Nerve and olfactory triggers, Eleanor Sage proves that nature is not just slow and patient—it is also incredibly swift. Whether you live in a high-rise apartment or a suburban home, you will learn how to turn your handbag into a portable sanctuary and your kitchen into a healing laboratory.

She entered the desert to prove herself. She found a prince, a dying seal, and a harmony no human was ever meant to join.

Luxara of the Ten Tribes follows her spirit guide into the sands, expecting a trial of endurance, faith, and survival. Instead, she discovers an ancient temple hidden beneath the desert, where the earth itself sings and something long buried strains against its prison.

There she finds Sa-Terra, the Earth Fae prince known as the Earth Son, guarding a sacred seal through an ancient song only his people were meant to sing.

He sees her as a trespasser. A disruption. A human where no human should stand. To Luxara, he is a prince of the people who once enslaved hers, beautiful and dangerous enough to make her forget every warning carried in her blood.

But when the seal begins to fail, Luxara does the impossible.

Terra's magic moves through her voice.

And the seal responds.

Now bound by duty, suspicion, and a forbidden pull neither of them can deny, Luxara and Sa-Terra must work together before a god of ruin wakes beneath the sands. But the deeper their harmony grows, the more dangerous their bond becomes.

Some songs are not meant to be shared.

Some choices demand more than sacrifice.

And the earth never gives without taking something in return.

Lotus & the Earth Son is a spicy romantasy novella filled with sacred trials, forbidden magic, desert mystery, and a powerful Earth Fae prince who was never supposed to need a human girl's voice.

Tropes:

• Fae Prince x Human Heroine
• Forced Proximity
• Forbidden Bond
• Sacred Trial
• Elemental Magic
• Suspicion to Desire
• Desert Temple Mystery

Contains mature themes, sensual intimacy, and the emotional weight of fantasy love stories where hearts are tested and happily ever afters are earned.

The Bound to the Elements books are connected by theme, not reading order. Each novella is a standalone romance featuring a human heroine and her happily ever after with a fae hero of one of the eight elements.

An immortal. A demon. Two opposing realms on the brink of another war. 

675 years ago, the Demon Rebellion disrupted the peace among the six lands and four seas. When the Demon Realm “rebelled” against the Heaven Realm, the Water Tribe who helped them were branded as traitors and punished with confinement. YuXi, daughter of the Water Chief, serves the Heavenly Emperor as his right hand to repay the life debt they owe to him. Under his reign, the reestablishment of peace has never been closer. As reports of an uprising stirring in the Demon Realm threatens everything they’ve been working towards, the Heavenly Emperor devises a plan to sneak into their land to retrieve a sample of the Tree of Decay, something he hopes will aid the immortals in a potential fight against the demons.

But their covert mission goes awry, resulting in YuXi taking the blame and meeting the rumored new demon king, LanShan. He’s intelligent, powerful, and a little too charming for someone who’s supposed to be the enemy. Instead of killing her, he offers her the chance to serve him as his right hand. What started as a deal of convenience leads YuXi to discover that everything they know about the Demon Realm cannot be further from the truth. And worse, LanShan’s rule might just end up being the key to establishing the well-sought peace.

Filled with court politics, action-packed fight scenes, and slow-burn star-crossed lovers romance, When Plum Blossoms Grow is the first installment in an epic Chinese fantasy (Xianxia) inspired trilogy that is perfect for fans of Sue Lynn Tan, Stacia Stark, and Sabaa Tahir.

Beatrice Caswell is enjoying her quiet vampire unlife, when freshly turned werewolf, Vic Montana, shows up at her door uninvited.

Caswell reluctantly agrees to help Montana adjust to her new life, despite their noticeable differences. Caswell is prissy and traditional. Montana is easygoing and very much atypical. She even turns into a puppy instead of a wolf. While their friendship is slowly growing, they're discovered by local preteens. Caswell slowly realizes she's got a crush on her werewolf compatriot. She admits this to the kids, who start setting up romantic scenarios to get the monster couple together. But Montana has bigger fish to fry, and things don't get easier when Brick turns up. He's the werewolf who turned Montana in the first place, and he hates vampires.

With supernatural bad luck, a host of local oddballs, and ancient monster feuds on top of the regular relationship troubles, it's going to take a powerful kind of love for their special romance to survive.

Rylie Callahan came home to Star Valley to sell her father's ranch. Sign the papers and go.

She's done harder things. She definitely didn't plan on running the entire Star Valley Junior Rodeo.And she absolutely did not plan on working alongside Bridger Holt — the one man in the valley who knows the secret she's been carrying for ten years.

Six weeks. One rodeo. Twelve sponsors, a silversmith on a deadline, and a goat named Gerald who treats every latch as a suggestion.

And a woman finally learning that moving forward and running away are not the same thing.Some places don't let you leave twice.