For the Appleton sisters, life had unravelled many times before. This time it explodes.Eight-year-old Hariet, known to all as Ari, is dispatched to Cape Breton and her Aunt Mary, who is purported to eat little girls . . . With Ari on the journey is her steadfast companion, Jasper, an imaginary seahorse. But when they arrive in Pleasant Cove, they instead find refuge with Mary and her partner Nia.As the tumultuous ’60s ramp up in Toronto, Ari is torn from her aunts and forced back to her twisted mother and fractured sisters. Her new stepfather Len and his family offer hope, but as Ari grows to adore them, she’s severed violently from them too, when her mother moves in with the brutal Dick Irwin.Through the sexual revolution and drug culture of the 1960s, Ari struggles with her father’s legacy and her mother’s addictions — testing limits with substances that numb and men who show her kindness. She spins through a chaotic decade of loss and love, the devilish and divine, with wit, tenacity, and the astonishing balance unique to seahorses.The Clay Girl is a beautiful tour de force that traces the story of a child, sculpted by kindness, cruelty and the extraordinary power of imagination, and her families — the one she’s born in to and the one she creates.

    Striking off on her own, she finds her true family in a group of larger-than-life trans femmes who live in a mysterious pleasure district known only as the Street of Miracles. Under the wings of this fierce and fabulous flock, Dearly blossoms into the woman she has always dreamed of being, with a little help from the unscrupulous Doctor Crocodile. When one of their number is brutally murdered, the protagonist joins her sisters in forming a vigilante gang to fight back against the transphobes, violent johns, and cops that stalk the Street of Miracles. But when things go terribly wrong, she must find the truth within herself in order to stop the violence and discover what it really means to grow up and find your family.

    Ma Taffy may be blind but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew Kaia comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear running through her. While they wait for his mama to come home from work, Ma Taffy recalls the story of the flying preacherman and a great thing that did not happen. A poor suburban sprawl in the Jamaican heartland, Augustown is a place where many things that should happen don’t, and plenty of things that shouldn’t happen do. For the story of Kaia leads back to another momentous day in Jamaican history, the birth of the Rastafari and the desire for a better life.

    . . .While her friends are spending their summers having pool parties and sleepovers, twelve-year-old Carolina — Carol — is spending hers in the middle of the New Mexico desert, helping her parents move the grandfather she’s never met into a home for people with dementia. At first, Carol avoids prickly Grandpa Serge. But as the summer wears on and the heat bears down, Carol finds herself drawn to him, fascinated by the crazy stories he tells her about a healing tree, a green-glass lake, and the bees that will bring back the rain and end a hundred years of drought. As the thin line between magic and reality starts to blur, Carol must decide for herself what is possible — and what it means to be true to her roots. Readers who dream that there’s something more out there will be enchanted by this captivating novel of family, renewal, and discovering the wonder of the world.

    From her Mom's new job to her sister's life at college, everything seems more important than Charlie. Then one day while ice fishing, Charlie makes a discovery that will change everything . . . in the form of a floppy fish offering to grant a wish in exchange for freedom. Charlie can't believe her luck but soon realizes that this fish has a very odd way of granting wishes as even her best intentions go awry. But when her family faces a challenge bigger than any they've ever experienced, Charlie wonders if some things might be too important to risk on a wish fish.

    With the Nazi Party at the height of its power, the occupying army empties Poland’s towns and cities of their Jewish populations. As neighbor turns on neighbor and survival often demands unthinkable choices, Poland has become a moral quagmire—a place of shifting truths and blinding ambiguities.Blending folklore and fact, Helen Maryles Shankman shows us the people of Wlodawa, a remote Polish town: we meet a cold-blooded SS officer dedicated to rescuing the creator of his son’s favorite picture book, even as he helps exterminate the artist’s friends and family; a Messiah who appears in a little boy’s bedroom to announce that he is quitting; a young Jewish girl who is hidden by the town’s most outspoken anti-Semite—and his talking dog. And walking among these tales are two unforgettable figures: the enigmatic and silver-tongued Willy Reinhart, Commandant of the forced labor camp who has grand schemes to protect “his” Jews, and Soroka, the Jewish saddlemaker and his family, struggling to survive.

    The Wolverine is the key to opening up Alaska and its huge reserves of gold to the outside world, but previous attempts have ended in tragedy.For Forrester, the decision to accept this mission is even more difficult, as he is only recently married to Sophie, the wife he had perhaps never expected to find. Sophie is pregnant with their first child, and does not relish the prospect of a year in a military barracks while her husband embarks upon the journey of a lifetime. She has genuine cause to worry about her pregnancy, and it is with deep uncertainty about what their future holds that she and her husband part.A story shot through with a darker but potent strand of the magic that illuminated The Snow Child, and with the sweep and insight that characterizes Rose Tremain's The Colour, this novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Eowyn Ivey singles her out as a major literary talent.

    When she is still very small, Mary meets Lanmo, a shining golden snake, who becomes her very best friend.The snake visits Mary many times, he sees her city change, become sadder as bombs drop and war creeps in. He sees Mary and her family leave their home, he sees her grow up and he sees her fall in love. But Lanmo knows that the day will come when he can no longer visit Mary, when his destiny will break them apart, and he wonders whether having a friend can possibly be worth the pain of knowing you will lose them.From one of Britain's most gifted and celebrated writers, The Little Snake is a magical and deeply moving fable about the journey we all take through life, about love and family, about war and resilience, about how we live in this world, and how we leave it.

    Her ancestors include Revolutionary War spies, brilliant scientists, and famous musicians--every single one of which learned of their extraordinary destiny through a dream. For Emma, her own dream can't come soon enough. Right before her mother died, Emma promised that she'd do whatever it took to fulfill her destiny, and she doesn't want to let her mother down. But when Emma's dream finally arrives, it points her toward an impossible task--finding a legendary treasure hidden in her town's cemetery. If Emma fails, she'll let down generations of extraordinary ancestors . . . including her own mother. But how can she find something that's been missing for centuries and might be protected by a mysterious singing ghost? With her signature blend of lyrical writing, quirky humor, and unforgettable characters, Natalie Lloyd's The Key to Extraordinary cements her status as one of the most original voices writing for children today.

    In these stories, reminiscent of Shirley Jackson and Julio Cortázar, three young friends distract themselves with drugs and pain in the midst a government-enforced blackout; a girl with nothing to lose steps into an abandoned house and never comes back out; to protest a viral form of domestic violence, a group of women set themselves on fire. But alongside the black magic and disturbing disappearances, these stories are fueled by compassion for the frightened and the lost, ultimately bringing these characters—mothers and daughters, husbands and wives—into a surprisingly familiar reality. Written in hypnotic prose that gives grace to the grotesque, Things We Lost in the Fire is a powerful exploration of what happens when our darkest desires are left to roam unchecked, and signals the arrival of an astonishing and necessary voice in contemporary fiction.

    Raised in a cabin by a poet named Sylvan, he grew up listening to sonnets read aloud and the comforting clicking of a keyboard. Although Teddy understands words, Sylvan always told him there are only two kinds of people in the world who can hear Teddy speak: poets and children.Then one day Teddy learns that Sylvan was right. When Teddy finds Nickel and Flora trapped in a snowstorm, he tells them that he will bring them home—and they understand him. The children are afraid of the howling wind, but not of Teddy’s words. They follow him to a cabin in the woods, where the dog used to live with Sylvan . . . only now his owner is gone. As they hole up in the cabin for shelter, Teddy is flooded with memories of Sylvan. What will Teddy do when his new friends go home? Can they help one another find what they have lost?

    But far more drastic than 13 year-old Ethel Leatherhead intended when she tried a combination of untested medicines and a sunbed.It’s fun at first, being invisible. And aided by her friend Boydy, she manages to keep her extraordinary ability secret. Or does she…?When one day the invisibility fails to wear off, Ethel is thrown into a nightmare of lies and deception as she struggles to keep herself safe, to find the remedy that will make her seen again – and solve the mystery of her own birth…

    Their tranquility is shattered by the crash of a bullet-riddled enemy plane, the arrival of grandmother’s friend Mr. Girandole—a man who knows the true story of Cinderella’­s slipper—and the discovery of a riddle in the sacred grove of ruins behind grandmother’s house. In a sumptuous idyllic setting and overshadowed by the threat of war, four unlikely allies learn the values of courage and sacrifice.

    Her best friend’s future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt.What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky? Faithful is the story of a survivor, filled with emotion—from dark suffering to true happiness—a moving portrait of a young woman finding her way in the modern world. A fan of Chinese food, dogs, bookstores, and men she should stay away from, Shelby has to fight her way back to her own future. In New York City she finds a circle of lost and found souls—including an angel who’s been watching over her ever since that fateful icy night.Here is a character you will fall in love with, so believable and real and endearing, that she captures both the ache of loneliness and the joy of finding yourself at last. For anyone who’s ever been a hurt teenager, for every mother of a daughter who has lost her way, Faithful is a roadmap.

    It seems like a place from another time until she realizes it actually is. Lux must keep one foot in her world, raising her son as well as she can with the odds stacked against her, but every day she is more strongly drawn in by the sweet simplicity of life in Greengage, and by the irresistible connection she feels with a man born decades before her. Soon she finds herself torn between her ties to the modern world, her adored son and the first place she has ever felt truly at home.

    There's a story around every corner, and each day has a hint of magic. In one tale, Yu'er wants to swim in the Special Olympics, a sports competition for people with disabilities. But she and her grandpa don't have a pool! Their trick to help Yu'er practice wows the whole neighborhood. In another story, a friend takes Yu'er to a wild place full of musical insects. Later, Yu'er hears a special story about her grandparents. And in the final story, Yu'er and her grandpa show a cranky painter the sweet side of life.-- "Journal"

    They especially didn't expect him to turn up a tattered and bruised thirteen-year-old boy.Fielding, the son of Autopsy, finds the boy outside the courthouse and brings him home, and he is welcomed into the Bliss family. The Blisses believe the boy, who calls himself Sal, is a runaway from a nearby farm town. Then, as a series of strange incidents implicate Sal — and riled by the feverish heatwave baking the town from the inside out — there are some around town who start to believe that maybe Sal is exactly who he claims to be.But whether he's a traumatised child or the devil incarnate, Sal is certainly one strange fruit: he talks in riddles, his uncanny knowledge and understanding reaches far outside the realm of a normal child — and ultimately his eerily affecting stories of Heaven, Hell, and earth will mesmerise and enflame the entire town.Devastatingly beautiful, The Summer That Melted Everything is a captivating story about community, redemption, and the dark places where evil really lies.

    By tracing rivers in ink on paper, Oona pins the land down to one reality and betrays her people. Can she escape the bonds of gold and blood and bone that tie her to the Imperial American River Company?At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    Draper.Ever since twelve-year-old Charlie Price's mom died, he feels like his world has been split into two parts. Before included stargazing and Mathletes and Saturday scavenger hunts with his family. After means a dad who's completely checked out, comically bad dinners, and grief group that's anything but helpful. It seems like losing Mom meant losing everything else he loved, too.Just when Charlie thinks things can't get any worse, his sister, Imogen, starts acting erratically—missing school and making up lies about their mother. But everything changes when one day he follows her down a secret passageway in the middle of her bedroom and sees for himself.Imogen has found a parallel world where Mom is alive!There's hot cocoa and Scrabble and scavenger hunts again and everything is perfect . . . at first. But something doesn't feel right. Whenever Charlie returns to the real world, things are different, and not in a good way. And Imogen wants to spend more and more time on the other side. It's almost as if she wants to leave the real world for good. If Charlie doesn't uncover the truth, he could lose himself, the true memory of their mother, and Imogen . . . forever.

    She is the daughter of a Russian Count and lives in a beautiful snowbound palace that is home to a menagerie of wonderful animals: tigers, wolfhounds and, of course, horses. And she is also the owner of a beautiful heirloom – a diamond necklace with a secret past.But when Anna defies her father’s wishes and secretly raises a young colt alongside her pet tiger cub, her actions will have far reaching consequences. And soon Anna, her tiger and her horse will be fighting for survival in the frozen tundra of Siberia…An epic adventure of horses, friendship and sparkling secrets!

    In the mirrors that line its grand hallways, which once belonged to a princess. In those that reflect the elegant rooms, now filled with sick children. It is her secret.One morning, when Emmaline climbs over the wall of the hospital’s abandoned gardens, she discovers something incredible: a white horse with broken wings has left the mirror-world and entered her own. Tucked into the garden’s once-gleaming sundial, Emmaline finds a letter from the Horse Lord. He is hiding the wounded white horse, named Foxfire, from a dark and sinister force—a Black Horse who hunts by colorless moonlight. If Emmaline is to keep the Black Horse from finding her new friend, she must collect colorful objects with which to blind him. But where can Emmaline find color when her world is filled with gray?

    From bewildering assemblies in school auditoriums to the murky waters of a Depression-era health resort, Beams’s landscapes are tinged with otherworldliness, and her characters’ desires stretch the limits of reality. Ing énues at a boarding school bind themselves to their headmaster’s vision of perfection ; a nineteenth-century landscape architect embarks on his first major project, but finds the terrain of class and power intractable ; a bride glimpses her husband’s past when she wears his World War II parachute as a gown ; and a teacher comes undone in front of her astonished fifth graders.As they capture the strangeness of being human, the stories in We Show What We Have Learned reveal Clare Beams’s rare and capacious imagination—and yet they are grounded in emotional complexity, illuminating the ways we attempt to transform ourselves, our surroundings, and each other.

    The words haunt him as he studies the Kaiju (Japan’s giant monsters) on an island reserve, attempting to understand the beauty his wife saw.“The Return to Monsterland” opens 'Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone,' a collection of twelve fabulist and genre-bending stories inspired by Japanese folklore, historical events, and pop culture. In “Rokurokubi”, a man who has the demonic ability to stretch his neck to incredible lengths tries to save a marriage built on secrets. The recently dead find their footing in “The Inn of the Dead’s Orientation for Being a Japanese Ghost”. In “Girl Zero”, a couple navigates the complexities of reviving their deceased daughter via the help of a shapeshifter. And, in the title story, a woman instigates a months-long dancing frenzy in a Tokyo where people don’t die but are simply reborn without their memories.Every story in the collection turns to the fantastic, the mysticism of the past, and the absurdities of the future to illuminate the spaces we occupy when we, as individuals and as a society, are at our most vulnerable.

    An Indian herbalist. A British chemistry professor. An Italian-American widow. Four unique women with one thing in common: each is haunted by a tragedy from her past.Cynthia, Rohini, Jane, and Angela meet on a food blogging site and bond over recipes. They decide on impulse to open The Secret Spice, an elegant café on the magnificent ocean liner, the RMS Queen Mary, currently a floating hotel in Long Beach, California. Rich in history and tales of supernatural occurrences, the ship hides her own desperate secrets.The women are surrounded by ghosts long before they step aboard, but once they do, nothing is quite what it seems. Not the people they meet, not their brooding chef’s mystic recipes, and not the Queen Mary herself. Yet the spirits they encounter help them discover that there’s always a chance to live, as long as one is alive.Nominated for the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, COOKING FOR GHOSTS is an unforgettable tale of love, redemption, and divine female power.

    She wants to go to the ends of the earth on her own but, believing that marriage is ultimately one of the best ways to face the world, she ends up settling down with her husband. They gradually lose their attachment and affection towards each other. Aside from the communication problem, the woman's wish of running away from her husband to a remote place fails to come true. She then imagines herself as a plant soaring through the veranda ceiling of her house up to the roof top. Through this outstanding story, the writer shows that people have a strong will to escape from the mental fatigue and hopelessness of modern life.

    Roses grow out of Miel’s wrist, and rumors say that she spilled out of a water tower when she was five. Sam is known for the moons he paints and hangs in the trees, and for how little anyone knows about his life before he and his mother moved to town. But as odd as everyone considers Miel and Sam, even they stay away from the Bonner girls, four beautiful sisters rumored to be witches. Now they want the roses that grow from Miel’s skin, convinced that their scent can make anyone fall in love. And they’re willing to use every secret Miel has fought to protect to make sure she gives them up.

    At first it was just "cute" and "adorable," but as she's gotten older and kids have gotten meaner, words like "loser" and "pathetic" appear, and those words bubble up and itch. And then there are words like "interesting," which she's not really sure how to feel about. Now, at age twelve, she's starting middle school, and just when her friends who used to accept and protect her are drifting away, she receives an anonymous note saying "I know who you are, and I know what you're dealing with. I want to help." As Elyse works to solve the mystery of who is sending her these notes, she also finds new ways to accept who she is and to become her best self.

    Bob Marley.” Reincarnated as homeless Fall-down man, Bob Marley sleeps in a clock tower built on the site of a lynching in Half Way Tree, Kingston. The ghosts of Marcus Garvey and King Edward VII are there too, drinking whiskey and playing solitaire. No one sees that Fall-down is Bob Marley, no one but his long-ago love, the deaf woman, Leenah, and, in the way of this otherworldly book, when Bob steps into the street each day, five years have passed. Jah ways are mysterious ways, from Kingston’s ghettoesto London, from Haile Selaisse’s Ethiopian palace and back to Jamaica, Marcia Douglas’s mythical reworking of three hundred years of violence is a ticket to the deep world of Rasta history. This amazing novel—in bass riddim—carries the reader on a voyage all the way to the gates of Zion.

    Rejected and afraid, she begins a new life as a nurse. But danger stalks the hospital too, and she’ll need to be on her guard to avoid falling into familiar traps. And then there are the things she sees…Strange portents that have a way of becoming real.Eighty years later, Mina Morgan is brought to the same hospital after a near-fatal car crash. She is in terrible pain but recalls nothing. She’s not even sure whom to trust. Mina too sees things that others cannot, but now, in hospital, her visions are clearer than ever…Two women, separated by decades, are drawn together by a shared space and a common need to salvage their lives.

      Sisters Rose and Lily Martin were inseparable when growing up on their family’s Kentucky flower farm yet became distant as adults when Lily found herself unable to deal with the demands of Rose’s unusual daughter. But when Rose becomes ill, Lily is forced to return to the farm and to confront the fears that had driven her away. Rose’s daughter, ten-year-old Antoinette, has a form of autism that requires constant care and attention. She has never spoken a word, but she has a powerful gift that others would give anything to harness--she can heal with her touch. She brings wilted flowers back to life, makes a neighbor’s tremors disappear, and even changes the course of nature on the flower farm. Antoinette’s gift, though, comes at a price, since each healing puts her own life in jeopardy. As Rose--the center of her daughter’s life--struggles with her own failing health and Lily confronts her anguished past, the sisters, and the men who love them, come to realize the sacrifices that must be made to keep this very special child safe. Written with great heart and a deep understanding of what it feels like to be different, The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin is a novel about what it means to be family and about the lengths to which people will go to protect the ones they love. “This is the kind of book that invites you home, sits you down at the kitchen table, and feeds you something delicious and homemade. You will want to stay in this world where new relationships bloom out of broken ones, sisters find one another again, and miracles really do occur.” —Tiffany Baker

    The monotonous days of poverty and merciless bullying are interrupted when Gabriel unintentionally attracts the attention of a mysterious creature, a girl with swallow’s wings.Navigating life with fellow outsider, the foreignerOrlando Khan, Gabriel abandons his small town for the grandeurs of Rome.But Gabriel is now a man and must choose where hebelongs: the imperfect reality, or the dream world that grows stronger and more seductive with each day…

    She's not even frightened when a ghost named Moses approaches her or when she has to stand-off against a bulldozer. But when her inquiries into the history of the cemetery and the people buried there begin to draw out the worst in the members of her community, Mary begins to be afraid. Will she be able to recover history while keeping the people she loves safe?

    There Trina finds a tiny porcelain doll, Augustine, who helps Trina understand more about her forgetful father, her absent mother, and herself.

    This is the story of the five seasons he lives there, during which he meets gangsters, gamblers, policemen, a brave and garrulous bus driver, a cricket player, a librettist, his first girlfriend, a shy apartment manager, and many other riveting souls, not to mention a wise and personable dog of indeterminate breed.A love letter to Chicago, the Great American City, and a wry account of a young man's coming-of-age during the one summer in White Sox history when they had the best outfield in baseball, Brian Doyle's Chicago is a novel that will plunge you into a city you will never forget, and may well wish to visit for the rest of your days.

    The Final Solitude exposes the injustice that prevailed during Emperor Aurangazeb's rule in a fictional small kingdom in eastern India, called satgargh. Interspersed with fantastical tales, this allegorical novel brings to light the torment and the trouble people faced during the lunatic king Pishada's fascist regime.

    In 1972, seventeen-year-old Annie Caldwell, who has the “gift” of animal communication, wants to be normal, but she’ll settle for being unnoticed. Annie’s brother died in Viet Nam, her mother is depressed, and her father drinks. Her only friend is elderly Aint Lulie—who lives in the same holler and who understands the gift because she has one, too: “The first daughter in ever’ other generation has always been blest with a gift, though some think it a curse.” As they sit by the fireplace in the evenings and tell each other stories, Aint Lulie shares family history with Annie, including a relative’s mysterious death and how some of their ancestors came to settle in the area: “There’s always been them that go and them that stay in ever’ generation.” When a local girl goes missing, Aint Lulie’s and Annie’s gifts can help solve the mystery—but if Annie speaks up, she can no longer go unnoticed. THEM THAT GO is an Appalachian coming-of-age novel rich in tradition, superstition, family ties, and secrets.

     Molly McMillan has lived in Saint’s Grove her entire life and aside from the normal gossip and disputes that make up life in a small town, nothing exciting ever happened. Until one day, a cosmic event occurs and not only is Saint’s Grove suddenly overrun with beings only heard of in stories, Molly is attacked by one of the same creatures that have haunted her nightmares for years. Luckily, evil creatures aren’t the only beings that appeared in Saint’s Grove that night. Aero doesn’t know why he’s been pulled out of his realm, but the moment his feet planted on the ground in Saint’s Grove, he found himself surrounded by chaos and creatures that shouldn’t be roaming Earth. Nearby, he hears the fearful screams of a woman, and hurries to the rescue. Little did he know that by saving her, his life will be changed forever.

    Sansom and Kate Mosse's Citadel in equal measure. 'A compelling blend of historical grit and supernatural twists' - Daily MailRiddle me this: I have a price, but it cannot be paid in gold or silver.1361. Porlock Weir, Exmoor. Thirteen years after the Great Pestilence, plague strikes England for the second time. Sara, a packhorse man's wife, remembers the horror all too well and fears for safety of her children. Only a dark-haired stranger offers help, but at a price that no one will pay.Fear gives way to hysteria in the village and, when the sickness spreads to her family, Sara finds herself locked away by neighbours she has trusted for years. And, as her husband - and then others - begin to die, the cost no longer seems so unthinkable.The price that I ask, from one willing to pay... A human life.

    As a child, Jen adored Lily and suspected she might be a witch; but the spell was broken long ago, and now her death means there won't be any reconciliation.Lily's gone, but the enchantments she wove and the secrets she kept still remain. In Lily's house, Jen and her daughter Marianne reluctantly confront the secrets of the past and present - and discover how dangerous we become when we're trying to protect the ones we love.

    It begins with a mysterious pow-wow to be held inside a colossal tipi, 200-feet tall and 3-miles wide, which suddenly appears on the outskirts of a town that has never hosted a pow-wow. Advertising fliers blanket the area and all of Indian country, billing itself as “The Pow-Wow of all Pow-Wows.” There is a stipulation to the pow-wow though, only full-blooded Native Americans are allowed to dance, drum, or attend the grand event. Mixed-blooded Native Americans and non-Native Americans protest the gathering. Meanwhile, nine travelers make their journeys to the huge get-together, including a blind teenager lovingly transporting the dead body of his grandmother, who was the last medicine woman, to the pow-wow she wanted to attend before her death. None of the nine travelers realize that they are part of something more important, something much bigger than what they all seek from being at the pow-wow. At the story’s end, an epic battle between good and evil ensues that will change the world forever.

    Neither sailor nor interviewer is what they seem; and both must learn to work together to find what they seek. Seemingly, Clarence St. Elmo sits old and blind in the Sailor's Safe Harbor Home. A patient interviewer sifts his wandering memories for details of the wreck of the Unicorn, a cargo schooner lost long ago in the South Pacific. But Clarence St. Elmo is also a young man who finds himself on a cursed ship with a cargo of dead gods destined to be sunk in the Sea of Time. His love waits for his return, while mad voices in his head slyly pry for clues to a lost book. And always beyond the words and the memories, the dreadful storm circles closer. A romance of memory, across the sea of time. From the book: Describe the dance in the moonlight. The girl stopped dancing at the first bird chirp of dawn. The ruined walls pooled the remainder of night like a hollow on a beach when the tide draws away. Exhausted, I stared up at a patch of coloring on a tree-top. My heart beat for a drum. The girl looked at the sky, then regretfully towards the dark entrance to the crumbled house. She wasn't a bit tired. But she intended to retire for the day, no doubt taking me and Cut-Throat with her. She could do it, too. In the faint light her face was hungry and pretty and determined as a tiger’s. If I bolted she would be on me before I made the archway. I crossed looks with Cut-Throat. He shook his head slightly, telling me the same. I tried not to look at the other fellow, who had no eyes to meet. He just stood there in rotting sea-man's clothes listening for the clap of her hands. But our Cut-Throat had taken the girl's measure. He’d noted what rhythm and time made her feet stamp, made her toss her ropes of hair. Now he began a slow sad dirge for the dying night. She turned to him, hands raised to clap an order. But I took her left hand and bowed and stepped forward my right foot and she had no choice in her perfection of movement but to step back and then half turn as I did and we stepped forwards together two steps, then turned together as I placed my left hand on the small of her back and we skipped left three steps as the fiddle slyly slipped from dirge to a laughing tune that ran faster and faster till we were whirling and turning over the cold stones.

    He hates to read, but takes off on his own with a book to satisfy his parents. Washington travels back to the past where he encounters his ancestor Square and witnesses the brutal punishment of a slave when he is caught reading.When he steps out of the circle of dirt, Washington fears he may never be able to return to the present or see his family again.

    We love the magical realism of the story, with rich imagery that elicits all senses, and a weight that we think many people can relate to.-- Karissa Chen, Fiction & Poetry Editor

    Shannon and Maya are twin sisters who grew up in the mortal world. After years of trying to fit in with mortals the family decides to move back to the Faery town of Wimbourne. Moving back is great for Shannon, who was born with their magic. For Maya, born without magic, it’s a nightmare. The sisters couldn’t be more different. The only thing they have in common is liking the same boy, Jake. Getting lost with Jake in an unfamiliar realm at the heart of a civil war is not helping their feelings of sisterly love. Even while they’re faced with dangers, neither one really understands the other. Will their differences destroy them, or can they look past years of growing apart to come together and find their way home?

    Claire is a programmer who cherishes an orderly life. His motto: ‘work is important; people, not so much’. His determination to be The Most Serious Person on the Planet is threatened when he becomes haunted by a mysterious manuscript from his past: 300 pages of possibly random bird tracks. Risking his career and self-possession, St. Claire dares to pursue the manuscript against the opposition of hackers, the NSA, the ghosts of famous writers and doubts of his own sanity. Lost in a maze of bird-prints and their possible meanings, St. Claire determines to summon the late writer Jorge Louis Borges to help with the translation. He will dream Borges into existence, exactly as Borges wrote of doing. But this act stirs the opposition of a secret order of past writers, who may, possibly, have their own agenda. The duel between St. Claire’s reality and theirs leads to a final encounter in The Dark Library, before the dread conclave known as The Tribunal of Dreams. ‘Origins’ is a book about books, about magic realism and artificial intelligence, virtual reality and languages, and how sensible people wind up in strange situations by strangely sensible steps. It is built of the words books whisper to each other alone after the library has closed. It ends as it must: with the hero tossed into a pit by Edgar Alan Poe. Kidding. I mean, that last does happen but the final ending is the hero finding the answer and getting the girl, as well as his sanity back. Mostly back. From the book: I sat on the bed in the dark, my back to the wall. I began a new web page. Time to tell the world the truth, I thought, and felt a surge of pride. This would upset the Secret Powers of the world. But hey they had cost me my $400 security deposit. It was payback time. I would tell the world. But tell what? I typed out the flat truth to see how it looked. There is a secret society of dead writers who live in the wall spaces between realities, in the silence of empty rooms, in the Schrödinger-uncertainty of unopened books. They call themselves the Tribunal of Dreams. Often they appear as birds. They peek out of mirrors and walk the shadows of libraries. They are old and sly and are not retired. They have vast plans. They have me barricaded in my bedroom and they painted my windows black. They are listening at the door now. Send help. I read it over several times. It expressed all the facts nicely, yet it lacked something. Specifically, it lacked the power to convince the world of anything except that I was insane.

    When she's not selling the latest gadget, the martial arts enthusiast surrounds herself with family.Yet, under her desire for normalcy and predictability, this ordinary girl hides an extraordinary past. Once renowned as a God, Tamhee must fight for her impossible autonomy when an old heartache-Ven-returns and a novel interest-Boe-garners the interest of the dark Council she ran away from.

    Their lives intersect in dreams, where destiny pulls them together through different times in history. Even though their meetings are more real to Lucy than the present, Lucy is uncertain if Will exists outside her mind. Lucy’s mum thinks there is something wrong when Lucy sleeps for days at a time. She is so caught up with finding a cure she doesn’t see the real problem. Lucy is bullied at school and is thinking of ending her life.When the bullying goes too far and Lucy ends up in a coma, only Will can reach her. But how do you live when the only person who can save you doesn’t exist?

    When she wakes up the next morning, Haleigh finds that her wish for an endless summer with her new friend Kevin has come true. At first, she’s thrilled, but Haliegh soon learns that staying in one place—and time—comes with a price.And when Haleigh realizes her parents have been keeping a secret, she is faced with a choice: do nothing and miss out on all the good things that come with growing up or find the secret of the time loop she’s trapped in and face some of the inevitable realities of moving on.As she and Kevin set out to find the source of the magic paints, Haleigh worries it might be too late. Will she be able to restart time? Or will it be the biggest mistake of her life?

    Maybe stargazing dinosaurs escape extinction, and ‘80s icons share their secrets and scams. A boardwalk Elvis impersonator declines in a Graceland of his own, Bigfoot works as a temp, families fall apart and come back together. This wild and vibrant collection of explorer's tales will take you from fabulist faraway worlds to Great Recession realism in a single breath.

    The image inspires him to write the story of this family, but then a woman turns up at his door, claiming that he's writing her family history exactly as it happened. She doesn't like it, but she has one question: What happened to the little boy of the family, her long-lost uncle? Throughout the course of a month-long tempest that begins to wash the peninsula out from beneath them, Peregrine searches modern-day San Francisco and its surroundings--and, through his continued writing, southern China and the Pacific immigration experience of a century ago--for the missing boy. The clues uncovered lead Peregrine to question not only the nature of his writing, but also his knowledge of his own past and his understanding of his identity"--

    Having an extraordinary best friend like Mal helps a little, but Summer's secret source of happiness is a link to the past: one very special guitar. Now her dad's plan to save them is turning Summer's life upside down again. The next thing she knows, they've moved to the other side of the world. In Australia, Summer makes an unlikely friend, who seems to be magically connected to her guitar. Is this for real? Has a mysterious boy been sent to help Summer? Or could it be the other way around? This sweet and spellbinding story about family, friends and believing in yourself will warm your heart.

    It’s just too bad he’s behind bars.When you only see the world in black and white until you meet yours, it's pretty simple to figure out when you’ve found your Soulmate. What Libby can't figure out is why fate/destiny/the powers-that-be have decided that Andrew McCormack is her one, true match. Libby is smart, organized, and always has a plan for what's coming next. So when she sees Andrew for the first time and her world is instantly filled with color, she's thrown for a loop.Namely because he's in a dingy grey jumpsuit.And handcuffs.And being booked into a juvenile detention facility.Surely a boy who's been convicted of a headline-making, violent crime isn't the person she’s meant to be with. There's no way she belongs with someone like that... Right?

     A half-Irish, half-English playboy, Finn McCarthy soon finds out there are some things that can't be bought, and some people who don't play by his rules. Raised in the pubs and educated at Oxford, Finn never did know which half to favor. His Irish half loves women and booze, while his English half is wicked smart and damned polite. And then there's Regan, the one girl who never did succumb to his charms.  When war beckons, Finn takes action and answers the call, but there are some casualties even a soldier can't prepare for. Injured, addicted to painkillers and abusing alcohol, Finn begins to question the strange nighttime dreams and daytime visions that surface, haunting him with premonitions of things he can't control. To heal his wounds he must banish his demons, a journey that leads him to a sleepy fishing village, where he meets three men that change his trajectory. Death, loss, and grief converge as the mysteries of his Celtic roots begin to take hold. Will he be lost to the sea? Or lost within his own heart? The battle for balance might just take everything he's got left.  War does things to a man. But Finn isn't just any man. Finn Again - Book 1 The Truth About Truly - Book 2

    Too bad the crystal is in Scotland—in a haunted castle—guarded by mind-reading, psychopathic sorcerers.Getting inside Castle Logan is easy. Getting out––not so much. Before she can snatch the stone, Zoraida stumbles into a family feud, uncovers a wicked ancient curse, and finds herself ensorcelled by not one but two handsome Scottish witches. Up to their necks in family intrigue and smack-dab in the middle of a simmering clan war, Zoraida and her best friend Zhu discover Granny hasn’t told them everything. Not by a long shot.

    A world both drowning and engulfed in flames. Autopsies reveal gardens of lilies sprouting up inside the rib cages of the dead. Clouds fall to the earth and affect the behavior of those that come in contact with them. Revolution and violent uprisings spread through nations across the globe. Twelve blind men in a basement transcribe the history of the world as it burns down around them. Nightmares become reality; reality becomes nightmare. Families turn to reluctant cannibalism in the hopes of waiting out the horrors beyond. Corporations push to create a new population to replace the old one. Philosophical musings from a balcony overlooking a dark, empty city. A brief moment of something good between lovers as the world begins to slowly recover. These are the stories before the event. These are the stories during the event. These are the stories after the event. These are the stories of people coping and surviving, fighting to live, or fighting just to be doing something, anything. The stories in this collection are brief moments, tiny pockets of surreal happenstance, but pure emotion. Each piece ties into the next by the tiniest filament, each story connected to the one before and the one after, each trying to hold on to some bit of normalcy, but failing in spectacular and terrifying ways. This collection of stories is a blend of surrealist nightmare and dystopian science fiction. Foreword by SK Kalsi, author of "The Stove-Junker."

    Prove yourself true. Fight like you didn't and she'll come to you.Evie Snow was the love of Vincent Winters' life, and of every lifetime he would ever live, but they didn't get the ending they wanted. He never stopped loving her though and he never, ever, forgot about her.Suddenly Vincent has the chance to right an old wrong and to finally prove himself worthy of Evie's love - he just needs to get to her first.As Vincent begins the journey of a lifetime, he learns more about love than he ever thought possible, and somehow, some way, he may also find his way back to the only woman he ever truly loved . . .

    One of today’s most beloved authors of lyrical fiction with a touch of magic, Alice Hoffman boasts a body of work that has been praised by readers and critics from the very beginning. This collection includes her first novel, plus three more of her outstanding tales.  Property Of: Hoffman’s debut about teenage girls in mascara and leather and their attraction to local toughs is “a remarkably envisioned novel, almost mythic in its cadences” (The New York Times).  The Drowning Season intertwines the stories of two women named Esther: a granddaughter, who yearns to escape the Long Island shore and the coldness of the family matriarch; and her grandmother, who fled her abusive parents in Russia decades before. This novel “casts the spell of all great fairy tales. It takes daily life and transforms it into myth as we watch” (Chicago Sun-Times).  Fortune’s Daughter: A New York Times Notable Book, this luminous novel of a restless young traveler and a fortune-teller with a secret is a tribute to the profound mysteries of motherhood and childbirth from a writer who, in the words of Amy Tan, “takes seemingly ordinary lives and lets us see and feel extraordinary things.”  At Risk is a New York Times bestseller that “will leave few dry eyes” (Library Journal). In 1980s America, a family copes with their daughter’s terrifying AIDS diagnosis.

    Now, fans can learn to sing and play all of Steven's favorite songs—from the tunes he learns on his ukulele, to his father's guitar hits, as well as original songs sung by each of the Crystal Gems. This music book also gives kids the tools and inspiration they need to write their own songs!

    The stories contained in the collection are an eclectic selection of pieces which vary from traditional literary fiction to magic realism and subtle experiments with the short story form. They deal with the theme of legacy; the achievements, issues and problems this generation has inherited from the previous. Disillusioned street preachers, adulterous grocery shoppers, robotic brothers and child burglars are all given voice to express their experiences of life in contemporary Northern Ireland as Carson blurs the line between social commentary and modern parable.

    Creatures and spirits of every ilk saunter down the jazz-filled streets day and night, struggling to find purpose amidst the ivy-drenched balconies and colorful shotgun houses. The Axeboy's Blues follows a centuries-old agency tasked with protecting New Orleans from forces that would see her destroyed. Unfortunately, the agency was nearly wiped out and is virtually nonexistent. In a city where mosquitoes wear vests and spectacles, where the Mississippi is teeming with monstrous beasts, and where Wonder sprouts from peoples' heads like plants, can this agency fill its ranks once more to take on an adversary from its past – an adversary that has jumped through time?

    During their correspondence, they realized that they both regretted not taking up with each other back then, especially given their difficult and tumultuous first marriages after college. When Angelina is killed, she is offered a choice of what to do next and opts to have both of them return to when she and Paul first arrived at college and do it over again … while remembering what happened to them over the years. They make many changes in the way they live their lives and find true happiness together. Although they don’t repeat those mistakes they made before, they definitely find new ones to experience and explore.

    In the depths of the jungle—alone with the Jaguar Man—compassion was her only defense.Lara’s survival and journey of healing is poignant, compelling, and exceptional—it runs against the grain of what we’re taught and how we speak about crime and victimhood. Bending the limits of reality, she uses myth to process her experience and further explore the power of compassion. What she comes to is authentic, unorthodox, and fresh, and could serve as a groundbreaking path for trauma survivors to find their own peace and healing.

    Or are they? Pepper Fairfield is a high-spirited young woman with an incredible imagination. When she accepts a job as a nanny at Calthorpe Manor, she finds that she has let herself in for a lot more than she expected. With mysterious disappearing doors, magical colour-changing bunnies and a couple of sassy sylphs, this house is nothing like what she'd anticipated. Is it haunted? Or is it something even more? In a whirlwind of events, Pepper finds herself fighting against impossible odds, not only for her life, but for the safety of humankind. What this land needs is a hero, but how do you convince a hero who's sure he's anything but? If one thing is for certain, it's that, in an existent world of non-existence, anything can happen . . .

    Timid Duuni has spent her life as abused and guarded property. Blind, arrogant Ram is determined to be again what he once was: hunter, lover, young lord of the earth. Desperate to escape their lives, the two lift up their hands to the passing Roadsoul caravan, and areliterallyflung together naked. Each of them soon learns that saying yes to the Roadsouls is more than just accepting an invitation to a new lifeits a commitment that cant be reversed. For Duuni and Ram, nothing is as it was. Lost to their old lives, hating each other, they are swept out of their cruel old certainties into an unknown, unknowable, ever-changing world of journey and carnival, artists and wrestlers and thieves. Behind them, inexorable, pads a lion. Inexorable, too, is Duuni and Rams inevitable encounter with it, an encounter that will change everything.

    Nock, two precocious children in the woods of 1950s Alabama. Ghosts, hauntings, scary tales told 'round the evening fire, witches, and famous legends weave a story of mystery, romance, and tragedy.

    From the pages of Bungo Stray Dogs comes a new series about the peaceful everyday lives of the cast-Only now the Armed Detective Agency and Mafia characters are mini-sized?! This cozy gag manga about the cute adventures of Atsushi and crew brings a different charm from the original!

    Their mother’s realm of reason, measurement and logic, and the world inhabited by their spectacularly unconventional grandmother, Hettie. While their mother worked, the sisters ran wild at Hettie’s Cob Cottage, discovering forbidden Pike Lake, unknowable Havoc Wood, and what their grandmother referred to only as ‘The Strengths’. But time passed, the sisters grew up, work and relationships and their mother’s world won them over, and The Strengths lay forgotten… That is until Hettie passes away suddenly, leaving behind Cob Cottage and a whole lot of questions. Anna is busy trying very hard not to cry as she caters yet another wedding, Charlie is spending more time at the job she loves than with the boyfriend she’s not quite sure about and Emz is dreaming up new ways to avoid school and the drama that comes with it, but can they deal with strange guests, unexpected danger and some long-forgotten memories? 'a born writer... the ultimate needle in a haystack' - Susan Hill, author of The Woman in Black "The magical life the Way sisters lead is an interesting read." - Julie, NetGalley Reviewer "When is the next one and I want to read it!" - Nigel, NetGalley Reviewer

    Over a decade later, she has no other choice but return to be the executor of her grandmother’s will. Little does she know her entire logical world is about to be turned upside down. Her estranged mother reveals a centuries-old family secret that shakes Lucy’s sense of reality. Not to mention, the terrifying nightmares that once haunted Lucy as a child seemed to be just waiting in the shadows for her to return. Now Lucy must try to settle the restless spirits in her ancestors’ Colonial home and sell the estate before she loses her sanity…and possibly her life. If you enjoy gothic fantasies or supernatural thrillers, you will find yourself pleasantly lost in the dark world of the Cotton Family. A world full of witches, restless spirits, folk magic and shapeshifters.

    

    Following the stories of present day Io and her 19th century ancestor, Talia, The Living Memory explores the relationship between where we came from and where we are going." @DanniiElleReads at UnitedByPop.com"A clever, well-crafted and entertaining read with two great young heroines brought together across the centuries by their startling powers over memory." Amazon.co.uk"Took my imagination for a perfect ride!" A. Melcher

    But there's something a little strange about this place... and we hope you read the book to discover what's what!