A teenage girl navigates trauma and revenge on a journey to the circus in this "marvelous modern-girl odyssey, dark and comic and poignant and smart" (Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief).At fifteen, Faith Duckle was lured under the bleachers by a bunch of boys and brutally attacked. Now, almost a year later, a newly thin Faith is haunted by her past and by the flippant, cruel ghost of her formerly fat self who is bent on revenge.Faith eventuall...

She's not your average crime fighter!Ivy Malone has a curiosity that sometimes gets her into trouble, and it's only aggravated by her discovery that she can easily escape the public eye. So when vandals romp through the local cemetery, she takes advantage of her newfound anonymity and its unforeseen advantages as she launches her own unofficial investigation.Despite her oddball humor and unconventional snooping, Ivy soon becomes discouraged by her failure to turn up any sol...

Reporter Moira Harrisons is lost. In the dark. In a thunderstorm. When a confusing detour places her on a rural, wooded road, she's startled by the sudden appearance of a lone figure caught in the beam of her headlights. Though Moira jams on her brakes, the car careens across the wet pavement--and the solid thump against the side of the vehicle tells her she hit the person before she crashes into a tree on the far side of the road.A dazed Moira is relieved when a man opens her door...

“Chilling, compelling suspense . . . be prepared to lose sleep” with this first in the thriller series featuring Ozarks detective Claire Morgan (Eileen Dreyer, New York Times bestselling author).With Every Turn in the Case . . .After moving from Los Angeles to Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, homicide detective Claire Morgan has at last adjusted to the peaceful rhythms of rural life. Until a grisly celebrity murder at an ultra-exclusi...

(If you enjoy this book, check out the sequels: NO SUBSTITUTE FOR MONEY, NO SUBSTITUTE FOR MATURITY, NO SUBSTITUTE FOR MYTH, NO SUBSTITUTE FOR MISTAKES, and NO SUBSTITUTE FOR MOTIVES.)A sleuthing substitute teacher tackles her first case and it's nearly her last.Notice: This mystery contains no vampires, werewolves, zombies, or space aliens. It was not tested on laboratory animals. It makes no claims to political correctness. Characters may not be fully clothed at all times...

In Murder in Vegas, the International Association of Crime Writers and New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly have gathered twenty-two crime and mystery stories about the ultimate playground and what can happen behind the glitz and glamour.Las Vegas. Lost Wages. Sin City. An artificial oasis of pleasure, spectacle, and entertainment, the gambling capital of America has reinvented itself so many times that its doubtful that anyone knows...

From the #1 New York Times bestseller, the latest in a new generation of Wild Cards talesIn 1946, an alien virus that rewrites human DNA was accidentally unleashed in the skies over New York City. It killed ninety percent of those it infected. Nine percent survived, mutated into tragically deformed creatures. And one percent gained superpowers. The Wild Cards shared-universe series, created and edited by New York Times #1 bestseller George R. R. M...

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Sandra Kring's A Life of Bright Ideas.Wisconsin, 1961. Evelyn “Button” Peters is nine the summer Winnalee and her fiery-spirited older sister, Freeda, blow into her small town–and from the moment she sees them, Button knows this will be a summer unlike any other.Much to her mother’s dismay, Button is fascinated by the Malone sisters, especially Winnalee, a feisty scrap of a thing who carries around a shiny silver urn con...

The picturesque town of Alpine in the Cascade Mountains is decked out in Christmas cheer, but at the Alpine Advocate, editor and publisher Emma Lord is fretting over how her brother and her son—both priests—will react to her affair with Sheriff Milo Dodge. Another family is singing the blues when Postmaster Roy Everson shows up with bones that may belong to his mother, who’s been missing for sixteen years. But the most disturbing discovery is the decomposed corpse found in a cave ...

"More engaging than any new fiction in years." —Chuck PalahniukAn unforgettable work of fiction that peers into the soul of a tough Midwestern American town to reveal the sad, stunted but resilient lives of its residents. Knockemstiff is a genuine entry into the literature of place.Spanning a period from the mid-sixties to the late nineties, the linked stories that comprise Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring characters who are irresis...

Based on a real-life event, Pulitzer Prize-winner Julia Keller’s latest Bell Elkins novel Fast Falls the Night takes place in a single 24-hour period, unfurling against the backdrop of a shattering personal revelation that will change Bell’s life forever.The first drug overdose comes just after midnight, when a young woman dies on the dirty floor of a gas station bathroom. To the people of the small town of Acker’s Gap, West Virginia, it is just another tragedy. It is sad—...