A debut collection of stories set in a hauntingly reimagined Lagos where characters vie for freedom from ancestral ties. ’Pemi Aguda opens her collection of twelve stories with the chilling tale of a woman who uncannily resembles her sinister, deceased grandmother. When the woman shows a capacity for deadly violence, she wonders—can evil be genetic, passed from generation to generation? Set in Lagos, Nigeria, Aguda’s stories unfold against a spectral cityscape where the everyday business of living—the birth of a baby, a market visit, a conversation between mothers and daughters—is charged with an air of supernatural menace. In “Breastmilk” a new mother’s inability to lactate takes on preternatural overtones. In “24, Alhaji Williams Street” a mysterious disease wreaks havoc with frightening precision. In “The Hollow,” an architect stumbles on a vengeful house. Evocative, strange, and yet familiar, “the speculative conceits of these stories are elegantly balanced with the gorgeous fullness of human emotion, all the hunger and longing and fear and delight of being a human in the world” (Lauren Groff).

The definitive English language translation of the internationally bestselling Ukrainian novel—a brilliant dark fantasy with "the potential to be a modern classic" (Lev Grossman), combining psychological suspense, enchantment, and terror that makes us consider human existence in a fresh and provocative way. Our life is brief . . . While vacationing at the beach with her mother, Sasha Samokhina meets the mysterious Farit Kozhennikov under the most peculiar circumstances. The teenage girl is powerless to refuse when this strange and unusual man with an air of the sinister directs her to perform a task with potentially scandalous consequences. He rewards her effort with a strange golden coin. As the days progress, Sasha carries out other acts for which she receives more coins from Kozhennikov. As summer ends, her domineering mentor directs her to move to a remote village and use her gold to enter the Institute of Special Technologies. Though she does not want to go to this unknown town or school, she also feels it’s the only place she should be. Against her mother’s wishes, Sasha leaves behind all that is familiar and begins her education. As she quickly discovers, the institute’s "special technologies" are unlike anything she has ever encountered. The books are impossible to read, the lessons obscure to the point of maddening, and the work refuses memorization. Using terror and coercion to keep the students in line, the school does not punish them for their transgressions and failures; instead, their families pay a terrible price. Yet despite her fear, Sasha undergoes changes that defy the dictates of matter and time; experiences which are nothing she has ever dreamed of . . . and suddenly all she could ever want. A complex blend of adventure, magic, science, and philosophy that probes the mysteries of existence, filtered through a distinct Russian sensibility, this astonishing work of speculative fiction—brilliantly translated by Julia Meitov Hersey—is reminiscent of modern classics such as Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, Max Barry’s Lexicon, and Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale, but will transport them to a place far beyond those fantastical worlds.

A new account of racial logics in premodern Islamic literature. In Black Knights, Rachel Schine reveals how the Arabic-speaking world developed a different form of racial knowledge than their European neighbors during the Middle Ages. Unlike in European vernaculars, Arabic-language ideas about ethnic difference emerged from conversations extending beyond the Mediterranean, from the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. In these discourses, Schine argues, racialized blackness became central to ideas about a global, ethnically inclusive Muslim world.Schine traces the emergence of these new racial logics through popular Islamic epics, drawing on legal, medical, and religious literatures from the period to excavate a diverse and ever-changing conception of blackness and race. The result is a theoretically nuanced case for the existence and malleability of racial logics in premodern Islamic contexts across a variety of social and literary formations.

HEATED RIVALRY meets A KNIGHT'S TALE A NAMELESS KNIGHT. A CHAMPION'S FALL. A SQUIRE CAUGHT BETWEEN. When the mysterious Alaric challenges Ser Halden, an undefeated tournament champion who clawed his way up from nothing, their confrontation sparks more than rivalry. Halden's humiliating defeat leaves him keenly aware of the distance between noble and commoner and drives him toward a dangerous fixation on the man who unseated him. Caught in their orbit is Perrin, Halden’s loyal squire, who has spent years anticipating his knight’s every need. As tensions between the two men escalate, Perrin is torn between his loyalty and desires he can no longer ignore. First Tilt is a medieval fantasy romance where pride, power, and desire collide on and off the tournament field, and three men discover that some rivalries burn hottest when the armour comes off. Perfect for readers who love intense rivals-to-lovers romance and medieval-inspired spectacle.

My friend is missing. When he disappeared, he’d been working on a magazine about the paranormal—his first real job as an editor. With almost no budget, he’d resorted to digging through back issues and unused research material, looking for inspiration. As he did, a terrifying truth began to emerge about a certain place in the Kinki region. I have collected the relevant articles, interviews, and other materials in this book. And once you have understood everything, I would like to ask for your cooperation. I hope you will get in touch.

A dark and utterly original literary horror debut, following a priest whose bloodthirsty life has extended far longer than any mere human's—and is upended when a stranger comes to town Stutley Tillinghast lives a solitary life, ostensibly as the minister of a remote rural parish in Rhode Island. For many decades now, what little human contact he’s allowed himself has been brief, frenzied and bloody, and has always ended in a shallow grave in his cellar. There’s a name for what he is, but he prefers not to use it is simple enough that he has his needs, and that when they become unbearable, he fulfils them. In his long and lonely life, he has met only one other like him—the woman he still yearns for, the one who made him what he is. Then a girl arrives, searching for him. She has his last name, and bears an uncanny resemblance to that woman, awakening memories Tillinghast had long suppressed; the connection he feels for her is immediate and overwhelming. She’s also sick, very sick, with symptoms Tillinghast recognizes all too well...and only he knows how to cure her. Inspired by the real events of the New England vampire panic of the nineteenth century, Tillinghast is a novel to sink your teeth at once a gripping, atmospheric horror that turns the classic monster narrative on its head; a literary work of exceptional prose about giving into--or resisting--our impulses; and a remarkably moving father-daughter story that will leave you unexpectedly hopeful—and rooting, despite your every instinct, for the killers.

Midonia, a freelance interplanetary transporter, is on thin ice after a fatal accident on the job. So she doesn’t argue when she’s given the less than luxurious job of flying devout Sister Irena to the remote fringe planet she calls home, a religious colony that worships a strange deity they call Anguish.When a solar flare grounds her ship, Midonia finds herself stuck with the cult-like Sisters, their bizarre prayers that shake loose memories Midonia would rather forget, and a bleak castle ruin that wakes her in the night with a call she can’t ignore.In the ruin, she meets a shadow, a horror, a dark shape that consumes her body and soul — the god they call Anguish. He speaks to Midonia as if he knows her, has been waiting for her. He invades her mind with his want, sparking an obsession that will be near-impossible to escape. . .

A brilliant Scottish debut, shortlisted for the Highland Book Prize and the Bookmark Book Festival Book of the Year.   The year is 825 CE. In the aftermath of a vicious attack by raiders from the north, an unlikely trio finds themselves the lone survivors on a remote Scottish isle. Still breathing are young Brother Martin, the only resident of the local monastery to escape martyrdom; Una, a beekeeper and mead maker who has been relieved of her violent husband during the slaughter; and Grimur, an aging Norseman who claws his way out of the hasty grave his fellow raiders left him in, thinking him dead.  As the seasons pass in this wild and lonely setting, their inherent distrust of each other melts into a complex meditation on the distances and bonds between them. Told with humor and alive with sharply exquisite dialogue, David Greig deftly lifts the curtain between our world and the past. The Book of I is an entirely unique novel that serves as a philosophical commentary on guilt and redemption, but also humanity, love, and the things we choose to believe in.