The Marrow Thieves

Cherie Dimaline

In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America's Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a fifteen-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones and take refuge from the "recruiters" who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing "factories."

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The Blood of Dragons: Standalone Book 3 in the Witches of Innsbrook

Viola Nichols

When Nayla wakes up as a giant silver dragon, destroys her own bed, and ruins the front door of her quaint cottage... she realizes that being a witch may not be her true calling. The ability to fly might make up for the inconvenience of the unexpected transformation, except she involuntarily transforms back into a human and tumbles thousands of feet from the sky.She is desperate for solutions when the good-looking village scholar shows up at her cottage and mentions he is on his way to the dragon-riddled Jagged Mountains, where the key to her transformation lies.Nolan is kind and nerdy with a chiseled chest and a dashing smile, and she finds herself falling for him - until she discovers that he works for the evil King’s army. The same evil King with a penchant for locking witches in dungeons and stealing their powers. She determines to put aside her growing attraction to him, which would be much easier if he wasn’t always sleeping so close to her.In a race against time to discover who she is before the dangerously random dragon transformations get her killed, Nayla and Nolan make their way to the Jagged Mountains, encountering soldiers, goblins, and unlikely friendships as they uncover a plot that could make the King more dangerous than ever.This is the third fast-paced short standalone book in the Witches of Innsbrook series, featuring friends-to-rivals-to-lovers, forced proximity, adventure, self-discovery, and epic dragons.

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The Melody of Shadows: a standalone cozy witchy romantasy (The Witches of Innsbrook Book 2)

Viola Nichols

She's a witch hungry for vengeance. He's a kind musician who makes his own magic. There's is a love story that will alter the kingdom.After years spent rotting in captivity, October "Toby" Riley doesn’t want a life of peace. She wants blood. She leaves her coven to repay the King’s Army for the atrocities committed against witches.But when she stumbles across a wounded deserter who talks to animals and trees and makes music that is literal magic, she can't bring herself to kill him.Toby's revenge will wait for no one, especially not the awkward but handsome golden retriever of a deserter. She brings him back to her coven to recover with every intention of leaving him as she pursues her mission of vengeance. But the longer she spends with Miles, the more she questions just how much of her humanity she left in the king's dungeons.Toby and Miles are inexplicably drawn together as they race against the king's growing destructive power to discover the secrets binding their kingdom. Toby's choices between peace and vengeance, love and solitude, will have consequences that reverberate throug all of Innsbrook.This fast-paced, cozy adventure is part of a standalone series following the Witches of Innsbrook as they fight against an oppressive king, explore the limits of their magic and the bonds of sisterhood, and find romance along the way.

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Tower Hill: A Plantation on the Edge of Rebellion

Alan Taylor

From the Pulitzer-Prize–winning historian, an absorbing family saga of Virginia slavery and the earthshaking rebellion led by Nat Turner. This powerful history of Virginia slavery is grounded in the daily life of a struggling plantation, Tower Hill, owned by generations of a local merchant family. A persistent debt that is both commercial and emotional drives the Blows—husbands and wives, fathers and sons—to turmoil and madness. The enslaved Blacks at Tower Hill live at the behest and often the violent whim of local whites. They claim as their own an evangelical Christianity that offers deliverance from suffering and a broad community of support and resistance. In 1831, Nat Turner’s rebellion arms that faith to attack slavery in the local counties. George Blow is instrumental to its suppression and to shaping the memory of an exceptional event led by a brilliant visionary who enthralled a few followers. But Alan Taylor shows the planned revolt to have included Black communities throughout the Tidewater and beyond. The shockwaves continued into secession and civil war.

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From Storms and Fire : Reigning Fae

Kaya May

No one believes you’re in danger when your clumsy nature helps cover up a deadly scheme. Shy, awkward and clumsy to a disastrous level, Emberly has tried to ignore the things said about her. But when those very personality traits put her in danger, her parents send her away to another kingdom. Now, Emberly has to deal with the King of Storms, who very well might kill her in a fit of temper if she spills one more drink on him. That is, if the person trying to kill her doesn’t take her out first. Unfortunately, no one believes the scrapes and bruises aren’t just from her tripping over her own feet. King Caspian sees no end to the frustration of being foisted with the responsibility of hosting the uncoordinated princess. His irritation is only amplified by constantly having to rescue the princess from herself. Despite all the reasons he finds Emberly aggravating, his body has a mind of its own when it comes to her. Why can’t he stop thinking about her? And how many times is this clumsy princess going to get hurt and blame it on someone else to avoid embarrassment? Will Emberly be able to convince Caspian someone is trying to kill her before it’s too late, or will she die leaving everyone thinking it was a tragic accident?

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Parable of the Sower

Octavia E. Butler

In 2024, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future. Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others. When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.

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Jesusland: Stories from the Upside Down World of Christian Pop Culture

Joelle Kidd

Using a blend of cultural criticism, humor, and personal memoir akin to Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror or Grace Perry’s The 2000s Made Me Gay, Joelle Kidd writes about her evangelical adolescence through the lens of Christian pop culture of the early 2000s, giving readers a peek into this odd subculture and insight into how evangelicalism’s growing popularity around the turn of the millennium has shaped culture and politics — including today’s far right. An empathetic, funny, and sharply critical collection of essays exploring the Christian pop culture of the 2000s and its influence on today’s politically powerful evangelicalism In 1999, after three years of secular living in Eastern Europe, Joelle Kidd moved back to Canada and was enrolled in the strange world of an evangelical Christian school. In Jesusland, Joelle writes about the Christian pop culture that she was suddenly immersed in, from perky girl bands to modest styling tips, and draws connections between this evangelical subculture and the mainstream, a tense yet reciprocal relationship that both disavows the secular while employing its media markers. But none of this was just about catchy songs: every abstinence quiz in a teen magazine was laying the foundation for what would become a conservative Christian movement that threatens women’s healthcare, attacks queer and trans rights, and drives present-day political division. Through nine incisive, honest, and emotional essays, Jesusland exposes the pop cultural machinations of evangelicalism, while giving voice to aughts-era Christian children and teens who are now adults looking back at their time measuring the length of their skirts, and asking each other if their celebrity crush was Christian enough. With care and generosity, Jesusland shows us how the conservative evangelical movement became the global power it is today by exploring the pop culture that both reflected and shaped an entire generation of young people.

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