The gods are dead. All that’s left are the Players… The performers of the Playhouse are as worshipped as they are feared, their enchanting shows bending hearts, minds, and even reality itself. Vicious, godlike, lethal. Eighteen-year-old Riven Hesper knows the dangers better than anyone, after her own encounter with a Player resulted in a curse that is slowly killing her. When the Playhouse announces the spectacle of a lifetime—a chance for one mortal to steal a Player’s immortality—Riven sees her last chance to live. Desperate for answers, she infiltrates the competition. There, she finds Jude, the Playhouse’s brilliant, merciless Lead Player, whose charm is as dangerous as his Craft, and strikes a deadly bargain to save her life. But with time running out and the Playhouse’s secrets unraveling into a disturbing picture, Riven faces a grim possibility: she might not be the hero of her story after all. In fact, she may be the villain. Because the Playhouse doesn’t just tell stories. It rewrites them. And Riven’s might end in blood. Caraval meets One Dark Window in this lush and dark fantasy.

“The Names is a truly gorgeous, heart-opening novel. I couldn’t put it down, and I’m grateful to have Cora and her children living inside my heart now. What a wonderful book!” —Ann Napolitano, bestselling author of Hello Beautiful The extraordinary debut that Can a name change the course of a life?In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...Spanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.With exceptional sensitivity and depth, Knapp draws us into the story of one family, told through a prism of what-ifs, causing us to consider the "one . . . precious life" we are given. The book’s brilliantly imaginative structure, propulsive storytelling, and emotional, gut-wrenching power are certain to make The Names a modern classic.

“The Names is a truly gorgeous, heart-opening novel. I couldn’t put it down, and I’m grateful to have Cora and her children living inside my heart now. What a wonderful book!” —Ann Napolitano, bestselling author of Hello Beautiful The extraordinary debut that Can a name change the course of a life?In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...Spanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.With exceptional sensitivity and depth, Knapp draws us into the story of one family, told through a prism of what-ifs, causing us to consider the "one . . . precious life" we are given. The book’s brilliantly imaginative structure, propulsive storytelling, and emotional, gut-wrenching power are certain to make The Names a modern classic.

The New York Times bestselling True Crime Files series continues with this haunting collection of the dangers lurking among those we trust the most—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Stranger Beside Me.Doomed relationships and deadly betrayals are at the heart of this unputdownable collection of true cases from the personal files of Ann Rule, “America’s best true-crime writer” (Kirkus Reviews). First is one of the most tragic unsolved crimes of the last twenty years: the disappearance of Susan Powell and the murder of her two young sons. With in-depth research and clear-eyed compassion, Rule leaves no stone unturned as she searches for the truth in this shocking story. Rule also chronicles the strange tale of a Coronado, California mansion that was the site of two horrifying deaths only days apart: a billionaire’s son’s plunge from a balcony and his girlfriend’s hanging. Although the cases are quickly closed, baffling questions remain. In these and seven other riveting cases, Ann Rule exposes the twisted truth behind the façades of Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors.

A breathless thriller with the soul of a sweeping love story. For fans of Listen for the Lie and The Love of My Life. Benny Abbott and Joy Moore host one of the most beloved podcasts in the world. Each week, they delight listeners with a different “against all odds” survival story, gleefully finding the weird, life-affirming humor in near-death experiences. Since their first episode on Joy’s experience with severe narcolepsy, they’ve been the best friends everyone wants to befriend—and thanks to the meticulous management of Joy’s husband, Xander, they’ve built a lucrative empire. The problem is, their next survival story may be their own. When Benny arrives at Joy and Xander’s one morning to record, he finds shattered glass and an empty house. The one clue shedding light on the couple’s disappearance is the incomplete, previously unseen first draft of Joy’s memoir. Benny is desperate to find them, even when the police soon zero in on him as their prime suspect. Millions of devoted listeners think they know the “real” Benny and Joy. But as the hours tick by, and the odds seem increasingly stacked against Joy and Xander being found alive, not even the most devoted fans could guess the terrible secrets their favorite famous BFFs have hidden from the world—and from each other. "Both a riveting mystery and a love story, This Story Might Save Your Life is one of the best thrillers I’ve read this year. Crum’s book is perfectly paced and unputdownable, with vividly drawn characters I won’t soon forget. I devoured it!" —Amy Tintera, New York Times bestselling author of Listen for the Lie “I truly loved reading This Story Might Save Your Life. The pace was terrific, and it was so smart and engrossing. The pages practically turn themselves in this nuanced thriller. I couldn't put it down!” —Nina Simon, New York Times bestselling author of Mother-Daughter Murder Night

"The training levels have concluded. Now the games may truly begin." The ratings and views are off the chart. The fans just can't get enough. The dungeon gets more dangerous each day. But in a grinder designed to chew up and spit out crawlers by the millions, Carl and Princess Donut need to work harder than ever just to survive. They call it the Over City. A sprawling, once-thriving metropolis devastated by a mysterious calamity. But these streets are far from abandoned. An undead circus trawls the ruins. Murdered prostitutes rain from the sky. An ancient spell is finally ready to reveal its dark purpose. Carl still has no pants. They call it Dungeon Crawler World. For Carl and Donut, it's anything but a game.

'Secrets don't stay secret for long in publishing' Six authors. One private island. Seventy-two hours to write the ending that will change their lives. ‘This is a house of novelists, not murderers. You dream up crimes. You don’t commit them.’ ‘But a writer has. And so, who better than a writer to catch them?’ World famous author Arthur Fletch is dead. His final novel, the most anticipated book in history, remains unfinished. But the ending won’t write itself. Fletch’s publisher, Merriweather Press, has invited six authors to Fletch’s private island in Scotland. Authors whose books have never had the big marketing budgets or publicity opportunities. In other words, midlist. And they’re about to be presented with the opportunity of a lifetime. Whoever writes a worthy ending will receive one million dollars, and a further one million dollars for a new three-book contract. They have just seventy-two hours, with no access to the outside world, just a typewriter and a blank page. All they have to do is write… Starting is often the hardest part. But getting to the end could be murder. ‘Smart, original and completely addictive…The Ending Writes Itself is both a great locked-room thriller and a brilliant satire on the publishing industry. An absolute must-read’ Karin Slaughter

The apocalypse will be televised! A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe. Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your followers, your views. Your clout. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style. You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big. You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that "it" factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That's the only way to truly survive in this game—with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy. They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it's anything but a game.

A breathless thriller with the soul of a sweeping love story. For fans of Listen for the Lie and The Love of My Life. Benny Abbott and Joy Moore host one of the most beloved podcasts in the world. Each week, they delight listeners with a different “against all odds” survival story, gleefully finding the weird, life-affirming humor in near-death experiences. Since their first episode on Joy’s experience with severe narcolepsy, they’ve been the best friends everyone wants to befriend—and thanks to the meticulous management of Joy’s husband, Xander, they’ve built a lucrative empire. The problem is, their next survival story may be their own. When Benny arrives at Joy and Xander’s one morning to record, he finds shattered glass and an empty house. The one clue shedding light on the couple’s disappearance is the incomplete, previously unseen first draft of Joy’s memoir. Benny is desperate to find them, even when the police soon zero in on him as their prime suspect. Millions of devoted listeners think they know the “real” Benny and Joy. But as the hours tick by, and the odds seem increasingly stacked against Joy and Xander being found alive, not even the most devoted fans could guess the terrible secrets their favorite famous BFFs have hidden from the world—and from each other. "Both a riveting mystery and a love story, This Story Might Save Your Life is one of the best thrillers I’ve read this year. Crum’s book is perfectly paced and unputdownable, with vividly drawn characters I won’t soon forget. I devoured it!" —Amy Tintera, New York Times bestselling author of Listen for the Lie “I truly loved reading This Story Might Save Your Life. The pace was terrific, and it was so smart and engrossing. The pages practically turn themselves in this nuanced thriller. I couldn't put it down!” —Nina Simon, New York Times bestselling author of Mother-Daughter Murder Night

Gideon the Ninth meets Moby Dick in USA Today bestselling author Alexis Hall's science fiction debut, Hell's Heart!Earth is a ruin, and the scattered remnants of humanity scavenge what they can from the stars under the watchful auspices of a grab-bag of collectives, corporations, and churches which are all that remains of what we once called society. Having long exhausted any conventional sources of energy, life in the solar system is now sustained by a volatile, hallucinogenic substance called spermaceti, which is harvested from the brains of vast cetacean-like Leviathans that swim the atmospheric currents of Jupiter.Finding herself with no money and little to occupy her groundside, the narrator (“I”) takes a commission aboard the hunter-barque Pequod as it sets out in pursuit of precious spermaceti. Once aboard, however, she finds herself pulled inexorably into the orbit of the barque’s captain, a charismatic but fanatically driven woman who the narrator names only as “A”. As the Pequod plunges ever deeper into the turbulent, monster-haunted atmosphere of the gas giant, the narrator begins to lose herself in the eerie word of Leviathan-hunting and the captain’s increasingly insistent delusions; the only thing that might keep her grounded is the bond she develops with Q, a woman from the wreck of Old Earth whose skin is marked with holographic light and who remembers things otherwise lost.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Gideon the Ninth meets Moby Dick in USA Today bestselling author Alexis Hall's science fiction debut, Hell's Heart!Earth is a ruin, and the scattered remnants of humanity scavenge what they can from the stars under the watchful auspices of a grab-bag of collectives, corporations, and churches which are all that remains of what we once called society. Having long exhausted any conventional sources of energy, life in the solar system is now sustained by a volatile, hallucinogenic substance called spermaceti, which is harvested from the brains of vast cetacean-like Leviathans that swim the atmospheric currents of Jupiter.Finding herself with no money and little to occupy her groundside, the narrator (“I”) takes a commission aboard the hunter-barque Pequod as it sets out in pursuit of precious spermaceti. Once aboard, however, she finds herself pulled inexorably into the orbit of the barque’s captain, a charismatic but fanatically driven woman who the narrator names only as “A”. As the Pequod plunges ever deeper into the turbulent, monster-haunted atmosphere of the gas giant, the narrator begins to lose herself in the eerie word of Leviathan-hunting and the captain’s increasingly insistent delusions; the only thing that might keep her grounded is the bond she develops with Q, a woman from the wreck of Old Earth whose skin is marked with holographic light and who remembers things otherwise lost.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A haunting coming-of-age tale following the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, Ronny Nyugen, as she grapples with the weight of generational trauma while navigating the violent power of teenage girlhood, for fans of Jennifer’s Body and Little Fires Everywhere. It’s the summer before high school, and Ronny Nguyen finds herself too young for work, too old for cartoons. Her days are spent in a small backyard, dozing off to trashy magazines on a plastic lawn chair. In stark contrast stands her brother Tommy, the pride and joy of their immigrant a popular honor student destined to be the first in the family to attend college. The thought of Tommy leaving for college fills Ronny with dread, as she contemplates the quiet house she will be left alone in with her parents, Me and Ba. Their parents rarely speak of their past in Vietnam, except through the lens of food. The family’s meals are a tapestry of cultural thick spring rolls with slim and salty nem nuong, and steaming bowls of pho tai with thin, delicate slices of blood-red beef. In the aftermath of the war, Me and Ba taught Ronny and Tommy that meat was a dangerous luxury, a symbol of survival that should never be taken for granted. But when tragedy strikes, Ronny’s world is upended. Her sense of self and her understanding of her family are shattered. A few nights later, at her first high school party, a boy crosses the line, and Ronny is overtaken by a force larger than herself. This newfound power comes with an insatiable hunger for raw meat, a craving that is both a saving grace and a potential destroyer. What Hunger is a visceral, emotional journey through the bursts and pitfalls of female rage. Ronny’s Vietnamese lineage and her mother’s emotional memory play a crucial role in this tender ode to generational trauma and mother-daughter bonding.

A haunting coming-of-age tale following the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, Ronny Nyugen, as she grapples with the weight of generational trauma while navigating the violent power of teenage girlhood, for fans of Jennifer’s Body and Little Fires Everywhere. It’s the summer before high school, and Ronny Nguyen finds herself too young for work, too old for cartoons. Her days are spent in a small backyard, dozing off to trashy magazines on a plastic lawn chair. In stark contrast stands her brother Tommy, the pride and joy of their immigrant a popular honor student destined to be the first in the family to attend college. The thought of Tommy leaving for college fills Ronny with dread, as she contemplates the quiet house she will be left alone in with her parents, Me and Ba. Their parents rarely speak of their past in Vietnam, except through the lens of food. The family’s meals are a tapestry of cultural thick spring rolls with slim and salty nem nuong, and steaming bowls of pho tai with thin, delicate slices of blood-red beef. In the aftermath of the war, Me and Ba taught Ronny and Tommy that meat was a dangerous luxury, a symbol of survival that should never be taken for granted. But when tragedy strikes, Ronny’s world is upended. Her sense of self and her understanding of her family are shattered. A few nights later, at her first high school party, a boy crosses the line, and Ronny is overtaken by a force larger than herself. This newfound power comes with an insatiable hunger for raw meat, a craving that is both a saving grace and a potential destroyer. What Hunger is a visceral, emotional journey through the bursts and pitfalls of female rage. Ronny’s Vietnamese lineage and her mother’s emotional memory play a crucial role in this tender ode to generational trauma and mother-daughter bonding.