It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder

Ally Carter

A billionaire’s grandson and the housekeeper’s daughter square off in this cat-and-mouse holiday romance-mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year. Ella Chambers didn’t kill Liam Montgomery. If she had, she certainly wouldn’t have done it outside his family’s mansion during the Christmas party of the year. She definitely wouldn’t have loaded his body into the trunk of her car. And she absolutely would not have announced to the town that the boy who ruined her life ten years ago was “so dead to her.” But now Liam is missing—nothing but a bloody spot on the drive and a host of unanswered questions—and Ella is the only person who knows he’s still alive. So it’s up to her to prove it. Liam Montgomery didn’t want to die. But, it turns out, when you’re the sole heir to a billionaire, someone might want you dead. Luckily for Liam, being dead works for him. Now he’s on the hunt for a killer. Unfortunately, Ella is on the hunt for him. She’ll have to prove he’s still alive to clear her name, but that’s easier said than done in a quaint mountain town where everyone knows your story but no one knows the truth. Can the billionaire’s grandson and the housekeeper’s daughter join forces to catch a killer? Or is their past too steeped in secrets and lies? As the storm of the century blows in, every step will bring these two childhood rivals closer to a killer—and each other. Because, this Christmas, only one thing is certain: it’s beginning to look a lot like murder.

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The Secret Lives of Zombie Wives

Barbara Truelove

The Secret Lives of Zombie Wives is a horror novella that combines the perfect intersection between trad wives on Instagram and #girldinner. Both funny and fleshy, it unravels the layers of domestic perfection demanded of women to get to the rotten heart of societal expectations.Patricia is a reformed zombie.She’s also an influencer—the wholesome, homey, traditional values kind—a career built up with the help of her husband, Ralph. Cooking, shopping, and hanging out with her friends; most days, it’s easy to forget she’s even dead, so long as she takes her antifungal medication. But when a zombie horde starts approaching her fenced community, Patricia comes face to face with memories of an era of her life she thought she’d left behind.Perhaps life with overbearing Ralph isn’t quite as perfect as she’d hoped, and maybe everyone kind of has the wrong idea about the zombie horde—they’re not frightening, they’re beautiful to Patricia, and they prompt her to embrace her true, authentic self.Unfortunately for Ralph, this involves eating his brain on livestream.

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Thoughts Be Bloody

Auden Patrick

A struggling student, a resident golden boy, and the curse that will bring them together: this queer, trans retelling is Hamlet as you’ve never read it before Exploring classism, identity, and the true meaning of revolution, this dark academia novel is perfect for fans of R. F. Kuang’s Babel The summer before his sophomore year, Horatio Bithersea walks into the university library to find Carson Hamlett, resident golden boy and master magician, cradling his father’s dead body. Life at Elsinore, one of the most prestigious universities in the secretive magical world, simply goes on when the professor’s death is ruled an accident—despite the mysterious circumstances and the bloody scene. A year later, Horatio is keeping his head down, attempting to graduate without his out-of-control magic harming his classmates. That changes when the ghost of Hamlett’s father appears and places a curse on Horatio and Hamlett: avenge his death by destroying Elsinore and its heart, lest the ghost robs them of their minds, memories, and their very souls. Elsinore has given Horatio everything—knowledge of his magical ability, an escape from his abusive family, and freedom to pursue his life as a transgender man—and now he’s to be its doom. As the two uncover more of Elsinore’s secrets, Horatio finds himself becoming more and more ensnared in Hamlett’s dark but charismatic web. The question is not if Horatio will manage to destroy Elsinore. The question is if Hamlett will destroy him first. This twisty, queer, dark academia is a brand-new take on the questions that haunt Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

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A Wall Is Also a Road

Annalee Newitz

From bestselling author Annalee Newitz, A Wall Is Also a Road is a thought-provoking science fiction adventure about the meaning of life and love, seen through the many eyes of an alien grad student studying a familiar backwater planet. Perfect for fans of Becky Chambers, Ryka Aoki, and Martha Wells. Gardenpath is a graduate student in biology who desperately wants to pass their exams with the highest honor possible: a prize given to scholars who discover something truly novel in the universe. Gardenpath also happens to be an amoeba–a slime mold, to be exact–from an ancient civilization that dwells in a vast network of towers between the stars. Seeking their prize, Gardenpath heads to a remote, dangerous planet that other researchers have dismissed as dead and uninteresting. There, they are surprised to discover a complicated ecosystem unlike anything they've ever encountered–including some peculiar, multicellular animals who seem to have language and culture. To learn more about these animals, Gardenpath changes their shape to resemble one of them. And that's how they meet a creature named Murtis, who lives in a city she calls Pompeii and works in a brothel known to locals as "the lupanar." Unfazed by a visitor who says she's from the stars, Murtis takes Gardenpath into her care, introducing her to the seaside tourist town full of immigrants and shopkeepers who are just trying to get by. A Wall Is Also a Road is a story about what happens when the alien becomes familiar–and beloved. Gardenpath expected to finish their research, present their discovery, and take their place among the decorated scholars of the floating cities. But when they look at their wild new friend Murtis’s sensor bulb, attached to a bizarre electro-chemical control system, they begin to realize there’s more to life than academic achievement. They're not sure what it is, but they're going to use science to find out.

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The Thrice-Bound Fool

Christopher Buehlman

The Thrice-Bound Fool is the epic, rollicking next chapter in the bestselling and “awesome as hell” (Nicholas Eames) fantasy adventure series that began with The Blacktongue Thief. Professional thief and inveterate trickster Kinch Na Shannack has always enjoyed a good book. But now his life, and the future of all of Manreach, depends on him deciphering a very bad book indeed; a stolen, sentient tome that tries to kill him every time he opens it—and often when it’s closed. Galva, veteran of the goblin wars and death’s sworn handmaiden, has vowed to protect Kinch while he mines the book for its dark magic and even darker secrets. She does so not for Kinch’s sake—though the cheeky bastard is growing on her—but because the book is the key to stopping the shadowy tyrants out to kill the queen she serves, and loves. The ruthless, all-seeing Taker’s Guild dogs their every step, and thief and knight must flee the known world entirely if they hope to succeed in their mission. But trouble finds Kinch wherever he goes, and the pair may have traded the devil they know for horrors far darker and hungrier as they enter lands unknown.

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Eclipse & the Wolf

Akwaeke Emezi

Enter St. Paradise, a city pulsing with blood magic, where clan secrets and shifting allegiances rule the land. For the first time, bestselling novelist Akwaeke Emezi brings their powerful talents to epic fantasy! Ten years ago, Eclipse Orinabe and her aunt, Silver, were the sole survivors of a massacre that nearly wiped out their family. Then the Orinabe unleashed their revenge: the annihilation of the clans who betrayed them, and the release of rapture, a drug so potent that the Orinabe—once peaceful pharmaceutical makers—soon have St. Paradise in a chokehold. Disturbed by the Orinabe’s bloody rise, the surviving clan leaders nonetheless make peace with Silver, known as the Butcher, and accept Eclipse—a weapon disguised as a glamorous debuante. With the foundations of St. Paradise trembling, one spark will set the city aflame and embers are everywhere, watched from the shadows by Clan Heron, spies so secretive that no one knows their true Heir. Wolf, Heir to the devout Goldshots, is on the run from his own people, armed with holy golden bullets and haunted by his sins. Noah, the volatile Heir to the psychic Ṣolarin clan, is pushed into a consuming relationship with Eclipse by his clan leaders. But neither Heir is what the other thinks—and the secret Noah is keeping is powerful enough to destroy St. Paradise in an instant. An ancient magic ties these clans together and a brutal reckoning will come as the Heirs collide and claim their fraught inheritance. Emotionally rich, explosively thrilling, and finely wrought as all of Emezi’s work, their new standalone novel is perfect for fans of the author or Fonda Lee, R.F. Kuang, and V.E. Schwab.

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A Devil of a Crime

T. Kingfisher

From New York Times bestselling author, T. Kingfisher, comes a charming murder mystery about a retired devil & retired angel who must team up to catch a killer stalking their small town ― before all hell breaks loose. When the murder of a priest rocks a quiet small town in North Carolina, the prime suspect is who else but the local retired agent of hell, Nicholas Fallen. But Fallen long ago traded his pitchfork for gardening shears and smites only the beetles who try to feast on his carefully cultivated tomato plants. If the reformed devil is to clear his (relatively) good name, he’ll have to pick up the mantle of detective, and partner with the least likely of allies: retired angel Serafina Fuller. As more bodies turn up and their dream of a retirement in small-town paradise looks to go up in flames, the two will stop this killer. Come hell or high water.

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Forged in FIYAH: Celebrating Ten Years of Black Speculative Fiction

DaVaun Sanders

Featuring the masterful prose of some of today's most accomplished writers, Forged in FIYAH is a celebration of Black speculative fiction unlike anything seen before!Forged in FIYAH showcases the extraordinary talent and innovation of contemporary Black science fiction and fantasy. Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, this collection of 18 stories features tales from mainstays of genre fiction alongside the dynamic, groundbreaking work of several of FIYAH's most promising newcomers.From pop-up funeral homes between worlds to magical healing silks; from high Victorian afterlives to creepy, sinister dolls; and from kind-hearted killing machines to a vampire with a conscience, these stories of science fiction, fantasy, and horror are unlike anything you have read before.Hopeful, defiant, glorious, and joyful, Forged in FIYAH is a landmark celebration of everything Black speculative fiction has to offer!

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Vicious

Victoria Schwab

A masterful tale of ambition, jealousy, desire, and superpowers. Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong. Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end? In Vicious, V. E. Schwab brings to life a gritty comic-book-style world in vivid prose: a world where gaining superpowers doesn't automatically lead to heroism, and a time when allegiances are called into question.

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She's a Doll

Barbara Truelove

Lucy isn’t a normal girl. Ghost. Victim. Killer. She’s a doll on a mission—to find the man who killed her and return the favor. Lucy McQuinn has been murdered, but she’s not about to go quietly. If she doesn’t get to keep breathing, then neither does Kyle, her killer. Possessing the body of an antique doll, she sets out on a quest for revenge. But it’s hard when you’re eighteen inches tall and made of porcelain. For help, she turns to Nicola, a human and fellow outsider with her own reasons to hate Kyle. But in their small idyllic town, no one wants to hear the truth, especially not about such a promising young man. If they can’t expose his crimes, Lucy will have to roll up her lacy little sleeves and teach him a lesson the old-fashioned way—as slowly and painfully as possible. From LA Times bestselling author Barbara Truelove, She’s a Doll is a ghoulish and gleeful tribute to the unstoppable power of female rage and a love letter to the friends who have our back—in this life and the next.

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