Instead of a home in need of cleansing, Rosemary finds a closed-off ex-best friend insisting she hadn’t called her and demanding she leave. The last thing Genevieve wants is her ex-best friend poking her nose where it doesn’t belong and making Genevieve hunger for things she can't let herself want. Then something in the old house traps them inside. Danger and proximity lead to buried, unaddressed feelings resurfacing, along with the reveal of a few shocking secrets. What happens when your ex-best friend has the overwhelming urge to kill you? Worse, what happens when you want to let her?

All Adara Goodman wants is to survive senior year of high school without issues, but when a shadow with her appearance lands a student in the hospital after a fight, graduating and preparing for college are the least of her worries. The darkness that’s followed her since childhood is resurfacing, and once its volatility causes the deaths of her loved ones, she’s forced to seek help from the source of her curse—the Devil himself. Desperate to restore life to those dearest to her, Adara agrees to a bargain: she must pass The Sixes, a series of trials created to grant Satanials, the soldiers of Hell, an opportunity to win back their souls. To qualify, she needs to be trained as one—not exactly a breeze judging by the rising tensions with her illusive mentor, the Daemon Prince Asmodeus, who seems determined to sabotage her. Although Adara is fighting to complete her trials, they aren’t her only battle. The longer she’s surrounded by depravity and corruption, the more she struggles not to succumb to her own dark impulses. If she fails to complete The Sixes, not only does she lose her one chance to right her wrongs and defy her emerging monstrosity, but her soul will land in Praeteritus, the endless void separating the Nine Circles of Hell… until which time she’ll return to the Circle of Treachery to serve as the Devil’s Satanial for eternity.

A twisted, tangled story about workplace love-affairs, and plants with a taste for human flesh During a grocery run to her local shopping center, Shell Pine sees a ‘HELP NEEDED’ sign in a flower shop window. She’s just left her fiancé, lost her job, and moved home to her parents’ house. She has to make a change and bring some good into her life, so she goes inside and takes a chance. Shell realizes right away that flowers are just the good thing she's been looking for, as is Neve, the beautiful florist who wrote the sign asking for help. The thing is, Neve needs help more than Shell could possibly imagine. An orchid growing out of sight in the heart of the mall is watching them closely. His name is Baby, and the beautiful florist belongs to him. He’s young, he’s hungry, and he’ll do just about anything to make sure he can keep growing big and strong. Nothing he eats – nobody he eats – can satisfy him, except the thing he most desires. Neve. He adores her and wants to consume her, and will stop at nothing to eat the one he loves. This is a story about possession, and monstrosity, and working retail. It is about hunger and desire, and other terrible things that grow.

‎In Emerald Ville, secrets don’t just haunt you. They hunt you. ‎ ‎Gabriella Peters arrived at Guépard Academy seeking the one thing her life in Lloren never allowed: invisibility. Along with her twin, Gabriel, she hoped the elite school’s ancient stone walls would provide a fresh start and a shield for the secret that has already cost her everything. But Guépard is an edifice that eats girls like her for breakfast, and its halls are filled with eyes that see more than they should. ‎ ‎When a sudden, bone-chilling Vision forces Gabriella to save a teacher’s life in front of her entire class, her cover is torched. The "Gift" she views as a curse — a heavy burden of headaches and glowing skin — is now a beacon for a predator. ‎ ‎A vague figure known as the Vandal is playing a lethal game of psychological chess, leaving notes in her locker and Guide that prove they know her mind better than she does and play tricks with her mind by manipulating events that happen in her life. ‎ ‎Alongside the CLARGST — a diverse group of misfits each guarding their own secrets — Gabriella must race to uncover the Vandal's identity. But as the stakes rise and the school’s technology begins to glitch in ways that defy logic, Gabriella realizes the Vandal isn't just toying with the school; they are experimenting on her. ‎ ‎In a place where the walls are always staring, Gabriella must solve the mystery before her Visions stop being warnings and start becoming her tomb.

A Victorian Gothic Paranormal Romance Novella by Briar Somerset. In a town where health is currency and longing is lure, a reluctant investigator and seamstress must uncover whether hunger will anchor a man already slipping into the dark. Behind the decrepit doors of an infirmary said to offer miraculous cures to London's ailing elite, people are vanishing. Private Investigator and estranged heir to French aristocracy Jacques Valmont is summoned across the channel to sleuth, despite the lingering sickness of his own—one of grief that stirs in his blood and shadows his mind. Amidst the fog and fever, he finds an unlikely ally in Annie, the quick-witted seamstress working next door to Beecham's Infirmary, whose presence seems to quiet the storm inside him. When she suggests the only way to breach the infirmary's guarded walls is becoming a patient himself, Annie's grandmother warns them both of curses that fester with longing. Unnatural aches that transform a person entirely, if not quelled. As Jacques nears the truth, desire and dread twist together. Annie may be the last tether holding him to his humanity—or the final thread that unravels it.

From bestselling and award-winning author Mason Deaver comes a delightful second-chance romance with trans representation! Trapped on a cruise together, exes Owen and Jacob are forced to confront why their relationship went off course…but in such close quarters, maybe they’ll finally be able to right the ship. A year ago, Owen Henson had a close-knit group of friends who felt like family and a boyfriend who made his heart race just by walking into the room. But now? Everything’s unraveling. His friends seem to be moving forward without him, and his happily-ever-after shattered when his boyfriend Jacob packed up and left for North Carolina to join a research team. The last thing Owen needs is for Jacob to waltz back into the city like nothing happened, showing up at their friends’ annual Christmas party looking just as annoyingly handsome as the day he left. Or for their friends to spring a surprise six-day, seven-night cruise up the West Coast to Alaska as a bonding trip for the group. How is Owen supposed to keep it together around the man who broke his heart, all while pretending he’s fine? Totally fine. But then Jacob tells Owen that he’d like to be something even more complicated than exes. He wants to be friends. Skeptical, Owen agrees to the plan but as they spend time together among the gorgeous Alaskan backdrop and cruise-mandated activities, Owen feels his walls coming down and he might just discover that he can’t help but fall in love again. An emotional second-chance romance set on a breathtaking cruise, where two former flames must decide whether to let go or risk it all for a love that refuses to sink. Tropes Forced proximity Exes Second chance Cruises Dating in secret Meddling friends

"A superb tutorial for anyone wanting to learn from pros how to polish fiction writing with panache."-- Library Journal Hundreds of books have been written on the art of writing. Here at last is a book by two professional editors to teach writers the techniques of the editing trade that turn promising manuscripts into published novels and short stories. In this completely revised and updated second edition, Renni Browne and Dave King teach you, the writer, how to apply the editing techniques they have developed to your own work. Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of view, interior monologue, and other techniques take you through the same processes an expert editor would go through to perfect your manuscript. Each point is illustrated with examples, many drawn from the hundreds of books Browne and King have edited.

From the celebrated Ursula K. Le Guin, "a writer of enormous intelligence and wit, a master storyteller" ( Boston Globe ), the revised and updated edition of her classic guide to the essentials of a writer's craft. Completely revised and rewritten to address modern challenges and opportunities, this handbook is a short, deceptively simple guide to the craft of writing. Le Guin lays out ten chapters that address the most fundamental components of narrative, from the sound of language to sentence construction to point of view. Each chapter combines illustrative examples from the global canon with Le Guin’s own witty commentary and an exercise that the writer can do solo or in a group. She also offers a comprehensive guide to working in writing groups, both actual and online. Masterly and concise, Steering the Craft deserves a place on every writer's shelf.

Reveals the diversity crisis in children's and young adult media as not only a lack of representation, but a lack of imagination Stories provide portals into other worlds, both real and imagined. The promise of escape draws people from all backgrounds to speculative fiction, but when people of color seek passageways into the fantastic, the doors are often barred. This problem lies not only with children’s publishing, but also with the television and film executives tasked with adapting these stories into a visual world. When characters of color do appear, they are often marginalized or subjected to violence, reinforcing for audiences that not all lives matter. The Dark Fantastic is an engaging and provocative exploration of race in popular youth and young adult speculative fiction. Grounded in her experiences as YA novelist, fanfiction writer, and scholar of education, Thomas considers four black girl protagonists from some of the most popular stories of the early 21st century: Bonnie Bennett from the CW’s The Vampire Diaries, Rue from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Gwen from the BBC’s Merlin, and Angelina Johnson from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. Analyzing their narratives and audience reactions to them reveals how these characters mirror the violence against black and brown people in our own world. In response, Thomas uncovers and builds upon a tradition of fantasy and radical imagination in Black feminism and Afrofuturism to reveal new possibilities. Through fanfiction and other modes of counter-storytelling, young people of color have reinvisioned fantastic worlds that reflect their own experiences, their own lives. As Thomas powerfully asserts, “we dark girls deserve more, because we are more.”

A haunting Southern Gothic from an award-winning master of suspense, A House With Good Bones explores the dark, twisted roots lurking just beneath the veneer of a perfect home and family. "Mom seems off." Her brother's words echo in Sam Montgomery's ear as she turns onto the quiet North Carolina street where their mother lives alone. She brushes the thought away as she climbs the front steps. Sam's excited for this rare extended visit, and looking forward to nights with just the two of them, drinking boxed wine, watching murder mystery shows, and guessing who the killer is long before the characters figure it out. But stepping inside, she quickly realizes home isn’t what it used to be. Gone is the warm, cluttered charm her mom is known for; now the walls are painted a sterile white. Her mom jumps at the smallest noises and looks over her shoulder even when she’s the only person in the room. And when Sam steps out back to clear her head, she finds a jar of teeth hidden beneath the magazine-worthy rose bushes, and vultures are circling the garden from above. To find out what’s got her mom so frightened in her own home, Sam will go digging for the truth. But some secrets are better left buried.

Under eternally gray skies the Wetworks harvests nutritious waste from the “Root”, the only plant humanity found after we fled through a gate to escape our home world’s ecological collapse. When a bloody accident at the sawmill births a new kind of person, this strange realm finally has someone who transcends the sins of the last one. Every petal and stalk of the Root is listening and whispering. Through this transfigured being, Jon Heap, we can hear what the all-plant says. We already depend on the Root, but it wants to give us something new: fresh fruit our priests will bless, our farmers will reap, and our mothers will bear. The Root will alter our bodies as it desires and despite the pain we will call it a miracle.

This explosive book of history and cultural criticism argues that white feminism has been a weapon of white supremacy and patriarchy deployed against Black and Indigenous women and all colonized women. It offers a long-overdue validation of the experiences of women of color. Taking us from the slave era—when white women fought in court to keep "ownership" of their slaves—through the centuries of colonialism—when they offered a soft face for brutal tactics—to the modern workplace, White Tears/Brown Scars</i< tells the story of white women's active participation in campaigns of oppression. Examining subjects as varied as The Hunger Games, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the viral BBQ Becky video, and nineteenth-century lynchings of Mexicans in the American Southwest, Ruby Hamad builds a powerful argument about the entrenched systems of white supremacy that we are socialized within, a reality that we must apprehend in order to fight.