Fruit Fly

Josh Silver

Go gay. Go sad. Go dark. A washed-up author will stop at nothing to claw her way back to relevancy—even if it means appropriating a young gay man’s tragic story. Mallory Maddox is buried under seven years of writer’s block. With her status as a literary sensation fizzling, she’ll do anything she can to resurrect her career. Inspiration needs to strike—and fast. Enter Leo. He’s a struggling addict sleeping under bridges and trading sex for survival. He’s vulnerable. He’s enigmatic. He’s exactly what Mallory has been looking for. Mallory needs Leo if she wants another bestseller. The world needs Leo’s story right now, and Mallory believes she deserves to tell it. Really, it’s her story—she’s the one who wrote it, after all. But as secrets threaten to unravel more than just her career, Mallory must decide how far she will go to pen the perfect story. A razor-sharp satirical thriller, Fruit Fly will appeal to fans of R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface and Yomi Adegoke’s The List.

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Evil Women

John Marlowe

Many people find it impossible to believe women are capable of committing brutal murders just like men, but this book shows otherwise. Katherine Knight donned a black negligee before stabbing her lover John Price 37 times, then serving up his corpse for dinner with baked potatoes, pumpkin and all the trimmings. Sue Basso became supermarket packer Buddy Musso's 'lady love', but his dreams of happiness were shredded when she and her friends tortured him to death for a paltry $15,000 life insurance policy. Shelly Michael injected her husband with a drug that led to death by slow suffocation, then she set their house on fire. Each of the cases documented here makes for a chilling read, proving that the female really can be deadlier than the male.

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Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden sex worker, can offer the chance of redemption.

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Open Wide

Jessica Gross

A provocative novel about intimacy, love, and consent, following an increasingly obsessive radio host who tests boundaries she didn’t know existed Olive is desperate to get close to Theo—really, really close. She’s always struggled to connect with people. And now she’s in her thirties, single, and so flustered by relationships that she secretly records her conversations, hoping to decipher social clues and find a way to be less alone. Then Theo turns up for a shift at the same food pantry where she volunteers. He’s a surgeon fascinated by human organs, a former soccer player, and possibly as weird as Olive. For the first time, someone seems to crave and understand her. Every recording Olive makes of Theo is a balm, which just makes her more afraid of losing him. The only solution seems to be to bind him to her forever. Luckily, the gap between Theo’s front teeth is just wide enough for something—or someone—to slip inside. Arresting and immersive, Open Wide explores the boundaries of love and the body, as universal human impulses bleed into the surreal.

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Steelborn

Taylor J. LaRue

Introducing an epic, slow burn enemies-to-lovers romantasy novel about a heroine forged in steel and rage, and the cursed immortal who might turn out to be as much her salvation as she is his, perfect for fans of Danielle L. Jensen and Callie Hart. Never run. Never bow. Never die. Reya Connery became the Crimson Dagger, the most notorious thief in Rhiterra, by following a strict set of rules. One: There is no honor among thieves. Two: A good blade is key to any negotiation. Three: Only the dead keep secrets. And Reya has a secret that must be kept at all costs. But when a heist goes wrong on the eve of paying off her debt to a ruthless crime lord, Reya may need a new set of rules. And lots of coin. Fast. Enter Caelan Halcyon, an immortal warrior whose magic makes him a valuable target—if the curse inching closer to his heart doesn’t kill him first. There’s just one person who might be desperate enough to try and get their hands on the fabled cure in time to save his life, someone whose legend claims they can steal anything: the Crimson Dagger. A male of honor, Caelan loathes everything the beautiful, cocky thief represents, yet knows that Reya is his last hope for survival. Their search takes them to the edge of the known world, where Reya discovers that there is far more at stake than her and Caelan’s own lives. Now, Reya must confront deadly foes, her growing attraction to the immortal who is as lethal as his jawline is perfect, and the rage she’s spent a lifetime trying to bury. This time, her daggers aren’t going to cut it, and the fate of all magic-born hangs in the balance. Enter a world ruled by tyrants and thieves, where magic is outlawed, revolution brews, desire is dangerous, and an impossible cure may prove deadlier than the curse.

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Little Black Classics Box Set (Penguin Little Black Classics)

Various Various

The irresistibly collectible box set of all 80 Little Black Classics In celebration of Penguin's 80th birthday, this box set of the 80 books in the Little Black Classics series showcases the many wonderful and varied writers in Penguin Black Classics. From India to Greece, Denmark to Iran, and not forgetting Britain, this assortment of books will transport readers back in time to the furthest corners of the globe. With a choice of fiction, poetry, essays and maxims, by the likes of Chekhov, Balzac, Ovid, Austen, Sappho and Dante, it won't be difficult to find a book to suit your mood. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of the Penguin Classics list - from drama to poetry, from fiction to history, with books taken from around the world and across numerous centuries.The Little Black Classics Box Set includes: Gooseberries (Anton Chekhov), The Terrors of the Night (Thomas Nashe), The Atheist's Mass (Honoré de Balzac), A Simple Heart (Gustave Flaubert), The Nose (Nikolay Gogol), The Figure in the Carpet (Henry James), The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon (Aesop), The Maldive Shark (Herman Melville), How Much Land Does A Man Need? (Leo Tolstoy), Traffic (John Ruskin), The Yellow Wall-paper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman), Socrates' Defence (Plato), The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows (Rudyard Kipling), The Steel Flea (Nikolai Leskov), The Meek One (Fyodor Dostoyevsky), Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime (Oscar Wilde), The Tinder Box (Hans Christian Andersen), To-morrow (Joseph Conrad), Of Street Piemen (Henry Mayhew), The Great Winglebury Duel (Charles Dickens), The Great Fire of London (Samuel Pepys), The Old Man in the Moon (Shen Fu), Miss Brill (Katherine Mansfield), The Communist Manifesto (Fredrich Engels and Karl Marx), How To Use Your Enemies (Baltasar Gracián), It was snowing butterflies (Charles Darwin), Il Duro (D. H. Lawrence), The Fall of Icarus (Ovid), My Dearest Father (Wolfgang Mozart), Kasyan from the Beautiful Mountains (Ivan Turgenev), Goblin Market (Christina Rossetti), Sindbad the Sailor, Leonardo da Vinci (Giorgio Vasari), As kingfishers catch fire (Gerard Manley Hopkins), Caligula (Suetonius), The Woman Much Missed (Thomas Hardy), Femme Fatale (Guy De Maupassant), The Night is Darkening Round Me (Emily Brontë), O Cruel Alexis (Virgil), Sketchy, Doubtful, Incomplete Jottings (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), Remember, Body… (C. P. Cavafy), Anthem For Doomed Youth (Wilfred Owen), The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue (Anon), Olalla (Robert Louis Stevenson), A Modest Proposal (Jonathan Swift), On the Beach at Night Alone (Walt Whitman), The Robber Bridegroom (Brothers Grimm), Aphorisms on Love and Death (Friedrich Nietzsche), The Wife of Bath (Geoffrey Chaucer), The Tell-Tale Heart (Edgar Allan Poe), How a Ghastly Story Was Brought to Light by a Common or Garden Butcher's Dog (Johann Peter Hebel), The Eve of St Agnes (John Keats), Circe and the Cyclops (Homer), Come Close (Sappho), Jason and Medea (Apollonius of Rhodes), A Slip Under the Microscope (H. G. Wells), The Dhammapada (Anon), I Hate and I Love (Catullus), Circles of Hell (Dante), The Life of a Stupid Man (Ryunosuke Akutagawa), Trimalchio's Feast (Petronius), Wailing Ghosts (Pu Songling), The Madness of Cambyses (Herodotus), Lips Too Chilled (Matsuo Basho), How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing (Michel de Montaigne), Well, they are gone, and here must I remain (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), Speaking of Siva (Anon), The Beautifull Cassandra (Jane Austen), A Hippo Banquet (Mary Kingsley), Antigone (Sophocles), On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts (Thomas De Quincey), Three Tang Dynasty Poets (Wang Wei), A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees (Kenko), Mrs Rosie and the Priest (Giovanni Boccaccio), The Voyage of Sir Francis Drake Around the Whole Globe (Richard Hakluyt, The nightingales are drunk (Hafez), Travels in the Land of Serpents and Pearls (Marco Polo), The Old Nure's Story (Elizabeth Gaskell), A Pair of Silk Stockings (Kate Chopin), and The Reckoning (Edith Wharton).

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