In this chilling novel from bestselling author John Marrs, a young couple’s house hides terrible secrets—and not all of them are confined to the past. Mia and Finn are busy turning a derelict house into their dream home when Mia unexpectedly falls pregnant. But just when they think the house is ready, Mia discovers a chilling message scored into a skirting board: I WILL SAVE THEM FROM THE ATTIC. Following the clue up into the eaves, the couple make a gruesome discovery: their dream home was once a house of horrors. In the wake of their traumatic discovery, the baby arrives and Mia can’t shake her fixation with the monstrous crimes that happened right above them. Haunted by the terrible things she saw and desperate to find answers, her obsession pulls her ever further from her husband. Secrecy shrouds the mystery of the attic, but when shards of a dark truth start to emerge, Mia realises the danger is terrifyingly present. She is prepared to do anything to protect her family—but is it already too late?

Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she’s studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book is a revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also so much more. Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren’s stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom’s labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done “with both the heart and the hands”; and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, of scientific work.Yet at the core of this book is the story of a relationship Jahren forged with a brilliant, wounded man named Bill, who becomes her lab partner and best friend. Their sometimes rogue adventures in science take them from the Midwest across the United States and back again, over the Atlantic to the ever-light skies of the North Pole and to tropical Hawaii, where she and her lab currently make their home.

"No woman in the three-hundred-year history of the karyukai has ever come forward in public to tell her story. We have been constrained by unwritten rules not to do so, by the robes of tradition and by the sanctity of our exclusive calling...But I feel it is time to speak out." Celebrated as the most successful geisha of her generation, Mineko Iwasaki was only five years old when she left her parents' home for the world of the geisha. For the next twenty-five years, she would live a life filled with extraordinary professional demands and rich rewards. She would learn the formal customs and language of the geisha, and study the ancient arts of Japanese dance and music. She would enchant kings and princes, captains of industry, and titans of the entertainment world, some of whom would become her dearest friends. Through great pride and determination, she would be hailed as one of the most prized geishas in Japan's history, and one of the last great practitioners of this now fading art form. In Geisha, a Life, Mineko Iwasaki tells her story, from her warm early childhood, to her intense yet privileged upbringing in the Iwasaki okiya (household), to her years as a renowned geisha, and finally, to her decision at the age of twenty-nine to retire and marry, a move that would mirror the demise of geisha culture. Mineko brings to life the beauty and wonder of Gion Kobu, a place that "existed in a world apart, a special realm whose mission and identity depended on preserving the time-honored traditions of the past." She illustrates how it coexisted within post-World War II Japan at a time when the country was undergoing its radical transformation from a post-feudal society to a modern one. "There is much mystery and misunderstanding about what it means to be a geisha. I hope this story will help explain what it is really like and also serve as a record of this unique component of Japan's cultural history," writes Mineko Iwasaki. Geisha, a Life is the first of its kind, as it delicately unfolds the fabric of a geisha's development. Told with great wisdom and sensitivity, it is a true story of beauty and heroism, and of a time and culture rarely revealed to the Western world.

A haunting, atmospheric debut thriller with a love story at its heart, following a feisty young woman caught between her husband and a mysterious stranger who disturbs their off-grid life in rural Washington.Helen and Tyler were soulmates, a couple with a storybook beginning and an enduring bond, until Tyler’s sudden murder shattered her world. Numb with grief and desperate for escape, Helen impulsively marries Wade—a near stranger—and goes off-grid with him to a farmhouse in rural Washington, far from her polished Seattle existence.By day, Helen, who definitely wasn’t built for canning food and sewing dresses, contemplates setting her garden on fire. By night, she faces down insomnia and PTSD with her collection of poems by Plath and Poe—and daydreaming about her past with Tyler. But the routine of her “trad wife” life is broken when an unexpected traveler Isaac, Wade’s broodingly mysterious brother.Wade is stunned—Isaac died in a horrific farm accident years ago—and he quietly insists to Helen they are in danger. Helen isn’t sure what to believe. Has Isaac truly come back from the dead? Is Wade manipulating her fragile grip on reality? Or is her mind turning against her? As her suspicions close in from every side, Helen must navigate a maze of secrets, grief, and uncertainty—where trusting the wrong person could be fatal.A stunningly original debut, Call Off the Dark blends a heart-piercing love story, immersive psychological drama, and spine-tingling thriller, resulting in a multilayered, transportive narrative that reminds us of the magic in human connection and that our truest partners in life can keep us tethered to the world, even from the grave.

The forest doesn't just take what it's owed—it takes whatever it wants. Dominic was born in Aplin Shade, a remote Canadian town built on the bones of another that vanished without a trace. Bookish and quiet, he never asked to lead his family, but after a carriage crash kills his father and leaves his sister forever changed, he has no choice. The only person who truly sees him is Lex, a logger in the camp near town and the love Dominic must keep secret. Together they dream of escaping Aplin Shade, a place where isolation breeds judgment and every kindness hides a cost. But the forest is no refuge. The Fanteur dwell there—shadowed beings who come at night to drain the dead of their blood and return them for burial by dawn. They've never touched the living. Until now. As winter descends and the Fanteur strike back against the logging camp, Dominic and Lex must fight for their lives, their love, and a way out of the woods' tightening grasp. Because the forest doesn't forgive, and it never forgets.

Horror Movie meets The Blair Witch Project in this supernatural chokehold of a book told entirely through found documents: the cursed story of an unwitting couple ensnared by a mysterious tabletop role-playing game, who are commanded, as the game’s intentions become clearer, to do the unthinkable. Cole and Lorraine playtest board games for some extra cash as they save up to buy a home. But after a series of bizarre coincidences, and signing a strange NDA, the couple finds on their porch a mysterious indie developer’s tabletop role-playing game called The Ship of Death. The game relies heavily on the players’ imaginations, and takes up an ever-growing amount of space: in their kitchen, and in their minds. As its true sinister nature becomes clearer, and its forces capture more in its web, the boundary between the game and reality begins to dissolve. . . and the pair are instructed to possess a stranger’s soul. Told entirely through game reports, emails, game forum posts, personal journals, and police reports, reading The Ship of Death feels like a dangerous dice roll. It’s a sleep-stealing, possession-inducing work of intense, intelligent found cosmic horror that announces Kyle Winkler as a spectacular voice in the genre.

‘Waist Deep might be this literary year’s first full fledged miracle’ BerlingskeA group of friends from university; seven summer days in a cabin in rural Denmark. A chance to swim, sunbathe, flirt, read and spend time together like the old days.At least that’s what Sylvia had hoped. But when Gry turns up with her kids and Esben and Karen announce their wedding, Sylvia is left wondering what happened to the radical ways of living they envisaged at university. Plus, she is nursing a decades-long crush on Esben, that her monogamous, long-term girlfriend Charlie won’t approve of.Within the rest of the group, desire and anxiety swirl in equal measure. Quince finally feels at home in his body and is ready to rave, but there are children with bedtime routines. While sparks fly around the dinner table, Gry is feeling banal among her colourful, eccentric friends. Unusually, she’s also brought her husband Adam, the poster child for a heterosexual masculinity Quince can't decide if he wants to tear down or tie down.As the week progresses, discussions and flirtations intensify. A modern midsummer night’s dream for the new generation, Waist Deep adds a sensuous, ethereal flourish to the perennial what is the best way to live and love as you get older?‘A perfume dream of a debut’ Politiken‘Linea Maja Ernst writes about sexual desire so well that it turns her readers on’ Weekendavisen

An unexplained tragedy. A handsome stranger. A house of ghosts and memories. In this fresh take on the Gothic tale, a young Nigerian woman returns to the family mansion where her brother died—only to find the past ready to consume her.1967, Nigeria. Celia has been estranged from her family since they banished her to St. Agnes’s reform school after her brother’s death. When the school closes down, she has nowhere to go and no one to write for help. She secures a job as a typist, marking the beginning of a new chapter; she hopes to leave behind the demons of her past and become a normal, happier person. And when a charismatic yet secretive aspiring politician hires her to be his fiancé, Celia begins to dream of a possible new future. But everything falls apart and Celia, in desperation, returns to her childhood home, the Water House. There, Celia is confronted by her hostile mother, a past love, and the horrors that the house holds deep in its walls. As a civil war brews in the outside world, Celia begins to suspect that the truth behind her brother’s death might be more sinister than she imagined. In a twist on Jane Eyre and Rebecca, Nneoma Ife-Njoku weaves a mesmerizing story of a woman confronting a home where the past refuses to stay buried.

This humorous, heart-pounding, feminist slasher takes on misogynist social pressures with one former scream queen as she is pursued by a serial killer impersonating the antagonist of her films. Former scream queen Barbra Jacobs desperately wants to break out of the box Hollywood has neatly packaged her in. Cast as the star of the Mirror horror franchise films twenty years ago, the breakout role that shaped her career has also destroyed her dreams of being taken seriously as an actress. Now forty, and still seeking the approval of everyone around her, she makes ends meet by signing old photos of herself and doing meet and greets at horror conventions. So when a producer calls asking her host The Monsters We Made, a hot new horror docuseries, she sees it as a step in the right direction. But when fans begin dying around her—and in ways that mimic the kills in her films—Barb is thrust back into a role she can’t seem to walk away The Final Girl. Will she ever break out of the display-box-life she’s been imprisoned in, or will Mirror Man end it all in Barbie’s Scream House?