The Emperor needs necromancers. The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman. Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead bullshit. Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won't set her free without a service. Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon's sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die. Of course, some things are better left dead.

From V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: a new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger. This is a story about hunger. 1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada. A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets. This is a story about love. 1827. London. A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow—but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined. This is a story about rage. 2019. Boston. College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge. This is a story about life— how it ends, and how it starts.

From Atlantic critic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert, a blazing critique of how early-aughts pop culture turned women and girls against each other—and themselves—with disastrous consequencesWhat happened to feminism in the 21st century? This question feels increasingly urgent after a period of reactionary cultural and legislative backlash, when widespread uncertainty about the movement’s power, focus, and currency threatens decades of progress. Sophie Gilbert, a staff writer at The Atlantic and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism, provides one answer, identifying an inflection point in the late 1990s and early 2000s when the energy of third-wave and “riot girrrl” feminism collapsed into a regressive period of hyper-objectification, sexualization, and infantilization. Gilbert mines the darker side of nostalgia, training her keen analytic eye on the most revealing cultural objects of the era, across music, film, television, fashion, tabloid journalism, and more. And what she recounts is harrowing, from the leering aesthetic of American Apparel ads and explicit music videos to a burgeoning internet culture vicious towards women in the spotlight and damaging for those who weren’t. Gilbert tracks many of the period’s dominant themes back to the explosion of internet porn, tracing its widespread influence as it began to pervade our collective consciousness. Gilbert paints a devastating picture of an era when a distinctly American confluence of excess, materialism, and power-worship collided with the culture’s reactionary, puritanical, and chauvinistic currents. Amid a collective reconsideration of the way women are treated in public, Girl on Girl is a blistering indictment of the matrix of misogyny that undergirded the cultural production of the early twenty-first century, and how it continues to shape our world today.

At once a time-travelling horror story and a fugue-like feminist manifesto, this is a singular, genre-warping new novel from the author of the acclaimed Paradise Rot. “It’s 1992 and I’m the Gloomiest Child Queen.” Welcome to 1990s Norway. White picket fences run in neat rows and Christian conservatism runs deep. But as the Artist considers her past, her practice and her hatred, things start stirring themselves up around her. In a corner of Oslo, a coven of witches begins cooking up some curses. A time-travelling Edvard Munch arrives in town to join a black metal band, closely pursued by the teenaged subject of his painting Puberty, who has murder on her mind. Meanwhile, out deep in the forest, a group of school girls get very lost and things get very strange. Awful things happen in aspic. Jenny Hval’s latest novel is a radical fusion of feminist theory and experimental horror, and a unique treatise on magic, gender and art.

A whipsmart debut about three women—transgender and cisgender—whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex. Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men. Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together? This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.

From the award-winning author of The Twisted Ones comes a gripping and atmospheric retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Fall of the House of Usher." When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruravia. What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves. Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.

Violence and the Sacred is Rene Girard's landmark study of human evil. Here Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred.

A powerful reimagining of the story of Ganga, goddess of the river, and her doomed mortal son, from Vaishnavi Patel, author of the instant New York Times bestseller Kaikeyi . A mother and a son. A goddess and a prince. A curse and an oath. A river whose course will change the fate of the world. Ganga, joyful goddess of the river, serves as caretaker to the mischievous godlings who roam her banks. But when their antics incur the wrath of a powerful sage, Ganga is cursed to become mortal, bound to her human form until she fulfills the obligations of the curse. Though she knows nothing of mortal life, Ganga weds King Shantanu and becomes a queen, determined to regain her freedom no matter the cost. But in a cruel turn of fate, just as she is freed of her binding, she is forced to leave her infant son behind. Her son, prince Devavrata, unwittingly carries the legacy of Ganga’s curse. And when he makes an oath that he will never claim his father’s throne, he sets in motion a chain of events that will end in a terrible and tragic war. As the years unfold, Ganga and Devavrata are drawn together again and again, each confluence another step on a path that has been written in the stars, in this deeply moving and masterful tale of duty, destiny, and the unwavering bond between mother and son.

Four friends go hiking in the woods and take a wrong turn. Two girls meet in a nightclub in London. A boy goes to sleep after a horrible night out, and wakes up as a woman seventeen years later. The son of a clan’s chief is asked to act as a guide for their guest, a girl from the sea. At Christmas, a girl summons a spirit and makes a wish. Five stories about people finding themselves, with the help of a bit of magic.

A new Queer, Asian-inspired fantasy novella about a renowned dragon slayer who never takes her armor off in public, Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame reads like She Who Became the Sun meets The Mandalorian, with dragons!The fiercely independent nation of Quanbao is isolated, reclusive, and something of a mystery to the rest of the world. It is rumored that there, dragons are not feared as is right and proper but instead loved and worshiped.Yeva is perhaps a strange emissary to these people. Not only because their face has never been seen in public, but because they are a hero born to a birthright that makes them suited for their task—hunting dragons.And so the dragon hunter must woo Quanbao's queen—the Lady Sookhee—to understand what secrets she is hiding. A woman reasonably suspicious of Yeva's intentions, and the imperial might of the throne she represents, Sookhee bears the burden of the safety of her entire people. How can she trust this stranger newly arrived to her court, a weapon forged in blood and fire, to understand what her people need and how best to safeguard their future?At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.