Halla is a housekeeper who has suddenly inherited her great-uncle’s estate… and, unfortunately, his relatives. Sarkis is an immortal swordsman trapped in a prison of enchanted steel. When Halla draws the sword that imprisons him, Sarkis finds himself attempting to defend his new wielder against everything from bandits and roving inquisitors to her own in-laws… and the sword itself may prove to be the greatest threat of all…

New York Times bestselling author T. Kingfisher returns to the cozy fantasy world of Swordheart in this deliciously charming sequel. Four hundred years ago, three warriors were trapped inside enchanted swords, cursed to be immortal servants of whoever wielded the blade. One of them is the Dervish, a restless, fiery soul who hates his captivity and hates his wielders even more, but has never found a way to escape the sword’s magic. Then one day, a disillusioned scholar named Learned Edmund is tasked with delivering the sword to a distant city, and, in the greatest of peril, draws the blade. The Dervish finds himself bound to a sweet, brilliant, and above all kind young man. And while he may be able to protect Edmund from bandits, cultists, dragons, and strange inhuman diplomats, he may find it much harder to protect his own heart.

Halla is a housekeeper who has suddenly inherited her great-uncle’s estate… and, unfortunately, his relatives. Sarkis is an immortal swordsman trapped in a prison of enchanted steel. When Halla draws the sword that imprisons him, Sarkis finds himself attempting to defend his new wielder against everything from bandits and roving inquisitors to her own in-laws… and the sword itself may prove to be the greatest threat of all…

Madeline Miller meets Angela Carter in this spellbinding queer retelling of the 12th-century tale of Bisclavret the werewolf—unmissable for fans of Uprooted by Naomi Novik, Swordcrossed by Freya Marske, and The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. A noble knight hiding the beast inside. A lonely king isolated by his courtiers. Between them an impossible gulf surmountable only by the twists and turns of relentless destiny in this spellbinding retelling of Marie de France’s classic 12th-century tale of romance and adventure. The wolf-sickness strikes always without warning, stealing Bisclavret’s body and confusing his mind. Since boyhood he hasn’t dared leave his isolated holdings—not to beg the return of his father’s lost estate, not to seek brotherhood among the court, not even to win the knighthood he yearns for. But when a new king ascends, Bisclavret must deliver his kiss of fealty or answer for the failure. Half an exile himself, the young king is intrigued by this uneasy, rough-hewn nobleman. Bisclavret seems a perfect knight: bold, strong, and merciful. But he keeps his secrets close, and the king’s longings are not for counsel alone. As his fascination grows, the barriers between them multiply, until the king battles desperation and grief. Then Bisclavret vanishes beyond reach, just as the greatest threats to the kingdom converge. Only duty to his people stands between the king and ruin—duty, and the steady loyalty of the strangest wolf . . .

The first novel in a new series set in the world of the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke award winning Ancillary Justice. "There are few who write science fiction like Ann Leckie can. There are few who ever could."―John Scalzi The mystery of a missing translator sets three lives on a collision course that will have a ripple effect across the stars in this powerful new novel by award-winning author Ann Leckie. Qven was created to be a Presger translator. The pride of their Clade, they always had a clear path before them: learn human ways, and eventually, make a match and serve as an intermediary between the dangerous alien Presger and the human worlds. The realization that they might want something else isn't "optimal behavior". I's the type of behavior that results in elimination. But Qven rebels. And in doing so, their path collides with those of two others. Enae, a reluctant diplomat whose dead grandmaman has left hir an impossible task as an inheritance: hunting down a fugitive who has been missing for over 200 years. And Reet, an adopted mechanic who is increasingly desperate to learn about his genetic roots--or anything that might explain why he operates so differently from those around him. As a Conclave of the various species approaches--and the long-standing treaty between the humans and the Presger is on the line--the decisions of all three will have ripple effects across the stars. Masterfully merging space adventure and mystery, and a poignant exploration about relationships and belonging, Translation State is a triumphant new standalone story set in Leckie's celebrated Imperial Radch universe.

From the author of Fun Home -- the lives, loves, and politics of cult fav characters Mo, Lois, Sydney, Sparrow, Ginger, Stuart, Clarice, and othersFor twenty-five years Bechdel’s path-breaking Dykes to Watch Out For strip has been collected in award-winning volumes (with a quarter of a million copies in print), syndicated in fifty alternative newspapers, and translated into many languages. Now, at last, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For gathers a “rich, funny, deep and impossible to put down” (Publishers Weekly) selection from all eleven Dykes volumes. Here too are sixty of the newest strips, never before published in book form.Settle in to this wittily illustrated soap opera (Bechdel calls it “half op-ed column and half endless serialized Victorian novel”) of the lives, loves, and politics of a cast of characters, most of them lesbian, living in a midsize American city that may or may not be Minneapolis.Her brilliantly imagined countercultural band of friends -- academics, social workers, bookstore clerks -- fall in and out of love, negotiate friendships, raise children, switch careers, and cope with aging parents.Bechdel fuses high and low culture -- from foreign policy to domestic routine, hot sex to postmodern theory -- in a serial graphic narrative “suitable for humanists of all persuasions.”

A classic of Mexican modern literature about a haunted village. As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro Páramo - lover, overlord, murderer. Rulfo's extraordinary mix of sensory images, violent passions, and unfathomable mysteries has been a profound influence on a whole generation of Latin American writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel García Márquez. To read Pedro Páramo today is as overwhelming an experience as when it was first published in Mexico back in 1955.

Dawn is breaking over the Guilleries, a rugged mountain range in Catalonia frequented by wolf hunters, brigands, deserters, race-car drivers, ghosts, and demons. In a remote farmhouse called Mas Clavell, an impossibly old woman lies on her deathbed. Family and caretakers drift in and out. Meanwhile, all the women who have lived and died in that house are waiting for her to join them. They are preparing to throw her a party. As day turns to night, four hundred years’ worth of stories unspool, and the house reverberates with raucous laughter, pungent feasts, and piercing cries of pleasure and pain. It all begins with Joana, Mas Clavell’s matriarch, who once longed for a husband―“a full man,” perhaps even “an heir with a patch of land and a roof over his head.” She summoned the devil to fulfill her wish and struck a deal: a man in exchange for her soul. But when, on her wedding day, Joana discovered that her husband was missing a toe (eaten by wolves), she exploited a loophole in her agreement, heedless of what consequences might follow.

There is a lot more to kidnapping than financial analyst Mickey Rapowski ever imagined. Mickey has a chip on her shoulder—she’s been cheated out of a small fortune by corporate giant Victoria Gresham. In an irrational attempt at revenge, Mickey kidnaps Gresham’s girlfriend, Ginette Felstrom. A straightforward and effective plan—except Ginette is the worst captive ever and no one wants to pay her ransom. Out of her depth as every one of her well-laid plans spins totally out of control, Mickey becomes the victim of reverse Stockholm Syndrome and falls head over heels for her captive. How could something so simple go so wrong? Or is that…right?

Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Constantinople, awakes to find that he is now a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Corvus has always had an overactive imagination. Growing up, she develops a unique coping mechanism: she can imagine herself out of any situation, no matter how terrible. To get through each day, Corvus escapes into scenes from fantasy novels, pop songs, and action/adventure movies, and survives by turning the everyday into just another role to play in the movie of her life. After a tragic loss, Corvus finds a sadness so great she cannot imagine it away. Instead, she finds Tim, a pornographer with unconventional methods, who offers her a new way to escape into movies. But when a sinister plot of greed and betrayal is revealed, Corvus must fight to reclaim her independence, and discovers she is stronger than even she could have imagined. Written in Richard Chiem’s singular style, this debut novel is equal parts sledgehammer and sweet song, a neon, pulsing portrait of grief. King of Joy tells the triumphant, electrifying story of one woman’s quest for survival against all odds, and serves as a reminder that resilience can be found even in our most hopeless moments.

Bree Paulsen's brave little protagonist, Garlic, is back in this charmingly illustrated standalone companion to Garlic and the Vampire, serving up another tale of friendship, magic, and self-discovery. Give both books to readers who fell in love with Tidesong or Witch Boy! Garlic loves spending time with Witch Agnes, Carrot, and her new friend, the Count, who has proven to be a delightful neighbor to the village of vegetable people rather than a scary vampire. But despite Agnes's best attempts to home-brew a vegetarian blood substitute for Count, the ingredient she needs most can only be found at the Magic Market, far from the valley. Before she knows it, with a broomstick in hand, Garlic is nervously preparing for a journey. But Garlic is experiencing another change too--finger by finger, she appears to be turning human. Witch Agnes assures her that this is normal for her garden magic, but Garlic isn't so sure that she's ready for such a big change. After all, changes are scary...and what if she doesn't want to be human after all?

A debut collection of stories set in a hauntingly reimagined Lagos where characters vie for freedom from ancestral ties. ’Pemi Aguda opens her collection of twelve stories with the chilling tale of a woman who uncannily resembles her sinister, deceased grandmother. When the woman shows a capacity for deadly violence, she wonders—can evil be genetic, passed from generation to generation? Set in Lagos, Nigeria, Aguda’s stories unfold against a spectral cityscape where the everyday business of living—the birth of a baby, a market visit, a conversation between mothers and daughters—is charged with an air of supernatural menace. In “Breastmilk” a new mother’s inability to lactate takes on preternatural overtones. In “24, Alhaji Williams Street” a mysterious disease wreaks havoc with frightening precision. In “The Hollow,” an architect stumbles on a vengeful house. Evocative, strange, and yet familiar, “the speculative conceits of these stories are elegantly balanced with the gorgeous fullness of human emotion, all the hunger and longing and fear and delight of being a human in the world” (Lauren Groff).

HOMECOMING In the aftermath of Gu Mang’s defeat of the Demonblood Beast, Mo Xi rallies Chonghua’s troops to face the Liao Kingdom. But there is little hope for victory. The blood pool left by the beast’s death draws ever closer to the city walls, and the wicked Hua Po’an appears unstoppable. Just as all seems lost, the enigmatic Jiang Fuli reappears with an astonishing magical item—an ancient artifact with the ability to alter the past. Mo Xi is presented with one last chance to avert Chonghua’s tragic future and save everyone he’s lost, though the cost to himself could be unimaginable. He is faced with a choice: How much more can he sacrifice for his beloved, and for the nation they both call home? This Regular Edition volume includes a two-page fold-out bound into the book!

HOMECOMING In the aftermath of Gu Mang’s defeat of the Demonblood Beast, Mo Xi rallies Chonghua’s troops to face the Liao Kingdom. But there is little hope for victory. The blood pool left by the beast’s death draws ever closer to the city walls, and the wicked Hua Po’an appears unstoppable. Just as all seems lost, the enigmatic Jiang Fuli reappears with an astonishing magical item—an ancient artifact with the ability to alter the past. Mo Xi is presented with one last chance to avert Chonghua’s tragic future and save everyone he’s lost, though the cost to himself could be unimaginable. He is faced with a choice: How much more can he sacrifice for his beloved, and for the nation they both call home? This Regular Edition volume includes a two-page fold-out bound into the book!

DARK BEFORE THE DAWNAs Gu Mang's mind continues to deteriorate, he and Mo Xi set out for the prefecture of Lin'an, hoping to find a legendary sage with the ability to summon Gu Mang's missing souls. Chances of success are vanishingly small, but Mo Xi is unwilling to give up any hope of restoring his beloved to health.Upon arrival, however, Mo Xi and Gu Mang find no such fabled sage, but a familiar face--Murong Chuyi, who has arrived with the rest of the Yue Clan, including Yue Chenqing and the estranged Jiang Yexue, to complete a perilous blood ritual. What begins as a chance encounter soon turns deadly as Mo Xi stumbles across one of the clan's darkest and most deeply buried secrets.

DARK BEFORE THE DAWNAs Gu Mang's mind continues to deteriorate, he and Mo Xi set out for the prefecture of Lin'an, hoping to find a legendary sage with the ability to summon Gu Mang's missing souls. Chances of success are vanishingly small, but Mo Xi is unwilling to give up any hope of restoring his beloved to health.Upon arrival, however, Mo Xi and Gu Mang find no such fabled sage, but a familiar face--Murong Chuyi, who has arrived with the rest of the Yue Clan, including Yue Chenqing and the estranged Jiang Yexue, to complete a perilous blood ritual. What begins as a chance encounter soon turns deadly as Mo Xi stumbles across one of the clan's darkest and most deeply buried secrets.

Tangier is a possessed city, haunted by spirits of different faiths. When we have literature in our blood, in our souls, it's impossible not to be visited by them. -- from Another Morocco In 2006, Abdellah Taia returned to his native Morocco to promote the Moroccan release of his second book, Le rouge du tarbouche ( The Red of the Fez). During this book tour, he was interviewed by a reporter for the French-Arab journal Tel Quel, who was intrigued by the themes of homosexuality she saw in his writing. Taia, who had not publically come out and feared the repercussions for himself and his family of doing so in a country where homosexuality continues to be outlawed, nevertheless consented to the interview and subsequent profile, "Homosexuel envers et contre tous" ("Homosexual against All Odds"). This interview made him the first openly gay writer to be published in Morocco. Another Morocco collects short stories from Taia's first two books, Mon Maroc ( My Morocco) and Le rouge du tarbouche, both published before this pivotal moment. In these stories, we see a young writer testing the porousness of boundaries, flirting with strategies of revelation and concealment. These are tales of life in a working-class Moroccan family, of a maturing writer's fraught relationship with language and community, and of the many cities and works that have inspired him. With a reverence for the subaltern -- for the strength of women and the disenfranchised -- these stories speak of humanity and the construction of the self against forces that would invalidate its very existence. Taia's work is, necessarily, a political gesture.

Kellen Tavadon, son of the Arch-Mage Lycaelon, thought he knew the way the world worked. His father, leading the wise and benevolent Council of Mages, protected and guided the citizens of the Golden City of the Bells. Young Mages in training-all men, for women were unfit to practice magic-memorized the intricate details of High Magic and aspired to seats on the council. Then he found the forbidden Books of Wild Magic-or did they find him? The three slim volumes woke Kellen to the wide world outside the City's isolating walls. Their Magic was not dead, strangled by rules and regulations. It felt like a living thing, guided by the hearts and minds of those who practiced it and benefited from it. Questioning everything he has known, Kellen discovers too many of the City's dark secrets. Banished, with the Outlaw Hunt on his heels, Kellen invokes Wild Magic-and finds himself running for his life with a unicorn at his side. Kellen's life changes almost faster than he can understand or accept. Rescued by a unicorn, healed by a female Wild Mage who knows more about Kellen than anyone outside the City should, meeting Elven royalty and Elven warriors, and plunged into a world where the magical beings he has learned about as abstract concepts are flesh and blood creatures-Kellen both revels in and fears his new freedom. Especially once he learns about Demons. He'd always thought they were another abstract concept-a stand-in for ultimate evil. But if centaurs and dryads are real, then Demons surely are as well. And the one thing all the Mages of the City agreed on was that practicing Wild Magic corrupted a Mage. Turned him into a Demon. Would that be Kellen's fate? Deep in Obsidian Mountain, the Demons are waiting. Since their defeat in the last great War, they've been biding their time, sowing the seeds of distrust and discontent between their human and Elven enemies. Very soon now, when the Demons rise to make war, there will be no alliance between High and Wild Magic to stand against them. And all the world will belong to the Endarkened.