Love grows in the most impossible of places in Summer N. England's debut sweet and spicy cozy romantasy for fans of The Spellshop and For Whom the Belle Tolls!  All gardener Clara Thorne wants is to live "happily ever after" in her beloved town of Moss, magically growing herbs and vegetables and trying to write her book. But Fate has other plans when The Goddess unexpectedly bestows her with an impossible quest. Clara has one month to travel to the cursed and abandoned town of Dwindle and grow them a garden. If she fails, she will be banished. Only Clara's magic doesn't work outside of Moss, a fact she has kept hidden for years. Worse, the Goddess has assigned the absurdly sexy, annoyingly cheerful Hesper Altanfall to keep her safe. All leather and crossbows, Hesper is as determined to protect Clara as she is full of secrets—but Clara would rather eat thorns than accept help. Nevertheless, the two can't help but grow closer as they make their way across enchanted woods, share one too many tavern beds, and work together to rebuild Dwindle one garden bed at a time. Clara, however, refuses to give in to their blossoming romance. She’s had one too many losses, and Hesper might the one to break her beyond repair. But if Clara can find the key to opening her heart, she may just unearth the life and love she's always believed to be impossible.  

KEEP YOUR ENEMIES CLOSER As the case of the murders in the capital comes to a close, Mo Xi takes custody of Gu Mang, the traitor who was once his lover. With his betrayer now firmly in his grasp, Mo Xi believes he can manipulate Gu Mang into revealing the hidden secrets within his broken mind. Yet one question continues to haunt Mo Xi: Is Gu Mang pretending, or has he truly forgotten everything? Tortured by specters of the past and bound by demands of the present, Mo Xi begins to lose hope of ever gaining the satisfaction he craves. But when Gu Mang’s memories finally do surface, what–or who–will he remember?

June, 1852.A preacher’s daughter with a secret. An outlaw running from the gallows. A love story spanning oceans and deserts and years. When Abby Proctor is kidnapped from a train in the middle of the desert halfway to her new life in California, she makes a promise to herself—she will escape. Because there’s a reason Abby is leaving Iowa and all its oppressions behind, and she refuses to be someone’s prisoner again. Especially when that someone is the infamous female outlaw Joey ‘JT London’ Taylor, Abby's brash, brooding, and inconveniently beautiful captor.But as Abby plots her escape, she stumbles upon a larger conspiracy at play behind her kidnapping—a complicated revelation considering the feelings she’s been having for Joey, who might not be the ruthless criminal everyone believes her to be. And when Abby realizes it’s all connected—her kidnapping, the secrets she left behind in Iowa, even her plans in California—she has to decide between returning to a life of obedience and unhappiness, or trusting an enigmatic outlaw who is bound for the gallows.

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.

A wildly inventive and entertaining novel about a sci-fi writing group whose fictional universe and personal dramas begin to collide and collapse from the critically acclaimed author of the “timeless and original” (The New York Times) The Body Scout.Perennially single, socially awkward, and drowning in debt, Michael Lincoln’s life has turned out nothing like the intergalactic pulp heroes of his youth. But these are pedestrian concerns—he has a greater calling, and that is to preserve for all posterity the greatest series in the history of the written The Star Rot Chronicles. Written collectively by Michael’s best (and perhaps only) friend Taras K. Castle and his misfit sci-fi writing group, the Orb 4, the stories follow Captain Baldwin and his fearless crew on their mind-bending adventures across the Metallic Realms, from solar whales swallowing suns at the edge of spacetime to interstellar love triangles. These masterpieces have gone tragically unpublished—until now. But the most urgent story Michael must tell takes place in the more intimate (if no less dramatic) confines of literary Brooklyn. Behind the greatest multiverse ever created, there are the all-too-mortal people who wrote it. As Michael chronicles the personal melodramas of the Orb 4 as well as the funhouse reflections in their fiction, the line between real and unreal becomes dangerously thin, and the true reasons for the group’s fallout begin to emerge. As he labors away in hiding, Michael has just one to bring the Metallic Realms to the world. No matter the cost. Metallic Realms is a genre-breaking ode to golden-age science fiction, friendship, creativity, and the power and perils of storytelling.

June, 1852.A preacher’s daughter with a secret. An outlaw running from the gallows. A love story spanning oceans and deserts and years. When Abby Proctor is kidnapped from a train in the middle of the desert halfway to her new life in California, she makes a promise to herself—she will escape. Because there’s a reason Abby is leaving Iowa and all its oppressions behind, and she refuses to be someone’s prisoner again. Especially when that someone is the infamous female outlaw Joey ‘JT London’ Taylor, Abby's brash, brooding, and inconveniently beautiful captor.But as Abby plots her escape, she stumbles upon a larger conspiracy at play behind her kidnapping—a complicated revelation considering the feelings she’s been having for Joey, who might not be the ruthless criminal everyone believes her to be. And when Abby realizes it’s all connected—her kidnapping, the secrets she left behind in Iowa, even her plans in California—she has to decide between returning to a life of obedience and unhappiness, or trusting an enigmatic outlaw who is bound for the gallows.

KEEP YOUR ENEMIES CLOSER As the case of the murders in the capital comes to a close, Mo Xi takes custody of Gu Mang, the traitor who was once his lover. With his betrayer now firmly in his grasp, Mo Xi believes he can manipulate Gu Mang into revealing the hidden secrets within his broken mind. Yet one question continues to haunt Mo Xi: Is Gu Mang pretending, or has he truly forgotten everything? Tortured by specters of the past and bound by demands of the present, Mo Xi begins to lose hope of ever gaining the satisfaction he craves. But when Gu Mang’s memories finally do surface, what–or who–will he remember?

The Noble General's Only Stain Noble-born Mo Xi is the foremost general of Chonghua, known for his ruthless temper and ascetic air. Once he was one of two promising young commanders, twin stars of the empire. His comrade, the lowborn Gu Mang, was Mo Xi's brother-in-arms, best friend, and--secretly--his lover, until the day Gu Mang turned traitor and joined the ranks of their nation's greatest enemy. Now Gu Mang has been returned to the empire a ruined man, a shadow of the military genius he once was. The public clamors for his death, and no one yearns for vengeance more than Mo Xi. Or so he thought--for faced once more with his bitterest enemy, Mo Xi is left with more questions than answers. Why did the man he loved betray him? And what secrets hide behind Gu Mang's tortured eyes?

The long-awaited translation of the novel behind the cult classic Japanese movie. In this gloriously over-the-top tale, Aoyama, a widower who has lived alone with his son ever since his wife died seven years before, finally decides it is time to remarry. Since Aoyama is a bit rusty when it comes to dating, a filmmaker friend proposes that, in order to attract the perfect wife, they do a casting call for a movie they don’t intend to produce. As the résumés pile up, only one of the applicants catches Aoyama’s attention—Yamasaki Asami—a striking young former ballerina with a mysterious past. Blinded by his instant and total infatuation, Aoyama is too late in discovering that she is a far cry from the innocent young woman he imagines her to be. The novel’s fast-paced, thriller conclusion doesn’t spare the reader as Yamasaki takes off her angelic mask and reveals what lies beneath. .

From an award-winning writer, a debut novel that’s a fresh and dazzling portrait of a family and its history in the American South, from Reconstruction through the present dayAt thirty-two, Aubrey Lamb is stumbling into adulthood. A semi-employed gig worker in Washington, DC, she's grieving the recent loss of her father and the end of a relationship that she’d thought would lead to marriage. When Aubrey learns that she has inherited a shared stake in a sizable Tennessee farm from her father, she simply sees an opportunity to get out of the city—and the potential to erase a mounting pile of debts.Upon her arrival in Lanyer County, though, Aubrey meets the relatives with whom she shares ownership of the farm, and discovers the backstory of the land, beginning with her great-grandfather Thomas—one of the first Black landowners in his community, who gave his four children a homestead on which they could flourish.But the land proves to be a burdensome inheritance. Over the years, it divides the family, turning Thomas’ descendants against each other and drawing the attention of external forces only too eager to wrest the land from Black hands. These struggles come to a head when a catastrophic tragedy befalls the Lambs, splintering the family and echoing down through the decades, with repercussions for Audrey herself.As Aubrey learns this history from her living relatives, the ghosts of her ancestors interject with their own exasperated, gossipy commentary on the flaws and foibles of relatives living and dead, and stake their own claims on the farm.Injecting the expansive family sagas of Honorée Fanonne Jeffers and Margaret Wilkerson Sexton with a very modern voice, The Great Wherever is at once grand and intimate; it explores the ways we learn to define ourselves through and against our family, how we carry on after loss, and how the past lives on in all of us.

The acclaimed, prize-winning #1 New York Times bestselling writer returns with a moving, luminous novel that reminds us of the sweetness and impermanence of life and the power of connection to defy time. When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again. Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.

An immortal, doomed to die. A time traveler, desperate to save her. When Zera travels back in time to 2040, she aims to investigate the geomagnetic storm that scorched the earth. Instead, she finds the beautiful Katherine, who speaks of past storms and asks with her dying breath, “Is this the first time we meet?” From WWII-era New York to early 2000s New Orleans and everywhere in between, Zera chases both storms and Katherine, thinking her immortality is the key to fixing the future. But as the immortal goes from a reluctant ally with a deadly hunter to a romantic complication, Zera wonders if the past is really set in stone, or if she can still save the world—and Katherine.

A searing novel of love and betrayal as a young boy comes of age in the heart of England, from an exquisite new voice.In a small village in England, in the shadow of an ancient abbey nestled between rivers, a young boy is growing up. Daniel is highly intelligent but little understood by his family, and so a secret passion burns inside him—for love, for certainty, and for recognition. His father is a man of grand gestures but few practical skills, and his beautiful mother is attentive but compromised by her own unhappiness and fading ideals.  When Daniel’s father loses his job as the headmaster of the local school, the family is pulled beneath the undertow of his whims, stumbling into a rural life for which they are ill-prepared. The arrival of Philip, a new boy at school, whom Daniel worships with a confused intensity, is his sole solace. Before long, both boys fall under the spell of a charismatic art teacher, setting Daniel on a perilous course that could lead to the betrayal of all he loves.  Tender, brutal, and enthralling, The Boyhood of Cain is a remarkable portrait of a young boy caught between mother and father, between self and desire, and between obedience and freedom. It evokes the passions and private wounds of youth and plumbs the turning points in our lives that make us who we are.

The Noble General's Only Stain Noble-born Mo Xi is the foremost general of Chonghua, known for his ruthless temper and ascetic air. Once he was one of two promising young commanders, twin stars of the empire. His comrade, the lowborn Gu Mang, was Mo Xi's brother-in-arms, best friend, and--secretly--his lover, until the day Gu Mang turned traitor and joined the ranks of their nation's greatest enemy. Now Gu Mang has been returned to the empire a ruined man, a shadow of the military genius he once was. The public clamors for his death, and no one yearns for vengeance more than Mo Xi. Or so he thought--for faced once more with his bitterest enemy, Mo Xi is left with more questions than answers. Why did the man he loved betray him? And what secrets hide behind Gu Mang's tortured eyes?

From World Fantasy Award-winning author Tasha Suri comes The Isle in the Silver Sea, a heart-shattering standalone romantasy of sapphic longing, medieval folklore and a love that spans the centuries. In an England fuelled by stories, the knight and the witch are fated to fall in love and doom each other over and over, the same tale retold over hundreds of lifetimes. Simran is a witch of the woods. Vina is a knight of the Queen’s court. When the two women begin to fall for each other, how can they surrender to their desires, when to give in is to destroy each other?  As they seek a way to break the cycle, a mysterious assassin begins targeting tales like theirs. To survive, the two will need to write a story stronger than the one that fate has given to them.But what tale is stronger than The Knight and the Witch?

A wildly inventive and entertaining novel about a sci-fi writing group whose fictional universe and personal dramas begin to collide and collapse from the critically acclaimed author of the “timeless and original” (The New York Times) The Body Scout.Perennially single, socially awkward, and drowning in debt, Michael Lincoln’s life has turned out nothing like the intergalactic pulp heroes of his youth. But these are pedestrian concerns—he has a greater calling, and that is to preserve for all posterity the greatest series in the history of the written The Star Rot Chronicles. Written collectively by Michael’s best (and perhaps only) friend Taras K. Castle and his misfit sci-fi writing group, the Orb 4, the stories follow Captain Baldwin and his fearless crew on their mind-bending adventures across the Metallic Realms, from solar whales swallowing suns at the edge of spacetime to interstellar love triangles. These masterpieces have gone tragically unpublished—until now. But the most urgent story Michael must tell takes place in the more intimate (if no less dramatic) confines of literary Brooklyn. Behind the greatest multiverse ever created, there are the all-too-mortal people who wrote it. As Michael chronicles the personal melodramas of the Orb 4 as well as the funhouse reflections in their fiction, the line between real and unreal becomes dangerously thin, and the true reasons for the group’s fallout begin to emerge. As he labors away in hiding, Michael has just one to bring the Metallic Realms to the world. No matter the cost. Metallic Realms is a genre-breaking ode to golden-age science fiction, friendship, creativity, and the power and perils of storytelling.

Manhunt meets Lord of the Flies in this blistering horror debut following a young trans woman after she arrives at the all-trans girl commune founded by her toxic ex-girlfriend, only to discover that demons, both literal and figurative, haunt her fellow comrades—and she's their next prey! Herculine’s narrator has demons. Sure, her life includes several hallmarks of the typical trans girl sob story—conversion therapy, a string of shitty low-paying jobs, and even shittier exes—but she also regularly debates sleep paralysis demons that turn to mist soon after she wakes and carries vials of holy oil in her purse. Nothing, though, prepares her for the new malevolent force stalking her through the streets of New York City, more powerful than any she’s ever encountered. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to rural Indiana, where her ex-girlfriend started an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods. The secluded camp, named after 19th-century intersex memoirist Herculine Barbin, is a scrappy operation, but the shared sense of community among the girls is a welcome balm to the narrator’s growing isolation and paranoia. Still, something isn’t quite right at Herculine. Girls stop talking as soon as she enters the room, everyone seems to share a common secret, and the books lining the walls of the library harbor strange cryptograms. Soon what once looked like an escape becomes a trap all its own. While trying to untangle the commune’s many mysteries, the narrator contends with disemboweled pigs, cultlike psychosexual rituals, and the horrors of communal breakfast. And before long, she discovers that her demons have followed her. And this time, they won’t be letting her go.

Vengeance and bitter violence have had their turns -- without redemptive results. How should we as a society respond to wrongdoing? When a crime occurs or an injustice is done, what needs to happen? What does justice require? Howard Zehr, known worldwide for his pioneering work in transforming our understandings of justice, here proposes workable Principles and Practices for making restorative justice both possible and useful. First he explores how restorative justice is different from criminal justice. Then, before letting those appealing observations drift out of reach, into theoretical space, Zehr presents Restorative Justice Practices. Zehr undertakes a massive and complex subject and puts it in graspable form, without reducing or trivializing it. This is a handbook, a vehicle for moving our society toward healing and wholeness. This is a sourcebook, a starting point for handling brokenness with hard work and hope. This resource is also suitable for academic classes and workshops, for conferences and trainings. By the author of Changing Lenses ; Reflections of Crime Victims ; and Doing Reflections of Men and Women Serving Life Sentences .

With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. For generations of Americans, the abolition of slavery was sheerest illusion. Similarly,the entrenched system of racial segregation seemed to last forever, and generations lived in the midst of the practice, with few predicting its passage from custom. The brutal, exploitative (dare one say lucrative?) convict-lease system that succeeded formal slavery reaped millions to southern jurisdictions (and untold miseries for tens of thousands of men, and women). Few predicted its passing from the American penal landscape. Davis expertly argues how social movements transformed these social, political and cultural institutions, and made such practices untenable.In Are Prisons Obsolete?, Professor Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for "decarceration", and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.