KW

Writer Karen Walker knows more than most about murderers. Her first love went on to become The Bagman, a notorious serial killer now locked away for life in a maximum-security prison. Karen has spent her life running from the weight of having loved him, defended him and, ultimately, leading the police to his door. But now, ten years later, just as she’s about to publish her account of his crimes, a young woman is abducted in horribly familiar circumstances.

The next step in Ellie Baker’s marriage: divorce. She and her husband, Jonah, are heading to Florida to break it to the family. No great drama to share. After twenty years of marriage, they’ve just fallen out of love. Simple. Not to their college-age daughter, Maggie, who is devastated. Or to Ellie’s father, Frank, who grows as cold as a retiree can get in Orlando. As for Ellie’s mother, Bunny: no, no, no. She doesn’t want to hear it. After a dreadful weekend, Ellie and Jonah return home to New Jersey with hearts and minds still set on a split.

It’s 5 November, and a woman awakens to a nightmare. Bound and gagged, she lies trapped in the heart of a towering bonfire. As the smoke thickens, panic sets in–she’s moments away from being engulfed in flames. How did it come to this? Rewind eleven months: Margot, a faded TV star, and her long-suffering friend Anna watch as glamorous Liv and her flawless family move into their street. The three women soon fabricate the perfect pretence of friendship, but each harbours her own deadly secret–and newcomer Liv senses something is terribly wrong beneath the polished exteriors.

Isolde, newly coronated queen, has finally found a king worthy of her in the vampire Adrian. But their love for each other has cost Isolde her father and her homeland. With two opposing goddesses playing mortals and vampires like chess pieces against one another, Isolde is uncertain who her allies are in the vampire stronghold of Revekka. Now, as politics in the Red Palace grow more underhanded and a deadly blood mist threatens all of Cordova, Isolde must trust in the bond she's formed with Adrian, even as she learns troubling information about his complicated past.

With ailing family to support, Evie Sage's employment status isn't just important, it's vital. So when a mishap with Rennedawn's most infamous Villain results in a job offer—naturally, she says yes. No job is perfect, of course, but even less so when you develop a teeny crush on your terrifying, temperamental, and undeniably hot boss. Don't find evil so attractive, Evie. But just when she's getting used to severed heads suspended from the ceiling and the odd squish of an errant eyeball beneath her heel, Evie suspects this dungeon has a huge rat . . . and not just the literal kind.

When a chance encounter sparks an unlikely bond between rival murderers Sloane and Rowan, the two find something elusive—the friendship of a like-minded, pitch-black soul. From small-town West Virginia to upscale California, from downtown Boston to rural Texas, the two hunters collide in an annual game of blood and suffering, one that pits them against the most dangerous monsters in the country.

Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She’s also the victim of a local serial killer. Recently brought back to life and returned to her grieving family by a government project, she is grateful for this second chance. But as the new Lou re-adapts to her old routines, and as she bonds with other female victims, she realizes that disturbing questions remain about what exactly preceded her death and how much she can really trust those around her.

Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady—ah, lady of a certain age—who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to. Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing—a dead man in the middle of her tea shop.

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian-American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.