CHILDREN’S BOOK

Dog Man: Big Jim Begins

In DOG MAN: BIG JIM BEGINS, discover the origin of our beloved characters from the Dog Man series as they join forces to stop the Space Cuties from destroying the city. Will the past predict the future for Dog Man and his friends? Will goodness and bravery prevail? Can anything happen if you truly believe?

Get ready for another unforgettable book in the #1 worldwide bestselling series from acclaimed graphic novelist and award-winning illustrator Dav Pilkey. AND coming soon, the Dog Man movie from DreamWorks Animation and Universal Pictures!

WESTERN

Five Women and the Star (a Jack Sage western – book 5)

Good men shot down in cold blood. A grieving family in peril. One lawman determined to serve justice even if it comes from the hip.

U.S. Marshal Jack Sage never shirks from his duty. Ordered by the president to hunt down the killers of a general and his son, he burns the breeze to Wyoming to protect the widows and children of his slain friends. And after he suspects an arrow found at the attack is a ruse, he’s none too surprised it’s white men he shoots when they ambush one of the bereaved wives and her child.

Arriving at the ranch, dinner turns deadly when a sniper takes aim at the matriarch and Jack narrowly avoids taking a bullet as he leaps across the table to shield the lovely woman. But when he heads to Laramie in pursuit of clues, he rides into a town-full of lethal trouble…

With the outlaw one step ahead, can the steadfast man escape an early grave?

THRILLER

The Night We Lost Him

“Drama, mystery, and intrigue” (PureWow) unfold in this instant New York Times bestseller about estranged siblings chasing a fifty-year-old secret that shaped their father’s mysterious life in this “propulsive thriller” (Orpah Daily) and “moving family drama” (People) from the author of The Last Thing He Told Me.

Liam Noone was many things to many people. To the public, he was an exacting, self-made hotel magnate fleeing his past. To his three ex-wives, he was a loving albeit distant family man who kept his finances flush and his families carefully separated. To Nora, he was a father who often loved her from afar—notably, a cliffside cottage perched on the California coast from which he fell to his death.

The authorities rule the death accidental, but Nora and her estranged brother Sam have other ideas. As Nora and Sam form an uneasy alliance to unravel the mystery, they start putting together the pieces of their father’s past and uncover a family secret that changes everything.

With Laura Dave’s trademark blend of mystery, suspense and evocative family drama, The Night We Lost Him is a riveting page-turner with a heartbreaking final twist that you will never see coming.

THRILLER

Homecoming Queen

NO ONE EVER LEAVES MIRANDA TWICE.

Anika Raven faces the challenge of a lifetime. She must rescue her little sister from a neglectful family as the hurricane of a century barrels toward her hometown of Miranda, Texas. Time is of the essence, but the deadly storm is not her biggest problem.

Once Miranda High School’s beloved homecoming queen, Anika now possesses a dark secret that must remain hidden. Unable to outrun the shadows of her past, and terrified to confront the demons of her future, she finds herself running from the law.

Concealing a dark secret of its own, the town of Miranda’s corruption permeates every aspect of society. Each time Anika catches a break, a scheming mayor and powerful political forces deliver her another life-threatening setback.

With the storm looming, and tensions in town escalating, Anika and her sister are trapped. To escape town, they will need unspeakable courage, perseverance, and the help of a special gift possessed by Anika’s little sister. But all bets are off as adversity abounds. To stay alive, they must overcome a jealous town, rabid adversaries bent on vigilante justice, and a monster hurricane . . . all coming at them with a vengeance.

Homecoming Queen was written for adults of all ages with a love for fast-paced thrillers. With a unique plot line, memorable characters, and page-turning storytelling, the book packs intriguing substance into a quick read.

THRILLER

Crossroads

Paris Pennington, a lovely workaholic about to be confronted with adversity and chaos, with challenges leading her to restlessness, uncertainty, and questioning her life choices and her current path. The fabric of her life begins to be picked apart as people around her start dying. A crossroad leads her to make a change and promises to fulfill her dreams while an embattled personal war between past and present comes together, testing loyalty and the forces of envy that may prevent tomorrow from coming.

Recommended by: Golden Globe-Nominated American Actress and Author Mariel Hemingway: “Keeps readers engaged in not only Paris’s personal life, but also the world of murder, tragedy, death, and the hope for justice.” And Best Selling Author J.J. Hebert states, “Paris Pennington is a protagonist that you find yourself rooting for from start to finish, even as those close to her mysteriously fall.”

THRILLER

None of This is True

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author known for her “superb pacing, twisted characters, and captivating prose” (BuzzFeed), Lisa Jewell returns with a scintillating new psychological thriller about a woman who finds herself the subject of her own popular true crime podcast.

Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summer crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins.

A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realize that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?

NONFICTION

Swamp Kings

The stranger-than-fiction story of the now-notorious Lowcountry clan, in all its Southern Gothic intensity—by an author with unparalleled access to and knowledge of the players, the history, and the place.

The most famous man in South Carolina lives in prison. He stands convicted of a staggering amount of wrongdoing—more than 100 crimes and counting. Once a high-flying, smooth-talking, pedigreed Southern lawyer, Alex Murdaugh is now disbarred and disgraced. For more than a decade, prosecutors asserted that Alex was secretly a fraud, a thief, a drug trafficker, and an all-around phony. On the night of June 7, 2021, they claimed, he also became a killer, shooting dead his wife and son in a desperate bid to escape accountability.

The many crimes of Alex Murdaugh, exposed piecemeal over the last two years, have appalled the general public. Yet his implosion—the spectacular manner in which he has turned his vaunted family name to mud—has also proved mesmerizing. With every revelation, Alex Murdaugh has been shown to be a man without bottom, though he insists he never harmed his family.

Remarkably, all of his misdeeds have precedent. In Swamp Kings, Jason Ryan reveals Alex’s evil actions are only the tip of the iceberg. When it comes to the Murdaugh family of Hampton County, history has a way of repeating itself. For every alleged, headline-grabbing crime associated with Alex Murdaugh, mirror-image incidents have played out within his family’s past, including parallel instances of fraud, theft, illicit trafficking of babies and booze, calamitous boat crashes, and even alleged murder. There were some crimes committed by Alex’s kin that even he would not dare mimic.

Covering a century of depravity in an impoverished and isolated stretch of the Deep South, Swamp Kings weaves together the jaw-dropping narratives of generations of Murdaughs before culminating in the telling of a murder trial for the ages. Page after page the family’s legacy is laid bare as a spotlight is finally trained on the Murdaugh men who have long lorded over the South Carolina Lowcountry.

NONFICTION

I Am A Man: Chief Standing Bear’s Journey for Justice

In 1877, Chief Standing Bear’s Ponca Indian tribe was forcibly removed from their Nebraska homeland and marched to what was then known as Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), in what became the tribe’s own Trail of Tears. “I Am a Man” chronicles what happened when Standing Bear set off on a six-hundred-mile walk to return the body of his only son to their traditional burial ground. Along the way, it examines the complex relationship between the United States government and the small, peaceful tribe and the legal consequences of land swaps and broken treaties, while never losing sight of the heartbreaking journey the Ponca endured. It is a story of survival—of a people left for dead who arose from the ashes of injustice, disease, neglect, starvation, humiliation, and termination. On another level, it is a story of life and death, despair and fortitude, freedom and patriotism. A story of Christian kindness and bureaucratic evil. And it is a story of hope—of a people still among us today, painstakingly preserving a cultural identity that had sustained them for centuries before their encounter with Lewis and Clark in the fall of 1804.

Before it ends, Standing Bear’s long journey home also explores fundamental issues of citizenship, constitutional protection, cultural identity, and the nature of democracy—issues that continue to resonate loudly in twenty-first-century America. It is a story that questions whether native sovereignty, tribal-based societies, and cultural survival are compatible with American democracy. Standing Bear successfully used habeas corpus, the only liberty included in the original text of the Constitution, to gain access to a federal court and ultimately his freedom. This account aptly illuminates how the nation’s delicate system of checks and balances worked almost exactly as the Founding Fathers envisioned, a system arguably out of whack and under siege today.

Joe Starita’s well-researched and insightful account reads like historical fiction as his careful characterizations and vivid descriptions bring this piece of American history brilliantly to life.

NONFICTION

The Barn: The Secret of a Murder in Mississippi

A shocking and revelatory account of the murder of Emmett Till that lays bare how forces from around the world converged on the Mississippi Delta in the long lead-up to the crime, and how the truth was erased for so long

Wright Thompson’s family farm in Mississippi is 23 miles from the site of one of the most notorious and consequential killings in American history, yet he had to leave the state for college before he learned the first thing about it. To this day, fundamental truths about the crime are widely unknown, including where it took place and how many people were involved. This is no accident: the cover-up began at once, and it is ongoing.

In August 1955, two men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were charged with the torture and murder of the 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. After their inevitable acquittal in a mockery of justice, they gave a false confession to a journalist, which was misleading about where the long night of hell took place and who was involved. In fact, Wright Thompson reveals, at least eight people can be placed at the scene, which was inside the barn of one of the killers, on a plot of land within the six-square-mile grid whose official name is Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, fabled in the Delta of myth as the birthplace of the blues on nearby Dockery Plantation.

Even in the context of the racist caste regime of the time, the four-hour torture and murder of a Black boy barely in his teens for whistling at a young white woman was acutely depraved; Till’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley’s decision to keep the casket open seared the crime indelibly into American consciousness. Wright Thompson has a deep understanding of this story—the world of the families of both Emmett Till and his killers, and all the forces that aligned to place them together on that spot on the map. As he shows, the full horror of the crime was its inevitability, and how much about it we still need to understand. Ultimately this is a story about property, and money, and power, and white supremacy. It implicates all of us. In The Barn, Thompson brings to life the small group of dedicated people who have been engaged in the hard, fearful business of bringing the truth to light. Putting the killing floor of the barn on the map of Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, and the Delta, and America, is a way of mapping the road this country must travel if we are to heal our oldest, deepest wound.

MISC.

The Life Impossible

The remarkable next novel from Matt Haig, the author of #1 New York Times bestseller The Midnight Library, with more than nine million copies sold worldwide

“What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet…”

When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.

Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.

Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.

MISC.

Onyx Storm (The Empryean, 3)

After nearly eighteen months at Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail knows there’s no more time for lessons. No more time for uncertainty.

Because the battle has truly begun, and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and within their ranks, it’s impossible to know who to trust.

Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves―her dragons, her family, her home, and him.

Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything.

They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find―the truth.

But a storm is coming…and not everyone can survive its wrath.

MISC.

Counting Miracles

Tanner Hughes was raised by his grandparents, following in his grandfather’s military footsteps to become an Army Ranger. His whole life has been spent abroad, and he is the proverbial rolling stone: happiest when off on his next adventure, zero desire to settle down. But when his grandmother passes away, her last words to him are find where you belong. She also drops a bombshell, telling him the name of the father he never knew—and where to find him.

Tanner is due at his next posting soon, but his curiosity is piqued, and he sets out for Asheboro, North Carolina, to ask around. He’s been in town less than twenty-four hours when he meets Kaitlyn Cooper, a doctor and single mom. They both feel an immediate connection; Tanner knows Kaitlyn has a story to tell, and he wants to hear it. To Kaitlyn, Tanner is mysterious, exciting—and possibly leaving in just a few weeks.

Meanwhile, nearby, eighty-three-year-old Jasper lives alone in a cabin bordering a national forest. With only his old dog, Arlo, for company, he lives quietly, haunted by a tragic accident that took place decades before. When he hears rumors that a white deer has been spotted in the forest—a creature of legend that inspired his father and grandfather—he becomes obsessed with protecting the deer from poachers.

As these characters’ fates orbit closer together, none of them is expecting a miracle . . . but that may be exactly what is about to alter their futures forever.

HISTORICAL FICTION

The Rainbow

‘Oh my gosh I don’t know where to start, this book broke me… it will stay with me for a very long time… heartbreaking, poignant, gripping and compelling, I felt every emotion… I read this book in one sitting.’ Fiction Vixen Reads,

Inspired by an incredible true story. Fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, We Were the Lucky Ones and The Choice will love this heartbreaking novel of love, betrayal and a secret passed down through a family.

Nazi-occupied Poland, 1940. When soldiers drag Tomasz back to his family’s farm, they put a gun to his head and tell him he must join the German army, or see his loved ones forced into the camps. Staring into the wide blue eyes of his childhood sweetheart Zofia, Tomasz does the only thing he can. Over the course of the war, he will risk his life, love and the respect of his own people, to secretly fight for good against evil. All the while, he longs to be reunited with Zofia… but will his brave choices tear them apart forever?

London, present day. Isla has grown up wearing her grandfather’s rainbow scarf, a beloved memento from the Second World War, and hearing his stories about his time as a young soldier bravely fighting the Germans to protect his people. But as she is collecting photos for his 95th birthday celebration, she finds an old photograph of two men standing in Nazi uniforms, next to a folded piece of paper… a newspaper article, written in German. She knows that name.

Her grandfather is too weak to answer questions, so Isla begins her hunt for the truth.

HISTORICAL FICTION

A Light Beyond the Trenches

From the USA Today bestselling author of Churchill’s Secret Messenger comes a WWI novel based on little-known history, as four very different lives intertwine across Europe from Germany to France—a German Red Cross nurse, a Jewish pianist blinded on the battlefield, a soldier tortured by deadly secrets of his own, and his tormented French mistress. This life-affirming tale of heroism and resilience will stay with you long after turning the final page.

By April 1916, the fervor that accompanied war’s outbreak has faded. In its place is a grim reality. Throughout Germany, essentials are rationed. Hope, too, is in short supply. Anna Zeller, whose fiancé, Bruno, is fighting on the western front, works as a nurse at an overcrowded hospital in Oldenburg, trying to comfort men broken in body and spirit. But during a visit from Dr. Stalling, the director of the Red Cross Ambulance Dogs Association, she witnesses a rare spark of optimism: as a German shepherd guides a battle-blinded soldier over a garden path, Dr. Stalling is inspired with an idea—to train dogs as companions for sightless veterans.

Anna convinces Dr. Stalling to let her work at his new guide dog training school. Some of the dogs that arrive are themselves veterans of war, including Nia, a German shepherd with trench-damaged paws. Anna brings the ailing Nia home and secretly tends and trains her, convinced she may yet be the perfect guide for the right soldier. In Max Benesch, a Jewish soldier blinded by chlorine gas at the front, Nia finds her person.

War has taken Max’s sight, his fiancée, and his hopes of being a composer. Yet despite all he’s given for his country, the tide of anti-Semitism at home is rising, and Max encounters it first-hand in one of the school’s trainers, who is determined to make Max fail. Still, through Anna’s prompting, he rediscovers his passion for music. But as Anna discovers more about the conflict’s escalating brutality—and Bruno’s role in it—she realizes how impossible it will be for any of them to escape the war unscathed . . .

HISTORICAL FICTION

The Bookbinder

It is 1914, and as the war draws the young men of Britain away to fight, women must keep the nation running. Two of those women are Peggy and Maude, twin sisters who live on a narrow boat in Oxford and work in the bindery at the university press.

Ambitious, intelligent Peggy has been told for most of her life that her job is to bind the books, not read them—but as she folds and gathers pages, her mind wanders to the opposite side of Walton Street, where the female students of Oxford’s Somerville College have a whole library at their fingertips. Maude, meanwhile, wants nothing more than what she has: to spend her days folding the pages of books in the company of the other bindery girls. She is extraordinary but vulnerable, and Peggy feels compelled to watch over her.

Then refugees arrive from the war-torn cities of Belgium, sending ripples through the Oxford community and the sisters’ lives. Peggy begins to see the possibility of another future where she can educate herself and use her intellect, not just her hands. But as war and illness reshape her world, her love for a Belgian soldier—and the responsibility that comes with it—threaten to hold her back.

The Bookbinder is a story about knowledge—who creates it, who can access it, and what truths get lost in the process. Much as she did in the international bestseller The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip Williams thoughtfully explores another rarely seen slice of history through women’s eyes.

HISTORICAL FICTION

A Crooked Cottage By The Sea

Bar Harbor, Maine: summer of 1967

When Billie Cooper receives a startling medical diagnosis just before a summer-long vacation, she decides to keep it secret. Her husband Derek is a Defense Department official immersed in the Vietnam war effort. Her two sons are backpacking through Europe. She can’t burden them. She has to face the issue alone.

She settles into a beautiful house on a hundred-foot-high cliff just south of Bar Harbor. With her husband often in Washington, D.C., Billie befriends a part-time cook named Lillian Moore. Of Native American heritage, Lillian introduces her to ancient remedies in a desperate attempt to cure what might never be cured. Billie also befriends a senile neighbor, Riley James, a lonely but lovable man who tells preposterous stories and lives in a crooked cottage by the sea, as well as three young girls who joyfully play in a secret fort hidden in nearby woods. This mismatched band of friends, and the clues contained in an overgrown family cemetery, teach Billie the meaning of life, helping her see what she had never before seen. She touches the hearts and souls of those around her, just as they touch hers, friendships formed for eternity.

HISTORICAL FICTION

The Widow of Escondido

Lorea McKinley Hughes embarks on a journey to Paris to visit relatives, hoping that time and distance might reenergize her frame of mind in dealing with a troubled marriage. However, on the return voyage back to the United States, she meets Perry Frederick, a wealthy American land owner, and an attraction between them transpires. Little did she know how this would eventually impact her life. Upon her return home, disagreement and friction continue to disrupt the marriage, and resolution nor any type of compromise is not obtainable. Therefore, an unthinkable decision of divorce evolves, and she leaves her hometown and establishes residency elsewhere, eventually experiencing personal happiness and contentment. This unpredictable new life sustains her until an untimely death interrupts the joy of a deep friendship and abiding love.

After Lorea’s death, her niece, Lori Davis, has the difficult task of dissolving the estate as a will and other important documents are mysteriously missing. In her search for the necessary documents, certain discoveries materialize as Lori stumbles on hidden photos, journals, and a manuscript in her aunt’s art studio confirming a long-time, secret relationship with a man by the name of Perry Frederick. However, answers to pertinent questions related to the estate could not be found.

Many years later, Lori discovers additional information that clarifies the remaining mystery surrounding her aunt and her life at Escondido Cottage in Lillian, Alabama, unearthing new dimensions that provide a unique ending to The Widow of Escondido.

HISTORICAL FICTION

The Secret Book of Flora Lee

When a woman discovers a rare book with connections to her past, long-held secrets about her missing sister and their childhood in the English countryside during World War II are revealed in this “beguiling blend of hope, mystery, and true familial love” (Sadeqa Johnson, New York Times bestselling author).

In the war-torn London of 1939, fourteen-year-old Hazel and five-year-old Flora are evacuated to a rural village to escape the horrors of the Second World War. Living with the kind Bridie Aberdeen and her teenage son, Harry, in a charming stone cottage along the River Thames, Hazel fills their days with walks and games to distract her young sister, including one that she creates for her sister and her sister alone—a fairy tale about a magical land, a secret place they can escape to that is all their own.

But the unthinkable happens when young Flora suddenly vanishes while playing near the banks of the river. Shattered, Hazel blames herself for her sister’s disappearance, and she carries that guilt into adulthood as a private burden she feels she deserves.

Twenty years later, Hazel is in London, ready to move on from her job at a cozy rare bookstore to a career at Sotheby’s. With a charming boyfriend and her elegantly timeworn Bloomsbury flat, Hazel’s future seems determined. But her tidy life is turned upside down when she unwraps a package containing an illustrated book called Whisperwood and the River of Stars. Hazel never told a soul about the imaginary world she created just for Flora. Could this book hold the secrets to Flora’s disappearance? Could it be a sign that her beloved sister is still alive after all these years?

As Hazel embarks on a feverish quest, revisiting long-dormant relationships and bravely opening wounds from her past, her career and future hang in the balance. Spellbinding and atmospheric, “this heartrending, captivating tale of family, first love, and fate will sweep you away” (Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author).