Favs

You have been selected to attend Zodiac Academy, where your star sign defines your destiny. If you're one of the Fae, elemental magic is in your blood. And apparently it's in ours. As twins born in the month of Gemini, we're a rare breed even in this academy of supernatural a-holes. Changelings were outlawed hundreds of years ago but I guess our birth parents didn't get the memo. Which means we're totally unprepared for the ruthless world of Fae. Air. Fire. Water. Earth. No one has ever harnessed all four of them, until we arrived. And it hasn't made us any friends so far. As the rarest Elementals ever known, we're already a threat to the four celestial heirs; the popular, vindictive bullies who happen to be some of the hottest guys we've ever seen. It doesn't help that they're the most dangerous beasts in the Academy. And probably on earth too. Our fates are intertwined, but they want us gone. They've only got until the lunar eclipse to force us out and they'll stop at nothing to succeed. We never knew we had a birthright to live up to but now that we do, we intend to claim our throne. We can't expect any help from the faculty when it comes to defending ourselves. So if the dragon shifters want some target practice, the werewolves want someone to hunt or the vampires fancy a snack then we have to be ready. But we've been looking after each other for a long time and fighting back is in our blood. Today's horoscope: totally screwed.

Oliver Marks has just served ten years in jail - for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day he's released, he's greeted by the man who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened a decade ago. As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, extra. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.

Seventeen-year-old Charlotte barely escaped from her abusive parents. Her little brother, Sam, wasn't as lucky. Now she's trying to begin the new life she always dreamed of for them, but never thought she'd have to experience alone. She's hired a techie-genius with a knack for forgery to remove the last ties to her old life. But while she can erase her former identity, she can’t rid herself of the memories. And her troubled history won’t let her ignore the little girl she sees one day in the park. The girl with the bruises and burn marks. That’s when Charlotte begins to receive the messages. Threatening notes left in her apartment—without a trace of entry. And they’re addressed to Piper, her old name. As the messages grow in frequency, she doesn’t just need to uncover who is leaving them; she needs to stop whoever it is before anyone else she loves ends up dead.

The literary event of Halloween: a book of otherworldly power from Russia's preeminent contemporary fiction writer Vanishings and apparitions, nightmares and twists of fate, mysterious ailments and supernatural interventions haunt these stories by the Russian master Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, heir to the spellbinding tradition of Gogol and Poe. Blending the miraculous with the macabre, and leavened by a mischievous gallows humor, these bewitching tales are like nothing being written in Russia-or anywhere else in the world-today.

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—inexorably—into evil.

It is a privilege to be devastated by loss. Vera, Em, and Stefan live intertwined, limbs across limbs, tangled in damp sheets and interpersonal complexities of life under the oppressive gaze of their government. Employing lyrical prose, Em’s River traverses the periphery of, and then confronts head on, incredible violence. This story explores the fall of the Weimar Republic and rise of facism during Germany’s Third Reich through the lens of personal turmoil and privilege as it explores class, compulsive heterosexuality, and nationalism. “Bleah Patterson’s Em’s River drives home the pain of being forced to choose. Both devastating and beautiful, the prose takes us on a journey through a world made cruel by the men running it, and the lives and loves impacted by it.” ―Kimberly Wolf, author of How The Frogs Get Married “What happens when your privilege won’t save you? This is the question at the heart of Patterson’s Em’s River. Set in Germany during the rise and reign of the Third Reich, Patterson’s deeply interior prose takes us through the complicated narrative of an American woman—Vera—as a series of attempted reconciliations. This story moves like the frog in slowly-boiling water the protagonist mentions, the heat intensifying subtly as Vera navigates queer and heterosexual loves, strained family relationships, and the descent into fascism of the country she now calls home. Pulled forward by Vera’s stream-of-consciousness-like narration, as we read—like the characters in this story—by the time we realize something’s wrong it’s already much too late.” ―Raye Hendrix, author of What Good is Heaven?