Coming Soon

“When you look over your own library, who do you see?” asks Well-Read Black Girl founder Glory Edim in this lovingly curated anthology. Bringing together an array of “unforgettable, and resonant coming-of-age stories” (Nicole Dennis-Benn), Edim continues her life’s work to brighten and enrich American reading lives through the work of both canonical and contemporary Black authors --- from Jamaica Kincaid and Toni Morrison to Dana Johnson and Alexia Arthurs. Divided into four themes --- Innocence, Belonging, Love and Self-Discovery --- ON GIRLHOOD features fierce young protagonists who contend with trials that shape who they are and what they will become. At times heartbreaking and hilarious, the stories within push past flat stereotypes and powerfully convey the beauty of Black girlhood.

With a name like Astra Noel Snow, holiday spirit isn’t just a seasonal specialty --- it’s a way of life. But after a stinging divorce, Astra’s yearly trip to the Milwaukee Christmas market takes on a whole new meaning. She’s ready to eat, drink and be merry, especially with the handsome stranger who saves the best kringle for her at his family bakery. For Jack Clausen, the Julemarked with its snowy lights and charming shops stays the same, while the world outside the joyful street changes, magically leaping from one December to the next every four weeks. He’s never minded living this charmed existence until Astra shows him the life he’s been missing outside of the festive red brick alley.

From the author of SISTERS OF THE RESISTANCE comes the story of WWII British Naval Intelligence officer Victoire Bennett, the real-life inspiration for the James Bond character Miss Moneypenny, whose international covert operation is put in jeopardy when a volatile socialite and Austrian double agent threatens to expose the mission to German High Command.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission --- and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. But he can’t remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery --- and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he has to do it all alone. Or does he?

In her debut, Julia Armfield explores women’s experiences in contemporary society, mapped through their bodies. As urban dwellers’ sleeps become disassociated from them, like Peter Pan’s shadow, a city turns insomniac. A teenager entering puberty finds her body transforming in ways very different than her classmates’. As a popular band gathers momentum, the fangirls following their tour turn into something monstrous. After their parents remarry, two step-sisters --- one a girl and one a wolf --- develop a dangerously close bond. And in an apocalyptic landscape, a pregnant woman begins to realize that the creature in her belly is not what she expected.

Elfreda Raughn will avoid pregnancy if it kills her, and one way or another, it will kill her. Though she’s able to stomach her gruesome day-to-day duties, the reality of preserving the Sisterhood of Aytrium’s magical bloodline horrifies her. She wants out, whatever the cost. So when a shadowy faction approaches Elfreda with an offer of escape, she leaps at the opportunity. As their spy, she gains access to the highest reaches of the Sisterhood, and enters a glittering world of opulent parties, subtle deceptions and unexpected bloodshed.

Melanie Trenholm’s husband, Jack, has asked for a separation. But their relationship issues are pushed aside when longtime nemesis Marc Longo comes to them with a proposition: allow their Tradd Street house to be used as the filming location for the movie adaptation of Marc’s bestselling book, and he will help Jack reestablish his stalled writing career. Despite Melanie’s hesitation, Jack jumps at the chance. But Melanie’s doubts soon prove to be well founded when she uncovers ulterior reasons for Marc wanting to be back in their house --- reasons that include a hidden gem so brilliant that legend links it to the most infamous jewel of all, the Hope Diamond.

The annual Christmas Game is afoot at Endgame House, the Armitages' grand family home. This year's prize is to die for --- deeds to the house itself --- but Lily Armitage has no intention of returning. She hasn't been back to Endgame since her mother died 21 years ago, and she has no intention of claiming the house that haunts her dreams. Until, that is, she receives a letter from her aunt promising that the game's riddles will give her the keys not only to Endgame, but to its darkest secrets, including the identity of her mother's murderer. Now, Lily must compete with her estranged cousins for the 12 days of Christmas. She will have to keep her wits about her, because not everyone is playing fair, and there's no telling how many will die before the winner is declared.

Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man --- one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears that Jane is an apparition that has come to haunt him.

Born in Ireland in 1868 to an aristocratic English family, Aleen Cust knows she is destined to work with animals, even if her family is appalled by the idea of a woman pursuing a veterinary career. Going against their wishes but with the encouragement of the guardian assigned to her upon her father's death, Aleen attends the New Veterinary College in Edinburgh, enrolling as A. I. Custance to spare her family the humiliation they fear. At last, she is on her way to becoming a veterinary surgeon! Little does she know her biggest obstacles lie ahead.

In 1916, Sven Ormson leaves a restless life in Stockholm to seek adventure in Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago where darkness reigns four months of the year. He might witness the splendor of the Northern Lights one night and be attacked by a polar bear the next. But his time as a miner ends when an avalanche nearly kills him, leaving him disfigured, and Sven flees even further, to an uninhabited fjord. There, with the company of a loyal dog, he builds a hut and lives alone, testing himself against the elements. Years into his routine isolation, the arrival of an unlikely visitor salves his loneliness, sparking a chain of surprising events that will bring Sven into a family of fellow castoffs and determine the course of the rest of his life.

Bobby and Cheryl Love were living in Brooklyn, happily married for decades, when the FBI and NYPD appeared at their door and demanded to know from Bobby, in front of his shocked wife and children, “What is your name? No, what’s your real name?” Bobby’s 38-year secret was out. As a Black child in the Jim Crow South, Bobby found himself in legal trouble before his 14th birthday. Sparked by the desperation he felt in the face of limited options and the pull of the streets, Bobby became a master thief. He soon found himself facing a 30-year prison sentence. But Bobby was smarter than his jailers. He escaped, fled to New York, changed his name and started a new life as “Bobby Love.”

Isla Larsen Sanchez's life begins to unravel when her father passes away. Instead of being comforted at home in New Jersey, her mother starts leaving her in Puerto Rico with her grandmother and great-aunt each summer like a piece of forgotten luggage. When Isla turns 18, her grandmother, a great storyteller, dies. It is then that Isla discovers she has a gift passed down through her family's cuentistas. The tales of dead family storytellers are brought back to life, replaying themselves over and over in front of her. At first, Isla is enchanted by this connection to the Sanchez cuentistas. But when Isla has a vision of an old murder mystery, she realizes that if she can't solve it to make the loop end, these seemingly harmless stories could cost Isla her life.

Born in a carnival trailer, Leah Fern begins her life as "The Youngest and Very Best Fortuneteller in the World." When Leah is six, her mother --- magician Jeannie Starr --- leaves her at the home of Edward Murphy, a kindly older man with whom Leah shares one fierce wish: that Jeannie Starr will return to them. After 15 years as a small-town outcast, Leah decides to end her life on her 21st birthday. But the intricate death ritual she has devised is interrupted by a surprise knock on her door. Her mysterious neighbor, art photographer Essie East, has died and left Leah a very strange inheritance. Through a series of letters, Essie will posthumously lead Leah on a journey to nine points on the map, which will reveal the story of Leah's mother.

On a quiet midsummer day in 1776, 13-year-old Jemima Boone and her friends Betsy and Fanny Callaway disappear near the Kentucky settlement of Boonesboro. A Cherokee-Shawnee raiding party has taken the girls as the latest salvo in the blood feud between American Indians and the colonial settlers who have decimated native lands and resources. Hanging Maw, the raiders’ leader, recognizes one of the captives as Jemima Boone, daughter of Kentucky's most influential pioneers, and realizes she could be a valuable pawn in the battle to drive the colonists out of the contested Kentucky territory for good. But ultimately the raiding party is ambushed by Daniel Boone and the rescuers in a battle with reverberations that nobody could predict.

For journalist Allie Burns, someone else's bad news is the unmistakable sound of opportunity knocking, an opportunity to get away from the "women's stories" her editors at the Scottish daily The Clarion keep assigning her. Striking up an alliance with budding investigative journalist Danny Sullivan, Allie begins covering international tax fraud, then a group of Scottish ultranationalists aiming to cause mayhem ahead of a referendum on breaking away from the United Kingdom. Their stories quickly get attention and create enemies for the two young up-and-comers. As they get closer to the bleeding edge of breaking news, Allie and Danny may find their lives on the line.

Fresh off her wolverine study in Montana, wildlife biologist Alex Carter lands a job studying a threatened population of polar bears in the Canadian Arctic. Embedded with a small team of Arctic researchers, she tracks the majestic bears by air, following them over vast, snowy terrain, spending days leaning precariously out of a helicopter with a tranquilizer gun, until she can get down on the ice to examine them up close. But as her study progresses, and she gathers data on the health of individual bears, things start to go awry. Her helicopter pilot quits unexpectedly, equipment goes missing, and a late-night intruder breaks into her lab and steals the samples she’s collected. Someone doesn’t want her to complete her study, but Alex is not easily deterred.

The problems fracturing the Goss family as Christmas approaches are hardly unique, though perhaps they are handling them a little differently than most people might. But then a true emergency arises, one with the potential to ruin not only Christmas, but everything holding the family together. Is the arrival of a lost puppy yet another in the string of calamities facing them, or could the little canine be just what they all need?

Head-in-the-stars Audrey is about to marry down-to-earth Josh. Though they are polar opposites, they have a healthy, stable relationship. But romance should be unpredictable and full of fireworks, and as the big day approaches, Audrey has found herself wondering if Josh really is "The One." So when Josh’s sister shows up to the rehearsal dinner with Fred, Audrey’s "What If? guy" --- the man she met six years ago and had one amazing day with --- Audrey finds herself torn. When everything that could go wrong with the wedding starts to go wrong, Audrey has to ask herself: Is fate trying to stop her from making a huge mistake? Or does destiny just have a really twisty sense of humor?

Christmas has come early to the town of Paterson, New Jersey, in the form of a snowstorm that dumps two feet of snow on the ground. Lawyer Andy Carpenter likes snow, but it can cause problems for the walks he takes his dogs on every day. When Andy’s golden retriever, Tara, goes to play in the snow and instead discovers a body, Andy ends up on the phone with the local newspaper editor. The murder victim is Mayor Alex Oliva, who had an infamous relationship with the newspaper. Last year a young reporter published an exposé, and Oliva had him fired for libel. Now, the young reporter --- and prime suspect --- is in need of a lawyer. Andy agrees to take the case, though it’s not looking good this holiday season.

In 1860s England, circus mania is sweeping the nation. When Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders pitches its tent in a poor coastal town, the life of one young girl changes forever. Sold to the ringmaster as a “leopard girl” because of the birthmarks that cover her body, Nell is utterly devastated. But as she grows close to the other performers, she finds herself enchanted by the glittering freedom of the circus, and by her own role as the Queen of the Moon and Stars. Before long, Nell’s fame spreads across the world --- and with it, a chance for Jasper Jupiter to grow his own name and fortune. But what happens when her fame begins to eclipse his own, when even Jasper’s loyal brother, Toby, becomes captivated by Nell?

Frances Turner has a confession to make: her sister, Crosby, drives her crazy. The woman wakes up in the morning with perfect hair. Men flock to her. And she somehow managed to jump out of the frying pan and into fame, writing a blockbuster novel --- and making a zillion bucks --- without even trying. And Frances, who has followed every rule, is stuck in pause. Crosby Turner has a confession as well: Frances locks herself in a miserable little box, and Crosby can’t understand it. With her fear of the unknown and her “Franic Attacks,” her sister is a small-time actress with big-time dreams --- and talent --- but playing by the rules gets her nowhere. Why can’t she break loose and climb out of her rut? Then fate intervenes, throwing these incompatible siblings together.

Growing up on the moon, Xingyin is accustomed to solitude, unaware that she is being hidden from the powerful Celestial Emperor who exiled her mother for stealing his elixir of immortality. But when Xingyin’s magic flares and her existence is discovered, she is forced to flee her home, leaving her mother behind. Alone, untrained and afraid, she makes her way to the Celestial Kingdom, a land of wonder and secrets. Disguising her identity, she seizes an opportunity to learn alongside the Crown Prince, mastering archery and magic, even as passion flames between her and the emperor’s son. To save her mother, Xingyin embarks on a perilous quest, confronting legendary creatures and vicious enemies across the earth and skies.

Mick Herron, author of the Slough House novels, is on his way to becoming one of the most critically acclaimed and culturally important crime fiction writers of the 21st century. He has been awarded both the Gold and Steel Daggers by the Crime Writers’ Association and has been called “the John le Carré of the future” (BBC). Now, for the first time, his short fiction has been collected into one volume. Five stand-alone nerve-rackingly thrilling crime fiction stories are complemented by four mystery stories featuring the Oxford wife-and-husband detective team of shrewd Zoë Boehm and hapless Joe Silvermann. The collection also includes a peek into the past of Jackson Lamb, the irascible top agent at Slough House.

Set in 1991, just as "Star Trek: The Next Generation" has rocketed the cast to global fame, the young and impressionable actor Brent Spiner receives a mysterious package and a series of disturbing letters that take him on a terrifying and bizarre journey that enlists Paramount Security, the LAPD and even the FBI in putting a stop to the danger that has his life and career hanging in the balance. Featuring a cast of characters from Patrick Stewart to Levar Burton to "Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, to some completely imagined, this is the fictional autobiography that takes readers into the life of Brent Spiner, and tells an amazing tale about the trappings of celebrity and the fear he has carried with him his entire life.