Coming Soon

This anthology of exclusive new short stories offers tribute to the master of the pulp era --- Cornell Woolrich, who stands with Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and Dashiell Hammett as a legend in the genre. Enter a world of vengeful brides and black widows, where cold-blooded killers watch from every window and every sin shall be paid for, no matter how deep you bury them. See the chilling fate of a young woman, and the darkness in every family, in Joe R. Lansdale’s “Missing Sister”; the cold, calculating mind of an ambitious wife and her cheating husband in Samantha Lee Howe’s “Trophy Wife”; a reunion dinner ripped apart by conspiracies and violence in Susi Holliday’s “The Invitation”; and the tight-knit family of a New York dive bar explode into violence in William Boyle’s “New York Blues Redux.” 

Annie, Jesse, Noah and Juliette are tied together by their experiences of grief. They are separated by their own versions of the truth of what happened on a single night 12 years ago, when Juliette, a college freshman grieving her mother, and Noah, a high school senior fighting for a place in a world that told him he didn’t matter, found each other. Spanning decades, this complex, captivating story pulls back the curtains of cancel culture to explore ambition, empathy, art, desire, consent, motherhood, and what it really means to lose everything.

Nine years ago, Lord Guy Harrowby, Viscount Wennington, was publicly humiliated by a failed and reckless romantic gesture. Despite this, his mother clings to the promise he made her then: that she would have a house full of grandchildren by his 30th birthday. Still single, embittered and swiftly approaching 30, Guy's work is his life. In desperation, his mother blindsides him with a weeklong house party at his estate filled with annoying debutantes, all competing to be his wife. After failing as a governess, Lottie Travers is struggling as a lady’s companion. But with the family farm in trouble, and her father now in dire need of her wages, she’s determined to conquer her wildness once and for all. Even with his home full of eligible women, there is only one who catches Guy’s eye --- though he tries to deny it.

When Karen Simmons is murdered on Valentine’s Day, Detective Elise King wonders if she was killed by a man she met online. Karen was all over the dating apps, leading some townspeople to blame her for her own death, while others band together to protest society’s violence against women. Into the divide comes Kiki Nunn, whose aggressive newsgathering once again antagonizes Elise. A single mother of a young daughter, Kiki is struggling to make a living in the diminished news landscape. Getting a scoop in the Simmons murder would do a lot for her career, and she’s willing to go up against not just Elise but the killer himself to do it.

Estie isn’t sure she likes being eight months pregnant. She isn’t even sure she likes her husband anymore, especially after he hid that he’s been fired from his job. Now, she’s stranded and bloated and alone. Her cat is not a people person, and on top of it all, her best friend has been ignoring her calls ever since Estie told her about the baby. After Estie gives birth, she begins to suspect that all the stories she’s been told about motherhood might not be true. Having a child does not “complete” her. And that mythical connection with her baby? Well, she’s still waiting. In fact, Estie fears she is destined to end up like her own mother --- divorced and crying in the bathroom while her daughter stands outside the door and wonders if she’s okay.

Estella Ecker has returned to Rockfall House. Years after she ran away from her overbearing father, she has been forced back home to walk in his footsteps, teaching at the college he dominated, and living in the fabulous home where he entertained artists and scholars for decades. And perhaps she owns it now, because her mercurial mother has disappeared. At the center of everything is her father's library of rare books, which she had been forbidden to touch while he was alive to stop her. Everyone in town is watching Estella, with her dead father's name on their lips, and no one seems to care about her missing mother. Who were her parents, really, and is the answer hidden somewhere in the depths of Rockfall House? What she will discover is that no one can escape the secrets hidden in this dark library.

Jennifer Jones and her best friends spend every summer at Big Cypress Swamp, and this summer, Jennifer finally will turn 11. She hopes to gain the “second sight” foretold by family legend and fulfill her destiny. Instead, the swamp serves up dangers greater than the gators lurking on Halfway Creek. Little Francie Farrow vanishes --- and Jennifer’s father goes to prison. Twenty years later, Jennifer has almost shed the label of Paul Jones’ daughter when her past comes barreling back. “Inspired by True Events,” a TV series that solves the unsolvable, is recreating that fateful summer. As the series plays out, Jennifer wonders: Did the show finally find Francie Farrow? And is Jennifer’s father truly guilty? Someone else wants answers even more than Jennifer does, and they won’t let her forget it.

October 1891. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city of Butte, Montana, is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and ballad-maker of the town, but also a doper, a drinker and a fearsome degenerate. Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the extremely devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington. A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly, and they strike out west on a stolen horse. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunmen are soon in hot pursuit and closing in fast. With everything to lose and the safety and anonymity of San Francisco still a distant speck on their horizon, the choices they make will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

For over 150 years, Lamont Cranston, and his alter ego, The Shadow, has possessed an array of mental and physical powers: scientific skills, shape-shifting ability and mind control. When a series of deadly natural disasters strike the planet, the Shadow immediately sets out to identify who’s responsible. A disgruntled graduate student? The power-hungry president of the Americas? Or could it be Shiwan Khan, the Shadow’s fiercest enemy? The Shadow’s latest adventure is also his, Maddy’s and Margo’s most dangerous. Triumph or perish, they’ll rise or fall…together.

It’s 2011, and Deecie Jeffries’ missing person’s case in Austin, Texas, is still cold. New mom Bee, struggling with postpartum depression, is living in Portland, Maine, having left Austin --- and those memories --- far behind. Until Leo, her childhood crush and her estranged twin Gus’ best friend, suddenly resurfaces, drawing Bee back into their shared past. Bee’s predictable life is upended, pushing her to return to her childhood home and piece together a neighborhood’s shattered history. Bee becomes consumed with a need to uncover the truth about Deecie’s disappearance and what happened to the families who lived across the field from one another --- Gus, Leo and their mothers: Mary, a homemaker, whose only escape is the local community theater, and Diana, a serious academic dedicated to her studies.

Lottie Rebecca Lee is spoken into the world in Fayetteville, North Carolina, by a Black nurse who declares, “Lord Jesus, if that ain’t the blackest little baby born this side of heaven.” Later, Lottie will prove that she is the ancestors’ promise to unearth the Mississippi and Ghanaian atrocities that have tormented Benjamin Lee, her grandfather who was born during the Great Depression in Mississippi’s red clay tobacco fields, and Benjamin Junior, his son and Lottie Rebecca’s father, born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where the post-Korean War GI Bill promises prosperity. These two generations of men are haunted by the Mother-Spirit, who did not survive enslavement’s post-traumatic stress violence.

Three years after they narrowly escaped the IRA's worst punishment for informing, Northern Irish sisters Tessa and Marian Daly have built a new life in Dublin with their young children. It's a small island, though, and just as quickly as they disappeared, figures from their past surface to drag them back into the conflict. Tessa is told she must track down her old handler from MI5, Eamonn, and attempt to turn him into an IRA informant, or lose everything. Tessa's reunion with Eamonn revives a host of feelings she has long attempted to bury. As their relationship intensifies and the pressure mounts, long-held secrets rise to the surface, and Tessa must navigate a treacherous landscape of shifting loyalties, all while trying to protect her beloved son.

Debut author Gemma Stanton knows romance readers love a bad boy --- and she has the perfect prototype for her novel: Mason Moretti. A high school hockey god-turned-pro player, Mason was Gemma's first crush, but she couldn't forget the sting of his very public rejection. So she casts him as a hot-headed Highlander in her spicy new historical romance. She never expected readers would find out on live TV when a morning show host invites Mason for a surprise on-air reunion. An aging hockey player, Mason has an image problem. So when his meet-cute with Gemma goes viral, he proposes that they build on the momentum with a few fake dates to boost her book sales...and his sagging profile. But when the fictional flirting gets a little too real, Mason realizes Gemma actually makes him want to become a better man.