Helene Simonauer and Evelyn Turner are two formidable women whose paths cross when their children marry. Both women are sharp, cunning and unwavering in their conflicting beliefs about marriage, responsibility, family and, most pressingly, their efforts to vie for the love of their shared granddaughter. Weaving together the lives of Helene and Evelyn --- from their vastly different childhoods through the pivotal events that define them --- AT LAST paints a vivid portrait of the American Midwest, capturing the essence of a time and place where societal norms and personal aspirations often clashed.

Gish’s mother, Loo Shu-hsin, is born in 1924 to a wealthy Shanghai family. Her beloved nursemaid is torn from her even as she is constantly reprimanded: “Bad bad girl! You don’t know how to talk!” Sent to a modern Catholic school by her progressive father, she receives not only an English name --- Agnes --- but a first-rate education. Agnes finds solace in books and, in 1947, announces her intention to pursue a PhD in America. As the Communist revolution looms, she sets sail --- never to return. Lonely and adrift in New York, she begins dating Jen Chao-Pe, an engineering student. But by the time Gish is born, the news from China is proving inescapable; their marriage is foundering; and Agnes recapitulates the harshness of her own childhood.

In BETWEEN CHAPTERS, Zibby Owens offers a front-row seat to her decade of reinvention as she goes from being an Upper East Side stay-at-home mom of four to a divorced and remarried “book-fluencer,” author, publisher, award-winning podcaster and bookstore owner. Laugh alongside Zibby as she shares moments like messing up “the birds and the bees” talk, getting stuck climbing an inflatable raft at her kids’ sleepaway camp, and traveling with her new love. Join her in the forty-something trenches as she gains and loses weight, gains and loses friends, makes a zillion mistakes, and finds ways to turn grief, divorce pain, communal tragedy and the anticipation of an empty nest into moments of connection.

Seft, a talented flint miner, walks the Great Plain in the high summer heat to witness the rituals that signal the start of a new year. He is there to trade his stone at the Midsummer Fair and to find Neen, the girl he loves. Joia, Neen’s sister, is a priestess with a vision and an unmatched ability to lead. As a child, she watches the Midsummer ceremony and dreams of a miraculous new monument, raised from the biggest stones in the world. But trouble is brewing among the hills and woodlands of the Great Plain. Joia’s vision of a great stone circle, assembled by the divided tribes of the Plain, will inspire Seft and become their life’s work. But as drought ravages the earth, mistrust grows between the herders, farmers and woodlanders --- and an act of savage violence leads to open warfare.

There’s a tempest brewing in Central America. A government crackdown on cartels leaves most of the drug lords locked up in an impregnable prison. In response, Amador Fierro, a brilliant, tech-savvy crime boss, forges the seven largest cartels into an allegiance called La Liga. If they are to defeat the U.S.-led offensive, they will need a powerful weapon. Thus is born Project Q: an Artificial General Intelligence computer that, when finished, will grant Fierro such overwhelming control of America. Chairman Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon are the only ones standing in his way, but they have their own problems. While two members of the team are unreachable in the Darien Gap searching for an Iranian Quds Force base, the Oregon crew have a mole in their midst. Meanwhile, other dark forces are at play.

For Meg (wife #1), Jenny (#2) and Amelia (#3), the term “a woman scorned” isn’t strong enough. They want more than revenge for the years of their life they wasted with their pitiful excuse for a husband. They want him dead. As they carry out their lethal plan, they soon realize they’re thinking too small. What about all the other men (and women) who cause immeasurable suffering and get away with it? Thus “the business” is born. A dazzling new female-owned venture that will change the course of their lives --- and shorten many others! And for Meg and Jenny, it could allow them to experience a love they never thought possible.

Clarke Cartwright runs Toade’s Antiques, which is no small feat, especially considering that the roof is in shambles and half her merchandise is unsellable. But dealing with that feels easier than her other option: chatting it up with the ghost of her childhood crush’s father. Leith Wilkes has spent his life preparing to take over his family’s farm. Well, he’s actually spent most of his life flirting, but now he’s ready to buckle down, which has nothing to do with an oddly specific clause that his dad left in his inheritance. Leith is pretty sure he’s the only one who knows about it…until Clarke drunkenly spills that she knows, too, along with a bunch of other Wilkes family secrets. Leith starts to wonder if there’s more to Clarke than she lets on --- and if his dad has something to do with it.

Paris, 1908. At the height of the Belle Époque, Gabriële Buffet --- a brilliant young musician fresh out of Europe’s most elite conservatory --- meets Francis Picabia, a charismatic and explosive Spanish painter. Their intense love affair plunges them into a Paris alive with artistic experimentation and social rebellion. Soon after, Gabriële meets the enigmatic Marcel Duchamp. Before long, the three have embarked on a passionate and unconventional relationship that will define their personal stories --- and in the process reshape modern art. As Europe moves from exuberance to upheaval, and World War I looms, Gabriële, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp and their milieu challenge every convention: about marriage, sexuality, authorship and artistic freedom.

Sheriff Joanna Brady is looking forward to the holidays with her busy family and celebrating her daughter’s graduation from the police academy. But the family is interrupted when a body is discovered beneath a flooded bridge in the Arizona desert. A young boy was murdered, and the details of the crime scene tell Joanna that this was not the killer’s first murder. As Joanna digs deeper into the case, she uncovers unlikely connections between cases of mysterious deaths and missing persons, having long since gone cold, that extend far beyond the confines of her small town and include the discovery of a body near Devil’s Lake, North Dakota. To get justice for the victims and to save the town of Bisbee from a predator, Joanna must chase down every dangerous lead.

Former FBI agent Brigid Quinn hasn’t forgiven herself for the testimony that led to young mother Nicole Gleason being convicted for the manslaughter of her abusive husband. Now out of jail early on parole, Nicole is living in a group home for felons in Brigid’s Arizona neighborhood. But while Brigid hopes to make amends with Nicole, not everyone in the community is happy to have criminals on their doorstep. When outspoken local resident Dorita Gordino is grotesquely murdered, suspicion soon falls on Nicole. Brigid is determined to catch Dorita’s killer and prove Nicole’s innocence --- even if it means one of her own darkest secrets comes to light.

In 1985, a white man walked into a South Georgia church and brutally murdered Harold and Thelma Swain, two pillars of the area’s Black community. The killer vanished into the night. For 15 years, the case remained unsolved. Then authorities zeroed in on Dennis Perry, a carpenter who grew up nearby. Convicted with devastatingly flawed evidence, Perry received a double life sentence. When award-winning journalist and South Georgia native Joshua Sharpe retraces the case, he discovers a winding path of corruption, devastating missteps and secrets. He eventually uncovers explosive evidence that helps prove Perry’s innocence. And he confronts a long-ignored suspect: an alleged white supremacist who had bragged about committing the murders. But the fight for the truth is not easily won.

Chicago, the turn of the 21st century. Our narrator --- always there and never entirely present --- recounts her decades-long relationship with the heiress Katherine Stern. Through the years since boarding school, she has seen Katherine as a daughter who wants for nothing but respect from her psychotherapist father, as a woman with a kind but fortune-hunting fiancée, and as a mystery even more confounding than the gothic horror stories she evaluates from the slush pile at her job. Sometimes, despite their estrangement, she has even seen Katherine as a friend. Inspired by the classic story WASHINGTON SQUARE by Henry James, Norah Labiner reimagines the prolific tale.

Walter Nash has a very high-level position at Sybaritic Investments, where his innate skills and dogged tenacity have carried him to the top of the pyramid in his business career. However, following his estranged Vietnam-veteran father’s funeral, Nash is unexpectedly approached by the FBI in the middle of the night. They have an important request: become their inside man to expose an enterprise that is laundering large sums of money through Sybaritic. At the top of this illegal operation is Victoria Steers, an international criminal mastermind that the FBI has been trying to bring down for years. Nash has little choice but to accept the FBI’s demands and try to bring Steers and her partners to justice. But when Steers discovers that Nash is working with the FBI, she turns the tables on him in a way he never could have contemplated.

It’s 1915, and life is falling apart for 13-year-old twins Bolt and Eleanor. When their mother dies, they are forced to leave home under the care of a vicious con man who claims to be their long-lost uncle Charlie. During a late-night poker game, when one of his rages ends in murder, they decide to flee. Salvation arrives in the form of Mr. Jengling, founder of the Emporium of Wonders. He adopts Bolt and Eleanor, who travel by train across the vast, sometimes brutal American frontier with their new family, watching as the exhibitions spark amazement wherever they go. But as Bolt falls in deeper with their new clan, he finds Eleanor pulling further away from him. And when Uncle Charlie picks up their trail, the twins find themselves facing a peril that will forever alter the trajectory of their lives.

Chino and Paco Rojas seem well-mannered, at least for Chicanos, to the white cops who pull them over for littering on the long drive from California to Trinity, Texas. So well-mannered, in fact, that Captain Frank McKellan lets them off with a warning and recommends them a job at Stanzik Farms, the largest independent melon grower in the area. But Chino and Paco didn’t drive all this way for work. Instead, Chino is looking for a mysterious man, Vincent Mora, whose new Valley Agricultural Workers Association is causing a scene striking against the farm owners. Stanzik’s fields and Mora’s union bring together a cast of unlikely characters. Some are neighbors, others are just passing through. Some know each other well, or at least thought they did…before the picket line.  

Four decades ago, Joyce Carol Oates penned her first novel of psychological suspense under the name “Rosamond Smith.” In the Smith books, Oates explored themes of betrayal and deception, lust and murder, through stories involving twins, doubles and hidden second identities. Hard Case Crime is proud to bring these extraordinary works of crime fiction back into print in definitive double editions, each pairing two complete novels and two never-before-collected Oates short stories. In this volume, a model suburban husband grows obsessed with a beautiful stranger in DOUBLE DELIGHT, while an eminent professor preys on a vulnerable student in NEMESIS --- and the echoes continue in the rare short stories “A Girl Worth Twenty Million” and “First Death.”

Michael Lobb has just been found dead on the floor of his family’s tin and pewter workshop. It’s suspicious enough that his body was found by a representative of Cornwall EcoMining, a company keen on acquiring his family’s land, and it’s made even worse when he’s revealed to have been the majority owner of the business and the sole obstacle preventing a deal from being made. But it doesn’t take long for Inspector Beatrice Hannaford to unearth the layers of estrangement that surrounded Michael in his final days. In comes Kayla, a young woman who has just been made his widow. Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers are brought in to help solve the crime and search for justice in a community where lust, greed and family traditions collide with devastating consequences.

Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean that he has always been set apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father's shadow and remains there, having missed one chance at love --- and passed up another offer of marriage from an unsuitable man. But in the Advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy's lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care. As the winter passes, father and daughter's lives, the understanding of their family and their role in their community are changed forever.

In 1969, 23-year-old starlet Lori Lovely shocks the world by ditching a promising film career to take vows as a Benedictine nun. The media can’t get enough of the story. Why would such a beautiful girl take the veil? Did it have anything to do with her costar, heartthrob singer Lucas Wesley? In 1990, history student Lu Tibbott decides to dig into a true 20th-century mystery for her senior thesis and write about her aunt Lori, now the Mother Abbess at a cloistered convent in rural New England. For decades, Mother Lori has refused all requests for interviews --- until Lu arrives with a tape recorder in hand. To Lu’s delight, Mother Lori is finally ready to talk...but only if Lu is truly ready to listen.