Pristine beaches, lush greenery, and perfect weather, the island of Kisapmata would be the vacation destination…if not for the curse. The Philippine locals speak of it in hushed voices and refuse to step foot on the island. They know the lives it has claimed. They won’t be next. A Hollywood film crew won’t be dissuaded. Legend claims a Dreamer god sleeps, waiting to grant unimaginable powers in exchange for eight sacrifices. The producers are determined to document the evidence. And they convince Alon, a local teen, to be their guide. Within minutes of… Read more.
Collins Cartwright does not want to go home. Sweetwater Peak, Wyoming, was supposed to be in her rearview mirror, but when she finds out a developer is trying to buy her parents’ antiques shop out from under them, she doesn’t have a choice—at least, that’s what she tells her family. They don’t need to know she’s lost her job and is out of money. Or that the ghosts who have always been her companions have recently gone silent. But just because she’s returned home doesn’t mean she has to stay with her parents or crash on her twin sister’s couch. Lucky for her, the new…. Read more.
It’s been a decade since Merritt Valentine’s peak as a celebrated singer-songwriter… and her subsequent career-ending mental breakdown. Since then, she’s abandoned the glitz of Los Angeles to move in with her sister, Olivia, in the sleepy Colorado ski town of Crested Peak, hoping to heal her lingering emotional wounds of the spotlight. Life in Crested Peak would be uncomplicated if not for Merritt’s inconvenient crush on the local contractor and handyman, Nikolaos Petrakis. Niko is disarmingly handsome and too kind-hearted to ever be right for the complex and prickly… Read more.
Protagonist in recovery for substance and alcohol addictions after an attempted suicide by overdose in the past, including on-page & recounted drug use & abuse and alcohol consumption & abuse
Unplanned teen pregnancy recounted & mentions of a pregnant secondary character
What’s an Alpha Male to do when he meets the Alpha Female of his dreams? Step one, hide all sharp objects. All Zach Sheridan ever wanted was to become Alpha Male of his Pack and be left alone. What he definitely didn’t need in his life was some needy female demanding his attention. What he never saw coming was the vicious, scarred female who not only demanded his attention but knew exactly how to get it. Sara Morrighan knew this was the best she could expect from her life. Good friends. A nice place to live. And a safe job. But when Zach rode into her…. Read more.
Once a promising alchemist, Helena Marino is now a prisoner—of war and of her own mind. Her Resistance friends and allies have been brutally murdered, her abilities suppressed, and the world she knew destroyed. In the aftermath of a long war, Paladia’s new ruling class of corrupt guild families and depraved necromancers, whose vile undead creatures helped bring about their victory, holds Helena captive. According to Resistance records, she was a healer of little importance within their ranks. But Helena has inexplicable memory loss of the months leading up to her capture… Read more.
Amnesia & memory loss, including non-consensual memory alteration
Nightmares
Suicidal ideation & self-harm
Alcohol consumption (on-page) & mentions of smoking
Forced pregnancy & childbirth*
Miscarriage & abortion mentioned
Blood & injury depiction, including eye trauma/ loss of eye, seizures, broken bones, emesis, traumatic brain injury, weight loss & gain due to malnutrition, disembowelment & amputation
Medical procedures, human experimentation. needles & surgery, including forced sterilization of a child
Cannibalism mentioned (secondary characters)
Murder & attempted murder
Physical assault
Attempted kidnapping
Arson & bombing
Imprisonment & captivity
Torture, including sensory deprivation and solitary confinement
War themes including war crimes & eugenics
Animal death & cruelty (experimentation)
Poverty
*Context: The female protagonist is raped by the male protagonist as part of a breeding program. The male protagonist cheats on his wife, who he was forced to marry and is also cheating on him, with the female protagonist.
My high school bully is now my fake boyfriend. Cash Wall has been messing with me since junior high. Nuisance stuff, mostly. Name calling. Pranks. Honestly, he’s nowhere near the worst of my problems. Back in school, I had bigger fish to fry, and now, I’ve got a “scarlet letter” situation going on. The whole town hates me. For some reason, Cash offers himself up as my knight in shining armor. So now my former bully is my fake boyfriend. What could possibly go wrong? Cash: Glenna Dobbs thinks I’m an idiot, and she’s mostly right. I hunt. Fish. Go mudding. I’m not a… Read more.
When eight-year-old Grace goes missing from a sweetshop on the way home from school, her mother Emma is plunged into a nightmare. Her family rallies around, but as the police hunt begins, cracks begin to emerge. What are the secret emails sent between Emma’s husband and her sister? Why does her mother take so long to join the search? And is Emma really as innocent as she seems? Meanwhile, ageing widow Maggie Taylor sees Grace’s picture in the newspaper. It’s a photograph that jolts her from the pain of her existence into a spiralling obsession with… Read more.
Peggy and Drew, both aspiring writers, move to an isolated canal boat with their fourteen-year-old son. Peggy is the glue that holds their family together, even as their son is bullied relentlessly for his physique and his family’s lack of money. But when Drew becomes frustrated by his wife’s sudden writing success, he moves their boat further and further from civilization. With their increasing isolation, personal challenges become harder to ignore, even as they desperately try to break toxic generational patterns. But when Drew’s gaslighting becomes too much for Peggy to take, it sets off a catastrophic series of events.
For the youngest in a long line of witches, demons used to be no big deal. A spell and a quick prick of the finger, and a witch like Ber could summon a demon to do anything she needed—clean a mess, send a message, you name it. But that was before Ber was diagnosed with diabetes. Now each time she tests her blood sugar, accidental demons are slipping into the human dimension…and causing absolute chaos. Good thing Ber and her older sister, Maeve, know that every magical problem has a magical solution. They’ll just conjur a low-order demon to monitor… Read more.
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts is Kingston’s disturbing and fiercely beautiful account of growing up Chinese-American in California. The young Kingston lives in two worlds: the America to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” Her mother tells her traditional tales of strong, wily women warriors – tales that clash puzzlingly with the real oppression of women. Kingston learns to fill in the mystifying spaces in her mother’s stories with stories of her own, engaging her family’s past and her own present with anger, imagination, and dazzling passion.
