Jennifer Pickens
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"Instead of presents this Christmas, a true crime podcaster is opening up a cold case... Madeline Martin has built a life for herself as the young owner of a thriving business, The Next Chapter Bookshop, despite her tragic childhood and now needing to care for her infirm father. When Harley Granger, a failed novelist turned true crime podcaster, drifts into her shop in the days before Christmas, he seems intent on digging up events that Madeline would...
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"Mikki Brammer's The Collected Regrets of Clover is a big-hearted and life-affirming debut about a death doula who, in caring for others at the end of their life, has forgotten how to live her own, for readers of The Midnight Library. What's the point of giving someone a beautiful death if you can't give yourself a beautiful life? From the day she watched her kindergarten teacher drop dead during a dramatic telling of Peter Rabbit, Clover Brooks has...
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"From New York Times Bestselling author Kelley Armstrong comes a spellbinding new tale of supernatural horror involving a haunted-house, seances, lost loved ones, and a sinister spirit out for blood... Nicola Laughton never expected to see adulthood, being diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis as a child. Then medical advances let her live into her thirties and she met Anton, who taught her to dream of a future... together. Months after they married, Anton...
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"Three childhood friends miraculously survive the night when everyone in their suburban hometown turns into ghosts"--
"The Velkwood Vicinity was the topic of occult theorists, tabloid one-hour documentaries, and even some pseudo-scientific investigations as the block of homes disappeared behind a near-impenetrable veil that only three survivors could enter--and only one has in the past twenty years, until now. Talitha Velkwood has avoided anything...
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"When Jess was thirteen, her mother went for a walk and never returned. Jess and her older sister never found out what happened. Instead, they did what they hoped their mother might be doing: survive. As soon as she was old enough, Jess fled the small town of Knife River, wandering from girlfriend to girlfriend like a ghost in her own life, adrift and aimless in her attempts to outrun grief and confusion. But one morning, fifteen years later, she...
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"Cordelia knows her mother is . . . unusual. Their house doesn't have any doors between rooms--there are no secrets in this house--and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend. Unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him. But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don't force their daughters to be silent and motionless...
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"The story of the groundbreaking trans athletes and Olympic bureaucrats who set the stage for today's culture wars"--
"In December 1935, Zdeněk Koubek, one of the most famous sprinters in European women's sports, declared he was now living as a man. Around the same time, the celebrated British field athlete Mark Weston, also assigned female at birth, announced that he, too, was a man. Periodicals and radio programs across the world carried the news;...
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Diane Williams, “godmother of flash fiction” (The Paris Review), returns with 33 short, brilliant stories.
In Williams’ stories, life is newly alive and dangerous; whether she is writing about an affair, a request for money, an afternoon in a garden, or the simple act of carrying a cake from one room to the next, she offers us beautiful and unsettling new ways of seeing everyday life. In perfectly honed sentences,...
In Williams’ stories, life is newly alive and dangerous; whether she is writing about an affair, a request for money, an afternoon in a garden, or the simple act of carrying a cake from one room to the next, she offers us beautiful and unsettling new ways of seeing everyday life. In perfectly honed sentences,...
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A caring and compassionate grief book for bereaved parents who have lost a child.
Being suddenly thrust into the world of parental grief is like being transported to a foreign land where you don't speak the language. With that in mind, Claire Aagaard has written “When a Child Dies” in a simple, straightforward manner, offering information, comfort, and hope for those who believe that none is possible.
Questions addressed include:
• Can we...
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"From the author of the WWII novel Those Who Are Saved ("sweeping and lyrical"-People), comes an electrifying page-turner about female rage, grief, and creativity, as a contemporary mother immerses herself in ancient Greco-Roman female mystery rites while on a summer journey with her family. Ava, an adjunct art-history professor whose research and writing have been stymied by her life as a wife and mother in LA, joins her Hollywood film producer husband...
13) Eastbound
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** SELECTED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AS 1 OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR **
** INCLUDED ON THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF 2023 **
“At The New York Times Book Review, I think it's fair to say we were dazzled by the way the author creates . . . a miniature masterpiece of narrative tension and compression” – Emily Eakin, "The Book Review" podcast
In this gripping tale, a Russian conscript and...
** INCLUDED ON THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF 2023 **
“At The New York Times Book Review, I think it's fair to say we were dazzled by the way the author creates . . . a miniature masterpiece of narrative tension and compression” – Emily Eakin, "The Book Review" podcast
In this gripping tale, a Russian conscript and...
14) Final Girls
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What if you could fix the worst parts of yourself by confronting your worst fears?
Dr. Jennifer Webb has invented proprietary virtual reality technology that purports to heal psychological wounds by running clients through scenarios straight out of horror movies and nightmares. In a carefully controlled environment, with a medical cocktail running through their veins, sisters might develop a bond they've been missing their whole lives-while running...
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Winner of the Ladies of Horror Fiction Award for Best Novella of 2020
"Can you hear the bell chime?"
A girl suffering from paralyzing night terrors finds a missing poster hanging from the door of her apartment building. On that poster is a photograph of a frighteningly familiar face.
It's her.
Only, she's never seen this photo before and something about its grin scares her. How its eyes seem to follow her no matter...
"Can you hear the bell chime?"
A girl suffering from paralyzing night terrors finds a missing poster hanging from the door of her apartment building. On that poster is a photograph of a frighteningly familiar face.
It's her.
Only, she's never seen this photo before and something about its grin scares her. How its eyes seem to follow her no matter...
16) Don't You Dare
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"Don't You Dare" is a compelling story that weaves together a current-day journey of discovery and a true-life love story between two women that took place over a hundred years ago. Newspaper headlines and stories back then didn't mention LGBTQ people. The LGBTQ community loved and lived in the background of society because it was too dangerous to do otherwise. All were hidden, just like the wedding photos belonging to author Gayla Turner's grandmother...
17) The Herbarium
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The Herbarium, an enchanted sacred text written by the ancients, is safely hidden in a monastery outside of Chartres . . . or is it?
In present day California, thirty-something Paige Delaney is struggling to cope. Since the death of her husband, she's felt lost, aimless, and frustrated. At the urging of her best friend, she accepts an invitation to join a Wiccan ceremony.
And it's a night that changes everything.
Haunted by the vivid apparition...
18) Magdalena
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"Beautifully written and satisfyingly creepy, this is one of the most poignant and original ghost stories I've ever read." -Mark Haskell Smith, author of Blown
In a small, secluded town that thrives on gossip and superstition, Dottie offers plenty of both when the scandal breaks about a missing girl, a ghost, and the affair that started it all. Having suffered a history of miscarriages, reclusive Dottie develops a strange motherly interest in her...
19) Down A Bad Road
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Jealousy can be deadly.
Longtime bachelor Ron Burley has a rule against messing around with married women in his rural upstate New York town, but sassy, lovely Lavender has convinced him to break it. Their steamy affair sets someone off, but it isn't Lavender's clueless husband-it's Marta, Burley's clingy childhood friend and ex-lover.
Marta knows Burley is on the verge of going broke, so she secretly tries to lure him with a lucrative job offer...
20) A Country Year
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A "delightful, witty" memoir about starting over as a beekeeper in the Ozarks (Library Journal).
Alone on a small Missouri farm after a thirty-year marriage, Sue Hubbell found a new love-of the winged, buzzing variety. Left with little but the commercial beekeeping and honey-producing business she started with her husband, Hubbell found solace in the natural world. Then she began to write, challenging herself to tell the absolute truth about her...