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The Temps

Andrew DeYoung

*Named a Best SFF Book of 2022 by Book Riot*

They're underemployed. Underpaid. And trying to survive the end of the world while trapped inside an office complex. Who knew temp work could be this dangerous?

Jacob Elliot doesn’t want a temporary job in the mailroom at Delphi Enterprises, but after two post-college years of unpaid internships and living in his parents’ basement, he needs the work. Then, on his first day, the unthinkable happens: toxic gas descends on a meeting in Delphi’s outdoor amphitheater, killing all the regular employees and leaving Jacob stranded inside the vast office complex.

Wandering through Delphi headquarters, Jacob finds other survivors: Lauren, the disillusioned classics major who’s now writing online personality quizzes; Swati, the fitness instructor trying to escape a toxic relationship; and Dominic, the business school student who will do almost anything to get ahead. Stranded in the wreckage of the company that employed them, the temps band together to create a miniature world that’s part spring break, part office culture—until a shocking discovery disrupts the survivors’ self-made paradise and drives them to uncover the truth about the mysterious corporation that employed them and the apocalypse that brought their world to an end.

A surprising, profound tribute to the absurdities and paranoia of modern life, The Temps is an epic exploration of survival and human connection in the digital age.

Private Entrance

Kathryn Harvey

BOOK THREE OF THE BUTTERFLY TRILOGY

New York Times bestselling author Kathryn Harvey captivates again in this sensual tale of murder, corruption, and passion.

Abby Tyler is a woman on a mission. For more than thirty years, Abby has been desperately searching for her child—an infant stolen at birth before she even had a chance to see it. To locate her child and end years of heartache, Abby formulates a plan that will bring her face to face with a past she has tried to forget.

Elsewhere, three strangers receive word that they’ve each won a contest that, oddly, they don’t recall entering. None of them are prepared for the luxurious and erotic prize that awaits them—a week at The Grove, an exclusive anything-goes, no-questions-asked resort in the Southern California desert. Amid the glamour of movie stars and the super-rich, the three strangers—Coco, Sissy, and Ophelia—find themselves embroiled in a baffling mystery involving the reclusive spa owner, Abby Tyler.

As a deadly sandstorm approaches the resort, a murderer stalks the trapped guests. Someone will die, someone will find love, and all three women will come to astonishing realizations about themselves. From the sensual heat of the desert to the corrupt underworld of Las Vegas, author Kathryn Harvey delivers a stimulating tale with Private Entrance.

The Prophetess

Barbara Wood

The time is December 1999. Millennial fever holds the world in its grip—stirring ancient and terrible fears that the apocalypse is at hand.

In the Sinai desert, archeologist Catherine Alexander just unearthed a cache of six ancient papyrus scrolls that point to the millennium's most transforming secret. Discovered inside the legendary Well of Miriam, a site named after the ancient prophetess who was the sister of Moses, the scrolls reveal a hidden history of the world and its religions—a series of shattering revelations that governments will do anything to suppress, and that an enigmatic billionaire named Miles Havers will do anything to possess.

But there is more: a seventh scroll that contains a secret of almost unimaginable power. It is a secret that may cost Catherine her life as she dodges government agents, Vatican operatives, and cyberspace perils in her race to translate the scrolls and release their powers to the world.

Aided by two very different and compelling men, Dr. Julius Voss and Father Michael Garibaldi, Catherine finds herself caught up in the adventure of a lifetime and a struggle that she must win

Serpent and the Staff

Barbara Wood

Set in the tumultuous era when Egypt is on the brink of becoming the dominant world power, The Serpent and the Staff tells the powerful story of a Canaanite family's struggle for survival in a climate of violent change, when cherished beliefs and traditions are threatened.

Ugarit, Syria, 1450 B.C.E. Eighteen-year-old Leah, the eldest daughter of a wealthy winemaker, is past the traditional age of betrothal. Vowed to wed the wealthy but cruel shipbuilder Jotham, Leah declines his offer of marriage after discovering that he and his family suffer from “the falling sickness.” Enraged by her refusal and his ruined reputation, he blackmails Leah’s father, a punishment forgiven only by offering Leah’s hand in marriage. With no more options for another suitor and no male heir for her family, Leah must seek out the cure for Jotham’s sickness or her family will face permanent ruin.

During her quest Leah begins to burn with desire for Daveed, the handsome household scribe whose culture forbids their union. Daveed has been called by the gods to restore the Brotherhood, an elite fraternity of guardians at the great Library of Ugarit, rumored to contain the secret symbol of immortality within its ancient archives. If his plan succeeds, it may also save Leah’s family from disaster. But even Daveed and Leah cannot fathom the extent of Jotham’s sinister schemes to make Leah his bride once and for all.

With rich historical detail, The Serpent and the Staff is a sweeping tale of love, betrayal, and how one family's faith can overcome the obstacles that life has in store for them.

The Hive

Melissa Young

2021 Indie Best Contest Winner

2021 Finalist for American Book Fest’s for Best Book Award

A 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award Winner for Best Cover Design

A 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist for Best Second Novel

A story of survival, sisters, and secrets

The Fehler sisters wanted to be more than bug girls but growing up in a fourth- generation family pest control business in rural Missouri, their path was fixed. The family talked about Fehler Family Exterminating at every meal, even when their mom said to separate the business from the family, an impossible task. They tried to escape work with trips to their trailer camp on the Mississippi River, but the sisters did more fighting than fishing. If only there was a son to lead rural Missouri insect control and guide the way through a crumbling patriarchy.

After Robbie Fehler’s sudden death, the surprising details of succession in his will are revealed. He’s left the company to a distant cousin, assuming the women of the family aren’t capable. As the mother’s long-term affair surfaces and her apocalypse prepper training intensifies, she wants to trade responsibility for romance.

Facing an economic recession amidst the backdrop of growing Midwestern fear and resentment, the Fehler sisters unite in their struggle to save the company’s finances and the family’s future. To survive, they must overcome a political chasm that threatens a new civil war as the values that once united them now divide the very foundation they’ve built. Through alternating point-of-views, grief and regret gracefully give way to the enduring strength of the hive.

Stars

Kathryn Harvey

BOOK TWO OF THE BUTTERFLY TRILOGY

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Butterfly comes a provocative, riveting tale of one woman’s escape from her haunting past.

The rich, the glamorous, the powerful all come to STARS—to gossip, to make deals . . . and to indulge luxuriously in their most erotic fantasies. At the magnificent and secluded Palm Springs mountaintop resort, bodies—and souls—are offered up to save fragile careers . . . or are used to extract the final succulent and satisfying drops of sweet retribution. And above it all, manipulating events from the shadows, is the beautiful owner of STARS—a woman of great mystery, fleeing the tragedy, disgrace, and scandal of a devastating past that haunts her every moment.

This Golden Land

Barbara Wood

A sweeping historical saga of Australia and a love story of one determined young woman who must choose between the two devoted men she loves.

Eighteen-year-old Hannah Conroy has always dreamed of following in her father's footsteps as a healer. But in 19th-century England, the medical profession is closed to women. She sees midwifery as a back door into that world, but her fledgling career is crushed by personal tragedy. Seeking to escape a possible murder conviction in England, Hannah's world is turned upside down as she boards a boat bound for Melbourne. Young and naïve, with some laboratory notes and a handful of medical instruments, she hopes Australia is a place of a new beginning and a fresh start, a place where she can begin a midwife practice. Arriving during a period of enormous change in Australia, Hannah faces a myriad of challenges.

Not only must she fight for acceptance as a medical professional, but she also falls in love with and must decide between two men: an American photographer seeking a new life in Australia, and a rowdy outlaw fleeing arrest. This Golden Land presents a love story that neither time nor distance can erase.

Washing the Dead

Michelle Brafman

Three Orthodox Jewish women search for truth amid a lifetime of secrets in this “heartfelt story of loss, hope, and reconciliation” (Booklist).
 
Barbara Blumfield, a big-hearted suburban Milwaukee mom and preschool teacher, was seventeen years old when her mother’s affair ripped her family from their Orthodox Jewish community. When the rabbi’s wife summons Barbara to perform the ritual burial washing of her beloved teacher, she walks back into the spiritual and emotional home her mother burned down. Exhuming generations of secrets is the only way Barbara can forgive her estranged mother and in turn spare her daughter their crippling family legacy.

Butterfly

Kathryn Harvey

From New York Times bestselling author Kathryn Harvey comes an arousing, passionate story of three women’s hidden desires and the place called Butterfly, where dreams are kept and where fantasies come to life.

Above an exclusive men’s store on Rodeo Drive there is a private club called Butterfly, where women are free to act out their secret erotic fantasies. Only the most beautiful and powerful women in Beverly Hills are invited to join: Jessica, a lawyer who longs for the days when men were men, and women dressed to please them; Trudie, a builder who wants a man who will challenge her—all of her—with no holds barred; and Linda, a surgeon, who uses masks to unmask the desires she hides even from herself.

But the most mysterious of them all is the woman who created Butterfly. She has changed her name, her accent, even her face to hide her true identity. And now she is about to reveal everything to realize the dream that has driven her since childhood—the secret obsession that will carry her beyond ecstasy, or destroy her and everyone around her.

Seven Years

Peter Robinson

A gripping novella from the New York Times–bestselling author of the Inspector Banks Mysteries and a “master of the art” (The Boston Globe)

Retired Cambridge professor Donald Aitcheson loves scouring antiquarian bookshops for secondhand treasures—as much as he loathes the scribbled marginalia from their previous owners. But when he comes upon an inscription in a volume of Robert Browning’s poetry, he’s less irritated than disturbed. This wasn’t once a gift to an unwitting woman. It was a threat—insidious, suggestively sick, and terribly intriguing.

Now Aitcheson’s imagination is running wild. Was it a sordid teacher-pupil affair that ended in betrayal? A scorned lover’s first salvo in a campaign of terror? The taunt of an obsessive psychopath? Then again, it could be nothing more than a tasteless joke between friends.

As his curiosity gets the better of him, Aitcheson can’t resist playing detective. But when his investigation leads to a remote girls’ boarding school in the Lincolnshire flatlands, and into the confidence of its headmistress, he soon discovers the consequences of reading between the lines.

The Book of the Lion

Thomas Perry

A long lost manuscript by Geoffrey Chaucer draws Professor Dominic Hallkyn through the streets of Boston and into a mysterious plot.

When Professor Dominic Hallkyn receives an anonymous phone call late one night from a voice claiming to possess a priceless Chaucerian manuscript presumed lost forever, he doesn’t know how to react. He soon finds himself scrambling to meet the caller’s demands amid uncompromising suspense that culminates in a devilish plot twist. Perry takes his readers on a mad dash through the winding streets of Boston in pursuit of the unique artifact that may be doomed to disappear from history . . . this time, for good.

The Bibliomysteries are a series of short tales about deadly books, by top mystery authors.

The Gospel of Sheba

Lyndsay Faye

A librarian is tormented by a lethal volume of black magic.

When A. Davenport Lomax’s young daughter asks him whether spirits and faeries are real, the Edwardian librarian just pats the little darling on the head. But when a desperate man emerges from the winding passages of the library muttering about demonology, he gets Lomax’s attention. Theodore Grange is a member of the Brotherhood of Solomon, a secret society dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of black magic, and he believes he has found a book written by the Queen of Sheba herself. Said to hold the answers to one thousand demonic mysteries, the tome will poison any man who dares read it.
 
The next time Lomax sees him, Grange is at death’s door. To uncover the truth about The Gospel of Sheba, Lomax agrees to accompany Grange to a meeting of the brotherhood, where he will encounter darkness that threatens his life, his family, and his soul.