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Between Tides

Angel Khoury

A captivating historical novel set on Cape Cod and North Carolina's Outer Banks, perfect for fans of Where the Crawdads Sing and Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping

1890s, Cape Cod: Between tides, a man deserts his wife and his post as keeper of the Chatham Beach Lifesaving Station to start a new family far to the south, at Cape Hatteras.

1940s: His daughter, en route to serve in World War II with the Red Cross, travels to Cape Cod where she meets his first wife, Blythe, reanimating a life she had long buried: memories of her courtship, her bitter losses, and her husband's slow-motion vanishing. Set on two wild seascapes, Cape Cod and North Carolina's Outer Banks, Between Tides is a lyrical novel for fans of Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, and Marilynne Robinson-a story of two women stitching together a family ripped at the seams and discovering that even through absence, love's presence is everlasting.

As You Were

David Tromblay

A hypnotic, brutal, and unstoppable coming-of-age story echoing from within the aftershocks set off by the American Indian boarding schools of generations past, fanned by the flames of nearly fifteen years of service in the Armed Forces, exposing a series of inescapable prisons and the invisible scars of attempted erasure.

When he learns his father is dying, David Tromblay ponders what will become of the monster’s legacy and picks up a pen to set the story straight.

In sharp and unflinching prose, he recounts his childhood bouncing between his father, who wrestles with anger, alcoholism, and a traumatic brain injury; his grandmother, who survived Indian boarding schools but mistook the corporal punishment she endured for proper child-rearing; and his mother, a part-time waitress, dancer, and locksmith, who hides from David’s father in church basements and the folded-down back seat of her car until winter forces her to abandon her son on his grandmother’s doorstep.

For twelve years, he is beaten, burned, humiliated, locked in closets, lied to, molested, seen and not heard, until his talent for brutal violence meets and exceeds his father’s, granting him an escape.

Years later, David confronts the compounded traumas of his childhood, searching for the domino that fell and forced his family into the cycle of brutality and denial of their own identity. 

Mistakenly Married

Victorine Lieske

It was only a business arrangement. She wasn’t supposed to fall in love.

When her online boyfriend stands Penny up at the altar, she ends up marrying the wrong man. Oops. But Harrison needs to be married to get his inheritance so they concoct a crazy plan.

Too bad her heart races every time he’s around.

Harrison just needs to prove to his stepmother that he’s married. But things don’t go as planned. And Penny breathes life into his world.

He finds himself wishing their fake marriage were real. Some mistakes were meant to happen.

Reluctantly Married

Victorine Lieske

Megan Holloway can’t stand her local morning show co-host, Adam Warner, even though he’s a total hunk. He goads her on-air until she says things she regrets. But since ratings increase each time they have an on-air fight, the producer encourages his behavior.

When a relationship specialist comes onto the show purporting that Adam has hidden feelings for her, she reluctantly agrees to go out with him—on camera. What starts out as one date turns into a viral dating show with Megan and Adam alternating between locking lips and knocking heads.

As Megan fights her growing attraction to Adam, their popularity increases and ABC takes notice, offering them their own program. Not a morning show like Megan is hoping, but a dating show in which she and Adam must marry at the end. With the promise of a hundred thousand dollars and the possibility of scoring what she really wants, her own national program, she signs on.

What she doesn't know is that Adam has fallen in love with her, and his objective is to get her to do the same.

Accidentally Married

Victorine Lieske

Madison Nichols, aspiring actress, is floundering. Her rent is due and she needs a job. Desperately. After getting a tip about an open position, she rushes to Jameson Technologies and meets CEO Jared Jameson. Unfortunately, due to a misunderstanding, she is put in the awkward position of pretending to be his girlfriend. Not the job she was applying for. And when she finds out Jared lied to her to get what he wanted, she decides to get back at him. In front of his family.

Jared is stunned when Madison announces they are getting married. She pushed her revenge too far. How can he tell them it’s all a lie? And when his sick aunt asks them to be married before she dies, Madison comes up with a hair-brained plan to hire an actor and stage a fake wedding.

What they both don’t know is Jared’s father has found out about the fake wedding. And he’s got his own hair-brained plan.

The Dark Door

Lisa Unger

A horror writer’s death leaves his daughter haunted by voices in this short story by the New York Times–bestselling author of Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six.

Pip Duke’s life has descended into chaos following the death of her father, a bestselling horror writer. She now hears voices all the time, saying troubling things like: Your father’s friends and family are after his money, or you should inherit everything. The voices also say she killed her dad, and the police are after her.

To silence these disturbing thoughts, Pip checks herself into an inpatient therapy center. However, the place is far from calming. She can’t trust the staff, and the voices in her head continue to say terrible things. There are those who want you released—only so they can continue to profit off your father’s name. A different voice says some wish to claim her inheritance by getting her declared insane.

If Pip hopes to ever know peace again, she must explore the depths of her psyche, sort through her memories, and unravel the secret that will be her key to freedom.

The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2022

Sara Paretsky

Sara Paretsky selects the twenty best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Michael Connelly, Jo Nesbo, Joyce Carol Oates, Colson Whitehead, and more!

Under the auspices of New York City’s legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international bestseller and MWA Grandmaster Sara Paretsky has selected the twenty most puzzling, most thrilling, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.

Includes stories by:

• Doug Allyn
• Colin Barrett
• Jerome Charyn
• Michael Connelly
• Susan Frith
• Tom Larsen
• Sean Marciniak
• Stefon Mears
• Kieth Lee Morris
• Gwen Mullins
• Jo Nesbo
• Joyce Carol Oates
• Annie Reed
• Kristen Kathryn Rusch
• Anna Scotti
• Ginny Swart
• Ellen Tremiti
• Joseph S. Walker
• Colson Whitehead
• Michael Wiley

Plus a bonus vintage story from the annals of mystery fiction, written over a century in the past.

The Odor of Violets

Otto Penzler, Baynard Kendrick

In the early days of WWII, a blind detective follows unseen clues to solve a murder and undermine a German spy plot.

Meet Captain Duncan Maclain. Blinded during his service in the first World War, Maclain made up for his lack of vision by sharpening his other senses, achieving a mastery of the subtle unseen clues often missed by those who see only with their eyes. Aided by his dogs Schnucke and Driest, the Captain puts the intelligence-gathering techniques he learned in the Army to work, making a name for himself as New York City’s most sought-after private detective. Now it’s 1940, there’s a second World War breaking out, and Maclain is pulled into a case unlike any he’s investigated before.

The murder of an actor in his Greenwich Village apartment would cause a stir no matter the circumstances but, when the actor happens to possess secret government plans, and when those plans go missing along with the young woman with whom he was last seen, it’s sensational enough to interest not only the local police, but the American government as well.

Maclain suspects a German spy plot at work and, in a world where treasonous men and patriots are indistinguishable to the naked eye, it will take his special skills to sniff out the solution.

Reissued for the first time in over a half-century, Odor of Violets is the most well-known installment in the long-running Duncan Maclain series, which featured one of crime fiction’s earliest disabled detectives. The novel, filmed in 1942 as Eyes in the Night, is a classic hybrid of mystery and espionage fiction.

The Cape Cod Mystery

Phoebe Atwood Taylor

The “Codfish Sherlock Holmes” solves a whodunnit in 1930s Cape Cod

Meet Asey Mayo, Cape Cod’s answer to Sherlock Holmes. Settled down from his former life as a seafaring adventurer, Asey is a Jack-of-all-trades who uses his worldly knowledge, folksy wisdom, and plain common sense to solve the most puzzling crimes to strike the peninsula. And in this, his first case, Asey finds himself embroiled in a scandal that will push his deductive powers to their limits.

A massive heatwave is scorching the Northeast, and vacationers from New York and Boston flock to Cape Cod for breezy, cool respite. Then a muckraking journalist is found murdered in the cabin he’s rented for the season, and the summer holiday becomes a nightmare for the local authorities. There are abundant suspects among the out-of-towners flooding the area, but they ultimately fix their sights on beloved local businessman Bill Porter as the murderer―unless Asey Mayo can prove him innocent and find the true killer.

A light whodunnit with an unforgettable amateur sleuth at its center, The Cape Cod Mystery is the first novel from one of the most beloved authors of the American Golden Age mystery. The plot is adorned with insightful historical detail and a healthy dose of Cape Cod local color, making this an enjoyable and enlightening read perfect for a beachside afternoon.

The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021

Lee Child

A Wall Street Journal holiday 2021 pick

A Suspense Magazine Best Book of the Year

Lee Child selects the twenty best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Stephen King, Sara Paretsky, and many more.

Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international bestseller Lee Child has selected the twenty most suspenseful, most confounding, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.

Includes stories by:

• Alison Gaylin
• David Morrell
• James Lee Burke
• Joyce Carol Oates
• Martin Edwards
• Sara Paretsky
• Stephen King
• Sue Grafton (with a new, posthumously-published work!)

And many more!

The Benson Murder Case

S. S. Van Dine

Brilliant amateur sleuth Philo Vance solves a puzzling murder in one of the most influential detective novels of the twentieth century

All of Wall Street and Manhattan high society is abuzz after playboy stockbroker Alvin Benson is discovered dead in his brownstone mansion, slumped over in an easy chair with a bullet in his head. The man’s body is found in a room locked from the inside, and his head is missing the toupee that usually adorned it. Ballistics experts, detectives, and the NYPD’s top brass can’t solve the crime, but luckily they don’t have to: New York’s leading flaneur and art connoisseur, Philo Vance, is on the case, and he’s got precisely the far-flung and esoteric knowledge needed to interpret the clues and determine whodunnit.

By carefully examining the crime scene and reconstructing the deadly shooting, Vance determines a number of things about the murderer, including his or her height―and this is only the first of many deductive feats that he will pull off before the investigation comes to a close. But will he be able to pierce the alibi of the true killer and prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?

The first novel in one of the most influential detective series of the early twentieth century, The Benson Murder Case introduces iconic amateur sleuth Philo Vance with a plot loosely based on the true-life murder of a famous bridge player. Its aristocratic Golden Age New York setting, obscure art cultural references, and devilishly complicated puzzle plot make this a must-read for nostalgia buffs and for anyone who appreciates a classic mystery.

Margaret's Story

Eugenia Price

In this powerful crescendo to Eugenia Price’s acclaimed Florida Trilogy, young and headstrong Margaret Seton vows to win the heart of grieving widower Lewis Fleming.

Margaret’s Story tells of the heartwarming relationship between the bold Margaret and her beloved Lewis, and how it plays out against dangerous and tumultuous events while spanning almost half a century. Experiencing Seminole uprisings, Florida’s burgeoning statehood, the Civil War, and the challenges of Reconstruction, Margaret holds her devoted family together with love, strength, and faith. Even the tragedy of seeing their beloved plantation on the St. John’s River, Hibernia, destroyed twice, and having sons and husband pitted against each other in war cannot break Margaret’s spirit or shake her faith. Her unconditional love, unflagging conviction in God, and contagious hope impact her descendants, a young state, and indeed a nation.