Will Dean

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Maryland

A Novel

And Then There Were None meets The Last Breath in this tense and suspenseful locked-room thriller that takes place inside a hyperbaric chamber from the author of the “brilliant, twisted, and oh so clever” (Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author) novel The Last Thing to Burn. Six experienced saturation divers are locked inside a hyperbaric chamber. Calm and professional, they know that rapid decompression would be fatal and so they work in shifts, breathing helium, and surviving in hot, close quarters. Then one of them is found dead in his bunk. With four days of decompression to go before the locked hatch to the chamber can be safely opened, the group must watch one another’s backs at all times. And when another diver is discovered unresponsive, everyone is on edge. What…or who…is taking them out one by one? And will any of them still be alive by the time the four days is up or will paranoia, exhaustion, suspicion, and pressure destroy them all?

The Chamber

8ebda7d5-1f72-487e-a86f-202ab091e994-0

Jennifer Egan

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022
ONE OF THE ECONOMIST TOP SIX BOOKS OF 2022
ONE OF ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022
ONE OF SLATE'S TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022
ONE OF THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022

Also named one of the BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by Vanity Fair, Time, NPR, The Guardian, Oprah Daily, LitHub, Self, Book Riot, Vogue, Bookpage, The New Yorker, BBC, Vulture, and many more!

From one of the most celebrated writers of our time comes an "inventive, effervescent" (Oprah Daily) novel about the memory and quest for authenticity and human connection.

The Candy House opens with the staggeringly brilliant Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, is so successful that he is "one of those tech demi-gods with whom we're all on a first name basis." Bix is forty, with four kids, restless, and desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalizing" memory. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, "Own Your Unconscious"--which allows you access to every memory you've ever had, and to share your memories in exchange for access to the memories of others--has seduced multitudes.

In the world of Egan's spectacular imagination, there are "counters" who track and exploit desires and there are "eluders," those who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative styles--from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. Intellectually dazzling, The Candy House is also a moving testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for connection, family, privacy, and love.

"A beautiful exploration of loss, memory, and history" (San Francisco Chronicle), "this is minimalist maximalism. It's as if Egan compressed a big 19th-century novel onto a flash drive" (The New York Times).

The Candy House

6386d0d3-0631-4ee1-97da-7978fa0f9dd9-1

Yoko Tawada

Margaret Mitsutani

Welcome to the not-too-distant future: Japan, having vanished from the face of the earth, is now remembered as "the land of sushi." Hiruko, its former citizen and a climate refugee herself, has a job teaching immigrant children in Denmark with her invented language Panska (Pan-Scandinavian): "homemade language. no country to stay in. three countries I experienced. insufficient space in brain. so made new language. homemade language."

As she searches for anyone who can still speak her mother tongue, Hiruko soon makes new friends. Her troupe travels to France, encountering an umami cooking competition; a dead whale; an ultra-nationalist named Breivik; unrequited love; Kakuzo robots; red herrings; uranium; an Andalusian matador. Episodic and mesmerizing scenes flash vividly along, and soon they're all next off to Stockholm.

With its intrepid band of companions, Scattered All Over the Earth (the first novel of a trilogy) may bring to mind Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or a surreal Wind in the Willows, but really is just another sui generis Yoko Tawada masterwork.

Scattered All over the Earth

dadde881-2353-452b-bc22-7b0af04b6ef7-1

Stuart Turton

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

From the bestselling author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water comes an inventive, high-concept murder mystery: an ingenious puzzle, an extraordinary backdrop, and an audacious solution. Solve the murder to save what's left of the world. Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched. On the island: it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they're told by the scientists. Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn't solved within 107 hours, the fog will smother the island--and everyone on it. But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer--and they don't even know it. And the clock is ticking.

The Last Murder at the End of the World

a187e9b1-7029-4889-9801-ea21fe6c04e0-0

Djuna

Anton Hur

For fans of the worlds of Philip K. Dick, Squid Game, and Severance: An absorbing tale of corporate intrigue, political unrest, unsolved mysteries, and the havoc wreaked by one company's monomaniacal endeavor to build the world's first space elevator--from one of South Korea's most revered science fiction writers, whose identity remains unknown.

On the fictional island of Patusan--and much to the ire of the Patusan natives--the Korean conglomerate LK is constructing an elevator into Earth's orbit, gradually turning this one-time tropical resort town into a teeming travel hub: a gateway to and from our planet. Up in space, holding the elevator's "spider cable" taut, is a mass of space junk known as the counterweight. And stashed within that junk is a trove of crucial data: a memory fragment left by LK's former CEO, the control of which will determine the company's--and humanity's--future.

Racing up the elevator to retrieve the data is a host of rival forces: Mac, the novel's narrator and LK's Chief of External Affairs, increasingly disillusioned with his employer; the everyman Choi Gangwu, unwittingly at the center of Mac's investigations; the former CEO's brilliant niece and power-hungry son; and Rex Tamaki, a violent officer in LK's Security Division. They're all caught in a labyrinth of fake identities, neuro-implant "Worms," and old political grievances held by the Patusan Liberation Front, the army of island natives determined to protect  Patusan's sovereignty.

Conceived by Djuna as a low-budget science fiction film, with literary references as wide-ranging as Joseph Conrad and the Marquis de Sade, Counterweight is part cyberpunk, part hardboiled detective fiction, and part parable of South Korea's neocolonial ambition and its rippling effects.

Counterweight

f497bbdb-39db-4c07-8bb6-3ecb7d34ab76-1

Kristen Perrin

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

For fans of Knives Out and The Thursday Murder Club, an enormously fun mystery about a woman who spends her entire life trying to prevent her foretold murder only to be proven right sixty years later, when she is found dead in her sprawling country estate.... Now it's up to her great-niece to catch the killer. It’s 1965 and teenage Frances Adams is at an English country fair with her two best friends. But Frances’s night takes a hairpin turn when a fortune-teller makes a bone-chilling prediction: One day, Frances will be murdered. Frances spends a lifetime trying to solve a crime that hasn’t happened yet, compiling dirt on every person who crosses her path in an effort to prevent her own demise. For decades, no one takes Frances seriously, until nearly sixty years later, when Frances is found murdered, like she always said she would be. In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to a meeting at the sprawling country estate of her wealthy and reclusive great-aunt Frances. But by the time Annie arrives in the quaint English village of Castle Knoll, Frances is already dead. Annie is determined to catch the killer, but thanks to Frances’s lifelong habit of digging up secrets and lies, it seems every endearing and eccentric villager might just have a motive for her murder. Can Annie safely unravel the dark mystery at the heart of Castle Knoll, or will dredging up the past throw her into the path of a killer? As Annie gets closer to the truth, and closer to the danger, she starts to fear she might inherit her aunt’s fate instead of her fortune.

How to Solve Your Own Murder

cd85bd84-5d9b-4d73-9558-19da827f9225-1

Hiron Ennes

A surreal and horrifying debut, Hiron Ennes's Leech defies our understanding of identity, heredity, and bodily autonomy.

An Amazon Book of the Month!

An October "Great Reads" Indie Next Pick!

"A wonderful new entry to Gothic science fiction, impeccably clever and atmospheric. Think Wuthering Heights... with worms!"--Tamsyn Muir

MEET THE CURE FOR THE HUMAN DISEASE

In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron's doctor has died. The doctor's replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies.

For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed.

In the frozen north, the Institute's body will discover a competitor for its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. A parasite is spreading through the baron's castle, already a dark pit of secrets, lies, violence, and fear. The two will make war on the battlefield of the body. Whichever wins, humanity will lose again.

Leech

8fecb526-eb4d-42be-9e93-c145f9cedd04-1

Kia Abdullah

A twisty and consuming thriller, Perfectly Nice Neighbors asks: When your dream home comes with nightmare neighbors, how far will you go to keep your family safe? Salma Khatun is hopeful about Blenheim, the suburban development into which she, her husband, and their son have just moved. The Bangladeshi family needs a fresh start, and Blenheim feels like just the place. Soon after they move in, Salma spots her white neighbor, Tom Hutton, ripping out the anti-racist banner her son put in the front garden. Avoiding confrontation, Salma takes the banner inside and puts it in her window. But the next morning, she wakes up to find her window smeared with paint. When she does speak to Tom, battle lines are drawn between the two families. As racial and social tensions escalate and the stakes rise, it’s clear that a reckoning is coming . . . And someone is going to get hurt.

Perfectly Nice Neighbors

93e9b6c5-5d24-4119-91cd-b28d8c7d4a81-1

Michelle Min Sterling

"In a near-future northern settlement, the fate of a young woman intertwines with those of a college professor and a collective of women soldiers in this mesmerizing and transportive novel in the vein of Station Eleven and The Power. In the far north of Canada, a team led by a visionary American architect is building a project called Camp Zero. With its fresh, clean air and cold climate, it's intended to be the beginning of a new community and a new way of life. A brilliant and determined young woman employed as a sex worker to the elite is offered a chance to join the Blooms, a group meant to service the men in camp-but her mission is to secretly monitor the mercurial architect in charge. In return, she'll receive a home for her displaced Korean immigrant mother and herself. Upon arrival at Camp Zero, she is named Rose. Rose quickly secures the trust of her target, but in the camp, everyone has an agenda, and her alliances begin to shift. Through skillfully braided perspectives, including those of a young professor longing to escape his wealthy family and an all-woman military brigade struggling for survival at a climate research station, the fate of Camp Zero and its inhabitants reaches a stunning crescendo. An electrifying page-turner where nothing is as it seems, Camp Zero cleverly explores how the intersection of gender, class, and migration will impact who and what will survive in a warming world"--

Camp Zero

a1f595e2-b4eb-4ab9-8b3a-9c615746d35e-1

Aimee Molloy

From "master of clever misdirection" (Kirkus Reviews) Aimee Molloy, author of the New York Times bestseller The Perfect Mother, comes an irresistible psychological thriller featuring a newly married woman whose life is turned upside down when her husband goes missing. Golden boy and reformed heartbreaker Sam Statler is looking forward to returning to his hometown of Orlando, New York, with his clever new wife, Annie. They've bought the house of their dreams and Sam, a therapist, is finally opening his own practice, attending to the egos of his (mostly female) clientele. Sensitive, curious, with a dimple to die for, Sam is a changed man--nothing like his no-good father, who left his own wife for a Talbots catalogue model. From the outside, Sam and Annie are building a picture-perfect life. But when Sam disappears and his secrets are exposed--including a house facing foreclosure and a mountain of debt he hid from Annie--everyone assumes he's following in his father's footsteps. Of course, assumptions being what they are, the truth is far more complex--and shocking. Showcasing Aimee Molloy's deft ability to subvert norms and expectations and culminating in the kind of unexpected twist that is becoming her trademark, Goodnight Beautiful is a thrilling tale of domestic suspense that explores just how far individuals will go to protect the ones they love--and to hide their own secrets.

Goodnight Beautiful

f118a693-1f33-43e8-856b-15729a27df14-1

Ernest Cline

"A 1980s cultural assessment of the fantastical future of online behavior continues the story that began in the internationally best-selling futuristic novel, Ready Player One, that inspired a blockbuster Steven Spielberg film"--

Ready Player Two

1d6f05f0-9593-4b98-a7aa-c608f0043e9a-1

Thomas Pynchon

Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon—Private eye Doc Sportello surfaces, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre that is at once exciting and accessible, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there. It's been a while since Doc Sportello has seen his ex- girlfriend. Suddenly she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. It's the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that "love" is another of those words going around at the moment, like "trip" or "groovy," except that this one usually leads to trouble. Undeniably one of the most influential writers at work today, Pynchon has penned another unforgettable book.

Inherent Vice

87966b89-47a5-4a2a-b17c-8b550d22f8c4-1

Jean Hanff Korelitz

** NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! ** The Tonight Show Summer Reads Winner ** A New York Times Notable Book of 2021 **

"Insanely readable." --Stephen King

Hailed as "breathtakingly suspenseful," Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Plot is a propulsive read about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it.

Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he's teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what's left of his self-respect; he hasn't written--let alone published--anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn't need Jake's help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then . . . he hears the plot.

Jake returns to the downward trajectory of his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan Parker's first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that--a story that absolutely needs to be told.

In a few short years, all of Evan Parker's predictions have come true, but Jake is the author enjoying the wave. He is wealthy, famous, praised and read all over the world. But at the height of his glorious new life, an e-mail arrives, the first salvo in a terrifying, anonymous campaign: You are a thief, it says.

As Jake struggles to understand his antagonist and hide the truth from his readers and his publishers, he begins to learn more about his late student, and what he discovers both amazes and terrifies him. Who was Evan Parker, and how did he get the idea for his "sure thing" of a novel? What is the real story behind the plot, and who stole it from whom?

The Plot

d09ad0d5-baf9-4bf9-afc5-ec5f6387dc26-1

Terry Miles

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

"Conspiracies abound in this surreal and yet all-too-real technothriller, detailing an underground alternate reality game, set in the same world as the popular Rabbits podcast. Rabbits is a secret, dangerous, and occasionally fatal underground alternate reality game, where the prizes are unclear but may involve vast sums of money, NSA or CIA recruitment, or perhaps even the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe itself. Since the game first started in 1959, ten iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. No one knows the true identity of these winners--just their now-famous user names. And everyone is waiting for the eleventh round to begin. K is an expert on the game, although he's never played it himself. He runs information sessions for amateurs at an historic, grungy arcade. But when he is approached by billionaire Alan Scarpio--the alleged winner of the sixth iteration--his world is turned upside down. Because Scarpio wants his help fixing the game, which he claims has become corrupted. And if the eleventh iteration begins before the game is repaired, he claims, all hell will break loose. Soon K is in way over his head, chasing down a myserious rabbit hole that is getting stranger and twistier and more perilous by the day. Because, as it happens, he blows the deadline, Eleven begins...and suddenly there is far more than just his own life at risk..."--

Rabbits

2b90f12e-f5e3-4510-bc77-ab48ae125efc-1

Jens Liljestrand

Life goes on in the face of a climate crisis in this astonishing and unforgettable debut novel that follows four characters as they struggle to survive in a burning world.

Even when the climate crisis escalates beyond our worst nightmares and people become refugees, the world keeps turning and life carries on as usual: teenaged love stories, marital collapses, identity crises, and revolts against hopeless parents continue to play out.

Didrik is a forty-year-old media consultant whose misguided efforts to become the family hero render him a pathetic vision of masculine incompetence. Melissa is an influencer with a suitcase full of lost dreams after denying climate change for years. André is the nineteen-year-old loser son of an international sports star who uses the erupting violence around him to orchestrate his own personal vengeance on his negligent father. And Vilja is Didrik's teenaged daughter who steps into a leadership role in the face of adult ineptitude.

"Simultaneously nerve-wracking, astute, and consumedly entertaining" (Sydsvenskan, Sweden) and through these four related stories, Even If Everything Ends eloquently illustrates a picture of a very near future that is at once extraordinary and entirely realistic.

Even If Everything Ends

7dbf48fb-818c-44cb-8de4-dbbfa520e064-1

Francesca Serritella

Cadence Archer arrives on Harvard's campus searching for answers about her brother, a schizophrenic genius who leapt from his dorm room window the year before. Eric's brilliance overshadowed Cady growing up, but she worshipped and adored him--even as he became more unstable, retreating deeper into his secretive work on multidimensional spacetime and isolating himself from everyone around him. Losing Eric has left a black hole in Cady's life, and while her choice to walk the same path threatens to break her family apart, she is driven to know whyEric killed himself. As Cady struggles under the enormous pressure that comes with being at Harvard, she begins to investigate her brother's life on campus. What was it that caused Eric to spiral into an irretrievable madness--the paranoia, the delusions, the illusory enemies--after he had been doing so well? Soon, her prying turns up clues that grow increasingly sinister. And then, as her suspicions mount, Cady begins to hear voices herself- three ghosts that walked the hallowed halls of Harvard, each from a different era of American history. That's when the panic sets in. Does she share Eric's illness, or are these voices real? And if she listens to these ghosts, will they lead to her brother--and the truth--or will they lead her down a path of her own destruction?

Ghosts of Harvard

bca009d5-498a-43a3-98b0-77808661843e-1

Colson Whitehead

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning Colson Whitehead continues his Harlem saga in a powerful and hugely-entertaining novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy glory. It’s 1971. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Amidst this collective nervous breakdown furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney tries to keep his head down and his business thriving. His days moving stolen goods around the city are over. It’s strictly the straight-and-narrow for him — until he needs Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter May and he decides to hit up his old police contact Munson, fixer extraordinaire. But Munson has his own favors to ask of Carney and staying out of the game gets a lot more complicated – and deadly. 1973. The counter-culture has created a new generation, the old ways are being overthrown, but there is one constant, Pepper, Carney’s endearingly violent partner in crime. It’s getting harder to put together a reliable crew for hijackings, heists, and assorted felonies, so Pepper takes on a side gig doing security on a Blaxploitation shoot in Harlem. He finds himself in a freaky world of Hollywood stars, up-and-coming comedians, and celebrity drug dealers, in addition to the usual cast of hustlers, mobsters, and hit men. These adversaries underestimate the seasoned crook – to their regret. 1976. Harlem is burning, block by block, while the whole county is gearing up for Bicentennial celebrations. Carney is trying to come up with a July 4th ad he can live with. ("Two Hundred Years of Getting Away with It!"), while his wife Elizabeth is campaigning for her childhood friend, the former assistant D.A and rising politician Alexander Oakes. When a fire severely injures one of Carney’s tenants, he enlists Pepper to look into who may be behind it. Our crooked duo have to battle their way through a crumbling metropolis run by the shady, the violent, and the utterly corrupted. CROOK MANIFESTO is a darkly funny tale of a city under siege, but also a sneakily searching portrait of the meaning of family. Colson Whitehead’s kaleidoscopic portrait of Harlem is sure to stand as one of the all-time great evocations of a place and a time.

Crook Manifesto

7265e760-952a-4884-a0ba-6f53764130fe-1

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, this gloriously entertaining novel is  "fast-paced, keen-eyed and very funny ... about race, power and the history of Harlem all disguised as a thrill-ride crime novel" (San Francisco Chronicle).

"Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. 

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time. 

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn't ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn't ask questions, either. 

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa--the "Waldorf of Harlem"--and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes. 

Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs? 

Harlem Shuffle's ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem. 

But mostly, it's a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.

Harlem Shuffle

1ddead42-0235-4627-a95e-d314dfa40ce5-1

Donna Tartt

Growing up in a small Mississippi town in a family haunted by the murder of her brother, Harriet Cleve Dusfresnes lives in a world of her imagination, until, at the age of twelve, she decides to find the murderer and exact her revenge. By the author of The Secret History. Reprint. 250,000 first printing.

The Little Friend

b8c3da08-b768-4daa-a98d-e364b870d8ac-1

Carole Johnstone

From the author of the "dark and devious...beautifully written" (Stephen King) Mirrorland comes a richly atmospheric thriller set on an isolated Scottish island where nothing is as it seems and shocking twists lie around every corner.

A remote village. A deadly secret. An outsider who knows the truth.

Robert Reid moved his family to Scotland's Outer Hebrides in the 1990s, driven by hope, craving safety and community, and hiding a terrible secret. But despite his best efforts to fit in, Robert is always seen as an outsider. And as the legendary and violent Hebridean storms rage around him, he begins to unravel, believing his fate on the remote island of Kilmeray cannot be escaped.

For her entire life, Maggie MacKay has sensed something was wrong with her. When Maggie was five years old, she announced that a man on Kilmeray--a place she'd never visited--had been murdered. Her unfounded claim drew media attention and turned the locals against each other, creating rifts that never mended.

Nearly twenty years later, Maggie is determined to find out what really happened, and what the islanders are hiding. But when she begins to receive ominous threats, Maggie is forced to consider how much she is willing to risk to discover the horrifying truth.

Unnerving, enthralling, and filled with gothic suspense, The Blackhouse is a spectacularly sinister tale readers won't soon forget.

The Blackhouse

338d6819-0db1-4f93-9df3-eb34d3a6d975-1

Alice Hoffman

From the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage of Opposites and the Practical Magic series comes an enchanting novel about love, heartbreak, self-discovery, and the enduring magic of books.

One brilliant June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia's mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community--an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden, and books are considered evil. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her?

Through a journey of heartbreak, love, and time, Mia must abandon the rules she was raised with at the Community. As she does, she realizes that reading can transport you to other worlds or bring them to you, and that readers and writers affect one another in mysterious ways. She learns that time is more fluid than she can imagine, and that love is stronger than any chains that bind you.

As a girl Mia fell in love with a book. Now as a young woman she falls in love with a brilliant writer as she makes her way back in time. But what if Nathaniel Hawthorne never wrote The Scarlet Letter? And what if Mia Jacob never found it on the day she planned to die?

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: "A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities."

This is the story of one woman's dream. For a little while it came true.

The Invisible Hour

2116596b-200c-4c7d-b6b6-a87125b9dc6e-1

Arianna Reiche

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

In this haunting debut novel--perfect for fans of Iain Reid, Jeff VanderMeer, and Julia Armfield--a loyal employee at a collapsing theme park questions the recent death of a celebrity visitor, the arrival of strange new guests, her boyfriend's erratic behavior, and ultimately her own sanity.

Delphi has spent years working at a vast and iconic theme park in California after fleeing childhood trauma in her rural hometown. But after the disturbing death of a beloved Hollywood starlet on the park grounds, Delphi is tasked with shuttering The Park for good.

Meanwhile, two siblings with ties to The Park exchange letters, trying to understand why people who work there have been disappearing. Before long, they learn that there's a reason no one is meant to see behind The Park's curtain.

What happens when The Park empties out? And what happens when Delphi, who seems remarkably at one with The Park, is finally forced to leave?

At once a novel about the uncanny valley, death cults, optical illusions, and the enduring power of fantasy, Reiche's debut is a mind-bending teacup ride through an eerily familiar landscape, where the key to it all is what happens at the end of every day.

Browse by categories

Will Dean

The Chamber

Jennifer Egan

The Candy House

Yoko Tawada; Margaret Mitsutani

Scattered All over the Earth

Stuart Turton

The Last Murder at the End of the World

Djuna; Anton Hur

Counterweight

Kristen Perrin

How to Solve Your Own Murder

Hiron Ennes

Leech

Kia Abdullah

Perfectly Nice Neighbors

Michelle Min Sterling

Camp Zero

Aimee Molloy

Goodnight Beautiful

Ernest Cline

Ready Player Two

Thomas Pynchon

Inherent Vice

Jean Hanff Korelitz

The Plot

Terry Miles

Rabbits

Jens Liljestrand

Even If Everything Ends

Francesca Serritella

Ghosts of Harvard

Colson Whitehead

Crook Manifesto

Colson Whitehead

Harlem Shuffle

Donna Tartt

The Little Friend

Carole Johnstone

The Blackhouse

Alice Hoffman

The Invisible Hour

Arianna Reiche

At the End of Every Day

Get The App