Claire Legrand

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Indiana

“Reader, hang on for dear life. Sawkill Girls is a wild, gorgeous, and rich coming-of-age story about complicity, female camaraderie, and power.” —Sarah Gailey, author of River of Teeth “An eerie, atmospheric assertion of female strength.” —Mindy McGinnis, author of The Female of the Species Fans of Victoria Schwab, Nova Ren Suma, and Netflix’s hit show Stranger Things will crave this frightening stand-alone contemporary teen horror novel about three girls who take on an insidious monster that preys upon young women. Who are the Sawkill Girls? Marion: The newbie. Awkward and plain, steady and dependable. Weighed down by tragedy and hungry for love she’s sure she’ll never find. Zoey: The pariah. Luckless and lonely, hurting but hiding it. Aching with grief and dreaming of vanished girls. Maybe she’s broken—or maybe everyone else is. Val: The queen bee. Gorgeous and privileged, ruthless and regal. Words like silk and eyes like knives; a heart made of secrets and a mouth full of lies. Their stories come together on the island of Sawkill Rock, where gleaming horses graze in rolling pastures and cold waves crash against black cliffs. Where kids whisper the legend of an insidious monster at parties and around campfires. Where girls have been disappearing for decades, stolen away by a ravenous evil no one has dared to fight…until now.

Sawkill Girls

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Maggie Stiefvater

Oversized Paperback (4 to 6 lbs)

North Carolina

Though she is from a family of clairvoyants, Blue Sargent's only gift seems to be that she makes other people's talents stronger, and when she meets Gansey, one of the Raven Boys from the expensive Aglionby Academy, she discovers that he has talents of his own--and that together their talents are a dangerous mix.

The Raven Boys

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Books I Wish I Could Read For The First Time Again

Books that are totally wild, confusing, or so out there.

Hailey Piper

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Florida

Mona Awad’s Bunny meets Stranger Things when a summer storm sweeps through a sleepy town, unleashing a monstrous power that threatens to bend reality, from the Bram Stoker award winning author of Queen of Teeth. Three years after running away from home, Olivia is stuck with a dead-end job in nowhere town Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania. At least she has her best friend, Sunflower. Olivia figures she’ll die in Chapel Hill, if not from boredom, then the summer night storm which crashes into town with a mind-bending monster in tow. If Olivia’s going to escape Chapel Hill and someday reconcile with her parents, she’ll need to dodge residents enslaved by the storm’s otherworldly powers and find Sunflower. But as the night strains friendships and reality itself, Olivia suspects the storm, and its monster, may have its eyes on Sunflower and everything she loves. Including Olivia.

A Light Most Hateful

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Books That Make You Go “What the Heck Did I Just Read”

A list of delicious books that center on women’s  rage. Keep your claws sharp. #rage #notsorry #whosafraidof #horror #ya #adultfiction

Rachel Harrison

Minnesota

A cynical twentysomething must confront her unconventional family’s dark secrets in this fiery, irreverent horror novel from the author of Such Sharp Teeth and Cackle. Nobody has a “normal” family, but Vesper Wright’s is truly...something else. Vesper left home at eighteen and never looked back—mostly because she was told that leaving the staunchly religious community she grew up in meant she couldn’t return. But then an envelope arrives on her doorstep. Inside is an invitation to the wedding of Vesper’s beloved cousin Rosie. It’s to be hosted at the family farm. Have they made an exception to the rule? It wouldn’t be the first time Vesper’s been given special treatment. Is the invite a sweet gesture? An olive branch? A trap? Doesn’t matter. Something inside her insists she go to the wedding. Even if it means returning to the toxic environment she escaped. Even if it means reuniting with her mother, Constance, a former horror film star and forever ice queen. When Vesper’s homecoming exhumes a terrifying secret, she’s forced to reckon with her family’s beliefs and her own crisis of faith in this deliciously sinister novel that explores the way family ties can bind us as we struggle to find our place in the world.

Black Sheep

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Laura Hankin

New Jersey

"The Wing meets the Illuminati in the latest spellbinding novel from Laura Hankin, about a young reporter who infiltrates a women-only secret society made up of members who may or may not be witches.... For years, rumors have swirled about a secret, women-only social club where the elite tastemakers of NYC meet. People in the know whisper all sorts of claims: Membership dues cost $1,000 a month. Last time Rihanna was in town, she stopped by and got her aura read. But no one knows for sure. That is, until journalist Jillian Beckley decides she's going to get the scoop and break into the club. But the deeper she gets into this new world, the more suspicious Jillian becomes. The women are really into astrology and witchcraft, and their lives are somehow perfect. Too perfect. These women have a secret"--

A Special Place for Women

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Slight bend on corner and sticker residue (see photos)

Colorado

A young woman in need of a transformation finds herself in touch with the animal inside in this gripping, incisive novel from the author of Cackle and The Return. Rory Morris isn’t thrilled to be moving back to her hometown, even if it is temporary. There are bad memories there. But her twin sister, Scarlett, is pregnant, estranged from the baby’s father, and needs support, so Rory returns to the place she thought she’d put in her rearview. After a night out at a bar where she runs into Ian, an old almost-flame, she hits a large animal with her car. And when she gets out to investigate, she’s attacked. Rory survives, miraculously, but life begins to look and feel different. She’s unnaturally strong, with an aversion to silver—and suddenly the moon has her in its thrall. She’s changing into someone else—something else, maybe even a monster. But does that mean she’s putting those close to her in danger? Or is embracing the wildness inside of her the key to acceptance? This darkly comedic love story is a brilliantly layered portrait of trauma, rage, and vulnerability.

Such Sharp Teeth

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Does My Female Rage Scare You?

Spooky, chilling books for a night curled in a blanket.

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Virginia

Agustina Bazterrica

Sarah Moses

Illinois

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing. Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.

Tender Is the Flesh

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Julia Armfield

Slight shelf wear and dent to the cover, but excellent condition otherwise. 

A Novel

Fathomlessly inventive and original, Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea is a portrait of marriage as we’ve never seen it before. “Shocking...Achingly poetic...Sharp and beautiful as coral polyps...Armfield exercises an exquisite—even sadistic—sense of suspense." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post “A wonderful novel, deeply romantic and fabulously strange. I loved this book.” —Sarah Waters “Without a doubt, one of the best books I've ever read.” —Kristen Arnett Leah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition months earlier, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp. By turns elegiac and furious, wry and heartbreaking, Our Wives Under the Sea is an exploration of the unknowable depths within each of us, and the love that compels us nevertheless toward one another.

Our Wives under the Sea

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Horror Books I Recommend

Some creatures lurk in the woods, some in the deepest parts of the sea, others in the darkest parts of our minds. This list has  monster and eldrich horror from my “read” pile.

Luke Dumas

Pennsylvania

A haunted paleontologist returns to the museum where his sister was abducted years earlier and is faced with a terrifying and murderous spirit in this chilling novel. Curator of paleontology Dr. Simon Nealy never expected to return to his Pennsylvania hometown, let alone the Hawthorne Museum of Natural History. He was just a boy when his six-year-old sister, Morgan, was abducted from the museum under his watch, and the guilt has haunted Simon ever since. After a recent breakup and the death of the aunt who raised him, Simon feels drawn back to the place where Morgan vanished, in search of the bones they never found. But from the moment he arrives, things aren’t what he expected. The Hawthorne is a crumbling ruin, still closed amid the ongoing pandemic, and plummeting toward financial catastrophe. Worse, Simon begins seeing and hearing things he can’t explain. Strange animal sounds. Bloody footprints that no living creature could have left. A prehistoric killer looming in the shadows of the museum. Terrified he’s losing his grasp on reality, Simon turns to the handwritten research diaries of his predecessor and uncovers a blood-soaked mystery 150 million years in the making that could be the answer to everything.

The Paleontologist

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Monster Fiction / Eldrich Horror

An ongoing list of picture book titles that have gone over well in circle and story time and at home with my daughter!

Picture Books My Daughter and Students Love

Shawn Robbins

Leanna Greenaway

Make the most of your magickal year by chronicling it with this indispensable 2024 planner filled with inspiring Wiccan spells and lore. This 17-month engagement calendar is the perfect place for modern-day witches, Wiccans, and pagans to track everything from daily tasks to key rituals to the sacred holidays and solstices on the Wheel of the Year. It is filled with beautiful illustrations as well as tips on holistic magick, Wiccan lore, and a variety of key spells. The planner lists the all-important moon phases, as well as major and national holidays. This is the perfect witch's calendar for anyone seeking a Wiccan holiday gift, those who enjoyed the 2023 edition, or users of other writual planners looking for something new. Features include: 17-month day planner (August 2023-December 2024) with a 6 x 8.5-inch trim size and a sturdy flexi cover with vibrant colors Monthly two-page views, weekly pages, and note pages Stunning two-color design filled with beautiful vintage-style line drawings throughout tied to the seasons Wiccan lore, tips on holistic magick, and key spells distilled from the bestselling Modern-Day Witch book series Major and national holidays for the US, Canada, and UK, and the all-important moon phases

Modern-Day Witch 2024 Wheel of the Year 17-Month Planner

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Ann Moura

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A Complete Book of Shadows

A resource for those practicing witchcraft that includes rituals, spells, and divinations.

Grimoire for the Green Witch

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Mona Awad

Kentucky

"Jon Swift + Witches of Eastwick + Kelly 'Get In Trouble' Link + Mean Girls + Creative Writing Degree Hell! No punches pulled, no hilarities dodged, no meme unmangled! O Bunny you are sooo genius!" —Margaret Atwood, via Twitter "A wild, audacious and ultimately unforgettable novel." —Michael Schaub, Los Angeles Times "Awad is a stone-cold genius." —Ann Bauer, The Washington Post The Vegetarian meets Heathers in this darkly funny, seductively strange novel from the acclaimed author of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl "We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we?" Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and seem to move and speak as one. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision. The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination. Named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Vogue, Electric Literature, and The New York Public Library

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Books I Wish I Could Read For The F...

Books That Make You Go “What the He...

Does My Female Rage Scare You?

Horror Books I Recommend

Monster Fiction / Eldrich Horror

Picture Books My Daughter and Stude...

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Shelves by Wicked Lit Library

Wicked Lit Library

Books I Wish I Could Read For The F...

Books That Make You Go “What the He...

Does My Female Rage Scare You?

Horror Books I Recommend

Monster Fiction / Eldrich Horror

Picture Books My Daughter and Stude...

TBR