"You like it darker? Fine, so do I," writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life--both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King...

"Sunyi Dean's The Book Eaters is a contemporary fantasy debut. It's a story of motherhood, sacrifice, and hope; of queer identity and learning to accept who you are; of gilded lies and the danger of believing the narratives others create for you. Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book's content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet...

Return to the geek-tastic world of Starfield fandom with a tale of a superstar and a superfan who swap lives in this sweet and funny companion novel to GEEKERELLA. Movie star Jessica Stone can't go up onstage at another con and pretend to love Starfield anymore--except that she's contractually obligated. She never dreamed she'd be playing Princess Amara for life, but people love Princess Amara, and for better or worse, Princess Amara has Jessica Stone's...

"Praise for Cynan Jones:"[A] piercing novella. Like Cormac McCarthy, Jones can make the everyday sound fraught and biblical."-Kirkus Reviews, starred review"Jones's perfectly pitched novel will appeal to anyone looking beyond sheer thrills."-Library Journal"This slim volume has all the gravity of a black hole, and reading it is like standing on the event horizon. It's like a more beautiful Cormac McCarthy; a darker W.H. Auden."-Elliot Bay Book Company"There's...

John Uhler Jack Lemmon III, was born on February 8, 1925. An only child, he was raised in Boston, Massachusetts, and was that rarity among Hollywood stars, a man with affectionate memories of his parents. Graduating from Harvard, Jack headed for New York City to become a professional actor. A job playing piano to silent movies gave him the chance to study comics like Keaton and Chaplin up close. His first acting was on soap opera and live TV drama....

Alexandra Fuller braids a multilayered narrative around the perfectly-lit, Happy Valley-era Africa of her mother's childhood; the boiled cabbage grimness of her father's English childhood; and the darker, civil war-torn Africa of her own. A story of survival and madness, love and war, loyalty and forgiveness, this intimate exploration of Fuller's family - at its heart, the story of her mother, Nicola - is as funny, terrifying, exotic, and unselfconscious...

Drawing from two cultural perspectives, an acclaimed British-Guyanese writer and award-winning poet combines personal reminiscence and philosophy to reflect on a year of personal and global crisis, as he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic. "For acclaimed British-Guyanese writer Fred D'Aguiar, 2020 was a year of personal and global crisis. The world around him was shattered by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Black...

"Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather, but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may be self-interested schemers, we benefit by pretending otherwise. The less we know about our own ugly motives, the better - and thus we don't like to talk or even think about the extent of our selfishness. This is "the elephant...

"When Emma's husband, Ben, falls in love with a large Victorian mansion for sale in upstate New York, he swears to her the fixer-upper will be worth the risk. With a baby on the way, Emma would like to live in a charming, safe community, after all--and in a space larger than a one-bedroom New York City apartment. On impulse, she agrees to Ben's plan and they put in an offer on the house. Sure, the mansion has a somewhat creepy backstory and is a bit...

"Artificial Intelligence helps choose what books you buy, what movies you see, and even who you date. It puts the "smart" in your smart phone, it has the run of your house, and soon it will drive your car. It makes most of the trades on Wall Street, and controls vital energy, water, and transportation infrastructure. But Artificial Intelligence can also threaten our existence. Though primitive today, 'intelligent' computer systems double in speed...