*Shelf Unbound 2018 Notable Indie Award.* “Every story has more than one side, like a crystal that captures and reflects different colors of light. Do not take for granted what you think you know, for until you hold the entire jewel in your palm, the temptation is to fall prey to illusion and deception.” This is a story of the Dark Ones… Inanna: the vampire warrior Known as the Angel of Death among her kind, she has lived millennia alone, one of the remaining True Bloods in existence, unconsciously longing for the one male she could never have. Gabriel: the forbidden human His soul recognizes hers from the first encounter. With the first touch, he is awakened. Though he does not know it, he has been searching for her across the ages. But even as they are finally reunited, their love faces seemingly impossible odds. Will history repeat itself or will they break all the rules and chart a new course together?

Read China Galland's posts on the Penguin Blog With this book, China Galland brought increased attention to the spiritual traditions of the Black Madonna and other cross-cultural expressions of the feminine divine. The popularity of recent works by authors like Sue Monk Kidd and Kathleen Norris have only increased readers’ fascination. Now with a new introduction by the author, Longing for Darkness explores Galland’s spellbinding and deeply personal journey from New Mexico through Nepal, India, Switzerland, France, the former Yugoslavia, and Poland—places where such figures as Tara, the female Buddha of the Tibetan tradition, and the Black Madonna are venerated today.

The poems of Natalie Shapero’s third collection, Popular Longing, highlight the ever-increasing absurdity of our contemporary life. With her sharp, sardonic wit, Shapero deftly captures human meekness in all its forms: our senseless wars, our inflated egos, our constant deference to presumed higher powers—be they romantic partners, employers, institutions, or gods. “Why even / look up, when all we’ll see is people / looking down?” In a world where everyone has to answer to someone, it seems no one is equipped to disrupt the status quo, and how the most urgent topics of conversation can only be approached through refraction. By scrutinizing the mundane and all that is taken for granted, these poems arrive at much wider vistas, commenting on human sadness, memory, and mortality. Punchy, fearlessly ironic, and wickedly funny, Popular Longing articulates what it means to share a planet, for better or more often for worse, with other people.

Naomi lives an almost idyllic life in Jamaica. She has a daughter who adores her, a close-knit community that looks out for its own, and paradise as her playground. But she secretly longs for the touch of other women. It is a longing she finally gets to satisfy during a trip into the tourist heart of Jamaica. When she surrenders to the seduction of a compelling stranger, however, she is savagely transformed into Belle, a ruthless beast whose hungers know no bounds. Now Belle is part of a vampire clan, reveling in an existence that lays bare the dark hungers within every soul. Part of her hates her new world, but another part glories in it and in the explosive sexual connection she shares with the powerful head of the clan. But as magical as her new world is, it also has its dangers. Dangers that threaten the people she loves.

An intense psychological novel, this book focuses on a young woman’s dependence on her husband and her attempts to forge an independent life for herself. Rosa, a frail, sensitive American Jew living in Paris, marries an alcoholic expatriate from Chile and finds herself trapped in a sadomasochistic relationship. Amid a series of fast-moving events—the birth of their daughter, moving to Rosa’s parents’ home and then to Sausalito, California, and various sexual encounters—this narrative explores Antonio’s fears and failures as well as Rosa’s implicit trust in him to direct her life. Ultimately, Rosa begins to question her relationship with her husband and her parents.

Devlin Sinclair, the New England Dark Ones’ Hunter, is on a mission to track down the elusive and mysterious Medusa, perhaps the ultimate nemesis the Pure and Dark Ones have been battling in recent years. But he can’t do it alone. Grace Darling has isolated herself from the world since a very young age, after her parents’ death and because of her own social disability. Awkward and brilliant, a born sensualist, Grace agrees to a blind date that changes the course of Destiny. She has the skills he needs. Their chemistry is off the charts, but will she, can she, give him the love he craves?

The acclaimed novelist Samantha Hunt’s first collection of stories blends the literary and the fantastic and brings us characters on the verge—girls turning into women, women turning into deer, people doubling or becoming ghosts, and more