The Railway Mania has gripped England. The Iron Horse rules supreme, and endlessly proliferating railway lines have created the shadowy zone known as The Underarches, that lurks beneath the very boot-heels of progress. Welcome to a steam-driven Victoriana where gryphons are real and children's snow-globes are powered by nasty-minded little imps. A world where a powerful new drug called spike beguiles high and low society alike. Alexia Burgundy, owner of a struggling railway company bedevilled by bad luck, is reluctantly drawn into the sphere of Jack Hammond, proprietor of the fabulously successful Hammond & Hill Railway Co., sole producers at their Arleyvale coalmine of the revolutionary new fuel called Black Adamantine. The journalist Daniel Benjamin, meanwhile, persists in digging ever deeper into the circumstances surrounding a mysterious accident at Hammond's mine. All the while, an entity both ancient and implacable stirs in the bowels of the earth beneath Arleyvale Colliery...

The stunning second book in the Black Heart series. The Station, a city buried deep beneath the surface of a frozen, lifeless earth, is only months away from completing its centuries-long mission to return the planet to its original orbit around the sun. Seventeen-year-old Trajectory Specialist Trainee Trudy Barnard is studying to join Mission Control, the elite group that control the earth's movement. Though she's a brilliant student, Trudy is haunted by her illustrious pedigree: granddaughter of Matt Barnard, one of the Station's greatest heroes, and daughter of Arthur Barnard, its most powerful figure. Trudy discovers a snippet of code hidden in the trajectory software that would obliterate of the Station at the moment of Arrival. When Mission Control are unable duplicate her findings, they accuse her of grandstanding, trying to grab attention. Ordered to drop the issue, Trudy instead ignites a firestorm that pits her against the governing Council and her own father, when she hacks into the Mission Control system itself, searching for answers. In a desperate race against time, and targeted for death by an unknown enemy, she struggles to unravel the mystery. But can she unlock the secret in time to save them all?

In book three of the Curse Workers series, “the perfect end to this gem of a trilogy” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), trust is a priceless commodity and the lines between right and wrong become dangerously blurred. Cassel Sharpe knows he’s been used as an assassin, but he’s trying to put all that behind him. He’s trying to be good, even though he grew up in a family of con artists and cheating comes as easily as breathing to him. He’s trying to do the right thing. And he’s trying to convince himself that working for the government is the right choice, even though he’s been raised to believe they are the enemy of all curse workers. But with a mother on the lam, the girl he loves about to take her place in the Mob, and all new secrets coming to light, what’s right and what’s wrong become increasingly hard to tell apart. When the Feds ask him to do the one thing he said he would never do again, he starts to wonder if they really are the good guys, or if it’s all a con. And if it is, Cassel may have to make his biggest gamble yet—on love. Love is dangerous and trust is priceless in Holly Black’s “powerful, edgy, dark” fantasy series (Publishers Weekly).

The Black Heart by Jamie Reynolds Mandy is packing and moving with her family from Mexico to California. Her father has finally received legal permission to move to the States and start a business with his brother. Mandy has mixed emotions about a lot of things, including being overwhelmed with thoughts about the possibility of consequences of her pregnancy, which she hasn’t divulged to anyone. Meanwhile in California, Janie is working hard in the corporate world. Her husband is abusive, contrary to Janie having the biggest heart and trying to cope. Mandy and Janie never meet, but they do have a relationship at different points in time with Alex, the good looking chef. Both of these women come to realize that Alex has a very angry temperament, and he could be the demise for one, if not both of them. The Black Heart gently provides an understanding of what anger means when spelled with a ‘D’, for ‘danger’. Author, Jamie Reynolds wants women (and men) to benefit through sharing her perspective and awareness of what one could risk - self and loved ones - when embracing a relationship with a person who isn’t capable of caring about others, but only wants to satisfy his/her own interests. It contains interesting characters that the reader can relate to, or be drawn to, because of the personal life challenges and obstacles that the characters overcome through sheer necessity. The paragraphs of story are interspersed with touching and sometimes sharp dialog and provide a vivid feel for the environment that the characters are immersed in.

Charlotte Hobson spent her gap year as a student in Voronezh, in deepest provincial Russia. Her arrival coincided with the collapse of this society, as initial optimism about the fall of communism gave way to disillusionment and uncertainy. These feelings are mirrored in the doomed love affair she has with the vodka-swilling Mitya. They too started out in a mood of wild optimism, and felt that anything was possible. Until in the spring the snow thawed, and revealed the black earth beneath.

An in-depth exploration of Ukraine through encounters with the many different people who live there. “Will someone pay for the spilled blood? No. Nobody.” Mikhail Bulgakov composed this ominous and prophetic phrase in Kiev amid the turmoil of the Russian civil war. Since then, Ukrainian borders have shifted constantly, and its people have suffered numerous military foreign interventions. Ukraine has only existed as an independent state since 1991, and what exactly it was before then is controversial among its people as well as its European neighbors. In Black Earth: A Journey through the Ukraine, journalist and celebrated travel writer Jens Mühling takes readers across the country amid the ousting of former president Viktor Yanukovych and the Russian annexation of Crimea. Mühling delves deep into daily life in Ukraine, narrating his encounters with Ukrainian nationalists and old communists, Crimean Tatars and Cossacks, smugglers, and soldiers. Black Earth connects all these stories to convey an unconventional and unfiltered view of Ukraine, a country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia and the center of countless conflicts. In this paperback edition, a new preface is included that takes into account recent developments up to the 2022 war between Russia and Ukraine.

At a time when slavery was spreading and the country was steeped in racism, two white men and two black men overcame social barriers and mistrust to form a unique alliance that sought nothing less than the end of all evil. Drawing on the largest extant bi-racial correspondence in the Civil War era, John Stauffer braids together these men's struggles to reconcile ideals of justice with the reality of slavery and oppression. Who could imagine that Gerrit Smith, one of the richest men in the country, would give away his wealth to the poor and ally himself with Frederick Douglass, an ex-slave? And why would James McCune Smith, the most educated black man in the country, link arms with John Brown, a bankrupt entrepreneur, along with the others? Distinguished by their interracial bonds, they shared a millennialist vision of a new world where everyone was free and equal. As the nation headed toward armed conflict, these men waged their own war by establishing model interracial communities, forming a new political party, and embracing violence. Their revolutionary ethos bridged the divide between the sacred and the profane, black and white, masculine and feminine, and civilization and savagery that had long girded western culture. In so doing, it embraced a malleable and "black-hearted" self that was capable of violent revolt against a slaveholding nation, in order to usher in a kingdom of God on earth. In tracing the rise and fall of their prophetic vision and alliance, Stauffer reveals how radical reform helped propel the nation toward war even as it strove to vanquish slavery and preserve the peace.