Ex-Confederate officer Captain Marcus Wayward and his infamous “Eight” are on a deadly mission. The Union has contracted them to find and kill the most notorious scientist in the world; Doctor Burson Carpathian, who resides somewhere in the forested interior of Arizona. Carpathian is protected by an undead horde of his own construction, and powered by the miracle fuel RJ-1027, they will defend him to the death. The chance for Wayward and his mercenaries to acquire fame, fortune, and immortality on such a mission is too great to refuse. The journey is fraught with perils and pitfalls – outlaws, Union troopers, thrill-seekers, Shifters of the Warrior Nation, and even other mercenaries hell-bent on finding and killing Carpathian first. When a shadowy force known as the Dark Council gets involved, the way becomes even deadlier. But the biggest challenge for Captain Wayward could very well be his own people, who begin to question the nature of the mission as it unravels.

Ayane's strange feline origin is revealed in the most unlikely of places.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A “furious and addictive new novel” (The New York Times) about mothers and daughters, and one woman's midlife reckoning as she flees her suburban life. “Exhilarating ... reads like a burning fever dream. A virtuosic, singular and very funny portrait of a woman seeking sanity and purpose in a world gone mad.” —The New York Times Book Review Samantha Raymond's life has begun to come apart: her mother is ill, her teenage daughter is increasingly remote, and at fifty-two she finds herself staring into "the Mids"—that hour of supreme wakefulness between three and four in the morning in which women of a certain age suddenly find themselves contemplating motherhood, mortality, and, in this case, the state of our unraveling nation. When she falls in love with a beautiful, decrepit house in a hardscrabble neighborhood in Syracuse, she buys it on a whim and flees her suburban life—and her family—as she grapples with how to be a wife, a mother, and a daughter, in a country that is coming apart at the seams. Dana Spiotta's Wayward is a stunning novel about aging, about the female body, and about female complexity in contemporary America. Probing and provocative, brainy and sensual, it is a testament to our weird times, to reforms and resistance and utopian wishes, and to the beauty of ruins.

Steampunk in the old west Ex-Confederate officer Captain Marcus Wayward and his infamous “Eight” are on a deadly mission. The Union has contracted them to find and kill the most notorious scientist in the world; Doctor Burson Carpathian, who resides somewhere in the forested interior of Arizona. Carpathian is protected by an undead horde of his own construction, and powered by the miracle fuel RJ-1027, they will defend him to the death. The chance for Wayward and his mercenaries to acquire fame, fortune, and immortality on such a mission is too great to refuse. The journey is fraught with perils and pitfalls – outlaws, Union troopers, thrill-seekers, Shifters of the Warrior Nation, and even other mercenaries hell-bent on finding and killing Carpathian first. When a shadowy force known as the Dark Council gets involved, the way becomes even deadlier. But the biggest challenge for Captain Wayward could very well be his own people, who begin to question the nature of the mission as it unravels. Can he keep it all together? Can he keep his mercenaries intact long enough to finish the job, to ride them to glory, and into the history books? Time will tell…

Blood drenches the sands of the Wild West as the promise of a new age dies, screaming its last breath into an uncaring night. An ancient evil has arisen in the western territories, calling countless people with a siren song of technology and promises of power and glory the likes of which the world has never known. Forces move into the deserts, some answering the call, others desperate to destroy the evil before it can end all life on Earth.

Read how Kenneth comes to his new home in North Oxfordshire England with his mother and stepfather, the new home being a small farm where Kenneth knows who will be expected to do all the work. Read how through all the hardships he manages to remain happy and bring excitement into his life by creating explosions, doing mind blowing experiments and building soapboxes. Read how accident prown Kenneth is and even on his first day at his new home he manages to collide with some escaping cattle and end up face down in a muddy stream. Read about the amazing illnesses he reads about in a Victorian home doctor book, that he manages to "get" and amazingly survive from, including an extremely dangerous strain of eboli. Read and laugh!

In All I Want Is Loving You: Popular Female Singers of the 1950s, author Steve Bergsman focuses on the white, female artists of the 1950s, a time that predated the chart-topping girl groups of the early 1960s. These popular performers, many of whom graduated out of the big bands of the 1940s, impacted popular music in a huge way. As the last bastion of traditional pop and the last sirens of swing, they undeniably shined in the spotlight. Yet these singers’ fame dimmed relatively quickly with the advent of rock ’n’ roll. A fortunate few, like Doris Day, Patti Page, Peggy Lee, and Debbie Reynolds, experienced some of their biggest hits in the late 1950s, and Eydie Gormé broke out in the 1960s. The luckiest, including Dinah Shore and Rosemary Clooney, ventured to television with varying degrees of success. Others would become major attractions at nightclubs in Las Vegas or, like Teresa Brewer, shift into the jazz world. Though the moment did not last, these performers were best-selling singers, darlings of the disk jockeys, and the frenetic heartbeat of fan clubs during their heyday. In a companion volume, Bergsman has written the history of African American women singers of the same era. These Black musicians transitioned more easily as a new form of music, rock ’n’ roll, skyrocketed in popularity. In both books, Bergsman reintroduces readers to these talented singers, offering a thorough look at their work and turning up the volume on their legacy.