Anne and Blake are perfect together. They both bring sob stories to the table: her parents died in a car wreck; his girlfriend drowned. But even as Anne starts to feel she’s finally found something good in all the tragedy, she can’t ignore signs that something’s not right with Blake.

All Hamlet Kennedy wants is to be a normal eighth grader. But with parents like hers - Shakespearean scholars who actually dress in Elizabethan regalia . . . in public! - it's not that easy. As if they weren't strange enough, her genius seven-year-old sister will be attending her middle school, and is named the new math tutor. Then, when the Shakespeare Project is announced, Hamlet reveals herself to be an amazing actress. Even though she wants to be average, Hamlet can no longer hide from the fact that she- like her family - is anything but ordinary.

The incredible story of a 1958 murder that ended with the last woman to ever be executed in California—a murder so twisted it seems ripped from a Greek tragedy. Deborah Larkin was only ten years old when the quiet calm of her California suburb was shattered. Thirty miles north, on a quiet November night in Santa Barbara, a pregnant nurse named Olga Duncan disappeared from her apartment. The mystery deepens when it is discovered that Olga’s mother in-law—a deeply manipulative and deceptive woman—had been doing everything in her power to separate Olga and her son, Frank, prior to Olga’s disappearance. From a forged annulment to multiple attempts to hire people to “get rid” of Olga, to a faked excoriation case, Elizabeth seemed psychopathically attached to her son. Yet she denied having anything to do with Olga’s disappearance with a smile. But when Olga’s brutally beaten body is found in a shallow grave, apparently buried alive, a young DA makes it his mission to see that Elizabeth Duncan is brought to justice. Adding a wrinkle to his efforts is the fact that Frank—himself a defense attorney—maintained his mother’s innocent to the end. How does a young girl process such a crime along with the fear and disbelieve that rocked an entire community? Decades later, Larkin is determined to revisit the case and bring the story of Olga herself to light. Long overshadowed by the sensationalism and scandal of Elizabeth and Frank, A Lovely Girl seeks to reveal Olga as a woman in full. Someone who was more than the twisted family that would ultimately ensnare her. As we follow the heart-pounding drama of the case through Larkin's young eyes—her father was the court reporter—A Lovely Girl is by turns page-turning yet poingnant, and makes the reader reexamine how we handle fear, how we regard mental illness, and how we understand family as we carve our own path in a dangerous world.

Archetypes are real. Muses are real. Writers are the channels of these spirits & if that sounds like witchcraft that's because it is. These stories gave me chills. Sylvia Plath & Lana Del Rey course through the veins of these dark, sexy, mind-bending, fantastical, romantic, & haunting tales. Authors from different genres came together in their love & passion for these muses. The Blacklist: Kathryn Louise Crazy Mary: Patricia Grisafi Pipedreams: Devora Gray And All the World Drops Dead: Max Booth III Without Him (and Him, and Him) There is No Me: Laura Diaz de Arce Going About 99: Christine Stoddard The Lazarus Wife: Tiffany Morris Stag Loop: Brendan Vidito SP World: Lorraine Schein A Ghost of My Own Making: Ashley Inguanta Loose Ends: A Movie: Tiffany Scandal Girls in the Garden of Holy Suffering: Lisa Marie Basile The Gods in the Blood: Gabino Iglesias The Land of Other: Farah Rose Smith Sad Girl: Monique Quintana Corinne: JC Drake Sphinx Tears: Cara DiGirolamo Rituals of Gorgons: Larissa Glasser The Wife: Victoria Dalpe Dayglo Reflection: Manuel Chavarria Catman's Heart: Laura Lee Bahr Panic Bird: Selene MacLeod Because of Their Different Deaths: Stephanie Wytovich

Lee Child says it’s “stunning… certain to be a book of the year.” Kathy Reichs calls it “extraordinary… a major achievement.” Gillian Flynn says of Karin Slaughter: “I’d follow her anywhere.” Sisters. Strangers. Survivors. More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia’s teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the horror and heartbreak of their shared loss—a devastating wound that's cruelly ripped open when Claire's husband is killed. The disappearance of a teenage girl and the murder of a middle-aged man, almost a quarter-century apart: what could connect them? Forming a wary truce, the surviving sisters look to the past to find the truth, unearthing the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago . . . and uncovering the possibility of redemption, and revenge, where they least expect it. Powerful, poignant, and utterly gripping, packed with indelible characters and unforgettable twists, Pretty Girls is a masterful novel from one of the finest writers working today.

ÒA wild, visually engrossing journey.Ó ÑPaste Magazine ÒA surreal, deeply personal tale.Ó ÑA.V. Club ÒA smart and unforgettable book.Ó ÑSyFy Wire Caroline Sharp gave up her humanity to gain incredible shape-shifting abilitiesÑpowers she used to save the world time and time again as the superhero Chrysalis. But as the years wore on, she began to lose control of the elemental forces coursing through her body, making her dangerously unstable and forcing her removal from ALPHA 13, the covert government agency that created her. Now, although she can barely hold herself together, CarolineÕs unique condition also means that nothing can kill her. Isolated, alienated and profoundly alone, sheÕs determined to break the curse of her immortalityÑby any means necessary. Enter the villainous Madame Atom, with the offer of a lifetime: to end her suffering, all Caroline has to do is undertake one final, dimension-spanning mission, with one simple objectiveÑthe destruction of the entire universe. Written by Eisner and GLAAD Media award-nominated writer Magdalene Visaggio and illustrated by Eisner Award-winning artist Sonny Liew, Eternity Girl collects the unforgettable six-issue miniseries from the groundbreaking DCÕs Young Animal imprint.

In Kathy Fiscus: A Tragedy that Transfixed the Nation historian William Deverell tells the heartbreaking story of a young girl trapped in a well--a story that transfixed the nation in what would become the first live, breaking-news TV spectacle in history. Kathy Fiscus tells the story of the first live, breaking-news TV spectacle in American history. At dusk on a spring evening in 1949, a three-year old girl fell down an abandoned well shaft in the backyard of her family's home in Southern California. Across more than two full days of a fevered rescue attempt, the fate of Kathy Fiscus remained unknown. Thousands of concerned Southern Californians rushed to the scene. Jockeys hurried over from the nearby racetracks, offering to be sent down the well after Kathy. 20th Century Fox sent over the studio's klieg lights to illuminate the scene. Rescue workers-ditch diggers, miners, cesspool laborers, World War II veterans-dug and bored holes deep into the aquifer below, hoping to tunnel across to the old well shaft that the little girl had somehow tumbled down. The region, the nation, and the world watched and listened to every moment of the rescue attempt by way of radio, newsreel footage, and wire service reporting. They also watched live television. Because of the well's proximity to the radio towers on nearby Mount Wilson, the rescue attempt because the first breaking-news event to be broadcast live on television. The Kathy Fiscus event invented reality television and proved that real-time television news broadcasting could work and could transfix the public. William Deverell is professor of history and director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West at the University of Southern California. He is the author of numerous studies of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century American West, including Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its Mexican Past.