Arthur Ellis Award finalist Rio Youers combines vengeance and deceit, love and bullets, secrets, and twists in this high-octane action thriller with a vibrant emotional core. Brody Ellis is short on luck and even shorter on cash to buy the medication his sister Molly needs. Desperate, he robs a convenience store, but on the way out, he bumps into a young woman and loses his wallet. Just when he expects the cops to arrive, the phone rings. It’s Blair Mayo—the woman he bumped into—and she’s got the missing billfold. Brody will get it back, but only if he does her a favor: steal her late mother’s diamonds from her wicked stepmom. But when he gets to the house, he finds a gruesome crime scene—and a security camera. Brody knows he’s been framed. Back home, the terrified young man gets another call. The police won’t get the incriminating video footage, Blair says. Instead, her daddy, the notorious mobster Jimmy Latzo, will exact his own kind of revenge. Brody and Molly realize that they’ve become pawns in a mysterious game—one that involves a notorious enforcer named Lola Bear who brutally crossed paths with Jimmy Latzo twenty-six years before. . . a ghost from the past who is intimately connected to their lives.

Male-centered theology, a dearth of men in the pews, and an overrepresentation of queer males in music ministry: these elements coexist within the spaces of historically black Protestant churches, creating an atmosphere where simultaneous heteropatriarchy and "real" masculinity anxieties, archetypes of the "alpha-male preacher", the "effeminate choir director" and homo-antagonism, are all in play. The "flamboyant" male vocalists formed in the black Pentecostal music ministry tradition, through their vocal styles, gestures, and attire in church services, display a spectrum of gender performances - from "hyper-masculine" to feminine masculine - to their fellow worshippers, subtly protesting and critiquing the otherwise heteronormative theology in which the service is entrenched. And while the performativity of these men is characterized by cynics as "flaming," a similar musicalized "fire" - that of the Holy Spirit - moves through the bodies of Pentecostal worshippers, endowing them religio-culturally, physically, and spiritually like "fire shut up in their bones". Using the lenses of ethnomusicology, musicology, anthropology, men's studies, queer studies, and theology, Flaming?: The Peculiar Theo-Politics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance observes how male vocalists traverse their tightly-knit social networks and negotiate their identities through and beyond the worship experience. Author Alisha Jones ultimately addresses the ways in which gospel music and performance can afford African American men not only greater visibility, but also an affirmation of their fitness to minister through speech and song.

WINNER OF THE JOHN CREASEY DEBUT DAGGER AWARD Nominated for the Edgar Award for best first novel An astonishing debut crime thriller about an unforgettable woman who combines the genius and ferocity of Lisbeth Salander with the ruthless ambition of Walter White The Crenshaw Six are a small but up-and-coming gang in South Central LA who have recently been drawn into an escalating war between rival drug cartels. To outsiders, the Crenshaw Six appear to be led by a man named Garcia . . . but what no one has figured out is that the gang's real leader (and secret weapon) is Garcia's girlfriend, a brilliant young woman named Lola. Lola has mastered playing the role of submissive girlfriend, and in the man's world she inhabits she is consistently underestimated. But in truth she is much, much smarter--and in many ways tougher and more ruthless--than any of the men around her, and as the gang is increasingly sucked into a world of high-stakes betrayal and brutal violence, her skills and leadership become their only hope of survival. Lola marks the debut of a hugely exciting new thriller writer, and of a singular, magnificent character unlike anyone else in fiction.

From the author of End Times and Point Hollow comes a new thriller, Rio Youers's Halcyon HALCYON is the answer for all Americans who want to escape, but paradise isn't what it seems. A beautiful island in the middle of Lake Ontario—a self-sustaining community made up of people who want to live without fear, crime, or greed. Halcyon is run by Valerie Kemp, aka Mother Moon, benevolent and altruistic on the outside, but hiding an unimaginable darkness inside. She has dedicated her life to the pursuit of Glam Moon, a place of eternal beauty and healing. And she believes the pathway there can only be found at the end of pleasure. On the heels of tragedy, Martin Lovegrove moves his family to Halcyon. A couple of months, he tells himself, to retreat from the chaos and grind. He soon begins to suspect there is something beneath Halcyon’s perfect veneer and sets out to discover the truth—however terrible it might be—behind the island and its mysterious founder, Mother Moon.

At Harlequin High School in 1986, Kelvin Fish was the oddball, the weird kid that no one would talk to, except for Patrick Beauchamp who was determined to learn more. When Patrick's curiosity about Kelvin leads him into a bizarre and tragic series of events, patrick gets much more than he bargained for.

A BEST BOOK OF JANUARY: O Magazine A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR in the UK: The Guardian, The Times “[Moss] writes beautifully about... souls in tumult, about people whose lives have not turned out the way they’d hoped. . .There’s little doubt, reading Moss, that you’re in the hands of a sophisticated and gifted writer." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times The acclaimed author of Ghost Wall offers a new, devastating, masterful novel of subtle menace They rarely speak to each other, but they take notice—watching from the safety of their cabins, peering into the half-lit drizzle of a Scottish summer day, making judgments from what little they know of their temporary neighbors. On the longest day of the year, the hours pass nearly imperceptibly as twelve people go from being strangers to bystanders to allies, their attention forced into action as tragedy sneaks into their lives. At daylight, a mother races up the mountain, fleeing into her precious dose of solitude. A retired man studies her return as he reminisces about the park’s better days. A young woman wonders about his politics as she sees him head for a drive with his wife, and tries to find a moment away from her attentive boyfriend. A teenage boy escapes the scrutiny of his family, braving the dark waters of the loch in a kayak. This cascade of perspective shows each wrapped up in personal concerns, unknown to each other, as they begin to notice one particular family that doesn’t seem to belong. Tensions rise, until nightfall brings an irrevocable turn. From Sarah Moss, the acclaimed author of Ghost Wall—a “riveting” (Alison Hagy, The New York Times Book Review) “sharp tale of suspense” (Margaret Tablot, The New Yorker), Summerwater is a searing exploration of our capacity for kinship and cruelty, and a gorgeous evocation of the natural world that bears eternal witness.

"From the acclaimed author of Lola on Fire comes a blistering novel of action, intrigue, and suspense about a down-and-out actor suspected of killing his wife, a wannabe starlet new to the L.A. scene, and the vengeful drug dealer they both dare to cross"--