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FALSE GOLD

After Sir Julian Marston-Lang’s shady family did their level best to see that he didn’t inherit Marston Hall, his stately ancestral home outside of London, in Heley’s last book, False Witness (2024), some of the locals are determined that his efforts to rehabilitate the neglected property come to naught. Egged on by Sir Julian’s own […]

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DETAINED

D.’s parents migrated to the United States when he was six months old, so for the next 13 years of his life, he grows up in the care of his grandmother, whom he calls Tía, and his uncle Felipe. After his uncle and his grandmother both die tragically, in quick succession, the author and his […]

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INDIGO

Ella Summer writes for an occult publication called Mars, covering urban legends, reptilian conspiracy theories, and other stories for which there is no proof. (As her editor likes to tell his reporters, “To have proof is called science, not the occult!”) When one of Ella’s former university professors dies mysteriously of apparent starvation, she drops […]

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HOMEMAKER

Prairie Nightingale’s business card says “Homemaker,” but the divorced, sharp-eyed mother of two has more ambitious plans for her life in Green Bay, Wisconsin. While waiting for her kids at school pickup, Prairie wonders why her former friend Amber Jenkins is carrying a very expensive handbag when her car has a broken taillight and her […]

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HEATHEN & HONEYSUCKLE

Darby Andrews is on the brink of marrying Jackson when something in her heart makes her write a letter to the one that got away. Resigning herself to her fate, she puts the letter aside, only for her sister Dahlia to send it—setting the stage for her long-lost love Leo Graham to reappear and help […]

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WEEPERS

Ed is a cowboy poet in the desert Southwest. He’s stable and reliable (even in the ways he finesses his alcoholism), settled, a stand-up guy who emerged bloodied but upright from domestic tragedy in his youth. And he’s found a calling in late middle age as a linchpin of Local 302, the Weepers, who go […]

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REIKI IN INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE

The author, an integrative healthcare practitioner, takes readers on a journey through the ins and outs of reiki, framing it as a method of healing and rejuvenation—and not, she clarifies, as a kind of religious belief. Reiki, a Japanese term meaning “universal life energy,” is a “non-invasive relaxation technique,” the author says, intended to help […]

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JOURNEY BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

The Wizard of Oz and its adaptation, The Wiz, are employed as metaphors for the caregiving experience in this self-help book. The author is a registered nurse and tells us that much like landing in Oz, assuming a caregiving role involves “all sorts of new customs, expectations, relationship dynamics, challenges, and personal insecurities to navigate. And […]

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UNCORKED

Stephens always liked to have fun. When the drinks were poured or the shots thrown back, she was always game to go one more round. But at the age of 45, after what should have been a casual afternoon with a friend turned into yet another binge-drinking episode, she finally realized something had to change. […]

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A STEEPING OF BLOOD

Arthie Casimir and her brother, Jin, managed to uncover the real identity of—and steal a ledger with incriminating evidence about—the Ram, monarch of Ettenia, but their crew, a mix of vampires and humans, is irrevocably changed. The revelation of a secret leads to a rift between the siblings, the Ram is still in power, and […]