Salem, Massachusetts, is home to Charlene Morris’ haunted bed-and-breakfast. Dr. Jack Strathmore, the ghost in residence at the house he used to own, loves and watches over Charlene. Dane Stallone, a photographer originally from Salem, and 12 international models of both sexes are staying at the B&B while they shoot a Cupid-themed calendar Dane hopes […]
Eleventh grader Jordan is struggling in the wake of his mother’s death from cancer. He’s also being bullied at school for being a small, quiet boy. His father sold their old house and moved them into an apartment after their loss, a change Jordan has found upsetting and destabilizing. He copes by reading his mother’s […]
Haslett’s third novel is partly narrated by Peter Fischer, a New York City lawyer working for a nonprofit handling asylum cases. There, and in the rest of his life, he handles things with assurance but little joy—his lover, Cliff, has little more depth than a dating-app hookup, and he avoids conversations with his snarky and […]
Pete Barnes finds a terrified young Black boy named Alex Broadnax—shivering from the cold and covered in blood—hiding in his father’s milk barn in Leakesville, North Carolina. Alex witnessed the murder of his entire family by the Ku Klux Klan and is now on the run. Poppa Barnes, despite his unabashed racism, takes Alex in […]
At the outset of World War I, agricultural communities in belligerent nations provided many of the soldiers who fought in the conflict. But a large number of those peasant farmers, especially in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, decided either to evade the draft or, once in uniform, desert. These “green cadres” took to the woods near their […]
Chelsea’s twin, Angelica, still follows her around nearly constantly despite having met an untimely death several years ago. Though 12-year-old Chelsea loves her sister, the situation leaves her feeling isolated. To make matters worse, the twins’ former friend Riley has relentlessly bullied Chelsea ever since Chelsea told Riley about Angelica’s paranormal presence. Unbeknownst to Chelsea, […]
Lila Kennedy thought she had the perfect family—a loving mother, a doting stepfather, two wonderful daughters, and a great husband. She even wrote a self-help book about repairing a marriage, which was published a mere two weeks before her husband left her. After her own mother’s sudden death, Lila finds herself an unexpected single mom […]
Death and complications define Angie Sheehan’s life. At 17, she witnesses her younger sister, Diana, die in a ski accident that also injures her own boyfriend, Julian. She eventually leaves to become an artist in New York City, but just as her career begins to blossom, her father develops cancer and Angie moves back to […]
In this melancholic assemblage of more than two dozen short stories, the author examines the austere conditions of human life in the American West and the backwoods of Pennsylvania; the formidable and unforgiving nature of the terrain serves as an analogue for the human soul. In the titular story, aging oil-rig hands Otie and J.L. […]
At the turn of the 21st century, three United States Navy nuclear submarines vanished, and only two were recovered by Naval Intelligence. The third, a massive Ohio-class sub, finally turned up in Barranquilla, Colombia, stashed inside a grotto in the Magdalena River. It appeared that some Navy admirals, possibly with Russian collusion, planned to sell […]