As a female writer, I love digging into the minds of women characters, especially in light of their family circumstances. I think we can sometimes underestimate the importance of a strong, loving family unit in terms of personal development. But what’s amazing is how a person’s story can be redeemed even if they were raised in a less-than-ideal environment. Even though I got pretty lucky in the parent department, I know not a lot of people have. And I love showing others through fiction that despite hardships they’ve had to face along the way, they are still loved and still wanted by a God who knows them better than anyone.
This book hooked me from the get-go. Axton Betz-Hamilton is raised by two parents who are the victims of stolen identities. She lives in a world of paranoia fostered by this incident and watches as the two people she’s closest to begin to turn on each other. Years later, Axton discovers she’s also the victim of identity theft and the journey she takes to figure out why is a nail-biter!
Axton Betz-Hamilton grew up in small-town Indiana in the early '90s. When she was 11 years old, her parents both had their identities stolen. Their credit ratings were ruined and they were constantly fighting over money. This was before the age of the Internet, when identity theft became more commonplace, so authorities and banks were clueless and reluctant to help Axton's parents.
Axton's family switched PO Boxes, changed all of their personal information and moved to different addresses but the identity thief followed them wherever they went. Convinced that the thief had to be someone they knew, Axton and her…
I am the ultimate dilettante. I consume huge amounts of history, literature, and current events. I am not interested in dumbing down what I write. I am endlessly curious and assume my readers are also. I started writing during the pandemic and have not quit. I have completed three novels and have been an avid reader my entire life. Join me!
I really enjoyed this historical mystery novel. It is an early example of a narrative being told from multiple perspectives, some unreliable; beware!
The novel is a classic with beautiful language and sentence construction. I feel there is an elegance and craft given to this narrative rarely found in today’s commercial mystery genre. Sit back and enjoy being seduced by Wilkie Collins.
HarperCollins is proud to present its range of best-loved, essential classics.
'The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared.'
One of the earliest works of 'detective' fiction with a narrative woven together from multiple characters, Wilkie Collins partly based his infamous novel on a real-life eighteenth century case of abduction and wrongful imprisonment. In 1859, the story caused a sensation with its readers, hooking their attention with the ghostly first scene where the mysterious 'Woman in White'…
If
there’s a theme with my favorite fiction books, it’s that I tend to read them
in one sitting. I read Hawk Mountain while waiting for and then on an airplane, and I cried, to the alarm of my seat partner.
Not for the faint of heart, this
is an incredible little novel that examines cycles of abuse, what repression
does to someone over time, and how it bleeds out and affects everyone around
them. This horror story about a man, his son, and the thoughts he won’t let
himself think until he’s confronted with a boy from his past is just
incredible.
If you’re averse to gore, pass this one by, but if you have the
stomach for it, this book is a moving portrayal of one very stunted man having
the worst possible reaction to what could have been a late-in-life gay
awakening.
Single father Todd is relaxing at the beach with his son, Anthony, when he catches sight of a man approaching from the water's edge. As the man draws closer, Todd recognizes him as Jack, who bullied Todd relentlessly in their teenage years but now seems overjoyed to have "run into" his old friend. Jack suggests a meal to catch up. And can he spend the night?
What follows is a fast-paced story of obsession and cunning. As Jack invades Todd's life, pain and intimidation from the past unearth knife-edge suspense in the present. Set in a small town on the…
Looking back, I was surprised at the things I'd done and the distance I'd traveled from my lower-middle-class upbringing in an industrial town. Destined for a life on the hot beds at the steel mill, I worked my way through college, found a job as a cub copywriter, learned documentary filmmaking, won an EMMY Award, moved to Hollywood, and started my 'sho biz' career.
What I love most about this story is the fresh new take on ‘the aliens among us.’ The author picks a ‘backwoods country boy’ to confront and eventually be chased by powerful creatures from outer space. Lucky for the country boy, he is given some superpowers to help him survive.
I liked how the story moved along with snappy enthusiasm (this is the first of six volumes).
The adventure begins when JB Tucker, a simple, backwoods country boy–born and raised in the Carolina swamps–accidentally becomes infected with tiny, autonomous alien tech.
The hundreds of millions of sub-molecular robots coursing through his bloodstream have evolved far beyond their original design and capabilities. The freak pairing of the off-world medical protocols and JB’s unique human body chemistry result in immediate and dramatic consequences.
Now, relentlessly hunted by off-worlders intent on both the retrieval of their stolen technology and his utter destruction, JB finds himself thrust into the center of an intergalactic conflict that he can neither comprehend, nor escape.…
The story starts out enjoyable and simple, very straightforward, but then slowly builds towards deep personal revelations and I really felt like we were peeling back the layers of an onion.
In USA Today bestselling author Julie Anne Long's latest installment in the Palace of Rogues series, a notorious rake meets his match in a lovely girl from the country, changing the course of both of their futures...
A London season is the chance of a lifetime for Catherine Keating. But the ton's glitter and decadence and casual cruelty threaten to crush her hopes of finding a husband before her season even begins...until she accidentally acquires one of the most scandalous men in England as a secret chaperone.
Famously fiery Lord Dominic Kirke can hold the House of Commons-and any woman…
I’m an American intellectual historian and professor at Vanderbilt University. I’ve long been fascinated by the history and politics of data: the question of how publicly available knowledge shapes societies as well as individual selves. It’s led me to research the effects of popular polls and statistics on mid-century U.S. culture and to write about how ever-advancing techniques for “knowing” citizens shaped modern privacy sensibilities. My current obsession is with official identity documents—how they infiltrate people’s lives in ways that are at once bureaucratic and curiously intimate. The books I’ve selected lay bare the promise and the peril of documentation in wonderfully vivid detail.
Although it reads like a spy novel, this is the real-life account of a noted English journalist’s encounter with his own Stasi surveillance file. The file in question was compiled in the early 1980s by the East German secret police on Garton Ash (code name “Romeo”), then a young man living in Berlin and writing about Central European communism. Garton Ash opened his file fifteen years later, after the former German Democratic Republic made Stasi records accessible. Tracking those who tailed him, the book explores the uneasy sensation of reading one’s past life through the photographs, informant reports, surveillance notes, and speculations of those tasked with observing a target of suspicion. It’s a compelling and often chilling chronicle of the costs both of watching and being watched.
In 1978 Timothy Garton Ash went to live in Berlin to see what that divided city could teach him about tyranny and freedom. Fifteen years later, by then internationally famous for his reportage of the downfall of communism in Central Europe, he returned to look at his Stasi file which bore the code-name 'Romeo'. Compiled by the East German secret police, with the assistance of both professional spies and ordinary people turned informer, it contained a meticulous record of his earlier life in Berlin.
In this memoir, he describes rediscovering his younger self through the eyes of the Stasi, and…
I’ve enjoyed dark fiction ever since I picked up Dracula for school. But I mostly avoided crime and thriller fiction. I couldn’t relate to a rogue detective with an alcohol problem or an FBI agent on the heels of the next Hannibal Lector. Police procedural books just aren’t my thing. But then Gone Girl came out and changed the genre. The domestic suspense subgenre has exploded over the last decade, and now there’s an abundance of books centered around the dangers within our family and friendship circle. And isn’t that the scariest part of life? Serial killers are rare, but domestic violence is, unfortunately, not rare. Where is more dangerous than in our own homes?
If you enjoyed Gone Girl, I’m guessing you have a soft spot for a well-written sociopath. Jane Doe will be right up your street and then some. Jane is the kind of sociopath you can’t help but love. She’s funny, she’s misanthropic and she doesn’t care about what anyone else thinks. But best of all, Jane is on a revenge mission and despite every horrible thing she does, you’ll still love her.
Jane's days at a Midwest insurance company are perfectly ordinary. She blends in well, unremarkably pretty in her floral-print dresses and extra efficient at her low-level job. She's just the kind of woman middle manager Steven Hepsworth likes-meek, insecure, and willing to defer to a man. No one has any idea who Jane really is. Least of all Steven.
But plain Jane is hiding something. And Steven's bringing out the worst in her.
Nothing can distract Jane from going straight for his heart: allowing herself to be seduced…
I’m an award-winning and bestselling novelist known for writing in a wide variety of genres. My most popular work to date is Lovecraft Country, a supernatural horror novel that served as the basis for the acclaimed HBO series of the same name.
This book borrows its title from a short story coauthored by H.P. Lovecraft, and it starts out like a classic Lovecraft tale, with an escaped psychiatric patient sending his wife a message from beyond the grave.
But just when you think you know what kind of book you’re reading, author La Farge throws in a twist—and then he does it again and again. It’s a unique and amazing novel that defies categorization.
From the award-winning author and New Yorker contributor, a riveting novel about secrets and scandals, psychiatry and pulp fiction, inspired by the lives of H.P. Lovecraft and his circle.
Marina Willett, M.D., has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends--or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's…
I’ve
enjoyed everything by Lucy Parker, but this one was special. It takes place in a
royal household but focuses on two staff members, not the royals themselves.
So there’s a little bit of a Downton Abbey vibe there, even though it’s a modern
timeline. I love the way she writes the chaos/stoic contrast of these two wildly
different characters while somehow making their romance feel organic and
believable.
There’s a fabulous twist at the end that made my heart grow two
sizes. I can’t wait to read what she writes next.
Following Battle Royal, beloved author Lucy Parker pens another delicious romantic comedy about a fake relationship between a grumpy royal bodyguard and the charming, sunny assistant who melts his cold, hard exterior.
Petunia De Vere enjoys being the personal assistant to lovable, bumbling Johnny Marchmont. But the job has its share of challenges, including the royal's giant, intimidating bodyguard, Matthias. Pet and Matthias are polar opposites-she's spontaneous and enthusiastic, he's rigid and stoic-but she can sense there's something softer underneath that tough exterior...
For Matthias Vaughn, protecting others is the name of the game. But keeping his royal charge out…
As a licensed mental health professional, I once had a client claiming to be demonically possessed, and requested that I get an exorcist to drive the evil spirits out of her body. Instead, I utilized a therapeutic approach to challenge “irrational” beliefs. The problem was gone. I realized that people were prone to strange beliefs and started to read and listen to “experts” who were skeptical in nature. To my surprise, I saw Carl Sagan distinguishing astrology (pseudoscience) from astronomy (science). His talk was clear, convincing, and logical. I was hooked.
Instead of “writing” this book on each subject myself, chapters are written by the most noted experts in the field of the subject matter. Some of the topics include claims of astrology, psychic ability, alternative medicine, after-death communication, psychotherapy, and pseudoscience. Mostly, I’ve never seen people so excited to study critical thinking as when the subject matter involves the paranormal.
Pseudoscience and Deception is a compilation of some of the most eye-opening skeptical articles pertaining to extraordinary claims and pseudoscience. The articles explore paranormal, extraordinary, or fringe-science claims and reveal logical explanations or outline the deceptive tactics involved in convincing the vulnerable. Topics include claims of astrology, psychic ability, alternative medicine, after-death communication, psychotherapy, and pseudoscience. The contributors to this book are among the most accomplished critical thinkers, scientists, and educators in the world and tackle their respective topics from a rational, logical, and skeptical perspective. Most students are seldom excited to study "critical thinking"-with the exception of allegedly paranormal…
