Romantic Suspense, YA Fantasy, & More

An Unexpected Peril

A princess is missing, and a peace treaty is on the verge of collapse in this new Veronica Speedwell adventure from the New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-nominated author Deanna Raybourn.

January 1889. As the newest member of the Curiosity Club—an elite society of brilliant, intrepid women—Veronica Speedwell is excited to put her many skills to good use. As she assembles a memorial exhibition for pioneering mountain climber Alice Baker-Greene, Veronica discovers evidence that the recent death was not a tragic climbing accident but murder. Veronica and her natural historian beau, Stoker, tell the patron of the exhibit, Princess Gisela of Alpenwald, of their findings. With Europe on the verge of war, Gisela’s chancellor, Count von Rechstein, does not want to make waves—and before Veronica and Stoker can figure out their next move, the princess disappears.

Having noted Veronica’s resemblance to the princess, von Rechstein begs her to pose as Gisela for the sake of the peace treaty that brought the princess to England. Veronica reluctantly agrees to the scheme. She and Stoker must work together to keep the treaty intact while navigating unwelcome advances, assassination attempts, and Veronica’s own family—the royalty who has never claimed her.

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Lethal Lies

A deadly secret can’t stay buried forever . . . 

Revenge. It’s the only thing that will help Anya Best sleep at night. The serial killer who murdered her sister is on the loose, and Anya will stop at nothing to put him behind bars-even use herself as bait to lure him out of hiding. But she can’t do this alone.

Private investigator Heath Jones’s job is to bring bastards to justice. This time it’s personal. He knew the Copper Killer’s latest victim so when her sister asks for his help, he’s all in. But when Anya uses the media to taunt the killer, she exposes Heath’s identity, putting them both in jeopardy. Now, secrets buried long ago are coming to light and the forces determined to destroy him are watching Heath’s every move, waiting to exact their own revenge. And they’ll use anything and anyone to get to Heath.

With twists and turns that will take your breath away, LETHAL LIES is sexy, action-packed suspense at its very best from New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Zanetti.

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Defy the Night

King Harristan rules Kandala with an iron fist. He’s had to ever since he and his brother Prince Corrick inherited a kingdom on the verge of collapse after a deadly illness killed most of the population before a cure was found. The one thing keeping his people alive is also driving them apart . . . the cure, made from the nectar of a rare flower. As sickness lingers among the people of Kandala, a sharp divide has formed, as those who control access to the medicine live in luxury–while the rest live in suffering. The only way to keep the peace is to kill anyone who threatens it, and that task falls to young Prince Corrick.

Tessa Cade is a masked outlaw marked for death, but she likes it that way. At night, she and her best friend Weston Lark ride through the streets of the poorest towns, distributing food, money, and medicine they’ve stolen from the elite ruling class. Tessa has reason to hate the king: her parents were publicly executed after they were caught selling medicine on the black market. She has reason to love Weston: he saved her life when she nearly followed her parents to the same fate. She’s come to hate the dawn, which signals that it’s time for Weston to return to his home on the other side of the city, where he spends his days working in the grueling iron forge.

Lately, rumors have been spreading that the cure no longer works, and people are starting to act on their worst impulses. Tessa knows that the only way to save her people–the poor–is to assassinate King Harristan. It’s a mission that is more likely to kill her than save anyone, but if her parents were willing to risk their lives, then so is she. What Tessa doesn’t expect to find is that everything she believed about her kingdom is a lie, and that tipping the balance of power will require her to work with the very people she intended to destroy. . .

Set in a fantasy world startlingly similar to our own, Brigid Kemmerer’s newest series illuminates the divide between those with power and those without. . . and what happens when someone is brave enough to flip the system upside down.

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Truly Devious

Something is wrong at Ellingham Academy: Its murderous past won’t stay in the past.

Ellingham Academy is an American institution. Students can’t buy admission, they have to earn it: these are the brightest of their generation, the thinkers, inventors, artists, dreamers, and schemers who will change the world. Ellingham is the brainchild of philanthropist and tycoon Edward J. Ellingham, who happened on a remote, idyllic spot outside of Burlington, Vermont in the 1920s, the perfect setting for his “dream school of the future.” For Ellingham, the dream ended a decade later, when his wife and child were kidnapped, then murdered, in what would become the crime of the century. Ellingham pledged everything to find the killer—he ended up giving his life.

It was an empty sacrifice: For years, the killer remained at large. He taunted the police, signing his letters Truly, Devious. Eventually, someone was caught, found guilty, and executed for the heinous crimes… but questions lingered. Why, for example, did Ellingham write these words on the day he died?

Where do you look for someone

who’s never really there?

Always on a staircase

but never on a stair.

Every institution has its ghost stories; every school imagines itself haunted. Ellingham Academy is, officially, beyond such silliness: it is devoted to greatness, and everyone accepted achieves it.

This includes Stevie Bell, who gained her fame by solving a murder when she was thirteen years old. Clever murders don’t happen along very often, and Stevie has been struggling to find her place in the competitive atmosphere of Ellingham. Then she finds out about the decades-old Ellingham riddle: Problem solved. She’ll solve the riddle, name the real killer, and prove herself exceptional. True Ellingham material.

Her investigation into the cold case is interrupted by a fresh one. When one of her classmates, internet superstar Hayes Major, turns up dead, Stevie is the first to question the official explanation. An accident? Really? Everyone else is convinced that Ellingham’s murderous past is just that, which leaves justice up to Stevie.

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