Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Queen of Roses by Julia Kelly, which is out now.

1960: Frustrated reporter Theresa Johnson’s life changes when she receives a phone call from a Miss Pearce who claims her obituary about one of Pasadena’s last great hoteliers is wildly inaccurate. Seeking the truth, Theresa drives to the mysterious Rosewood House nestled high in the Altadena foothills. Even more intriguing than the house’s beautiful garden is Miss Pearce’s proposal that Theresa help her settle old scores by writing her biography.

1903: Beautiful but haughty, Adele Pearce is reluctant to leave the London Season and her last hope of a proposal. When she arrives in California, she discovers the startling truth of why her mother has called her there: her father has squandered his fortune and Adele must marry a wealthy American to save the family.

Stifled by expectation as Pasadena’s newest doyenne, Adele’s only comfort is Rosewood House and the beautiful garden she creates with the help of taciturn gardener Alexander Macalister. However, as Adele’s feelings for Alex flourish, a fire ignites in the San Gabriel Mountains above Rosewood House, threatening everything Adele holds dear, while in 1960, Miss Pearce learns that history has a terrible habit of repeating itself.

EXCERPT

Chapter one
THERESA
May 1960

Theresa glared at the metal fan on her desk as she banged out the last words of her article on her Olympia typewriter. The damn thing wasn’t doing a thing in this heat.

She whipped the paper out of the platen and stood, straightening the hem of her skirt before walking on low heels over to her editor Phil’s desk.

“Here’s the Goldberg obit,” she said.

Phil didn’t even bother to look up from the article he was correcting in red pencil. “Funeral?”

“Happened three days ago. He was Jewish. They bury the body as soon as possible after death,” she explained.

“Then there’s no rush.”

“The family’s expecting it to be published soon.”

“Shouldn’t have made any promises, Johnson. You know how it is. Obits get killed all the time.”

The irony of killing a piece that was meant to celebrate the life of the dead was not lost on Theresa.

“I didn’t make any promises,” she said, “but it’s a good piece.”

“Put it in the tray,” said Phil, as he slashed through a paragraph.

“Could you at least let me know if it has any chance of running this weekend? News is always slow on holiday weekends.”

Instead of responding, Phil pointed to the metal basket on the edge of his desk with the end of his pencil.

Theresa’s eyes narrowed, but she dropped the paper on top of all the other articles languishing as they waited for edits. Better to eventually have a byline printed than to get no byline at all.

When she didn’t leave, Phil set down his pencil with a sigh. “What is it?”

“I heard there might be a job opening up in the Metro section.”

The editor took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Damned reporters. Can’t keep a secret to save their lives. Yes, Roy’s leaving for the Santa Barbara job.”

It would be a huge step forward for Roy Royle. After more than twenty years of reporting, he’d been handpicked by the owner of the Pasadena Herald Times to become Metro editor of the business’s new Santa Barbara paper. It also meant that there would soon be a rare staff job open in the ranks of the Herald Times’s Metro section.

“I’d like to be considered,” she said.

“Roy hasn’t even packed up his desk yet and already you vultures are circling,” said Phil.

Theresa kept her lips firmly shut. She’d learned during her tenure at the Herald Times that sometimes it was better not to say anything than to argue a point.

“You really think you’re ready for Metro?” asked Phil, his skepticism clear.

“I do,” she said. “I’ve been working in Obits for two years, and I fill in on weekends—”

“Only in rare circumstances,” Phil reminded her.

“Nevertheless, I think I’ve more than proven I can do the job.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Phil before adding, “but it won’t just be my decision. Gareth will have final say.”

“I understand,” she said. Winning over managing editor Gareth Packard

would be a tall order, but after two years of keeping her head down and producing good, consistent work in Obits, surely he’d have to consider her.

“Now go. I have a job to do and so do you,” said Phil.

Theresa turned on her heel and walked back up the length of the newsroom, holding her breath as she passed through the cloud of cigarette smoke that always hung around Archer Madison, the way dirt followed Pigpen around in the Charlie Brown comics.

“Still languishing in the land of the dead?” asked Archer, the paper’s most ambitious young reporter, with a smirk.

She shot him a sweet smile. “Still a pompous ass?”

That sent Archer laughing, which made him cough, which made him hack. And hack. And hack.

Theresa couldn’t bring herself to sympathize with the bastard. The first day she’d arrived at the paper fresh from the Columbia Journalism School in New York City, Archer had taken one look at her and asked, “Lady reporter?

What are you working? Weddings or Society?”

“Obituaries,” she’d ground out.

“Just as bad,” he’d said before treating Theresa to her first show of his laugh/cough/hack triple act.

She hated that what Archer had said that day was true. Most women reporters were stuck in the doldrums of newspapers across the country. A few had risen through the ranks thanks to hard work, good luck, and general mercilessness to write major stories on crime and politics, but Mr. Packard had made it very clear during Theresa’s interview that the most she could probably hope for at the Pasadena Herald Times was one day covering the education beat.

Back at her desk, Theresa began shuffling through her notes for a faded nearly famous jazz singer’s obituary that was due at the end of the day. Mercifully, the tan telephone on the corner of her desk rang, giving her an excuse to put off figuring out a more delicate way to phrase the singer’s onetime manager’s suggestion that taking cocaine to work and laudanum to sleep in the twenties had probably contributed to the life of general ill health that had ultimately led to the singer’s demise.

“Theresa Johnson,” she said into the phone.

“Miss Johnson? There’s a telephone call for you,” said one of the paper’s

switchboard operators.

“Who is it?”

“A woman who says there’s an error in one of today’s obituaries.”

Theresa sighed. “All right, put her through.”

She waited a moment for the operator to connect the outside call and then said, “Theresa Johnson speaking.”

“Miss Johnson? Thank you for taking my call. My name is Adele Pearce. I am concerned about the accuracy of one of your articles that ran in this morning’s paper.”

The woman’s voice sounded strong, but it had the timbre of age and, if Theresa wasn’t mistaken, an English accent lacing through most of her words.

She clamped the receiver between her ear and shoulder so she could grab a reporter’s pad off the stack on her desk and a pencil. “May I ask which article it was?”

“The obituary for Guy Whitley.”

She remembered writing the piece. Former hotelier. Grew up in Chicago and moved to California to make his fortune just before the turn of the century. Fell on hard times before the First World War and seemed to have lived a fairly quiet life afterward. He had one child, a son who had died in Italy during the Second World War, and a wife who had passed away from cancer in 1949. He’d moved into a care home for about five years before dying of natural causes. Phil had given her two hundred words, no space for a photo, and had made her wait weeks for it to run.

“I remember the piece. What is the error you wish to have corrected?” she asked, tapping her pencil against her notepad.

“All of it. The entire article is wrong.”

Theresa’s pencil froze in midair. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Pearce, but—”

“Miss Pearce,” the older woman interrupted.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Pearce, but I can assure you that I researched Mr. Whitley’s life very carefully.”

“Apparently not carefully enough,” the woman said, her tone wry.

“May I ask how you can be certain?” she asked.

“Well, first of all, you said that his wife died in 1949.”

She let out a breath. If the date of Mrs. Whitley’s death was incorrect, it should be a relatively easy correction to issue.

“All right. Do you know when Mrs. Whitley died?” she asked.

“In 1949, as you wrote,” said Miss Pearce.

Theresa frowned. “Then there is no correction needed.”

“Yes, my dear, there is. You see, she was only the second Mrs. Whitley.”

Excerpted from THE QUEEN OF ROSES by Julia Kelly. Copyright © 2026 by Julia Kelly. Reprinted by permission of Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LCC.

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Hi, LJ! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

Hi! I live on a hobby farm with my husband and four kids. I love anything to do with mythology and adore putting new lore into my books. I have chickens who think are hilarious and goats that I pretend like me more than they really do. I have a thousand candles in my backyard cottage where I write and I definitely use reading as “working” to procrastinate doing actual work.

When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?

Oh, I’ve been writing since I was a kid. I used to write my daydreams because I was always so excited and I had to get them out of my head and onto paper. I guess I thought they’d come true if I did.

Quick lightning round! Tell us:

• The first book you ever remember reading: Boxcar Children
• The one that made you want to become an author: Goosebumps. Yes. You read that correctly.
• The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Well I’m reading it right now, but This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews

The Stolen Crown is the fourth installment in your Ever Seas series and it’s out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

Ohh, okay: Heartbreaking, heartwarming, sexy, bromance, girl squad

For those who haven’t picked up your Ever Seas series yet, what can they expect?

The series is perfect for readers who love pirates, Vikings, fae lore, and dark enemies to lovers. The found family is HUGE as the Ever Seas is a second gen from my Broken Kingdoms series (they can be read independently of each other) so expect to have a new morally gray friend squad who’ll bury the body with you and ask questions later.

And for readers who have, what’s to come?

Well, I’m genre hopping in between Stolen Crown and Book 5 and this coming June I’ll be releasing a dystopian romance titled Blood in the Ink. It’s up for preorder now. Then later next year Book 5 in the Ever Seas will be coming out. We haven’t shared the title or main characters yet, so that’s all I’ll say on that one.

Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring further?

I really had a blast expanding the world. We have new clans, new enemies, and the Ever Seas world building continually grows. I’m excited for future plans and ideas that are coming in this universe.

Did you face any challenges whilst writing this new installment? How did you overcome them?

There are a lot of sensitive topics in the The Stolen Crown. I had the opportunity to work with several sensitivity readers to address some of Tait’s complex backstory. I am so grateful for their help in shaping how his character was portrayed on the page.

What’s next for you?

Blood in the Ink will be my next major release. I am so excited and a little nervous to step foot into a new world and group of characters, but they are a blast. The premise involves books that are translated in a language only the elite of society is allowed to learn. But don’t worry there is an entire criminal organization focused on stealing those books back. I mean, I think we’d all go pretty far if our books were taken from us, right?

Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?

I’ve really enjoyed Helen Scheuerer’s Kiss of the Black Flame, Miranda Lyn’s Hide the Witches, and Caty Rogan’s Kissed by the Gods.

Will you be picking up The Stolen Crown? Tell us in the comments below!

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and from Where We Go at Night by Ikwo Ntekim, which releases on October 27th 2026.

To name a thing is to see it, and no one can see the folk if they don’t want to be seen.

As far as seventeen-year-old Trixie Godfrey is concerned, her hometown of Woods Crossing would be perfect —if not for the dark world of fae and magic lurking in the shadows. Growing up, her grandfather, Pops, never allowed her to get close to them—those aberrations, Mama used to say.

But on graduation night, when Trixie sneaks home past curfew she witnesses Pops’ brutal murder in a moment so sudden, so inhuman she can no longer avoid the fae. Those without the Sight will blame wild animals, calling Pops’ death an accident, a tragedy, but Trixie knows the truth because she has the Sight. She spent years burying her “gift”, but she needs to revive it now.

Determined to get justice for Pops and rid Woods Crossing of its monsters, Trixie ventures into the intriguing but deceitful world of the fae—only to find herself caught in a power struggle between ancient families more terrible and crueler than hers could ever be. Or so she thinks….

EXCERPT

PROLOGUE
TEN YEARS AGO

I was seven the first time I saw an aberration, though at the time I didn’t think of her as something to be feared. I had a habit of wandering in the surrounding woods when Mama was too busy homemaking to play with me. Not that I needed much encouragement at that age; all she had to do was flick her cigarette in the direction of the back door for me to go running out. “Keep the swing in sight,” she’d holler after me from the kitchen table, Daddy seated nearby with his arm around her waist as she rolled out dough. Mama and Daddy were each other’s biggest focus and distraction; they couldn’t bear to be apart. It didn’t take long to notice they either checked in on me during the first fifteen minutes or not at all.

My favorite thing to do on days like this was explore the East Woods. If I walked thirty minutes against the afternoon sun, through the bramble with only my shadow to keep me company, I’d reach a clearing where sunlight filtered through willow branches and neon leaves. It was there I went to talk with the trees and share my seven-year-old burdens. Until they started talking back.

She walked out of an oak tree, but for years I told myself she came around it. After all, when she appeared, it had been too bright to see exactly where she’d come from.

She was striking, taller than Mama and—to my embarrassment I admitted—much more beautiful. Angelic, even. I thought perhaps Mary mother of God had come all the way down from heaven to scold me for daring to disobey Mama and leaving the yard. Her crown was the first thing I registered, haloed around her head—seven, no, eleven copper spikes connected at the tips by a string of fire opals. Silver threads and strings of citrine and black pearls were so finely woven into her kinky tar-black hair I couldn’t tell where her jewels began and her hair ended. Her gown, despite having adopted the same color and texture as the tree she came from, ridges and all, swayed in glittering shades of bark when she moved. And her skin—her skin was not tan or brown or anything common, but bronzed and impossibly smooth. She was a belabored carving polished to perfection with oil.

No brown woman had any business looking that ethereal. She

had to be a fairy-tale princess. The kind of princess found in books Daddy once tried to get me to read before he began tossing them behind my bed, calling them fools’ tales.

“Miss, are you lost?” I had asked her, never frightened, only amazed.

She tilted her head and mimicked me. Her words came out fragmented, as though from a broken speaker. As though she weren’t used to speaking. “Miss, are you lost?”

“What’s your name?” I tried again. “What’s your name?”

“Mama calls me Trixie, but I don’t think I like it.”

She considered this carefully, drumming her fingers on her chin. Each fingertip was encased in a filigreed claw ring sharp enough to carve out a heart. “Tricks-y?”

“No, Trixie. Like, ‘Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids.’ I mean, that’s not why they named me that. I like Trisha just fine, but—”

It happened like a skipped beat.

One moment she was across the clearing, the next right in front of me. My words halted in my throat, lodged like a stuck chicken bone. Thinking back, I was probably her height now, but back then she seemed absolutely giant. She bent so close I could taste her breath, honeyed. She put a claw to my lips, cool despite the day’s heat. “You should know better, little one.” She tsked. “You smell of Daniel Godfrey, so you should know to always keep your name to your person.”

I blushed furiously. I tried to focus on her words.

Keep my name? I thought.

“Your name in its entirety,” she responded like she could read my mind. “You may be wondering, What’s in a name but letters and spaces? To us, they are entire lives lived and everything that transpires in between.”

“I don’t . . . Do you mean like a secret?” I managed to ask.

“Like a secret,” she confirmed with a long, sharp-toothed smile. “Well, then how would people know what to call me?”

“Give them a different name. Or a half name. Any name that doesn’t show who you are.”

“I don’t think Mr. Petrelli is gonna go for that.” I giggled, imagining telling my second-grade teacher to call me something new. “What do I call you, then? If we’re to be friends, we should have names for each other.”

“Friends?” Her face split into a wide grin; she was even more beautiful. “Yes, let us be friends! I’ll be your Auntie Hattie and you’ll be my Trixie.”

I’ll never know how it happened, but I turned up at home with twelve hours behind me and a furious trio of parents before me. “I wasn’t gone that long,” I cried as Mama spanked me with a switch from Pops’s oak tree. He said he’d planted it himself when he was a boy, but just last week Mr. Petrelli told us oak trees took hundreds of years to get that big, so Pops must have been fibbin’.

Whack!

“It was one hour! I checked my watch the whole time.”

Mama’s anger could not be contained. I hollered so loud, Jesus himself would have said it wasn’t that serious, but still I wailed and eventually Daddy had to step into the hallway before calling the sheriff’s office. He had to let them know I’d made it back home safe and sound.

Pops eventually wrestled the switch from Mama. “Can’t beat the melanin out of her, Nicky.”

“That’s not—” Mama dropped her voice to a whisper, and peered around the corner to make sure Daddy was still on the phone. “She’s seen that Black Madonna. I know it. I can feel it in my gut.”

“Please, Nicky, we both know how Sightless you are,” Pops scoffed. “My Sight may not be twenty-twenty, but I’ve seen enough to know that . . . that she ain’t holy. She is not good. A-and Brad does not approve of your goings-on. He says we should have her baptized.”

“If he’s that bothered, Brad and his God are welcome to find a new house to live in like he’s been promising for years.”

“Keep your voice down!” Mama hissed.

Pops continued unfazed. “You wouldn’t know the Black Madonna, as you call her, from one of Trixie’s dolls. Now, unhand my baby girl.” Tucking me into bed that night, Pops kissed me on my forehead and whispered, “Don’t be too mad at her. We do silly things when we’re scared. But tell me, you really saw them, didn’t you?”

Who was them? I shook my head, Mama’s beating still fresh in my mind.

“Young lady, if you learn to lie this young, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?” He tsked at my silence. “You saw them, didn’t you?”

This time I nodded. “Just one lady.”

Maybe Pops would tell me what I had seen and help me make sense of Mama’s explosion. Maybe he’d know where I had been during those lost hours.

“Trixie, I’ll let you in on a secret,” he said as he smoothed my covers, tucking me in further. “Your mama is right on one thing— there are no innocent faeries, and you’d do good to remember that. The best of them will steal your socks from your feet and say you weren’t wearing them in the first place; the worst will set your feet on fire so you never get the chance to steal them back. But the last thing you want to do is be afraid of them. Spend enough time with them and you’ll find they’re just children who never outgrew their playtime follies.”

“Faeries?” I said, my heart galloping. “So faeries . . . are real? Auntie Hattie is a faerie? Or is it Black Madonna?”

Pops tousled my head. “She told you to call her Hattie?”

“Well, Auntie Hattie,” I clarified. “But why does Mama call her the Black Madonna? She’s very brown, if anything.”

“When no one is lookin’, your mama can be a little superstitious. Even with her poor Sight, she once caught a glance of your Auntie Hattie without her jewels and beauty, and it frightened her because she couldn’t make sense of what she saw.”

“Mama needs glasses?”

“A special kind of prescription. Without it, her own shadow makes her jump. But at the end of the day”—Pops leaned in and I stilled, ready to receive the secret—“Auntie Hattie is more girl than monster, not from heaven but from the soil itself. She is without teeth; she will not harm you. That you saw her in the first place means your Second Sight is quite powerful. Or perhaps she was in a playful mood and let you gaze upon her. Either way it takes courage to see what’s in front of you.”

I was beaming at being called powerful and brave by the most powerful man I knew. “I have a Second Sight.”

“We Godfreys have that ability to see what may not want to be seen, even if they layer on the heaviest of Glamours. I have it, and you have it too. The Second Sight is a gift that has to be used, and if you go years shoving it down as your mother has, it will do what unwanted things do and simply disappear.”

“I want to see where Auntie Hattie lives.”

Pops peered at me from the top of his glasses, contemplating. “One day, when you’re a little older. I need to get some things ready before I take you. Make sure it’s fit for a visit from the likes of Trixie Godfrey. Until then, let’s keep this faerie talk our little secret. Yes? Promise?”

“Promise,” I said, spitting in my palm like I’d seen the big kids at the playground do and holding it out for Pops to shake.

But over the next four years promises would be broken and everything would change. Daddy would die, and a year after that, Mama would up and leave. In the months after Daddy’s untimely accident, it became clear Mama couldn’t or wouldn’t lift a finger to take care of me, and I grew lonelier, living in the cloud of her sadness. It fell on Pops to raise me, but he was barely around himself. He was always disappearing on long afternoon walks and evening strolls. When he’d return, he’d be wearing odd clothes made of rich materials I’d never seen around the house, and I imagined Auntie Hattie had gotten her faithful subjects to weave them for him, custom made in her magical kingdom. As far as I was concerned, Pops was living in a fairy tale, and I could maybe join him if only I was on my best behavior.

But try as I might, Pops never honored his promise to take me with him to Auntie Hattie’s. To combat my requests, he always had an excuse followed by another. First it was “My knee is acting up again,” and then “Who’ll keep your mama company?” and finally “Auntie who, now? You ain’t got any aunties.”

There was a time living with him that I fully thought I was going crazy, and the only way to keep my sanity was proving for myself Auntie Hattie had indeed been real, and not a figment of my imagination. So, not unlike Pops, I began sneaking away to the clearing where I had first seen Auntie Hattie. She hadn’t left a calling card, but I knew in my gut if I practiced patience and kept going to the place we’d first met, I’d inevitably run into her again. And that’s exactly what happened. Auntie Hattie visited me in the clearing time and time again. She, like Pops, refused to show me her home, but it was no matter because I grew content with the knowledge she had indeed been real. To not rouse suspicion, I’d go to the clearing every other week and we’d play all sorts of games and trade stories. We did this through the summer until one day without warning she failed to show up. And no matter how many times I returned, she never did.

Spending time with Pops became everything. Sure, I had to

share that time with his unknowable world, but my options for company were limited, and you know what they say about beggars and their options. The moment Pops set foot in the house, it would be as though the sun came out and Mama’s depression had no place to hide. Laughter, light, and normalcy could always be found in Pops, and when he got home, I’d be standing there with open arms saying, Welcome back. I have missed you.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Sign of the Raven by Pippa Dunn, which is out November 10th 2026.

LONDON, 1889.

Ashlyn Threadneedle leads a double life. By day she works as a government messenger. By night she escapes into vivid lucid dreams, navigating the Stream—a world in which the only boundary is her own imagination. But when her long-dead mother unexpectedly appears in a dream, Ashlyn is certain the Stream is hiding secrets, ones that contradict everything she knew about her past—and threaten to undo the future of everyone she loves.

In her quest for answers, she joins the Corvi Signum, a secret society of dreamers fighting to protect the Stream from an insidious enemy powerful enough to manipulate people’s thoughts and seize control of London. For Ashlyn to have any hope of preserving her own mind, she must first unravel the mysteries of both her family and the Stream. But a world of dreams is a treacherous place. Time slips backward and forward as easily as sand through an hourglass, and if Ashlyn and her fellow dreamers fail in their mission, then nowhere—neither waking nor sleeping—will be safe.

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About The Soulmate Bakery: This cozy, romantic fantasy is perfect for fans of Gilmore Girls, The Baby Dragon Cafe and Legends and Lattes!

There’s something undeniably romantic about the idea of soulmates. The thought that somewhere out there is one person destined for you, someone who will understand you in ways nobody else can, is a promise that romance has returned to time and time again. It suggests that love isn’t something we have to search for endlessly, but something waiting for us to discover it.

But what if the person we believe is our soulmate isn’t necessarily the person who’s right for us?

This was an idea I wanted to explore while writing THE SOULMATE BAKERY, a cosy fantasy romance set in the magical town of Maple Falls. My protagonist, Maya Reverie, is a chaotic kitchen witch who dreams of finding her soulmate. When she discovers an enchanted cookie recipe that promises to help her do exactly that, she sees it as her chance to finally find the love she’s always wanted. Unfortunately, her cookies go spectacularly wrong, accidentally love-cursing six people in the process.

As Maya scrambles to undo the spell, she finds herself caught between two very different boys: Silas, the golden-boy werewolf she’s spent years dreaming about, and Orion, a grumpy dragon-shifter with whom she shares a complicated history. Orion is also the person who broke her heart the previous summer, making him the last person she wants to rely on, even if he might be the one who understands her best.

For Maya, the idea of a soulmate is initially reassuring. If there’s one perfect person out there for her, then surely finding him will mean everything else falls into place. She just has to work out who he is.

I think many of us can relate to that feeling, even without enchanted cookies or magical matchmaking. We grow up surrounded by stories that promise us a perfect love, often one that arrives with an unmistakable sense of certainty. We’re encouraged to look for signs, to believe in instant connections, and to imagine that when we meet the right person, we’ll simply know.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting that kind of love. In fact, I think the soulmate trope is so enduring precisely because it speaks to something universal: the desire to be understood, chosen and loved for who we really are. There’s comfort in believing that someone out there will see us completely and still want to stay.

But I also think there’s a danger in becoming too attached to the idea of what our soulmate is supposed to look like.

When we decide that love must arrive in a particular form, we risk overlooking the relationships that don’t fit our expectations. We might mistake familiarity for destiny, idealise someone from a distance, or become so focused on winning a particular person’s heart that we fail to notice what we actually need.

Maya’s journey is, in part, about learning the difference between wanting someone and truly knowing them. Silas represents the romantic ideal she’s built up in her imagination, while Orion challenges her in ways she doesn’t always welcome. Their history is messy, their feelings are complicated, and neither relationship offers the simple answers Maya hopes to find.

I wanted to have fun with the soulmate trope while also questioning some of its assumptions. What if a soulmate isn’t necessarily the person who looks perfect on paper? What if it isn’t about finding someone who never challenges you or with whom everything feels effortless? And what if the person who’s right for you is someone you never expected to fall for?

For me, a soulmate isn’t necessarily someone who completes you, as though you were missing a piece of yourself before they arrived. It’s someone who sees you clearly, who understands the parts of you that you struggle to explain, and with whom you can grow into a version of yourself you genuinely want to be.

Perhaps there isn’t just one person out there for everyone. Perhaps there are people we could build meaningful, lasting relationships with, and what makes those connections special isn’t destiny alone, but the choices we make and the effort we put into understanding one another.

That doesn’t make love any less magical. If anything, I think it makes it more so.

After all, there’s something wonderfully romantic about discovering that love can surprise you, that the future you imagined for yourself can change, and that sometimes the person who makes your heart race isn’t the person you expected.

And if Maya’s story has taught me anything, it’s that sometimes the hardest part of finding your soulmate isn’t figuring out who they are. It’s letting go of who you thought they would be.

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The Truly Devious series is one of my favourite YA mystery series of all time. It is constructed with such care, compelling characterisation and twists that devastate you. With The Velvet Knife, Stevie Bell is back with a vengeance.

Stevie is such a fantastic protagonist with brilliant observational skills and a deep, fierce love for those she loves. She is very much carrying the weight of her previous cases in this book though and grappling with an immense guilt for those who have died, for what she perceives as her fault. Also within this, she is dealing with the disintegration of her relationship and how this has completely knocked her worldview. Her love was all-consuming and now has nowhere to be channelled into. This is possibly one of the lowest points where we’ve met Stevie and that funk is palpable from the opening chapters. Through a series of events, she ends up in New York City and is confronted with yet another murder but she might be one of the only people who sees it that way. Throughout the story, she is trying to battle with her trauma and the way it has sharpened her instincts, dialling up paranoia and those existing feelings of abandonment and fear that have shaped her. Your heart just shatters for her, paying testament to how well Johnson has developed this character over the series.

In fact characterisation is such a strength of these books with a brilliant cast of supporting characters, both old and new faces gracing the pages. The inter-personal arcs in the series are a shining light and I enjoyed how they appeared in this book, getting developed further and encountering interesting beats for these characters we have come to know and love. Of course, Stevie and David’s relationship is a prominent focus as Stevie reels from the emotional explosion in her life. However, I did also like how Johnson explicitly confronts the way Stevie is treating both herself and those around her in the aftermath. Difficult conversations are had and she must face the consequences of her actions. Johnson also excels at deftly sketched characterisation through the historical timeline. That storyline is dark and draws you into its world quickly, grounding you in an immersive sense of time and place. You can see the net start to close in on some characters and it has a genuinely chilling atmosphere. The consequences of actions taken in that timeline are also still rippling through into the present. Johnson seems to be grappling with guilt and trauma as key themes, especially how we may choose to confront them, and asking if people truly have the capacity to make amends.

This is not a book that plays around. The opening chapter is instantly chilling and sends your heart to the pit of your stomach. As usual, Johnson has created a true puzzle-box of a book that rewards attention to detail and has such powerful parallels with real-life historical cases and the state of our current world. There is a palpable rage within these pages. It is a book very much preoccupied with the abuse of power and manipulation. The series has never shied away from these themes but this is a new angle on them and feels cognisant, especially in terms of controlling and twisting the narrative.

The Velvet Knife shows that Johnson will knock it out of the park every single time.

The Velvet Knife is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.

Will you be picking up The Velvet Knife? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis

Return to the world of Truly Devious as Stevie Bell and her friends travel to New York to solve a murder in the next standalone mystery from New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson.

Stevie might be the greatest teenage detective Ellingham Academy and the world has ever seen, but even she can’t figure out what happened with her boyfriend, David. What she needs is a distraction: a good old-fashioned murder. Stevie is much happier dealing with dead people. They’re a lot less confusing—they don’t send cryptic texts and make out with other girls in British pubs.

But then Stevie gets exactly what she wanted when a dead body turns up in the middle of a Manhattan apartment complex, and this one is . . . complicated. Caught in a web of messy alive-people feelings, Stevie finds herself questioning all human connection. Is magnetism only manipulation? Can you trust anyone? Does anyone realize that they’re joining a cult—before it’s too late? And are things with David really over?

The post Review: The Velvet Knife by Maureen Johnson appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Fist of Memory by Wole Talabi, which releases on October 27th 2026.

When a non-communicative alien spacecraft suddenly appears in the sky, global powers are thrown into turmoil.

But for Tope, a principled Nigerian assassin with a talent for lethality in the employ of the mysterious witchdoctor known as “Baba,” it’s all just business as usual. At least until a job goes wrong, and Tope is caught in the scramble—a high stakes game of power and politics for the future that is to come. Joined by Itumeleng, a South African astronomer plagued by mysterious dreams, they must find a way to survive, navigate their complicated pasts, and come to understand how they, and all of humanity, are connected to the alien craft before it lands and the world changes forever. But it won’t be easy. There are sinister forces marshalled against them, including a strange assassin obsessed with a single memory.

The Fist Of Memory is a first contact thriller unlike any other; a meditation on the nature of reality, memory and connectedness.

EXCERPT

THE GREAT WALL OF LAGOS

Lagos, Nigeria

Tope

It’s noon when I wake up, curtain‑ filtered light kissing my eyes.

After six glasses of double‑ oak whiskey, I’d finally drifted off into dream‑ filled slumber. Didn’t really work though. Same dream, as always. Now, I find myself nursing a light hangover and thinking of the men I killed on the road this morning. There is an uncomfortable emotional resonance between the dream, the call from Lolade, and the act of killing those men that I don’t want to dwell on. Thinking too much would lead to drinking too much, and as much as I like the blissful wooziness of being drunk, I can’t afford to incapacitate myself right now, so I get up. Go outside. Think about something else.

Lagos is particularly hot today— weather predictions say it is . . . [39 degrees Celsius,] but it feels like more when I open the sliding glass door and step onto the balcony of my air‑ conditioned, 19th floor studio apartment wearing a blue wrapper tied above my breasts. It is like stepping out of a fridge and into an oven. Oily exhaust fumes float on gusts of humid air. Lagos is the grip of another heat wave, but this has always been a city of extremes, even before climate change made it more so.

Mine is one of the ninety‑ five flats in this high‑ rise building along Kudirat Abiola Way and just one of my many hideouts in this sprawling, disorganized city. Chinedu, my real estate agent, has proven to be astute at obtaining good, discreet accommodation. This high rise with its silver solarskin exterior and rooftop pool like several others around Ikeja, sprouts out of a cluster of older, lower buildings, a network of legacy power lines propped up on wooden poles still running between them. Mostly two to three stories high. The electric cables hang slack, and older towers are beginning to buckle under the sun. Drones buzz high overhead like vultures, and holographic billboards remind people to bring water. The city was not built for this heat. Truth be told, the city wasn’t built for anything at all. Nothing about Lagos was planned. It’s evolved like an organism. Adapting to environmental, social, and political pressures in a desperate bid to survive. Like I have. The city is uncertain of itself, always changing rapidly and unevenly, giving it the quality of a patchwork place, a city assembled from neighborhood pieces that exist in different periods, income brackets, levels of development, security, a place of superposition.

Sweat‑ stained and agitated pedestrians scurry along the roads. It’s not quite lunch time but some early eaters are already leaving their offices, moving along the sidewalks, tending toward a tarpaulin‑ and‑ zinc shack mama‑ put in the corner of an open‑ air car park at the junction. Two heavy‑ set women in black blouses and ankara wrap pers steadily scoop up the soft lumps of eba, fufu and amala, loading them with generous helpings of thick egusi, ewedu or gbegiri soups and meats as customers take seats on the plastic chairs nearby under a crude green holographic projection from a circling ad‑drone. Across the road, there is a competing autonomous food cart selling both jollof and fried rice with chicken, plantain, coleslaw and other accompaniments. Despite the heat, the length and diversity of the queue developing in front of the mama‑ put is impressive. Damn. Now I’m hungry. Haven’t eaten in almost twenty hours.

I close my eyes and lift my face up to the sky, for a few seconds, feeling the sun tighten the skin on my face, and then I reenter the cool air of the apartment.

I can’t run away from my own thoughts forever.

“Ori,” I say, “search for pictures of Lolade Adejuwon.”

[Search results ready. Five hundred and three pictures found. I have prioritized them by resolution and visibility of facial features. Would you like them projected from the quovision panel?]

“ Yes.”

Hololines whizz in front of me resolving into a grid of images. The first ten results are images of Lolade with her husband the Brigadier General, at various state functions and ceremonies, taken by professionals. I pick the first one where she is alone. . It’s a profile shot, taken with a holoscanner so that it can be rotated 360 degrees. She has an oval face, full cheeks and a broad smile that doesn’t extend all the way to her eyes. Pearly white teeth. I rotate the holo‑ image a few times. Dimples on both cheeks. Her hair is bound up in a towering and intricate red and gold gele that matches her red lace blouse and gold jewelry. She looks like she is in her late thirties or early for ties, just like me, even though we look nothing alike.

“Ori, search for all addresses in Nigeria registered to Brigadier General Olatunji Adejuwon or Lolade Adejuwon.”

A list of twenty‑ seven addresses bubble into the air next to the pictures of Lolade.

“Run Spyder.”

The projection background darkens as Ori activates the connection to the darknet through a back door in the carrier network. “Enhanced search. Cross‑ reference with compromised police surveillance and shopping order drone deliveries. Last 6 months. Buyer profile: female, wealthy, age‑ range thirty to fifty.” Addresses on the list shuffle up and down as the program extracts information from a passive malware code embedded in the operating systems of billions of network base stations; it computes and assigns probabilistic matches based on the data. When complete, the top ad dress is in Garden View Estate, Ikoyi. A luxurious suburban area.

I examine the holographic eyes of the woman I am going to meet. Those bright eyes that remind me so much of my mother’s are hiding something. Desperate pain? Or a trap?

I’ll find out soon enough.

The post Read An Excerpt From ‘The Fist of Memory’ by Wole Talabi appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Love Operation by Melissa R. Collings, which releases on November 1st 2026.

Dr. Cordelia Wren has always been in control―of her surgical career, her emotions, and especially her memories. But when she joins a cutting-edge memory enhancement study at her hospital, she gains an unexpected ability: the power to vividly relive any moment from her past. It seems like the perfect opportunity to analyze her failed relationships and finally understand why every man she’s ever loved has walked away.

There’s just one problem. Actually, three:

1. She may have…borrowed…access to the highly restricted memory study.
2. She’s secretly dating the hospital’s new COO while competing for chief of surgery―a relationship that could destroy both their careers if discovered.
3. Her first love has just reappeared in her life, stirring up feelings she thought she’d buried.

As Cordelia dives deeper into her past, the lines between memory and reality begin to blur. The truth she uncovers forces her to question everything she thought she knew about love, ambition, and what it means to be “in control.”

With her career hanging in the balance and her heart pulled in two directions, Cordelia must decide: Should she trust the memories that have shaped her life, or finally let go of the past to embrace an uncertain future?

Perfect for fans of Emily Henry and Ali Hazelwood, The Love Operation is a witty, emotional story about the intersection of medicine, memory, and the messy reality of loving imperfectly.

EXCERPT

From Chapter 5 TIME TRAVEL FOR ONE, PLEASE

“I feel like Bruce Banner about to meet his alter ego,” I say, only halfway joking.

A chill races across my skin. I shake it off.

The hospital is a different place at night—emptier, stretched thin, like the walls have loosened their grip on reality. Footsteps echo too long. Shadows stretch too far. The air has a different hum. The after-hours atmosphere verges on creepy.

The lab is dim, lit by work lamps and the glow of the large screen opposite us, where my lesson, the procedure I am to memorize, will soon be displayed.

Delenn dots conductive gel to my scalp, and I inhale at the sudden shock of cool and wet that becomes tacky and mildly unsettling as she presses the electrodes over it. The attached wires brush against my skin like mutant spider legs.

“I hope you’re planning to step away once you apply the electricity, in case I turn into a monster or go berserk.”

A flicker of a smile tugs at Delenn’s lips, but her focus is laser sharp. She’s half with me, half with the machine. I watch the slight crease between her brows, the measured way she checks each electrode, her gaze darting over the setup like she’s triple-checking what she’s already triple-checked, and I think, This is why we’re friends. We ride the same wavelength—driven, ambitious, wired to keep pushing forward. I trust her completely.

Still, a thread of nerves gets tangled beneath my excitement, and doubt wants to scuttle around the forming knots. Electricity will soon be applied to my head, changing things in my brain. What if it changes too much? What if this doesn’t go as planned? Lately nothing has, and this almost feels like tempting fate.

At least I’m not thinking about Isaac. Not about the fact that I haven’t heard from him all day. Not about this morning. That moment.

At least there’s that.

My mind is eased by knowing I’m not the first to have this procedure done. Three other people have gone through it earlier today. The study is officially underway, and even after the first session, it’s promising. Delenn sent me ecstatic messages all day. She couldn’t wait for me to try it.

“So, why do you think the results varied from person to person?” I ask, wanting to hear again that they’re all okay, even though I’ve analyzed all the prestudy data. It’s not like these therapies are novel—it’s only the combination that’s new. I have no reason to be concerned, but I do want to be thorough and cautious, as much as I can be in this scenario.

“It’s not surprising,” she says. “Each person’s brain encodes and stores memory in different ways. There are structural differences—variability in hippocampal volume, synaptic density, neurochemical balances. But more than that, memory retrieval is deeply affected by emotional regulation, prior trauma, and even baseline sleep cycles. And then there’s the added complexity of neuroplasticity—people who’ve trained themselves to remember differently, or repress consistently, have literally rewired how their recall pathways function. The protocol for the study has stimulated heightened recall in everyone we’ve tested so far. Their memory is, as we hoped and hypothesized, better—much better. But the interpretation still happens through the lens of who they are. It’s not just data. It’s identity.”

This explanation takes a hammer to my lingering concerns, and I lean into the anticipation.

“You swallowed all the pills?” Delenn asks, tapping a pen against her clipboard, but it’s not really a question. She watched me do it.

“A half an hour ago,” I say.

She spins away. “Good. I’m going to turn on the diffuser.”

A switch flips, and instantly a thin vapor unfurls from the top of the machine, curling into the air like the first breath of an active volcano.

My heart rate increases. It’s like I’ve just taken a breath of fresh air, but it’s clear, beautiful air, away-from-technology, mountainous air. My mind feels clear and focused—no noise, just sharp clarity.

“I think the med cocktail’s kicking in,” I say, scanning the room as if I’ve just walked into it.

Her eyes go wide and bright. “Yeah? What are you feeling?”

I stretch my hands in front of me, fingers flexing like I could actually hold the sensation in my palms. “More.”

She nods, as if she already understands.

“It’s like . . . paths have opened in my mind that were closed before, that I never even knew existed. I feel like I can breathe better. Like my whole body is processing information faster. Everything’s sharper.”

Her smile grows wider. “Good. Good.”

Something in her eagerness makes me shift. I don’t like feeling like an experiment, but I remind myself—again—to trust this. I trust Delenn. And I want what this can give me—an edge.

“Let’s start the electrical stimulation then. You ready?”

As much as the wires will allow, I shift in the chair and give her a confident “Yes. Absolutely.”

Then, before she even applies the current, something in me opens. My thoughts go clear.

“This drug combination is incredible.”

“It is, isn’t it?” she says, her eyes gleaming as she moves to the machine that controls the current. “It’s only two milliamps,” she explains, gesturing to the control panel. “You should feel a mild tingle, maybe a little warmth. I’ll turn the screen on first.”

She’s in coordinator mode because I already know this. Honestly, I feel confident I could run this experiment without her. “Great. Let’s do it.” I’m ready now. No turning back. It’s time to fully surrender—to receive everything this can offer.

Delenn squares her shoulders like she’s stepping onto a stage. With a click of her remote, the screen lights up, displaying the surgical technique for Chiari malformation type 1, a brain abnormality where the lower part of the brain extends into the spinal canal, where it shouldn’t be.

It’s not a procedure I’d normally perform—it belongs to neurosurgery, not orthopedic spine—but that’s why it’s perfect for testing memory retention outside my typical wheelhouse.

Delenn exhales. “Here we go.” She turns the dial.

A slow warmth blooms across my scalp—like static building before a shock.

“Whoa,” I breathe, because it’s the only word that makes it past the sensation.

Delenn leans in, her pen poised, eyes locked on mine. “What are you feeling? Tell me everything.”

But for a moment, I can’t speak. Everything is too much.

My body tenses, muscles buzzing with unfamiliar energy. The room is suddenly too bright, even though I know the light hasn’t changed. A faint, high-pitched hum rings in my ears.

And then—blueberry pie.

The scent floods my senses, rich and warm, like a memory spilled from another room in my brain. I blink. “Did you put blueberries in the diffuser?”

Delenn frowns. “No. Why?”

I open my mouth to explain, but then—it’s gone. The overstimulation recedes like a wave pulling back from shore, leaving behind perfect stillness. Unshaken clarity.

I exhale, my pulse steadying. I want to bottle this state of mind, keep it forever. But instead, I try to describe it. “I feel . . . open,” I say. “Like everything I take in right now will become part of me. Like I’ve been operating at half capacity, and now my brain is hungry and wants more.”

She looks pleased. “Great. And physically?”

I scan my body. Different. “My senses are heightened. It’s like I can feel the hairs coming out of my skin.”

She skims my forearm with the tip of her pen, and I inhale sharply.

“Okay.” She grins, and I can practically feel the excitement radiating from her skin. “Let’s review the procedure. Read it aloud.”

I zero in on the screen. The words are crisp, immediate.

Most frequent approach: suboccipital craniotomy, usually combined with dural patch grafting and cervical laminectomy of C1 through C2 or C3.

Patient position: prone on chest rolls, head in Mayfield.

Flex neck to open interspace between occiput and posterior arch of C1.

Shoulders retracted inferiorly with tape.

Midline incision . . .

As I speak, it’s like the words aren’t just being read, they’re stamped onto my brain, locked in place. Not just reviewed, but etched.

When I finish, Delenn clicks her pen. “Do you feel like you need to read it again?”

I shake my head. “No. Turn it off.” My lips curl into a grin. “Test me.”

“Cord, that was too fast. There’s no way—”

“Test me.” I feel giddy, restless, completely unmoored by the implications of this. I just absorbed a complex surgical procedure in a fraction of the time it would have taken me without these wires attached to my head and this medication in my bloodstream.

Delenn hesitates, then shuts off the screen. She grabs the physical copy of the procedure, flipping it open. “Okay. Walk me through how you’d operate on someone with Chiari malformation.”

I open my mouth and begin thinking of the first words I saw on screen, but then—

My body locks up.

I . . . I can’t believe it. I can barely process it. My heartbeats tumble over one another as I feel suddenly weightless, unattached from the present. It’s as if I’ve slipped through a crack in reality.

The scene in front of me shifts, and it’s like I’m watching a movie of the past several minutes from the inside.

Delenn paces. Not now, but before, as she did moments ago. She rubs her temple. Drops her pen. Bends to pick it up.

I see myself reading the screen. Except I’m not just remembering what happened or even watching a memory—I’m in it.

THE LOVE OPERATION by Melissa R. Collings, Text copyright © 2026 by Melissa R. Collings, Published by Mindy’s Book Studio

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Hi, Cassie! Welcome back! What have you been up to since we spoke earlier this year for your debut novel, Meet Me Under the Lights?

ALL of the things! I drafted Book 3 this summer and just turned in edits for that one. I started Year 20 in the classroom back in August as well, so with Mistletoe Lane just hitting shelves, it’s been a kind-of full-throttle Fall!

Your latest novel, Meet Me on Mistletoe Lane, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

Hallmark, romcom, cozy, Christmas, love triangle

What can readers expect?

Small town Christmas vibes, a loud, chaotic Italian family that’s in everyone’s business, TONS of nods to Christmas movies, and a love triangle where both boys are total green-flags.

Where did the inspiration for Meet Me on Mistletoe Lane come from?

I’ve always loved My Big Fat Greek Wedding because of the multiple-generation storyline, so I thought it would be fun to take that dynamic but make it Italian to pay homage to my and my husband’s heritage! The Farmers Market focus came from places around my hometown. I love writing about small-town life and small business owners, and I wanted to show the highs and lows of trying to hold on to that kind of lifestyle in a world that’s constantly growing and changing. The idea of home being more than just a place but also a community and a form of family is very important to me.

Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

I LOVED writing the eccentric cousins and aunts and uncles into this story—truly I laughed out loud mulitiple times with some of their scenes. There were so many moments where I stopped writing and literally said to myself, “What ridiculous, outlandish thing would Aunt Sofia say here?” I feel like we all have that one family member who is the one you want to sit next to at large family gatherings because you never quite know what they will say or do, so writing those kinds of people was an absolute blast.

Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?

Honestly, this story came together very quickly for me. I was fortunate enough to write it during the month of December last year. I mean, what better time to write a Christmas romcom then when I’m watching those movies and listening to that kind of music while snow is falling outside? It was magical.

Can you share some insight into the timeline for your two releases this year?

It was a total surprise, actually. We sent my editor two pieces as the “option” part of my contract last November, and she and her team at Viking Children’s came back and said they loved them both, but would I be interested in setting my Farmers Market romance in Christmastime? Once I agreed to that, we had a QUICK turnaround because we wanted Mistletoe Lane to be out in October of the same year as my debut.

So while I was gearing up for my debut Meet Me Under the Lights and it’s launch, I was working on edits for Meet Me on Mistletoe Lane, and while I was getting ready to launch Mistletoe Lane, I was working on edits for Book Three! Honestly, I’m surprised my brain handled all of that while teaching full time and being a mom as well.

With the holiday season drawing near, what are some books, movies, or shows you turn to for the festive spirit?

I’m a big fan of what I call “the classics,” so any of the Charlie Brown specials will always kick off any holiday season for me. I also love the movie musicals: White Christmas and Holiday Inn being my absolute favorites. A Muppet Christmas Carol is a must in my house as well, and yes, I sing all of those songs. I used to re-read Little Women every year for Christmas, but it’s been a few years since I did that – maybe this will be the year I bring back the tradition!

What’s next for you?

Book Three, a fall romance! Can’t wait to share more about that one. I also have an idea for a fourth book for the “Meet Me” universe that I’ll need to draw up and get some sample pages for sometime in the early New Year.

Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?

I cannot wait to dig into more of BK Borison’s work, specifically the Lovelight Farms series, and I’m really excited for Ally Carter’s It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder. I haven’t read nearly as much as I would’ve liked so far this year (not enough headspace sadly), but I devoured Sarah Adams “Rome Kentucky” series this year, and Our Strange Duet by Erin Craig was such a great read for this big Phantom of the Opera “phan”!

Will you be picking up Meet Me on Mistletoe Lane? Tell us in the comments below!

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The Only Good Indians tells the tale of four Blackfeet friends who make the mistake of killing a young, pregnant elk. For a decade, the spirit of this elk bides its time, waiting to find a way back into the world to seek revenge on them. The result: A novel where each section tells the twisted tale of these men meeting their fate, a story that grows more horrific with the turning of each page.

Off the Reservation picks up in the same world five years later, and while supernatural elements are once again wreaking havoc on humans, it isn’t exactly a sequel.

Nate Yellow Tail—a secondary character, one of just two survivors of the massacre at the heart of The Only Good Indians—takes center stage in this new story. After Nate and his friend Sebby Spear Woman are in a car accident that nearly kills them both, Nate’s entire world feels off-kilter. However, his hospital nurse, Seine Plenty Wolf, convinces Nate that he has the power to restore balance. All he has to do is join her “holy mission.”

It may sound naive, but it’s the only chance he’s got. So, with some hesitation, Nate piles into an ‘80s-model Sundancer RV with Seine—and two other very interesting traveling companions—for a road trip to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. The goal of Seine’s so-called holy mission? Find the remains of a boy who was kidnapped and murdered there over a century ago to bring him back home where he belongs. Perhaps by bringing one Blackfoot boy back home, Nate can bring another—his best friend Sebby—back from the brink of death too.

This is a horror novel, though. And one written by Stephen Graham Jones, no less. That means things absolutely will not go smoothly. You can’t mess around with the past without expecting it to snap right back. So when this crew tries to resurrect the remains of the Blackfoot boy, they dredge up much more than they expected.

Off the Reservation is an absolute rollercoaster ride! If you’ve read anything by Jones before, you know he has a really unique brand of horror. Things can get a bit weird. And then get even weirder. He’s a master at using small details to create the most unsettling feeling in the reader … and then just lets it stew. Yet he balances this out with a signature dry, pithy humor. You don’t necessarily expect to laugh out loud while reading a horror novel, but it’s guaranteed with this one.

Jones’s editor warns that “every detail matters” in this story and he’s not wrong. It is one of those novels where hints are dropped all along the way, going unnoticed until the pieces suddenly snap into place. There’s an entire section titled “Hindsight” and readers will feel that deeply when this journey comes to an end. All I’m saying is, get ready for a few jaw-dropping plot twists. Literally. My mouth hung wide open for a good minute at one point.

As always, Jones goes past the flashy horror elements to build rich characters and then sets them down within the framework of this country’s long history of colonisation, which is horrific in its own right. Mile after mile passes on this wild ride of a road trip and it becomes increasingly clear that each passenger in the RV is hiding something. Jones takes time with each of them, allowing the reader into their innermost thoughts and experiences, making them more than just a cast of characters—each one is a core component of his story.

So, if you’re looking for a new spooky season read with no shortage of action and gore, but also plenty of depth, you don’t want to miss Off the Reservation.

Off the Reservation is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.

Will you be picking up Off the Reservation? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis

A ragtag group of activists sets out to repatriate the bones of a Blackfeet boy taken to the infamous Carlisle Indian Industrial School in author Stephen Graham Jones’s return to the Blackfeet reservation of his award-winning New York Times bestsellers The Only Good Indians and The Buffalo Hunter Hunter.

Five years have passed since the massacre on the Blackfeet reservation in Stephen Graham Jones’s breakout bestseller The Only Good Indians. Nathan Yellow Tail, one of the survivors of the revenge murders, finds himself in the hospital after a terrible accident that should’ve killed him and that nearly killed his best friend, Sebby, who is hanging on to life in a room a few doors down.

Nate’s life is out of balance, so when he is given the chance to reset his life, and maybe save Sebby in the process, Nate steps up, again. This time it’s into a camper van that is almost as run down as his broken body, filled with three older Blackfeet, to find the bones of the lone Blackfeet boy who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School—where many Indigenous children were abused—and repatriate this boy home. The problem is, when they get the bones, something terrible has escaped with them.

By turns terrifying and deeply moving, Off the Reservation is a haunting American Indian novel of survival, reckoning, and redemption, shining light on the dark corners of this country’s history while also showing the desperate choices people make when they’re put up against a wall.

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