A Fevered Land

When Darcy Bambrough's filly becomes the latest in a line of horses to develop a grave illness, her mother, Laurel, exhausts every prospect to nurse the filly back to health. Tormented by the impending death, Laurel desperately agrees to let a close friend bring a spiritualist to the farm to identify any unseen cause for the recurring illnesses. Antebellum slavery, Native American mythos, animism, spirituality, horse fable, family interplay, the role of women as nurturers and a coming-of-age experience all play out when the healer unveils a formidable threat that is on an order of magnitude far beyond what the Bambrough family has perceived. Convincing and evocative, 'A Fevered Land' vividly depicts how complex but imperceptible factors shape and determine our everyday life.

Lon Prather and his cousin Emory Campbell, determined to escape the drought and financial ruin of cotton farming, follow promises of money and adventure to the Texas-oil-field towns of Wink, Kilgore and Odessa. Irene Sandell captures the historical truth of boomtown life, at the same time weaving a complex and twisting plot of love and hatred, hope and regret, poverty and power. A western for the twenty-first century.

James Marshall's illuminating study of dispossession on the frontier begins with the autobiography of a pioneer who met repeated failure. Writing in his old age, Omar Morse (1824-1901) looked back on the successive loss of three homesteads in mid-nineteenth century Wisconsin and Minnesota. The frontier as Morse encountered it was a place of runaway land speculation, of high railroad freight rates, of mortgage foreclosures, and of political and economic chaos. Stoic and resilient in adversity, Morse nevertheless expressed the anger of those for whom the Jeffersonian ideal of an independent yeomanry proved to be a cruel illusion. Marshall moves from Morse's narrative to the historical record of the thousands of similarly dispossessed pioneers and to the legacy of their failure. Politically, their anger was expressed in a grassroots movement that led to formation of the Populist party in the 1880s and 1890s. Culturally, dispossession became a theme in their literature, exemplified in Mark Twain's and Charles Dudley Warner's The Gilded Age and in novels by such Realists as Edward Eggleston, Joseph Kirkland, and Hamlin Garland. Land Fever thus presents the underside of disappointment that has long been the great ignored reality of the splendid success myth of the American frontier.

Lon Prather and his cousin Emory Campbell, determined to escape the drought and financial ruin of cotton farming, follow promises of money and adventure to the Texas oil field towns of Wink, Kilgore and Odessa. Irene Sandell captures the historical truth of boom-town life while weaving a complex and twisting plot of love and, hatred, hope and regret, poverty and power.

Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl meets Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty in this contemporary YA about what it means to be a fan—and what it means to be a friend—when your whole world is in flux. In middle school, everyone was a Fever Dream fan. Now, a few weeks after her high school graduation, Grace Thomas sometimes feels like the only one who never moved on. She can’t imagine what she’d do without the community of online fans that share her obsession. Or what her IRL friends would say if they ever found out about it. Then, one summer night, the unthinkable happens: Grace meets her idol, Jes. What starts out as an elusive glimpse of Fever Dream’s world turns into an unlikely romance, and leads her to confront dark, complex truths about herself and the realities of stardom. From the author of A Song to Take the World Apart, Grace and the Fever is a heart-clutching reminder of what it’s like to fall in love—whether it’s with a boy or a boy band—and how difficult it is to figure out who you are after you’ve fallen out of love again. "Grace and The Fever crackles with sharp cultural commentary and deep emotional resonance." —Bitch Magazine "Grace and the Fever is a clear-eyed portrait of 'the girls of the internet' . . . a YA novel that does the fangirl justice."—The Verge "A wise, bittersweet coming-of-age story for the thinking fangirl." —Anna Breslaw, author of Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here "Super addictive." —Goldy Moldavsky, New York Times bestselling author of Kill the Boy Band "A smart, warm, feminist ode to anyone who has ever been eighteen, made a mess of their own life, spent their late night hours on Tumblr, or loved a band so much it hurt." —Katie Coyle, author of Vivian Apple at the End of the World

'A hugely entertaining Victorian mystery' New York Times 'I enjoyed this - properly creepy and Gothic' Ian Rankin A spellbinding concoction of crime, history and horror - perfect for fans of Sherlock Holmes and Jonathan Creek. New Year's Day, 1889. In Edinburgh's lunatic asylum, a patient escapes as a nurse lays dying. Leading the manhunt are legendary local Detective 'Nine-Nails' McGray and Londoner-in-exile Inspector Ian Frey. Before the murder, the suspect was heard in whispered conversation with a fellow patient - a girl who had been mute for years. What made her suddenly break her silence? And why won't she talk again? Could the rumours about black magic be more than superstition? McGray and Frey track a devious psychopath far beyond their jurisdiction, through the worst blizzard in living memory, into the shadow of Pendle Hill - home of the Lancashire witches - where unimaginable danger awaits... * * * Praise for The Strings of Murder: 'This is wonderful. A brilliant, moving, clever, lyrical book - I loved it. Oscar de Muriel is going to be a name to watch.' Manda Scott 'One of the best debuts so far this year - a brilliant mix of horror, history, and humour. Genuinely riveting with plenty of twists, this will keep you turning the pages. It's clever, occasionally frightening and superbly written - The Strings Of Murder is everything you need in a mystery thriller.' Crime Review