A Promise Of Ruin

DAPHNE DU MAURIER AWARD NOMINEE "A riveting period puzzler, filled with history, mystery, and romance." —Susan Elia MacNeal, New York Times bestselling author of the Maggie Hope series Book 2 in the enthralling Dr. Genevieve Summerford mystery series. As Dr. Genevieve Summerford watches from the docks, the body of a young Italian woman is pulled from the East River, dampening the city's Independence Day festivities. Although the police suspect random violence, when Genevieve is asked to help find another young Italian woman who's gone missing, she wonders if something more sinister might be afoot. Desperate to find the missing woman before she too meets a grisly end, Genevieve must rely on all of her skills as a psychiatrist—both to understand the mind of a cunning predator, and to help the victims he's left behind. But none of her training can prepare her for what happens when she herself is captured, bringing the case much closer to home than she'd ever anticipated.

A ForeWord Reviews' Book of the Year Award and the Next Generation Indie Book Award for Best Mystery "Do no harm" is easier said than done... Dr. Genevieve Summerford prides herself on her ability as a psychiatrist to understand the inner workings of the human mind. But when one of her patients is arrested for murder-a murder Genevieve fears she may have unwittingly provoked-she begins to doubt her training and intuition. Unable to believe that her patient could have committed the gruesome crime, Genevieve seeks out answers, desperate to clear the woman's name-and her own. Over the course of her investigation, Genevieve uncovers a dark secret-one that could, should Genevieve choose to reveal it, bring down catastrophe on those she cares most about. But, should she let it lie, it will almost certainly send her patient to the electric chair. Steeped in the gritty atmosphere of turn-of-the-century New York City, A Deadly Affection is a riveting debut mystery and the first in an exciting new series featuring Dr. Genevieve Summerford.

To prove herself to the other Keepers, Ru must close three portals to Hell…. Ruin Roberts is just coming to grips with the idea that she is actually a Keeper, a half-angel charged with keeping Grim Reapers from claiming unmarked souls, when she is tasked with closing the remaining portals to Hell. She’s made a promise to her friend Cutter that she’ll complete her mission, no matter the cost. Luckily, she has a team of experienced Keepers to help her. If she can find her missing mother, who may hold the map to the portals, in time, Ru may be able to complete her task before Thanatos hunts her down. Will Ru find her mom and the portals before Thanatos finds her, or will Ru lose everything to the half-demons stalking the citizens of Reaper’s Hollow?

Set in Virginia during the Civil War and a century beyond, this novel by the award-winning author of The Yellow Birds explores the brutal legacy of violence and exploitation in American society. Spanning over one hundred years, from the antebellum era to the 1980's, A Shout in the Ruins examines the fates of the inhabitants of Beauvais Plantation outside of Richmond, Virginia. When war arrives, the master of Beauvais, Anthony Levallios, foresees that dominion in a new America will be measured not in acres of tobacco under cultivation by his slaves, but in industry and capital. A grievously wounded Confederate veteran loses his grip on a world he no longer understands, and his daughter finds herself married to Levallois, an arrangement that feels little better than imprisonment. And two people enslaved at Beauvais plantation, Nurse and Rawls, overcome impossible odds to be together, only to find that the promise of coming freedom may not be something they will live to see. Seamlessly interwoven is the story of George Seldom, a man orphaned by the storm of the Civil War, looking back from the 1950s on the void where his childhood ought to have been. Watching the government destroy his neighborhood to build a stretch of interstate highway through Richmond, he travels south in an attempt to recover his true origins. With the help of a young woman named Lottie, he goes in search of the place he once called home, all the while reckoning with the more than 90 years he lived as witness to so much that changed during the 20th century, and so much that didn't. As we then watch Lottie grapple with life's disappointments and joys in the 1980's, now in her own middle-age, the questions remain: How do we live in a world built on the suffering of others? And can love exist in a place where for 400 years violence has been the strongest form of intimacy? Written with the same emotional intensity, harrowing realism, and poetic precision that made The Yellow Birds one of the most celebrated novels of the past decade, A Shout in the Ruins cements Powers' place in the forefront of American letters and demands that we reckon with the moral weight of our troubling history.

The second in the captivating Hades and Persephone series from fan-favorite bestselling author Scarlett St. Clair. "Are you saying you wouldn't fight for me?" Hades sighed and brushed his finger along her cheek. "Darling, I would burn this world for you." Persephone's relationship with Hades has gone public and the resulting media storm disrupts her normal life and threatens to expose her as the Goddess of Spring. To add to her troubles, everyone seems eager to warn Persephone away from the God of the Dead by exposing his hellish past. Things only get worse when a horrible tragedy leaves Persephone's heart in ruin and Hades refusing to help. Desperate, she takes matters into her own hands, striking bargains that lead to severe consequences. Faced with a side of Hades she never knew, and crushing loss, Persephone wonders if she can truly become Hades's queen.

Liz Daniels should be happy about setting off on a rare family vacation. Instead, she feels uneasy about taking her kids away from home to see their grandparents. Her husband, Paul, hasn’t spoken to his parents—or about them—in years, and it’s a long drive to the remote farmhouse. After a day on the road, Liz decides it’s time to check in to a hotel for the night. After all, everything always looks better in the morning. But when the sun comes up, she finds her worst fears realized and her entire existence upended: Paul is suddenly a stranger to her, and Liz must now fight to save her family. Her panic mounts as she races to unravel a web of lies, following a thread that leads deep into the woods and journeying from a safe, ordinary life to a disturbing, hidden world born from dreams and haunted by nightmares. Praise for Jenny Milchman and Ruin Falls “[Jenny] Milchman has a gift that allows her to delve deep into the mind and psyche of her characters, and fans of dark plots like the works of Gillian Flynn will find another author to savor.”—RT Book Reviews “Essential for psychological thriller fanatics . . . Extreme, heart-pounding action follows this determined mother as she risks everything to save her children.”—Library Journal “[Jenny Milchman] carves out a new niche with this unusual mix of ecothriller and family suspense drama.”—Booklist (starred review) “Milchman weaves a complex and intriguing tale, adeptly pacing the narrative as danger escalates. . . . Most impressive, though, is Liz’s transformation from a meek wife . . . to a strong, capable woman determined to rescue her children at any cost to herself.”—Publishers Weekly “Absorbing from start to finish: Jenny Milchman writes a deeply felt and suspenseful story of a woman whose life is upended by a death and a dark secret.”—Nancy Pickard, bestselling author of The Scent of Rain and Lightning “Milchman can evoke the shadows and fears of a rural community like no one else.”—DuJour

After a decade as a high-profile magazine editor, 35 year old Elayna now works from home, having traded her glamorous life for raising her daughter Hazel and caring for her lawyer husband, Paul. Two years ago Elayna and Paul lost a child and only now is Elayna's passion for life and sex returning. But with Paul spending long hours at the office, Elayna discovers longings for a young neighbour that could destroy everything she cherishes - even as a threat to Hazel emerges. Hanauer is editor of bestselling essay collection The Bitch In The House, published by Penguin UK.

The Architecture of Ruins: Designs on the Past, Present and Future identifies an alternative and significant history of architecture from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first century, in which a building is designed, occupied and imagined as a ruin. This design practice conceives a monument and a ruin as creative, interdependent and simultaneous themes within a single building dialectic, addressing temporal and environmental questions in poetic, psychological and practical terms, and stimulating questions of personal and national identity, nature and culture, weather and climate, permanence and impermanence and life and death. Conceiving a building as a dialogue between a monument and a ruin intensifies the already blurred relations between the unfinished and the ruined and envisages the past, the present and the future in a single architecture. Structured around a collection of biographies, this book conceives a monument and a ruin as metaphors for a life and means to negotiate between a self and a society. Emphasising the interconnections between designers and the particular ways in which later architects learned from earlier ones, the chapters investigate an evolving, interdisciplinary design practice to show the relevance of historical understanding to design. Like a history, a design is a reinterpretation of the past that is meaningful to the present. Equally, a design is equivalent to a fiction, convincing users to suspend disbelief. We expect a history or a novel to be written in words, but they can also be delineated in drawing, cast in concrete or seeded in soil. The architect is a ‘physical novelist’ as well as a ‘physical historian’. Like building sites, ruins are full of potential. In revealing not only what is lost, but also what is incomplete, a ruin suggests the future as well as the past. As a stimulus to the imagination, a ruin’s incomplete and broken forms expand architecture’s allegorical and metaphorical capacity, indicating that a building can remain unfinished, literally and in the imagination, focusing attention on the creativity of users as well as architects. Emphasising the symbiotic relations between nature and culture, a building designed, occupied and imagined as a ruin acknowledges the coproduction of multiple authors, whether human, non-human or atmospheric, and is an appropriate model for architecture in an era of increasing climate change.