THE BOOKS
THE PROTEGE
Dr. Hannah Bryers, anthropology professor and forensics expert at the prestigious Mad River University, takes pleasure in examining corpses, but small talk and living people fill her with dread. When she’s not teaching, she analyzes the decomposing flesh of murder victims around the globe.
Winter Jones is Hannah’s most promising graduate student. She’s smart, cunning, and dedicated, but she’s got her own agenda for coming to Mad River: to bring Hannah Bryers down. She’ll stop at nothing to make her life implode. In alternating narratives, Winter systematically robs Hannah of the things she values most: her reputation, her job, and—ultimately—her safety.
When dangerous mistakes are made in her lab, Hannah has no idea who would have it out for her and would be willing to risk students’ lives. As the incidents become deadly, many suspects come to light. Hannah won’t go down without a fight. She has to figure out who is sabotaging her career and killing people; her life depends on finding answers.
THE SUMMER WE BURIED
Twenty years ago, Tansy was drawn to Selene’s hard edges, her grit, and her knack for survival. Since then, the confused tangle of guilt about covering up a murder shattered their friendship, and even now, at 38, Tansy has never come to terms with what happened that night.
But now, Selene is back, demanding her old friend repay her. Selene’s daughter, Jupiter, attends the college where Tansy works as a guidance counselor. Selene is convinced that Jupiter’s boyfriend, Colton, is abusive and wants Tansy to intervene. As she is drawn back into the intensity of Selene’s world, Tansy discovers the ugly truth about Colton. But Tansy suspects there’s far more to the story, and now she’ll finally have to confront Selene once and for all.
The Girls Weekend
For fans of Ruth Ware and Lucy Foley, a riveting locked-room mystery about five college friends eager to reunite after years apart--only to be ripped apart again when their host's disappearance unearths dark secrets and old grudges.
Their reunion just became a crime scene . . .
June Moody, a thirty-something English professor, just wants to get away from her recent breakup and reunite with girlfriends over summer break. Her old friend and longtime nemesis, Sadie MacTavish, a mega-successful author, invites June and her college friends to a baby shower at her sprawling estate in the San Juan Islands. June is less than thrilled to spend time with Sadie--and her husband, June's former crush--but agrees to go.
The party gets off to a shaky start when old grudges resurface, but when they wake the next morning, they find something worse: Sadie is missing, the house is in shambles, and bloodstains mar the staircase. None of them has any memory of the night before; they wonder if they were drugged. Everyone's a suspect. Since June had a secret rendezvous with Sadie's husband, she has plenty of reason to suspect herself. Apparently, so do the cops.
A Celtic knot of suspense and surprise, this brooding, atmospheric novel will keep you guessing as each twist reveals a new possibility. It will remind you of friendships hidden in the depths of your own past, and make you wonder how well you really know the people you've loved the longest.
Watch Me
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Kate Youngblood is disappearing. Muddling through her late 30s as a creative writing professor at Blackwood college, she’s dangerously close to never being noticed again. The follow-up novel to her successful debut tanked. Her husband left her for a woman ten years younger. She’s always been bright, beautiful, independent and a little wild, but now her glow is starting to vanish. She’s heading into an age where her eyes are less blue, her charm worn out, and soon no one will ever truly look at her, want to know her, again.
Except one.
Sam Grist is Kate’s most promising student. An unflinching writer with razor-sharp clarity who gravitates towards dark themes and twisted plots, his raw talent is something Kate wants to nurture into literary success. But he’s not there solely to be the best writer. He’s been watching her. Wanting her. Working his way to her for years.
As Sam slowly makes his way into Kate’s life, they enter a deadly web of dangerous lies and forbidden desire. But how far will his fixation go? And how far will she allow it?
The Truth About Jack
Can the write guy
be the right guy?
Dakota McCloud has just been accepted into a prestigious art school. Soon she'll leave behind the artists' colony where she grew up―hippie dad, tofu since birth, yurt―and join her boyfriend and best friend on the East Coast. It was the plan…until Dakota finds out her boyfriend and best friend hooked up behind her back.
Hurt and viciously betrayed, Dakota pours out her heart on a piece of paper, places it in a bottle, and hurls it into the ocean. But it doesn't quite go where she expects…
Jack Sauvage finds the bottle washed up on the shore and responds to Dakota's letter. Except what if his straight-laced life doesn’t jive with the free-spirited girl he’s only seen from afar? As Jack creates a persona he believes she’ll love, they slowly fall for each other with each new letter. Now Jack is trying to find a way to make this delicate, on-paper romance happen in real life…without revealing his deception.
Bombshell
Copywriter Ruby Sugars is in a rut. Her life consists of the following: long hours, boring neutral colors and regular fat-shaming from her stick insect-looking boss. But Ruby isn't really a Bland Betty—she's a complete Bettie Page hottie, with an enviable collection of vintage couture and very naughty vixen lingerie. Now if only she could channel that girl into her real life….
Cue Ruby's best friend, whose recent fixation is "fantasy matchmaking." She's decided that all Ruby needs is one night with a sexy, delectable man—one with a serious thing for curvy pinup girls.
And "Lancer" is hot enough to make any girl's fantasy come true.
For one night, it's pure, X-rated hotness. But come the next morning, this brand-spankin'-new bombshell will get the shock of her life when the man she vowed to see only once shows up again…as her new boss.
Audrey's Guide to Witchcraft
Falling in love, baking a magical cake, fighting an evil necromancer—it’s all in a day’s work for Audrey Oliver, seventeen-year-old witch-in-training. When her mother goes missing and her mysterious "cousin" shows up out of the blue, Audrey knows something’s gone horribly, dangerously wrong. Now it’s up to her to get her own magical powers up to speed before everyone she loves is destroyed by the sorcerer intricately connected to her mother’s secret past.
Audrey's Guide to Witchcraft is more than just a novel; it's a book of spells, a collection of easy recipes, a charming coming-of-age story, an enchanting romance, and an action-packed adventure. As Audrey overcomes her insecurities and learns to protect herself against the wicked black magic of her nemesis, she grows into a heroine we can root for—a witch who knows that true power comes from deep within.
Audrey's Guide to Black Magic
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Sometimes you have to fight black magic with blacker magic. But in trying to save the people she loves, will Audrey fall into the dark abyss that claimed her father?
In Book II of the Audrey's Guide series, Audrey learns about her witchy roots and continues to fight her nemesis; this time she must dig deeper than ever, experimenting with dark magic to combat the insidious enchantment that's invaded her newfound community. She travels to the magical compound on the Mad River, the home her mother fled twenty years ago. Here Audrey meets her grandmother, the powerful matriarch of the Clan, and a host of colorful characters, some friends, some foes. When a sinister force begins to take over the magical community, Audrey must decide how far she's willing to go to protect the people she loves.
Babe in Boyland
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Natalie boldly goes where no girl has gone before in this fresh, funny peek inside the male mind!
Natalie writes the relationship column for her high school newspaper. Then she is accused of knowing nothing about guys and giving girls bad relationship advice, so she decides to disguise herself as a guy and spend a week at Underwood Academy, the private all-boys boarding school in town. In the process, she learns about guys, though in ways she never expected. But when she starts to fall for her dreamy roommate, things get even more complicated. The fun doesn't stop in this light, lively offering for teen girls.
Confessions of a
Triple Shot Bettty
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Geena can't wait to spend summer vacation at the Triple Shot Betty coffee shop with her best friend, Amber, and her cousin, Hero. But Amber and Hero hate each other on sight, and Geena's dreams of a girl-bonding summer fly out the window - then vanish entirely when a few cute (okay, drop-dead gorgeous) guys enter the picture. All is not what it seems, though, and in a story of mistaken identities, summer high jinks, and just enough romance, Geena and her friends learn that when Bettys unite, they can take on the most powerful force in their world: a hot guy.
"Gehrman blends realistic teen characters who use slang, curse, and talk about sex with skillfully descriptive writing, leaving readers with a double shot of a highly caffeinated and hard-to-put-down book."
School Library Journal
Triple Shot Betttys in Love
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Geena is freaking out. She's been going out with Ben for five months, their relationship is comfortable and perfect, and then Bam! he's suddenly putting the pressure on to be way more physical. She's not sure she's ready.
Enter Mr. Rex Sands, Geena's delectably hot and brilliant English substitute teacher (he speaks to her soul!), on whom her best friend Amber develops an immediate crush when he stops by the Triple Shot Betty coffee shack. Amber needs Geena's help talking to him because he is such an intellectual, so Geena finds herself writing love notes and texts to Mr. Sands under Amber's name. And he writes back! Geena is just doing it all for Amber (sort of), so it's not technically cheating on Ben . . . right?
In this romantic and playful update of Cyrano de Bergerac, Jody Gehrman reintroduces readers to Geena, Amber, and the Sonoma gang as they walk the rocky and confusing path toward true love.
Notes from the Backseat
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I thought I knew everything about Gwen Matson. We've been best friends since sophomore year at Analy High. I know her to be smart and confident with a retro style that would give Jackie O. a run for her money. (Albeit a graceful, sweat-free run in kitten heels).
Not once did she ever display a rabid need to record every detail of her existence. But never before had she gone on a weekend road trip with her amazing boyfriend Coop...and his evil, yoga-toned best friend, Devil Blonde Dannika. Now she s writing to me like mad.
Not that I'm complaining. I m in gay Paree (good), meeting my future in-laws (bad), so her tireless scribbling is keeping us both sane.
Usually, a well thought-out What Would Jackie Do? helps Gwen pull it together. But this crisis is beyond help. I know Gwen and Coop are meant to be, but can their love withstand Gwen's psycho jealously and Dannika's twisted sabotage?
And what do you do when you're just watching it all unfold from the backseat, over 3,000 miles away?
Tart
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Meet Claudia Bloom. She's having one of those years. First she steals her ex's VW bus and drives it from Austin to Santa Cruz, where it promptly explodes. Next she lets herself be rescued by Clay, a cute DJ on a motorcycle, falls hard and meets his somehow-never-mentioned estranged wife while searching frantically for her panties. She tries to forget about Clay and focus on her tenuous new career teaching theater at UC Santa Cruz, only to discover Clay's wife is her colleague and his mother is her boss. Could it get any worse? When her neo-Deadhead cousin shows up with a horse-size mutt, Rex, and the two of them take up residence on her couch, Claudia's pretty sure things have hit rock bottom.
Set in the über-hip beach town of Santa Cruz, this novel explores the rocky terrain of family secrets, forbidden fruit and all things Tart.
Summer in the Land of Skin
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Twenty-five-year-old Anna—restless, famished and emotionally numb—is following the long-cold trail of her father, a celebrated luthier, whose death has always haunted her. She's tracked his former business partner to a sailboat on Bellingham Bay, determined to pry from the old man the secrets of their guitarmaking trade, and maybe a few answers about her father.
Anna catches an echo of her musical father in Arlan, guitar player for a local band. Soon she's living on his sofa, hanging out with his girlfriend—having friends for the first time, even. And if Anna's new friends do drugs, read her journal and leave open a few too many bedroom doors, who's to say they aren't real friends? And if Anna has feelings for Arlan, who's to say where her loyalty lies?
During a single summer's worth of days, gin-soaked and colored with longing, Anna rediscovers her senses, shut down since her father's death, and finds that the only way to get free of her past is to embrace it.