COUNTERPOINT – serie

On Kentucky’s Blood River, a Sheriff’s Deputy investigates the death of her ex-fiance, whose brutal occultist murder strongly resembles a similar murder decades ago, for readers of Tana French, Gillian Flynn, Megan Abbott, and fans of True DetectiveDeputy Sheriff Alicia Moore is thrust into the center of a chilling murder investigation when she discovers a victim identifiable only by his hauntingly familiar tattoo—her name inked onto the knuckles of her ex-fiancé, Jake.Years earlier, Alicia’s father, the then-Sheriff, had arrested a teenage occultist for a nearly identical murder, believed to be driven by the suspect’s worship of demonic entities. Now, with Jake’s murder mirroring that past crime, doubts arise about whether the true culprit was ever caught. The mystery deepens with the arrival of Lucas Masterson, a Criminology PhD student studying the confluence between religious trauma and occult crime, who is eager to lend his expertise to the investigation. As Lucas delves into the case, his profound knowledge of the town’s grim history and his outsider perspective strain the local social fabric, while Alicia grapples with her suspicion towards his unsettling familiarity with the crimes. Caught between her strained relationship with her father, the community’s watchful eyes on a female deputy, and her own harrowing ties to the case, Alicia must navigate a maze of potential occultists, convicts, corrupt officials, and clergy to prevent a gruesome history from repeating itself once again.For what lies at the heart of Blood River—is it an ancient malicious force seeking to harm the townfolk, or is there a deeper prejudice in a town that continues to punish women in a way that it does not punish the men?

A Washington Post “Most Anticipated” Book of the Year • A New York Times “Must Read”For readers of My Dark Places and The Fact of a Body, a beautiful, brutal memoir documenting one woman’s search for identity alongside her family's decades-long quest to identify the two men who abducted—and murdered—her mother"Melding true crime with memoir, Ervin reminds us of what happens when we conflate people with the transgressions committed against them—the collateral damage we inflict when we turn human beings into moral allegory . . . A powerful treatise on love and loss, on mothers and daughters, but it is also a warning to all of us who consume true crime." —The New York Times Book ReviewKristine S. Ervin was just eight years old when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from an Oklahoma mall parking lot and violently murdered in an oil field. First, there was grief. Then the desire to know: what happened to her, what she felt in her last terrible moments, and all she was before these acts of violence defined her life.In her mother’s absence, Ervin tries to reconstruct a woman she can never fully grasp—from her own memory, from letters she uncovers, and from the stories of other family members. As more information about her mother's death comes to light, Ervin’s drive to know her mother only intensifies, winding into her own fraught adolescence. She reckons with contradictions of what a woman is allowed to be—a self beyond the roles of wife, mother, daughter, victim—what a “true” victim is supposed to look like, and, finally, how complicated and elusive justice can be.Told fearlessly and poetically, Rabbit Heart weaves together themes of power, gender, and justice into a manifesto of grief and reclamation: our stories do not need to be simple to be true, and there is power in the telling.

The stunning true story of a double homicide in the vibrant native Alaskan Iñupiat community at the arctic edge of the United States—written by the public defender at its centerRebecca Wright is a defense attorney living in the Lower 48 when she suddenly finds herself a widow and an empty nester. In need of a radical change, she accepts a public defender position in Utqiagvik on Alaska’s North Slope, an oil-rich area the size of Wyoming where the Iñupiat community holds great cultural, political, and economic power. Though she’ll always be a tanik—an outsider—she works hard to gain the trust and friendship of the folks who call this singular place home.When two well-known sisters, Bernice and Wanda Ipalook, are found murdered, Wright is tasked with representing Amos Lane, a drifter on the short-list of murder suspects. Criminal charges are looming. But this is summer in northern Alaska, the season of the midnight sun, when twenty-four-hour sunlight makes it difficult for witnesses to confirm the time—or even the day—they last saw the sisters, Amos, or anyone else. Wright must navigate an unreliable client, a prosecution willing to entrap her to get a conviction, a budding romance, and a community that believes Amos might deserve a different form of justice from what the tanik legal system can provide.Weaving a detailed portrait of Utqiagvik alongside Wright’s complex self-portrait of an outsider in an isolated community, Sisters of the Midnight Sun is a riveting true account that brings to vivid life a land at the edge of the habitable world.

A Gentleman in Moscow meets My Brilliant Friend in this novel of two estranged friends who reunite to confront each other and the devastating betrayal that tore them apartDowntown Los Angeles, 1990. Alone in her luxury hotel suite, the reclusive Lacey Crane receives a message: Edith is waiting for her in the lobby. Former best friends, Lacey and Edith haven’t spoken to one another in over four decades.As young adults meeting at summer camp in Maine, and later making their way in the glitzy spotlight of postwar Hollywood, Edith and Lacey share a deep-rooted bond that once saved them from isolation and despair, providing comfort from the public and private traumas that they had each endured and which a newly optimistic world was eager to forget. Told through a continuous, twisting conversation that unfolds over the course of a single evening, in which each woman tells her story and reveals long-hidden secrets, the narratives of Edith and Lacey burn with atmosphere, mystery, resentment, and regret.Set against the vivid landscapes of Los Angeles and unfolding with the evanescence of a dream or a memory, Goldenseal peels away the layers of an intimate female friendship to reveal a stirring and haunting story about the search for connection and the lingering echoes of lost love.

A darkly humorous thriller about the ghosts that haunt the temples of excess we call casinos, and the people caught in their high-stakes, low-odds webFor decades, a dark force has terrorized the Languille Lake reservation. Spoken of only in whispers as “the sandman,” he lurks in the Hidden Atlantis Lake Resort and Casino, the reservation’s main attraction and source of revenue, leeching its patrons’ dreams and preventing the ghosts that linger there from moving on. Fleeing a breakup, Marion Lafournier, a midtwenties Ojibwe, seeks solace in the slot machine’s siren song. Here he falls afoul of the sandman, an encounter he barely escapes through the timely intervention of his cousins Alana and Cherie, who both work at the casino and are intimately aware of the sandman’s power. Meanwhile, Glenn Nielan, recently out of the closet and an aspiring documentarian, hopes to capture the faces of the Ojibwe land while experiencing the casino’s thrills. But he will learn that all who choose to play the sandman’s games are in danger of falling into his grasp.Marion and Alana are members of the Bullhead clan, a family with ties to a sacred past and a fierce determination to ensure their future. Alana, with her sevenfire sight, is the only person to fully understand the danger the sandman poses. Aware of Marion’s occasional ability to navigate the spirit world, she enlists his aid in defeating this wraith. But the power and reach of the sandman go far beyond Alana’s worst fears. Soon she and Marion find themselves in a battle for their lives and for the souls of the reservation’s residents, both the living and the dead.

"Master craftsman" (Los Angeles Times) and beloved author Rick Bass explores ecological, social, and personal landscapes through this collection that brings together his best-loved essays and brand-new piecesFor acclaimed writer and environmental activist Rick Bass, it can be wearying to dwell relentlessly upon the broken, the fragmented, the dead and dying and doomed to extinction. Activism is a necessary part of the environmental movement, but so is the time-honored celebration of the beauty that inspires us.Spanning his storied career, these new and selected essays attempt to take a brief step to the side, away from lamentation and prescription, to inhabit, as deeply as possible, the greater depths of the beauty in each moment. With Every Great Breath ranges from the extremely local—a long-form essay about the community affected by the largest Superfund site in U.S. history, in Libby, Montana—to the far-flung: the Galápagos, Namibia, and Alaska. Throughout, Bass offers a portrait of our planet that is always alert to its wonders, even in the face of environmental crisis.

Sylvia Brownrigg's “wise, intimate, and deliciously entertaining memoir" (Carol Edgarian) reconstructs a poignant story of fathers lost and foundWhen Sylvia Brownrigg received a package addressed to her father that had been lost for over fifty years, she wanted to deliver it to him before it was too late. She did not expect that her father, Nick, would choose not to open it. A few years later, she and her brother finally did.Nick, an absent father, was a would-be writer and back-to-the-lander who lived off the grid in Northern California. Nick’s own father, Gawen—also absent—had been a wellborn Englishman who wrote a Bloomsbury-like novel about lesbian lovers, before moving to Kenya and ultimately dying a mysterious death at age twenty-seven. Brownrigg was told Gawen had likely died by suicide.Reconstructing Gawen’s short, colorful life from revelations in the package takes her through glamorous 1930s London and staid Pasadena, toward the last gasp of the British Empire in Kenya, and from there, deep into the California redwoods, where Nick later carved out a rugged path in the wilderness, keeping his English past at bay. Vividly weaving together the lives of her father and grandfather, through memory and imagination, Brownrigg explores issues of sexuality and silences, and childhoods fractured by divorce. In her uncovering of this lost family, she writes movingly of daughterhood and of parenthood, gradually making her own story whole.

A New York Times Notable Book of the YearA New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice"Unspools with gorgeous precision. The heart of Hollow Spaces lies in the way children repeat their parents’ mistakes—and the not-so-casual racism in privileged spaces." —The New York Times Book Review The only Asian American partner at a prestigious law firm sees his professional and personal life demolished when he is put on trial for murder. Three decades later, his children reunite to uncover the truth and try to salvage what remains of their family.Thirty years ago, John Lo was acquitted of the murder of an employee he was having an affair with. The repercussions of that long-ago event still haunt his adult children. Brennan, a lawyer following in her father’s footsteps in more ways than one, has always maintained that the trial got it right. Hunter, a disgruntled war correspondent whose similarities to his father run more than skin-deep, believes their father got away with murder. Their opposing convictions have pushed them apart. Now, spurred by their mother’s failing health, the estranged siblings decide to reconcile their differences by reinvestigating the murder to come to a definitive conclusion.Told in a dual timeline that moves between John’s perspective thirty years prior and Brennan and Hunter’s present-day investigation, Hollow Spaces is a moving portrait of a flawed man’s shocking fall from grace and a gripping exploration of race in corporate America, filial loyalty, ambition, and the fallout of a sensational trial for those caught in its wake.

“James Queally takes the skills he has acquired as an award-winning journalist and puts them to devastating use as an author.” —S.A. Cosby, bestselling author of King of AshesRussell Avery needs a story to tell. The reporter turned private investigator is almost out of clients after taking on the Newark Police Department and exposing a scandal that left him on the wrong side of the thin blue line. Desperate for work, Russell is as elated as he is skeptical when a detective shows up on his doorstep, asking him to look into one of Brick City's most haunting mysteries: the Twilight Four killings.The detective tells Russell a story almost too good to be true, but maybe good enough to save his otherwise doomed journalism career. Supposedly, the wrong man was convicted in the brutal arson-murders that claimed four teenagers' lives, and if Russell finds the real culprit, he'll have the inside track on the kind of story that most reporters stake their careers on.As Russell starts untangling the complications of a decades-old murder, he runs into opposition from City Hall and finds himself pulled into a contentious mayoral race that could impact Newark for generations to come, all while trying to stay one step ahead of the real Twilight Four killer, who wouldn't mind reducing Russell to ash.

"AN AMAZING FIRST NOVEL." —MICHAEL CONNELLYAll favors come with a cost, and after using what pull he has left in the Newark Police Department to get his private investigator’s license, former crime reporter Russell Avery finds himself paying the price. He spends his days keeping corrupt cops out of the crosshairs of Internal Affairs until a social justice activist shows him a troubling video: a YouTube snippet chronicling the same kind of use-of-force that had set New York City, Ferguson, and Cleveland on fire. The same violence he’s been covering up for Newark PD. When the young black man who filmed the video is found dead, Russell begins asking questions that land him on the wrong side of the thin blue line. As the details of the shooting become public and Newark flirts with the idea of letting history repeat itself, Russell must ally with street activists and gang members to put together the biggest story of his life . . . before the city he loves burns down around him.

From the critically acclaimed author of Line of Sight and All These Ashes comes the exciting final installment of the Russell Avery series, a trilogy of “turnpike noir” that brings the neighborhoods of New Jersey to life (CrimeReads)After the death of his two oldest sources, Russell Avery trades in his life as a former journalist turned private investigator for peace and quiet at home. Aside from the occasional online reporting under the safety of an alias, Russell is enjoying being a normal guy with a normal girlfriend and suburban bliss just within reach. Until his onetime mentor disappears. Russell soon learns that other journalists in the area have gone missing, too, all under mysterious circumstances. Unable to resist the pull of a good story, he quickly finds himself at odds with a violent band of conspiracy theorists and ex-cops convinced that reporters are the “enemy of the people.” Russell sacrificed two careers to the belief in the power of truth. But now, face-to-face with an America where facts are more fluid than Newark’s Passaic River, he must decide if the truth is still worth fighting for.

This illuminating book weaves personal stories of a multilingual upbringing with the latest scientific breakthroughs in interspecies communication to show how the skill of deep listening enhances our curiosity and empathy toward the world around usThird Ear braids together personal narrative with scholarly inquiry to examine the power of listening to build interpersonal empathy and social transformation. A daughter of Holocaust survivors, Rosner shares stories from growing up in a home where six languages were spoken to interrogate how psychotherapy, neurolinguistics, and creativity can illuminate the complex ways we are impacted by the sounds and silences of others.Drawing on expertise from journalists, podcasters, performers, translators, acoustic biologists, spiritual leaders, composers, and educators, this hybrid text moves fluidly along a spectrum from molecular to global to reveal how third-ear listening can be a collective means for increased understanding and connection to the natural world.

The powerful story of how an immigrant from the Philippines overcame childhood trauma and an emotionally abusive marriage to find her voice and thriveAs a child in a small barrio in the Philippines, Deja Vu Prem faced neglect and physical abuse. At age seventeen, desperate to escape her situation and claim a better life for herself beyond the mountains of her town, she became a mail-order bride and moved to San Francisco. But the challenges of her childhood didn’t go away—they merely evolved into the form of her emotionally abusive husband.Cut off from her family and any kind of emotional or financial support, Prem was a prisoner in her own home, unable even to use the phone or check the mail. But she wasn’t helpless. Relying on her deep faith and the fire within that had always pushed her to achieve, Prem made the brave decision to escape her situation to provide a better life for herself and her two young children.Recounting Prem’s harrowing yet hopeful journey, Beyond the Mountains is a stirring and moving portrait of one immigrant’s refusal to be defined as a victim and a testament on finding the strength to forgive in order to reclaim the power that lives within us all.

An electrifying new novel for readers of Joe Hill and Stephen King Beneath a hopeful new suburb carved from the echoes of war, an old hunger stirs, awakened by an itinerant stranger whose gifts reveal what the town has tried to bury: The past is not done feedingIt’s 1952, and a dark force gathers in the nearly completed subdivision of Brookshire, Maryland, a place meant to promise safety and security for those ready to establish roots after the chaos and sacrifice of World War II. This maleficent thrum feeds off the trauma and quiet rage dwelling in those veterans who have returned home to claim their piece of the American Dream—the quarter-acre lot, the pretty wife, the docile children.That promise begins to waver when a cryptic bookbinder arrives in town, leaving handmade books in trees and mailboxes that speak to the secrets tucked behind storm doors and chain-link fences. His bond with an equally misunderstood young girl reveals further mysteries tying this stranger’s own history to Brookshire’s fate, as a makeshift tribe readies for battle against the evil growing in their town.A debut novel about secrets, community, and the insatiable amoral emptiness that is the true embodiment of war, American Crow tells a thrilling, page-turning story set against the darkest echoes of humanity.

"Polchin knows the era, and brings to his account a wealth of colorful supporting detail . . . With its layers of taboos and public spectacle, the case feels, a century later, as relevant as ever." —Marisa Meltzer, The New York Times Book ReviewFrom Edgar Award finalist James Polchin comes a thrilling examination of the murder that captivated Jazz Age America, with echoes of the decadence and violence of The Great GatsbyOn the morning of May 16, 1922, a young man’s body was found on a desolate road in Westchester County. The victim was penniless ex-sailor Clarence Peters. Walter Ward, the handsome scion of the family that owned the largest chain of bread factories in the country, confessed to the crime as an act of self-defense against a violent gang of “shadow men,” blackmailers who extorted their victims’ moral weaknesses. From the start, one question defined the investigation: What scandalous secret could lead Ward to murder?For sixteen months, the media fueled a firestorm of speculation. Unscrupulous criminal attorneys, fame-seeking chorus girls, con artists, and misogynistic millionaires harnessed the power of the press to shape public perception. New York governor and future presidential candidate Al Smith and editor of the Daily News Joseph Medill Patterson leveraged the investigation to further professional ambitions. Famous figures like Harry Houdini, Arthur Conan Doyle, and F. Scott Fitzgerald weighed in. As the bereaved working-class Peters family sought to bring the callous Ward to justice, America watched enraptured.Capturing the extraordinary twists and turns of the case, Shadow Men conjures the excess and contradictions of the Jazz Age and reveals the true-crime origins of the media-led voyeurism that reverberates through contemporary life. It’s a story of privilege and power that lays bare the social inequity that continues to influence our system of justice.

A New York Times Notable Book of the YearA New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice The only Asian American partner at a prestigious law firm sees his professional and personal life demolished when he is put on trial for murder. Three decades later, his children reunite to uncover the truth and try to salvage what remains of their family.Thirty years ago, John Lo was acquitted of the murder of an employee he was having an affair with. The repercussions of that long-ago event still haunt his adult children. Brennan, a lawyer following in her father’s footsteps in more ways than one, has always maintained that the trial got it right. Hunter, a disgruntled war correspondent whose similarities to his father run more than skin-deep, believes their father got away with murder. Their opposing convictions have pushed them apart. Now, spurred by their mother’s failing health, the estranged siblings decide to reconcile their differences by reinvestigating the murder to come to a definitive conclusion.Told in a dual timeline that moves between John’s perspective thirty years prior and Brennan and Hunter’s present-day investigation, Hollow Spaces is a moving portrait of a flawed man’s shocking fall from grace and a gripping exploration of race in corporate America, filial loyalty, ambition, and the fallout of a sensational trial for those caught in its wake.