VERVE BOOKS – serie

It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend.Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah.But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. But only one can offer her real happiness.Sunburn is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp.

A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, Cassie is trapped in a corporate nightmare. Between the long hours, toxic bosses and unethical projects, she struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of houseless people bathing in the bay. Startup burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains and men literally set themselves on fire in the streets.Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, the black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever closer as the world around her unravels.When her CEO's demands cross an illegal line and her personal life spirals towards a bleak precipice, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are worth the pain, or succumb to the black hole.

January 1965. The orphaned O'Leary siblings - Tom, Jack, Anna and Peggy - arrive in the village of Ballycrea, tight-lipped about their troubled past and desperate for a fresh start.After being met with suspicion from most of the locals, the family are thrilled when they're taken under the wing of their well-respected neighbours, Bill and Betty Nevan, who offer them work, companionship and an opportunity to fit in.But for one of the O'Learys, this new friendship sparks an intense attachment that makes the dynamic dangerous for all. It's difficult to bury secrets, but almost impossible to bury feelings...Crackling with suspense and intensity from start to finish, Heap Earth Upon It revisits the rural Ireland of Howarth's critically acclaimed debut, delving into claustrophobic relationships and tangled identities, and leaving you wondering who to trust until the very last page.

A candid portrayal of first love and self-discovery, from the author of the 'instant queer classic', Isaac.Cornwall, 2018. In the quiet fishing village of Portscatho, sixteen-year-old Daniel and seventeen-year-old Jago form an unexpected connection - something neither of them can name. What unfolds is transformative, particularly for Daniel, who for the first time feels truly seen.East London, 2023. Daniel has rewritten himself: sharper, louder, queer in a way the city understands. But a visit from Jago stirs up a reckoning with his former life, forcing them both to question how much change their bond can withstand.Reminiscent of Édouard Louis and Douglas Stuart's writing, Orange examines how we reconcile our past selves with the people we become, those we bring with us and those we leave behind.

In late-twenty-first-century Australia, Tao-Yi and her partner Navin spend most of their time inside an immersive, consumerist virtual reality called Gaia. They log on, go to work, socialise and even eat in this digital utopia. Meanwhile, their aging bodies lie suspended in pods inside cramped apartments.Across the city, in the abandoned real world, Tao-Yi's mother remains stubbornly offline, dwindling away between hospital visits and memories of her earlier life in Malaysia.When a new technology is developed to permanently upload a human brain to Gaia, Tao-Yi must decide what is most important: a digital future or an authentic past.

No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Ollie is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable, a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof and the empirical world. None of that explains what's happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy's carefully constructed life.As Amy comes of age and seeks to find her place - first in academia, then New York publishing, and through a series of troubled relationships - every step brings collisions with Ollie, who slips in and out of the Shred family without warning. Yet for all that threatens their sibling bond, Amy and Ollie cannot escape or deny the inextricable sister knot that binds them.Spanning two decades, Shred Sisters is an intimate and bittersweet story exploring the fierce complexities of sisterhood, mental health, loss and love.

January 1965. The orphaned O'Leary siblings - Tom, Jack, Anna and Peggy - arrive in the village of Ballycrea, tight-lipped about their troubled past and desperate for a fresh start.After being met with suspicion from most of the locals, the family are thrilled when they're taken under the wing of their well-respected neighbours, Bill and Betty Nevan, who offer them work, companionship and an opportunity to fit in.But for one of the O'Learys, this new friendship sparks an intense attachment that makes the dynamic dangerous for all. It's difficult to bury secrets, but almost impossible to bury feelings...

January 1965. The orphaned O'Leary siblings - Tom, Jack, Anna and Peggy - arrive in the village of Ballycrea, tight-lipped about their troubled past and desperate for a fresh start.After being met with suspicion from most of the locals, the family are thrilled when they're taken under the wing of their well-respected neighbours, Bill and Betty Nevan, who offer them work, companionship and an opportunity to fit in.But for one of the O'Learys, this new friendship sparks an intense attachment that makes the dynamic dangerous for all. It's difficult to bury secrets, but almost impossible to bury feelings...Like Howarth's acclaimed debut, Heap Earth Upon It explores rural Irish life at a specific moment in time and delves into claustrophobic relationships and tangled identities, leaving you wondering who to trust until the very last page.

A spellbinding tale of sisterhood, betrayal and reclamation revolving around three 18th-century wax models of women, known as Anatomical Venuses or 'slashed beauties'. Legend has it, these beauties are bewitched, coming to life to murder men who have wronged them.Finally, these men will get what they deserve. We will make sure of it. Together.Seoul, present day: Antiques dealer Alys is offered a vast sum of money to transport one of three highly coveted Anatomical Venuses to London, with one key condition - she must destroy it when she reaches the city.London, 1769: After a chance meeting at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, young and inexperienced Eleanor is promised a life of luxury by the beautiful and charismatic Elizabeth and her protégé, Emily. All she must do is allow Elizabeth complete control of her destiny.In a darkly compelling and magical plot, prepare to discover the dangerous secret shared by these four women - a secret that spans centuries, and which will unearth horrors not of this world.

DNA doesn't lie. But what if the truth is dangerous?DNA expert Dr Sian Love has settled into running her own investigative agency and living with her partner, Kris. She's also started seeing a therapist to work through her traumatic past - a big step for Sian.Her life threatens to descend into chaos again when a teenage girl shows up at her office claiming to be Courtney Johnson - a child who went missing from a Brighton beach over fifteen years ago - but refusing to let Sian test her DNA.Wary but intrigued, Sian reluctantly revives the undercover skills she learned during her days as a police officer and begins investigating. But revisiting the past has consequences...

New York City, 1962. Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She's working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA.Next thing she knows she's in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. As Vera becomes more and more enmeshed with the young radicals, the fragile local government begins to split at the seams. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns war makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows, and she's forced to take extreme measures to save herself.An exhilarating page turner and perceptive coming-of-age story, Who is Vera Kelly? introduces an original, wry and whip-smart female spy for the twenty-first century.

** SELECTED AS ONE OF COSMOPOLITAN'S HOTTEST NEW BEACH READS FOR SUMMER 2022 **It's a fine line between admiration and envy.Diana Martin has lived her life in the shadow of her sadistic older brother. She quietly watches the family next door, enthralled by celebrity fashion designer Marianne Taylor and her feted daughter, Aurelle.She wishes she were a 'Taylor girl'.By the summer of 1995, the two girls are at university together, bonded by a mutual desire to escape their wealthy families and personal tragedies and forge new identities.They are closer than lovers, intoxicated by their own bond, falling into the hedonistic seduction of the woods and the water at a remote university that is more summer camp than campus.But when burgeoning artist Diana has a chance at fame, cracks start to appear in their friendship. To what lengths is Diana willing to go to secure her own stardom?

Julia Lerner is one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley and an icon to professional women across the country. She is the COO of Tangerine, one of America's biggest technology companies. She is also a Russian spy. Julia has been carefully groomed to reach the upper echelons of the company and use Tangerine's software to covertly funnel information back to Russia's largest intelligence agency.Alice Lu works as a low-level analyst within Tangerine, having never quite managed to climb the corporate ladder. One afternoon, when performing a server check, Alice discovers some unusual activity and is burdened with two powerful but distressing suspicions: Tangerine's privacy settings aren't as rigorous as the company claims they are and the person abusing this loophole might be Julia Lerner herself. Now, she must decide what to do with this information - before Julia finds out she has it.

Ava Simon designs storage boxes for STÄDA, a slick Brooklyn-based furniture company. She's hard-working, obsessive and heartbroken from a tragedy that killed her girlfriend and upended her life. It's been years since she's let anyone in.But when Ava's new boss - the young and magnetic Mat Putnam - offers Ava a ride home one afternoon, an unlikely relationship blossoms. Ava remembers how rewarding it canbe to open up - and, despite her hesitancy, she starts to fall for him. But what if Mat isn't who he claims to be?The Very Nice Box is a darkly comic and suspenseful novel that will keep you on the edge of your seat until its gripping finale. It's at once a satire of toxic masculinity and a big-hearted account of grief, friendship and trust.

Ruby Mills is ruthlessly ambitious, strikingly beautiful - and one of the Forty Thieves' most talented members.Harriet Littlemore is an aspiring journalist from a 'good' family, engaged to a rising star of the Tory party - but she wants a successful career of her own.After witnessing Ruby fleeing the scene of a robbery, Harriet develops a fascination with the young thief that extends beyond journalistic interest, one which Ruby can use to her advantage.But both the Forties and London society have strict rules - and the fallout from Ruby and Harriet's unlikely acquaintance may be more than either woman is prepared for.The Dazzle of the Light tells a compulsive, cinematic story, fraught with envy and desire, about class, morality and the cost of being an independent woman in 1920.

Mallika is a painfully shy young woman growing up in the heart of a lively, sometimes stifling New Delhi colony. Though she is surrounded by love, her life is complicated by secrets that she, her mother and her aunt work hard to keep.After suffering a trauma aged nineteen, Mallika loses three days of her memory and slowly spirals into a deep depression. She must find a way out of the abyss, back to herself and those she cares about. But she must also hide her mental illness from her community.In a narrative that unfolds elliptically from the perspectives of Mallika and the seven people closest to her, the astonishing story of these characters lives emerges. For Mallika's family, childhood friends and the two men she loves are also hiding truths. As each gives voice to contending with their own struggles, secrets and silences shatter.

Erin McCabe is a New Jersey criminal defense attorney doing her best to live quietly in the wake of a profound personal change - until a newsworthy case puts her whole life at risk...Erin McCabe has been referred the biggest case of her career. Four months ago, the son of a New Jersey state senator was found fatally stabbed in a rundown motel near Atlantic City. Sharise Barnes, a nineteen-year-old transgender sex worker, is in custody, and, based on the evidence against her, there seems little doubt of a guilty verdict.As a transgender woman herself, Erin knows that defending Sharise will blow her own private life wide open and doubtless deepen her estrangement from her family. Yet she feels uniquely qualified to help Sharise and duty-bound to protect her from the possibility of a death sentence.While Erin works with her law partner, former-FBI-agent Duane Swisher, to show Sharise acted in self-defense, the senator begins using the full force of his influence to publicly discredit them and their efforts to mount a defense for Sharise. And behind the scenes, his tactics are even more dangerous. For his son had secrets that could destroy the senator's own political aspirations - secrets worth killing for...

Doors open at 7. The sacrifice is at 9. The dress code is, as usual, black tie.It's the winter solstice in a Philadelphia that has been eroded by extreme weather, economic collapse, and disease-carrying mosquitoes. The Saturnalia carnival is about to begin, an evening on which reality is suspended, and troubles forgotten.For tarot reader Nina, Saturnalia is simply a cruel reminder of the night that changed everything for her - the night she walked away from the elite Saturn Club, with its genteel debauchery, arcane pecking order, and winking interest in alchemy and the occult.But when she gets a chance call from Max, her last remaining friend from the Saturn Club, Nina will put on a dress of blackest black and attend the Club's wild solstice masquerade, the biggest party of the year, on a mysterious errand she can't refuse.Before the night is over, she will become the custodian of a horrifying secret - and prey to a mysterious hunter.

The last time Maeve saw her cousin was the night she escaped the cult they were raised in.For the past two decades, Maeve has worked hard to build a normal life in New York City, where she keeps everything - and everyone - at a safe distance.When her cousin Andrea suddenly reappears, Maeve regains the only true friend she's ever had. Soon she's spending more time at Andrea's remote Catskills estate than in her own cramped apartment. Maeve doesn't even mind that her cousin's wealthy work friends clearly disapprove of her single lifestyle. After all, Andrea has made her fortune in the fertility industry - baby fever comes with the territory.What worries Maeve is that the more she immerses herself in Andrea's world, the more her long-buried memories flood to the surface. But confronting the terrors of her childhood may be the only way for Maeve to transcend the nightmare still to come...

Two sisters. One fire. A secret that won't burn out.The Grayson sisters are trouble. Everyone in their small town knows it. But no-one can know of the secret that binds them together.Hattie is the light. Penny is the darkness. Together, they have balance.But one night the balance is toppled. A match is struck. A fire is started. A cruel husband is killed. The potential for a new life flickers in the fire's embers, but resentment, guilt, and jealousy suffocate like smoke.Their lives have been engulfed in flames - will they ever be able to put them out?

Six decades. Seven people. One unspeakable secret.1957. A catastrophe occurs at the pharmaceutical lab in Coventry where sixteen-year-old Wilf is working for the summer. A catastrophe that needs to be covered up at all costs.2017. Phiney is shocked by the death of her grandfather, Wilf, who has jumped from a railway bridge at a Coventry station. Journalist Mat Torrington is the only witness.Left with a swarm of unanswered questions, Phiney, Mat and Wilf's wife, Dora, begin their own enquiries into Wilf's death. It is soon clear that these two events, sixty years apart, are connected - and that Wilf is not the only casualty.But what is the link? And can they find out before any more lives are lost?

In an isolated town on the North Norfolk coast, Fran's life is unravelling. Her one source of solace is slipping out to the beach early in the morning, to watch the birds.Small-town tensions simmer when a new teacher starts at the local school and a Romany community settle in the field adjoining Fran's caravan park. Then the schoolteacher and Fran's brother-in-law both go missing on the same night and accusations fly. Yet all Fran can seem to care about is the birds.Eerie and unsettling, Bird Spotting in a Small Town is a psychological suspense featuring unreliable narrators and the perfect balance of mystery, tension and family drama.

An unflinching and emotionally insightful debut about cultural identity, homesickness, love and loss.In the five years following his brother's death, Aaron has built himself a life of solitary routines. After moving from Dublin to Boston, and illegally overstaying her visa, Róisín has done the same.When the two meet on a night out, they each find in the other something missing in their lives. A semblance of home.Their relationship is complicated by their disparate religious backgrounds - Aaron is Jewish; Roísín is atheist - and by the harsh realities of everyday life. Just as they're pushed to their breaking point, Roísín realises she is pregnant.Placeholders is a poignant story of loneliness corrected and the transformative power of love.

Erin McCabe's years as a criminal defence attorney have prepared her for almost anything - except for being on the opposite side of the interrogation table.A new client - a successful financial advisor - has been found stabbed to death on the beach near his palatial Jersey Shore home. Unfortunately, the time of death is estimated to be during Erin's one and only consultation with him. As the last person to see him alive, Erin is now the prime suspect.While the investigation unfolds, Erin and Duane are called on to represent a mother charged with abducting her child, a hot-button case that has both private and public implications for Erin.As she battles one prosecutor who wants to see her charged with murder and another determined to send her to jail for refusing to divulge her client's location, Erin also faces a devastating family tragedy. With not only her career on the line, but also her personal relationships and her freedom, the stakes have never been higher.

At a meatpacking facility in Missouri, Dee-Dee and her coworkers kill and butcher 40,000 chickens in a single shift.The work is repetitive and brutal, with each stab and cut a punishment to her hands and joints, but Dee-Dee's more concerned with what is happening inside her body. After a series of devastating miscarriages, Dee-Dee has found herself pregnant, and she is determined to carry this child to term.Dee-Dee fled the Pentecostal church years ago, but judgment follows her in the form of regular calls from her mother, whose raspy voice urges her to quit living in sin and marry her boyfriend, Daddy, an underemployed ex-con with an insect fetish. With a child on the way, at long last Dee-Dee can bask in her mother and boyfriend's newfound attention. She will matter. She will be loved. She will be complete.When her charismatic friend Sloane reappears after a twenty-year absence, feeding her insecurities and awakening suppressed desires, Dee-Dee fears she will go back to living in the shadows. Neither another miscarriage nor Sloane's own pregnancy deters her: she must prepare for the baby's arrival.

Six-year-old Gracie Lynn is perpetually curious and bighearted. Convinced she knows how to save her beloved grandfather John from the 'worm' that is eating his brain - a metaphor her mother once used to explain John's dementia and sundown syndrome - Gracie helps him break out of his nursing home, and the two disappear together on a quest to chase the sun. But what is an adventure for Gracie is a nightmare scenario for her estranged parents, LeeAnn and Dan. There's no way to predict where John might have taken their young daughter, or if he's capable of keeping her safe. An emotionally resonant novel, Sun Seekers artfully explores the truths of parenthood, the ways in which we sometimes hurt those we love most and the universal experience of deep loss - even when the person is still here.

WWII may be over, but journalist Billie Walker's search for a missing young man will plunge her right back into the danger and drama she thought she'd left behind in Europe.It's 1946, and though war correspondent Billie Walker is happy to finally be back home in glamorous Sydney, for her the heady postwar days are tarnished by the loss of her father and the disappearance of her husband, Jack. To make matters worse, newspapers are now sidelining her reporting talents to prioritise jobs for returning soldiers.Determined to take control of her future, she reopens her late father's private investigation agency, and, slowly, the women of Sydney come knocking.At first, Billie's work consists of tailing cheating husbands. But when a young man goes missing, Billie finds herself on a dangerous new trail that will lead her to the highest levels of Sydney society, and down into its underworld.As the risk mounts, Billie realises that there is much more than one man's life at stake. Though the war was won, it is far from over.

What I remember best about that week in January is trying to keep track of all the lies I told...1998. Ontario has been hit by a days-long, life-endangering ice storm, and on Regis University campus, with classes cancelled, the students are partying. In the midst of it all, eighteen-year-old Ros's roommate Megan goes missing. As a panicked search ensues, Ros is blamed for not keeping a closer eye on Megan, and the incident casts a shadow over the next two decades of her life.2020. Ros's former partner, Lukas, the father of her eleven-year-old son, is accused of a sexual assault. The accusation brings new details of an old story to light, forcing Ros to revisit a dark moment from her past. Ros must take a hard look not only at the father of her child, but also at her own mistakes, her own trauma, and at the supposedly liberal period she grew up in.

Still reeling from a life-threatening experience on the coast of Calais, daredevil climber Jen Shaw finds herself in Glasgow for a funeral, devastated with grief and in search of answers.As her dogged determination propels her closer to the criminal underworld than ever before, Jen and her family become the target of some dangerous and powerful people with links to the heart of Glasgow's Police Force.In the absence of anyone she can truly trust, Jen has no option but to rely on her own instincts and everything she's learnt from her close bond with police officer Nick Crawford for survival. Even if it means going undercover herself and disappearing into the city's dark underbelly.