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Psychological Thriller

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You walk into the kitchen. You grab a glass. You open the refrigerator. The next thing you know, you are sitting in your car with no memory of anything that happened between the kitchen and your vehicle. You’ve lost time.

What do you do? Do you call for help? Do you admit there might be a problem? Do you mention the stress?

For Maris Heilman, the choice is especially complicated. While she’s a successful sociology professor, she’s also a recovering alcoholic who was prone to blackouts. But it turns out she’s not alone: there’s a group of women all experiencing the same unexpected blackouts. Are they suffering from a strange illness? Or is someone more nefarious behind these memory losses?

What would you do if you couldn’t trust your thoughts? Your memory? Your instincts?

In Blackout , Erin Flanagan creates a terrifying thriller that leaves you questioning everyone in your life—and how much control you really have.

—Jessica Tribble Wells, Editor

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Shipwrecks are fascinating things—tragedies and secrets long-held and hidden below the surface of the water, they rest. As the wooden frames rot and wear away, changed beneath the unrelenting ocean, they provide a foundation for new life, new growth, new ecosystems. And as the tides and the wind have the ability to keep things hidden, they also possess the power to push them to the surface, years later, exposing what has been there all along but no one could see.

Mary Ellen Taylor’s The Brighter the Light depicts the tragedies, secrets, and triumphs across three generations of women in a coastal town in North Carolina. The captivating dual timelines—from present day to one summer in the 1950s—capture in vivid Technicolor the sweltering, sun-soaked summers at the shore. The enchanting songs, red lipsticks, crisp linen dresses, hot sandy beaches, and the sacrifices mothers will make for their daughters. A hurricane churning up the coast whips up sand, water, and secrets, and like the shipwreck just offshore, old events are revealed and cast in bright new light.

Grab a beach towel, a park bench, or a cozy armchair—wherever you’ll be most comfortable—and prepare to be transported and transfixed by Mary Ellen Taylor’s sweeping tale of love, sacrifice, and seaside reverie.

—Alison Dasho, Editor

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It’s been years since a killer calling himself the Reaper went on a spree that terrorized Tooele County, Utah...and then went quiet. Everyone has finally moved on—everyone except the Reaper. On the anniversary of the first murders, new victims are found dead, accompanied by a letter that begins, “This is Reaper speaking.”

As the killings intensify, and the letters keep coming, local sheriff Billie Gray finds herself out of her depth and in desperate need of help. Solomon Shepard was the most cunning and dedicated homicide prosecutor the Tooele County Attorney’s Office ever had. But when a defendant attacked him in court, sending him to the hospital for weeks, Shepard stopped practicing law. Knowing how brilliant Shepard is at serial murderer psychopathology, Gray begs him to come back to the game and help her solve this case.

Together, Shepard and Gray make an unstoppable team in this nail-biting series starter. Winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, Victor Methos masterfully blends courtroom drama and the crimes of a serial killer into this fast-paced thriller. The Secret Witness is Methos’s best work yet.

—Megha Parekh, Editor

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If you’re a fan of Terry McMillan, Kimberla Lawson Roby, or Eric Jerome Dickey, then I’m thrilled to introduce you to your new favorite author, A. C. Arthur. Happy Is on Hiatus is Soul Food meets Big Little Lies , and every word of this book is a delicious mix of family drama, the power of sisterhood, and incredible characters that will stay with you long after the last page.

A. C. writes the women we all need in our lives, and Rita McCall is no exception. When I asked A. C. what she loved most about creating Rita, she told me, “Rita is such a resilient and faith-filled woman. I loved her dedication to her family and how it was intertwined with her steadfastness to reclaim her happiness after her world had been shattered.”

I think Rita would be the first to tell you that life will inevitably give you some lemons, but sometimes a little lemon juice is just what you need to make the most amazing meal. Life is sweet, bitter, savory, salty, and spicy all at the same time, and Rita’s story shows just how wonderful that combination can be.

—Lauren Plude, Editor

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Everyone needs that friend who has read everything and is able to provide the perfect book recommendation. For many, that person is now Zibby Owens. She is known for her popular podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books , in which she interviews authors about their new works. She’s a mom of four, with a passion for reading, and has found a way to build her life around it, which has had a profound impact on her trajectory.

I was a longtime fan of her podcast, but it wasn’t until I read her memoir, Bookends , that I realized so much of what fuels her love for literature is that reading saved her life at her lowest moments. In Zibby’s friendly and approachable style, she writes about how books gave her comfort and direction when she lost her best friend on 9/11, when she struggled with relationships and the stress of parenting, and when she met the love of her life at a unique emotional crossroads. I formed a whole new appreciation for her. Even for those not familiar with Zibby’s infectious enthusiasm for reading, if you are looking for inspiration and a sense of hope while chatting with a friend, Bookends is the perfect pick.

—Carmen Johnson, Editor

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I have a weakness for dramas set in suburbia, where families jockey for social status and picture-perfect landscaping is the norm. It’s a ripe setting for seemingly respectable characters to create scandal and divulge juicy secrets. Chris Cander’s A Gracious Neighbor is that kind of book, and it reminded me that the devil is truly in the details and that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the hedge.

Set in a small city-within-a-city in Houston in 2019, A Gracious Neighbor follows Martha, a late-thirty-something wife and mother who becomes obsessed with her fancy new neighbor—a woman she first met years ago. Martha is convinced her neighbor is hiding something. Her curiosity gets the best of her, and she goes to cringeworthy lengths—eventually crossing the line into illicit activity—in order to find out more about the happenings next door. I couldn’t take my eyes off the page as Martha pulled me deeper into a community that ultimately reveals itself to be not at all what it first appears.

—Carmen Johnson, Editor

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Tufayel Ahmed had me laughing, crying, and utterly gripped from the first page of his debut, This Way Out . Amar has everything he’s ever wanted—he’s found The One, has great friends, and loves his job at an independent bookstore. The only problem is that Amar has a secret, and when he accidentally-on-purpose announces it in the family WhatsApp group, everything changes...

Coming out to his family in a group chat isn’t exactly the way Amar had planned to deliver the news, but after twenty-eight years of hiding it, the truth is finally out. While he’s used to the acceptance of his and (now-fiancé) Joshua’s London friends, when it comes to his Bangladeshi Muslim family, he knows not everyone is going to be happy. The fallout brings many casualties, leading Amar to question everything he once took for granted—his religion, his culture, his relationship, and his family—as he embarks on a riotous and emotional journey of self-discovery and begins to understand what love (in all its forms) truly means.

Can finally revealing who he truly is help Amar find the right path and lead him to his very own happy ending? This book may not start out as a love story, but let me assure you, it 100% ends that way and will have you, too, laughing, crying, and swooning until the very last page!

—Victoria Oundjian, Editor

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Sometimes you go through life thinking of yourself in a certain way and then a single moment makes you question everything. The color Pink finds herself in just such a situation when she sees her friends planning a rainbow party and begins to wonder if a non-rainbow hue like herself really is a color.

Spoiler alert: it turns out she is. But it takes a special friend to remind her of the wonderful things she brightens and the happiness she creates. I hope you enjoy her story, set in the rosy corner of the world first introduced in Goodreads Choice Award finalist This Book Is Gray .

—Kelsey Skea, Editor

Amazon Original Stories | Doctor Ice Pick by Claire Prentice | Read for free with Prime.

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English United States

Psychological Thriller

Book Club Fiction

Crime Thriller

Women's Fiction

Memoir

Domestic Drama

Contemporary Fiction

Children's