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In 2013’s THE CROSSING (EBR Review), Maryam discovered she’d been lied to her entire life. That the Apostles weren’t who they said they were and that the native women taken to the ship were being treated like slaves. Determined to escape the injustices, Maryam makes a plan, and with the help of her newfound friend Joseph they do–with two unexpected companions in tow.

Now, in INTO THE WILDERNESS (Amazon), Maryam and Joseph cross the sea in search of a new home, but nothing goes according to plan.
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McKayla’s aunt Avril has always been a little odd. She travels the world as a psychic for the FBI, to the chagrin of McKayla’s mother, who doesn’t like it when she talks magic with her daughters. Now, Avril is visiting Sun Valley in small-town Idaho where McKayla and her family live in order to investigate a serial killer who – it appears – possesses her victims. McKayla goes with her aunt during a case to interview the widow of a murder victim. There she discovers that maybe Aunt Avril’s psychic abilities are magic and run in the family because McKayla can feel the window’s emotions–she’s empathic.

But that’s not even the strangest thing, because despite outward tears the widow’s inside emotions are not what McKayla expects a widow to be experiencing: she’s not sad, she’s angry.
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Jacob’s grandfather was kind of an odd guy. When Jacob was a kid, his grandfather would tell him all sorts of stories about the kids in the Welsh children’s home he lived in after escaping pre-war Europe. Then he would show Jacob all sorts of strange photographs (see cover picture of levitating girl) of the other peculiar children he lived with. As Jacob grew older he began to realize that these stories couldn’t have been memories, but were tall tales to entertain an imaginative grandson.

Or were they?

After witnessing his grandfather’s death, Jacob’s parents are convinced that it was so traumatic that he hallucinated the monster-like creature Jacob saw. Jacob is able follow the clues of his grandfather’s last words, and convinces his father to take him to the island where Miss Peregrine’s home for children resides. Instead of answers, Jacob instead finds an abandoned relic from 60 years before. While there he meets someone from his grandfather’s past, and Jacob begins to realize that maybe his grandfather wasn’t completely bonkers after all.
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My first introduction to Adam Nevill as a writer was by a guy across the pond named James on his blog Speculative Horizons. His was a book-review blog (now retired) that I really enjoyed reading because we seemed to have similar tastes in books. Somewhere along the way, Orbit UK came along in 2010 and snatched James up as an editorial assistant. He reviewed Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill on his blog shortly before signing off, and although I never picked the book up at the time, James’s positive opinion of Mr. Nevill stuck with me. So much so, that when I recently happened across another of his books, I immediately picked it up and started to read.

THE HOUSE OF SMALL SHADOWS (Amazon) is a strong, slow-building, atmospheric novel that, honestly, took me a while to get into. I’d just come off the soaringly-high buzz of a Mark Hodder book, and the sudden gear shift from fifth to sub-first nearly caused a car wreck, to say the least. However, once I got into the groove of things, my world took a hard left turn into creepy town.
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Kyra wants to kill the princess.

There was even an attempt, but she missed with her poison dart, and now she’s on the run from the king’s soldiers. She wants to finish the job, but the princess has gone into hiding and Kyra needs the rest of the poison potion she made at her old apartment where her former business partners still live.

Did I mention the princess used to be Kyra’s best friend?
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When people die their memories and experiences are archived in a special library that few people know about. But sometimes those memories wake up, the restless and violent kind especially, and someone has to return them.

That’s where Mackenzie Bishop comes in.

Four years ago, when Mackenzie was twelve, her grandfather introduced her to the Archive, where the people’s Histories are stored, to learn about the job of a Keeper and take his place. She’s spent the years since his death doing just that, finding Histories assigned to her by the Librarians at the Archive and returning them to their rest.
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After the exciting events from FORTUNE’S PAWN (EBR Review), Devi has found herself without a partner and several of her recent memories. It drives her crazy that she can’t remember what happened when Cotter died, or why her fingers sometimes turn black, or why little blue critters appear on the ship that others can’t see. But she’s determined to not let any of that stop her from doing a good job. She doesn’t want to give Caldswell a single excuse to dump her at the next available space station.
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Devi Morris is a mercenary and she knows how good she is at her job. Her ambitions mean one day becoming one of the king’s own Devastators, but she must prove herself. She signs up for a year-long stint aboard the Glorious Fool, a trader ship captained by the infamous Caldswell, who attracts bad luck wherever he goes. If Devi can survive the year, then her chances of becoming a Devastator are pretty good. There’s also a pretty good chance she won’t survive.

It doesn’t take long for Devi to notice a few oddities. How little Caldswell sells his shipments for. That a clan of alien xith’cal called a blood feud on him. The strange behavior of his daughter Ren. Also odd are his varied crew, from the xith’cal doctor, the bird-like aeon navigator, and a ship’s cook who is unusually strong.

Working aboard the Glorious Fool turns out to be more than she anticipated, and Devi finds herself in more than one fight with terrible odds. But it turns out it’s not the enemy who will test her resolve…
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In this latest installment of Cat Adams’ The Blood Singer series, we begin TO DANCE WITH THE DEVIL (Amazon) with Celia in therapy. Her mother hates her, Celia’s grandmother doesn’t understand their animosity, all the while dealing with her own problem of being part-vampire and hunted by demons. But it’s not the therapy that lands her in the hospital. No, it’s the guys in suits who run her off the road, trash her car, and leave her on a sun-soaked beach to burn alive.

Not really the relaxing weekend she was hoping for.
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Lucian de Remeni-Masson is convinced it was his indiscretion that lead to the death of his entire family. As a pure-blood sorcerer he is forbidden to even talk to ordinaries–those who have no magic–much less allow one to see him unmasked or perform magic, yet he did.

Years have passed since his college dalliance, but he still fears he hasn’t completely escaped the consequences and finds himself at the mercy of the Pureblood Registry. Despite good behavior and hard work using his talent for magically created portraits, he is contracted to work for a mere coroner drawing the corpses of ordinaries whose identities are unknown. Lucian fears his fortunes have sunk so low that he may never find favor in the eyes of the Registry again.

But it is while drawing the dead that Lucian begins to uncover abilities he thought he’d lost, and as a result the past begins to unfold a narrative that is much more complicated than he anticipated.
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