The New York Times bestselling series is back, as Katie Bonner—owner of Artisans Alley in the quaint shopping district of Victoria Square—attempts to solve a murder at a nearby B & B. Katie Bonner feels like nothing can spoil her perfect day off, sailing Lake Ontario with her good friend and lawyer Seth Landers. Then she runs into her ex-boss Josh on the dock. It was never smooth sailing with Josh, and Katie is only too happy to get away from him as he makes a scene. Unfortunately, the next day her unpleasant former employer is found drowned in a bathtub at a bed-and-breakfast in Victoria Square. Who would pull the plug on Josh? When an autopsy reveals lake water—not bath water—in his lungs, Katie quickly finds herself in over her head. She’ll need to race to find the killer before her business and her freedom both go down the drain…
Sarah Dearly is adjusting to life as a fledgling vampire, satisfying her cravings at vampire-friendly blood banks. But when her fiancé Thierry takes a job with the Ring—the secret council in charge of keeping vampires in line—Sarah’s about to get more than a taste of danger… Being engaged to a centuries-old master vampire can be challenging—especially when he takes a job with the Ring. Thierry’s in for fifty years of nonstop travel and deadly risk. It’s enough to make any woman reconsider the wedding…any woman except Sarah, that is. Traveling to Las Vegas for his first assignment, they encounter a child beauty pageant contestant from hell, as well as a vampire serial killer leaving victims drained of blood, potentially exposing the existence of vampires to the whole world. But when Thierry’s truly ancient history comes back to haunt him, and he’s accused of a crime he didn’t commit, it’s up to Sarah to clear his name before their immortal lives come to an end.
If Katie Bonner's late husband hadn't invested all their savings in the crafts fair Artisans Alley, the Webster mansion could have been hers to remodel into a bed-and-breakfast. Instead that dream belongs to another young couple. But that dream becomes a nightmare when a skeleton is discovered sealed in the walls of the mansion. The bones belong to Helen Winston, who went missing twenty-two years ago. Heather's aunt, a jewelry vendor at Artisans Alley, asks Kate for help finding her niece's murderer. The case may be cold, but the killer is very much alive-and ready to go to any lengths to keep past secrets buried...
Sixteen-year-old Sarah wakes up dead at the Mall of America only to find she was murdered, and she must work with a group of dead teenagers to finish up the unresolved business of their former lives while preventing her murderer from killing again.
DIVExamines the role of television in public space at different points in the history of the medium and how that differs from the normal assumptions of domestic viewing space./div
Librarian Minnie Hamilton and her rescue cat, Eddie, are ready to pin down a bank robber in the newest installment of the delightful Bookmobile Cat mystery series. Late March is prime reading weather in the small northern Michigan town of Chilson. Though snowfall and cloudy skies deter outdoor activities, life inside the bookmobile is warm and cheerful. But as Minnie and Eddie are making the rounds to deliver comforting reads, they see something strange: loyal bookmobile patron Ryan Anderson making a sudden u-turn and speeding away. When Minnie discovers the police want to question Ryan about a bank robbery and the death of a security guard, she realizes she’s one of the only people who thinks Ryan isn’t morally bankrupt. When an additional murder victim is discovered, the police immediately suspect her patron, but Minnie isn’t convinced. And when she encounters Ryan hiding from the police, she decides to help him by investigating the crimes. Minnie and Eddie will have to fight tooth and claw to prove his innocence.
A Christmas crime shocks the merchants of a quaint shopping district in this latest installment of The New York Times bestselling Victoria Square series. It's Christmastime, but not everyone is jolly--especially not Vonne Barnett. Her dead body has been found in Victoria Square. Katie Bonner, the manager of Artisan's Alley, happens to be at the tea shop Vonne's mother, Francine, owns when the news is delivered. Vonne left a trail of men behind her so the suspects are many--but the clues are few. A broken teacup leads Katie to one of the suspects, but before she can investigate, she's attacked. Katie may be closing in on a murderer, but time is ticking because the murderer is definitely closing in on her.
Katie Bonner loses her lunch—literally—when her social media account serves up a shocking announcement. Her boyfriend Andy’s assistant manager, Erikka, is pregnant, and apparently with his child. And when Erikka turns up dead, the Sheriff turns up the heat on Katie and Andy, certain that one of them is to blame. But Erikka wasn't pregnant after all. Was Erikka's misconception the only way she could conceive of stealing Andy from Katie? When Katie finds planted evidence, it’s her friend and former detective, Ray, who insists on concealing it. Is it his growing affection for her that causes him to act against his training and code of ethics, or could he be responsible for Erikka’s death? Katie is afraid to find out.
A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2021 An NPR Best Book of 2021 An Electric Literature Best Poetry Book of 2021 A Dennis Cooper Best Book of 2021 Hoarders is a tender and unusual exploration of place, loneliness, grief, and desire in late capitalist America. What is the true nature of the relationship between people and objects? Kate Durbin’s Hoarders is a quest into this question, vividly capturing the sticky attachments between people and their stuff. To create the book, Durbin took detailed notes while watching the reality TV show of the same name, one she had resisted watching for years because of her family’s history of hoarding. She then began whittling, re-arranging, researching, and writing, and what emerges is her unique form–fifteen jewel-like portraits of people and their beloved objects, in curious conversation with one another. Noah and Allie live in a Chicago house toppling with books. Chuck from Bisbee, Arizona hoards thousands of paintings of naked women. Gary from Franklin, Indiana has transformed his home into a forest, where he falls asleep each night surrounded by plants, both living and dead. Cathy in Centralia, Illinois spends her nights ordering Lularoe leggings and jewelry from Home Shopping channels. Shelley’s house in Warren, Michigan is crowded with Barbies and Beanie Babies. Durbin doesn't directly critique the reality show, yet she deftly demonstrates through these magnetic poems that there's far more to a person, a life, and their “things.”
Poetry. "Gina Myers' aptly-named HOLD IT DOWN chronicles the endless effort to keep a lid on hope, that feathered thing that must be denied so the rent can be paid. Everything else Pandora's box let loose has hung around boredom, sickness, loneliness but if hope gets out, it gets away. Moving among Brooklyn, Saginaw, and Atlanta, with a soundtrack looping Otis Redding and Johnny Cash, these poems forgo hipster irony for genuine dismay with consumerism, war, and others of the world's ills. Myers' lines break like hearts. Let her speak plainly to you: 'This is my life, / this is my life." Evie Shockley "Like a flaneur walking an abandoned shopping mall past boarded up storefronts, Gina Myers surveys the streets of late capitalism recording wreckage in work that gives voice to our disappointment, fear, and longing for a place where we might find some rest. 'A kitchen table does not make a home, ' Myers reminds us. Moving 'in and out of / the security camera's range, ' from Brooklyn to Saginaw, the poems in HOLD IT DOWN trace our 'boom & bust, minus / the boom' and serve as testimony for 'those of us who still live here' at the edges of the economy." Susan Briante "The poems in Gina Myers' HOLD IT DOWN seem part protest, part prayer, but not in the usual sense of either of those words. As the speakers confront a purgatorial daily grind of headlines, hangovers, debt, self-doubt, political and economic injustice, and the repeated mistakes of humankind, they never make the one 'of placing hope in seasons, / to look forward to the days to come & expect things to be better.' Instead they bear the unbearable, point at the sources of suffering and ask the question, who holds us down?" Laura Solomon "Since Gina Myers' move to where I grew up, her poetry carries us, as a subway line, between the Brooklyn she left and the Bible Belt of dogwood trees and Atlanta MARTA buses. Myers' is a tale of the magical mundane and a long distance love with Saginaw: part Whitman ('I stop somewhere waiting') part Stein ('What I look forward to is, is '), and part Lorca ('Signs of summer: / tulips, baseball, & violence.'). You'll spy a heart not breaking and the work-a-day walk to happy hours in a city of drivers. You may not know where the places these poems came to life, 'but this is one / of them, one / of the best days' to visit." Amy King "The city we mourn was an unsustainable promise made in a time of need, like a pension. Plural. Cities. Gina Myers narrates an American exodus with heartbreaking clarity and calm; she only wants to love her neighbor and do no harm. I want to say cheer up Nobody listened to Moses either. I want to say even more that when we finally make it past this time of brutality we repress so well, it will be important to remember what it felt like every day. HOLD IT DOWN is a beautiful, painful record of that psychic cost. Keep it safe for later. We're going to need it to live on." Jordan Davis"
