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Dark and Daring in Fiction
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Tom's Crossing
by Mark Z. Danielewski
A magisterial, page-turning epic, about two friends determined to rescue a pair of horses set for slaughter.
In the fall of 1982, the Utah town of Orvop witnessed not just shocking crimes but an astonishing adventure beyond its borders. The astonishing journey was as crazy as it was foolish, just plain beyond imagining. Not that such daring was entirely unexpected considering the venture included the likes of young Tom Gatestone, already an Orvop legend, and his friend Kalin March, the two of them taking it upon themselves to rescue a couple of neglected horses from the Porch paddocks on Willow and Oak. For sure no one expected the dead to rise but they did. For sure no one expected the mountain to fall but it did. For sure no one expected an act of courage so great, and likewise so appalling, that it still staggers the heart and mind of anyone who knows anything about the Katanogos massif.
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Bog Queen
by Anna North
The story of an anthropologist's monumental discovery and the clash of civilizations it sets off.
When a body is found in a bog in northwest England, Agnes, an American forensic anthropologist, is called to investigate. But this body is not like any she has ever seen: Although its bones prove it was buried more than two thousand years ago, it is almost completely preserved. Then there is the moss itself: a complex repository of artifacts and remains with its own dark stories to tell. As Agnes faces the deep history of what she has unearthed, she is also forced to question what she thought she knew about her talent, her self-reliance, and her place in the world.
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Crafting for Sinners
by Jenny Kiefer
A queer woman must fight her way out of a big-box craft store run by a diabolical religious cult in this gripping survival horror novel.
Ruth is trapped. She’s stuck in her small, religious hometown of Kill Devil, Kentucky, stuck in the closet, and stuck living paycheck to paycheck. After her manager finds out that she lives with her girlfriend, Ruth is fired from her job as a cashier at New Creations—a craft store owned by the church that dominates life in the town. In an act of revenge, Ruth attempts to shoplift some yarn but is caught red-handed by a New Creations cashier. Instead of calling the police, the employees lock her in the store—and attack her. As Ruth fights for her life, she plunges deeper into the tangled web of the New Creationists, who are hiding a terrible secret that threatens not only her, but the entire town.
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The Ordeals
by Rachel Greenlaw
In this lush, atmospheric romantasy, an illusionist competes in a series of deadly trials for a spot at an elite magical college.
Twenty-year-old Sophia DeWinter has only known life bound to her cruel uncle, the Collector, thanks to a blood bond he exacted from her as a child. When she learns of Killmarth College, an elite academy for magic wielders outside of the Collector’s control, she knows it is her only chance to finally break free. But to gain entry, she will have to compete against other illusionists, masquiers, botanists, and alchemists in a series of brutal trials that many hopefuls don’t survive—the Ordeals. o make it out alive, she will have to hone her magic and learn to identify who is a rival, who could be an ally, and who is a murderer.
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The Hong Kong Widow
by Kristen Loesch
Set in Hong Kong, 1953, witnesses insist a massacre took place, but the police see no evidence. Decades later, a witness resurfaces…
In 1950s Hong Kong, Mei is a young refugee of the Chinese Communist revolution struggling to put her past in Shanghai behind her. When she receives a shocking invitation—to take part in a competition pitting six spirit mediums against one another over six nights, until a single winner emerges—she has every reason to refuse. Except that the hostess, a former Shanghainese silent film star, is none other than the wife of the man who once destroyed Mei’s entire life. The competition promises the winner a fortune, but there is only one prize Mei wants: revenge.
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Boom Town
by Nic Stone
A missing stripper in Atlanta sets off a suspenseful search by her friends, unraveling a web of secrets and power dynamics in the city’s most notorious Black strip club.
Welcome to Boom Town, Atlanta’s most infamous Black strip club, where the air is thick with secrets and the stakes are as high as the heels. When Damaris “Charm” Willburn, a new daytime dancer, vanishes without a trace, former headline Lyriq is thrust back into a world she thought she had left behind. Charm’s disappearance eerily mirrors that of Lyriq’s former partner, Lucky, who also went missing under mysterious circumstances. Both women shared a dangerous connection with Thomas McIntyre, a wealthy white man with far more power than they could imagine. As Lyriq delves deeper into the mystery, she uncovers a tangled web of deceit, power, and privilege that threatens to consume her. With each revelation, the line between friend and foe blurs, and Lyriq must confront her own past to uncover the truth.
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World War II in Nonfiction
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The Hiroshima Men: The Quest to Build the Atomic Bomb, and the Fateful Decision to Use It
by Iain MacGregor
A vivid account of one of history’s most significant deliberations: the approval, construction, and fateful decision to drop the atomic bomb.
At 8:15 a.m. on August 6th, 1945, the Japanese port city of Hiroshima was struck by the world’s first atomic bomb. Built in the US by the top-secret Manhattan Project and delivered by a B-29 Superfortress, a revolutionary long-range bomber, the weapon destroyed large swaths of the city, instantly killing tens of thousands. The Hiroshima Men’s unique narrative recounts the decade-long journey towards this first atomic attack. It charts the race for nuclear technology before and during the Second World War, as the allies fought the axis powers in Europe, North Africa, China, and across the vastness of the Pacific.
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The Traitors Circle: The True Story of a Secret Resistance Network in Nazi Germany—and the Spy Who Betrayed Them
by Jonathan Freedland
The extraordinary true story of a group of daring Germans who risked everything to save Jewish lives during the Holocaust.
The Traitors Circle tells the true, but scarcely known, story of a group of secret rebels against Hitler. Drawn from Berlin high society, they include army officers, government officials, two countesses, an ambassador's widow and a former model. They meet in the shadows, hiding and rescuing Jews or plotting the end of Nazi rule in Germany. But one day in September 1943, they gather for a tea party—unaware that one among them is about to betray them all to the Gestapo. But who is the betrayer of a circle themselves branded “traitors'” by the cruelest regime in history?
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The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II
by David Nasaw
A revelatory reexamination of post-World War II America and the nation's unhealed traumas.
The veterans of World War II returned to America with great expectations. After all, the Great Depression was over, the Germans and the Japanese were defeated, and the home front was celebrating victory. However, the stories of post-World War II America which persist across art, history, and literature, have failed to account for the realities of the veterans’ return and the traumas that characterized postwar America.
In The Wounded Generation, David Nasaw illustrates how veterans and civilians alike were confronted with the aftershocks of World War II, and how the media and the government failed to prepare America for what lay ahead. Drawing on a wealth of primary source material, including personal memoirs and oral histories from veterans themselves, Nasaw looks beyond the welcome crowds and victory parades and illuminates a largely hidden story of a country in transition.
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The Boys in the Light: An Extraordinary World War II Story of Survival, Faith, and Brotherhood
by Nina Willner
An extraordinary true story about survival against all odds, the strength of the bonds forged during war, and the resilience of the human spirit.
At sixteen, Eddie Willner was among the millions of European Jews rounded up by Hitler’s Nazis. He was forced into slave labor alongside his father and his best friend, Mike, and spent the next three years of his life surviving the death camps. Meanwhile, in the United States, boys only a few years older than Eddie were joining the army and heading toward their own precarious futures. Once farmers, factory workers, and coal miners, they were suddenly untested soldiers, thrust into the brutal conflicts of WWII. A company of 3rd Armored Division tankers, led by 23-year-old Elmer Hovland, quickly became battle-hardened and weary, constantly questioning whether the war was worth it. They got their answer when two emaciated boys stepped out of the woods with their tattooed arms raised. The Boys in the Light follows the parallel journeys of Company D and Eddie Willner, the author’s father, as they are caught up on two sides of World War II.
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Monopoly X: How Top-Secret World War II Operations Used the Game of Monopoly to Help Allied POWs Escape, Conceal Spies, and Send Secret Codes
by Philip Orbanes
The amazing true story of World War II of how British and American military intelligence smuggled supplies and escape tools into German P.O.W. camps disguised as Monopoly game sets.
The masterminds at England’s top-secret MI-9, and later America’s MIS-X, created a special version of Monopoly, hiding tools, maps, and money within game boards—delivered by an unwitting Red Cross—to captured Allied servicemen held at gunpoint behind barbed wire in German prison camps. This ingenious and complex plot, dubbed “Monopoly X,” was never discovered by the Nazis and led to successful Allied breakouts. For the first time, Phillip E. Orbanes tells the full story of the breadth and depth of this clandestine program—how it was devised, implemented, and used to great success.
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A Light in the Northern Sea: Denmark's Incredible Rescue of Their Jewish citizens During WWII
by Tim Brady
The gripping, little-known true story of how the people of Denmark banded together during WWII to rescue nearly all of their Jewish citizens from Nazi persecution.
In 1940, on its way to conquering Western Europe, Germany coerced the Danish government into a “cooperative” agreement that lasted three long years until the increasing brazenness of the Resistance movement prompted a crackdown. Denmark’s nearly 8,000 Jews, who had so far been spared Hitler’s wrath, now became the focus of his rage. A roundup was ordered to begin on October 1st, 1943, the first day of the Jewish New Year. The only passage to safety was across the Oresund to Sweden. But no group existed to organize an escape. Sweden didn’t agree to allow the refugees into the country until the last possible moment–and 95% of Denmark’s Jews survived the Holocaust, the highest percentage in Europe.
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