'Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches.' That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva--stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that's why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales. In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay's most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the same university where Minerva is now studying and became obsessed with her beautiful and otherworldly roommate, who then disappeared under mysterious circumstances. As Minerva descends ever deeper into Tremblay's manuscript, she begins to sense that the malign force that stalked Tremblay and the missing girl might still walk the halls of the campus. These disturbing events also echo the stories Nana Alba told about her girlhood in 1900s Mexico, where she had a terrifying encounter with a witch. Minerva suspects that the same shadow that darkened the lives of her great-grandmother and Beatrice Tremblay is now threatening her own in 1990s Massachusetts. An academic career can be a punishing pursuit, but it might turn outright deadly when witchcraft is involved.

January in Gotland. The days are short, the air is cold, and all the roads are covered in snow. On a deserted, icy backroad, these wintery conditions will soon bring together a group of strangers with a force devastating enough to change their lives forever when, in the midst of a brief period, a deadly accident and two separate crimes leave victims in their wake. Four years later a single phone call is all it takes to bring back the terror of that day and to set in motion a plot for revenge. For Sandra it started as an unremarkable wintery day of shopping followed by a kind gesture from a stranger. For Jeanette it began with the thrill of an illicit rendezvous with her lover. Both women had driven past the same icy ravine, but only one was in the car that caused a deadly crash, and only one left a man to die alone in the snow. Each carried a secret from that day, a secret that, if revealed, could connect them to a larger, more terrible transgression... And there is someone out there who knows the whole picture, and who would rather kill than allow it all to come to light.

In a secessionist rural state that has cut itself off completely from urban centers, where living is hardscrabble and poor but “free,” Brooke Holland runs a farm with her husband, Milo, and two daughters. Their life at the fringes of modern society is tenuous—they make barely enough from each harvest to keep going—yet Brooke cherishes the loving, peaceful life they have carved out for themselves. She has even begun to believe she is free from the violent history she has kept a secret from her family. When escaped criminal Stephen Cawley attacks at the farm, Brooke’s buried talents surface, and she manages to quickly and harshly subdue him. She is convinced that he has come in retribution for the blood feud she thought she escaped years ago. Brooke sets out to bring Cawley to justice, planning to use the bounty on his head to hide her family far from danger. Fearing that other members of Cawley’s infamous family will soon descend, Brooke insists Milo and the girls flee with her, travelling miles on foot across an unforgiving landscape to reach the nearest marshal. Their journey, started at the onset of winter with little preparation, brings already strained family dynamics to the breaking point. As Brooke’s ghosts—both real and imagined—close in, the ruthlessness that let her survive her past may become the biggest threat to her hopes for a different future. What follows is a harrowing exploration of family loyalty, trauma, and resilience.

As the ash and chaos from Mount Rainier's eruption swirled and finally settled, the story of the Greenloop massacre has passed unnoticed, unexamined, until now. But the journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town's bloody wreckage, capture a tale too harrowing and too earth-shattering in its implications, to be forgotten. Because if what Kate Holland saw in those days is real, then we must accept the impossible. We must accept that the creature known as Bigfoot walks among us, and that it is a beast of terrible strength and ferocity.

Rebecca meets Fatima Farheen Mirza in this sweeping, gorgeously atmospheric novel about a ruined mansion by the sea, and a young girl who unearths the true story of the tragedy that happened there a hundred years ago. Akbar Manzil was once a grand estate off the coast of South Africa. Now, nearly a century since it was built, it stands in ruins-a boardinghouse for misfits, where people come to forget or be forgotten. Seeking a new home after a painful tragedy, Sana and her effusive father are Akbar Manzil's newest residents. There they find a community of eccentrics, each suffering their own losses and likewise searching for something-escape, solace, absolution. As Sana becomes increasingly entwined in their stories, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to the history of the mansion itself: to the overgrown garden and its strange assortment of bones; to the eerie and forgotten East Wing, home to a clutter of broken and abandoned objects; and to a dusty old bedroom, unopened for decades, where she finds faded photographs of Akbar Manzil's first residents and a worn diary with entries she cannot translate. As she explores the mansion's whispering corners, she dredges up its longest resident: a djinn, the only remnant of Akbar Manzil's dark past. With its help, she discovers the story of a young woman named Meena from a hundred years prior, the original owner's second wife, who lived in the East Wing at the height of Akbar Manzil's glory, whose tragic fate is the house's ultimate secret-and whose story is the answer that Sana had been searching for all along. Sublime, heart-wrenching, and lyrically stunning--with a cast of characters that will have you crying from both laughter and sorrow--The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a haunting, a love story, and a mystery, all twined beautifully into one young girl's search for belonging.

Imagine a world where all humans must hibernate through a brutally cold winter, their bodies dangerously close to death as they enter an ultra-low metabolic state of utterly dreamless sleep. All humans, that is, apart from the Winter Consuls, a group of officers who diligently watch over the vulnerable sleeping citizens. Charlie Worthing is a novice, chosen by a highflying hero Winter Consul to accompany him to the Douzey, a remote sector in the middle of Wales, to investigate a dream which is somehow spreading amongst those in the hibernational state, causing paranoia, hallucination and a psychotic episode that can end in murder. Worthing has been trained to deal with Tricksy Nightwalkers whose consciousness has been eroded by hibernation, leaving only one or two skills and an incredible hunger; he's been trained to stay alive through the bleakest and loneliest of winters - but he is in no way prepared for what awaits him in Sector Twelve. There are no heroes in Winter, Worthing has been told. And he's about to find out why.

Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, dark secrets, and the woman pulled into their clutches... In the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz's father is executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife's sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost. But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined. When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz's sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo's sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz's fears--but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark its doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña Solórzano? Beatriz only knows two things for certain. Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will help her. Desperate for help, she clings to the young priest, Padre Andrés, as an ally. No ordinary priest, it will take Andrés's skills as a witch to battle the malevolent presence haunting the hacienda. Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz's doom.

When Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore dies, she's not only North Carolina's richest woman, she's also its most notorious. The victim of a famous kidnapping as a child and a widow four times over, Ruby ruled the tiny town of Tavistock from Ashby House, her family's estate high in the Blue Ridge mountains. In the aftermath of her death, that estate--along with a nine-figure fortune and the complicated legacy of being a McTavish--pass to her adopted son, Camden. But to everyone's surprise, Cam wants little to do with the house or the money--and even less to do with the surviving McTavishes. Instead, he rejects his inheritance, settling into a normal life as an English teacher in Colorado and marrying Jules, a woman just as eager to escape her own messy past. Ten years later, Camden is a McTavish in name only, but a summons in the wake of his uncle's death brings him and Jules back into the family fold at Ashby House. Its views are just as stunning as ever, its rooms just as elegant, but coming home reminds Cam why he was so quick to leave in the first place. Jules, however, has other ideas, and the more she learns about Cam's estranged family--and the twisted secrets they keep--the more determined she is for her husband to claim everything Ruby once intended for him to have. But Ruby's plans were always more complicated than they appeared. As Ashby House tightens its grip on Jules and Camden, questions about the infamous heiress come to light. Was there any truth to the persistent rumors following her disappearance as a girl? What really happened to those four husbands, who all died under mysterious circumstances? And why did she adopt Cam in the first place? Soon, Jules and Cam realize that an inheritance can entail far more than what's written in a will--and that the bonds of family stretch far beyond the grave.

When he was just a fledgling birdwatcher, Jonathan C. Slaght had a chance encounter with one of the most mysterious birds on Earth. Bigger than any owl he knew, it looked like a small bear with decorative feathers. He snapped a quick photo and shared it with experts. Soon he was on a five-year journey, searching for this enormous, enigmatic creature in the lush, remote forests of eastern Russia. That first sighting set his calling as a scientist. Despite a wingspan of six feet and a height of over two feet, the Blakiston's fish owl is highly elusive. They are easiest to find in winter, when their tracks mark the snowy banks of the rivers where they feed. They are also endangered. And so, as Slaght and his devoted team set out to locate the owls, they aim to craft a conservation plan that helps ensure the species' survival. This quest sends them on all-night monitoring missions in freezing tents, mad dashes across thawing rivers, and free-climbs up rotting trees to check nests for precious eggs. They use cutting-edge tracking technology and improvise ingenious traps. And all along, they must keep watch against a run-in with a bear or an Amur tiger. At the heart of Slaght's story are the fish owls themselves: cunning hunters, devoted parents, singers of eerie duets, and survivors in a harsh and shrinking habitat. Through this rare glimpse into the everyday life of a field scientist and conservationist, Owls of the Eastern Ice testifies to the determination and creativity essential to scientific advancement and serves as a powerful reminder of the beauty, strength, and vulnerability of the natural world.

Set in a close-knit Pennsylvania suburb in the grip of winter, A Quiet Life follows three people grappling with loss and finding a tender wisdom in their grief. Chuck Ayers used to look forward to nothing so much as his annual trip to Hilton Head with his wife, Cat--that yearly taste of relaxation they'd become accustomed to in retirement, after a lifetime of working and raising two children. Now, just months after Cat's death, Chuck finds that he can't let go of her things--her favorite towel, the sketchbooks in her desk drawer--as he struggles to pack for a trip he can't imagine taking without her. Ella Burke delivers morning newspapers and works at a bridal shop to fill her days while she anxiously awaits news--any piece of information--about her missing daughter. Ella adjusts to life in a new apartment and answers every call on her phone, hoping her daughter will reach out one day. After the sudden death of her father, Kirsten Bonato set aside her veterinary school aspirations, finding comfort in the steady routine of working at an animal shelter. But as time passes, old dreams and new romantic interests begin to surface--and Kirsten finds herself at another crossroads. In this beautifully crafted and profoundly moving novel, three parallel narratives converge in poignant and unexpected ways, as each character bravely presses onward, trying to recover something they have lost.

It is a cold January morning and trudging home, Fran Hunter's eye is drawn to a splash of color on the frozen ground, ravens circling above. It is the strangled body of her teenage neighbor, Catherine Ross. The locals on the quiet island stubbornly focus their gaze on one man; loner and simpleton Magnus Tait. But when detective Jimmy Perez and his colleagues from the mainland insist on opening out the investigation, a veil of suspicion and fear is thrown over the entire community.

In this propulsive locked-room thriller debut, a reunion weekend in the French Alps turns deadly when five friends discover that someone has deliberately stranded them at their remote mountaintop resort during a snowstorm. When Milla accepts an off-season invitation to Le Rocher, a cozy ski resort in the French Alps, she's expecting an intimate weekend of catching up with four old friends. Yet no sooner do Milla and the others arrive for the reunion than they realize something is horribly wrong. Stranded in the deserted resort, Milla's not sure what's worse: the increasingly sinister things happening around her or the looming snowstorm that's making escape even more impossible. All she knows is that there's no one on the mountain she can trust.

The author of This House of Sky provides a magnificent evocation of the Pacific Northwest through the diaries of James Gilchrist Swan, a settler of the region. Doig fuses parts of the Swan diaries with his own journal.