Archives de catégorie : Frankfurt 2023 Adult Fiction

GILDED MONSTERS de Rebecca Kenney

Neon Gods meets The Great Gatsby in this spicy modern retelling with a magical twist.

GILDED MONSTERS
by Rebecca Kenney
Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2024 – 2025

BEAUTIFUL VILLAIN (Book 1 – July 2024)

Daisy Finnegan is looking forward to a summer of fun on Glassy Mountain, North Carolina. She doesn’t want to think about college, or the newly awakened power of her own voice, which has a way of making people do increasingly frightening things. But when her cousin goes missing at an exclusive house party, Daisy confronts the mysterious host…only to discover the wealthy recluse is Jay Gatsby, her childhood sweetheart. Shocked at the change in the boy she once knew so well, Daisy investigates the source of Gatsby’s new riches and becomes entangled in a web of dizzying wealth and lies and obsession darker than she ever could have dreamed—culminating in an act of violence that shatters the summer haze and threatens to drown them all.

But it isn’t until Gatsby is shot through the heart—and survives—that Daisy discovers the full truth. Gatsby clawed his way up in the world by selling the secret of immortality to the highest bidder, using his lavish parties as the ultimate cover. But Gatsby’s intricately-laid plans are in danger…and so, by extension, is he. With her friends’ lives at stake, her own untested power still volatile, and an unimaginable threat closing in, Daisy will have to face an impossible choice: side with the man who claimed her heart…or with the monsters who would see him lost to her forever.

CHARMING DEVIL (Book 2 – January 2025)

The painting that has kept Dorian Gray flawless for over a century is beginning to fall apart, saturated and rotted by his life of reckless decadence. Desperate, he seeks out the only person who might be able to save him: Baz Allard. She’s a talented young painter who just inherited her aunt’s house and studio in Charleston—and she happens to be a direct descendant of Basil Hallward, Dorian’s first love, and the man who created the magical portrait. Baz has the same gift as her ancestor, but for deeply personal reasons, she has vowed never to paint anyone’s likeness, and she refuses Dorian’s commission.

Rebecca Kenney writes contemporary fantasy, paranormal romance, and spicy fantasy romance. She lives in upstate South Carolina with her handsome blue-eyed husband and two smart, energetic kids.

THIS GIRL’S A KILLER d’Emma C. Wells

Meet your new best friend (who also just happens to be a serial killer). For readers of Finlay Donovan is Killing It and The Bandit Queens comes a bright and biting thriller following Cordelia Black, a best friend, a businesswoman, and, in her spare time, a killer of bad men.

THIS GIRL’S A KILLER
by Emma C. Wells
Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks, October 2024

Ask Cordelia Black why she did it. The answer will always be: He had it coming.

Cordelia Black loves exactly three things: Her chosen family, her hairdresser (worth every penny plus tip), and killing bad men.

By day she’s an ambitious pharma rep with a flawless reputation and designer wardrobe. By night, she culls South Louisiana of unscrupulous men—monsters who think they’ve evaded justice, until they meet her. Sure, the evening news may have started throwing around phrases like « serial killer, » but Cordelia knows that’s absurd. She’s not a killer, she is simply karma. And being karma requires complete and utter control.

But when Cordelia discovers a flaw in her perfectly designed system for eliminating monsters, pressure heightens. And it only intensifies when her best friend starts dating a man Cordelia isn’t sure is a good person. Someone who might just unravel everything she has worked for.

Soon enough Cordelia has to come face to face with the choices she’s made. The good, the bad, and the murderous. Both her family, and her freedom, depend on it.

Emma C. Wells loves anti-heroes, dark humor, witty banter, and ride-or-die friendships. Twisty relationships are her kryptonite (or catnip—depending on how you look at it) and her favorite characters are often called unlikable (but at least they’re never boring). Emma enjoys camping, yoga, researching spooky folklore, and collecting copies of Wuthering Heights from used bookstores.

ONE ANOTHER de Gail Jones

At Cambridge University, in the summer of 1992, Australian student Helen is completing her thesis on Joseph Conrad. But she is distracted by a charming and dangerous lover, Justin, and by a ghost manuscript, her anti-thesis, which she has left on a train.

ONE ANOTHER
by Gail Jones
Text Publishing, March 2024

Haunted by this loss and others, by Justin’s destructive tendencies and by details of Conrad’s life, Helen is unmoored. And then the drama of the lost manuscript sets in motion a series of events—with possibly fatal consequences.

In her masterly new novel, Gail Jones traverses the borders between art and life, between lif and death, in a journey through literary history and emotional landscapes. Elegantly written, deftly crafted, One Another covers new territories of grief, memory and narrative.

Gail Jones is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. She is the author of two short-story collections and nine novels, and her work has been translated into several languages and has received numerous literary awards. Originally from Western Australia, she now lives in Sydney.

BLUE HOTEL de Dann McDorman

BLUE HOTEL’s puzzle-like structure, in which each new section of the novel alters the reader’s understanding of what came before, accompanies a deeply felt meditation on death, the nature of reality, and our reasons for being and non-being.

BLUE HOTEL
by Dann McDorman
Knopf, Spring 2025
(via David Black Literary)

A man wakes up in a room with no idea where he is or how he got there. The room has no door nor windows. He has no way to tell the time. He has nothing to eat except for the endless cartons of Cup O’ Noodles (Original flavor) with which he is tormented by his captors. The stubble on his chin doesn’t grow. He loses his mind; he gets his back. Then one day, one hour, one minute, a vintage black typewriter appears on the desk, gleaming like a beetle. He warily taps out his name: J-O-H-N T-H-O-M-A-S. He sits down and begins to write…
Thus begins BLUE HOTEL, during which readers follow John Thomas as he tries to solve the mystery of his imprisonment. His surprising escape, and the discovery of what lies outside his room, launches an exploration during which readers will encounter a strange menagerie of characters: doomsday cultists, a Reality Studies professor, a Big Tech billionaire, an immortal chatbot, a woman who thought she could fly, and two sisters who speak to the dead — plus a few other, rather more surprising personalities…
BLUE HOTEL, Dann McDorman’s follow-up to West Heart Kill, features his trademark mixture of plot twists and philosophical inquiry. It’s a novel filled with bizarre facts and heretical histories, ranging from the origins of artificial intelligence to 19th century revolutionary politics in Canada. BLUE HOTEL’s puzzle-like structure, in which each new section of the novel alters the reader’s understanding of what came before, accompanies a deeply felt meditation on death, the nature of reality, and our reasons for being and non-being.

Dann McDorman is an Emmy-nominated TV news producer, who has also worked as a newspaper reporter, book reviewer, and cabinet maker. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children.

WITCHCRAFT FOR WAYARD GIRLS de Grady Hendrix

In the vein of Rosemary’s Baby, Grady Hendrix’s next highly-anticipated horror novel takes place in the 1970s at a home for unwed mothers, exploring motherhood and women’s autonomy.

WITCHCRAFT FOR WAYARD GIRLS
by Grady Hendrix
Ace, TBD
(via JABberwocky Literary Agency)

Set in 1970, at a home for unwed mothers in Florida, this book follows five pregnant teenage girls as they wait out the last three months of their pregnancy in seclusion, hoping to have their babies, surrender them for adoption, and return to their regular lives. They must be hidden away from the public, their communications are monitored, and they’re not even allowed to share their real names with each other.

Each girl has a betrayal in her recent past that brought her here, whether it’s being ditched by her married lover, parents breaking up her planned marriage to a boyfriend they think is inappropriate, or rape. Then there’s Holly, barely 13 years old and enormously pregnant, who doesn’t speak at all. In the pressure cooker of the home, the girls begin to believe that the house is haunted, and they soon realize that most of the supernatural activity revolves around Holly. One by one they reach their due dates and come back from the hospital traumatized, prompting the remaining girls to vow that they won’t give up their babies, which sets them against the women who run the home and who are determined to get them to surrender their babies.

As the war between the girls and their social workers intensifies, it becomes very clear that the house isn’t haunted, Holly is. The father of her baby may not be human, and soon the house’s worst nightmare is going to come true as he shows up to cause a kind of trouble few people have seen and survived.

Grady Hendrix is the author of the novels Horrorstör, about a haunted IKEA, and My Best Friend’s Exorcism, which is like Beaches meets The Exorcist, only it’s set in the Eighties. He’s also the author of We Sold Our Souls, and The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires.

He’s also the jerk behind the Stoker award-winning Paperbacks from Hell, a history of the 70’s and 80’s horror paperback boom, which contains more information about Nazi leprechauns, killer babies, and evil cats than you probably need.