Metaphysical Thriller

Booklist calls the world of Hugo Award winner Elizabeth Bear’s spellbinding Jacob’s Ladder series “magnificently populated, well worth visiting.” Here the trilogy that began with Dust and Chill draws to its stunning conclusion. The passengers of the generation spaceship Jacob’s Ladder have found a new home at last. But the planet Grail is already inhabited - and its population of genetically engineered humans has no intention of sharing the world.

Deep in the enchanted hills west of Florence, a powerful ancient relic lays hidden, shielded by veils of secrecy both human and divine. Julia Giardano’s father tells her she’s a witch, heiress to an ancient tradition and all its mysteries, but before she can learn more, he’s murdered in cold blood. Alone, with few clues, can Julia find her legacy in time to save it from her father’s murderer, Gregor Danilenko, who will stop at nothing to possess the relic he believes will give him eternal life and unmitigated power?

When a reclusive tech genius is found dead inside a sealed AI lab, a disillusioned journalist and a burned-out ethics professor are drawn into a high-stakes investigation. What they uncover isn't just a machine capable of passing the Turing Test—it’s an intelligence that seems to know their secrets. As the line between simulation and consciousness begins to blur, they must confront a terrifying truth: the future of humanity might already be thinking without us.

Nineteen-year-old Mercy Habernackle is a witch gone off the rails. Causing problems with the law in her hometown, she's faced with two options. Go to a correctional institution or get shipped off to witch boarding school, or as her mother prefers to call it, finishing school. Choosing the latter, Mercy's mother, Linda, drives her daughter cross country to the Paranormal Institute for Witches, situated high in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains in cozy Aspen Falls, Pennsylvania.

Neil Double is a 'conference surrogate', hired by his clients to attend industry conferences so that they don't have to. It's a life of budget travel, cheap suits, and out-of-town exhibition centers. But his latest job, at a conference of conference organizers, will radically transform him and everything he believes as it unexpectedly draws him into a bizarre and speculative mystery. In a brand-new Way Inn - a global chain of identikit mid-budget motels - he meets a woman he has seen before in strange and unsettling circumstances.

Grace Berney is a mid-level bureaucrat in the Food and Drug Administration, a woman who once brimmed with purpose but somehow turned into a middle-aged single mom with a dull government job and a melancholy sense that life has passed her by. Until the night a strange photo comes across her desk, of a young woman in a hospital bed who has been subjected to a mysterious procedure.

The countdown has begun. The Tenth Protocol has been activated, and the evacuation of the surface is about to begin. Millions of lives will be saved, but billions more will be lost. As the old world crumbles, there are some on the surface who seek to save those doomed to die a gruesome death. But are they willing to sacrifice themselves to achieve it?

Deep beneath the mountains of Mexico lies an abandoned underworld: an ancient and enormous archaeological wonder that dwarfs anything ever created by humanity. Trying to flee from its clutches with a stolen artifact, Sarah Morgan holds the key to exposing an extinct species, once capable of extraordinary cultural and scientific advances. But an unknown terror awaits her in the abyss, something distinctly...inhuman.

Lexi Sobado, code name Lynx, is the young, puzzling prodigy with a psychic gift working for Iniquus. Her job is to support American security and safety as she hunts through intelligence pieces in order to stop our enemies. This time, solving the puzzle means saving her own life. Rival group Omega has been contracted to bring her in dead or alive. Alive would mean rendition and interrogation.

Set in Denmark in the here and now, The Quiet Girl centers around Kaspar Krone, a world-renowned circus clown with a deep love for the music of Johan Sebastian Bach, and an even deeper gambling debt. Wanted for tax evasion and on the verge of extradition, Krone is drafted into the service of a mysterious order of nuns who promise him reprieve from the international authorities in return for his help safeguarding a group of children with mystical abilities - abilities that Krone also shares.

At the Madrid café where she stops for breakfast each day before work, María Dolz finds herself drawn to a couple who is also there every morning. Though she can hardly explain it, observing what she imagines to be their "unblemished" life lifts her out of the doldrums of her own existence. But what begins as mere observation turns into an increasingly complicated entanglement when the man is fatally stabbed in the street.

Holistic health guru Chopra makes his fictional debut with a symbolic tale mixing Arthurian legends with a modern-day detective story.

Siddhanta Sarma-a thinker, teacher, and unexpected explorer of truth-finds himself drawn into a conflict that spans continents and timelines. From ancient sites in Southern India to high-security locations in the Middle East, he uncovers a network of hidden influences that go beyond conventional threats-forces that shape thoughts, alter perception, and challenge human autonomy.

Deep within the archives of time-and-motion pioneer Lillian Gilbreth lies a secret. Famous for producing solid light-tracks that captured the path of workers' movements, Gilbreth helped birth the era of mass observation and big data. Did she also, as her broken correspondence with a young Soviet physicist suggests, discover in her final days a 'perfect' movement, one that would 'change everything'?

Meet Simon Strong, an immortal detective about to enjoy a night out on the town. He’s planned this date for weeks and tonight is the night. When Tristan Montague, Simon’s partner and resident cranky mage, advises Simon against this course of action, Simon declares his freedom to see whomever he chooses. There’s only one problem. Her name is Michiko and she doesn’t share well.

David, a college student, takes a summer job at a run-down family resort in a dying English resort town. This is against the wishes of his family because it was at this resort where David's biological father disappeared fifteen years earlier. But something undeniable has called David there. The characters have a suspicious edge to them.

Three complete novels from the best-selling Jade Ihara Adventures series by David Wood and Sean Ellis!

When humans Ciaran, a billionaire technology genius, and his wife Madeline, a quirky, psychic journalist, are forced to enter the multiverse with few resources beyond the love they share, countless lives hang in the balance. Traversing in this strange new world with unfamiliar technology and a language neither Ciaran nor Madeline understand, the pair struggles to distinguish friend from foe, allies from an enemies, and reality from elusion. As their family grows, so too do the dangers around them. Can they muster the strength and gather the necessities in order to save millions of lives and emerge unscathed?

One day, one of her clients tells Lily and a group of fellow students about an autopsy that was accidentally performed on the wrong body at the hospital where she works. She was hoping to send the body to the funeral home as quickly as possible, but when the medical examiner’s report is complete, it states that death was due to homicide! Lily (along with the clients who were present that day) is intrigued and can’t help doing a little investigating. The murkiness of the woman’s death sparks the very type of passion and interest she has been yearning to feel.

Take the plunge down the rabbit hole of insanity and wonder in this fast-paced, nonstop psychological thriller that will leave you questioning the very nature of reality and beyond. Part thriller, part romance, part existential horror, A Dream of Waking Life delves into lucid dreaming, psychedelics, existential ontology, video games, the nature of love, the nature of reality, and more.