A collection of stories that follows a bewildered bartender, a grieving beautician, a jilted urban planner and others as their lives unravel in unexpected ways, revealing primal urges and raw emotions against the backdrop of a fractured, overwhelmed America.

"In Melissa Larsen's The Lost House comes the mesmerizing story of a young woman with a haunting past who returns to her ancestral home in Iceland to investigate a gruesome murder in her family. Forty years ago, a young woman and her infant daughter were found buried in the cold Icelandic snow, lying together as peacefully as though sleeping. Except the mother's throat had been slashed and the infant drowned. The case was never solved. There were...

Twelve-year-old Ethan is afraid of everything, but he must overcome his fears to save his town from a cursed videotape turned monster on the loose.

"Sam Carlson is a projectionist in small-town Minnesota, where fantasies unspool in glorious black and white--for him and for his sweetheart, college-bound math whiz Sarah Haber. When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, Sam is sent to the Philippines and captured as a POW. Brutalized but unbroken by the Bataan Death March and POW camps, Sam is one of eighteen hundred starved and weakened prisoners herded into the cargo hold of a barbaric hell ship called...

On Stenland, there comes a time known as skeld season: one day, any woman on the island can wake with three black lines on her forehead, the mark of a skeld. Skeld season comes around without warning, and while each window of time lasts only three months, anyone a skeld turns to stone is very much dead. That's how Tess's mother killed Soren's parents. Maybe for this reason alone, Tess and Soren should not have fallen in love. Since the time her mother...

"A poignant coming-of-age story following the friendships, hopes, fears, and struggles of a group of Native high school students from Winnipeg's North End illuminating what it's like to grow up forgotten, urban, poor, and Indigenous. Word on the street is that this is the Tigers' last season. For Tomahawk "Tommy" Shields, an image-obsessed high school student from a northern Indian reserve, the potential loss of his hockey team serves as a stark reminder...

"The tale begins with Agnes. After losing her baby, Agnes is called to the great manor house to nurse the local lord's baby boy. But something is wrong with the child: his nails grow too fast, his skin smells of soil, and his eyes remind her of the dark forest. As he grows into a boy, then into man, a plague seems to follow him everywhere. Trees wither at the roots, fruits rot on their branches, and the town turns against him. The man takes a wife,...

"It begins with cicadas. It will end with the swarm. When millions of insects appear unexpectedly, off the rhythm of their 17-year cycle, Detective Vicky Paterson is investigating a bizarre killing in her sleepy hometown. At the same time, a pair of hired guns work to free their client's daughter from a shadowy cult. As these events intertwine, things begin to spiral out of control. When Vicky's young daughter, Sadie, is attacked by the insects, it's...