www.passions.com

STARTER VILLAIN

Charlie Fitzer, a former business journalist–turned–substitute teacher, is broke and somewhat desperate. His circumstances take an unexpected and dangerous turn when his estranged uncle Jake dies, leaving his business—i.e., his trillion-dollar supervillain empire—to Charlie. Charlie doesn’t really have the skills or experience to manage the staff of the volcano lair, and matters don’t improve when he’s pressured to attend a high-level meeting with other supervillains, none of whom got along wit

BUTTER

Three of the men died in suspicious accidents, one of a drug overdose, another under a train, and another in a bathtub. Determined to score an interview with the assumed murderer, who is in a detention center awaiting a second trial, Rika overcomes the woman’s refusals by expressing great interest in food. To further gain her trust, Rika carries out the extreme assignments concocted by Kajimana, including having sex (with her droopy older boyfriend, as it turns out) before rushing out to consum

NERO

To borrow a philosopher’s phrase opining on another era, life in ancient Rome was nasty, brutish, and short—and being on top of the heap didn’t seem to help much. In the year 37 CE, the brutal Emperor Tiberius is dying. Agrippina is related to him by marriage and has a young son, Lucius, who will one day become known as Nero. Sit back and enjoy—or cringe at—this bloody tale that is littered with the bodies of the powerful, the ambitious, and the innocent. The story roughly follows Agrippina and

FLAGS ON THE BAYOU

Seriously in debt to business associate Minos Suarez, Charles Lufkin rents him Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman he’s recently purchased. Things don’t go well for either Hannah, whom Suarez unmercifully assaults, or Suarez, who’s found castrated with his throat cut shortly after Hannah parts company with him. Just as Hannah is haunted by Samuel, the son from whom she was separated during the bloody Union attack on Shiloh Church, Lufkin’s nephew, Wade, who volunteered as a medical officer on the

WESTFALLEN

It all starts with a ham radio that Alice, Lawrence, and Artie fool around with in 1944 and Henry, Frances, and Lukas find in 2023. It’s late April, and the 1944 kids worry about loved ones in combat, while the 2023 kids study the war in school. When, impossibly, the radio allows the kids to communicate across time, it doesn’t take long before they share information that changes history. Can the two sets of kids work across a 79-year divide to prevent the U.S.A. from becoming the Nazi-controlle

THE END OF EDEN

Attempting to fully comprehend the magnitude of global climate change can feel next to impossible. In this deeply researched and disturbing book, photographer and environmental writer Welz helps us understand it “through smaller stories.” Moving among far-flung ecosystems—e.g., the Mojave Desert, South Africa’s Cape Floral Region, the high-altitude grasslands of Central Asia—the author presents climate change in focused snapshots. Each case study of an ecosystem tracks how small increases in lo

VOLK

Terri Watson is a hardworking and slightly harried agent for the FBI in Philadelphia, specializing in organized crime. Along with her partner, Marc Peterson, Terri has been investigating a ring of Russian mobsters led by Konstantin Kretzky. Concurrently, a series of murders have been committed in the city in which the victims appear to have been torn apart by wild dogs. While in pursuit of Dieter, a money launderer working with the Russian mob, Terri and Marc witness a beast attacking their per

HOUSE OF BONE AND RAIN

After his mother, a low-level drug dealer named Maria, is shot in the face for encroaching on someone’s territory, her son, Bimbo, will stop at nothing to avenge her—including torturing and murdering people for information. Most of his close friends don’t want any part this. But after one of them, Xavier, is murdered and Gabe, the primary narrator of the book, barely escapes the killers, their outlook changes. Torn between loyalty to Bimbo and love of his girlfriend, Natalia, who tries to talk

CLEAN

On the first page of Trabucco Zerán’s novel, the narrator, Estela García, offers a deal to the people who may or may not be on the other side of a mirrored glass pane: “I’m going to tell you a story, and when I get to the end, when I stop talking, you’re going to let me out of here.” Estela, it seems, is waiting to be interrogated in connection with the death of a girl, Julia, the daughter of a couple for whom Estela has worked as a housemaid for seven years. What follows is Estela’s account of

BINDING 13

Beautiful, waiflike, 15-year-old Shannon has lived her entire life in Ballylaggin. Alternately bullied at school and beaten by her ne’er-do-well father, she’s hopeful for a fresh start at Tommen, a private school. Seventeen-year-old Johnny, who has a hair-trigger temper and a severe groin injury, is used to Dublin’s elite-level rugby but, since his family’s move to County Cork, is now stuck captaining Tommen’s middling team. When Johnny angrily kicks a ball and knocks Shannon unconscious (“a so

THE WELL-CONNECTED ANIMAL

Our belief in human exceptionalism has long included the dogma that we are the only animals that create complex social networks—but we are wrong. In this compelling book, evolutionary biologist Dugatkin, author of The Imitation Factor and Principles of Animal Behavior, notes that while the study of complex non-human social networks is a fairly young discipline, new research is occurring at a rapid pace. As one example, we now know reciprocal altruism drives vampire bats, who are most likely to

TONIGHT, I BURN

Thorn witch Penelope Albright’s upcoming 21st birthday means she’ll finally be of age to cross into Death and fulfill the duties of her coven—protecting the veil between Life and Death and guiding souls through Death to the horizon. Imprisoned within the walls of the Colligerate, thorn witches have two paths: They can serve the High Warden as death-walkers by periodically being burned on a pyre, or they can release their identities and become part of his soulless Gilded army. When Penny’s siste

SWAN SONG

Hilderbrand fans, a vast and devoted legion, will remember Blond Sharon, the notorious island gossip. In what is purportedly the last of the Nantucket novels, Blond Sharon decides to pursue her lifelong dream of fiction writing. In the collective opinion of the island—aka the “cobblestone telegraph”—she’s qualified. “Well, we think, she’s certainly demonstrated her keen interest in other people’s stories, the seedier and more salacious, the better.” Blond Sharon’s first assignment in her online

THE EMPIRE WARS

Eighteen-year-old Coa Rangecroft has been forced to enter the Great Hunt, an annual tradition that takes place over the course of seven days in the totalitarian Arctic nation called the Allied Force. Soldiers target and hunt down the foreign participants, and the family members of anyone they kill are publicly executed afterward. Few of the hunted even survive until the fifth day, but Coa is harboring a secret: She’s a fireborn who possesses magic, a rare ability among the world’s remaining pop

OCEANS RISE EMPIRES FALL

Driven by an impetus to control and/or expand their territory and to influence what happens within and beyond their borders, “world powers use and abuse the earth,” writes geography professor Toal, author of Near Abroad: Putin, the West, and the Contest for Ukraine and the Caucasus. To protect and enhance their sovereignty and boost their economies, nation-states exploit the land, oceans, air, and now outer space, and they do so in competition with other nation-states. The author argues that th

THE BLETCHLEY RIDDLE

Headstrong 14-year-old Lizzie Novis refuses to believe that her mother, a U.S. embassy clerk who was working in Poland, is dead. After fleeing from her grandmother—who’s attempting to bring her back to America—Lizzie locates her 19-year-old brother, Jakob, a Cambridge mathematician who’s stationed at the clandestine British intelligence site called Bletchley Park. Hiding from her grandmother’s estate steward, Lizzie becomes a messenger at Bletchley Park, ferrying letters across the grounds whil

INCIDENTS AROUND THE HOUSE

Set in the fictional small town of Chaps, Michigan, near the other made-up places in dread specialist Malerman’s novels, the story involves a deeply troubled family. Bela’s actual mommy has been cheating on her father, Daddo, whose friendliness and good cheer clash with his wife’s dark streak. Wrapped up in their squabbling and work demands, they’ve neglected to pay attention to Bela. Sweetly seductive in the beginning, Other Mommy offers Bela, who blames herself for the whole mess, a solution.

SAINT-SEDUCING GOLD

Joan’s godfather, Baba Ben, is still locked away in the Tower of London, so it’s Joan’s job as one blessed by the Orisha Ogun to protect their people with her power to manipulate metals. Fae creatures that feast on the bones and blood of humans are growing bolder and stronger now that the Pact forged to keep them in their own realm has been broken. Since iron is the only defense against Fae folks, Joan’s gift is critical in the fight against them. But Titanea, queen of the Fae, has risen from t

AN AMERICAN BEAUTY

Arabella Yarrington is helping to support her family in post–Civil War Richmond when Collis Potter Huntington, an industrialist and railroad tycoon, happens to visit the gambling saloon where she serves champagne to patrons. Immediately attracted to the woman 30 years his junior, Collis begins visiting the boardinghouse Belle’s mother owns. Quick to spot an opportunity to help her family escape the grinding struggle to make ends meet, Belle sets about using Collis’ affection to secure financial

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR

Parker, the author of Magical Negro, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, is good at snappy titles, clever formulations, and bitter humor, all of which are on display in these provocative and personal reflections, structured as a kind of symphony of themes and metaphors. One of the central images is the slave ship, which features in essays with titles like “Everything Is a Slave Ship: Rupture” and “Strategies for Boat Repair: A Guide to Reparations.” Positing that “a Bla