Mental Fiction

While her mother, aerobics queen Kiki Sparks, spends the summer touring Europe, 15-year-old Colie Sparks is stuck in sleepy Colby, North Carolina. But she's not complaining. For one thing, her Aunt Mira is a sweet, laid-back eccentric; for another, no one knows that back home in Charlotte Colie is seen as a formerly-fat "golf-course slut," the school scapegoat. Then, by fate or by accident, Colie lands a waitressing job, where she meets Morgan and Isabel.

Meet Aimee Sinclair: the actress everyone thinks they know but can’t remember where from. Except one person. Someone knows Aimee very well. They know who she is and they know what she did. When Aimee comes home and discovers her husband is missing, she doesn’t seem to know what to do or how to act. The police think she’s hiding something and they’re right, she is - but perhaps not what they thought. Aimee has a secret she’s never shared, and yet, she suspects that someone knows.

Oliver Sacks' compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people. He explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day. Yet far more frequently, music goes right....

On the Fourth of July, Hallie Evers dies at a rooftop party in Las Vegas. Hours later, she wakes up in the hospital, disoriented but alive. Why can’t she find the doctor who revived her? Why does her head feel crowded and loud? Why do her memories feel both foreign and familiar? Her self-doubt spirals into crippling paranoia.

Michael used to live to game, but the games he was playing have become all too real. Only weeks ago, sinking into the Sleep was fun. The VirtNet combined the most cutting-edge technology and the most sophisticated gaming for a full mind-body experience. And it was Michael’s passion. But now every time Michael sinks, he risks his life.

Now in his sixties, big-wave surfer Joe Sharkey has passed his prime and is losing his “stoke.” The younger surfers around the breaks on the north shore of Oahu still idolize the Shark, but his sponsors are looking elsewhere. One night, while driving home from a bar after one too many, Joe accidentally kills a stranger near Waimea, a tragedy that sends his life out of control. As the repercussions of the accident spiral ever wider, Joe's devoted girlfriend, Olive, throws herself into uncovering the dead man’s identity and helping Joe find vitality and refuge in the waves again.

Meet Rochelle “Elle” Evans: Pretty, popular - and never been kissed. Meet Noah Flynn: Badass, volatile - and a total player. When Elle decides to run a kissing booth at her school's Spring Carnival, she locks lips with Noah and her life is turned upside down. Her head says to keep away, but her heart wants to draw closer. This romance seems far from a fairy tale. Is Elle headed for heartbreak or will she get her happily ever after?

The town of Wirrawee is emerging from war, slowly, like a flower after a cold snap. Businesses are starting to reopen, the school has re-commenced classes, and local farmers are gradually repossessing their land. But it's not the same Australia as before the war. A new nation exists just a few miles away, a new border that separates Australia from its invaders. Or does it?

When Silla and Nori arrive at their aunt's home, it's immediately clear that the "blood manor" is cursed. The creaking of the house and the stillness of the woods surrounding them would be enough of a sign, but there are secrets, too - the questions that Silla can't ignore: Who is the beautiful boy who's appeared from the woods? Who is the man her little sister sees, but no one else? And why does it seem that ever since they arrived, the trees have been creeping closer?

After a lifetime of being bullied, Daelyn is broken beyond repair. She has tried to kill herself before, and is determined to get it right this time. Though her parents think they can protect her, she finds a Web site for "completers" that seems made just for her. She blogs on its forums, purging her harrowing history. At her private Catholic school, the only person who interacts with her is a boy named Santana. No matter how poorly she treats him, he just won’t leave her alone. And it's too late for Daelyn to be letting people into her life...isn’t it?

It's been three months since The Night on the Bathroom Floor--when Lily found her older sister Alice hurting herself. Ever since then, Lily has been desperately trying to keep things together, for herself and for her family. But now Alice is coming home from her treatment program and it is becoming harder for Lily to ignore all of the feelings she's been trying to outrun.

Eighteen-year-old Ziva prefers metal to people. She spends her days tucked away in her forge, safe from society and the anxiety it causes her, using her magical gift to craft unique weapons imbued with power. Then Ziva receives a commission from a powerful warlord, and the result is a sword capable of stealing its victims secrets. A sword that can cut far deeper than the length of its blade. A sword with the strength to topple kingdoms. When Ziva learns of the warlord’s intentions to use the weapon to enslave all the world under her rule, she takes her sister and flees.

There’s bad news and good news about the Cutter High School swim team. The bad news is that they don’t have a pool. The good news is that only one of them can swim anyway. A group of misfits brought together by T. J. Jones (the J is redundant), the Cutter All Night Mermen struggle to find their places in a school that has no place for them. T.J. is convinced that a varsity letter jacket - exclusive, revered, the symbol (as far as T.J. is concerned) of all that is screwed up at Cutter High - will also be an effective tool.

A little girl and her mother haunted by mental illness become entangled in the paranoia of the early 1990s Satanic Panic.

“This tale is so action-packed! You'll love the supporting cast, the setup, the mystery, and the inevitable solve with plenty of surprises - a fast-paced fun read!” –Kay Smith-Blum, author of Tangles Josh Lowenstein is back! Although reluctant to utilize his unique but problematic Watching talents again, his ability to travel through space and time, he finds himself profoundly affected by a photograph of a painting stolen by the Nazis during WWII. Along with Watchings, this time Josh also experiences a new paranormal pheonomenon–visits–as he ventures into the past to discover the ...

Dallas, Dealey Plaza, 1963. Nineteen-year-old Mariah Byrne is following her dream of a career in photography. One moment she’s filled with joy and hope watching the president and Mrs. Kennedy drive past. In the next, the world—and Mariah’s life—is split into before and after. What follows, and the unconventional decisions Mariah makes, will affect her and her family forever.

Seventeen is nothing like Codi Teller imagined. She’s never crashed a party, never stayed out too late. She’s never even been kissed. And it’s not just because she’s gay. It’s because she and her two best friends, Maritza and JaKory, spend more time in her basement watching Netflix than engaging with the outside world. So when Maritza and JaKory suggest crashing a party, Codi is highly skeptical. Those parties aren’t for kids like them. They’re for cool kids. Straight kids. But then, Codi stumbles upon one of those cool kids, Ricky, kissing another boy.

Julián Luna has a plan for his life: Graduate. Get into UCLA. And have the chance to move away from Corpus Christi, Texas, and the suffocating expectations of others that have forced Jules into an inauthentic life. Then in one reckless moment, with one impulsive tweet, his plans for a low-key nine months are thrown - literally - out the closet. The downside: the whole world knows, and Jules has to prepare for rejection. The upside: Jules now has the opportunity to be his real self. Then Mat, a cute, empathetic Twitter crush from Los Angeles, slides into Jules’s DMs.

"5 out of 5 stars. I highly recommend Nutshell to fans of medical thrillers and psychological novels." –Online Book Club During Dust Bowl days in west Texas, a country doctor with shaky credentials delivers a baby, a so-called "monster," acceptable parlance of that era indicating a newborn with multiple birth defects. Later, Ivy Pettibone is mistakenly thought schizophrenic due to her garbled speech, landing her in a mental institution. There, she weaponizes one of her unusual birth defects, allowing her to emerge as an alpha female among the inmates. In a parallel story merging decades ...

High school quarterback and town golden boy Brady used to be the best of friends with Willa - she even had a crush on him when they were kids. But that's all changed now: Her life choices have made her a different person from the girl he used to know. Gunner used to be friends with Willa and Brady, too. He, too, is larger than life and a high school football star - not to mention that his family basically owns the town of Lawton. He loves his life and doesn't care about anyone except himself. But Willa is the exception.