Hesta Web, with her hot red hair and her tough, guarded coldness, is trapped with a mother who hates her and a father who is mostly away earning money on an oil rig. When Hesta discovers that her mother and her mother's lover have had rampant sex in Hesta's bed, she absconds with her friend Janey to the seaside. It is the last day of the season, sun bright and sea sparkling. The bars and shops are open, the funfair spins round with shrieks and shouts. As night falls, the illuminations go on. But when Janey catches the last train to London, Hesta stays behind. She falls in with the gothic-looking, unpleasantly attractive Skilt and his subject colony of junkies and beggars. In a rotting hotel on the front, among the broken marble balustrades, the mouse-eaten rooms and the bonfire in the ballroom, Hesta takes up her new life. She hears drugged legends told beside the fire, the rumours of ghosts and the strangeness of the sea. For now the season has ended, the seaside is deserted, the illuminations are switched off, this place is very strange. Does Skilt know its secret? Should Hesta be wary of the blond man who watches her from the pier? And what happens when the lights go out? It's dark.

'A powerful and truthful story about hope and how to find it' The Times 'A gem of a book' Emily Maitlis Emma's husband Chris is fretting about starvation and societal collapse. He's turned off the heating and is stockpiling off-label medicines and tins of baked beans. Chris, certain that society will soon spiral to its doom, finds Emma's optimism exasperating. Emma finds Chris's obsession with disaster relentless. She's beginning to wonder whether relationships, like mortgages, should be conducted in five-year increments. But when Chris's mother turns up for a visit, the cracks begin to show. Will Emma and Chris be able to find their way back to each other?

“A twisty, captivating, edge-of-your-seat read.” —Megan Miranda, bestselling author of All the Missing Girls “Creepy and oh so clever!” —Alice Feeney, bestselling author of Sometimes I Lie A woman is forced to question her own identity in this riveting and emotionally charged thriller by the blockbuster bestselling author of The Good Girl, Mary Kubica Jessie Sloane is on the path to rebuilding her life after years of caring for her ailing mother. She rents a new apartment and applies for college. But when the college informs her that her social security number has raised a red flag, Jessie discovers a shocking detail that causes her to doubt everything she’s ever known. Finding herself suddenly at the center of a bizarre mystery, Jessie tumbles down a rabbit hole, which is only exacerbated by grief and a relentless lack of sleep. As days pass and the insomnia worsens, it plays with Jessie’s mind. Her judgment is blurred, her thoughts are hampered by fatigue. Jessie begins to see things until she can no longer tell the difference between what’s real and what she’s only imagined. Meanwhile, twenty years earlier and two hundred and fifty miles away, another woman’s split-second decision may hold the key to Jessie’s secret past. Has Jessie’s whole life been a lie or have her delusions gotten the best of her? Don't miss Mary Kubica's chilling upcoming novel, She's Not Sorry, where an ICU nurse accidentally uncovers a patient's frightening past... Look for these other edge-of-your-seat thrillers by New York Times bestselling author Mary Kubica: The Good Girl Pretty Baby Don’t You Cry Every Last Lie The Other Mrs. Local Woman Missing Just The Nicest Couple She's Not Sorry

Sometimes the strangest of people become the ones you need to survive the end of the world. With only a few weeks left until the Texas-sized asteroid hits the Earth, Jack and Marie try to live peacefully in their retirement development despite the world falling apart around them. When the electricity goes out for everyone, Jack and Marie cope with the new struggle. Not everyone, though. Strange old, child-like Astrid and her overly-mature grandson Darren still have power. Power beyond Jack and Marie’s understanding. Buy When the Lights Go Out, a short sci-fi short story from the Auts Series, and discover unexpected salvation.

Blythe Padgett isn't thrilled her roommate's arranged a blind date for her. It also doesn't help that she forgets to tell Blythe his name. So when she runs into a sexy stranger in their building during a blackout, Blythe assumes it's him. Luckily he's hot—so hot, she sheds both her inhibitions and her clothes! But when the lights come back on, she finds out he wasn't her date after all…! Getting stuck in an elevator isn't how reporter Max Laughton expected to meet his date. He's especially surprised when the cute little redhead propositions him that same evening! Fortunately, Max has always had trouble saying no! Then, when he finds out he slept with the wrong woman, Max doesn't think there's a problem. Now he just has to convince Blythe how right things can be between them!

In October 2003, I became a victim of traumatic brain injury. Thats when I was hit and dragged by a pickup truck while riding a Big Wheel trike at a friends party. Emergency brain surgery saved my life, but I lost a portion of the back part of my brain. At the age of ten, I had to learn how to breathe, swallow, talk, eat, stand, sit, walkeverything all over again. Traumatic brain injury is one of the leading causes of disability among children, yet, because of the complexity of the brain, experts still have much to learn about how to treat TBI. In When the Lights Go Out, I describe my therapieswhats worked, what hasnt, and whyand share how I learned to cope with the emotional and psychological challenges. In the process, I have discovered the critical roles that faith in God, love of family, the healing power of friends, and the inherent goodness of people all played in my ability to triumph over overwhelming odds. I have also learned that a horrific accident has given me an amazing gift. When the Lights Go Out is an expression of that gift.

This book is a collection of abstract poetry encompassing a wide range of subjects and styles. It represents a personal reflection on love, death, existentialism, and language itself. All poems are written in a unique style of conjunction, which all but avoids the use of punctuation.

A blackout gives this straitlaced executive the chance to break the rules…in USA TODAY bestselling author Jules Bennett’s scorching new series, Angel's Share! What happens in the dark won’t stay in the dark— when business partners cross the line… Distillery executive Elise Hawthorne always puts business first. No way she’ll gamble a lucrative partnership for one night of pleasure. But when a storm outage strands her with VIP client Antonio Rodriguez, he awakens a passion Elise can’t ignore. Continuing their clandestine affair when the lights come back on puts everything she’s worked for at risk. And now a family secret could blow up her life and cost her the most priceless merger of all… From Harlequin Desire: A luxurious world of bold encounters and sizzling chemistry. You’ll be swept away by this bold, sizzling romance, part of the Angel's Share series: Book 1: When the Lights Go Out... Book 2: Second Chance Vows

A love letter to a sport that's losing itself, from one of Canada's best sports writers. Canadian hockey is approaching a state of crisis. It's become more expensive, more exclusive, and effectively off-limits to huge swaths of the potential sports-loving population. Youth registration numbers are stagnant; efforts to appeal to new Canadians are often grim at best; the game, increasingly, does not resemble the country of which it's for so long been an integral part. These signs worried Sean Fitz-Gerald. As a lifelong hockey fan and father of a young mixed-race son falling headlong in love with the game, he wanted to get to the roots of these issues. His entry point: a season with the Peterborough Petes, a storied OHL team far from its former glory in a once-emblematic Canadian city that is finding itself on the wrong side of the country's changing demographics. Fitz-Gerald profiles the players, coaches and front office staff, a mix of world-class talents with NHL aspirations and Peterborough natives happy with more modest dreams. Through their experiences, their widely varied motivations and expectations, we get a rich, colourful understanding of who ends up playing hockey in Canada and why. Fitz-Gerald interweaves the action of the season with portraits of public figures who've shaped and been shaped by the game: authors who captured its spirit, politicians who exploited it, and broadcasters who try to embody and sell it. He finds his way into community meetings full of angry season ticket holders, as well as into sterile boardrooms full of the sport's institutional brain trust, unable to break away from the inertia of tradition and hopelessly at war with itself. Before the Lights Go Out is a moving, funny, yet unsettling picture of a sport at a crossroads. Fitz-Gerald's warm but rigorous journalistic approach reads, in the end, like a letter to a troubled friend: it's not too late to save hockey in this country, but who has the will to do it?

A harrowing and spellbinding story about family, the complications of mixed-race relationships, misplaced loyalties, and the price athletes pay to entertain—from the critically acclaimed author of Three-Fifths Xavier “Scarecrow” Wallace, a mixed-race MMA fighter on the wrong side of thirty, is facing the fight of his life. Xavier can no longer deny he is losing his battle with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), or pugilistic dementia. Through the fog of memory loss, migraines, and paranoia, Xavier does his best to stay in shape by training at the Philadelphia gym owned by his cousin-cum-manager, Shot, a retired champion boxer to whom Xavier owes an unpayable debt. Xavier makes ends meet while he waits for the call that will reinstate him after a year-long suspension by teaching youth classes at Shot’s gym and by living rent-free in the house of his white father, whom Xavier was forced to commit to a nursing home. The progress of Sam Wallace’s end-stage Alzheimer’s has revealed his latent racism, and Xavier finally gains insight into why his Black mother left the family years ago. Then Xavier is offered a chance at redemption: a last-minute high-profile comeback fight. If he can get himself back in the game, he’ll be able to clear his name and begin to pay off Shot. With his memory in shreds and his life crumbling around him, can Xavier hold on to the focus he needs to survive? John Vercher, author of the Edgar and Anthony Award–nominated Three-Fifths, offers a gripping, psychologically astute, and explosive tour de force about race, entertainment, and healthcare in America, and about one man’s battle against himself.