EMPTY ROOMS What is it about empty rooms, what lingering presence is sensed when you walk in, what dark secrets do the silent walls hold... Thirteen authors have come up with innovative and dark stories on this theme, guaranteed to stay in your mind. MISSING What's missing, who's missing, how did they/it go missing... another themed collection from talented Thirteen authors who have delved into the depths of their dark imaginations and produced a range of stories to haunt your sleep.

"If the dying body makes us flinch and look away, struggling not to see what we have seen, the lost body disappears from cultural view, buried along with the sensory traces of its corporeal presence."—from the Introduction American popular culture conducts a passionate love affair with the healthy, fit, preferably beautiful body, and in recent years theories of embodiment have assumed importance in various scholarly disciplines. But what of the dying or dead body? Why do we avert our gaze, speak of it only as absence? This thoughtful and beautifully written book—illustrated with photographs by Shellburne Thurber and other remarkable images—finds a place for the dying and lost body in the material, intellectual, and imaginary spaces of contemporary American culture. Laura E. Tanner focuses her keen attention on photographs of AIDS patients and abandoned living spaces; newspaper accounts of September 11; literary works by Don DeLillo, Donald Hall, Sharon Olds, Marilynne Robinson, and others; and material objects, including the AIDS Quilt. She analyzes the way in which these representations of the body reflect current cultural assumptions, revealing how Americans read, imagine, and view the dynamics of illness and loss. The disavowal of bodily dimensions of death and grief, she asserts, deepens rather than mitigates the isolation of the dying and the bereaved. Lost Bodies will speak to anyone imperiled by the threat of loss.

With Empty Rooms, bestselling award-winning novelist Jeffrey J. Mariotte introduces crime savant Krebbs and obsessive comic book fan Robey, who will quickly join the ranks of the most beloved heroes of thriller literature. Richie Krebbs is an ex-cop, a walking encyclopedia of crime and criminals who chafes at bureaucracy. Frank Robey quit the FBI and joined the Detroit PD, obsessed with the case of a missing child and unwilling to leave the city before she was found. When Richie unearths a possible clue in one of Detroit’s many abandoned homes, it puts him on a collision course with Frank—and with depths of depravity that neither man could have imagined. How do people who dwell in the darkest places—by profession or predilection—maintain their connection to the world of light and humanity? Richie and Frank will need every coping mechanism at their disposal to survive their descent into darkness and emerge unbroken on the other side. "This is not a book for the timid or easily shocked...despite this, Empty Rooms remains a highly recommended read.” —Mystery Scene

Each year, hundreds of thousands of people are reported missing in the United States alone. The majority of those who disappear turn up within a week, but a small percentage are never heard from again. Why did a Swedish teenager on an Australian adventure mail a cryptic letter to his family in Stockholm before disappearing forever? What became of a young woman whose car was found crashed and abandoned off a cliffside in Whatcom County, Washington? How can an individual vanish without a trace in a world so connected and monitored? This book explores ten unsolved missing persons cases from around the world, from a 12-year-old British boy who purchased a one-way ticket to London King's Cross never to return, to an American traveler who walked into the Himalayas not to be seen again. Included are exclusive interviews, statistical information and a case-by-case analysis of the most common and probable theories for each disappearance.

The arrival of those twenty Africans, though they were not the first Africans in America, represented the vanguard of an institution and an industry that would, for 246 years, survive in the unkempt median lying between the merging lanes of the sociopolitical practices of the past and the oncoming traffic of advancing sociopolitical concepts of the future. Unlike the simple annotation in Rolfe's diary announcing the arrival of the 1619 Africans, the concept of advanced sociopolitical thinking arrived on the scene with the proverbial bang. Whereas Rolfe's announcement was a precursor to the institution of slavery, the new concept of natural individual rights was a precursor of its demise. Entering the sociopolitical spectrum from the lanes of evolving religious freedom, the notion of the natural rights of the individual was ultimately destined to clash with slavery's abject denial of such rights. The convergence of these two events, as though engaged in a turf war over morality, would, years later, crash into each other with the sound of cannon fire.

The younger sister of a boy who died in his teens of a rare autoimmune disease describes the loving bond they shared and draws on interviews with more than two hundred sibling survivors to consider the complex emotional impact of losing a brother or sister. 35,000 first printing.

The inspiration for the Peacock Original series The Calling, streaming now! "A tense, gripping page-turner that I devoured in two days—it’s hard to believe it’s a debut.” — S.J. Watson, New York Times bestselling author of Before I Go to Sleep Israeli detective Avraham Avraham must find a teenage boy gone missing from the suburbs of Tel Aviv in this first volume in the thrilling crime series by D. A. Mishani. Crimes in Avraham’s quiet suburb are generally not all that complex. But when a sixteen-year-old boy goes missing and a schoolteacher offers up a baffling complication, Avraham finds himself questioning everything he thought he knew about his life. Told through alternating points of view, The Missing File is an emotionally wrought, character-driven page-turner with plenty of twists and turns. It’s a mystery that will leave readers questioning the notions of innocence and guilt, and the nebulous nature of truth.

Single mom Betsy Holmes gets more drama than she bargained for when her mother Claudia drops a bomb that rocks her to the core: Betsy's father wasn't alone the night of his fatal car crash three years ago. Determined to prove Claudia wrong, Betsy investigates—and in the process she uncovers some disturbing family secrets that will change her life forever. "... goes further than the regular whodunit and delves into the hilarity that is family life"—Louise Woods (Readers' Favorite five-star review) Fans of chick-lit mysteries will love Lost Witness. Read it today!

In a single night, the company goes bankrupt and my girlfriend disappears. Frustrated, I wander to the northern seaside city and in order to survive, I enter a business to work. To think that the CEO is actually the beauty I flirted with ...An unknown nobody, rising from the bottom to challenge all kinds of dark forces. The cold and beautiful CEO couldn't stand to be conquered.

"With nimble pacing, genuine scares, and a riveting central mystery, Graveyard of Lost Children is a bonafide page-tuner." —Rachel Harrison, author of Cackle and Such Sharp Teeth ONCE SHE HAS HER GRIP ON YOU, SHE'LL NEVER LET YOU GO. At four months old, Olivia Dahl was almost murdered. Driven by haunting visions, her mother became obsessed with the idea that Olivia was a changeling, and that the only way to get her real baby back was to make a trade with the "dead women" living at the bottom of the well. Now Olivia is ready to give birth to a daughter of her own...and for the first time, she hears the women whispering. Everyone tells Olivia she should be happy. She should be glowing, but the birth of her daughter only fills Olivia with dread. As Olivia's body starts giving out, slowly deteriorating as the baby eats and eats and eats, she begins to fear that the baby isn't her daughter at all and, despite her best efforts, history is repeating itself. Soon images of a black-haired woman plague Olivia's nightmares, drawing her back to the well that almost claimed her life—tying mother and daughter together in a desperate cycle of fear and violence that must be broken if Olivia has any hope of saving her child...or herself. Baby Teeth meets The Invited in a haunting horror novel about the sometimes-fragile connection between a woman's sense of self and what it means to be a "good" mother.