An astute short story that challenges the formulaic and inhumane murder mysteries of television. A body is found floating in the bottom of a swimming pool. The police have no leads. Might the nosy cleaner have a theory about this strange case? After all, she is well used to reading the mess that people leave lying all around. Award-winning writer Fiona Farrell offers a refreshing take on death and justice in this intriguing mystery.

“A delightfully weird and very queer reimagining of 90s YA nostalgia.” —Autostraddle "Queer dynamite." —Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things Finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction Meet Margaret. At age twelve, she was head detective of the mystery club Girls Can Solve Anything. Margaret and her three best friends led exciting lives solving crimes, having adventures, and laughing a lot. But now that she's entered high school, the club has disbanded, and Margaret is unmoored—she doesn't want to grow up, and she wishes her friends wouldn't either. Instead, she opts out, developing an eating disorder that quickly takes over her life. When she lands in a treatment center, Margaret finds her path to recovery twisting sideways as she pursues a string of new mysteries involving a ghost, a hidden passage, disturbing desires, and her own vexed relationship with herself. Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body reimagines nineties adolescence—mashing up girl group series, choose-your-own-adventures, and chronicles of anorexia—in a queer and trans coming-of-age tale like no other. An interrogation of girlhood and nostalgia, dysmorphia and dysphoria, this debut novel puzzles through the weird, ever-evasive questions of growing up.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The disappearance of a beautiful, charismatic mother leaves her family to piece together her secrets in this propulsive novel for fans of Big Little Lies—from the bestselling author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything and the upcoming Pretty Things. “Watch Me Disappear is just as riveting as Gone Girl.”—San Francisco Chronicle Who you want people to be makes you blind to who they really are. It’s been a year since Billie Flanagan—a Berkeley mom with an enviable life—went on a solo hike in Desolation Wilderness and vanished from the trail. Her body was never found, just a shattered cellphone and a solitary hiking boot. Her husband and teenage daughter have been coping with Billie’s death the best they can: Jonathan drinks as he works on a loving memoir about his marriage; Olive grows remote, from both her father and her friends at the all-girls school she attends. But then Olive starts having strange visions of her mother, still alive. Jonathan worries about Olive’s emotional stability, until he starts unearthing secrets from Billie’s past that bring into question everything he thought he understood about his wife. Who was the woman he knew as Billie Flanagan? Together, Olive and Jonathan embark on a quest for the truth—about Billie, but also about themselves, learning, in the process, about all the ways that love can distort what we choose to see. Janelle Brown’s insights into the dynamics of intimate relationships will make you question the stories you tell yourself about the people you love, while her nervy storytelling will keep you guessing until the very last page. Praise for Watch Me Disappear “Watch Me Disappear is a surprising and compelling read. Like the best novels, it takes the reader somewhere she wouldn’t otherwise allow herself to go. . . . It’s strongest in the places that matter most: in the believability of its characters and the irresistibility of its plot.”—Chicago Tribune “Janelle Brown’s third family drama delivers an incisive and emotional view of how grief and recovery from loss can seep into each aspect of a person’s life. . . . Brown imbues realism in each character, whose complicated emotions fuel the suspenseful story.”—Associated Press “When a Berkeley mother vanishes and is declared dead, her daughter is convinced she’s alive in Janelle Brown’s thriller, calling to mind Big Little Lies and Gone Girl.”—Variety

From fifteen of New Zealand's finest short-fiction practitioners come stories to delight, amuse and move. These stories have been gathered from a range of titles, published in recent years by Vintage New Zealand and commended by readers and reviewers alike. Owen Marshall is regularly described as New Zealand's finest living short-story writer and his subtle story included here is testament to his skill. Peter Hawes presents a wickedly funny story alongside an amusing and intriguing tale from Craig Cliff's Commonwealth Prize winning collection A Man Melting. There are two very different stories playing with the genre of crime writing, from Julian Novitz and Fiona Farrell, about whom one reviewer wrote: 'she has the rare ability of turning the mundane events of domestic life into profound human experiences'. The stories range from New Zealand settings, such as Shonagh Koea's 'Rain', to stories set in America, Australia, Russia, Morocco and the Galapagos Islands, among other places. Montana Award winner Charlotte Grimshaw is represented by a vivid story of a childhood experience in France, her short story collections having been twice placed in the prestigious Frank O'Connor shortlist. Among the many other prize-winning authors, Fiona Kidman has also had a collection, The Trouble with Fire, shortlisted for this award, and the story included here is from that fine book. Sue Orr's story 'Recreation' comes from From Under the Overcoat, which won the 2012 People's Choice Award at the NZ Post Book Awards. While Sue Orr's story is a contemporary riff on a Maori myth, there are several stories touching on the war, of recent travel, of colonial appropriation, of love and friendship. Other stories are by Witi Ihimaera, Stephanie Johnson, Sarah Laing, Carl Nixon, Sarah Quigley and Peter Wells. A fabulous smorgasbord to satisfy every taste.

A provocative and insightful exploration of rebuilding our homes, communities and cities after their devastation. Where are we? How did we get here? Where do we go now? From nineteenth-century attempts to create Utopias to America’s rustbelt, from Darwin’s study of worms to China’s phantom cities, this work ranges widely through history and around the world. It examines the evolution of cities and of Christchurch in particular, looking at its swampy origins and its present reconstruction following the recent destructive earthquakes. And it takes us to L’Aquila in Italy to observe another shaken city. Farrell writes as a citizen caught up in a devastated city in an era when political ideology has transformed the citizen to ‘an asset, the raw material on which . . . empire makes its profit’. In a hundred tiny pieces, she comments on contentious issues, such as the fate of a cathedral, the closure of schools, the role of insurers, the plans for civic venues. Through personal observation, conversations with friends, a close reading of everything from the daily newspaper to records of other upheavals in Pompeii and Berlin, this dazzling book explores community, the love of place and, ultimately, regeneration and renewal.

"Roll over Maigret. Commissaire Dupin has arrived." —M.C. Beaton on Death in Brittany "Very satisfying...along the lines of Martin Walker’s novels set in Dordogne, or M.L. Longworth’s Aix-en-Provence mysteries." —Booklist on Murder on Brittany Shores The Missing Corpse is internationally bestselling author, Jean-Luc Bannalec’s fourth novel in the Commissaire Dupin series. It’s picturesque, suspenseful, and the next best thing to a trip to Brittany. Along the picturesque Belon River, home of the world famous oyster beds, between steep cliffs, ominous forests and the Atlantic Ocean, a stubborn elderly film actress discovers a corpse. By the time Commissaire Dupin arrives at the scene, the body has disappeared. A little while later, he receives a phone call from the mystical hills of Monts d'Arree, where legends of fairies and the devil abound: another unidentified body has turned up. Dupin quickly realizes this may be his most difficult and confounding case yet, with links to celtic myths, a sand theft operation, and mysterious ancient druid cults.

Some years ago New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph Crater walked out of his office, turned south along Broadway, and disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again.. There were headlines, public clamor and widespread excitement, but the true-life case was never solved. Something of that same breathless mystery is aroused in this story when Stephen P. Wyndham, internationally known sportsman and last in a line of a rich and respected New York family, vanishes into the gloom of a drizzly Havana night. What is behind the grim crime in that fashionable hotel room? Why would a popular young sporting idol drop blankly from existence? Follow in the steps of the ambitious young newspaperman, as he pieces together a set of mocking clues that lead through murder and violence, all the way from a sedate Murray Hill mansion to a lonely tropical waterfront. As he works to solve The Case of the Missing Corpse he encounters a varied cast of characters: an erratic spinster, a beautiful dancer, a prominent judge, a movie director, fisherfolk, and gangsters. To get to the bottom of it all, our newspaper must sift the treacherous characters from the sincere, hoping beyond hope that he will be able to solve the riddle of Stephen Wyndham’s disappearance and write the story of a lifetime.

(www.canammissing.com- missing person site)Author David Paulides has released the sixth installment in his best selling series, Missing 411. The books have revealed the names and facts behind people who have disappeared in the national parks and forests of the world. The identification of over 59 geographical clusters of missing people in North America is one of the mysterious, unsettling and unexplained elements in the Missing 411 series. Missing 411- Hunters explains a subset of the research and documents 148 cases of hunters who have vanished in four countries. The incidents parallel other disappearances documented in prior Missing 411 books. The vast majority of the cases in this edition are new and they don't appear in other books in the series. The mystery and stories of the victims will baffle and confound the avid outdoorsman and seasoned hunter.Countries Included:United States- 26 StatesCanada- 9 ProvincesAustraliaAzerbaijianDisappearances Documented:148348 PagesOther Books in the Series:Missing 411- Western United StatesMissing 411- Eastern United StatesMissing 411- North America and BeyondMissing 411- The Devil's in the DetailMissing 411- A Sobering Coincidencewww.canammissing.com

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A must-read owner’s manual for every body. Take a head-to-toe tour of the marvel that is the human body in this “delightful, anecdote-propelled read” (The Boston Globe) from the author of A Short History of Nearly Everything. With a new Afterword. “You will marvel at the brilliance and vast weirdness of your design." —The Washington Post Bill Bryson once again proves himself to be an incomparable companion as he guides us through the human body—how it functions, its remarkable ability to heal itself, and (unfortunately) the ways it can fail. Full of extraordinary facts (your body made a million red blood cells since you started reading this) and irresistible Brysonesque anecdotes, The Body will lead you to a deeper understanding of the miracle that is life in general and you in particular. As Bill Bryson writes, “We pass our existence within this wobble of flesh and yet take it almost entirely for granted.” The Body will cure that indifference with generous doses of wondrous, compulsively readable facts and information. As addictive as it is comprehensive, this is Bryson at his very best.

From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes incredible stories of science, history, finance, mythology, the arts, medicine, and more, as told by the Periodic Table. Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why is gallium (Ga, 31) the go-to element for laboratory pranksters? The Periodic Table is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of adventure, betrayal, and obsession. These fascinating tales follow every element on the table as they play out their parts in human history, and in the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them. The Disappearing Spoon masterfully fuses science with the classic lore of invention, investigation, and discovery -- from the Big Bang through the end of time. Though solid at room temperature, gallium is a moldable metal that melts at 84 degrees Fahrenheit. A classic science prank is to mold gallium spoons, serve them with tea, and watch guests recoil as their utensils disappear.