These books feature characters and content for adults.
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The Maidens: Entertaining enough
After a murderer strikes the college her niece attends, psychotherapist Mariana feels determined to discover the killer.
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The Six Deaths of the Saint: The best short story
The Saint of War spares the life of a servant girl so she can fulfill her destiny as the kingdom’s greatest warrior.
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Malibu Rising: Lackluster and slow
This story follows the four Riva siblings over the day leading up to an infamous party that will result in a wildfire.
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The Paris Apartment: An excellent audiobook
Jess arrives at her brother’s apartment in Paris where he’s supposed to be expecting her, but he’s not there. Now she must engage with the strange inhabitants of the building – and their secrets – if she’s going to find out what happened to him.
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One Dark Window: Duology review
In a kingdom where magic is confined to decks of cards and the use of magic comes with a cost, a young woman stumbles into a family that aims to change everything.
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The Heiress: Quick and easy
Camden, the heir to a wealthy estate, and his wife Jules are pulled into the fold of Ashby House, where his despicable family still lives. But questions begin to arise about his adoptive mother, her four dead husbands, and her own mysterious past.
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An Education in Malice: Atmospheric and vampiric
In this erotic horror retelling of “Carmilla” set in the 1960s, Laura is a new college student in St. Perpetua’s writing program, where she is swept up with the seductive and alluring Carmilla, a fellow student, and the professor she’s obsessed with.
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Bluebeard’s Castle: Subversive, but long
A gothic romance writer, Judith, finds herself swept up in a romance with a mysterious man named Gavin who feels like he came right out of one of her books, except it’s not quite what she expected. This is a story about what the reality of a “gothic romance” might look like.
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The Golden Couple: Contrived and underwhelming
An ex-therapist with a revoked license (who still does “consultations”) agrees to help a couple with their struggling marriage, but they’re hiding more lies than she initially thinks.
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Water for Elephants: Captivating and well-written
This story follows a man named Jacob at two different points in this life: when he’s 90 (or 93, he can’t remember) in a nursing home, and back when he joined a circus after a tragic loss in his 20s.
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We Are the Light: Emotional and hopeful
After a community is shaken by a violent tragedy, Lucas, who insists his deceased wife visits him as an angel, forms an unlikely bond with an ostracized young man who has decided to set up camp in Lucas’s backyard.
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Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (Book 2): A charming sequel
The prickly professor Emily Wilde is working on a new project, and is swept onto a new academic adventure to uncover the secrets of Faerie Doors with her former rival, Wendell Bambleby.
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A Curious Beginning: A romantic mystery
After a close call with an intruder, Veronica Speedwell is deposited with a curmudgeonly but handsome fellow scientist for safekeeping, where she must unravel the secrets of her lineage and find out who is out to get her.
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The Tainted Cup: A fantasy detective story
An assistant investigator must solve a string of murders involving trees exploding out of people, a powerful old family, and magical enhancements, all before leviathans destroy the sea wall.
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Station Eleven: The microcosms at the end of the world
When a flu pandemic kills the majority of humans in a short span of time, the ones who are left must contend with a new world. This story follows an interconnected web of people across the years before and after, from a Shakespeare actress in a traveling caravan to a former corporate professional now living…
These books target an audience in the 18-23 age range. New Adult tends to straddle the line, featuring tropes or plot points beloved in Young Adult, but with Adult characters and content.
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A Court of Wings and Ruin (Book 3): The worst of ACOTAR
Book 3 for the A Court of Thorns and Roses series.
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A Court of Mist and Fury (Book 2): The best of ACOTAR
Book 2 of the A Court of Thorns and Roses series.
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A Court of Thorns and Roses (Book 1): A good introduction
A human girl is whisked away to a magical High Lord’s court as retribution for killing one of the Fae.
These books have characters and content for teenagers.
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To Shape a Dragon’s Breath: A superb cozy fantasy
Anequs, an indigenous islander in this fantasy world, is required to attend the colonizer’s school away from her people after a newly-hatched dragon chooses her to be its rider.
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Firekeeper’s Daughter: Entertaining and enlightening
After Daunis witnesses a murder, she becomes a confidential informant to the FBI. As more people in her community die, she becomes increasingly conflicted between protecting her tribe and trusting the feds to solve the crime.
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The Inheritance Games (Book 1): Fun and easy
A teenager learns that a stranger has written her into his will – and that she’s inheriting billions. But there’s a catch.
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Serpent & Dove: Full series review
A young witch, Lou, is forced into marriage to Reid, a witch hunter, while also hiding from her dark and mysterious past.
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Wolf by Wolf: Duology review
In an alternate history where Hitler won, a concentration camp survivor joins a treacherous Hitler Youth motorcycle race with the goal of assassinating the dictator.
