A fictionalized account of real life Canadian serial killer Willie Pickton and his final victim. In the debut novel of award-winning essayist, Melissa Chadburn, we follow the life of Filipina foster youth Marina Salles and are submerged in the confluence of violence and empathy, fabulism and realism. A story of how both victim and monster emerge from the same world.

"One man's disappearance throws four women's lives into chaos -- and not all will survive. Vicki works as an aromatherapist, healing her clients out of her home studio with her special blends of essential oils. She's just finishing a session when the police arrive on her doorstep -- her ex-husband David has gone missing. Vicki insists she last saw him years ago when they divorced, but the police clearly don't believe her. And her memory's hardly reliable...

After a string of foster homes and the death of her heroin-addict mother, Lexi Baill is taken in by a newly discovered great-aunt who lives a spartan life near Seattle. Lexi soon meets Mia and her loving twin brother, Zach. The friendship flourishes, and Mia's mother draws Lexi into the family circle. A slowly growing attraction between Zach and Lexi begins, but then Lexi, Mia, and Zach collectively make a bad decision that results in a tragedy with...

Ceit Robertson's power emerged at an early age, and she's assumed to be next in line to lead her family's Celtic magick community. When her mother becomes afflicted by dark beings called the Sluagh, Ceit tries to save her mother's soul and is revealed to possess more power than anyone imagined. Cait is effectively orphaned, with her mother catatonic and her father too distraught to care for her. Members of a Satanic temple are awed by Ceit and decide...

"A spare, lyrical Native American coming of age story set in rural Oklahoma in the late 1980s. With his single mother in jail, Sequoyah, a fifteen-year-old Cherokee boy, is placed in foster care with the Troutt family. Literally and figuratively scarred by his unstable upbringing, Sequoyah has spent years mostly keeping to himself, living with his emotions pressed deep below the surface--that is, until he meets the seventeen-year-old Rosemary, another...

Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett's teenage daughter, Sheridan, receives a text message with a staggering implication: that April, the foster daughter thought to have died 6 years ago in a massacre, is still alive. If it really is April who's texting, she's in danger, and for Pickett, the only thing worse than losing her the first time would be losing her again. Pickett must negotiate FBI politics, recruit his fugitive friend Nate Romanowski, and take...

"From the award-winning author of Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away, the story of a young boy who believes two things: that his Nigerian birth mother loves him like the world has never known love, and that he is possessed by a wizard. Elijah, seven years old, is covered in scars and has a history of disruptive behavior. Taken away from his birth mother, a Nigerian immigrant in England, Elijah is moved from one foster parent to the next before finding a home...

"Jazz and Joaquin's foster mother, Carol, has always been fanatical, but with Jazz grown up and out of the house, Carol takes a dangerous turn that threatens thirteen-year-old Joaquin's life. Over and over, child services fails to intervene, and Joaquin is running out of time. Then Jazz gets a blocked call from someone offering a solution. There are others like her--people the law has failed. They've formed an underground network of 'helpers', each...

When Koby Hill and Keaton Rutledge were orphaned at age two, they were separated, but their unbreakable connection lingered. Years later, they reunite and decide to make up for lost time and capitalize on their shared interests by opening up a well-stocked bookstore and cozy soul-food café in the quaint Pacific Northwest town of Timber Lake. But this new chapter of their lives could end on a cliffhanger after Koby's foster brother is found murdered....

Brutally separated from her younger siblings after her clergy parents were killed in a car crash and posthumously accused of theft, 16-year-old Hope Prescott has neither forgotten nor given up trying to find her family. Now, seven years later, going to college and working at a telephone answering service, she falls for a delightful "butler" and ends up charming and changing the life of a powerful man who is determined enough to help her locate her...