Hearts of Stone by Sam Hall, 464 pages

 When the stone gargoyles in the massive estate I just inherited start to move, I should’ve run for the door, right?

So why am I still standing here?
One, there was a certain cartoon from the 90s that played a pivotal role in my emotional development.
Two, each one of them towers over me, blocking out the light with their massive wings, their serpentine tails flicking as they stalk closer.
And three?
They tell me I’m their fated mate.
That they’re sworn to protect me.
That they’ll do anything to keep me safe.
And if I agree to become theirs?
They’ll spend every night anticipating my every wish and making sure every single one of them come true.
Including the ones I don’t dare admit, even to myself.
But if the gargoyles can perform miracles for me, they can do that for others,
And that puts a target on all of our backs.
People have been trying to harness the power of the gargoyles for centuries
And now that I’ve awake, they won’t stop until all of us fall under their control.

World of Archie Jumbo Comics #134 pages, 225 pages

 TWO BRAND NEW STORIES! Ginger Snapp visits Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe on the eve of Halloween to help Betty & Veronica with costume ideas. As different Riverdale folks stop by, they remember a particular Halloween-related incident around Pop’s food item. Then, when Penny’s boxing instructor, Pug, is charged with a gym owner’s disappearance she teams up with Veronica and Archie to prove him innocent. Will the three be victorious or wind up down for the count themselves?

World of Archie Jumbo Comics #136, 225 pages

 TWO BRAND NEW STORIES! First, an opportunity to model alongside Young Doctor Masters sends Betty and Veronica into a toxic “health” competition until they discover that his “perfect specimen” is someone unexpected. Then, Fran Frazer and romantic rival Hal Davis help Archie and Veronica unmask corruption during an investigation!

Archie Milestones #23 Jughead Spring Time Bash, 225 pages

 Spring is in the air, so smell the flowers (and burgers!) with Jughead in this collection of seasonal stories featuring everyone’s favorite best pal!

Archie Jumbo Comics #352, 225 pages

 BRAND NEW STORY! Sabrina hosts a monster movie night on the beach with Archie and friends, but her nemesis, Amber Nightstone, has other plans!

The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare by Lilian Jackson Braun, 201 pages

 There's something rotten in the small town of Pickax--at least to the sensitive noses of newspaperman Jim Qwilleran and his Siamese cats Koko and Yum Yum. An accident has claimed the life of the local paper's eccentric publisher, but to Qwilleran and his feline friends it smells like murder. They soon sniff out a shocking secret, but Koko's snooping into an unusual edition of Shakespeare may prove CATastrophic...because somewhere in Pickax a lady loves not wisely but too well, a widow is scandalously merry, and a stranger has a lean and hungry look. The stage is set for Qwilleran, Koko, Yum Yum, and the second act of murder most meow...

Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton, 265 pages

 Anita Blake is small, dark, and dangerous. Her turf is the city of St. Louis. Her job: re-animating the dead and killing the undead who take things too far. But when the city’s most powerful vampire asks her to solve a series of vicious slayings, Anita must confront her greatest fear—her undeniable attraction to master vampire Jean-Claude, one of the creatures she is sworn to destroy...

Of Sugar and Snow: A History of Ice Cream by Jeri Quinzio, 279 pages

 Was ice cream invented in Philadelphia? How about by the Emperor Nero, when he poured honey over snow? Did Marco Polo first taste it in China and bring recipes back? In this first book to tell ice cream's full story, Jeri Quinzio traces the beloved confection from its earliest appearances in sixteenth-century Europe to the small towns of America and debunks some colorful myths along the way. She explains how ice cream is made, describes its social role, and connects historical events to its business and consumption. A diverting yet serious work of history, Of Sugar and Snow provides a fascinating array of recipes, from a seventeenth-century Italian lemon sorbet to a twentieth-century American strawberry mallobet, and traces how this once elite status symbol became today's universally available and wildly popular treat.

You're So Dead to Me by Steffanie Holmes, 392 pages

 I’m Bree, and I see dead people.

Not all dead people. Only those with unfinished business. They’re everywhere – I’ll be eating my breakfast and a poisoned heiress glares over my Cheerios, and I can’t even enjoy the wilderness without being accosted by chattering ex-hikers who don’t understand which mushrooms are edible.

I’ve returned to my hometown of Grimdale to cat-sit for my parents while I plan my next move. I’m looking forward to raiding their fridge, hanging out with their two mischievous kittens, and staying far, far away from anything supernatural.

But I forgot that I’m never alone in Grimdale.

The three ghosts I used to play with as a kid are back in my life again. Only now I’m their age and they’re infuriatingly attractive.

There’s the slightly psychotic Roman soldier who loves the Great British Bake Off, the bossy, aristocratic royal prince who demands the finer things in life (er, death), and the blind Victorian gentleman adventurer who doesn’t have a mean bone in his body (or any bones, for that matter).

But my three ghoulish houseguests are the least of my problems. I’ve landed a job giving tours of the historic Grimdale Cemetery, and on my very first day, I stumble into a fresh corpse.

The dead guy’s ghost needs me to solve his murder so he can cross over, but sticking my nose into spirit business might see me to an early grave.

As for my three hauntingly hot friends? It turns out their unfinished business…is me.

Something in the Water by Charlotte MacLeod, 262 pages

 

Although real murder is never a laughing matter, Charlotte MacLeod makes the fictional kind more fun than anyone else. Her latest outing with Professor Peter Shandy, New England's famous horticulturist and homegrown hercule Poirot, takes us to the Maine coast, a world of stormy seas and verdant gardens where dark and bright are strangely mixed... and where secrets abound. Peter Shandy has journeyed northward alone to escape his wife Helen's all-female house party and to go in search of some mysterious lupines - glorious great spikes of bloom that are reportedly growing where conditions should make their existence impossible. He takes a room at a quaint old inn in Pickwance, Maine, and is awaiting a serving of Indian pudding in the dining room when the town's most disliked citizen, Jasper Flodge, keels over, face first, into his chicken pot pie. Foul play is soon suspected - especially since everyone in Pickwance feels that while Jasper never finished his main course, he got his just desserts. Shandy, however, is more intrigued by another enigma. He has located the lupines at an ancient farm owned by Frances Hodgson Rondel, a woman of great age and fixed opinions. Her plants are inexplicably lush, her hens are in glowing health, and she herself is as spry as a woman of forty. Could it be something in the soil - or in the bubbling spring that Miss Rondel guards from prying eyes? And whose voice did Shandy hear shouting threats as he came up the nearly impassable drive? Just as an unidentified element is making Miss Rondel's lupines bloom with incredible splendor, an unknown someone is turning love and hate, greed and lies, into fertile ground - for murder.

The Story o fCharlotte's Web: E.B. White and the Birth of a Children's Classic by Michael Sims, 307 pages

 As he was composing what was to become his most enduring and popular book, E. B. White was obeying that oft-repeated maxim: "Write what you know." Helpless pigs, silly geese, clever spiders, greedy rats-White knew all of these characters in the barns and stables where he spent his favorite hours. Painfully shy his entire life, "this boy," White once wrote of himself, "felt for animals a kinship he never felt for people." It's all the more impressive, therefore, how many people have felt a kinship with E. B. White. With Charlotte's Web, which has gone on to sell more than 45 million copies, the man William Shawn called "the most companionable of writers" lodged his own character, the avuncular author, into the hearts of generations of readers.

In The Story of Charlotte's Web, Michael Sims shows how White solved what critic Clifton Fadiman once called "the standing problem of the juvenile-fantasy writer: how to find, not another Alice, but another rabbit hole" by mining the raw ore of his childhood friendship with animals in Mount Vernon, New York. translating his own passions and contradictions, delights and fears, into an all-time classic. Blending White's correspondence with the likes of Ursula Nordstrom, James Thurber, and Harold Ross, the E. B. White papers at Cornell, and the archives of Harper Collins and the New Yorker into his own elegant narrative, Sims brings to life the shy boy whose animal stories--real and imaginary--made him famous around the world.

World of Archie Jumbo Comics #110, 225 pages

 BRAND NEW “Waterparked!” Betty, Veronica, Archie, and Jughead are excited because they are going to a waterpark for the day. Unfortunately when they get there the park is overcrowded and the lines are endless! Will their day at the waterpark be a big splash or will their idea of fun leave them all wet?

Salome: My First 2,000 Years of Love by George Viereck & Paul Eldridge, 320 pages

 In the dazzling figure of Salome, temptress o Herod, there is embodied the eternal search for love of all womankind. Forever youthful, forever ardent, the Wandering Jewess tells the vivid and passionate story of her personal quest for romance and her struggle through 2000 years to attain sexual victory.

Charles in Charge by Elizabeth Faucher, 142 pages

 With wild Buddy Lemback as his best friend and gorgeous Gwendolyn Pierce as his girlfriend, it seems unlikely that Charles can take care of three kids and still get good grades--but he does

Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha by Dorothy Gilman, 217 pages

 Something dangerous is in the Hong Kong air...

Faster than she can say her name, the newly married Mrs. Pollifax is packed and ready to go on another adventure - her most dangerous assignment yet. Lured away from renovating her idyllic country home by an urgent agent Bishop, she flies off to Hong Kong, where young agent Sheng Ti, whom she’d helped smuggle out of mainland China in a previous mission, holds the answers to what is going on at the sinister Feng Imports - a one-time agency front.
Naturally, only Mrs. Pollifax has earned Sheng's trust, and only she can possibly stop what turns out to be a frightening and ominous plot involving illicit drugs, smuggled diamonds, a famous cat burglar turned Interpol agent, a mysterious psychic, and, of course, murder - quite possibly her own....