Collection: Adult

A triumphantly feminist retelling of ancient creation myths in the tradition of Madeline Miller and Claire North.

Lyrically rendered, this epic U.S. debut tells the story of the woman known as Adam's first wife and her fall from Paradise and quest for revenge.

Before Eve, there was Lilith.

Lilith and Adam are equal and happy in the Garden of Eden. Until Adam decides Lilith should submit to his will and lie beneath him. She refuses--and is banished forever from Paradise.

Demonized and sidelined, Lilith watches in fury as God creates Eve, the woman who accepts her submission. But Lilith has a secret: she has already tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Endowed with Wisdom, she knows why Asherah--God's wife and equal, the Queen of Heaven--is missing. Lilith has a plan: she will rescue Eve, find Asherah, restore balance to the world, and regain her rightful place in Paradise.

Lilith's quest for justice drives her throughout history, from the ziggurats of Ancient Sumer, to the court of Israel's Queen Jezebel, and to the side of a radical preacher in Roman Judea. Noah's wife, Norea, Jezebel and Mary Magdalene all play their part in Lilith's enlightenment. In the modern age, as she observes the catastrophic consequences of a world built on inequality, Lilith finally understands what must be done to correct the wrong done to women--and all humankind--at the beginning of time.

Inspired by ancient myths and suppressed scriptures, Lilith is a thought-provoking and ambitious novel with an evocative literary voice and a triumphantly engaging heroine.

A young woman must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin in this wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive novel about love, female rivalry, and superstition from the author of the smash hit My Sister, the Serial Killer ("A bombshell of a book... Sharp, explosive, hilarious'--New York Times)

"A triumph: bold, searing, and utterly original. From the first page, it grips with an electric pulse....Impossible to put down."
--Abi Daré, New York Times bestselling author of Girl with the Louding Voice

When Ebun gives birth to her daughter, Eniiyi, on the day they bury her cousin Monife, there is no denying the startling resemblance between the child and the dead woman. So begins the belief, fostered and fanned by the entire family, that Eniiyi is the actual reincarnation of Monife, fated to follow in her footsteps in all ways, including that tragic end.

There is also the matter of the family curse: "No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace..." which has been handed down from generation to generation, breaking hearts and causing three generations of abandoned Falodun women to live under the same roof.

When Eniiyi falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family's history. As several women in her family have done before, she ill-advisedly seeks answers in older, darker spiritual corners of Lagos, demanding solutions. Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak? Or can she break the pattern once and for all, not only avoiding the spiral that led Monife to her lonely death, but liberating herself from all the family secrets and unspoken traumas that have dogged her steps since before she could remember?

Cursed Daughters is a brilliant cocktail of modernity and superstition, vibrant humor and hard-won wisdom, romantic love and familial obligation. With its unforgettable cast of characters, it asks us what it means to be given a second chance and how to live both wisely and well with what we've been given.

Equal parts sizzling, sweet and irresistibly fresh, Steven Salvatore's The Boyfriend Subscription is the LGBTQIA+ Pretty Woman rom-com fans have been waiting for.

What happens when a simple deal gets...complicated?

After losing his marriage and his beloved retail plant business, Teddy Hughes is ready to drown his sorrows--or would be, if he could afford another beer in his favorite dive bar. He has no choice but to uproot his dreams and leave New York for good. And then a gorgeous stranger walks in with cheekbones that could cut glass and a confidence that leaves Teddy panting.

Like the leather harness he wears under his designer suit, Cole Vivien is a mass of contradictions. He's a successful entrepreneur whose app, VERSTL, allows consumers and sex workers to form real--if temporary--connections. But now Cole is in the unfamiliar position of needing something from someone else. A fake boyfriend can help Cole project a more traditional image for a potential investor. And Teddy--shy, smart and so much hotter than he knows--is perfect for the part. Maybe too perfect.

Cole just has two conditions: no kissing and no falling in love. In exchange for one week together, Teddy will get enough money to get back on his feet, and no messy feelings will be in the mix.

But some rules are made to be broken...

From showing up to glowing up, these characters are on the path to leading their best lives and finding sizzling romance along the way.

Don't miss these other fun titles from Afterglow Books:

The (Fake) Dating Game by Timothy Janovsky
The Bookbinder's Guide to Love by Katherine Garbera
The Devil in Blue Jeans by Stacey Kennedy
Frenemy Fix-Up by Yahrah St. John
Manila Takes Manhattan by Carla de Guzman
Fake Flame by Adele Buck
Out of Office by A.H. Cunningham

"I remember the movement of his hips pressing against the pinball machine. This one sentence had me in its grip until the end. Two young men find each other, always fearing that life itself might be the villain standing in their way. A stunning and heart-gripping tale." --André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice

The critically acclaimed, internationally beloved novel by Philippe Besson--"this year's Call Me By Your Name" (Vulture) with raves in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Vanity Fair, Vogue, O, The Oprah Magazine, and Out--about an affair between two teenage boys in 1984 France, translated with subtle beauty and haunting lyricism by the iconic and internationally acclaimed actress and writer Molly Ringwald.

In this "sexy, pure, and radiant story" (Out), Philippe chances upon a young man outside a hotel in Bordeaux who bears a striking resemblance to his first love. What follows is a look back at the relationship he's never forgotten, a hidden affair with a boy named Thomas during their last year of high school. Thomas is the son of a farmer; Philippe the son of a school principal. At school, they don't acknowledge each other. But they steal time to meet in secret, carrying on a passionate, world-altering affair.

Despite the intensity of their attraction, from the beginning Thomas knows how it will end: "Because you will leave and we will stay," he says. Philippe becomes a writer and travels the world, though as this "tender, sensuous novel" (The New York Times Book Review) shows, he never lets go of the relationship that shaped him, and every story he's ever told.

"Beautifully translated by Ringwald" (NPR), this is "Philippe Besson's book of a lifetime...an elegiac tale of first, hidden love" (The New Yorker).

A "wholly unique" and "uncompromising" literary horror debut about a boy who transforms into a monster, a monster who tries to be a man, and the people who love him in every form he takes (Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes)

Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago's lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family's decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses--though curbed by his biological and chosen family's communal care--threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life.

A thought-provoking meditation on grief, acceptance, and the monstrous sides of love and loyalty, Gerardo Sámano Córdova blends bold imagination and evocative prose with deep emotional rigor. Told in four acts that span the globe from Brooklyn to Berlin, Monstrilio offers, with uncanny clarity, a cathartic and precise portrait of being human.

Horror Movie meets the scope and emotion of Stephen King in this heart-pounding, magnetic tour de force novel, destined to become an instant classic, about a woman pulled into a cult horror film that is determined to have a sequel, by critically acclaimed author Michael Wehunt.

Ten years ago, Jorie Stroud was the rising star of the October Film Haunt - a trio of horror enthusiasts who camped out at the filming locations of their favorite scary movies, sharing their love through their popular blog. But after a night in the graveyard from Proof of Demons - perhaps the most chilling cult film ever made, directed by the enigmatic Hélène Enriquez - everything unraveled.

Now, Jorie has built an isolated life with her young son in Vermont. In the devastating wake of her viral, truth-stretching Proof of Demons blog entry -- hysteria, internet backlash, and the death of a young woman -- Jorie has put it all, along with her intense love for the horror genre, behind her.

Until a videotape arrives in the mail. Jorie fears someone might be filming her. And the "Rickies" - Enriquez obsessives who would do anything for the reclusive director - begin to cross lines in shocking ways. It seems Hélène Enriquez is making a new kind of sequel...and Jorie is her final girl.

As the dangers grow even more unexpected and strange, Jorie must search for answers before the Proof of the movie's title finds her and takes everything she loves.

This riveting and layered horror novel unleashes supernatural terror in a world where truth can be manipulated, and nothing is as it seems. Beautiful and horrifying, with an unforgettable cast of characters, The October Film Haunt will shock and delight readers all the way to its breathless final page.

"So unique and steeped in 21st century paranoia and dread you won't be able to read this alone at night." - Paul Tremblay

"The horror in here is palpable, but the writing itself is just as scary: How can one pen have this many good lines in it?" - Stephen Graham Jones

There's power in a book...

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they're sent to Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There's Rose, a hippie who insists she's going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby's father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they're allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what's best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it's never given freely. There's always a price to be paid...and it's usually paid in blood.

In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a "horror master" (NPR).

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - USA Today Bestseller - Washington Post's The Twelve Best Thrillers of the Year - TIME's 100 Must Read Books of the Year - Goodreads Choice Award Nominee - USA Today's Best Reviewed Books of the Year - BookPage's Best Mystery of the Year - Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year - New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice - Cover of the New York Times Book Review - Barack Obama's Summer Reading List - The Financial Times's Best Crime Books of the Year - ALA Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction Longlist - SIBA's 2024 Southern Book Prize Finalist - Starred Publishers Weekly - Starred Library Journal - Starred BookPage - Starred Booklist
"Fresh and exhilarating. . . Cosby keeps his eye on the story and the pedal to the metal." --Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review

A Black sheriff. A serial killer. A small town ready to combust.

The new novel from New York Times bestselling and Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning author S. A. Cosby, "one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction." --Washington Post.

"An atmospheric pressure cooker." --People

Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, quiet Charon has had only two murders. But after years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface.

Then a year to the day after Titus's election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus's deputies. As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon.

With the killer's possible connections to a local church and the town's harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town's Confederate history.

Charon is Titus's home and his heart. But where faith and violence meet, there will be a reckoning.

Powerful and unforgettable, All the Sinners Bleed confirms S. A. Cosby as "one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction" (The Washington Post).

This acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from an award-winning author "pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale" and includes a foreword by N. K. Jemisin (John Green, New York Times).

When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions.

Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny.

Hand in Hand with Love is a celebration of queer voices throughout the ages, featuring an electrifying range of poems from Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Oscar Wilde, Christina Rossetti, Wilfred Owen and many more.

Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is edited by Dr Simon Avery, a specialist in queer history and culture at the University of Westminster.

From Sappho and the Ancient Greeks to Edna St. Vincent Millay and the modernists, this luminous anthology champions and redefines the spectrum of queer poetry - from visionary writers whose only safe space to express their intimate thoughts was on the page, to the pioneering poets who paved the way for decades to come. Together, these dynamic voices offer a vivid archive of queer identity to be celebrated, discovered and treasured.

"Wholly transportive and spellbinding. I was beguiled." --Ling Ma, bestselling author of Severance and Bliss Montage

"A fascinating account of a remarkable woman dangerously ahead of her time." --Kevin Kwan, bestselling author of Crazy Rich Asians

"Exquisitely researched, deeply felt, and poignant. This one belongs on your shelf." --Sarah Rose Etter, author of Ripe

The life and times of literary pioneer and queer icon Margaret C. Anderson, who risked everything to be the first to publish James Joyce's Ulysses in America. Perfect for fans of The Editor, Flapper, and Nasty Women.

Already under fire for publishing the literary avant-garde into a world not ready for it, Margaret C. Anderson's cutting-edge magazine The Little Review was a bastion of progressive politics and boundary-pushing writing from then-unknowns like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, and Djuna Barnes. And as its publisher, Anderson was a target. From Chicago to New York and Paris, this fearless agitator helmed a woman-led publication that pushed American culture forward and challenged the sensibilities of early 20th century Americans dismayed by its salacious writing and advocacy for supposed extremism like women's suffrage, access to birth control, and LBGTQ rights.

But then it went too far. In 1921, Anderson found herself on trial and labeled "a danger to the minds of young girls" by a government seeking to shut her down. Guilty of having serialized James Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses in her magazine, Anderson was now not just a publisher but also a scapegoat for regressives seeking to impose their will on a world on the brink of modernization.

Author, journalist, and literary critic Adam Morgan brings Anderson and her journal to life anew in A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls, capturing a moment of cultural acceleration and backlash all too familiar today while shining light on an unsung heroine of American arts and letters. Bringing a fresh eye to a woman and a movement misunderstood in their time, this biography highlights a feminist counterculture that audaciously pushed for more during a time of extreme social conservatism and changed the face of American literature and culture forever.

Strange, intimate, haunted, and hungry--Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is an intoxicating and surreal fiction debut by award-winning author Ananda Lima.

"Remarkable and memorable." --OLIVIE BLAKE - "An astounding new voice." --ERIC LaROCCA - "I love it so much." --KELLY LINK - "Trippy, eerie, wry, and always profound." --JOHN KEENE - "Incredible. Truly wondrous." --KEVIN WILSON - "Heart-wrenching and wickedly funny." --GWEN KIRBY - "Propulsive, uncanny, and expertly built." --JULIA FINE

At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer slept with the devil. She sees him again and again throughout her life and she writes stories for him about things that are both impossible and true.

Lima lures readers into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil where they'll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of people who are not dead. Once there, she speaks to modern Brazilian-American immigrant experiences-of ambition, fear, longing, and belonging--and reveals the porousness of storytelling and of the places we call home.

With humor, an exquisite imagination, and a voice praised as "singular and wise and fresh" (Cathy Park Hong), Lima joins the literary lineage of Bulgakov and Lispector and the company of writers today like Ted Chiang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.

Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil includes: "Rapture," "Ghost Story," "Tropicália," "Antropógaga," "Idle Hands," "Rent," "Porcelain," "Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory," and "Hasselblad."

A great next read for fans of Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties and V. E. Schwab's The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

Recommended reading by Chicago Review of Books, Electric Literature, The Kenyon Review, and more!

Welcome to legendary style guru David Kibbe's program of Love-Based Beauty, filled with revolutionary techniques to unlock the secret superpower that is your Authentic Style.

Prepare for a guided journey to play your way to style! Kibbe's ingenious method of games will take you by the hand to uncover all the things that are unique to you. His aspirational vision of beauty will help you completely redefine what style is, what it can do for you, and how it can help you uplift the world around you.

As you travel this journey, you will learn such visionary concepts as: beauty comes from individuality; style evolves from identity; there are no "flaws"--only unique characteristics; you are exactly who you are "supposed" to be; you are a star--it is your irrefutable birthright.

This trail-blazing style bible includes:
- 82 dazzling visuals representing all ages, body sizes and backgrounds.
- Overhauls and updates of his groundbreaking Image Identity and Color systems.
- His cutting-edge recipes for Makeup, Hair, and Victorious Shopping.

Here you will find all you need to banish the old, restrictive style rules of yesterday and smash the stifling boxes of stereotypes. David Kibbe's Power of Style will give you everything you need to know to capture your star quality and reveal it to the world with confidence and joy! This game-changing guide is your definitive style companion for the twenty-first century.

A New York Times bestseller
A Washington Post bestseller
A Los Angeles Times bestseller
Named a "Best Essay Collection of the Decade" by Literary Hub
A Book Riot "Favorite Summer Read of 2020"
A Food Tank Fall 2020 Reading Recommendation

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings--asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass--offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

A dazzling novel about the inextricable link between the personal and the political set against the decadence of Hollywood and postwar Los Angeles

As a Hungarian immigrant working as a studio hack writing monster movies in 1950s Hollywood, George Curtis must navigate the McCarthy-era studio system filled with possible communists and spies, the life of closeted men along Sunset Boulevard, and the inability of the era to cleave love from persecution and guilt. But when Madeline, a famous actress, offers George a writing residency at her estate in Malibu to work on the political writing he cares most deeply about, his world is blown open. Soon Madeline is carrying George like an ornament into a class of postwar L.A. society ordinarily hidden from men like him.

What this lifestyle hides behind, aside from the monsters on the screen, are the monsters dwelling closer to home: this bacchanalia covers a gnawing hole shelled wide by the horror of the war they thought they'd left behind and the glimpse of an atomic future. It's here that George understands he can never escape his past as György, the queer Jew who fled Budapest before the war and landed in New York, all alone, a decade prior.

Spanning from sun-drenched Los Angeles to the hidden corners of working-class New York to a virtuosic climax in the Las Vegas desert, The Future Was Color is an immaculately written exploration of postwar American decadence, reinventing the self through art, and the psychosis that lingers in a world that's seen the bomb.