APL 2024 Staff Favorites

"From the bestselling, acclaimed, beloved author of We the Animals, Blackouts mines lost histories--personal and collective. Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized, Juan has a project to pass along, one built around a true artifact of a book--Sex...

The explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times -bestselling author of Friday Black , about two top women gladiators fighting for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own. "A new and necessary American voice." -- Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review. Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or...

When murders mount on the hundred-thousand-acre resort, two agents go on the hunt through the vast landscape-and it's not clear what they are searching for. Erebus Resort, occupying a valley deep in the Colorado Rockies, offers guests the experience of viewing woolly mammoths, Irish Elk, and giant ground sloths in their native habitat, brought back from extinction through genetic manipulation. When a billionaire's son and his new wife are kidnapped...

"When Barbara Van Laar is discovered missing from her summer camp bunk one morning in August 1975, it triggers a panicked, terrified search. Losing a camper is a horrific tragedy under any circumstances, but Barbara isn't just any camper, she's the daughter of the wealthy family who owns the camp--as well as the opulent nearby estate, and most of the land in sight. And this isn't the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared in this region: Barbara's...

"Steven T. Collis, one of the world's leading experts on civil discourse, reveals ten practical habits that can help you navigate the potential minefields of hard topics and leave you and those you converse with feeling thoughtful and productive"-- "Learn the practical skills that can help you build bridges, heal relationships, and engage in productive conversation about even the hardest topics. Imagine turning what could be a contentious conversation...

"Justin has a curse, and thanks to a Reddit thread, it's now all over the internet. Every woman he dates goes on to find their soul mate the second they break up. When a woman slides into his DMs with the same problem, they come up with a plan: They'll date each other and break up. Their curses will cancel each other's out, and they'll both go on to find the love of their lives. It's a bonkers idea... and it just might work. Emma hadn't planned that...

"During his twenty-five year career with the Investigative Support Unit, Special Agent John Douglas became a legendary figure in law enforcement, pursuing some of the most notorious and sadistic serial killers of our time: the man who hunted prostitutes for sport in the woods of Alaska, the Atlanta child murderer, and Seattle's Green River killer, the case that nearly cost Douglas his life. As the model for Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs,...

"In this gripping stand-alone literary thriller set in the world of the award-winning post-apocalyptic novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, a scouting party led by Evan Whitesky ventures into unknown and dangerous territory to find a new home for their close-knit Northern Ontario Indigenous community more than a decade after a world-ending blackout. For the past twelve years, a community of Anishinaabe people have made the Northern Ontario bush their home...

Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours. He knows what he's done, and now awaits execution, the same chilling fate he forced on those girls, years ago. But Ansel doesn't want to die - he wants to be celebrated, understood. Through a kaleidoscope of women - a mother, a sister, a homicide detective - we learn the story of Ansel's life. As the clock ticks down, these three women sift through the choices that culminate in tragedy, exploring the...

As World War I raged across the globe, hundreds of young women toiled away at the radium-dial factories, where they painted clock faces with a mysterious new substance called radium. Assured by their bosses that the luminous material was safe, the women themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered from head to toe with the glowing dust. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" were considered the luckiest alive--until they began to fall mysteriously...