Spooky's Maze Of Books: 2025

Monday, March 31, 2025

THEIR MONSTROUS HEARTS

Welcome to my showcase for THEIR MONSTROUS HEARTS which is been hosted by HarperCollins and Harlequin

THEIR MONSTROUS HEARTS

Author: Yigit Turhan

Publication Date: April 8, 2025

ISBN: 9780778368274

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Harlequin Trade Publishing / MIRA

Price $28.99

Buy Links:

HarperCollins: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/their-monstrous-hearts-yigit-turhan

BookShop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/their-monstrous-hearts-original-yigit-turhan/21435391

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/their-monstrous-hearts-yigit-turhan/1145530543

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Their-Monstrous-Hearts-timeline-suspenseful/dp/0778368270

Prologue Perihan gazed at the opulent villas lined up like precious pearls on a necklace, feeling overwhelmed by their excessive beauty. The sight was almost terrifying, reminiscent of the antique pearls adorning her own necklace. As the dark clouds were illuminated by a sudden flash of lightning, she shook off her thoughts and quickened her pace along the deserted road. The gentle raindrops on her tired face felt like an ominous sign. The unexpected gust of wind, unusual for a mild November afternoon, added to her unease. On her seventieth birthday, Perihan had indulged in a day of shopping at Milan’s most luxurious stores. Despite her age, she possessed a strong physique, with firm knees, agile movements, and enough strength to carry her shopping bags from the stores to her home. The kind store managers at Cartier and Valentino had offered to send the packages to her address with a courier, but she declined, insisting she could manage on her own. Though she lacked a family to celebrate with, her small group of friends had arranged to gather at the villa, refusing to let her spend the evening alone. They had asked her to leave the house and return around seven o’clock. Glancing at her watch, Perihan realized she was already half an hour late. Oh my… Licia must have already set the table, she thought as she turned the corner onto Via Marco de Marchi, where she resided. Just then, another lightning bolt flashed across the sky, and a large monarch butterfly appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Despite the heavy rain, Perihan could hear the faint flapping of its wings. The butterfly had bright orange and black stripes, with one wing decorated with symmetric white dots. It seemed to hover in midair. “What a miracle,” Perihan exclaimed, a smile stretching across her wrinkled face. “It’s been years since I last saw this one…and on my birthday!” Hastily shifting the heavy bags onto her shoulder, she wiped the raindrops from her eyes with her long red nails and followed the butterfly. It fluttered around in circles for a few moments, before darting straight ahead. Despite the downpour, the orange-and-black wings moved swiftly. Overwhelmed with excitement, Perihan disregarded the red light—and almost got hit by an old Ford passing by. The driver, an unattractive man with numerous moles and few teeth, leaned out of the window and cursed at her in an Italian dialect she couldn’t understand. Unfazed by his behavior, Perihan remained focused on following the butterfly, which flew rapidly and ascended into the sky. “I wonder where it disappeared to,” she mused with a melancholic expression on her face. The rain intensified, the drainage problems in the area turning the road into a pool of water. Perihan’s bare feet were drenched as the rain seeped through the open toes of her green python slingbacks. “You’re blocking my view.” The unexpected comment startled her. She looked at the stranger, hoping to recognize a friendly face, but it was no one she knew. She turned to notice the growing crowd of people with their faces hidden behind their phone screens. She wondered if they were filming her. Lacking an umbrella, her meticulously coiffed hair now wet, her makeup smudged, and her silk skirt ruined by the muddy street,Perihan was struck by the crowd’s indifference. They shifted slightly to the right, attempting to remove her from their line of sight, all the while continuing to record whatever had caught their attention. Curious, Perihan turned around and was terrified by what she saw. In shock, she dropped her red shopping bags, causing more muddy water to splatter onto her skirt and completely destroying her shoes. “This can’t be happening,” she screamed to the sky at the top of her lungs. Her knees trembled uncontrollably, left her unsure about taking another five steps to cross the road. Perihan noticed the cameras turning toward her in her peripheral vision, but she paid no mind to the desperation and terror that would eventually go viral on numerous social media networks in multiple countries. Her villa loomed in front of her, concealed by high walls covered with lush green bushes—now invaded by hundreds, if not thousands, of butterflies. They hovered over the garden, flapping their wings vigorously despite the pouring rain. The entire structure, partially visible through the bushes, seemed imprisoned within a butterfly sanctuary. When Perihan realized the creatures were all monarchs, each one so exquisite and valuable, she paused. Beauty had a threshold, and beyond it, it became a captivating terror, holding people’s attention hostage to fulfill its own needs. She propelled herself into the flooded road, heading for the garden gate. With what little strength remained after the ordeal, she pushed her way through the floral Art Nouveau door. “Licia! Where are you?” she shouted upon entering the garden. Before closing the door behind her, she turned to scream at the onlookers, “Leave! The show’s over! This is my property!” Yet, the crowd remained unaffected, mesmerized by the extraordinary natural phenomenon unfolding before them. Licia, Perihan’s housekeeper and closest friend of nearly forty years, looked like a ghost. Her complexion was drained of color, her wet hair clung to her face in disheveled patches, and her shoes were ruined by dark mud. She trembled as she spoke. “Perihan… We did our best, but…” Licia glanced quickly at their small group of friends, who observed the scene from the kitchen window on the first floor of the house. Perihan brushed Licia aside with the back of her hand and made her way toward the large greenhouse on the left side of the garden. Orange butterflies continued to emerge rapidly through a broken pane in its ceiling, swarming through the air. Looking up at the vortex of butterflies resembling a brewing tornado, Perihan felt a wave of dizziness. Her bony hand reached for the intricately detailed metal handle of the greenhouse door, but fear gripped her body. She hesitated, afraid to enter, yet knowing she had no other choice. Slowly, she pushed the door open, entered, and closed it behind her. Licia tried to conceal her sobbing behind her hands. Should she follow Perihan into the greenhouse or return to the house? The rain cascaded like a waterfall, obstructing not only her movements but her thoughts as well. She compelled herself to decide, but the sudden outburst from within the greenhouse froze her in place. “No… No… No!” Perihan’s voice echoed, growing louder with each repetition—until the world fell silent, save for the raindrops tapping against any surface they encountered. The darkness beneath the swarm of butterflies gradually gave way to a dull light as they departed from the house. Licia collapsed onto her knees and allowed herself to sink into the saturated garden soil,

her tears mingling with the raindrops. Once the first monarch butterfly Perihan had witnessed a few moments earlier found its way to her villa, it hovered briefly over the garden before heading in the same direction as the others. When the last of the butterflies vanished, no trace of the miraculous event remained. Excerpted from THEIR MONSTROUS HEARTS by Yigit Turhan. Copyright © 2025 by Yigit Turhan. Published by MIRA, an imprint of HTP/HarperCollins.

Book Summary:

A haunting novel about the boundaries people will cross to keep their dreams alive.

A mysterious stranger shows up at Riccardo’s apartment with some news: his grandmother Perihan has died, and Riccardo has inherited her villa in Milan along with her famed butterfly collection.

The struggling writer is out of options. He’s hoping the change of scenery in Milan will inspire him, and maybe there will be some money to keep him afloat. But Perihan’s house isn’t as opulent as he remembers. The butterflies pinned in their glass cases seem more ominous than artful. Perihan’s group of mysterious old friends is constantly lurking. And there’s something wrong in the greenhouse.

As Riccardo explores the decrepit estate, he stumbles upon Perihan’s diary, which might hold the key to her mysterious death. Or at least give him the inspiration he needs to finish his manuscript.

But he might not survive long enough to write it.

Author Bio:

Social Links:

GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/13825951.Yi_it_Turhan

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yigit/?hl=en

Yigit Turhan was born in Ankara, Turkey. A lifelong reader, he owes his love of horror to his grandmother and the films she shared with him. He has previously published a horror novel in Turkish. He lives in Milan, Italy, where he holds a C-suite role at a renowned fashion house. This is his English-language debut.

MIDNIGHT IN SOAP LAKE

Welcome to my showcase for MIDNIGHT IN SOAP LAKE which is been hosted by HarperCollins and Harlequin

MIDNIGHT IN SOAP LAKE

Author: Matthew Sullivan

Publication Date: April 15, 2025

ISBN: 9781335041791

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Harlequin Trade Publishing / Hanover Square Press

Price $28.99

Buy Links:

HarperCollins: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/midnight-in-soap-lake

-matthew-sullivan?variant=43103022350370

BookShop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/397/9781335041791

Barnes & Noble: http://aps.harpercollins.com/hc?isbn=9781335041791&retailer=barnesandnoble

Amazon: https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=9781335041791&tag=hcg-02-20

Abigail

Something was there.

An animal, Abigail was certain, loping in the sagebrush: a twist of fuzz moving

through the desert at the edge of her sight. The morning had already broken a

hundred. Her glasses steamed and sunscreen stung her eyes—

Or maybe she hadn’t seen anything.

Yesterday, while walking along this desolate irrigation road, she’d spotted a

cow skull between tumbleweeds, straight out of a tattoo parlor, but when she ran

toward it, bracing to take a picture to send to Eli across the planet—proof, perhaps

, that she ever left the house—she discovered it was just a white plastic grocery bag

snagged on a curl of sage bark.

Somehow. Way out here.

The desert was scabby with dark basalt, bristled with the husks of flowers, and

nothing was ever there.

When Eli first told her he’d landed a grant to research a rare lake in the Pacific

Northwest, Abigail thought ferns and rain, ale and slugs,

Sasquatch and wool.

And then they got here, to this desert where no one lived

Not a fern or slug in sight.

This had been the most turbulent year of her life.

Eleven months ago, they met.

Seven months ago, they married.

Six months ago, they moved from her carpeted condo in

Denver to this sunbaked town on the shores of Soap Lake, a

place where neither knew a soul.

Their honeymoon had lasted almost three months—Eli whistling in

his downstairs lab, Abigail unpacking and painting upstairs—and then

he kissed her at the airport, piled onto a plane, and moved across the

world to work in a different lab, on a different project, at a different lake.

In Poland.

When she remembered him lately, she remembered photographs of him.

The plan had been to text all the time, daily calls, romantic flights to Warsaw,

but the reality was that Eli had become too busy to chat and seemed more

frazzled than ever. This week had been particularly bad because he’d been

off the grid on a research trip, so every call went to voicemail, every text into

the Polish abyss. And then at five o’clock this morning, her phone pinged and

Abigail shot right out of a drowning sleep to grab it, as if he’d tossed her a life

preserver from six thousand miles away.

And this is what he’d had to say:

sorry missed you. so much work & my research all fd up. i’ll

call this weekend. xo e

As she was composing a response—her phone the only glow in their dark,

empty home—he added a postscript that stabbed her in

the heart like an icicle.

P.S. maybe it time since remember using time to figure out self life? What kind of a sentence was that? And what was a “self life” anyway? Abigail had called him right away. When he didn’t pick up she went down to the lab he’d set up in their daylight basement. She opened a few of his binders with their charts of Soap Lake, their colorful DNA diagrams, their photos of phosphorescent microbes, as cosmic as images from deep space. She breathed the papery dust of his absence and tried to imagine he’d just stepped out for a minute and would be back in a flash, her clueless brilliant husband, pen between his teeth, hair a smoky eruption, mustard stains on the plaid flannel bathrobe he wore in place of a lab coat. From one of his gleaming refrigerators, Abigail retrieved a rack of capped glass tubes that contained the Miracle Water and the Miracle Microbes collected from the mineral lake down the hill— she sometimes wondered if her limnologist husband would be more at home on the shores of Loch Ness—and held one until a memory arose, like a visit from a friend: Eli, lifting a water sample up to the window as if he were gazing through a telescope, shaking it so it fizzed and foamed. And then he was gone again. She hated that she did this. Came down here and caressed his equipment like a creep. Next she’d be smelling his bathrobe, collecting hairs from his brush. It was as if she felt compelled to remind herself that Eli was doing important work and, as the months of distance piled up, that he was even real. Back when they’d first started dating, Abigail had been the busy one, the one who said yes to her boss too much and had to skim her calendar each time Eli wanted to go to dinner or a movie. Of course her job as an administrative assistant in a title insurance office had never felt like enough, but when she mentioned this restlessness to Eli, finding her path—figure out self life—had suddenly become a centerpiece of their move to Soap Lake. But they got here and nothing had happened. It wasn’t just a switch you flipped. Abigail slid the tall tube of lake water back into its rack. Only when she let go, the tube somehow missed its slot and plunged to the floor like a bomb. Kapow! On the tile between her feet, a blossom of cloudy water and shattered glass. She stood over the mess, clicking her fingernails against her teeth and imagining microbes squealing on the floor, flopping in the air like miniscule goldfish. She told herself, without conviction, it had been an accident. And then she stepped over the spill, put the rack back in the fridge and, surprised at the immediacy of her shame, went for a walk in this scorching desert. It stunned her, how harsh and gorgeous it was. Loneliness: it felt sometimes like it possessed you. She hadn’t spoken to anyone in over a month, outside of a few people in the Soap Lake service industry. There was the guy who made her a watery latte at the gas station the other morning, then penised the back of her hand with his finger when he passed it over. And the newspaper carrier, an old woman with white braids and a pink cowgirl hat, who raced through town in a windowless minivan. She told Abigail she was one DUI away from unemployment, but the weekly paper was never late. And the cute pizza delivery dude who was so high he sat in her driveway on his phone for half an hour before coming to the door with her cold cheese

pizza, saying, Yes, ma’am. Thanks, ma’am, which was sweet but totally freaked her out. And the lady with the painted boomerang eyebrows in the tampon aisle at the grocery store who gave her unwanted advice on the best lube around for spicing up menopause, to which Abigail guffawed and responded too loudly, “Thanks, but I’m not even goddamned forty!” At least she’d discovered these maintenance roads: miles and miles of gravel and dirt, no vehicles allowed, running alongside the massive irrigation canals that brought Canadian snowmelt from the Columbia River through the Grand Coulee Dam to the farms spread all over this desert. The water gushed through the main canals, thirty feet wide and twenty feet deep, and soon branched off to other, smaller canals that branched off to orchards and fields and ranches and dairies and soil and seeds and sprouts and leaves and, eventually, yummy vital food: grocery store shelves brimming with apples and milk and pizza-flavored Pringles. Good soil. Blazing sun. Just add water and food was born. Almost a trillion gallons a year moved through these canals. T: trillion. All that water way out here, pouring through land so dry it crackled underfoot. She halted on the road. Pressed her lank, brown hair behind her ear. Definitely heard something, a faint yip or caw. She scanned the horizon for the source of the sound and there it was again, a smudge of movement in the wavering heat. Something running away. A few times out here she’d seen coyote. Lots of quail, the occasional pheasant. Once, in a fallow field close to town, a buck with a missing antler that looked from a distance like a unicorn. Not running away, the smudge out there. Running toward. She was nowhere near a signal yet her instinct was to touch her phone. She craned around to glimpse the vanishing point of the road behind, gauging how far she’d walked and, if things got bad, how far she’d have to run. Three miles, minimum. Six miles, tops. Definitely approaching. Not something. Someone. A human. Alone. Running. A boy. A little boy. Sprinting. Abigail froze as their eyes met, and suddenly the boy exploded out of the desert, slamming into her thighs with an oof! He wore yellow pajamas and Cookie Monster slippers covered in prickly burrs. He clung to her legs so tightly that she almost tipped over. When she registered the crusty blood on his chin and cheeks and encasing his hands like gloves, she felt herself begin to cry, scared-to-sobbing in one second flat. Deep breath. Shirt wipe. “Hey! Are you hurt? Look at me. Are you hurt?”

The boy wasn’t crying, but his skin was damp and he was panting hot and wouldn’t let go of her legs. She felt a hummingbird inside of his chest. She knelt in the gravel and unfolded his arms, turning them over at the wrist. She lifted his shirt and spun him around as best she could. He had some welts and scratches from running through the brush, and the knees of his pj’s were badly scuffed, but he wasn’t cut, not anywhere serious, which meant— The blood belonged to someone else. Excerpted from MIDNIGHT IN SOAP LAKE by Matthew Sullivan. Copyright © 2025 by Matthew Sullivan. Published by Hanover Square Press, an imprint of HTP/HarperCollins.

Book Summary: A lake with mysterious properties. A town haunted by urban legend. Two women whose lives intersect in terrifying ways. Welcome to Soap Lake, a town to rival Twin Peaks and Stephen King’s Castle Rock. When Abigail agreed to move to Soap Lake, Washington for her husband’s research she expected old growth forests and craft beer, folksy neighbors and the World’s Largest Lava Lamp. Instead, after her husband jets off to Poland for a research trip, she finds herself alone, in a town surrounded by desert, and haunted by its own urban legends. But when a young boy runs through the desert into Abigail’s arms, her life becomes entwined with his and the questions surrounding his mother Esme’s death. In Abigail’s search for answers she enlists the help of a recovering addict-turned-librarian, a grieving brother, a broken motel owner, and a mentally-shattered conspiracy theorist to unearth Esme’s tragic past, the town’s violent history, and the secret magic locked in the lake her husband was sent there to study. As she gets closer to the answers, past and present crimes begin to collide, and Abigail finds herself gaining the unwelcome attention of the town’s unofficial mascot, the rubber-suited orchard stalker known as TreeTop, a specter who seems to be lurking in every dark shadow and around every shady corner. A sweeping, decade-spanning mystery brimming with quirky characters, and puzzle hunt scenarios, Midnight in Soap Lake is a modern day Twin Peaks—a rich, expansive universe that readers will enter and never forget.

Social Links:

Author Website: http://matthewjsullivan.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mickmatthew1/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matthew.j.sullivan.77/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5690035.Matthew_J_Sullivan

Author Bio: Matthew Sullivan is the beloved author of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, an Indie Next Pick, B&N Discover pick, a GoodReads Choice Award finalist and winner of the Colorado Book Award. He received his MFA from the University of Idaho and has been a resident writer at Yaddo, Centrum, and the Vermont Studio Center. His short stories have been awarded the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editors’ Award for Fiction. His writing has been featured in the New York Times Modern Love column, The Daily Beast, and Shelf Awareness amongst others.