HPL 2026 Fiction Spotlight

"Pro hockey star Ryan Price may be an enforcer, but off the ice he struggles with anxiety. Recently traded to Toronto, he's determined to make a fresh start in the city's dynamic LGBTQ+ Village. The last thing he expects to find in his new neighborhood is a blast from his past in the fabulous form of Fabian Salah. Aspiring musician Fabian loathes hockey. But that doesn't stop him from being attracted to a certain burly ginger-bearded defenseman....

"Meredith Hansel should be having the best week of her life. After establishing herself as a portfolio manager at a prestigious Wall Street firm, she's in the national spotlight for the innovative funds she created. But as Meredith prepares to celebrate, the plates she's kept spinning for years begin to crash: Her strained marriage reaches a breaking point. Her conscientious teenage daughter acts out under mysterious pressures. Someone vandalizes...

"A social satire dissecting morally bankrupt London society just after World War I, from the author of Brave New World. Like Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Aldous Huxley's Antic Hay, portrays a world of lost souls madly pursuing both pleasure and meaning. Fake artists, third-rate poets, pompous critics, pseudo-scientists, con-men, bewildered romantics, and cock-eyed futurists all inhabit this world spinning out of control, as wildly comic as it is...

"Her words used to set the page on fire. But a viral backlash over her latest film adaptation forced Petra Rose to take a hiatus, resulting in missed deadlines and an overdue mortgage. Branded a fraud and fame-hungry opportunist, she learned the hard way what happens when the Internet turns on you. And she's been uninspired to write ever since. Now, with her next suspense novel outlined and savings nearly gone, she retreats to a secluded lakeside...

"Enter a darker age with USA Today bestselling author Christopher Buehlman's Between Two Fires, a medieval horror adventure unlike anything on the shelf. And Lucifer said: "Let us rise against Him now in all our numbers, and pull the walls of Heaven down..." The year is 1348. Thomas, a disgraced knight, has found a young girl alone in a dead Norman village. An orphan of the Black Death, and an almost unnerving picture of innocence, she tells Thomas...

"We make monsters in order to destroy them. For thousands of years, we've named witches and burned them, suspected demons and exorcised them. When crops die and children fall ill, who better to blame than a monster? In nineteenth-century Bulgaria, Yana rides from one desolate town to the next, staging grisly displays while the villagers sleep: animal corpses in the public square, eggs filled with blood in the chicken coop. She tells the stricken villagers...

"Benny Abbott and Joy Moore host one of the most beloved podcasts in the world. Each week, they delight listeners with a different "against-all-odds" survival story, gleefully finding the weird, life-affirming humor in near-death experiences. Since their first episode on Joy's experience with severe narcolepsy, they've been the best friends everyone wants to befriend--and thanks to the meticulous management of Joy's husband Xander, they've built a...

"In A Very Cold Winter, it is 1946 and Milan is in ruins. A woman named Camilla opens her illegally occupied attic to her extended family as they rebuild their lives among the rubble. The absence of men--lost to war, death, or abandonment--leaves the burden of survival to the women, who use the attic to incubate fragile futures: Camilla works to carry the family toward dignity and normalcy; Lalla dreams of becoming a novelist to escape their grim...

The Body is a pulse-pounding supernatural horror story from bestselling author Bethany C. Morrow, where one woman must survive a series of bizarre and escalating attacks on her marriage. Mavis broke from her parents' congregation years ago, but she still hasn't recovered. Their impossible expectations and soul-shredding critiques have dug deep into her mind, and she's taunted by the knowledge that even when she's done nothing wrong, she'll never be...

"From USA Today bestselling author Audrey Blake comes a story of love, hope, and perseverance, following one woman's fight against an invisible enemy. One woman physician. A group of talented midwives. A deadly disease spreading. 1849. Dr. Nora Gibson is the only female surgeon in London. In all of England, even. After earning her medical degree and overcoming the prejudice of those who wished to see her fail, she's finally earned her place at the...