“How Would you Fight a Lion” by Jasmine Schwartz

Genre: Mystery

Melissa’s new Wall Street job is saving her. She’s climbing out of debt, she’s getting her life together… and the boss’s son is cute. But a mysterious email threatens to destroy everything. Is Melissa working with a killer? She must discover who’s lying, who’s dangerous, and who’s just out for themselves in this smart, modern Wall Street tale.

“First Promise” by Christine Dougherty

Genre: Thriller

It is 1985 and the United States is reeling from a disease that has taken huge, bloody bites out of the country as people are changed into vampires. The survivors have grouped together in remote outposts and the National Guard is the lifeline that runs between the outposts, bringing news and supplies.

In Wereburg, New York, a young woman named Destiny Riser has lost her parents in the plague but saved her little brother, Chance. But the outpost she brings him to is still young and learning and in an accident of fate, it is ravaged by vampires. Destiny sees her brother bit and changed and from that moment on, rechristens herself ‘Promise’ and vows to release Chance from his nightmare, nighttime existence.

With the assistance of her black horse, Ash, she combs the barren forests surrounding Wereburg and even her old development, Willow’s End, searching for Chance; desperate to end his misery. But then the National Guard brings a stranger to Wereburg, a man who is purportedly a fabled ‘half and half’–someone who has been bit but who has at least a partial immunity to the disease. That man will change everything that Promise believes.

“Shadow on the Rose” by Laura Jane Leigh

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Marion is thrilled when she and her husband, James, buy a lovely, old mansion with a rose garden. After they move in, however, she falls ill and must stay at home to rest. Alone and depressed, she begins to have strange dreams which seem to take her back into the past. Although James is skeptical, Marion believes that when she sleeps, she is leading the life of a young Victorian woman, Mariana.

Mariana used to visit the house as a guest of her friend Rosamund, whose mother is thought to have drowned while rowing on the river with her husband. During her stays with the family, Mariana comes to suspect that the death was not an accident. She investigates, but meets with obstacles that prevent her from finding the full truth.
Eighty years later, Marion takes up the search. The scene shifts back and forth from the nineteenth century to the twentieth, as her discoveries push forward those of her Victorian alter ego. The latter, after she accuses someone of murder, is never entirely free from doubt: she thinks she may have persecuted an innocent person. By determining what really happened, Marion thinks she can drive away the guilt that has been hovering about the house like a ghost. What she fails to see is that her obsession is damaging her relationship with James. If she’s not careful, she’ll destroy her marriage and her future happiness.

Note: Canadian spelling is used throughout.