Stories by @lindseyolson

Sky Daddy

Linda is doing her best to lead a life that would appear normal to the casual observer. Weekdays, she earns $20 an hour moderating comments for a video-sharing platform, then rides the bus home to the windowless garage she rents on the outskirts of San Francisco. But on the last Friday of each month, she indulges in her true passion: taking BART to SFO for a round-trip flight to a regional hub. The destination is irrelevant because each trip means a new date with a handsome stranger—a stranger whose intelligent windscreens, sleek fuselages, and powerful engines make Linda feel a way that no human ever could. Linda knows that she can’t tell anyone she’s sexually obsessed with planes—nor can she reveal her belief her destiny is to “marry” one of her suitors by dying in a plane crash, thereby uniting her with her soulmate plane for eternity. But when an opportunity arises to hasten her dream of eternal partnership, and the carefully balanced elements of her life begin to spin out of control, she must choose between maintaining the trappings of normalcy and launching herself headlong toward the love she’s always dreamed of.

Escape!

A propulsive debut novel following a has-been reality TV star and a disgraced producer who get one last shot at redemption on a show set on a remote island, only to discover that the plot twists are beyond what they ever imagined. Everyone gets the story arc they deserve. Kent Duvall, a faded reality show winner, just wants another chance at glory—to find his way out of his depressing life and back to his highlight reel. When a scandal is captured on camera at a charity event, he gets his shot, on a new jungle survival show with seven other contestants. Each of them has been cast as a type—Ruddy the bully, Miriam the nerd, Ashley the love interest—but everyone is more than they appear. The contestants’ goals seem simple—survive the wild, build a raft, win treasure. But Beck Bermann, a reality producer who suffered her own public shaming, sees them as characters in her redemption arc. As the schemes and strategies spiral out, breakout camps sabotage each other and rival producers struggle to control the storyline. Soon the question becomes less about who will win than who will make it out in one piece.

Presidents of the United States

My castings of each and every US president

Long Live Evil

When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at living: a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of her favourite fantasy series. She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. He’s impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she's not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor's tale. So be it. The wicked are better dressed, with better one-liners, even if they're doomed to bad ends. She assembles the wildly disparate villains of the story under her evil leadership, plotting to change their fate. But as the body count rises and the Emperor's fury increases, it seems Rae and her allies may not survive to see the final page. This adult epic fantasy debut from Sarah Rees Brennan puts the reader in the villain's shoes, for an adventure that is both 'brilliant' (Holly Black) and 'supremely satisfying' (Leigh Bardugo). Expect a rogue's gallery of villains including an axe wielding maid, a shining knight with dark moods, a homicidal bodyguard, and a playboy spymaster with a golden heart and a filthy reputation.

Everyone is Lying to You

The #tradwife murder mystery we’ve all been waiting for. From the bestselling author of The Sicilian Inheritance and the creator of the Under the Influence podcast comes an explosive thriller about two estranged friends, a grisly murder, a sudden disappearance, and the truly shocking revelation that everyone is lying to you about something . . . Lizzie and Bex were best friends in college. After graduation, Bex vanished, leaving Lizzie confused and devastated. Fifteen years later, Bex is now Rebecca Sommers, a “traditional” Instagram influencer with millions of followers who salivate over her perfect life on her ranch with her five children and handsome husband, Gray. Lizzie is a struggling magazine writer, watching reels while her young children demand her attention. One night out of the blue, Bex calls Lizzie with a career-making proposition—an exclusive interview with her about her multimillion-dollar business venture and an invitation to MomBomb, the high-profile influencing conference. At the conference, Bex goes missing and Gray is found brutally murdered on their ranch. Lizzie finds herself plunged into the dark side of the cutthroat world of social media that includes jealousy, sordid affairs, swingers, and backstabbing. She must learn who her old friend has become and who she has double-crossed to try to find her, clear her name, and maybe even save her life. Piazza’s master storytelling and razor-sharp insight into the world of social media brings us a pulpy, juicy, and cleverly plotted read that will have you guessing all the way through and leave you gasping for more.

Strangers

It was a great love story, one for the ages. The speed of our beginning and the speed of our ending felt like matching bookends. They both came out of nowhere. He wanted it, he wanted me. And then he didn’t. In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha’s Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together—building fires in the late afternoons, drinking whisky sours, making roast chicken. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of twenty years announced that he was leaving her. Overnight, her caring, steady partner became a man she hardly recognized. He exited his life with her like an actor shrugging off a costume. In Strangers, Burden revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal. Through all of it, she is transformed. The discreet, compliant woman she once was—someone nicknamed “Belle the Good”—gives way to someone braver, someone determined to use her voice. With unflinching honesty and profound grace, Burden charts a path through heartbreak to show the power of a woman who refuses to give up on love. Strangers is a stunning, deeply moving, compulsively readable memoir heralding the arrival of a thrilling new literary talent.

Startup Hell

Morgan Blackwater's mother is a kickass, world-saving, demon-slaying Shadow Council wizard. As for Morgan? Morgan's a junior salesperson at a tech startup that can't even decide what its product is. But with magic dyslexia and a disinclination to kick ass, Morgan is doing her best carving out a niche for herself in the mundane world. Leaving work late one night, she discovers her boss dead from the effort of summoning a demon to trade his soul in order to make his quarterly target. The disturbingly-attractive demon, Lucareoth (Luke for short), is trapped here until he finds someone to sell their soul. While trying to sneak Luke out of the building, Morgan runs into her infamous mother. Apparently, someone has been summoning demons and she's here to get to the bottom of it. Trying to protect Luke from her mother, Morgan gets sucked into the Infernal Plane and discovers hell really is a corporate nightmare. She only gets back home with a promise to deliver a human soul of her own. While her coworkers are really annoying, she's not willing to sacrifice their souls. The company's tech bro CEO, though, is another story. With Caitlin Rozakis's signature wit, STARTUP HELL is a contemporary fantasy that exposes the demonic nature of the corporate world.

Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter

A woman who runs a cat rescue in 1920s Montreal turns to a grouchy but charming wizard to help save the shelter in this heartwarming cozy fantasy from the New York Times bestselling author of the Emily Wilde series. Agnes Aubert leads a meticulously organized life—and she likes it that way. As the proudly type-A manager of a much-needed cat rescue charity, she has devoted her life to finding forever homes for lost cats. But after she is forced to move the cat shelter, Agnes learns that her new landlord is using her charity as a front—for an internationally renowned and thoroughly disreputable magic shop. Owned by the disorganized—not to mention self-absorbed, irritating, but also decidedly handsome—Havelock Renard, magician and failed Dark Lord, the shop draws magical clientele from around the world, partly due to the quality of Havelock’s illicit goods as well as their curiosity about his shadowy past and rumors of his incredible powers. Agnes's charity offers the perfect cover for illegal magics. Agnes couldn’t care less about the shop—magical intrigue or not, there are cats to be rescued. But when an enemy from Havelock’s past surfaces, the magic shop—and more importantly, the cat shelter—are suddenly in jeopardy. To save the shelter, will Agnes have to set aside her social conscience and protect the man who once tried to bring about the apocalypse—and is now trying to steal her heart?

The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne

Babs Dionne, proud Franco-American, doting grandmother, and vicious crime matriarch, rules her small town of Waterville, Maine, with an iron fist. She controls the flow of drugs into Little Canada with the help of her friends and oldest daughter. When a drug kingpin discovers his numbers are down in the upper Northeast, he sends a malevolent force, known only as "The Man," to investigate. At the same time, Babs's youngest daughter, Sis, has gone missing, which doesn't seem like a coincidence. In twenty-four hours Sis will be found dead, and the whole town will seek shelter from Babs’s wrath.

The Amalfi Curse

Powerful witchcraft. A hunt for sunken treasure. Forbidden love on the high seas. Beware the Amalfi Curse… Haven Ambrose, a trailblazing nautical archaeologist, has come to the sun-soaked village of Positano to investigate the mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast. But Haven is hoping to find more than old artifacts beneath the azure waters; she is secretly on a quest to locate a trove of priceless gemstones her late father spotted on his final dive. Upon Haven’s arrival, strange maelstroms and misfortunes start plaguing the town. Is it nature or something more sinister at work? As Haven searches for her father’s sunken treasure, she begins to unearth a centuries-old tale of ancient sorcery and one woman’s quest to save her lover and her village by using the legendary art of stregheria, a magical ability to harness the ocean. Could this magic be behind Positano’s latest calamities? Haven must unravel the Amalfi Curse before the region is destroyed forever… Against the dazzling backdrop of the Amalfi Coast, this bewitching novel shimmers with mystery, romance and the untamed magic of the sea.

Dog Person

Harold may be an aging mutt—but Amelia May, the romance novelist who adopted him, taught him a thing or two about the human heart before she died. And she also left Harold with a final to help her partner, Miguel, find love again. Trouble is, the grief-ridden recluse rarely goes out, not even to the bookstore he and Amelia owned together. Now it’s in danger of going under, and when a renowned author doesn’t show up for his event, it pushes the store’s already precarious finances into the red. In a final attempt to save the bookstore, Miguel and Harold set out to find the no-show and insist he fulfill his obligation. But instead, they’re greeted by Fiona, his sunny yet secretive sister. Fiona is intent on protecting her brother’s privacy—and to Harold’s horror, she doesn’t like dogs. But her precocious eleven-year-old daughter, who's also named Amelia, immediately befriends Harold . . . who can’t help but wonder if his Amelia was right when she said there are no coincidences in life. Harold’s quickly running out of time to accomplish his mission, but if he can just convince his infuriatingly stubborn person to let Fiona in, he’s certain Miguel will find something far more important than a missing his own happy ending. Uplifting, smartly observed, and hilariously insightful, Dog Person is as undeniably charming as its beloved narrator, Harold, and offers a much-needed reminder that while not all love is unconditional, it is still always worthwhile.

Lucky Day

Lucky Day is the newest novel of terror from Chuck Tingle, USA Today bestselling author of Bury Your Gays, where one woman must go up against the most horrifying concept of all: nothing. Vera is a survivor of a global catastrophe known as the Low Probability Event, but she definitely isn't thriving. Once a passionate professor of statistics, she no longer finds meaning in anything at all. But when problematic government agent Layne knocks on her door, she's the only one who can help him uncover the connection between deadly spates of absurdity and an improbably lucky casino. What's happening in Vegas isn't staying there, and the world is at risk of another disaster. When it comes to Chuck Tingle, the only thing more terrifying than a serious horror novel is an absurd one...

Dandelion is Dead

Jake has fallen head over heels for Dandelion. The only problem? Dandelion is dead. When Poppy discovers unanswered messages from a charming stranger in her late sister’s dating app, she makes an impulsive choice: She’ll meet him, just once, on what would have been Dandelion’s fortieth birthday. It’s exactly the kind of wild adventure her vivacious sister would have pushed her toward. Jake is ready to find something real—and not least because his ex-wife’s twentysomething boyfriend has moved into their old family home. When he meets the intriguing woman who calls herself Dandelion, their connection is undeniable, and he can think of little else. As their relationship deepens, Poppy finds herself trapped in a double life she never meant to create. Every moment with Jake feels genuine, electric, and totally right—despite the fact they’re tangled in deceit. As the lines between grief and love blur, Poppy faces a choice: keep her sister’s memory alive through her lies, or risk everything for a chance at her own happiness? With sparkling wit and aching tenderness, debut author Rosie Storey gives us a modern love story about the courage it takes to live again after loss and finding hope in the most unexpected places.

It Should Have Been You

You press send and your message disappears. Full of secrets about your neighbors, it’s meant for your sister. But it doesn’t reach her – it goes to the entire local community chat group instead. As rumor spreads like wildfire through the picture-perfect neighborhood, you convince yourself that people will move on, that this will quickly be forgotten. But then you receive the first death threat. The next day, a woman has been murdered. And what’s even more chilling is that she had the same address as you – 26 Oakpark – but in a different part of town. Did the killer get the wrong house? It won’t be long before you find out…

Tom's Crossing

The best-selling author of the million-copy classic House of Leaves returns with a magisterial, page-turning epic, about two friends determined to rescue a pair of horses set for slaughter. While folks still like to focus on the crimes that shocked the small city of Orvop, Utah, back in the fall of 1982, not to mention the trials that followed, far more remember the adventure that took place beyond municipal lines in mountains ready to shrug even the bravest from their backs, as one Orvop local would put, with another characterizing the astonishing journey as crazy as it was foolish as it still is just plain beyond imaginin. But them kids went for it anyway. Not that such daring was entirely unexpected considering how some of those involved included the likes of young Tom Gatestone, already a bit of an Orvop legend, and his friend Kalin March, new to the area, the two of them takin it upon themselves to rescue a couple of neglected horses from the Porch paddocks on Willow and Oak. Who knows what would have happened if they hadn’t? For sure no one expected the dead to rise but they did. For sure no one expected the mountain to fall but it did. For sure no one expected an act of courage so great, and likewise so appalling, that it still staggers the heart and mind of anyone who knows anything about the Katanogos massif to say nothing of Pillars Meadow. As one Orvop high-school teacher would describe that extraordinary feat days before she died: Fer sure, no one expected Kalin March to tell Old Porch: You get what you deserve when you ride with cowards. In this sweeping tale of mythic proportions, populated by extraordinary characters, the ghosts of the American West, and bursting with unexpected humor, Danielewski tells a masterful story of determination, perseverance, and humanity in the face of long odds and adverse fate.

Anna O

What if your nightmares weren’t really nightmares at all? We spend an average of 33 years of our lives asleep. But what really happens, and what are we capable of, when we sleep? Anna Ogilvy was a budding twenty-five-year-old writer with a bright future. Then, one night, she stabbed two people to death with no apparent motive—and hasn’t woken up since. Dubbed “Sleeping Beauty” by the tabloids, Anna’s condition is a rare psychosomatic disorder known to neurologists as “resignation syndrome.” Dr. Benedict Prince is a forensic psychologist and an expert in the field of sleep-related homicides. His methods are the last hope of solving the infamous “Anna O’”case and waking Anna up so she can stand trial. But he must be careful treating such a high-profile suspect—he’s got career secrets and a complicated personal life of his own. As Anna shows the first signs of stirring, Benedict must determine what really happened and whether Anna should be held responsible for her crimes. Only Anna knows the truth about that night, but only Benedict knows how to discover it. And they’re both in danger from what they find out.

Twice

What if you got to do everything in your life—twice? The heart of Mitch Albom’s newest novel is a stunning love story that dares to explore how our unchecked desires might mean losing what we’ve had all along.

Life, and Death, and Giants

Gabriel Fisher was born an orphan, weighing eighteen pounds and measuring twenty-seven inches long. No one in Lakota, Wisconsin, knows what to make of him. He walks at eight months, communicates with animals, and seems to possess extraordinary athletic talent. But when the older brother who has been caring for him dies, Gabriel is taken in by his devout Amish grandparents who disapprove of all the attention and hide him away from the English world. But it’s hard to hide forever when you’re nearly eight feet tall. At seventeen, Gabriel is spotted working in a hay field by the local football coach. What happens next transforms not only Gabriel’s life but the lives of everyone he meets.

The Book of Lost Hours

Nuremberg, 1938: On the night of Kristallnacht, eleven-year-old Lisavet Levy is hidden by her father from approaching forces in a mysterious place called the time space—a library where the memories of the past are stored inside books. When her father doesn’t return, she becomes trapped, spending her adolescence walking through the memories of those who lived before. When she discovers that living timekeepers are entering the time space to destroy memories and shape history to their liking, Lisavet sets out to salvage the past, creating her own book of lost memories. Until one day in 1949, when she meets an American timekeeper named Ernest Duquesne, intent on stopping her. What follows sets her on a course to change history—and the time space itself—forever. Boston, 1965: Amelia Duquesne is mourning the death of her uncle and guardian, Ernest, when she’s approached by Moira, the enigmatic head of the CIA’s secretive Temporal Reconnaissance Program. Moira tells her about the time space—accessed only by specially designed watches whose intricate mechanisms have been lost to time—and enlists her help in recovering a strange book her uncle once sought. But Amelia soon realizes that the past—and the truth—are not as straightforward as Moira would have her believe. A sweeping, cinematic love story, this feat of imagination explores memory, time, and the lengths we go to protect those we love.