179 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid Maybe I’m overthinking that photo, but I’m starting to notice a pattern: Evelyn always leaves you hoping you’ll get just a little bit more. And she always denies you.

178 Six Of Crows by Leigh Bardugo When everyone knows you’re a monster, you needn’t waste time doing every monstrous thing.

177 The Inheritance Of Orquidea Divina by Zoraida Córdova She wondered, did everyone have such a fraught relationship with the places they came from? Did anyone else have a grandmother who might as well have been a legend, a myth, a series of miracles that took the shape of an old woman?

176 Heartwood by Amity Gaige Eventually, I understood that motherhood, as the child imagines it, is unperformable. No woman is a star. No woman is a god or a tree or a magician. But for a while, in your arms, the universe was the right size, and I knew where I was.

175 Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir So it was that with the apocalypse looming - possibly caused by an alien life-form - I stood in front of a bunch of kids and taught them basic science. Because what’s the point of even having a world if you’re not going to pass it on to the next generation?

174 Private Rites by Julia Armfield Remember this: the world as it once was. The way things appear in the instant before they go under: first assured, then shipwrecked. The ease with which facts presumed permanent can change.

173 The Macabre by Kosoko Jackson This piece spoke to him. Clawed out to him in his dreams, screamed at him when he was in the same room. A metaphor and an honest-to-God statement all at once.

Ain’t that the truth…

172 The Bodyguard by Katherine Center Let me just stop the clock right here for a second, because it’s not every day you stand in Jack Stapleton’s doorway, squinting directly into his magnificence, while he does a completely normal yet utterly astonishing thing, like put on a T-shirt.

171 The Thirty Names Of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar The only words I had back then were for what I knew I wasn’t - a girl. But how to explain this feeling that my body was a tracing of something else, and not all the lines match up?

170 Salt Bones by Jennifer Givhan For a hundred years, townsfolk have claimed a horse-headed woman roams the beaches and surrounding desert as far as Mexico. La Siguanaba, they call her. Hideous one. But that doesn’t tell the whole story.

169 Song and Dance by Michael Glennon I gave myself a mental smack to the head and wondered what I was trying to accomplish. In life, with this case, whatever.

168 How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin Your future contains dry bones. Your slow demise begins right when you hold the queen in the palm of one hand. Beware the bird, for it will betray you. And from that, there’s no coming back.

167 Kitty Cat Kill Sat by Argus It is…hard to it is always hard. To see, to be burdened to know what’s at stake. To feel like I am alone, and small, against a terrifying universe.

166 Play Nice by Rachel Harrison “I grew up in a haunted house.” “Bullshit.” “Sorry, not haunted. Possessed.”

165 Finlay Donovan Rolls The Dice by Elle Cosimano There are not supposed to be any more dead guys! No more dead guys! It’s only been ten days since the last one! Why does this keep happening?

164 The Haunting of William Thorn by Ben Alderson I constantly feel as though I am standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down into the knowledge of what would become of me if my family found out I had fallen in love with a man.

163 A Land So Wide by Erin Craig They could go anywhere. See anything. See everything. They could find what lay beyond the edge of this map, and the map after that, and the map after that. They could explore the entire globe if the fancy struck them.

162 Cat’s People by Tanya Guerrero Maybe the key to a happier life was doing things for others. Other people. Other beings. Maybe that’s what he had been missing in his dreary life. Maybe he’d been too focused on himself.

161 The Life Impossible by Matt Haig This is the challenge of life, isn’t it? Moving forward without annihilating what has gone before. Knowing what to clasp onto and what to release without destroying yourself. Trying not to be the meteor and the dinosaur at once.

160 Blood Over Bright Haven by ML Wang I’m…I admit, I’ve been slow on the uptake, but I’m starting to understand how ridiculous it is to demand civility when the world is so disgustingly uncivil.

159 The Book Of The Unnamed Midwife by Meg Ellison What disease cannot do, people accomplish with astonishing ease.

158 The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King I understand the utility. But I have lived longer than all of you and have seen how the world can use your abilities for its own purposes. Sometimes it is best to forget and move on.

157 Best of All Worlds by Kenneth Oppel You could waste a lot of time wishing things had been otherwise. Maybe that had been part of the problem from the outset. Striving for things that were impossible.

156 The Way Up is Death by Dan Hanks Nia was right. The tower had told then what to do. And he couldn’t help but feel it was going to make them do it.

155 Pines by Blake Crouch Perfection was a surface thing. The epidermis. Cut a few layers deep, you begin to see some darker shades. Cut to the bone - pitch black.

154 The Strange Case of Jane O by Karen Thompson Walker The more I learned about her case, the less certain I was about its nature. It was as if each conversation led me further from a diagnosis instead of closer to one.

153 Ghost Fish by Stuart Pennebaker I still didn’t understand what had brought her back to me, my sister-ghost-fish, but I knew I had to be so careful with her. I didn’t want to disturb whatever was happening.

152 Matchmaking for Psychopaths by Tasha Coryell The thing about heartbreak is that it reveals the ways in which all tragedy is connected. I was wounded as a child, and those wounds, though long stitched shut, continued to impact the way I moved through the world.

151 When The World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson If people bear the trauma of their ancestors, doesn’t it follow they also bear their rhapsodies? If there is generational pain passed down, mustn’t there also be generational joy?

150 The Midnight Shift by Cheon Seon-Ran A vampire can find a way to bury into their victims’ hearts, feed them faith and love, all the while consuming them up bit by bit, until their victims just offer up their own blood.

149 The Murderbot Diaries Vol 3 by MarthaWells I’m not a bot, I’m not a human, so I don’t fit into any neat category. Also, I hate being patronized. (The whole bot-guardian system is like an attraction field for humans who like to be patronizing.)

148 Network Effect by Martha Wells Nobody fucking listens to me.

147 The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica …it’s dangerous to be writing this, at this time, in this place, but I do it anyway, to remember who I was before I came to the House of the Sacred Sisterhood. What did I do, where did I come from, how did I survive? I don’t know.

146 The Society of Unknowable Objects by Gareth Brown All unknowable objects did something; these ordinary, everyday items could enable those who possessed them to do unusual and extraordinary things.

145 Angel Down by Daniel Kraus …he sighs and nuzzles into the angel and asks, with a disturbing calm, “We gonna die out here, Bagger?” to which Bagger forms a weary, mud-caked grin and replies, “Maybe we already did,” delivered as devil-may-care gag but feeling more like a lonely arctic wind,

144 Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle When you finally realize that absolutely nothing matters, that your whole life has been dedicated to quantifying a universe that can’t be quantified, a sort of waking death occurs.

143 The Faceless Thing We Adore by Hester Steel This place. I want to drink it. I want it to drink me.

142 The Once and Future Me by Melissa Pace “Have you been hearing voices, Dorothy?” None of your fucking business. So, I guess that’s a yes to voices - but don’t we all hear a voice from time to time…?

141 Love Forms by Claire Adam (ARC) I had a baby when I was sixteen. I went to Venezuela. The baby was given up for adoption…. For the last forty-odd years, the story has existed only in these disconnected pieces. It’s only now…that I’m trying to properly put all these fragments together.

140 Too Old For This by Samantha Downing Every new date was a new opportunity, the chance to find love or a relationship…. But I didn’t. My enthusiasm waned, and one day it was gone forever. This was the same. Like so many other things, murder began to feel like a chore instead of a joy.

139 The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis “You’ll fall in love,” she said at last, “but the love will be brief. She paused again. “There’s something else here. Something…” she cleared her throat. “You’re going to be hunted. You’re going to be afraid.”

138 The Sleepless by Victor Manibo In 2032, when the UN declared hyperinsomnia a global pandemic, no one yet understood where it came from or how it spread. All that the world’s best doctors knew at first was that people weren’t sleeping anymore.

137 The Word Is Murder by Anthony Horowitz Diana Cowper had planned her funeral and she was going to need it. She was murdered about six hours later that same day.

136 Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas In order to show his family what he was, who he was, Yadriel needed to go through with his own quinces ceremony- with or without their blessing. His father and the rest of the brujx hadn’t left him with a choice.

135 How To Fall In Love In A Time Of Unnamable Disaster by Muriel Leung For the first time, he feels himself bound again to the living, to feel something so unbearably human as regret. Why can he not forget that, at the very least?

134 Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue “You really should have been born a boy.” She half laughs at that. “I’m rather an enigma even to myself. Nature was in a funny mood the day she made me. Perhaps I’m the connecting link between the sexes.” That notion makes Eliza blink.

133 The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong The hardest thing in the world is to live only once.

132 Scythe by Neal Shusterman The ending of human life used to be in the hands of nature. But we stole it. Now we have a monopoly on death. We are its sole distributor.

131 Ghost Station by SA Barnes Standing here in the center of this now open space, she shivers, feeling the tiny hairs in the back of her neck rise to attention. Something about this place just feels…wrong. She’s not even sure why at first.