This column was submitted by Evangeline Cessna with the Warren County-Vicksburg Public Library.

This week we are featuring titles from our New Adult Fiction collection.

Carl Hiaasen delivers another delightfully entertaining Florida caper with Fever Beach. Dale Figgo is a dimwitted crusader who was kicked out of the Proud Boys for being too dumb. His latest poor decision is picking up a hitchhiker one rainy afternoon on his way to run an errand. This errand sets off a chain reaction involving Viva Morales who also happens to be renting a room in Figgo’s apartment. Viva is clever and resilient and trying hard to rebuild her life after her divorce. She’s working at the Mink Foundation—a philanthropic front with dark secrets under the surface. Also in Figgo and Viva’s circle is Twilly Spree, a quick-tempered environmentalist with stacks of cash and a penchant for petty revenge. Viva and Tilly become unusual allies when dark money and twisted motives bring them together. They uncover a twisted plan of corruption and conspiracy led by a billionaire couple addicted to plastic surgery and a vapid congressman with delusions of grandeur.

In Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz, the past and present are once again linked as detective Atticus Pünd and editor Susan Ryland attempt to solve a murder. Susan has left her Greek island, her hotel, and her Greek boyfriend, Andreas, for a new life back in England. As she is freelancing for a London publisher, she is given the job of working on an Atticus Pünd continuation novel called Pünd’s Last Case. She knows the new writer, Eliot Crace. He is the troubled grandson of legendary children’s author Miriam Crace who died twenty years ago. Eliot is convinced his grandmother was poisoned. Surprisingly, Susan enjoys reading the manuscript and the more she reads, it becomes clearer that Eliot has deliberately hidden clues about his grandmother’s death in the book. Susan tries to prevent Eliot from putting himself in harm’s way, but his behavior is growing more and more erratic. When another murder occurs, Susan finds herself to be the prime suspect. If she doesn’t solve the mystery of Pünd’s Last Case, Susan could very well become the next victim.

Going Home in the Dark is the latest from bestselling author Dean Koontz. Outcasts Rebecca, Bobby, Spencer, and Ernie were inseparable as kids in the idyllic town of Maple Grove. Three of them left to pursue their dreams and achieve them, but Ernie stayed. When Ernie falls into a coma, his three childhood friends feel an overwhelming need to return home. Don’t they remember people falling into comas back then? Those people awoke, didn’t they? Maple Grove hasn’t changed much in twenty years, including Ernie’s annoying, creepy mother. Rebecca, Bobby, and Spencer begin to remember an imposing, murderous figure and a pile of mysteriousness that they were made to forget. Something strange awaits the three friends as they try to save Ernie. Time is running out and they will be forced to remember the terrors of the past to save the future.

Where the Rivers Merge by Mary Alice Monroe is the first of two epic novels celebrating one incredible woman’s life in the American South. The Lowcountry of South Carolina is on the verge of change in 1908. Young Eliza Rivers lives in her family’s treasured home of Mayfield—a grand estate held for generations by the Rivers family. Eliza is a free spirit who refuses to be confined by society’s norms and spends her days exploring the vast property, observing wildlife, and riding horses. She is put on a collision course with the patriarchal norms of a bygone era as she and the estate weather the Great War, coastal storms, and family turmoil. Eliza is the matriarch of the River/DeLancey family in 1988. She has fought her whole life to save her beloved Mayfield. She’s too stubborn and steadfast to quietly retire and leave the fate of her home to her greedy son. Eliza must make decisions that will ensure the future of the land and her family because the alternative is to watch them both split apart.

Christopher Moore’s latest, Anima Rising, is a hilarious and unhinged tale of a mad scientist, a famous painter, and an undead woman’s journey of self-discovery. In Vienna in 1911, Gustav Klimt is the most famous painter of the Austrian Empire and the darling of Viennese society. He spots a woman’s body in the Danube canal, but he stops sketching her before he calls for the police. As he draws, the woman coughs. Back at Klimt’s studio, he and his model-turned-muse Wally tend to this formerly drowned girl. She is positively feral and doesn’t remember who she is or how she came to be in the canal. Klimt names her Judith and is determined to help her regain her memories. With the help of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Judith recalls being stranded in the arctic over a hundred years ago, locked in a crate by a man named Victor Frankenstein. She also remembers visiting the Underworld. So how did she get here? And why are so many people chasing her—including Geoff, the giant croissant-munching devil dog of the North?

The Incandescent is a dark fantasy novel by Emily Tesh. Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood School and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days are a mix of endless meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented students, more meetings, and securing the school’s boundaries from demonic intrusions. Walden is great at her job, but demons are master manipulators and it’s Walden’s responsibility to keep her school and its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. It’s also possible the entity Walden most needs to protect her school from is herself.