Hatch Public Library

NOTE: This book is emotionally intense with psychological stakes. Noah Hayes was supposed to be starting over. A full scholarship and a future built on talent, not survival. As one of the university’s rising ice hockey stars, everything in his life should finally be falling into place, instead, it starts falling apart on day one when Chase Voss notices him. Beautiful. Cruel. Dangerous in a way that doesn’t need to be hidden. But Noah had bigger problems than a campus king’s grudge. Drowning in debt and desperation, Noah takes a job he knows will cost him, but the man he stole from isn’t just powerful, he’s dangerous. Adrian Voss. Now Noah belongs to him, trapped in a world he never wanted. By day, he’s the university’s ice hockey star, by night, he moves product for a man who owns his life. What started as hatred between Chase and Noah turns into obsession. What should be a rivalry turns into something neither of them can control. Chase falls hard and reckless, but Noah knows better than to trust something that feels like a weakness. And if Chase Voss wants him, then Noah will use him. Play him. Survive him. But the deeper they get, the harder it becomes to tell what’s real and what’s manipulation. And in a world built on power and blood, love is the most dangerous mistake of all, because loving the wrong person could destroy everything, but walking away might be even worse.

He was the campus king. She was the only heart he couldn't steal. Jace Kingston is untouchable. Star hockey player. Campus legend. A walking trail of broken hearts and whispered warnings. Girls call him King. They say it like a prayer. I say it like a curse. He nearly ran me over with his sports car last semester. He throws money around like it means nothing. He smirks while girls cry over him. And now, thanks to my tutoring job, he's my assignment. One semester. One paper. Five hundred dollars that I desperately need to keep a roof over my head. The rules are simple. He shows up. He does the work. He doesn't flirt with me, charm me, or treat me like another conquest. But Jace Kingston doesn't follow rules. He shows up with bruises he won't explain. He looks at me like I'm something he wants to break. And when he accidentally lets his armor slip, I see something terrifying underneath. A boy afraid of becoming a monster. A boy who flinches at loud voices and keeps a photograph of his mother hidden in his drawer. A boy who might be just as broken as I am. I can't afford to fall for him. I have rent to pay. A future to build. A promise I made to myself when I watched my mother die with nothing but debt and a daughter who couldn't save her. I swore I'd never depend on anyone again. But Jace is everywhere now. In my study sessions. In my thoughts. In the way my pulse stutters when he says my name. And when his demons come hunting, I realize the worst truth of all. He's not just my enemy anymore. He's the one person I might destroy myself to save.

Seventeen‑year‑old Raven has spent her whole life drifting through the foster system, never staying long enough to call anywhere home. With her eighteenth birthday—and the end of state support—only weeks away, she’s sent to the strange little town of Hallow’s Edge, a place obsessed with Halloween and thick with secrets. The Connors, her new foster family, are nothing like the others. Warm. Protective. Magical. And their son Noah? He’s distant, intense, and impossible to read… yet Raven feels an instant pull toward him she can’t explain. But Hallow’s Edge is waking up. Students are disappearing. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. And Raven’s dreams are filled with a crying woman and a warning she can’t escape. When Raven’s dormant witch powers begin to stir, she discovers she’s the last heir of a powerful witch bloodline—and Noah is bound to her by a fate older than the town itself. In Hallow’s Edge, nothing is accidental. Not her arrival. Not her magic.

Across time and continents, a mysterious violet Door appears to those in their darkest hour. It is not just an escape; it is a summons. In modern-day Tanzania, Resipicius ("Ressi") is a young man crushed by poverty and aimlessness. When the glowing portal tears through the wall of his crumbling hut, he steps into the void, leaving his world behind. But the mystery of the Door began long ago. In 1921, twins Mwanamalundi and Mwajuma were born with the power to command the storm and the earth. Destined to protect their people, they built a sanctuary against colonial oppression. However, their rise provoked Baraka, a jealous rival who betrayed them to German forces. In the ensuing battle, Baraka found redemption in a sacrificial death, but tragedy struck the twins. Mwajuma fell into the Chozi la Ardhi—a mystical pond that defied gravity to become the very first Door—and vanished into the stars. Now, the Door has opened again for Ressi and others across the globe. The prophecy foretold that help would come from other worlds. The scattered heroes are being gathered, and the true war is about to begin.

Eliza Ward does not fall through time. Time bends toward her. Pulled from the present into Revolutionary America, Eliza becomes trapped in a landscape where history repeats unevenly, battles restart with variations, and memory functions as both anchor and weapon. She is not a chosen heroine, but a constant: a woman whose awareness destabilizes the moment itself. She meets Mercy Hale, a midwife and witch who understands time as a negotiation rather than a force to command. Mercy aids Eliza’s survival while refusing the role of savior, having already learned the cost of standing too close to history’s center. During a looping battle, Eliza saves Thomas Reed, a Continental soldier who does not shift when time does. Thomas is an anchor: steady, observant, unchanged across iterations. Their bond deepens in an almost-normal village where time briefly behaves. Eliza’s intervention triggers time’s response. Rather than immediate destruction, time collects interest. Mercy bargains to spare Eliza and Thomas, sacrificing her own future to stabilize the present. Time extracts payment from Eliza as well, stripping away her voice, the very tool she uses to name and hold moments in place. Silenced and unmoored, Eliza is violently displaced back into the original battle. Unable to anchor the moment, she watches Thomas die in the version of history that was always waiting beneath her defiance. Told in rotating perspectives between Eliza, Thomas, and Mercy, The Hours That Refused to Behave is a lyrical time-travel novel about revolution, restraint, and consequence, asking not whether history can be changed, but who pays when it is.

Another tail-chasing journey come forth when Etheral’s original pack was slaughtered and she was forced to become a rogue in a place where unruly rebels like rogues live, feral wolves kill, painted wolves wander and other wild animals hunt. And in the hopes of getting away from the never-ending chase, Etheral continues to survive as a lone wolf until a pack is willing enough to accept her. But many packs didn’t open their doors for Etheral for she carries a peculiarity that a pack member shouldn’t have. Etheral is a runt. And all those packs were afraid to take her in. While Etheral runs away from her nightmares chasing her into the rabbit burrows, there is a question, long been lingering in her heart: Will the tail-chasing continue until she falls down deep on her death bed? Or will she find a new home, her mate, and a better ending?