Win A ‘Crooked Lane Book Prize Pack’

by | Jul 25, 2026 | Free Books, Free Giveways | 0 comments


Fruit Fly by Josh Silver in stores on Tuesday, August 4th.
Go gay. Go sad. Go dark.

A washed-up author will stop at nothing to claw her way back to relevancy—even if it means appropriating a young gay man’s tragic story. Mallory Maddox is buried under seven years of writer’s block. With her status as a literary sensation fizzling, she’ll do anything she can to resurrect her career. Inspiration needs to strike—and fast.

Enter Leo. He’s a struggling addict sleeping under bridges and trading sex for survival. He’s vulnerable. He’s enigmatic. He’s exactly what Mallory has been looking for. Mallory needs Leo if she wants another bestseller. The world needs Leo’s story right now, and Mallory believes she deserves to tell it. Really, it’s her story—she’s the one who wrote it, after all.

But as secrets threaten to unravel more than just her career, Mallory must decide how far she will go to pen the perfect story.

A razor-sharp satirical thriller, Fruit Fly will appeal to fans of R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface and Yomi Adegoke’s The List.

Death at a Scottish Halloween by Lucy Connelly in stores on Tuesday, August 11th.
When Dr. Emilia McRoy stumbles upon a dead body in a haunted house, she resolves to find the killer before another body can fall.

Halloween isn’t the only cause for fright in the fifth Scottish Isle mystery, perfect for fans of Paige Shelton and Connie Berry. It’s the week of Halloween—or as they say in Scotland, All Hallows’ Eve—and the town of Sea Isle is full of spooky celebrations. Dr. Emilia McRoy loves being part of her new community and is eager to help out in any way she can. But the festivities are interrupted when she and her assistant, Abigail, find a dead body in a haunted house. A real one. They’re too late to save the victim, but they’ll do whatever it takes to find his killer.

There’s just one problem: There are too many suspects. Constable Ewan would prefer the good doctor and her friends stay out of the investigations, but that isn’t how Dr. Em rolls. As she and her gang investigate, they realize the killer is searching for something—and has no problem murdering anyone who gets in the way of finding it.

Dr. Em must stay one step ahead if she’s to survive this Halloween season alive—either that or she might just end up the next victim.

Poker Wars by Philip Guitar and Jim Martyka in stores on Tuesday, August 11th.
Poker Wars tells the true story of the hitmen, bandits, card sharks, and mobsters who brought about the internationally successful World Series of Poker.

The World Series of Poker, the sport’s most popular and lucrative event, had its inaugural event in 1970, and has since grown well beyond anything its founders ever imagined.

Especially considering where it came from. Poker Wars chronicles the history of the dangerous key players and the violent conflicts that brought the game from the dark Dallas underbelly to the bright lights of Las Vegas and turned it into the billion-dollar industry it is today.

Offering an in-depth exploration of the nearly inconceivable life stories of the sport’s pioneers—especially those of “The Cowboy,” Benny Binion, an illiterate horse trader turned gambling boss who was as quick-tempered as he was business savvy—Poker Wars is a thorough breakdown of the remarkable sequence of events that brought the card game into the national spotlight.

With new insights, Guitar and Martyka offer a behind-the-scenes look into some of the most well-known conflicts in poker history, including Binion’s feud with Herbert Noble, an ambitious gambler who earned the nickname “The Catman” by surviving several assassination attempts. They also present a comprehensive look at poker forefathers like Titanic Thompson and Nick the Greek, as well as the colorful personalities of the Texas Circuit like Johnny Moss and Doyle Brunson, who upped the ante by introducing a brand-new variant of the game. At once an exposé of the darker side of the tournament’s early legacy and its consequences and a wild, colorful, outlandish tale, Poker Wars is a true crime joyride.

Any More Questions for the Corpse? by J. J. Unthank in stores on Tuesday, August 25th.
When a young necromancer investigates a string of deaths in the hidden magical capital of England, the dead come back to haunt him—in more ways than one.

Twenty-one-year-old Malowin Gladstone was raised by the dead—two skeletons to be precise. While his parents keep a close eye-socket on him, he just wants to get through the rest of university without using any more of his much-loathed necromancy. A hope that gets all the more difficult when he’s recruited by a secret Order to hunt a serial killer.

Dunwich, the hidden magical capital of England, has its fair share of oddities, its most recent being a series of murders that have the police at a dead end. But Detective Walters has an unorthodox suggestion. Who better to find a killer than someone who can talk to the dead? He proposes that Mal use his necromancy for good and solve the case before it goes stone-cold.

As more bodies begin to drop, Mal befriends several misfits who help him unearth the culprit. Among them, Des, a fledgling vampire; Hala, a magical empath; and Yu, a shapeshifting genius.

The team put their unique set of skills to the task, but as they get closer to digging up the truth, the group’s ghosts come back to haunt them and the killer won’t rest until they’re all dead and buried.