CMash Reads

Get Gribnitz by Howard Gimple #AuthorGuestPost

GHott — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 09:27:23 +0000

GET GRIBNITZ

by Howard Gimple

June 29 – July 24, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

Howard Gimple, master of the comedy thriller, takes on the world of advertising in his funniest, snarkiest, most entertainingly irreverent book yet.

Stew Gribnitz is a brilliant advertising copywriter with impulse control issues, an utter disdain for authority, and an unresolved demi-Oedipal complex (he’d like to murder his father but has no sexual designs on his mother). When the first act of his new creative director is to dump our hero’s best work into a garbage bin, Stew’s immediate impulse (which, of course, he can’t control) is to do unspeakable things to his new boss’s necktie while he’s still wearing it.

The next day, when the necktie guy is found brutally murdered, Stew is brought in for questioning by the NYPD. He’s released thanks to an air-tight alibi, but not before his face is emblazoned on the cover of the New York tabloids, declaring him to be a cross between Son of Sam and Jack the Ripper. Stew becomes a Madison Avenue untouchable and a New York City pariah, except to his father who declares that seeing his son on the front page of his favorite paper is the first time that Stew has ever done anything to make him proud.

Stew gets a gig as a part-time advertising consultant to a billionaire publisher running for Governor of Connecticut who’s twenty points behind in the polls. When the publisher’s private plane does a nosedive into Long Island Sound, Stew is the only one who knows that his deceased client had been receiving death threats from his opponent, a former FBI agent whose brother is a mob enforcer.

Stew is convinced he’ll be the next victim and the authorities are convinced he’s a multiple murderer. The only way to clear his name is to find the real killer or killers, a task, well beyond his skill set, made even more difficult because the FBI, the NYPD, several suburban police jurisdictions and a homicidal hitwoman are all out to GET GRIBNITZ.

Praise for Get Gribnitz:

“…the perfect mystery novel”
~ Readers’ Favorite

“…a deliciously entertaining, fun, and exciting read from cover to cover.”
~ The Mystery Review Crew

Book Details:

Genre: Mystromedy
Published by: Mystromedy Books
Publication Date: July 1, 2024
Number of Pages: 348
ISBN: 9798990761575
Book Links: Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads | BookBub

Read an excerpt:

On my way to the house I’m hoping Moish isn’t home. But as soon as I walk in there he is, standing in the living room, holding the Post in one hand and the News in the other.

I gird myself for what’s coming. “So I guess you read about me in the paper.”

His smile gets broader. “You bet I did.”

“It was all a huge misunderstanding. Believe it or not, you’re my alibi. I was here with you last night when it happened.”

He sticks his thumb in the air. “Of course you were. I’ll back you up a hundred percent. Just tell me what time I was supposed to be here and I’ll swear on a pile of Bibles.” He winks at me. “Old Testament, of course.”

“No, really.”

He shakes his head. “This is better. We were here together all night, playing pinochle. Wait a minute, you never learned to play pinochle. How about gin rummy? You know how to play gin rummy. Of course you do. Any moron can play gin rummy.”

“Pop, listen to me. We don’t have to make up a story. If it ever comes up, just tell the truth.”

“Okay, son,” he says, still grinning. “Whatever you say. But I still think the gin rummy routine is the way to go.”

Son? He never calls me son. Putz, schmendrick or shmuck with earlaps, which for my father is the absolute worst thing you can be, are his usual terms of endearment for me, but son? Never.

Since my mother died, giving me a hard time has become my father’s favorite pastime. Even more than playing cards or going to the track. After forty-five years of arguing with her, he needed someone else to yell at. Not that he didn’t yell at me when she was alive, it’s just that she was his number-one target. She told me that he never means anything by it. She used to say, “When he gets quiet, that’s when you have to worry. As long as he’s yelling, everything’s fine.”

That’s why I’m so confused. Here’s the perfect chance for him to tell me what a shmuck I am for getting myself into this mess, instead he’s kvelling like I just won the Nobel Prize.

“You did see the paper, didn’t you?”

“Of course. I bought extra copies. I’m gonna hand them out to everyone at the track.”

“And you’re not upset?”

“Upset?” He puffs out his chest. “I’ve never been prouder.”

“But everyone thinks I’m a cold-blooded murderer.”

“I know.” There’s that grin again. “It’s terrific.”

“I don’t get it.”

“What’s to get? You finally made a name for yourself. Made it to the front page. The page that’s usually reserved for presidents, governors and generals. And now my boy is right up there with them.”

“They made me look like a homicidal maniac. It’s not the same.”

“You’re right. It’s better.”

At this point I don’t know what to say, so I just stand there with my mouth open.

“You know where I grew up, right?”

I nod. “Yeah. Brownsville. Chester Street, right?”

“You know my mother had a chicken market around the corner on Dumont Avenue?”

“Of course. You told me that story a hundred times. They called her the Chicken Lady. She made you get up at five in the morning to pluck chickens before you went to school. Made you come back before you went to bed to sweep up.”

“She was a hard woman, my mother. She had to be. After that goddamn flu killed my father, she had three babies to feed. But that doesn’t matter now.” His eyes start to twinkle. And Moish wasn’t usually a twinkler. “Do you know what was down the street from my mother’s store?”

I shrug.

“Rosie Gold’s candy store.”

“Okaaaaay?”

“You know who hung around Rosie’s?”

“Not a clue.”

He puffs out his chest. I’m thinking it’s gonna be some old-time Jewish sports hero like Kingfish Levinsky or Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom.

“Murder, Incorporated. That’s who. The toughest SOBs in the country. And they were all Jews. Louis Lepke, Abe Reles, Buggsy Goldstein. Killers, every one of them. Everybody feared them. The Italians, the Irish, the coloreds. They had class too. Money, women, fancy cars, you name it. When I was a kid, twelve or thirteen, I’d sneak out of my mother’s shop and hang around outside Rosie’s. Those guys loved me. They treated me like I was their little mascot. Their good-luck charm. I’d run errands for them. Bring them cigarettes, drinks, the paper. Whatever they wanted. And they’d throw me a twenty-dollar tip like it was a nickel. You know what that’s worth today? Five hundred dollars. I was a snot-nosed pisher with more money in my pocket than most of the grown men in the neighborhood. In a couple of years I coulda been one of them.”

I don’t know whether to be impressed or aghast. “So what happened?”

He shrugs. “This and that. Reles turned rat. Then he fell out of a hotel window. Pretty soon they were all dead or in jail. The Depression hit. The war happened. I spent five years in the Philippines shooting Japs. And when I came home I married your mother.”

I’m a little taken aback that he puts marrying my mother in the same category as the Second World War and the Great Depression.

“Besides, when your grandmother found out what I was doing, she beat the living crap outta me. Told me if she ever caught me hanging around with those bums again she’d pluck me like one of her chickens.”

“Let me get this straight, your childhood dream was to be a gangster?”

“It was different then, not like the scum-bums you see now. Back then, if you were in the rackets you were somebody, a big shot, a mensch.”

“So seeing my commercials on TV and the awards I won, that all means nothing to you, but having everybody in New York think I’m the Jewish Dillinger, that you’re proud of?”

“It’s not like you’re a senator or governor, but it’s something.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you but I really didn’t do it.”

“Whatever you say.” He pauses for a second. “Listen, do you know Shifty, the bookie from back in our old neighborhood?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“He’s been giving me a hard time. He says I owe him some money but he’s fulla shit.”

“How much money?”

“I dunno, two . . . three hundred.”

“Dollars?”

“No, kishkes. Of course dollars.”

“And you’re sure you don’t owe him the money?”

“Of course I’m sure. You think I wouldn’t remember something like that?”

I don’t say anything.

“He says he’s gonna come over here with some leg breakers and take it if I don’t give it to him. How about you pay him a little visit and convince him to lay off?” He holds up the paper and grins. “He’ll listen to you.”

“Listen, Pop. I’m not a thug. I don’t even play one on TV. There’s no way I’m gonna threaten your bookie or anybody else.”

He shoots me a scornful smirk. “I shoulda known you didn’t have the guts.” He walks to the bathroom. Before he shuts the door he looks at me with disgust and shouts, “Putz!”

***

Author Bio:

I’ve been writing for my supper for most of my adult life. First as a copywriter and creative director for several ad agencies. After I aged out of the advertising business (you’re a dinosaur at 35), I wrote English dialogue for the American releases of Japanese anime cartoons, reviewed movies for a pay-per-view television network, and was the editor of a newsletter for the New York Giants football team. I wrote the lyrics for a song used in the soundtrack of the horror film THE REJUVENATOR as well as the fight song for Stony Brook University, where I was a writer and sports editor for their alumni magazine and taught two classes, Rock and Relevance, about the influence of classic rock on politics and Filthy Shakespeare about the sexy bits of the Bard’s plays and poems that they don’t usually teach. Several of my stories have been featured in Akashic Books’ Mondays are Murder online noir series. I recently finished work on The Garbageman, a documentary about a trash hauler who saved the lives of 50,000 children in underprivileged countries with congenital heart disease. And if you’ve gotten this far on the website, you know about my novels.

After living in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Long Island, I headed west to Glendora, California, with my wife and Goldendoodle.

Catch Up With Howard Gimple:

HowardGimple.com
Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads
BookBub – @howardgimple
Facebook – @authorhowardgimple

GUEST POST by HOWARD GIMPLE

MYSTROMEDY…WAIT, WHAT??

Simply, a mystromedy is a comedy-mystery. It’s a genre that has been wildly popular on screens large and small. Shows like Columbo and Monk ran for many years atop the ratings. And funny mysteries have been dominating the silver screen forever. From William Powell’s Thin Man to Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau to Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, moviegoers can’t get enough daffy detectives. Why is it then, when it comes to the printed page or the pixilated ebook screen, mixing jokes and thrills is unkosher, undignified and unacceptable. A few outliers like Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books and Carl Hiassen’s quirky Florida capers are the exceptions that prove the rule that comedic mysteries are the Rodney Dangerfields of the mystery-thriller genre.

Even Donald E. Westlake, the dean of whodunit humor, said that his Dortmunder series, one of the all-time comedic mystery masterworks, was created by accident. He began writing another book in his Parker series, featuring a tough-as-nails criminal whose exploits wouldn’t come close to engendering a smirk, let alone a smile or, heaven forbid, a guffaw. Parker’s demeanor was so fierce and foreboding that the mere sight of him entering a room would give its occupants shivers.

Westlake said that when he started writing the book, no matter how hard he tried to stick to the usual ominous Parkeresque atmospherics, the story kept veering wackily off course. He decided to temporarily put Parker on the shelf and continue the comedic arc of the story with a new main character. And so John Dortmunder was born. After The Hot Rock, the first Dortmunder book, was finished Westlake considered it to be a one-off and intended to return to writing hard boiled mysteries. But the tremendous critical and commercial acclaim it received persuaded him to write another and another and another— fourteen novels and more than a dozen short stories in all.

So why is it that out of Amazon’s 60-odd categories for the Mystery, Thriller and Suspense genre, from amateur sleuths to witches and wizards, there isn’t a single category for comedy? Do they think that mystery readers have no sense of humor? Is there no room for both gasps and giggles in a 300 page novel? Of course there is. But it may take time for mysteries and comedies to cohabitate on amazon.

I encountered the same sort of anti-comedy bias when I was a young copywriter at an ad agency. I was assigned to write ads for an insurance company. Every time I submitted a humorous one it was summarily rejected. ‘Insurance is serious business, it’s not a laughing matter,’ I was sternly told. And for years, insurance ads were at best dry and at worse morose. Then Met Life started airing ads featuring Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang. Not only was no one put off by this, their sales took off. And the trend continued. Geico uses a wise-cracking gecko with an Australian accent as its spokeslizard, Flo and her gang are doing shtick for Progressive and a kooky emu is the face of Liberty Mutual.

Let’s do the same for laugh-out-loud mysteries. C’mon amazon, give us a category. Maybe even two. It could be the start of the mystromedy revolution. Or at least get us mystromedians a little respect.

Tour Participants:

Click through the other tour stops for can’t-miss reviews, insider interviews, exclusive guest posts, and more chances to win!

Click here to view the Tour Schedule

Get In, Enter, Then GET GRIBNITZ

This giveaway is hosted by Partners in Crime Tours for Howard Gimple. See the widget for entry terms and conditions. Void where prohibited.

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Proxy Legal Thriller Series by Manning Wolfe #AuthorInterview

GHott — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 10:22:05 +0000

PROXY LEGAL THRILLER SERIES

by Manning Wolfe

June 8 – July 17, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Amazon | KindleUnlimited | BookShop.org | Goodreads | BookBub

DEAD BY PROXY

In this lawyer on the run action suspense, attorney Quinton Bell loses the trial of his career, and possibly his life.

Dead By Proxy takes you on a heart-pounding journey through the life of a criminal defense attorney, whose world is wiped out. When Quinton loses a career-defining case, he finds himself being hunted by the very client he tried to save.

As Quinton navigates the treacherous path of survival, he is running from a powerful and relentless adversary who will stop at nothing to see him silenced. Finally landing in Houston, he hides in plain sight while re-inventing his new life as a trial lawyer.

When he’s forced to take on a high-profile murder case, he exposes himself and those he loves to danger. With each passing moment, the noose tightens, and he must draw on every ounce of wit to outsmart those who still want him dead.

Will Quinton Bell find a way out, or will he forever be a target in a deadly game of cat and mouse?

Amazon | KindleUnlimited | BookShop.org | Goodreads | BookBub

HUNTED BY PROXY

In this lawyer on the run action suspense, can attorney Quinton Bell hang on to his new life as he hides in plain sight?

Hunted By Proxy takes you on a heart-pounding journey through the life of a criminal defense attorney, whose world, as he knew it, was wiped out by the very client he tried to save.

Quinton establishes a new life and law practice in Houston and thinks he’s outrun the dangerous adversaries who chased him there. Just as he begins to relax, he receives a mysterious note that proves to him that he’s still in danger and running from a powerful and relentless adversary. But who?

With each passing moment, the noose tightens, and he must draw on every ounce of wit to outsmart those who still want him exposed, or worse, dead.

Will Quinton Bell find a way out, or will he forever be a target in a deadly game of cat and mouse?

Amazon | KindleUnlimited | BookShop.org | Goodreads | BookBub

ALIVE BY PROXY

Can attorney Quinton Bell hang on to his new life, as he hides in plain sight, in this lawyer-on-the-run suspense thriller?

Alive By Proxy takes readers on a heart-pounding ride through the life of a criminal defense attorney whose world was wiped out by the very client he tried to save. After faking his own death and stepping into the life of his deceased best friend, Quinton walks a razor-thin line every day to keep his past buried and his future intact.

When Houston Wildcatters linebacker Marcus Hale is charged with the brutal murder of his agent, the case detonates into a media firestorm. As the defense digs deeper, the murder case opens into something darker with buried secrets, dangerous leverage, and hidden lives that refuse to stay in the shadows.

As the courtroom battle intensifies, so does the danger beyond it. Unseen eyes track Quinton’s every move. Old ghosts stir. The identity that has kept Quinton alive begins to feel more fragile than ever.

Every witness, every revelation, and every step closer to the truth threatens to expose both Quinton and his client. Will Quinton find a way out, or will he forever be a target in a deadly game of cat and mouse?

Praise for the Proxy Legal Thriller Series:

“A riveting read that expertly teams courtroom drama and legal maneuvering with imminent danger, spine-tingling suspense, a touch of romance, and non-stop action. Talk about an adrenaline rush!”
~ Reedsy

“Can a woman write a thriller book that leaves you going, ‘Wow, how did I ever miss this author before?’ Yes, she can. Fist bumps and high fives to author, Manning Wolfe on this fantabulous thriller!”
~ Forgotten Winds

“I love the whole book! From beginning to end, it was a roller coaster ride! From New York to Texas, With incredible character development, and plot twists from beginning to end! Looking back, there were subtle clues, but not until the very end was there a resolution. I would highly recommend this book!”
~ Susan Riley, Amazon Customer

“Manning Wolfe just put herself on my list of must-read authors!”
~ John Ellsworth

Book Details:

Genre: Legal Thriller
Published by: Starpath Books, LLC
Series: Proxy Legal Thriller Series

Author Bio:

MANNING WOLFE, an award-winning author and attorney residing in Austin, Texas, writes cinematic-style, smart, fast-paced thrillers and crime fiction. Manning was recently featured on Oxygen TV’s: Accident, Suicide, or Murder.

Manning’s legal thriller series features Austin attorney Merit Bridges, including Dollar Signs, Music Notes, Green Fees, Chinese Wall, and Killer Weed.

Manning’s new Proxy Legal Thriller Series features Houston attorney Quinton Bell and includes: Dead By Proxy, Hunted By Proxy, and Alive By Proxy.

Manning is co-author of Sinister Santa, and twelve additional Bullet Book Speed Reads.

As a graduate of Rice University and the University of Texas School of Law, Manning’s experience has given her a voyeur’s peek into some shady characters’ lives and a front-row seat to watch the good people who stand against them.

Catch Up With Manning Wolfe:

ManningWolfe.com
Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads – @manningwolfe
BookBub – @ManningWolfe
Instagram – @manningwolfe
X – @ManningWolfe
Facebook – @manning.wolfe
YouTube – @starpathbooksllc1763
Pinterest – @manningwolfe
BlueSky – @manningwolfe.bsky.social
TikTok – @manningwolfe

Q&A with MANNING WOLFE

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
I’m an attorney turned thriller writer living in Lockhart, Texas, which means I spend my days thinking about courtroom drama, suspicious characters, and whether brisket counts as a food group. Lockhart is known as the BBQ Capital of Texas, so I consider it less of a hometown and more of a delicious occupational hazard.
I’ve always loved storytelling. Practicing law introduced me to all kinds of personalities and conflicts, and eventually I realized that some of the best fiction starts with people under pressure facing terrible decisions.

What was the inspiration for this book?
Most of my books start with a “what if” question. In this case, I became fascinated with the idea of how quickly an ordinary life can spiral into complete chaos. One bad decision, one wrong person, one secret exposed at the wrong time, and suddenly everything changes.
I also love stories where the hero is smart but still vulnerable. I think readers connect more with characters who are trying to hold things together while the walls are slowly closing in around them. Plus, let’s face it, putting fictional people through misery is part of the job description for thriller writers.

Can you give us a glimpse into the research that went into writing this story?
One advantage of being an attorney is that I already understand legal procedure and courtroom strategy. The downside is that I also know how much paperwork real lawyers deal with, which is why my fictional attorneys are always much cooler and more efficient than reality.
Beyond the legal side, I choose locations carefully. I’ve spent a good amount of time in the places I select as the main venue. I want readers to feel like they’re standing on a Houston street corner at midnight or sitting in a Galveston restaurant watching a storm roll in.
I also tend to fall down strange internet rabbit holes while researching. At some point during every book, my search history begins to look highly suspicious. So far, the cops have not come calling.

What does your typical writing routine look like? Any idiosyncrasies or rituals?
I’m an early outliner and a late-in-the-day writer. I’ll spend days mapping out twists and scenes, then suddenly write for eight straight hours fueled by tea and the false belief that I’ll “just finish one more chapter.”
I also tend to work out plot issues in my dreams. This has convinced my family that either I’m deeply creative or slowly losing my mind due to lack of REM sleep. The jury is still out.

What are a few of your favorite foods?
Living in Lockhart, Texas, it’s basically illegal not to love BBQ. Brisket here is practically a religion. If somebody says they know a “better” BBQ place somewhere else, people in Lockhart react like they’ve been personally insulted.
But my second home is the Texas Coast, and that’s where my other food obsession takes over: shrimp. Fried shrimp, grilled shrimp, shrimp tacos, shrimp po’boys, shrimp boiled in enough Old Bay to clear your sinuses. I love those little crustaceans in just about any form imaginable.
Writing this makes me think I should include a restaurant that serves both BBQ and shrimp in my next book. Maybe I’ll throw in a little salad too.

Tour Participants:

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Click here to view the Tour Schedule

Reasonable Doubt You’ll Want To Miss This? None.

This giveaway is hosted by Partners in Crime Tours for Manning Wolfe. See the widget for entry terms and conditions. Void where prohibited.

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The Midas Touch by Gary Grossman, Oren Aviv, & Charles Segars #AuthorInterview

GHott — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 09:16:40 +0000

THE MIDAS TOUCH

by Gary Grossman, Oren Aviv, & Charles Segars

June 29 – July 24, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

National Treasure meets Jack Ryan in THE MIDAS TOUCH

July 19, 1799. Napoleon’s armies advance into Egypt. In the steaming desert sands, his explorers unearth an astounding discovery: The Rosetta Stone. The tablet, cracked and incomplete, will eventually answer mysteries about ancient Egyptian history, culture, and science. But in the years since its partial excavation, world leaders, historians, scientists, and adventurers have speculated that the missing fragments could answer another age-old mystery.

THE MIDAS TOUCH is a globe-trotting adventure that follows CIA cryptologist/puzzle solver/savant Brady Donovan as he investigates the murder of his beloved mentor Dr. Hastings Kaufman, only to find that it leads to a search for the missing pieces of the famed Rosetta Stone and the secret it holds: The Alchemist Gold Theory – how to turn ordinary metals into gold.

Protagonist Brady Donovan partners with British archeologist Teppy Flynn and conspiracy theorist Avery Prophet. Only a heartbeat away is a diabolical Silicon Valley tech giant, D’Arcy Lauren Granier, and her henchmen.

The quest takes them through Napoleonic history and into a contemporary race through the streets of London, America’s backroads, the Caribbean, New Orleans’ French Quarter, Napoleon’s last island prison in the Atlantic, the Louisiana Bayou, and a massive, abandoned salt mine where pirate Jean Lafitte hid his treasures.

History, told in vivid flashbacks, jumps back to 1799 Egypt, and forward through the hundreds of years since, with pirates and presidents on the search for better or worse. Now Brady Donovan fights against the fast- ticking clock, relentless bad guys, and a Category 5 hurricane to where past meets present and greed and betrayal become deadly partners.

THE MIDAS TOUCH is written by international award-winning thriller writer Gary Grossman with Charles Segars and Oren Aviv, the creators of the billion-dollar National Treasure movie franchise.

Praise for THE MIDAS TOUCH:

“A perfect piece of entertainment with characters and a story that never disappoints. Poignant in places, nail-biting in others, the plot is accentuated by a take-no-prisoners attitude, similar to speeding down a slalom course with all its twists and turns. It’s quite a ride!”
~ Steve Berry New York Times best-selling author

“The Midas Touch is a thrilling ride through history and modern-day, tantalizing the reader with intrigue, action, and adventure across a labyrinth of archaeological secrets and danger.”
~ Raymond Benson, New York Times best-selling James Bond novelist

“Fans of The DaVinci Code will love The Midas Touch. Grossman, Segars, and Aviv have created an iconic character in Brady Donovan, a CIA cryptologist who trades in his pen for tradecraft to protect the world from a devastating economic weapon. Gripping prose, unforgettable settings, and non-stop excitement. A real page turner!”
~ K.J. Howe, international bestselling author of Skyjack writes

THE MIDAS TOUCH Trailer:

Book Details:

Genre: Suspense, Mystery, History Fiction, Globe-Hopping Intrigue
Published by: Fayetteville Mafia Press
Publication Date: June 2, 2026
Number of Pages: 334
ISBN: 9781949024999 (ISBN10: 1949024997)
Book Links: Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads | BookBub

Gary Grossman:

THE MIDAS TOUCH is written by international award-winning thriller writer Gary Grossman (OLD EARTH, the EXECUTIVE ACTIONS and RED HOTEL series) with Charles Segars and Oren Aviv, the creators and executive producers of the exciting and popular Nicholas Cage NATIONAL TREASURE movie franchise.

Catch Up With Gary Grossman:

garygrossmanbooks.com
Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads
BookBub
Instagram – @garygrossman1
X – @garygrossman1
Facebook – @AuthorGaryGrossman

Charles Segars:

CHARLES SEGARS has served as a senior executive at Viacom, CBS, The Walt Disney Company, DreamWorks Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation. Segars is also known as Creator and Executive Producer of the Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures hit movie franchise, National Treasure and National Treasure: Book of Secrets.
Currently, Segars enjoys a dual role as CEO of Ovation TV, the only multi-platform program service dedicated to the Arts and as President of Segars Media.
Segars is a respected global safety and security analyst. He advises a number of national security-related technology startups and is actively involved in governmental affairs.He has served as a White House Associate as an Advance Team leader for the Office of the President and Vice President of the United States of America, leading a number of secretive domestic and international trips.

Oren Aviv:

OREN AVIV ran Disney Studios from 2006-2010, after heading Disney Marketing for eight years. He became Disney’s first Chief Content Officer, and after leaving Disney he became CMO for 20th Century Fox Studios. In addition to executive producing a dozen films, he also co-created and was Executive Producer of Disney’s National Treasure film franchise.
Aviv was named “Marketer of the Year” three separate times by Advertising Age Magazine. He created breakthrough campaigns for the studio’s NARNIA, STEP UP, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the National Treasure franchises, and launched memorable campaigns for many of Pixar’s animated hits, including Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles and Cars. He also launched blockbusters such as The Sixth Sense; Pearl Harbor; Ransom; The Rock; Signs; The Waterboy; Armageddon; Unbreakable; 101 Dalmatians; Con Air; Crimson Tide; Freaky Friday; and Father of the Bride, as well as hundreds of other films under the Disney, Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures banners. As CMO at 20th Century Fox, Aviv created the campaigns for Rise of the Planet of the Apes; X-Men: First Class; Ridley Scott’s Prometheus; The Wolverine starring Hugh Jackman; and Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning Life of Pi.
As head of production at Disney, Aviv was responsible for greenlighting such hits as THE PROPOSAL starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds; Tim Burton’s billion-dollar-grossing Alice in Wonderland; Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End; National Treasure: Book of Secrets; and the Amy Adams musical-comedy Enchanted.

Q&A with GARY GROSSMAN

Can you tell us a little about yourselves and your backgrounds?
I guess I’m a book with many chapters. Like Brady Donovan, our lead character in THE MIDAS TOUCH, I grew up in Hudson, New York. Unlike Brady, I have no amazing cognitive skills that would lead me to the CIA and a treasure hunt around the world. However, the world was out there for me. The first way, as a 12-year-old ham radio operator, tapping out Morse Code and communicating with other shortwave radio operators across the globe.
The second way I reached beyond my one-square mile small town borders was as a local rock radio DJ. I started at 15 and at that point, I thought my career was set. Radio. Forever radio and rock and roll. Then came Boston and Emerson College where television and documentary film production lured me to expand my experience. Both mediums extended my reach and I became a story teller. The next leaps were into journalism, local and network news, documentary production, and books – both fiction and non-fiction. All as a storyteller, in one medium or another.
That’s who I am now—through writing international mysteries and thrillers, memoirs, books on TV history, and yes, I’m still producing some TV and happily getting on live radio and podcasts to promote my books.
It’s full circle experience, and word for word, it’s my story. I can even still spell it out in Morse Code!

Can you give us a glimpse into the research that went into writing this story?
Collaborating with Charles Segars and Oren Aviv has been truly creative and fulfilling. Together, we recognized that history was going to be a character in THE MIDAS TOUCH. That meant we’d have to hunker down and do thorough research on names, places, and dates. We had to create interlocking links between the real and the imagined, and have our cryptologist, Brady Donovan, and his cohorts, Egyptologist Teppy Flynn and conspiracy research Avery Prophet, figure them out.
That meant there’s hardly a page that didn’t require research. Hopefully, our research will be the transportation for readers to follow the clues from 1799 Egypt with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, to the British Museum, and onto America, while deep diving through centuries of history.
The challenge and the goal was to cultivate the facts without getting too deep in the weeds. That gets back to my collaboration with the creators and executive producers of National Treasure and National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Charles Segars and Oren Aviv know how to strike the balance between authenticity and entertainment. They’ve done that in their movies and we feel we’ve succeeded in our wild, globe-hopping treasure hunt, THE MIDAS TOUCH.

Tweaking this question to get to except I had working with Charles and Oren, who reinvented the treasure hunt genre. How did the three of you collaborate on THE MIDAS TOUCH? What did that process look like day to day?
Collaboration can work many ways: Talking through the manuscript with one writer hitting the keys. Alternating chapters and passing them around. Or a combination of both. For the creation of THE MIDAS TOUCH, everyone contributed with story, characters, location, dialogue, through the five drafts, then the polish. In other words, we each brought our own best game to the process—as writers, film and television storytellers, and fans of the genre.
Most of all, it’s really exciting when everyone has something important to contribute. A good idea gets better with help. Imagery becomes richer. Characters, more real. And for us, history jumps off the page.
I got to work with real pros. It doesn’t get any better than that.

What does your typical writing routine look like? Any idiosyncrasies or rituals?
Process, process, process. Routine, routine, routine. I don’t believe in writer’s block. I have to lay something down every day, no matter how much I may rework it later. My goal is three pages a day. Sometimes more. Just do the math. If I keep it up, and I try to, that’s ninety pages a month, Less with a day or a weekend off every so often.
Then there’s rewriting. Sometimes that’s even harder. Well, if not harder, certainly more tedious because that’s where I discover what needs to be strengthened, improved, eliminated, or reimagined. However, with something on the page, and the establishment of a creative direction, rewriting takes me one step closer to bringing the story together.
And . . . then come the next drafts.
As screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill<, The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and so many more wonderful movies) says, “Being a writer is like having homework every night of your life for the rest of your life.”
Totally true. And with that, I have another two pages to write today!

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SHADOWS OF FRENCHMEN by Michael Rigg #AuthorInterview

GHott — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 08:16:16 +0000

SHADOWS OF FRENCHMEN

by Michael Rigg

June 22 – July 31, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

A Jonathan Gray, M.D. Mystery

On a frosty Sunday morning in February, Dr. Jonathan Gray, Coroner of Orleans Parish, faces a gruesome sight. A dead man splayed against the circular steel and cut-glass blocks of the city’s AIDS memorial in Washington Square Park has strange symbols carved into his forehead and chest. A coded note—a cipher—has been placed under one hand. The body mutilation and note are hallmarks of a serial killer dubbed by the news media as the “Mardi Gras Sweeper,” because he strikes during Carnival season and leaves coded manifestos taunting police and giving hints about his next victim.

Hoping to avoid a panic during the city’s most profitable season, Mayor Max Jamerson asks Gray to investigate the murder “on the sly,” without formal assistance from the New Orleans Police Department. Time is of the essence as Gray races to figure out the cipher and track down the Sweeper in order to prevent additional killings—and save Mardi Gras.

Praise for Shadows of Frenchmen:

“A chilling, razor-sharp mystery set against the explosive energy of Mardi Gras. This cat-and-mouse hunt fuses cryptic clues, relentless suspense and rising terror into a tale that gives us a horrifyingly intimate glimpse into a killer’s mind. Dr. Jonathan Gray is a hero you won’t forget—and the Mardi Gras Sweeper is a nightmare you won’t escape.”
~ Kathleen Antrim, Bestselling Author, President-Outliers Writing University

“Michael Rigg does it again, with another thrilling mystery that you won’t be able to put down featuring New Orleans Coroner Jonathan Gray. Shadows of Frenchmen takes readers into the darkest corners of New Orleans’ lush settings and spooky cemeteries as Gray and his colleagues hunt for a possible serial killer, all against the backdrop of raucous Mardi Gras celebrations. Rigg’s love for this extraordinary city shines through on every page, even as danger lurks among the Spanish moss and above-ground tombs.”
~ Ellen Byron, USA Today Bestselling & Agatha Award Winning Author

“As a coroner, Dr. Jonathan Gray is the new Kay Scarpetta. In Shadows of Frenchmen, author Michael Rigg skillfully uses beads, beignets, bullets, bombs, and bodies to make New Orleans vivid and alive.”
~ John DeDakis, Former CNN editor, writing coach, and author of the Lark Chadwick mystery-suspense-thriller series, at johndedakis.com.

“Great action from the get-go! Atmosphere, characters, and all the right ingredients. A great read by Michael Rigg!”
~ Heather Graham, New York Times Bestselling Author

“Featuring smart and complex characters, Shadows of Frenchmen pulses with energy, taking the reader on a breathless chase for a serial killer terrorizing the city in the days leading up to a city-wide Mardi Gras celebration. Fans of the intrepid New Orleans coroner Dr. Jonathan Gray will not be disappointed!”
~ K.L. Murphy, Author of the Detective Callie Forde Mysteries, The Great Forgotten, and the award-nominated Her Sister’s Death

Shadows of Frenchmen Trailer:

Book Details:

Genre: Medico-Legal (Coroner) Thriller
Published by: Level Best Books
Publication Date: May 5, 2026
Number of Pages: 336
ISBN: 979-8898202354
Series: A Jonathan Gray, M.D. Mystery, Book 2
Book Links: Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop | Goodreads | BookBub | Level Best Books

Read an excerpt:

Chapter One

Alpha and Omega
Sunday, February 1, 2015 – 1:47 a.m.

Twenty-plus years with the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office taught Jonathan Gray to expect the unexpected. But Washington Square Park had always been a tranquil haven on the fringe of the French Quarter. So crime-scene tape draping the square’s wrought-iron fence presented the visual equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. Moonlight filtering through stately live oaks cast eerie—almost funereal—shadows, adding to the dissonance.

Fluttering in the nippy midwinter breeze, the neon-yellow ribbon communicated

a mute warning. On this side, normalcy. On the other, insanity. Stepping into the dysfunction never got easier. Regardless, turning back wasn’t an option. As if speaking the incantation aloud would immunize him against the unfolding drama, he repeated his trite pre-crime scene mantra: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” His breath lingered in the frosty air before evaporating.

After checking in with the uniformed officer monitoring access, Jonathan angled toward floodlights illuminating a temporary canopy above the city’s AIDS memorial. More tape—red as opposed to yellow—identified the innermost “Do Not Cross” perimeter. Crime scene technicians in white Tyvek protective suits busied themselves measuring and photographing what must be the reason he’d been summoned. A male corpse sitting upright on the ground—its arms and legs twisted at seemingly impossible angles—leaned against the memorial’s circular cut-glass and steel panels surrounded by a pool of thick, dark-crimson liquid.

A curved, nearly rectangular piece of wood with brass edges—most likely a knife handle—protruded from under the right side of the dead man’s rib cage. A portion of his intestines spilled out of the wound. A second knife—its handle and part of its blade visible—had been thrust downward into the soft tissue between the left collarbone and neck.

Cause of death seemed too obvious to require someone of Jonathan’s seniority. A first-year med student could have made the call. But markings carved into the dead man’s forehead and chest hinted at something more sinister. No wonder Mitch Broussard from NOPD had called him in the middle of the night. The man’s heavy flannel shirt lay open, exposing his chest and a series of

capital letters etched into his skin. The letters—G I D I A I D I V—made no sense, at least not in English. A folded piece of paper with similar letters and other symbols, not quite readable from that distance, lay under the man’s left hand. Lack of blood covering the letters in the chest signaled they had been added postmortem. Jonathan focused on two marks in the man’s forehead. An uppercase “A” and what looked like an upside-down horseshoe—the Greek letter Omega—apparently cut while the victim was still alive.

It couldn’t have been two years already. But there it was. Alpha and Omega. Jonathan bit his lip and cursed under his breath. Then, a silent prayer. Looked like the nightmare was about to begin—again.

One of the CSTs stood and raised her clear face shield. “Hey, Doc. Welcome to Funsville.”

Author Bio:

Agatha and Anthony-nominated author Michael Rigg, a lawyer for more than four decades, writes mysteries and thrillers set in two very different locations: Virginia Beach (where he lives) and New Orleans (which he visits as often as possible “for research,” including participation in three Mardi Gras Krewes). He is a retired Navy Judge Advocate and a retired civilian government attorney, formerly working for the Department of the Navy Office of the General Counsel. He is a member of International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, and both the Sisters in Crime national organization and its Southeastern Virginia Chapter—Mystery by the Sea.

Catch Up With Michael Rigg:

www.MichaelRigg.com
Amazon Author Profile
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BookBub – @michaelrigg716
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Threads – @michael.rigg716
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Q&A with MICHAEL RIGG

What was the biggest challenge you faced in beginning your writing career?
The biggest challenge I faced as I started my career as a fiction writer was to unlearn what I’d learned about writing in the decades I’d been a lawyer, dedicated to writing “just the facts, ma’am.” Both legal writing and fiction writing share a common goal: in both, you’re writing “for effect.” In legal writing, you want to convince someone (a judge, an opposing attorney, or your client) that your legal position is true and correct and should be adopted. In fiction writing, you want to make a reader believe they are in the story, that they’re part of the action, that a fictional situation is “real.” You want to swing them to your (and your protagonist’s) point of view. Similar goals. Different techniques.

Can you give us a glimpse into the research that went into writing this story?
Because I write a mystery series, and other stories, set in New Orleans, I thought I needed a better understanding of Mardi Gras and its part in New Orleans and Louisiana culture. Since 2018, I’ve paraded annually with three Mardi Gras krewes. Those experiences provided important background for my other works (short stories, a novelette, and a debut novel), which dealt only tangentially with Mardi Gras. Shadows of Frenchmen, on the other hand, is knee-deep into the Carnival season. Shadows of Frenchmen involves the possible return of a serial killer who has terrorized Mardi Gras every other year. This will be the so-called “Mardi Gras Sweeper’s” third visit. Detailed knowledge of how Mardi Gras parades come together proved critical to drafting an effective, and believable, narrative.

Are you currently working on your next novel? If so, can you share a little about it?
For most authors with a series, the next one is always in the works. I’m two books into a three-book contract with Level Best Books, so, yes, I’m working on my next novel. Like Voices of the Elysian Fields and Shadows of Frenchmen, it’s set in New Orleans, with Jonathan Gray as the protagonist. Currently, the next novel involves several characters from the large Vietnamese community in what’s called “New Orleans East.” There may or may not be an outbreak of a contagious disease that threatens to spread from New Orleans to the Gulf Coast and beyond. Stay tuned. It’s early. Let’s see where the characters and circumstances take us.

What are some of your favorite leisure activities or hobbies when you’re not writing?
My wife’s the fiction reader in our house. She reads constantly. Until I started writing fiction, I mostly focused on non-fiction—remember, I was an attorney for a lot of years. For pleasure reading, I often turned to history and biography. And I’ve long been “a Civil War guy.” Since I was a very young kid, I’ve liked reading about the American Civil War. And, if I had my choice of leisure activities, it’d be walking a Civil War battlefield. Despite living in Virginia, life (translated: work and raising a family) always interfered. But I take advantage of opportunities when they arise. For example, one of my daughters went to college in a town just north of Richmond. When I went to pick her up for a holiday break one year, I left home earlier than required and visited the “The Seven Days Battles” in reverse. IYKYK.

Do you have a message or anything specific you’d like to say to your readers?
I’d like to say a simple “Thank you.” I first thought about writing a novel in my mid-fifties, as I scouted for something to keep me busy once I retired. Reading excerpts from books my wife was reading, I thought, “I can do this.” How better to impress someone who reads fiction than by writing a novel? After all, I reasoned, “How hard can it be?” Okay. You got me there. Famous last words. It’s very hard. But once the writing bug bit, I couldn’t stop. Little did I know how much readers would reward my efforts. My debut novel, Voices of the Elysian Fields, garnered nominations for an Agatha and an Anthony in the Best First Novel category. Didn’t win the Agatha (go figure, four cozies and a coroner procedural). But now I’m Calgary bound. And it’s all thanks to readers. So, if you’re headed to Bouchercon, please keep me in mind.

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Beads, Beignets & Bookish Bounty

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The Ledger by Steven Manchester #AuthorInterview

GHott — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 12:10:53 +0000

THE LEDGER

by Steven Manchester

June 8 – July 3, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

Set in a medium-security penitentiary in the mid-1990s, The Ledger is a faith-based story that pulls back the curtain on prison life, allowing the reader a safe peek behind the wall.

Although told from three alternating perspectives—officer, inmate, and sergeant—many of the same questions are asked: Can light be found in the deepest darkness? What about forgiveness, redemption, and grace? And if the code is clear, “loyalty above all things except honor,” when should an officer cross the blue line to police one of his own?

The Ledger is the long-awaited companion novel to The Menu.

Praise for The Ledger:

“The Ledger illuminates the dark world of Corrections, making it safe for all of us to steal a peek.”
~ Barry McKee, Professor Emeritus, Criminal Justice

“I found myself holding my breath. It felt like I was right back inside the wall.”
~ Nelson Julius, Deputy Superintendent, DOC (ret.)

“Intensely powerful and deeply moving, pick up a copy to balance your own ledger.”
~ Debby Guyette, Book Blogger, Single Titles

“The Ledger is a spiritual read, drawing the reader inward.”
~ Reverend Andy Stinson, First Congregational Church of Fall River

Book Details:

Genre: Christian, Crime Fiction, Literary Fiction
Published by: Luna Bella Press
Publication Date: May 26, 2026
Number of Pages: 280
ISBN: 979-8999472021
Series: Companion novel to The Menu.
Book Links: Amazon | Kindle | Goodreads | BookBub

Author Bio:

New England’s Storyteller Steven Manchester is the author of the soul-awakening novel, The Menu, as well as the ’80s nostalgia-series, Bread Bags & Bullies; Lawn Darts & Lemonade; Yearbooks & Yo-Yos. His other works include #1 bestsellers Twelve Months, The Rockin’ Chair, Pressed Pennies and Gooseberry Island; the national bestsellers, Ashes, The Changing Season and Three Shoeboxes; the multi-award winning novels, Dad and Goodnight Brian; and the heartwarming Christmas movie, The Thursday Night Club (NYIFA & LAFA winner). He is the co-author of You Will Be Peter, as well as Officer Erik & the Very Special Dad (written with TV icon, Erik Estrada). His work has appeared on NBC’s Today Show and CBS’s The Early Show; in Billboard and People Magazines. Three of Steven’s short stories were selected “101 Best” for Chicken Soup for the Soul series. He is a multi-produced playwright and winner of several book festivals, Including Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Amsterdam, and New England (from 2017-2025). When not spending time with his family, this Massachusetts author is promoting his works or writing.

Catch Up With Steven Manchester:

www.StevenManchester.com
Amazon Author Profile
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BookBub – @stevenhmanchester
Instagram – @authorstevemanchester
YouTube – @authorstevenmanchester3970
X – @authorSteveM
Facebook

Q&A with STEVEN MANCHESTER

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
After returning home from a difficult tour of duty in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, I stepped back behind the walls of a Massachusetts penitentiary where I battled each day as a prison investigator. Needless to say, there was great negativity in my life at that time, and very little opportunity to heal from my wartime demons (or pursue my dreams of being published). I finally decided to return to college to finish my degree in Criminal Justice. During one of the classes, my professor, Barry McKee, detailed police work, but barely touched on other topics. I finally raised his hand and asked, “As the criminal justice system is so vast, what about the courts, probation, parole – corrections?” Barry smiled and told me to see him after class. I thought I’d done it! In his office, Barry explained, “Except from the slanted perspectives of inmates, there’s no real written material out there on corrections, or prisons.” Barry smiled again and then dropped the bomb that would change my life forever. “If you’re so smart,” he said, “why don’t you write it?” It was the last push I needed to get writing. Nine months later, I placed the first draft of 6-5; A Different Shade of Blue (under the pen name, Steven Herberts) on Barry’s desk. From then on, I was hooked. I was a writer.
Today, 30 years later, I am the co-author of the historical biographical novel, You Will Be Peter, the author of the soul-awakening novel, The Menu, as well as the ’80s nostalgia-series, Bread Bags & Bullies; Lawn Darts & Lemonade; Yearbooks & Yo-Yos. My other works include #1 bestsellers Twelve Months, The Rockin’ Chair, Pressed Pennies, and Gooseberry Island; the national bestsellers, Ashes, The Changing Season, and Three Shoeboxes; the multi-award-winning novels, Dad, and Goodnight Brian; and the heartwarming Christmas movie, The Thursday Night Club (NYIFA & LAFA winner). I am also the co-author of Officer Erik & the Very Special Dad with TV icon, Erik Estrada, as well as In the Valley of the Shadow, featuring the artwork of Brian Fox. My work has appeared on NBC’s Today Show and CBS’s The Early Show; in Billboard and People Magazines. Three of my short stories were selected “101 Best” for Chicken Soup for the Soul series. I am a multi-produced playwright, as well as the winner of the 2017 Los Angeles Book Festival, 2020 New England Book Festival, 2023 Paris Book Festival, and 2025 New York Book Festival. When not spending time with my beautiful wife, Paula, and our children and grandchildren, I am promoting my works or writing.

What was the inspiration for this book?
The Ledger has been another labor of love for me, the second installment in my Menu Series.
In 2020, I released The Menu, a story about hope, healing, and finding true peace. It’s a positive message intended to unite us all. My greatest hope has been that The Menu serve as a beacon of light for those who are feeling isolated and disheartened. The book’s message is simple: ‘We are all connected, and none of us is ever alone—not ever.’
Upon The Menu’s release, I began volunteering with caregivers at Hospice. During one of the many healing sessions, one of my readers claimed that she loved the novel but questioned why all the characters were good and kind. ‘Having a conscience was a menu choice,’ she said. ‘What if one of the characters decided not to order a conscience from his life’s menu?’ Talk about a goosebumps moment! I immediately understood that I needed to write a novel to complement—or maybe even counter—The Menu. Ying and yang; light and darkness. I figured that if I’m going to write about mercy, forgiveness, and redemption, what better setting than a prison?
I spent the better part of a decade working within a medium-security penitentiary—as a Correction Officer and then prison investigator—so it only made sense that 30 years later I’d take my writing skills and return to that setting. Although The Ledger is a departure from my usual fare, it’s a story I needed to write.

What’s an interesting or fun fact about the book that readers might not know?
The Ledger is the most reality-based fiction I have ever penned… and that’s saying something. In this novel, my goal was to pull back the curtain on life behind prison walls, giving my readers a safe peek.

Tell us why readers should pick up your book—what makes it stand out?
The research took years and the book required 30 years of writing experience to get it right.

Are you currently working on your next novel? If so, can you share a little about it?
All the Books in the World is a comprehensive historical and spiritual narrative centered on the life, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, and legacy of Jesus Christ, as witnessed and recorded primarily by John bar Zebedee and other disciples. It offers a detailed portrayal of early Christian events, the formation of the discipleship group, Jesus’s teachings and miracles, the growing opposition from religious authorities, and the establishment of the early church. The narrative blends historical context with personal reflections and theological insights from the perspective of the last living eyewitness.

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Clear Your Schedule, Open THE LEDGER

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TRAFFICKING IN MURDER by Jeannette de Beauvoir #AuthorInterview

GHott — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 10:23:25 +0000

TRAFFICKING IN MURDER

by Jeannette de Beauvoir

June 8 – July 3, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

SYDNEY RILEY PROVINCETOWN MYSTERY SERIES

When a Boston TV crew comes to Provincetown to shoot a segment at the Race Point Inn, owner Sydney Riley takes it in stride… until one of the producers mysteriously disappears. The missing producer soon winds up murdered, miles away, the corpse gruesomely displayed in a Wampanoag graveyard. Worse, a bizarre note on the body implies Sydney is responsible!

Meanwhile, a beautiful young Wampanoag woman has also gone missing. Ali, Sydney’s husband and a DHS counter-trafficking agent, is assigned to look into her disappearance. And Sydney needs to investigate who killed the TV producer and left that horrifying note. Are the two cases connected? Has Sydney’s past come back to haunt her—and threaten the people she loves?

TRAFFICKING IN MURDER Trailer:

Book Details:

Genre: Mystery
Published by: Beckett Books
Publication Date: May 22, 2026
Number of Pages: 322
ISBN: 979-8992594256
Series: Sydney Riley Provincetown Mystery Series, #11 | Each is a Stand Alone Mystery
Book Links: Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads

Read an excerpt:

Chapter One

“Americans,” said my goddaughter, licking cheese and tomato sauce off her fingers, “eat twenty-three pounds of pizza every year.”

I looked at her suspiciously. There’s no doubt in anybody’s mind that Lily is precocious for a seven-year-old, but she also sometimes falls prey to what in artificial intelligence is known as hallucinations, and makes things up if she believes they’ll create a better story. “I don’t eat twenty-three pounds of pizza,” I said, even though we were in fact sitting at the Provincetown House of Pizza and contributing to the statistic.

“Not every American,” Lily conceded. “It’s an average.” She brightened. “So that means, some people eat way more than that!”

“That’s a lot of pizza,” I agreed. The truth is, I do regard it as a treat of sorts. I am part-owner of the Race Point Inn in Provincetown’s East End, and pizza is never featured on our Michelin-starred restaurant’s menu.

Besides, I like spending time with my goddaughter. When my best friend Mirela brought Lily back from Plovdiv in Bulgaria—where her sister had regarded the baby as an inconvenience and readily signed adoption papers so Mirela could bring Lily to the States—I hadn’t been quite as enthused. (To be fair, neither had Mirela: if there were ever someone who manifested zero maternal instincts, it’s her. As a mother, she’s something of a work in progress. That had not, however, stopped her from once becoming the fiercest mother bear ever out in the dunes when the baby’s life was threatened.)

In my defense, there aren’t that many non-parents who can truly embrace the demands of a baby, which morphed into the demands of a toddler, which finally metamorphosed into the very smart conversations one could now have with the girl sitting at the table with me.

“Did you know,” she said, “that some indigenous people call the earth Turtle Island?”

“I did not,” I said. She knows the word indigenous. Of course she does. “Are you going to eat that piece?”

She shook her head, intent on her thought. “The way the turtle shell is curved works okay for half the earth,” she said. “That makes sense. But what about the bottom half? And where does the turtle sit, or stand, and how come people don’t fall off the turtle? And if we’re on Turtle Island, why don’t we just float away? But if we did, what would we be floating on top of?”

“Good questions,” I said. Somewhere in the back of my mind an expression flitted by, turtles all the way down, but I couldn’t remember who said it or what it meant, and didn’t want to further complicate the conversation. I picked up the last slice of pizza and took a bite. “You could look them up and see.”

“Aunt Sydney,” she said to me with dramatic excessive patience, “I already did. I know how to do research! But no one knows.”

When I was seven, I probably didn’t even know the word research. I sighed. Maybe she could make it her dissertation topic. At the rate she was going, that was probably going to happen sometime next year. “It’s their story,” I said. “Lots of cultures have stories to explain how things work.”

“But if everybody’s got a different story, how do we know which one is true?”

We’d gone from alimentation to geography to metaphysics in under four minutes, which had to be a record of some kind. I was rescued by the arrival of my husband. “I see you didn’t save me any pizza,” he said, sitting down at the table and reaching over to tousle Lily’s hair.

“Didn’t know you were coming,” I said.

“Uncle Ali,” said Lily, “How do we know whose story is true?”

“Story?” He raised his eyebrows, amused, and gave me a smile, which always—even after twelve years together—takes my breath away. Ali is Lebanese-American, and is the most beautiful man I have ever seen.

“Origin myths,” I told him. “Turtle Island.”

He said to Lily, “Truth can be different from facts, you know? Different stories are true for different people. In my religion, we don’t think the world started with a turtle. We think Allah created it, and did it in seven days.” He paused. “Does that sound like a fact to you?”

She shook her head. “My mom can’t even do a painting in seven days, sometimes,” she said.

“So they’re not facts, our stories, but even if we know they’re not factual, they tell us some truths about who we are,” he said.

“What truths does your story tell?”

He considered the question. Ali always treats Lily like a miniature adult. It works okay more often than not. “Well, it tells me that Allah is good, because the earth is good. It tells me Allah pays attention. It reminds me that he wants me to live in a way that I pay attention, too. And I think that people who tell the story of Turtle Island must be very close to the earth and nature, and the turtle reminds them of that.”

“Okay.” She was probably filing it all away to ask Mirela about later. “Are you going to order a pizza?”

Ali smiled. “I think not,” he said. “I was just passing and saw your Aunt Sydney’s car here so thought I’d stop in to say hello, because I haven’t seen you in forever.”

“It hasn’t been forever, Uncle Ali,” Lily said seriously. “It was last week.”

“Well, it feels like forever,” he said. “What are you ladies doing after lunch?”

“I don’t know about Lily,” I said, “but this lady has work to do.”

“You have to take me home first,” Lily said.

“I know.”

“My mom gave me the key,” Lily said.

“I know. She told me. And you haven’t lost it?”

She made a face. “Of course not, Aunt Sydney. I’m responsible.”

“You certainly are,” I said, smiling. I stood up and began clearing the table. “Want to help me with this? What time’s your mom coming home?”

She finished her soda, sucking noisily on the straw. “When she’s done at the gallery.”

That could be anytime. Mirela isn’t just any artist; even in Provincetown—itself an important art colony, the oldest continuous one in North America—she’s one of the town’s hottest artists. She came to P’town from Bulgaria one summer to work, back when Bulgarian students came here in droves; they still come, but in somewhat smaller numbers; Provincetown is changing. She spent that first summer waiting tables at Joon Bar and The Mews, driving a pedicab, and painting seascapes, mostly of the harbor. The paintings sold, and she stayed on, eventually becoming a US citizen; but over those years her style changed. Now she creates abstract works that sell for tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars. She’s also marginally psychic, and some of her paintings carry eerie messages that scare the hell out of me.

Lily is, of course, her loudest critic, and often complains that her work doesn’t look like anything in particular; I privately agree with that assessment.

Very privately.

Ali stood up and opened his arms for a hug. “I’ll see you soon, habibi,” he said. It’s an Arabic endearment he reserves for Lily. He generally uses Italian ones with me. He thinks they make him sound sexy.

He’s right.

Lily duly deposited at Mirela’s house in the West End, Ali and I returned to the Race Point Inn, which was doing its usual brisk business. It was late June, the start of the tourist season, when Provincetown’s population makes the switch from three thousand residents in the winter to eighty thousand in the summer. The inn’s open year-round, and we’re generally booked up completely from April to December. I’ve been part of the inn now, one way or another, for over fourteen years, and yet am still absorbing what that entails: people, people, and more people.

Ali disappeared into our residence, which is the penthouse on the top floor of the inn, and I went in search of Wendy, the inn’s manager and—I could swear—magician. She soothed ruffled feathers, dealt with crises, handled difficult people, all the things I’m not terribly good at. We all have our areas of specialty.

Mine is murder.

***

That’s not really true, of course; I haven’t actually killed anybody yet, though I’ve come close a few times. In my fantasies, anyway. No; as Julie Agassi, the head of the Provincetown Police detective unit, tells it, if there’s a dead body anywhere in town, I’m going to be the one to have found it. Or known about it. Or been somehow involved with it. And it’s true that I seem to have a Jessica Fletcher/Miss Marple-level of amateur connection to crime.

It started one summer morning when I went to take an early dip in the Race Point’s pool—at the time, I was employed as the inn’s wedding coordinator—and found the body of my boss floating in the water with me. A thousand times ick, as well as a sorrow I’ve never really gotten over: Barry had been the kindest, gentlest man I’d ever known.

So of course I wanted to be part of bringing his killer to justice.

After that, it felt somehow natural for me to be on the scene of other crimes. Provincetown isn’t very big, and my work brings me into contact with a tremendous number of people, so it’s logical, really, that I’d have more success in figuring things out than would the State Police, dispatched from up-Cape to investigate homicides and not necessarily all that familiar with our little quirks down here.

And quirky doesn’t even begin to describe Provincetown. The town is a vibrant art colony. It’s also a gay-resort destination. And an old fishing village that still retains the remnants of the commercial fleet, along with the Portuguese families who worked it. Once upon a time, one of the whaling capitals of the world. And before that, the summer home of an indigenous population. All that history, all that mix makes for people who most decidedly do not do things by the book. Some outsiders find that disconcerting.

I find it… home.

Wendy was sitting in the empty restaurant drinking coffee and going over the evening’s menu with Martin, the maître d’. “It doesn’t matter; she says we have to take it off,” he was saying.

I pulled up a chair. “Take what off?”

“The salmon en croute,” said Martin. “She is not pleased with the quality of today’s delivery.”

Wendy was shaking her head. “Seriously? I don’t get it. Everybody likes salmon,” she objected. “Even people who don’t like fish, like salmon. She’s got it; for heaven’s sake, what else does she want to do with it?”

Martin made a face; I could only imagine what “she” had said to do with it. She was, of course, Adrienne the diva chef, by whose graces we had earned and kept our Michelin rating. She also had absolutely no care for anybody’s feelings; staff had been known to quit their first night of service because she’d completely terrorized them. My co-owner, Mike, seemed to be the only person who took her tantrums in stride. “It is not a local fish,” Martin was saying, his French accent somehow making the remark more persuasive. “And she has two other piscatory dishes on the menu…”

Wendy snorted. “For heaven’s sake,” she said again, but she said it with resignation. We all knew the truth: what Adrienne the diva chef wanted, Adrienne the diva chef got. “I’m going to have to reprint the menus.”

“Such is the nature of our curious enterprise,” said Martin, shrugging; he knows which battles to fight. He turned to me. “Sydney? Was there something you needed?”

“I wanted to check in with Wendy about the TV crew,” I said. We were being featured on one of the local-things-to-do, early-evening programs out of Boston, which was both a Good Thing—it helps to be known as a Weekend Waypoints destination—and also was going to be disruptive of staff and guests alike.

“Arriving tomorrow morning,” she said, changing gears briskly and seemingly effortlessly. “Mike wants you to do the interview, did he tell you?”

“He did.” Mike and I had become co-owners of the inn when its former owner gave up Provincetown for Amsterdam and his new love. Mike had been the manager, so he slipped easily into the role of keeping on top of the practical side of things, whereas once I gave up coordinating weddings, I tended more toward the public-relations side of ownership, attended business guild meetings, helped organize events, went off-Cape to conferences… and, apparently, did interviews for Boston television stations.

I also valued Wendy’s impressive organizational skills. “Where do you suggest it will disrupt people the least? The interview, I mean? The part I’m doing?”

“You’re doing the whole part,” she corrected me. “You’re going to have to stick with them, and take the producers to lunch here, I have a table for you at one o’clock.” She pulled out her smartphone and started scrolling. “Juliet Mills and Bruce Peterson,” she read. “And rooms thirty-four and eighteen will be empty and prepared for the cameras, but you have to be out of eighteen by lunchtime because we have an early arrival for it.”

I raised my eyebrows ever so slightly. “Thirty-four? Do you think that’s a good idea? You know they’ll have done their homework.” I could still hear Lily’s voice saying she knew how to do research; there was absolutely no way television producers didn’t.

It wasn’t that thirty-four is a bad room—it’s actually quite nice, with antique furnishings and a window overlooking the largest of our patios, the one with the arbor. It had been two years since Ali and I had stood on that patio exchanging wedding vows when we were interrupted by a man’s body falling very nearly on top of us.

From room thirty-four.

“They requested it,” said Wendy. “It adds a little pizzazz, knowing a murder happened here.”

Two murders, in fact, if you counted the body in the pool years before that. My instinct was to downplay that particular facet of the Race Point’s claims to fame. But Wendy leaned into it, and her decision had proved successful. There was even talk, sometimes, of a possible haunting. And people liked that. “Your call,” I said, making a face.

“I’ve put together a schedule,” Wendy went on, her voice brisk. Potential ghosts weren’t playing into her agenda—for the day, at least. “They’ll spend the morning shooting the inn, then after lunch they’ll go down Commercial Street, do shots of the town. They call it B-roll. Back here for a wrap-up before dinner service starts. Nine of them in all: producers, director, the on-air talent, and cameras and sound.”

“Okay.” I knew better than to argue: Wendy knew what she was doing. Nothing could go wrong.

Which just goes to show how little I understand about fate, or life, or anything.

***

Author Bio:

Jeannette de Beauvoir is the author of historical and mystery/thriller fiction and a poet whose work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She has written three mystery series along with a number of standalone novels; her work “demonstrates a total mastery of the mystery/suspense genre” (Midwest Book Review) She’s a member of the Authors Guild, the Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and the Historical Novel Society. She lives and works in a seaside cottage on Cape Cod where she’s also a local theatre critic and hosts an arts-related program on local community radio.

Catch Up With Jeannette de Beauvoir:

jeannettedebeauvoir.com
Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads
BookBub – @JeannettedeBeauvoir
Instagram – @JeannettedeBeauvoir
Facebook – @JeannettedeBeauvoir

Q&A with AUTHOR

How did you come up with the title?
I have to just laugh—I try to show that each of my mysteries has a murder in it, so I use words like fatal, deadly, and so on. And since human trafficking as a crime was also involved, I came up with Trafficking in Murder. The silly part of it is that it’s absolutely technically meaningless—but it still sounded good, my publisher agreed, so we left it at that.

Can you give us a glimpse into the research that went into writing this story?
I generally spend two or three years researching the stories I write—once it’s in print, it’s forever, and I want to include everything that I can learn into my understanding, even though not all of it makes it into the original book. For Trafficking in Murder, there were a number of subplots that needed researching: the background to producing a weekly television program, the processes involved in human trafficking, and the history and culture of the Wampanoag tribe. So I was gathering a lot of threads together!

What is your inspiration?
Most of my books are mystery novels—what that means is at the most basic level, they’re about a crime, finding out how it happened, and resolving the aftermath in some way. And yet all of my novels, though they seem to be about solving crime, are at their core about respect and the non-“othering” of people who are different from us. And that will inevitably lead to exploring our own psyches, questioning why we believe what we believe about others, and figuring out whether we ourselves have room for growth. In exploring and sharing the world of the various different kinds of communities, I am hoping that readers will again enter emotionally into the lives of people they may never have thought about, and then go out and make the world just a little better, safer, and more joyful.

What’s next for you—what can readers look forward to?
I’m well into the research for the 12th Sydney Riley Provincetown mystery—this one will have a paranormal/metaphysical background (Provincetown has so many ghost stories, I couldn’t resist!). And I’m currently doing Draft Three of the next Abbie Bradford International mystery: after heading up to Base Camp in The Everest Enigma, she’ll be checking out some past espionage in England.

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Lights, Camera… Murder in Provincetown

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Hi Love, You Just Dropped Your Glove by Paul Charles #AuthorInterview

GHott — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 09:25:13 +0000

HI LOVE, YOU JUST DROPPED YOUR GLOVE

by Paul Charles

June 1 – July 10, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

A McCusker Mystery

Thomas Barry, Lefty Kelly, and Brendy McCusker were all teenage boys who were roaming the streets of Portrush, County Antrim, in Northern Ireland in 1976 when Thomas Barry quite literally bumped into Isabella Scott, and he uttered the words of the title. In July 2019, the same Thomas Barry’s remains were discovered at the foot of the Pilgrim’s Steps in the Portrush Harbour. There were an extra 200,000 people visiting Portrush that week as The Royal Golf Club played host to Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy and the UK Open Tournament.

McCusker and DI Lily O’Carroll are conscripted from the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) in Belfast to help the already stretched local police force work on the case. They discover McCusker’s childhood friends Barry and Isabella Scott had married and then…well then, everything became very complicated relationship-wise involving Isabella’s sister, Colette, lawyers, accountants, and showband singers. Thomas had become an ultra-successful property developer, sometimes in partnership with the Buckley Brothers, at least one of whom doesn’t mind the cowboy approach to work. Meanwhile, McCusker is pining over a recent relationship he had started back in Belfast with O’Carroll’s sister, Grace.

Set against the backdrop of the (actual) UK Golf Open taking place in a small seaside town, where absolutely everyone has an opinion, and their opinions they are keen to share.

Praise for Hi Love, You Just Dropped Your Glove:

“Paul Charles’ Hi Love, You Just Dropped Your Glove is a page turner par excellence. Written written with Charles’ customary verve. Another brilliantly compelling atmospheric effort from a master crime writer.”

“A welcome return for Brendy McCusker… Charles crafts with such a careful eye on the sparks that can fly—some of them charming, some witty, some downright menacing—between characters who don’t happen to see eye to eye, or sometimes even to be operating in the same galaxy. Once again, it’s hard to resist a hero who realizes, ‘He just had a habit of opening his mouth and not knowing what was going to come out.”
~ Kirkus Reviews

“Charles’s skillful depiction of the many sides of love and its strange bypaths lifts this clever novel well above the genre average.”
~ Publishers Weekly

“Paul Charles is an outstanding author of crime fiction novels. They are models of character development and powerful observations of people the detectives meet. I enjoy reading his books.”
~ Irish American News

“Charles’s skilful depiction of the many sides of love and its strange bypaths lifts this clever novel well above the genre average.”
~ Publishers Weekly

“Charles has a wealth of experience in the crime genre from his past Kennedy and Starrett novels and the McCusker series delivers the same blend of mystery and engaging protagonists. The characters have an authenticity that Charles has fine-tuned throughout his writing career. Charles ability to weave real-like details helps bring the story full to life. A Day in The Life of Louis Bloom is both a love letter to Belfast and a gripping thriller.”
~ Aoife Bradshaw, Hot Press

“Charles In Full Bloom With Novel… a thrilling page-turner.”
~ Sunday World

“Amusing light-hearted entertainment from Paul Charles.”
~ The Irish Independent

HI LOVE, YOU JUST DROPPED YOUR GLOVE Trailer:

Book Details:

Genre: Police Procedural, Crime Fiction
Published by: Level Best Books
Publication Date: March 31, 2026
Number of Pages: 382
ISBN: 9798898201050
Series: A McCusker Mystery, Book 3 | Stand Alone
Book Links: Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads | BookBub | Level Best Books

Read an excerpt:

Chapter One

I was born here and I’ll die here, against my will.
—Dylan

‘Hi love, you just dropped your glove.’

When she turned to face him, he was amazed. He remained totally in shock to the extent he became a blabbering idiot.

‘Just now as it fell from your coat pocket…’ he continued, ‘I caught it before it hit the wet ground… Honestly it didn’t get wet. I mean it’s a little wet, but only from the rain and not the pavement…agh…’ and mid-sentence he reluctantly turned and chased after his two mates.

She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever set his eyes on during his seventeen years on this earth. When she’d passed him a few life-changing seconds beforehand, she was walking, arms interlinked in the midst of two friends with her head bowed to the pavement. Consequently, he’d missed her green eyes, hidden by her long black hair, and he’d missed her quiet demeanour, but, most of all, he’d also missed the chance to make a connection.

He insisted his two mates, Brendan and Lefty, continue walking around the streets of Portrush with him until darkness fell ninety minutes later. He was working on the theory they’d bump into the three girls again. They’d discovered, to his cost, the only thing more difficult than finding someone in Portrush in the peak holiday season was finding someone on the deserted streets of Portrush during the off-peak season, when Ulster’s number one tourist centre reverted to its more comfortable status of winter ghost town, aka Ghostrush.

Thomas Barry—Tommy to his acquaintances, Tom to his good friends—minus his two mates was back on the streets the following morning, just before eight o’clock. He walked the short distance from his parents’ house in the sedate Antrim Gardens to the nearly (but not quite) refurbished railway station in Eglinton Street, passing the moth-balled Barry’s (historic) Amusement Arcade on the way. It was a journey just like he’d done most days of his life. Most other days of his life. though, he’d just taken Barry’s (no relation) and every other local landmark, for granted. That Sunday morning in October 1976 though he’d studied every nook and cranny around the streets of the Port as if his life depended on it.

He felt it did.

When his friends met up with him just before lunch time, he admitted to them he’d already had tea and toast in Portrush’s Holiday Hostel, with its ultra-colourful rooms; the once elegant Adelphi Hoteland The Atlantic Hotel, with its spectacular views, in the vain hope the three girls were out-of-towners. The other hotels and guest houses were all closed for the winter, he claimed. Still, he’d tried them all, “just in case, you understand.” He also, for one who’d always gone to great trouble to keep the majority of his feelings inarticulately to himself, articulately explained he felt for the sake of his well-being, if not his life, he needed to find this girl. He also admitted that, not only did he not know what he was going to say to her when, and if, he met her, but if such an accidental, on purpose, meet happened he’d be so tongue-tied again, he might even need to walk on past her. He just knew he really needed to find her. He told them he’d been awake all-night thinking about her. Lefty put him out of his misery by offering to take him to some of the out-of-town hotels. The two of them hopped on Lefty’s trusted red Vespa 125 scooter and headed off out past Kelly’s trailer park and bar and on to Castle Rock, Portstewart, Portballintrae and even Bushmills.

They returned just over an hour later with the Vespa’s petrol tank empty and their four arms all the one length.

Thomas Barry admitted to his two best friends he’d never felt so convinced about anything before in his life. A real-life girl had never ever had such an effect on him before. Isabella Adjani on the silver screen yes, but a real live human, certainly not. He most certainly accepted the fact he was never ever going to meet the long-haired, green-eyed girl again in his life.

He admitted how weird this feeling was to him.

Nonetheless he continued his search.

He thought of all the things he could have done, should have done. Perhaps all of them were things capable of scaring her off for life. But what did it matter now? He’d most certainly lost her for life.

The lads wanted to go to the Old Harbour Bar. Even with the new glitzy restaurant extension, accessed by a half a flight of wooden stairs, it was still the cosiest bar in the winter and their favourite watering hole. He declined, suggesting he might join them later. Once again, he took to the streets of Portrush. The same familiar streets he had taken for granted all his life, but which now took on major importance due to the fact they may be keeping him from finding the green-eyed girl. He tried chastising himself for feeling sorry for himself. It didn’t work. How could it possibly work when someone, something, a God even, if such a spirit existed, had allowed him to experience this special creature and then not equip him properly about how to approach her? He chastised himself further for not considering what he’d say to her if, or when, he met her. He’d already let himself down once by blabbering away when he had the perfect excuse to greet her. Equally he felt if he had something rehearsed it would have sounded too false, stifled, insincere and a chat up line. He kicked himself over his rap about her glove being wet not because he had let it fall on the wet pavement but because it had gotten damp in the rain.

He’d never been one for the chat up lines. They’d left those to Lefty. Funny enough this approach hadn’t worked out for their lead wingman either. Thomas Barry had often wondered if they’d become mates, “blood brothers” just so they could hang out together and look for girls. Anyway, they had launched their little gang, the BLTs. They even had their own unique motto: May the Sauce be With You. It was funny at the time. They’d picked it over a meal together in Morelli’s as they simultaneously chased the food-saving flavouring known as HP. They’d also debated using: Life is a Beach and Then the Tide Goes Out,. Considering their endgame objective, they had unanimously voted against this option on the grounds it was too negative. As he wandered around the deserted streets, now it had gotten down to the nitty-gritty, he wasn’t so sure about their motto either, or even about their gang in the first place. Lefty was always complaining three wasn’t a good number to hang out in. If they met two girls and got through the even more complicated task of chatting them up, then the girls would surely feel sorry for the additional boy they would have to exclude due to the mathematical impossibilities. He reckoned maybe they could possibly have made the problematic maths work down in the more liberal Belfast. In the meantime, they had agreed they would figure out such a scenario as and when it arose. Lefty had claimed the girls would probably make their preference known and they, the boys, would just have to deal with it. They’d been happy to leave the tactics to Lefty. Even though Lefty’s tactics had, so far, been 100% unsuccessful, they still left him in charge. The alternate didn’t bear thinking about.

Tommy wondered if it would be any easier if, and when, one of them found a girlfriend and peeled off their gang as it were. He wondered who’d be the first to find a girl. He thought if you were a betting man and you followed the odds, then Lefty should be the first to find a girl. But then what would they do? They’d surely be lost without the tactics man. Or would they?

‘At least the rain has stopped,’ he said aloud, as he rounded the corner of the forsaken Mark Street Lane and into the desolate Atlantic Avenue.

‘Hi Love,’ he thought he heard a ghostly breathy voice say, not much above a whisper, ‘you haven’t found another glove, have you?’

There she was, there right in front of him on what would now become the hallowed, Atlantic Avenue. His green-eyed girl’s green eyes were smiling straight at him.

He was so intent on finding her he pretty much nearly walked straight into her. He knew if she hadn’t spoken first, he would have walked past her. Lucky enough before he’d a chance to figure out what he was going to say she spoke again.

‘What am I like?’ she started, ‘I’m forever losing a glove, thankfully never both at the same time, mind you, always just the one at a time. The one you picked up for me I…’

‘I’ve been looking for you all day,’ he admitted, his voice sounding a lot calmer than he felt.

‘Mmmm,’ she replied, studying his face and sounding like she knew, and accepted, such an admission wasn’t as weird as he feared, ‘you’d look good with a moustache.’

Of all the things he’d imagined her to reply, and most of them also included her rushing off as quickly as her shapely legs would carry her, this was not even in the top 1000. It wasn’t as though he had actually come up with more than three possible replies.

Before he knew it, they were involved in a natural freewheeling conversation.

She seemed inclined to linger rather than to walk away.

At a very brief lull in the conversation, they both silently acknowledged they didn’t want the conversation to be stifled, so they spurted out their next questions simultaneously.

‘Do you live here?’ Tommy asked.

‘Who were you talking to as you walked around the corner?’ she asked over the top of his question.

‘No, I’m at the University of Ulster in Coleraine and one of my course mates invited me and another friend over to her parents’ house for the weekend. Her parents own a wee guest house over by the West Strand,’ she said in response to his question.

‘I was talking to myself,’ he admitted, ‘what’s your friend’s name?’

‘Gilly Hutchinson.’

‘Oh,’ he said, without even meaning to.

‘You know her?’

‘Well I know of her,’ he replied, ‘I know her sister.’

‘Which one?

‘Gilly would have been a few years ahead of me,’ Tommy replied.

‘Right,’ she replied, without allowing him to finish, ‘so you’d know the youngest, Emmi Mae.’

‘Yeah we were really good friends when we were…oh 13 ish and then she outgrew me.’

‘Ah yes, it happens at 13 or even 13-ish.’

‘Tell me about it,’ he offered more to himself, ‘so was that Gilly the blonde-haired girl with you yesterday?’

‘No, Gilly was swotting, you saw the eldest sister, Adele, who’s just great craic altogether.’

‘Okay, figures, I don’t know her at all,’ he replied.

He looked at his green-eyed girl out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t see her as well as he’d seen her yesterday when they’d met face to face. She still looked stunning even though her long dark hair covered the side of her face. He couldn’t see those amazing green eyes though. On the upside what he’d missed yesterday was her personal scents. She smelt of a blend of soap, shampoo, mixed with little hints of a heather based perfume. The combination was totally intoxicating. ‘I’m Tommy,’ he offered, extending his hand, and knowing it was an excuse to steal another glimpse of her stunning emerald eyes, ‘Tom Barry.’

‘I know,’ she said, offering her own hand in return.

‘You know?’ he said, surprised while noticing two of her top teeth protruded a wee bit to the extent it looked like her top lip was going to have trouble covering them.

‘Yes, Adele told me,’ she said, as she smiled, ‘she also said you weren’t part of the other Portrush Barry family.’

‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ he said, still holding her soft skinned hand and shaking it gently, determined to never let it go again if he could get away with it. ‘’Fraid it also means I’ll not be able to get you free rides on the dodgems.’

‘I’d be more of a Barry’s Big Dipper kind of girl, anyway.’

‘Ditto on the Big Dipper, although I can’t pull any strings there either,’ he offered regretfully, while thinking he didn’t see her as being a Big Dipper kind of girl. All that screaming seems so alien to one so reserved and private. ‘I could get you a pony ride on the beach though if you wanted?’

‘Accepted,’ she replied, seeming content to leave her hand where it was, she leaned towards him, her nostrils wriggling the more they bridged the gap to his ear, ‘but not being part of the amusements also means you won’t smell of petrol and grease and candyfloss.’

‘Or Daulse and Yellowman,’ he added, attempting to complete her list and praying it was a compliment, ‘oh look…’ he continued and pointed with his free hand to the cuff of her red duffle coat, ‘there’s your missing glove, stuck up the sleeve of your coat.’

Sadly, for Tommy, this gave her an excuse to break away from him.

‘I’m Isabella,’ she said, retrieving her glove, ‘Isabella Scott and the pleasure to meet you on this wintery weekend, is all mine. That’s twice you saved me, Tommy, which means I’ll never forget you.’

And that, was how Tommy Barry and Isabella Scott first met.

Neither Isabella, her two friends, Gilly Hutchinson and Jane Murray nor Tommy Barry’s two friends, Lefty Kelly and Brendan ‘Brendy’ McCusker, would ever forget Tommy Barry. This fact was even more definite now that forty-three years later (bar three months) on Wednesday July 17th, 2019, the very same Tommy Barry died a very unnatural death.

***

Author Bio:

Paul Charles began his career in music at fifteen years old, managing his first band, The Blues by Five, in his hometown of Magherafelt in Northern Ireland. He moved to London in 1967 intending to study civil engineering but was quickly drawn back into the music world. In the 1970s he worked in multiple roles for the Belfast prog rock band FRUUPP, who signed to Dawn Records and toured widely across the UK and Europe. Charles lyrics for Sheba’s Song were later sampled and used as Soon The New Day by Talib Kweli featuring Norah Jones on the album Ear Drum which debuted at #2 on the Billboard Top 200 chart in 2007. After FRUUPP disbanded Charles co funded the Asgard Agency and has represented major artists including Crosby Stills & Nash, Jackson Browne, Tom Waits, The Kinks, Van Morrison, Robert Plant, Ani DiFranco, Gordon Lightfoot, Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Loudon Wainwright III, John Lee Hooker, and Ry Cooder. He has programmed the Acoustic Stage at the Glastonbury Festival for the last 38 years. A life long writer he published his first Christy Kennedy mystery in 1997 Level Best Book have just published his 22nd mystery – Hi Love, You Just Dropped Your Glove.

Catch Up With Paul Charles:

PaulCharlesBooks.com
Amazon Author Profile
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Instagram – @paulcharlesbooks

Q&A with PAUL CHARLES

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
My name is Paul Charles. I was born and raised in Northern Ireland. I’ve always been a fan of both music and books. I’ve been so lucky to be allowed to follow both those passions in my career as an agent in the music business and author of some 26 books. Mostly murder mysteries but also some non-fiction about the Beatles and the music business.

How did you come up with the title?
In 1968 Van Morrison released Astral Weeks, one of the best albums ever released. The album included the classic track Madam George. Part of the lyrics went along the lines of: He jumps up and shouts, hey love you forgot your glove. I remember like it was yesterday being stopped in my tracks by the imagery. I imagined this young Ulster exile in London at a party but longing for home. He spots a young lady and is immediately overcome by her natural beauty and aura. He silently chastises himself for being so painfully shy he is unable to approach her. She even gifts him an opening by leaving her glove on the seat she’d just vacated. He jumps up and shouts, “hey love you forgot your glove.” and she walks out of the party and his life. In my attempts to keep the books real I used my interpretation of Van lyrics as the way for the two main characters in Hi Love, You Just Dropped Your Glove, Thomas Barry and Isabella Scott, to meet each other. I changed the location from a party in 1968 to them bumping into each other on the late-night streets of Portrush in 1970s.

Excluding the main character, who is your favorite character from the book, and why?
My favorite character in Hi Love, You Just Dropped Your Glove would have to be DI Lily O’Carroll, McCusker’s side kick. This is the third in this series and over the course of the three books O’Carroll has developed from a walk-on part in the first to the point she really has become McCusker’s equal. I also love the way their relationship has developed to the extent it has become the foundation of the series.

Tell us why readers should pick up your book—what makes it stand out?
Although it is clearly the work of fiction, I always endeavor to make the books read as a true crime book would read. I was inspired by The Executioners Song by Norman Mailer and In Cold Blood by Normal Mailer, where both authors who very successfully took a true crime story and wrote them as though they were novels. I reversed their process.

What does your typical writing routine look like? Any idiosyncrasies or rituals?
While writing the first draft I work religiously from 6.00 am to 09.30 am every day. When I start the story, I do not know who committed the crime. I endeavor for the detective, the writer and the author to discover the relevant facts simultaneously.

Are you currently working on your next novel? If so, can you share a little about it?
Yes, it’s called The Return of The James Gang, the 12th DI Christy Kennedy Mystery. The James Gang, if we are to believe their own publicity, were the 2nd biggest band in Liverpool to the Beatles. As a power trio they were ahead of their time. They split up back in the day due to the drummer, who was also their manager, triple dipping. They reformed in modern day Camden Town to play at the drummer’s daughter’s wedding. Come the time for their big comeback performance the drummer is found in his dressing room with a drumstick through his heart…

Do you have a message or anything specific you’d like to say to your readers?
I’ve always felt that a big part of the success of a book is the reader’s imagination.

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A CHANCE MEETING, A CHANCE TO WIN

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Wildwood Exit by Joel E. Turner #AuthorInterview

GHott — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 10:09:04 +0000

WILDWOOD EXIT

by Joel E. Turner

May 25 – June 19, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

A deadly family vendetta at a Jersey Shore restaurant finds John McGinty (aka Ginty) tailing his boss’s lying wife and junkie son into a dark world of embezzlement, drug dealing and murder.

Ginty has just stepped in as the manager of a Wildwood restaurant owned by his friend, Lou Scolletta, after Lou fires the old manager for dipping in the till.

Ginty starts out ordering rolls of salami and bottles of Galliano, but quickly becomes Lou’s consigliere, picking up questionable packages from sketchy associates; tailing Lou’s wife Concetta on her furtive trips to Cape May; scouring the Jersey Shore for Lou’s son, Davy, a junkie on the lam; and wondering why a possibly bent State Trooper keeps showing up everywhere he goes.

Things in Ginty’s world don’t improve when a drug shipment goes wrong, a blackmail note appears…and a body is found floating in Delaware Bay.

Ginty is now the unwilling-yet trusted-confidante of all the Scollettas, and realizes that everyone in this twisted family circle is in danger-including himself.

WILDWOOD EXIT is as sordid as it is comic, and should be on every beach towel from Asbury Park to Cape May.

Praise for WILDWOOD EXIT:

“A quirky sand-in-your-shoes crime novel with a romantic heart”
~ Amy Rosenberg, Philadelphia Inquirer

“Funny, thrilling . . . a captivating crime story with a vivid Jersey Shore setting.”
~ Kirkus Reviews

Book Details:

Genre: Amateur Sleuth, Noir/Hard Boiled, Crime fiction, Noir Fiction, Jersey Shore Noir, Literary Noir
Published by: Level Best Books
Publication Date: May 6, 2025
Number of Pages: 329
ISBN: 9781685129729 (ISBN10: 1685129722)
Book Links: Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads | BookBub | Level Best Books | Main Point Books | Wildwood Historical Society (Signed)

Read an excerpt:

Chapter 1

The car bumped hard, the undercarriage hitting the edge of the shoulder, as it careened off the Garden State Parkway, heading for a stand of trees. The bump woke me up, and I jammed on the brakes and fought the steering wheel, cutting it hard left, but it was too late. The car fishtailed as the front smashed into a tree, the rear swinging right as the brakes took hold and crashing into another tree. I was flung forward, my hands coming off the wheel and banging against the console.

My hands were cut and bleeding as I sat staring at the road, the car twisted at a forty-five-degree angle. Pain throbbed from my right temple, and I realized I must have hit the windshield or the roof. A heaviness pressed down inside my head above my eyes, and I felt an urge to close them and go to sleep.

I forced myself to stay awake and get out of the car. I knew I was still technically drunk, but the crash had pumped enough adrenaline into my veins that I was hyper-aware, despite the likely concussion. I tried to open the trunk, but it was stuck shut, the right fender crunched in and bent on the top where it met the hatch.

A car passed going north on the other side of the Parkway. I looked back up the south-bound lane and saw no traffic. I stepped onto the road and half-jogged across, stepping over the median and across the north-bound lane. I glanced back at the car, slanted cock-eyed in the grass just past the Exit 6 sign for North Wildwood, then hurried through the grassy stretch alongside the road and into the woods that bordered it.

My only thought now was to avoid getting a DUI. I could deal with the car later. What a disaster. I had just bought the damn thing yesterday afternoon from a guy in Buena with a badly running nose and a burning desire to take my cash and go meet someone to make him well. That’s what I got for taking a lead on a cheap car from a guy holding up the end of the bar at a beer-and-a-shot place down the street from my house. I could have asked Lou to hook me up, but the price was right, and I just wanted something to get me through the summer. So I hitched a ride to Buena from a buddy who was headed to Margate, where I met Drew, the guy with the dripping nose. Drew had that pressing business to attend to, so he was fine with giving me the uncompleted paperwork.

Drew said, “Just see Mitch at the title place here next week, he’ll handle it.”

I trudged through the patch of woods, distancing myself from the Parkway. I came to a two-lane road and ran across that into deeper woods on the other side. I was about ready to just sleep under a tree there, when through a gap in the branches I saw an open field.

I pushed forward to the perimeter of the woods and stopped, trying to make out where I was. If it was somebody’s back yard, I would have to be careful. But there were no lights, just a dark field spreading out before me. I looked to my left and saw a brighter patch on the ground and a hundred yards beyond that a low building, maybe a garage?

I walked through tall grass to shorter grass, and as I got closer to the bright patch, I realized what it was: a sand trap.

I was on a fairway of Wildwood Country Club, the home course of my friend Lou Scolletta, whose house I was supposed to have been at four hours ago. There was probably a caddie shack I could hide out in, but I opted for a makeshift bed in the grass of a hollow a few fairways over. I lay down and, in the brief period before I passed out, wondered if this was the best way to prepare for the first day on my new job.

* * *

There was no way I wanted a full-time job working for Lou. I knew just enough about Lou to know not knowing anything more was the prudent path. The fact that he had just fired the prior manager for dipping in the till did not make the opportunity more appealing.

But there was a crazy part of me that thought running a place—a restaurant, not McNabb’s Tavern, the decrepit neighborhood tappie in Southwest Philly where until last year I humped kegs, mopped up fluids, breathed a lot of smoke and told myself I was the “manager”—might be something I could do. Because I was nowhere right now. No degree, no trade—just fifteen years of bartending that had ended when the last McNabb standing decided—wisely—that this was no way to make a living. The new owners didn’t need a mug like me in the fern bar that McNabb’s was to become.

I knew The Seabreeze, the quintessential Jersey Shore restaurant. When Lou bought it six years ago, I helped out a few weekends bartending when some of the corner boys he had hired just disappeared on him. It wasn’t hard finding someone to cover for me at McNabb’s. Our weekends were slower in the summer anyway, with a lot of folks going to the shore.

Lou and I hung out more back then. He bought the place in 1977 when I was thirty and Lou maybe thirty-seven. It was sort of a vanity project for him; his main business was a Cadillac dealership in South Philly. The following summer, he showed up at my bar with his son Davy—guess the kid was sixteen. He wanted Davy to get a summer job. Could we take him on, washing dishes, whatever? I wondered why he didn’t hire him at the dealership, but I guess he wanted him to work for someone else.

So I hired him, and he was okay, typical teenager, hardly said a word. There really wasn’t that much to do—we had a kitchen and did some sandwiches, but it wasn’t much to keep a dishwasher busy.

I guess that was the first favor I did for Lou. And I did owe him big, seeing as how his dad got me out of the draft back in 1967. Plus, Lou got me my first restaurant job, which was really a pretty good gig at a nice South Philly restaurant. But with Lou, you never felt like he was looking for payback. He just came off as a great guy, not like he was some connected dude that you had to say yes to. I’m sure he sold a lot of cars seeming like a great guy.

I used to give Davy a ride home sometimes, which often led to Concetta—Lou’s wife—asking me in to eat. There was always food, loads of food. She’d give me a plate of pasta, red wine out of a jug—might be ten o’clock in the evening, but so what? Then Lou would show up, and he wouldn’t bat an eyelash that I was there. Then he had me down to a little mom-and-pop restaurant near his dealership for dinner, and I met some of his friends. They were mostly older and had gone to Bishop Neumann or Southern, but a few knew guys from Kingsessing, my old neighborhood in Southwest Philly.

I thought about that pasta and how a mick like me was going to run a real restaurant, and, as I passed out in the wet grass at 3:30 AM, whether Davy was still having the same nose-dripping problems as Drew from Buena, a path I saw him starting down two and a half years ago.

* * *

The sound of a mower woke me up. The guy running it looked like he had seen worse. He pointed me to the caddy shack and gave me some coins for the payphone. Thank God Lou picked up, but then that’s Lou, he’s not surprised if some fuckup calls him at dawn. I washed up as best I could with cold water and no soap in the filthy sink in the shack’s bathroom, then waited outside the locker room, not wanting to meet up with anyone, until Lou arrived.

What a night. Blitzed out of my mind, drinking stingers like I was twenty in Somers Point, dancing with those crazy chicks, trying to teach me to moonwalk like Michael Jackson on that Motown show a couple of months ago. It was the Friday after a Monday Fourth of July, and it felt like the bar itself was stumbling under the strain of a week-long bender.

I had just stopped in for something to eat, then met these girls, three of them, late teens, which led to my dancing lesson. As it got late and the stingers took their toll, I figured maybe I’d just crash in the back seat for a couple of hours, then get breakfast somewhere, rather than roll in drunk at four in the morning and freak out Concetta.

Then two of the girls disappeared and the last one, Sharon, became glued to a chair at my table—that is, her butt was glued to the chair, but her face ended up stuck to the table itself, her long brown hair straggling out into the sticky remains of many ungodly drinks. At closing time, I struggled her to her feet and managed to get her to moan out where she was staying in Sea Isle City, a couple of towns south. After she vomited in the parking lot, I got her into the back seat and drove as carefully as I could, taking Route 9 to avoid the faster traffic.

I got the girl out of the car at her shabby rental duplex, leaving her sprawled on a chaise lounge in the screened porch. I banged on the door until one of her roommates appeared in a long t-shirt. We got her into bed and I talked the roommate through how to make sure Sharon didn’t choke on her own vomit.

I sat in my car, worrying about the girl. I was old enough to be her father, but being plastered in a Somers Point bar at closing time didn’t exactly qualify me to be in loco parentis. I was just a more experienced wastrel, a thirty-six-year-old failed bartender who would have been a disappointment to someone, if there was anyone left to fill that role.

When I left the girl’s rental, I figured it wasn’t much farther to Wildwood, and what the hell, why not take the Parkway? But of course, that’s what impaired judgment is all about. So fatigue and drunkenness once more exacted their toll on a stupid Irishman, and here I was creeping around at dawn like an escaped convict.

***

Author Bio:

Joel E. Turner’s first novel, WILDWOOD EXIT, a noir tale set at the Jersey Shore, was published by Level Best Books in 2025. Amy Rosenberg of the Philadelphia Inquirer called it “a quirky sand-in-your-shoes crime novel with a romantic heart”.

His second novel, BRENDA’S GREEN NOTE, forthcoming from Cynren Press in 2027, is a coming-of-age story about a young woman with synesthesia who harnesses her ability to see sounds as colors to become a key player in the vibrant music scene of the 1960s in Philadelphia.

His fiction has appeared in many US and UK journals. His website joeleturnerauthor.com, has samples/links to his work and posts about books, film and music. Articles he has written about Soul music have been featured on the UK-based Soul Source website, a major platform for news on the Northern Soul scene.

Mr. Turner splits his time between Philadelphia and White Cloud, Michigan.

Catch Up With Joel E. Turner:

JoelETurnerAuthor.com
Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads
Instagram – @bzturner
Threads – @bzturner
BlueSky – @joeleturner.bsky.social
Facebook – @joeleturner2

Q&A with JOEL E. TURNER

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
I grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, went to Catholic grade school and a Jesuit high school, then a small co-ed liberal arts college—no more single-sex, Catholic education, please! My degree was in English Lit and I wrote my first fiction then, lost (thankfully) in one purge or another. I considered academia but based on what I observed with teachers I admired being denied tenure, I decided it was not for me. I spent a few years working for the SSA and became interested in systems analysis, which led to me getting an MBA from University of Michigan—a truly brutal course of study, at least for me. That led to 30+ years as a consultant/data analyst/software developer in the banking industry.
I wrote fiction throughout that period and had my first story published by Ambit, a pretty avante-garde, or at least non-academic, literary magazine published in London UK. The fiction editor at that time was J. G. Ballard, and I still have the very nice response he sent to me when recommending the story to the mag’s publisher, Martin Bax.
My first published novel, Wildwood Exit, in 2025, was the third novel I wrote. The other two— maybe they’ll come out of the drawer some day, with pretty significant rewrites. My second novel publication, Brenda’s Green Note, is due out in October 2027. I am also working on a sequel to Wildwood Exit.
I also blog about books, music and films at joeleturnerauthor.com. I am a big fan of 50’s/60’s R&B/Soul. A couple of my pieces in that vein were published at Soulsource.uk.com, a major venue focused on the Northern Soul scene (a whole other story, as they say).
I am married with three grown children. I am a basketball fan and played until my knees gave out, then turned to golf.

Tell us why readers should pick up your book—what makes it stand out?
Wildwood Exit is a noir tale, but also a family drama. Ginty, the bartender-become-restaurant-manager-and-unwilling-consigliere is a bit of an everyman. He does things for Lou Scolletta, the restaurant owner who hired him, because Lou, through his dad (a doctor) helped him evade the draft, and got him jobs in the restaurant business. Ginty, in turn, hired Lou’s son, Davy—the addict on the run who is at the center of the story. Ginty has a sense of moral duty, to all of the Scolletta’s, which causes conflict and danger for him.
The book has a comedic aspect, particularly with the introduction of Pinto, a super-annuated South Philly corner boy, who becomes Ginty’s partner in sketchy assignments from Lou. Pinto is a wise guy who attracts trouble in a carefree manner. And there’s a bit of romance, as Ginty meets Pauline, a vacationing paralegal from a small town in Quebec, who charms and befuddles him with her unlikely attraction to him and her French-Canadian take on his activities, delivered with a Gallic (or more properly, Québécois) panache.

Are you currently working on your next novel? If so, can you share a little about it?
I’m in the editing process for my next novel, Brenda’s Green Note, due out from Cynren Press in October 2027. It is the story of a girl with synesthesia—she sees sounds as colors—who is also a talented musician and leverages these capabilities to become a sound engineer in the lively music scene in Philadelphia in the mid-1960s. She begins her journey under the guidance of an avante-garde composer/musician, who introduces her to his electronic soundscapes/installations and then becomes a protégé of a rock and roll promoter. Brenda undergoes a trauma that changes her life and leads her on a search for fulfillment. It’s a coming of age story. Contrary to the advice of several folks in the publishing industry, I haven’t “stayed in my lane” by sticking to crime or literary fiction.

What are some of your favorite leisure activities or hobbies when you’re not writing?
I play golf, collect records (esp. R&B/Soul 45s) and enjoy the company of my wife, kids and their families. I especially like spending time at our place in the North Woods of Michigan, and at my wife’s family’s cottage on Lake Michigan—that’s taken the place of the Jersey Shore for me!

What are a few of your favorite foods?
Soft pretzels, hoagies, tomato pie, pasta— hey, I’m from Philly.

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Shadow of Betrayal by Blaire Morgan

GHott — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 11:32:35 +0000

SHADOW OF BETRAYAL

by Blaire Morgan

June 8-12, 2026 Book Blast

Synopsis:

Kyndall Family Suspense Series

In this chilling romantic suspense, U.S. Marshals investigator Heather York stumbles into danger at a Maine lakeside lodge, with Jordan Kyndall’s protective instincts as her only hope.

A woman hunted by corruption.

Heather York thought her life was ordinary—until a sudden threat pulls her into a deadly game. In Shadow of Betrayal, she’s forced to question whether she’s a target—or collateral damage.

A man who won’t walk away.

Jordan Kyndall planned a weekend celebrating his college roommate’s wedding. Instead, he finds a grisly scene in the woods—a woman’s lifeless body—and a surge of protective instinct binds him to Heather in ways he never expected.

A danger that could destroy them both.

As threats multiply and secrets surface, Heather and Jordan must navigate corruption, desire, and deadly stakes—trusting each other may be the only way to survive.

Book Details:

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Published by: Blaire Morgan Books
Publication Date: June 8, 2026
Series: Kyndall Family Suspense Series, Book 2
Book Links: Amazon | KindleUnlimited | Goodreads

Read an excerpt:

Prologue

THE DRIVE TO the dingy bar outside of the city had been rough when the directions led him down a series of dirt roads before reaching what managed to loosely be called civilization. The bell above the door chimed a dull sound, barely registering his presence. He shook his rain-soaked umbrella, drawing a few curious glances his way before the three men at the bar decided their cold beer and stale peanuts were more interesting than him.

The bartender, a man in his late fifties with a marine tattoo on a bicep, asked him if he wanted anything. Though kind, if the bartender had offered him a bottle of the Alps’ finest water, he wouldn’t accept—not in a place like this—but he was trying to blend in.

“Whatever is on tap,” he said, and found a table in a back corner.

Although he had no intention of staying longer than necessary, the location offered him anonymity. The front door, with its surprisingly clean window, opened and brought with it a strong wind and his associate. The new arrival scanned the room, nodded at the others, and crossed the dark bar.

“You’re late.”

“I’m here now. You have something for me, Hewitt?”

He’d made a mistake giving the man a name, even if it wouldn’t lead back to him. They’d agreed not to use names, not here, not ever. He removed a black, zippered deposit bag from the inside pocket of his rain slicker and slid it across the table.

The man across from him chuckled and unzipped the bag.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Hewitt asked, his whisper a low hiss. He quieted when the bartender set a beer in front of him.

His associate raised an eyebrow and continued to wear his smile. “You’ve seen too many movies.” He closed the bag and leaned forward. “Do you honestly think anyone here cares who you are or what you’re doing? At least you dressed for the occasion—kind of.”

Hewitt stared at the man across from him, confident that despite his off-balanced behavior at times, he’d get the job done. History had proven he was capable, if not entirely trustworthy, and willing to do anything—for a price.

“You’re forgetting something,” he said.

Hewitt hated this man. “It’s in the bag.”

Another chuckle. “In the bag, I like that.” He pulled the colored photograph from the deposit bag and studied the image. “How’d you find me?”

“Does it matter?”

“I like to know what I’m getting into.”

Hewitt studied him, unsure now of his idea but knowing he had to move forward. “All you need to know is I can make your other . . . inconvenience go away.”

“And what might that be?”

Hewitt pulled a folded sheet of paper from his inside breast pocket and slid it across the table.

“I’m not sure I believe you.”

“You know who I work for?” Hewitt asked.

“I checked it out.”

“Then you know I can do what I say,” Hewitt said, growing impatient. “Will it be a problem?”

“No, no problem.” Instead of returning the picture to the bag, he slipped it into the pocket of his dark, denim shirt. “You going to drink this?” he asked before he lifted Hewitt’s beer and drank deeply.

From Chapter One

JORDAN EASED THE rented SUV into the graveled parking lot of the lakeside lodge. Nestled in the thick pine forest surrounding Moosehead Lake, the Highlands Lodge reminded him of the fishing camp his family frequented in Alaska.

He stepped out and walked around to the back of the vehicle, breathing in the fresh northern air. Though nothing like his hometown of Stewart Crossing, which was tucked away on a remote Alaskan bay, Moose Creek, Maine, was a pleasant escape from the spring heat of North Carolina, where he operated the main branch of Eagle Wilderness Journeys.

The parking lot was empty, but he heard voices coming from the back of the lodge, laughter carrying through the trees and echoing over the water. Adam, his college roommate and the reason Jordan trekked up north, ambled across the gravel and pulled Jordan into a big hug. Considering Adam stood four inches shorter than Jordan and weighed thirty pounds less, it wasn’t easy.

“Dang, it’s good to see you.”

Jordan returned the amiable smile. “You look happy.”

“Wait till you meet her.” Adam opened the back of the SUV and lifted the duffel out before Jordan objected. “You’re going to love her. I mean, whoever thought I’d ever be monogamous.”

Jordan laughed, closed the back door, and followed Adam to the lodge. “If I recall, you didn’t know the meaning of the word throughout our senior year.”

“Well, yeah, but could you blame me?” Adam led him around the corner of the lodge and stopped. “Wait, there she is.”

Adam had described her perfectly. Girl-next-door pretty and fresh off the cheerleading squad, Grace was only a year younger than his friend. Her pale, blond curls bounced as she walked on long legs across the lawn. “She’s something all right. I wouldn’t have expected—”

It wasn’t often when life’s unexpected moments stunned Jordan into silence or immobilized him, but none stopped his breath quite like his first glimpse of the woman standing next to Adam’s fiancée.

“Who is she?”

“It’s Grace, man, who do you think . . . Ah.” Adam nudged Jordan’s ribs with his elbow and laughed. “That’s Heather, Grace’s maid of honor.”

Jordan didn’t want to use the word “dumbstruck,” but at the moment, he couldn’t formulate another. His sister would have called him “twitterpated” and normally he would put her in a headlock until she cried “mercy” and take it back, but it had been a long time since she’d had cause to tease him about a girl.

“Hey, buddy, close your mouth before you drool.”

Jordan wiped his mouth before he realized Adam was messing with him. “Don’t forget, I can still kick your golf-playing butt from here to next Tuesday.”

“Why don’t I introduce you instead, and then you can owe me one.”

***

Blaire Morgan, Author Bio:

Blaire Morgan is a pseudonymous American author blending danger, emotion, and high-stakes storytelling into gripping romantic suspense. She lives wherever the next adventure takes her—usually somewhere with a lot of trees, or a place that exists only in her imagination.

Catch Up With Blaire Morgan:

www.blairemorgan.com
Amazon Author Profile
BookBub – @blairemorganbooks1
YouTube – @blairemorganbooks

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MAYBE YOU LIED by Jennifer Sadera #CoverReveal

GHott — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 08:05:59 +0000

MAYBE YOU LIED

by Jennifer Sadera

June 9 – 12, 2026 Cover Reveal

Synopsis:

Everything he knows about his life is. . . a lie.

Blindsided by the sudden death of his mother, 21-year-old Will Lockhart can no longer afford the rent or bear the haunting memories of their shared Massachusetts apartment. While packing up his mother’s belongings, he discovers his long-dead father’s deed to a house in upstate New York. With nowhere else to go, he settles there, intent on making a fresh start. But odd things happen as soon as Will moves in. He’s unnerved by evidence of fire damage in the cottage, and alarmed by the seizure his elderly next-door neighbor suffers upon meeting him. Most shocking of all are the rumors of a long-ago murder in his house. Now, trapped in a town full of strangers, unsure of whether local murmurings are true or simply small-town gossip, he’s determined to discover what really happened all those years ago, and how he’s connected to the chaos. The truth will set him free. Or get him killed.

Book Details:

Genre: Psychological Suspense, Domestic Suspense
Published by: Creative James Media
Publication Date: September 22, 2026
Number of Pages: 344
ISBN: 9781965648919 (ISBN10: 1965648916)
Book Links: Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads

Author Bio:

Jennifer Sadera first worked in the publishing industry as a junior copywriter for NAL/Penguin. She has written and edited for newspapers and magazines as a freelancer and on the staffs of major women’s publications, Woman’s World and Redbook.

Catch Up With Jennifer Sadera:

JenniferSadera.com
Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads
BookBub – @jennifersadera
Instagram – @jensaderaauthor
X – @jennifersadera
Facebook – @jennifer.sadera
LinkedIn
YouTube – @AuthorJenniferSadera

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The Truth Might Be Deadly… This Giveaway Isn’t

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CMash Reads

Get Gribnitz by Howard Gimple #AuthorGuestPost

GET GRIBNITZ

by Howard Gimple

June 29 – July 24, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

Praise for Get Gribnitz:

Book Details:

Read an excerpt:

Author Bio:

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GUEST POST by HOWARD GIMPLE

MYSTROMEDY…WAIT, WHAT??

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Get In, Enter, Then GET GRIBNITZ

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Proxy Legal Thriller Series by Manning Wolfe #AuthorInterview

PROXY LEGAL THRILLER SERIES

by Manning Wolfe

June 8 – July 17, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

DEAD BY PROXY

In this lawyer on the run action suspense, attorney Quinton Bell loses the trial of his career, and possibly his life.

HUNTED BY PROXY

In this lawyer on the run action suspense, can attorney Quinton Bell hang on to his new life as he hides in plain sight?

ALIVE BY PROXY

Can attorney Quinton Bell hang on to his new life, as he hides in plain sight, in this lawyer-on-the-run suspense thriller?

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Author Bio:

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Q&A with MANNING WOLFE

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Reasonable Doubt You’ll Want To Miss This? None.

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The Midas Touch by Gary Grossman, Oren Aviv, & Charles Segars #AuthorInterview

THE MIDAS TOUCH

by Gary Grossman, Oren Aviv, & Charles Segars

June 29 – July 24, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

National Treasure meets Jack Ryan in THE MIDAS TOUCH

THE MIDAS TOUCH is written by international award-winning thriller writer Gary Grossman with Charles Segars and Oren Aviv, the creators of the billion-dollar National Treasure movie franchise.

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THE MIDAS TOUCH Trailer:

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Gary Grossman:

Catch Up With Gary Grossman:

Charles Segars:

Oren Aviv:

Q&A with GARY GROSSMAN

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History, Suspense, & Gift Cards – Enter To Win

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SHADOWS OF FRENCHMEN by Michael Rigg #AuthorInterview

SHADOWS OF FRENCHMEN

by Michael Rigg

June 22 – July 31, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

Synopsis:

A Jonathan Gray, M.D. Mystery

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Shadows of Frenchmen Trailer:

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Chapter One

Alpha and OmegaSunday, February 1, 2015 – 1:47 a.m.

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Beads, Beignets & Bookish Bounty

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The Ledger by Steven Manchester #AuthorInterview

THE LEDGER

by Steven Manchester

June 8 – July 3, 2026 Virtual Book Tour

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Q&A with STEVEN MANCHESTER

Alpha and Omega
Sunday, February 1, 2015 – 1:47 a.m.

I was born here and I’ll die here, against my will.
—Dylan