Romance Novel Giveaways

Killer Friends by Chris Karlsen 💕 Book Tour and $20 Giveaway 💕 (Historical Suspense)

2026-09-21T00:07:00.000-04:00

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The few leads they develop take them from the world of wealthy families and into the secret society of sexual peculiarities.

Henrietta Newell stormed into the detective bureau. She claimed her adult son was missing and feared for his safety. The detectives attempted to reassure her that the absence of a bachelor in his thirties, in a city like London, wasn’t extraordinary. Despite their efforts, she insisted an investigation be conducted, reminding them of her political connections.

Detective Rudyard Bloodstone and his partner were told to look into the matter. Their investigation reveals evidence of suspicious and unusual activity but no clues regarding the man’s disappearance. The few leads they develop take them from the world of wealthy families and into the secret society of sexual peculiarities.

The detectives discover the victim didn’t simply disappear. He was murdered. They have the evidence except for one problem, they’re missing the victim’s body.

Newell counted to one hundred out of excess of caution in case Eric and Leo remained nearby. At one-hundred he stood by the door, delayed for a couple of seconds, searching for a way to open the door. His vision, cut off by the bag when they hustled him into the room, he was unaware the knob had been removed.

Newell kicked the lock housing. The door didn’t budge. He took a few steps back to build momentum and kicked the lock again. The force knocked him on his bum and sent a shock wave of pain from his ankle to his knee. He scrambled to his feet and, gave his kicking leg a few good jerks, hoping to shake off the pain. He couldn’t say why he thought that would help other than he’d seen workmen shake limbs after hurting themselves.

The effort didn’t ease the pain. No point in repeating another kick. He took the only option left and screamed for help.

No one came.

Outside, drunks shouted challenges and curses to each other. London was never truly quiet. The seedier the neighborhood, the louder the inhabitants. Foot traffic along the river was constant, increasing during the day, but still busy at night. Surely, someone should hear him. He yelled, loud as he could.

Nothing.

He shouted for help again and again.

No one came.

Newell’s throat felt like he’d swallowed broken glass when he finally stopped for the night. Exhausted, he curled up on the cold floor and tried to sleep. Every part of his back ached. Shoulders to his tailbone throbbed like he’d been beaten with an iron rod. The pain traveled and no matter how he positioned himself, his calves and thighs cramped. When he had found a sliver of comfort, rest continued to escape him. Questions plagued his thoughts. After a while he sat up with his arms wrapped around his knees and his head pressed to them.

Another gust of fetid air from the river wafted through the only window. Three millennia of foul matter, human and otherwise, hung like a cloud over the room. He idly wondered if there was ever a time the Thames wasn’t a filthy cesspit.

“Bloody hell.” To escape the worst of the stink, Newell moved to the far corner and slid down the wall to sit on the floor.

Initially, with all the daytime activity around the river, Newell didn’t think Eric could keep him prisoner for long. Someone would discover what Eric had done. A day passed and then another passed. He still hoped he’d be heard. He removed a shoe and pounded the wall that bordered the wharf. Between hits he and screamed and screamed, “Help me, please. Someone, help me. I’m locked inside. Help me.”

No one heard or if they did, they had no desire to heed the call. Still, someone should’ve been curious enough to investigate but who knew how thick the brick walls were? Eric was clever. It wouldn’t surprise Phillip if Eric had tested how well a scream traveled.

Newell lay in a fetal position on the floor, shivering. He began to sob as he waited for Eric’s return, waiting to beg for release. He was weeping when Eric finally arrived.

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Chris is a Chicago native who grew up with a love of history and books.

Passionate about traveling her travels have taken her Europe, the Near East, and North Africa, in addition to most of the United States.

Chris spent twenty-five years in law enforcement with two agencies. Harboring a strong desire to write, upon retiring, Chris decided to pursue her desire. She writes three different series. Her Bloodstone series, which is set in Victorian London, features homicide Detective Rudyard Bloodstone.

She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and four wild and crazy rescue dogs.

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Why Aurora Ran by Nora Kingsley 💕 Guest Post, New Release Tour and $20 Giveaway 💕 (Mystery)

2026-09-21T00:06:00.000-04:00

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Two weeks before her wedding, Aurora Larrimore slapped her wedding planner, punched her florist, stole the florist's van, and drove off...

Is Aurora missing, or is she just gone?

Those are two different types of investigations.

Two weeks before her wedding, Aurora Larrimore slapped her wedding planner, punched her florist, stole the florist's van, and drove off.

Her family calls her unstable. Melissa "Pissy Lou" Jenkins isn't convinced. A blunt, brilliant skip tracer for the family's law firm, Pissy Lou notices what everyone else misses, and her Tourette's has a habit of announcing exactly what she thinks of the people she questions. She is sent to find Aurora in time to save the wedding, and she starts with the question nobody else asked: is Aurora missing, or is she just gone? Those are two different types of investigations.

Her interviews turn up stories about a controlling mother, a fiancé whose answers don't fit, and a carefully polished lie the whole family seems to be protecting. Before Pissy Lou can find the runaway bride, she has to answer the question at the heart of the case. Everyone involved in the wedding has a theory about Aurora, but Pissy Lou is the only one asking why she ran.

A quick note before I get into Lou’s Tourette’s: she isn’t the first fictional detective to have it. Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn, published in 1999, is an award-winning neo-noir novel featuring private investigator Lionel Essrog, who has Tourette syndrome. It was also adapted into a film starring Edward Norton. I haven’t read the book yet, so Lionel wasn’t an influence on Lou, but I recently got a copy and will be reading it shortly.

When writing about Lou’s Tourette’s, I did my research but I am sure there are things I got wrong. Her mother, Augusta, helped her learn ways to cope with it, but Tourette’s is different for everyone. Sometimes what comes out of Lou’s mouth is coherent and sometimes it isn’t. It’s part of Lou, but it doesn’t define her. In Chapter 3, while interviewing Hayes Merritt, she says something off-color and then thinks: “My apologies. I meant nothing by it. Tourette’s,” she said. I had no idea I was going to say that but I did. Wow. One of the few times I agree with the rando shit that comes out of my mouth. This guy is a damn stinker, as Grandma used to say.

The involuntary swearing associated with Tourette syndrome is called coprolalia, and despite the stereotype often shown in movies and on television, it affects only about 10–15% of people with Tourette’s. Tics can be vocal, such as sniffing, throat clearing, grunting, or words and phrases, or motor, such as blinking, shrugging, twitching, or sudden movements. The tics are involuntary and don’t necessarily reflect someone’s thoughts or beliefs. Some people can suppress them temporarily, but that takes effort and can create a buildup that leads to stronger tics later.

I explored this in Chapter 6: Celeste Larrimore, when Lou barely makes it back to her car after holding her tics in through a tense interview. Once the door closes, the pressure breaks: she rocks, pounds the steering wheel, and unleashes a string of rhyming insults until she’s nearly crying with relief.

Chapter 4

Vendors and a Client

Pissy Lou was at her desk by eight the next morning. She poured her yellow-orange mug full of iced coffee and opened her notebook to a fresh page. The Larrimore file was open in front of her. She had a list of calls to make before she drove out to Devereaux Heights, where Richard and Celeste Larrimore lived. She had verified information on the people she had intended to talk to the day before.

First on her list was the caterer, a woman named Darlene Puckett who ran the Fork & Flourish out of a commercial kitchen on the east side of town. Ms. Puckett answered on the second ring.

After introductions, Pissy Lou got down to work. “What did you do when Celeste Larrimore called to change the menu for the wedding?

“I told Aurora everything,” Puckett said. She had the tone of a woman who was waiting to talk about this situation. “As soon as I realized what her mother was doing, I called Aurora directly. I did not care whose toes I stepped on. It is her wedding.” She paused. “That woman, Celeste Larrimore, called me four times in two weeks. She wanted to swap out the entire menu. Aurora and Hayes had tasted everything; they’d signed off on a menu, and we had a contract. The menu was set. Then here comes Celeste wanting another tier on the cake, to swap out the wedding topper, and then she wanted chicken marsala and salmon added to the menu. She said Aurora was ‘too informal’ in her choices, like it was a character flaw.” Another pause, a deliberate one. “I have dealt with a lot of difficult mothers of the bride. That woman is in an extra-obnoxious category by herself.”

Pissy Lou thanked her and moved on.

The printer, a slow-talking man who identified himself only as “Bill, from Printed to Perfection,” confirmed the invitation situation, Aurora and Hayes had selected a plain card with an elegant texture, letterpress printing, a classic Garamond font, and wording that named them both first and their parents second. Celeste had called and instructed him to change the wording so that it read: “Mr. and Mrs. Richard Larrimore request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their daughter …” which was not what Aurora had ordered, and not what was on the signed proof. Celeste provided her credit card, so he did a second run with the new wording. He then emailed the new proof to Aurora. She called back and sounded angry. She told him to throw those out, and hoped he still had the original invitations. He did. She also made him promise to call her again if Celeste tried to change them again.

"This happens more often than you might think," Bill said in his deadpan way. "Parents argue about wording. Grandparents argue about wording. I once had a bride's aunt threaten to sue over cardstock. That is why I never throw invitations away until after the wedding. Somebody is always upset about something.”

"Was this unusual?" she asked.

"As I said, no, happens all the time. But this was a bit new, Aurora wanted me to call her personally if her mother contacted me again. I mean the woman got caught the first time. Why would she try it again?”

Pissy Lou’s call to BarbyAnne Knowles, the events coordinator at the wedding venue, was more involved. Aurora and Hayes had booked The Carrington, an estate property outside of town with a bridal ceremony and reception space, gardens, and a catering kitchen. Celeste had called The Carrington and, citing unspecified “concerns,” canceled the booking, then booked a different property, Magnolia Hall, which had a more formal aesthetic. Pissy Lou suspected this site had a greater prestige among the circles Celeste traveled in. Aurora had called The Carrington, discovered the cancellation, and re-booked it immediately.

“I was surprised at how calm Aurora was. If my mother had pulled that on me, I would have been swearing something awful,” BarbyAnne said. “Then she asked that no further changes be accepted from anyone other than herself, and that such changes had to be in writing. I could tell she had thought this out before she called. I have never had another bride who had to ask me to do th Her last vendor call was to Beaufort Bridal, the shop where Aurora's gown had come from. The owner, Serafina Beaufort, ran the store her grandmother had opened and had been dressing Nunenberg brides for over forty years. She remembered the gown without having to look anything up.

"Aurora picked an ivory, sleeveless couture gown, clean lines, no fuss. It had a slightly uneven hem, and ended just above her ankles so she could move easily. It suited her perfectly, and she knew it the minute she had it on. You can always tell," Serafina said. "And she had an eye, that girl. She chose all four bridesmaids' dresses here too — peacock blue, midcalf, with three-quarter sleeves of ivory illusion lace, and little flowers embroidered into the lace in the same blue, so they seemed to bloom right on the skin. Each one was cut a little differently, but you could see at a glance they belonged together. Those women came to their fittings laughing, and every single one asked me if she could wear hers again afterward. In this business, that is the highest compliment there is."

"And the bride's gown?"

"Then the alterations started.” Serafina Beaufort paused before continuing. “Her mother ordered the changes directly, four separate times, and mostly between fittings, so Aurora never saw them coming. Lace sleeves. A higher neckline. Lace layered over the bodice. She addeda train and veil. Mrs. Larrimore was paying for the work, so my hands were tied, but every fitting, that poor girl came in and found less of her own dress waiting for her. At the last one she said something about us turning it into a lacy burka. One of my fitters laughed. I did not."

"Four rounds of alterations," Pissy Lou said. "Is that normal?"

"Honey, in forty years I have taken gowns in, let gowns out, and re-beaded an entire bodice overnight for a bride who changed her mind. I have never un-designed a dress four times for a woman who was not the one wearing it." She paused. "I heard Aurora took the gown with her when she left. Good. She should burn it. I've unpicked a lot of mistakes in forty years, but that gown's got four rounds of her mother sewn in too deep for any seam ripper. Fire's just the last alteration, and it's the only one her mother can't reverse."

"So, you think Aurora intends to burn the dress?" Pissy Lou asked.

"Honey, if that were my dress, I'd pour a can of gasoline on it and strike a match," Serafina said without hesitation.

💕 To be released September 28 💕

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Nora Kingsley lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, where the landscape, the weather, and the Atlantic provide a constantly changing backdrop for an active imagination. Why Aurora Ran is Nora Kingsley's debut and the first in the Lou Jenkins mystery series.

A lifelong reader, Nora is happiest wandering through historical fiction, mysteries, science fiction, and fantasy, especially books that offer a compelling world, an intriguing puzzle, or characters worth following well past bedtime. Her interests extend beyond the page to music, movies, cooking, and art, and she has always been drawn to the many different ways people create and tell stories.

She shares her life with the people and animals she loves, an unreasonable number of interests, and the firm conviction that there is always room for another book.

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Teardown by William Campbell Powell 💕 Behind the Scenes, 99¢ Sale Tour and $10 Gift Card Giveaway 💕 (Rock Star Gay Romance)

2026-09-21T00:05:00.000-04:00

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On the road to music fame, desire and dreams collide.

Growing up in a dead-end, Thames Valley town like Marden Combe, Kai knows there’s no escape without a lot of talent, hard work—and luck.

Two weeks before the Clayton Paul Blues Band plans to set out on tour to Germany, their singer quits, and drummer Kai takes matters in hand. With bandmates Jake and Jamie, they recruit a talented new singer—the enigmatic Dominique—as the new face of the band and set out on the road to Berlin in a rickety white van.

Dogged by mishaps and under-rehearsed, the band stumbles through their first shows, zig-zagging between chaos and brilliance. But as the first gig in Berlin draws near, the band begins to gel. They’re clicking with their audience, and even the stone-hearted Kai starts to crumble under the spell, first of Dom and then…of Lars.

As the end of the tour approaches, Kai must make hard choices. Dom? But she’s keeping a dark secret. Lars? Not after the acrimony of their last parting. The band? Or will that dream crumble too?

Hi, and thank you for inviting me to post something about Teardown.

It’s a very personal book for me, so I’m going to talk about the origins of the book, and one of the more unusual aspects of creating Teardown.

I started playing in bands when I was about fifteen, with some school friends, and learned bass guitar, because there were too many guitarists already. I stayed with those guys for 17 years, before my job made it impossible to stay in the band.

So it was inevitable that I’d write books about being in a band. In my first book, Expiration Day, Tania was a bass player in a couple of bands. Here in Teardown, Kai is the drummer, and I am drawing on my own experiences of touring Germany in a rickety van. Not all of the exploits in the book are fictional – but names have been changed to protect the guilty.

That was a long time ago – though it was at least in this galaxy. It was before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the re-unification of Germany. At one point in the tour we drove up close to the frontier between East Germany and West Germany. We were warned not to go too close. But we were close enough to see the barbed wire fences separating the two halves of Germany. I can still picture the scene – and the feeling of dread at how close we were to guards willing to kill, in order to keep the two Germanies separate. It has stayed with me and surfaces in several places in Teardown. The book title’s link to Ronald Reagan’s famous call - “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” is not accidental.

But back to bands, and the ‘Behind the Scenes’ part that I’d like to talk about, which is writing original songs for music books. I learned in Expiration Day that authors can’t just quote their favourite songs for their band to sing. The copyright lawyers are waiting to pounce. (The same goes for poetry.) So when the plot demands a song or a poem, you have to do the hard yards and write it yourself.

There’s form on this, naturally. Taylor Jenkins Reid wrote several songs for ‘Daisy Jones & The Six’, and because it got dramatised, I guess somebody set those lyrics to music. Iain Banks wrote songs for his ‘Espedair Street’, which was also dramatised. Likewise, Malorie Blackman for ‘Knife Edge’.

For Expiration Day I wrote one original song, and I had a tune, which I kept in my head. For Teardown, though, the songs are so crucial that I felt I had to do better. I wanted my readers to be able to hear those songs, at least as demos. For my own satisfaction, I wanted to prove that I’d written songs, not poems, that the music was integral with the lyrics. So I’ve recorded demos of all those original songs – there are five (plus a sixth “traditional, adapted by”). They’re a work in progress – I wanted to get something down in time for the book release – so currently demo quality, recorded in my home studio, with me doing all the parts. As Jamie tells Kai in the book:

“I’m not sure how to put this, Kai. You’ve got a good voice. It’s, well…not very, well, rock’n’roll. No…grit. Too pure. Sorry.”

Unfortunately, that’s me, too. I can sing, but I don’t have Dom’s voice. But I do have plans to re-record the songs, and get them closer to production quality. I’m working with one of my old band mates on ‘The Hall of Fallen Angels’ at the moment. Such as they are, all the songs are posted on my website at https://bit.ly/TeardownMusic .

If the music is important to you, or if you are just curious how the songs sound, please give the songs a listen. And if they inspire you to perform/record your own version, I’d love to hear what you do with them.

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Enjoy original songs made for Teardown!

Here's Cross/Don't Cross

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Play

Chapter One

Sunday, September 18, 2016

The Band Hut, Marden Combe

The bus stank of commuters. It wasn’t like a night bus, granted, but the mix of sweat and cheap scent—and the pungency of diesel—was another reminder of how much I hated Marden Combe.

A Thames Valley town like every other Thames Valley town, Marden Combe had a posh, blingy bit, where the bankers, footballers, and celebrity chefs lived. The rest ran the spectrum from dilapidated through demolished to barely affordable modern rabbit hutches. The old town centre was closing down, and the new shopping centre was gridlock hell.

The bus lurched and swung left, past a school named for a long-dead parliamentarian. Or possibly a royalist. I ought to know; it had been my old school till I’d turned sixteen. But it had all seemed irrelevant to the more immediate problem of not getting picked on for being different. There were a dozen ways and more to be different, whether it was for being too ugly, too geeky, too slow on the uptake, too shy, too dark, not dark enough, having a funny accent, or a fundy religion, or being neurodivergent, being too posh, being too poor, liking the wrong music, or football team, or playing oddball sports, or using last year’s tech; not liking girls, not liking boys, not liking either, liking both. Plus others, plus combinations. By more than one marker, I was weird, and I hadn’t always kept my head down. But there’d definitely been no bullying at Sir Long-Dead-Parliamentarian School. Or Royalist, as the case may be. Oh no.

That didn’t come close to summing up the suffocating, hope-crushing, soul-sucking, shit-brown hole that is Marden Combe. I needed to escape.

If I had a plan, it was that music would save me, as currently embodied by two pairs of drumsticks in my backpack and the cymbals in their hardcase. I’d found a few other muzos with a similar plan, and I was heading for the weekly escape committee meeting.

The bus crawled through the town centre—the closing-down bit, where the last of the character pubs struggled to keep their doors open with, as always, the pressure on the landlords to boost profits, cut costs, and serve salmonella-free food, or be booted out with a mountain of debt.

I gave it a nostalgic glance as the bus passed the Lord Nelson, boarded up and awaiting planning permission for conversion to flats. Once, the very bricks had rung with rock and oozed the blues. Once. Now, it was just another live music venue, dead and gone forever.

Still clinging on: the Cherry Tree, where we played a one-in-four Saturday night residency, alternating with rivals the Dave Green Blues Band, the twice ill-named Silent But Deadly, and a guest out-of-town band for the final Saturday. That residency was our lifeline, our oxygen, dependent on our ability to bring in the punters and dependent on the other bands too. Rivals we might be, but every band had to pull its weight.

Last night’s gig had been borderline, thanks to the competition from freshers’ week at the uni. Jeff and Simon had shown the strain as they’d sat us down after the gig to pay us. A dear old couple, they did what they loved for bugger-all profit. Simon, a long-term AIDS survivor, was a respected leader in Marden Combe’s tiny LGBTQIA community. They were never less than friendly to us as a band or to me personally, but yesterday, Simon got as near to reading the riot act as made no difference. Times were tough, and if our audience numbers didn’t pick up…

We got the message.

The lights changed. The bus lurched into motion, taking us up the hill, towards Marden Combe’s main industrial estate.

The bus passed an abandoned car on the grass verge. Last week, a sign on the windscreen said Police Aware, but evidently, not so aware that someone couldn’t set fire to it in the interim. That was my cue to get off. I rang the bell, and the bus pulled to a halt about fifty yards short of a block of single-storey industrial units. It had been built in the 1960s, and the brickwork left much to be desired. Ditto the ironwork and the paintwork. Don’t even think about asbestos. The third unit along was the one I was looking for. The sign read The Band Hut, and it fit right in with Marden Combe…

I pushed open the door, and all was gloom within. Thick cardboard and felt covered the windows. I called “Hi” to Wally at the front desk, hunched over his phone, and the autopilot grunted back. I moved past room 1 (a folk-metal trio), room 2 (empty), and into room 3, signed with gloss white paint roughly slapped over its matt black outer door.

Usually, with great rock stars taking interviews in their home studios, there wasn’t an amp in sight unless it was some boutique marque they’d been paid to endorse. The studio would be airy, bright, and wood-panelled in glossy pine, with walls featuring three or four iconic guitars. Double-insulated patio doors would lead onto a beautifully manicured lawn, the whole set tastefully in the Cotswolds.

In Marden Combe, they did things differently. Black felt covered the walls and ceiling of Studio 3. Underfoot, recycled carpet tiles clung to my shoes, sticky as only years of spilt beer could accomplish. Worn and curling patches showed where the bass drum spikes had caught between two tiles and where the studio’s cobbled-together frankenamps had been dragged too many times. Gaffa tape glinted under fluorescent lights, hasty repairs criss-crossing the floor. Other marks—cigarette burns mostly—clustered round the amps; the still-potent reeks of ancient tobacco and stale weed lurked at the edge of awareness. A tired but eclectic collection of posters hung on the walls, providing a potted archaeology of Marden Combe’s indigenous music of the last half decade.

Jake was already set up and sitting on a Band Hut amplifier, cradling his beloved Fender Stratocaster. He didn’t look up, but I didn’t expect him to. He hunched over the fretboard, fingers spider-dancing their scales. Half in shadow, he was a little spiderlike himself, all spindly limbs that gangled and writhed. His hair, too pale for a spider, was cut short and neatly combed.

After a minute, he finished his phrase, and we nodded to each other. Jake wasn’t a great conversationalist, so I didn’t push him out of his comfort zone. It was called ‘letting the music do the talking’. It suited both of us.

It took me about ten minutes to get the studio’s drum kit set up the way I like it, with my own cymbals in place. All the while, Jake happily noodled on his Strat. Clay breezed in just as I was finishing up.

Clay was the kind of guy you’d want fronting a blues band. Beautiful, with ebon-black skin and close-cropped hair, he had a solid baritone voice with a growl that went up to eleven. Today, he wore jeans and a T-shirt from a Kyla Brox show, but on stage, he was sharp-cut suit and moves. Twenty-six years old and—speaking entirely in my capacity as detached observer—hot and classy as fuck.

“Hi, Clay,” I called.

“Hi, Kai. Where’s Jamie?”

“He said he’d be a few minutes late. The boss is making him do overtime.”

Which, given that it was Sunday, was brother Jamie’s standard polite fiction for his housemates roping him into cleaning the kitchen. A little unfair, given that Jamie is possibly the tidiest human being on the planet. If Clay had been thinking, he’d have remembered that.

“That’s a bugger,” said Clay.

“Yeah. Tell me about it.”

But then he just stood there. Like a kid busting for a pee but afraid to ask the teacher.

“D’you need a hand getting stuff out of the car?” I asked.

“No.” He held up the flight case that held his mic and harmonicas. “How long do you think he’s going to be?”

“I don’t know. He said a few minutes, but I’ve no idea what that is in real minutes.”

Clay sat on an amp, then got up and walked over to the soundproof door. He opened it and the second door beyond it. He peered through the gloom. I could hear the folk-metal band getting into their groove, and good luck to them, but I was glad there would be a vacant studio between us and their sawtooth D minors.

No sign of Jamie though.

It was like something was up with Clay. I was almost tempted to ask him if he was okay. But what if he said no? That was why I didn’t ask personal questions within the band. We played blues together, and we planned escape. We memorised the names of one another’s significant others so we could be polite if they showed up at a gig. Clay’s significant other, Sirelle was—again, in my capacity, et cetera, et cetera—hot, but she was also Little Miss Disdain. Jake did not have a significant other that wasn’t made of wood and didn’t have six strings. Jamie had been a sore test of memory up until Louise, but he was currently unattached. That was it.

Clay was making me nervous though. So:

“Are you going to set your mic up, Clay? I’ll help you set levels so you’re all ready to go when Jamie gets here.”

No reason he couldn’t do it himself, but I was also music tech, so I was allowed to ask.

“Uh, no.”

Then, he expelled a deep, doom-laden breath, and I knew this day, which had started only medium crap, was going to end full-on shitstorm.

“I can’t wait for Jamie,” he decided. “Ah, guys…I’ve got an announcement to make.”

Jake looked up but carried on playing irritating little shreds.

“Good news?” I asked, more in forlorn hope than expectation.

“Well, yes. Sort of. I’ve got a new job.”

That doesn’t happen a lot in Marden Combe. Let’s not piss on the parade just yet.

“That’s good. Well done. So, what’s not to like about that?”

“It’s…in London.”

“Good pay, then, I guess. But I don’t fancy your commute.”

“Oh, it’s not Central London. It’s in Acton. But you’re right about the commute. Apart from that, though, it’s a pretty good job. It’s a real step up in my career.”

It was my turn to take a deep breath. “Okay. So why aren’t you dancing for joy?”

“Well, it’s a big project, and they need to get started right away. So, I’m starting next week. There’s no flexibility on that date. We’re up against the wire.”

“Right. What happens when you go on holiday the week after? Are they okay with that?”

“That’s just it, Kai. This is a huge project. It’s a fantastic opportunity. I’ll be in right at the ground floor. I need to be there. I’ve promised them I’ll be there.”

Ah. This is goodbye, then. Why can’t you just fucking say it?

“So what happens to the Clayton Paul Blues Band? What happens to the tour? Köln, Aachen, Berlin? All those German punters waiting to see us two weeks from now?”

Clay wouldn’t meet my eye.

“I can’t pass this up, Kai. It’s a dream opportunity for me.”

“And you can’t wait?”

“They won’t wait. I aced that interview, but there’s a bunch of guys almost as good, ready to start tomorrow. White guys.”

“That shouldn’t matter. There are laws…”

“Shit, Kai. Don’t tell me you don’t know how discrimination works. The manager liked me, stuck his neck out to make the offer. But if I start pissing them about, making conditions… It wouldn’t be discrimination, no sir. But it would be ‘we need someone who can start immediately’—that’s what they’d say.”

I nodded. I did know. White male privilege, Kai. “And the band? Your band. Us. The Clayton Paul Blues Band that goes on tour in two weeks?”

“I don’t know.” It was a scream of desperation, and it made Jake stop shredding. Something had gotten through to him.

“I don’t know,” Clay repeated, quieter. “It’s just a tour. It’s not the fucking Beatles going to Hamburg to find their destiny.”

“No, it’s not. In the great scheme of history, it’s just a piece of fun.”

“Well, then. You’ll get over it.”

Eyeroll. Do you know how crass that comes across, Clay? And a deep breath.

“With the greatest of respect, Clay, fuck you. I do not plan to ‘get over it’. I said it’s just a piece of fun, but that’s why it matters. Marden Combe is a shithole of the first water. Nothing happens here. Nothing good has ever come out of here. If we stay here all our lives, dying will be the best thing that ever happens to us.

“So yes, it’s a piece of fun. And no, it’s way more than that. It’s the hope of escape. It’s the dream in our waking lives that makes all the crap worth enduring—the crummy job or the even crummier no-job.”

A father who was too distant. A step-mom who was too close. But I didn’t say it. Nobody else’s business.

Clay shook his head. “I can’t be responsible for the crap in your lives, Kai.” It was a whisper.

Jake turned back to his guitar and started adjusting his pedal board. He wasn’t going to get involved if he could help it.

“Okay,” Clay continued, “you’d better cancel it—”

“Your band. Your tour. Haven’t you got the balls to cancel it yourself?”

“I thought…you could find a stand-in for the tour. If you wanted it that much.”

“A stand-in? And keep the band going afterwards, Clay? Is that what you want? This band as your bolthole, waiting for you to return when the new job settles down?”

I let that sink in, then asked him, “Can you commit to that?”

“Shit! I don’t know.”

“Don’t know? Or don’t want to tell us?”

“Put it on hold. We can put the band on hold, can’t we?”

“How long for?” I asked him.

“I don’t fucking know! I’ll be flying over to the US quite a bit. And there’s a bunch of guys in Japan I’ll need to work with. Six months, maybe?”

And then it hit me. I knew why Clay couldn’t meet my eye.

“The Cherry Tree. You must have known about this last night, and you didn’t say a fucking word. We’re already in the Last Chance Saloon. This is Boot-fucking-Hill.”

I’d struck true. His mouth hung open, and the longer it stayed that way, the more certain I was.

“Y-yes, Kai. I had the offer, but I didn’t know if I was going to take it. Honest, guys. But I thought it over, slept on it, and knew I had to take my chance.”

Well, it might be true, but my money was on Clay being too chicken to stuff the band in front of Simon. It had been too long a pause, while he crafted a damage-limitation lie.

“This’ll cost us our Saturday slot,” I said. “You know that, don’t you? Simon knows we won’t find a new singer in time.”

“One of you could—”

“Simon’s already got a plan to fill our slot, else he wouldn’t have given us ‘the talk’ last night. He’s a lovely guy, but he’s a businessman too.”

“He wouldn’t do that to you, Kai. You’re one of his golden…kids.”

Well, it was true, about being a ‘golden kid’ at least. Simon had taken me under his wing when I first got the notion I might become Kai. But that didn’t change a thing because Simon taught self-reliance and owning the consequences even while he was still putting the pieces back together, with himself as the prime example.

“You know better than that,” I said. “He owes the band nothing. He owes me nothing. And neither of us would have it any other way.”

But I did owe Simon. Maybe what I owed him was enough notice to give another band a clear shot at the residency.

Which was all very noble but not the issue at hand. Time to wrap this shit up, Kai.

“You said six months,” I began.

Six months. Six months without a band. I felt the dread rise up like a wave, ready to pull me under. The Clayton Paul Blues Band was my life.

Had been my life.

Six months though. Six months was more than enough time to build a new band. If I could pull the rest of the guys through.

Jake was in shock, biting his lip. His eyes darted about the room, to me, to Clay, back to the fretboard, where spider fingers shaped chaotic chords.

“No good. Jake, you don’t want to be six months without a band, do you?”

Jake put on his best rabbit-in-headlights gurn.

Bad move, Kai. This isn’t ‘pulling the guys through’.

But maybe I hadn’t screwed up. Maybe Clay sensed that the worst was over.

“No, you’re right,” he said. “It’s not fair to ask you to wait. It’s been a blast with you guys, but all good things come to an end.”

He held out his hand. “Kai? No hard feelings? Maybe play together someday when all this is done?”

I shrugged. But…why burn bridges? If I’d had the chance, wouldn’t I have done the same?

“Maybe.” I shook his hand. “Good luck with your escape from Alcatraz, Thames Valley. And don’t cancel the tour. I want to think about that.”

He shook hands with Jake too. There was an awkward silence. Jake went back to his guitar and began dabbing harmonics.

“Look, guys,” Clay said. “I’d like to stay and say goodbye to Jamie, but I guess you’ll want to talk over what’s next, and you won’t want me around for that. I’ve paid the Band Hut man, so the room’s yours till ten o’clock anyway. Least I could do. Okay?”

The Band Hut man. Clay, his name’s Wally. He’s been the set-up guy for two fucking years here, and you can’t be arsed to remember his name.

Clay’s harmonicas and microphone were still in his flight case, unopened. He picked the case up, squared his shoulders, and left the Band Hut, leaving us to pick up the shards of a blues band.

Fuck.

Jamie wasn’t best pleased when he arrived a few minutes later.

“No Clay? I thought I saw him driving past as I got off the bus. What happened?”

Jake let me do the explaining. When I’d finished, Jamie’s comment was brief.

“Stupid bugger.”

Huh? I expected more support from my brother than that. Jamie saw my worried frown.

“Easy, Kai. I didn’t mean you. You were right to force the issue. He wants us to give him a free pass back into the band if it all goes tits-up. No dice. Shame about the tour—”

“Yeah. Shame Clay’s going to miss it.”

Jamie started to say something, but I rode right over him.

“I’ve been thinking about it, guys. We’ve put a lot of work into rehearsing for this tour, and I don’t want it to go to waste. It’s a vital part of the Plan.”

The Plan, which was to practise like crazy and hone the set with a tour—yes, like the Beatles, but in less time. We had Deller Studio A booked in Oxford for our return, ready to record a sizzling demo to impress the A&R men in London. Get a record deal. Spend the rest of our lives playing music and counting money. And spend it somewhere that was not Marden Combe.

Meanwhile, Jamie was being practical. “But we’ve got no singer, no van, and no driver…”

“Hey, we can fix that stuff. Advertise for a singer. Find one who can drive a van. Hire a van.”

“That takes time, Kai.”

“We’ve got two weeks. One of us could sing.”

“Not like Clay.”

Jake perked up. Shit! The slumbering giant awakes…

“Yeah. What Kai said. One of us could sing.”

But not you, Jake. Please, not you. Behind Jake, Jamie rolled his eyes. One thing we agreed on.

“There’ll be a lot of admin too,” said Jamie.

“I guess that’s mostly me, then,” I replied. “You guys have got day jobs.”

Jamie nodded. “Jake—anything else on your mind?”

“Yeah. Can we play now, bossman?”

“Yeah. I think we need to.”

I fussed around with the drum kit a bit for the sake of something to do. Jamie plugged his bass into the studio’s amp and twiddled a few knobs until it sounded okay.

No microphone. Clay had taken his away with him. So I begged Wally, the front desk guy, to find us a decent mic.

And, of course, with budget rehearsal studios, nothing’s free; everything’s an extra. Wally played hardman with me. He took the tack that, yes, Clay had paid, but that didn’t include unlimited mics. He pointed to the price list on the wall.

“Ten quid, Wally? You cannot be serious. Show me something that’s worth that much.”

So, he reached into a drawer and pulled out an offering. “It’s a Shure. Top-line mic.”

I shook my head. “It’s a fucking museum piece. Look—the windshield’s dented. Somebody’s dropped this, hard. And the lead’s missing a grub screw. You can’t charge ten quid for this shit.”

He opened his mouth to reply.

I wagged a finger at him. “Here’s five quid and a five-star review for your customer service. Promise. Okay?”

“Done.”

I set up the mic—it crackled, and I wondered whether I’d sold my review too cheap. We argued about who’d go first, and Jake won.

Live, we always set up a special mic for Jake to do backing vocals. I mixed it up, prominent in the stage monitors, but it didn’t go anywhere near the main bus. We endured it so the audience didn’t have to.

That trick wasn’t going to work in the studio though. We had to be fair; we had to let him try. Jake gave it his all.

“‘Serves You Right to Suffer’, guys,” he said, grinning and bizarrely aware of the irony of his audition choice. “John Lee Hooker.”

Indeed, a prophetic choice. Jamie and I set up a slow blues pattern, and Jake dived in on guitar, catching the groove. He took the guitar down to nothing and growled the opening lyric. Then he searched for a pitch, found a note he liked and hung on to it, while Jamie struggled on bass to find the key he’d chosen. Then Jake played a riff in the original key, clashing horribly with Jamie’s bass. Jake glared at Jamie, who reverted to the original key.

Jake choked the guitar back again. His voice found another note he liked. This time, Jamie stuck to the original key and earned another black look from Jake. It went on like that a long time, back and forth between random keys, and whatever Jamie did was wrong. After a couple of verses, Jamie launched into an unmistakable this-IS-the-end-of-the-song fretboard run before Jake had a chance to start a new verse.

Jake turned to me. I guessed Jamie was in all kinds of bad books for pissing about with the bass line.

“How was that?” he asked, puppy-dog eager to start his new singing career.

“That was…astonishing, Jake.”

It was all I could think of to say. It was even true. Technically ‘astonishing’ could mean bad as well as good. But as I saw a puppy-dog joy fill his eyes, I knew I’d said the wrong thing. The unvarnished truth would hurt him deeply.

Jamie saved me. “What happened to the guitar, Jake? I don’t think I caught much guitar.”

“That? No. I guess it was a bit sparse.”

“We do need your guitar. Very much.”

“I’m not sure I could do both. I could learn.”

I jumped in. “Let’s make it our plan B.” By which I meant our plan Z. “Your guitar is too important to our sound. Jamie? Did you want to try?”

Jamie liked to bounce about on stage, so I couldn’t see how that was going to work, live. Despite that, he wanted to try out, so we ran through a couple of numbers. He wasn’t bad—we already knew his pitch and timbre were good enough for backing vocals—but he wasn’t happy.

“You don’t have to tell me, guys. That was shit. I can’t syncopate against the bass line. I can’t put any feeling behind it. Not the way Clay could. Your turn, Kai.”

So I pulled the mic stand around to the side of the kit, set it up so it didn’t get in the way of the hi-hat, and we gave it a go. I picked ‘I Come from the Blues’, which was one of Clay’s compositions. It had fallen out of the set sometime in the last six months, but I loved Clay’s soft, jazzy butterscotch vocals on it. If it had been up to me, it would still be in the set, but Clay had said he wanted to move on.

Where did I come from? I come from the blues.

Where am I going? I’m going to lose.

Where is my future? I’m sure I have none.

Where is my hope? My hope is all gone.

I’ve always sung along—off-mic and under my breath—so I didn’t have any trouble fitting the words in the right places. And I’ve got decent pitch and rhythm. So I think I did all right.

Now, Jamie wouldn’t meet my eye.

“What?” I demanded. “What was wrong with that?”

He mumbled something.

“I can’t hear you, bro. What did he say, Jake?”

Jake looked away. He didn’t want to get involved in any squall between me and my brother. Besides, he’d used up all his words for the day.

“I’m not sure how to put this, Kai. You’ve got a good voice. It’s, well…not very, well, rock’n’roll. No…grit. Too pure. Sorry.”

“I see.”

“Look, we’ll ask around our friends. Social media. There’s got to be something online.”

I didn’t say anything. I was thinking lots though. About how I’d discovered that this was something I really wanted to do. And could do. All that bullshit about ‘too pure’—no, my voice was good. Damn you, Jamie. I will sing. In this band, if possible. If not…

The rest of the practice was conducted with icy politeness. We mostly played instrumentals. Jamie sang the few bits where we absolutely needed the vocal cues. I sat behind the kit pretending to be okay.

It was crap.

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William lives in a small Buckinghamshire village in England. By night he writes speculative, historical, crime and other fiction. His latest novel - TEARDOWN - is published by NineStar Press and is widely available in eBook and paperback formats. Previously, his debut novel, EXPIRATION DAY, was published by Tor Teen in 2014 and won the 2015 Hal Clement Award for better than half-decent science in a YA novel – the citation actually says "Excellence in Children's Science Fiction Literature". His short fiction has also appeared in DreamForge, Metastellar, Abyss & Apex and other excellent 'zines. By day he writes software and in the twilight he sings tenor, plays guitar and writes songs.

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Flimflam Fairy by Elizabeth Pantley 💕 Book Tour, Newsletter Freebie and Signed Book Giveaway 💕(Paranormal Cozy Mystery)

2026-09-18T00:07:00.000-04:00

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A fun cozy mystery adventure with an enchanted bookstore and a clever talking cat!

A fun cozy mystery adventure with an enchanted bookstore and a clever talking cat!

Best friends Willa and Lucy buy an enchanted bookstore full of charmed books. One wisp of magic later, they’re whisked inside a story, transformed into amateur sleuths, and joined by Banjo, a charming talking cat. There is no way out until the mystery is solved.

This adventure drops them in Whisperglow Village, a world of color, wonder, and fairies, where one of the most beloved residents in town has just been murdered, found clutching a cryptic note from a con man.

Villagers don’t lock their doors here. They never imagined this could happen, and they certainly never could have imagined whodunit.

Can Willa, Lucy, and Banjo unmask the killer, solve the case, and make it back to their own cozy bookstore before the story closes its final page?

~ ~ ~

If you like the idea of an enchanted bookstore with charmed books, check out the companion series – The Magical Cozy Mystery Book Club: 11 book series available in eBook, paperback, audiobook, and Kindle Unlimited.

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Elizabeth Pantley is a bestselling author of fiction and non-fiction books. She writes two well-loved cozy mystery series: The Magical Mystery Book Club, and the Destiny Falls Mystery and Magic series. She has also written the international bestselling No-Cry Solution parenting book series that is available in over twenty languages.

Elizabeth lives in the majestic Pacific Northwest and spends winters in the sunny desert of Arizona. While neither location is home to any paranormal beings (that she knows of) the vastly different yet equally lovely locations are the inspiration for the settings in many of her books.

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Would you join a book club that gets sucked into their cozy mysteries? These people did, and now they are hooked on traveling into books to become the amateur sleuths!

The book selection of the month takes the club into a charming and idyllic world of gnome-like people who love the earth, celebrating, and honey. What they don’t like is the mysterious ailment that is turning students at the local college into hideous versions of themselves.

The timing is terrible, as it coincides with the upcoming Honeybee Moon Festival, the community’s biggest celebration of the year.

The event is only a week away. Can the motley group determine what’s causing the students’ transformations, stop it from spreading, and get them back to normal? They better, since it’s the only way they can exit the book and get back home to Colorado.

"You can’t enough of this series! It will blow you away!"

… Cozy Mystery Book Reviews

“One of my go-to series. The quality and enjoyment are guaranteed.”

… All and Any Books

“I adore this series, and it just keeps getting better with each book!”

… Fiction Vixen

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This is Halloween by Sarah Branson 💕 New Release Blitz and Signed Book Giveaway 💕(Small-Town Halloween Romance)

2026-09-17T00:07:00.000-04:00

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Halloween.

A Pennsylvania hill town.

A ghost with an agenda.

Midwife. Halloween. A Pennsylvania hill town. A ghost with an agenda. A historian with patient eyes.

Jules Lockwood, nurse-midwife and family nurse practitioner, wants two years of loan forgiveness and a one-way ticket to Australia. Her obstacle: a town that keeps finding reasons to need her.

Eli Matthews, Blue Spruce Hills town historian, is the kind of man who came back when it mattered and stayed. He brings coffee every morning without being asked.

Agnes Bell, midwife, 1856 to 1931, has been waiting in Blue Spruce Hills since her death for the right pair of hands to pass her work to. She has found them. She is not subtle about it.

On Halloween night, when the veil between past and present is at its thinnest, everything Jules came to Blue Spruce Hills to avoid arrives at once.

This Is Halloween delivers the satisfaction of a woman choosing herself and her work on her own terms, a slow-burn romance that earns every moment, and a ghost story that will make you wish you could have known Agnes Bell.

• small town romance

• ghost mentor

• found community

• slow burn

• woman finding home

• past and present collide

• reluctant to stay

• Halloween setting

• professional woman romance

• haunted by the past (literal)

• second chance at belonging

Heat level: closed door

Series: Blue Spruce Hills, Book 1 — standalone, complete story, no cliffhanger

POV: third person limited, Jules

Tense: past

Setting: small Pennsylvania town, October through May

Comp titles: The House in the Cerulean Sea; Beach Read; A Discovery of Witches

Content notes: pregnancy and birth depicted (clinical, not graphic); brief mention of historical pregnancy loss (off-page); deployment/absent spouse (minor character)

Juliet "Jules" Lockwood had sworn exactly six times since leaving the highway and crossing the Blue Spruce Hills town line. All six had been silent. All six had been necessary.

She pulled her Subaru into the gravel lot beside the Blue Spruce Hills Community Clinic and sat there longer than necessary, hands wrapped around the steering wheel like the car might attempt escape without her. Outside, the October sky was an intense blue with a few white clouds scudding across it. A carved pumpkin grinned from the clinic's front step. Orange lights shaped like leaves were looped around the porch railing. Just up the street, a plastic skeleton swung from a telephone pole, rotating haphazardly in the wind.

Jules stared at the skeleton. The skeleton appeared to stare back.

She opened the car door, stepped out onto the gravel, closed her eyes, and took a deep inhale. Wood smoke and baked goods, harvest-sweet with cinnamon and nutmeg. It was, Jules thought grimly, aggressively charming. She took a step and nearly collided with a man holding a cardboard tray of coffee.

"Oh! Sorry!" he said, immediately steadying both the tray and her elbow with equal care. He was tall and laid back, with dark hair that the wind had done something unrequested to and kind brown eyes, soft and patient, the sort of eyes that suggested the person behind them listened when you talked. He wore a canvas jacket the color of cedar bark and was smiling with the easy confidence of someone who had nowhere to be and was fine with that. "You must be Jules."

She froze. This was... unfortunate. Because those eyes were going to be a problem. She recognized his type immediately, the way one would recognize a load-bearing wall, structural and quiet, that the whole room organizes itself around without anyone quite noticing. Those eyes reflected the sort of steadiness that belonged to men who stayed. She had believed that about someone once. Believed it comprehensively and inconveniently, and at considerable personal expense. Never again.

"I'm Eli Matthews," he said, and held out the coffee tray. "Town historian and unofficial town greeter. I brought options. Decaf, regular, and one with oat milk, because the clinic called ahead and..." he paused, reconsidering his own sentence, "okay, I asked Margaret at the post office, who asked Clara at the bakery, who said she had heard that you'd mentioned oat milk to someone at the gas station in Lehighton."

Jules stared at the tray. "That's a significant intelligence operation for a cup of coffee."

He smiled, a little sheepishly. "Small town. We have patterns." He glanced at the pumpkin on the porch. "Also, it's October. We take hospitality seriously in October."

She reached for the oat milk coffee. Behind her, someone cleared their throat very distinctly — the throat-clearing of someone who had been waiting a respectable amount of time and was now done waiting. Jules's hand tightened around the cup.

She recognized that sound. She knew it the way she knew a change in barometric pressure, in her teeth, at the base of her skull, in the specific cold that moved along her spine when something was present that had no business being present.

Absolutely not. I am not doing ghosts again.

She turned slowly.

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Award-winning feminist speculative fiction author Sarah Branson spent close to thirty years as a midwife before turning to fiction, writing tales of action, adventure, revenge, and romance rooted in the strength and resiliency of the human spirit. Her New Earth universe imagines a future where diversity of identity is simply the texture of life, with honors including the 2022 Kindle Book Award for science fiction, the 2025 Wishing Shelf Book Award Gold Medal for A Pirates' Pact, and a Foreword Indie Award Honorable Mention for For the Love of Glitter. Her two newest releases expand beyond New Earth: This Is Halloween, a cozy women's fiction novella in the Blue Spruce Hills series (September 17, 2026), and Life Ends, Love Remains: A Revolutionary Ghost Story, a literary paranormal novel set in Ridgefield, Connecticut (early October 2026). Sarah lives with her husband in Connecticut.

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Falling Into Leaves Giveaway Hop presented by MamatheFox and Mom Does Reviews

2026-09-16T09:00:00.000-04:00

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Ok don't laugh...

I've actively avoided the pumpkin spice craze this entire time.

BUT.

This is the year I'm going to cave and try it!

BUT.

I need suggestions....

Leave a comment letting me know your favorite pumpkin spice item!

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Dark Night of the Soul by Michelle Miles 💕 New Release Tour, Newsletter Freebie and $10 Giveaway 💕(Dark Paranormal Romance)

2026-09-15T00:07:00.000-04:00

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Love made him dangerous.

Devotion will make him unstoppable.

Love made him dangerous. Devotion will make him unstoppable.

For centuries, Kincade survived by control.

Forged by the Brotherhood, he learned to bury his humanity, suppress his instincts, and become exactly what they needed him to be—a weapon. Darkness was safer than feeling. Obedience was survival.

Then she changed everything.

When the woman he loves is taken, restraint shatters. The careful balance he's fought to maintain slips—and the Brotherhood sees their opening. They want the monster he used to be. The weapon they never quite lost.

To save her, he may have to become exactly that.

As ancient secrets rise and factions fracture, the line between protector and destroyer begins to blur. Every step closer to her pulls him deeper into the war he tried to escape—and toward the darkness he swore would never rule him again.

Because this time, love isn't his weakness. It's his point of no return.

Dark Night of the Soul is a dark paranormal romance set within the War of the Brotherhood—a high-stakes spin-off arc in the Dream Walker universe. You do not need to read the previous Dream Walker books to enjoy DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL. This spinoff is designed to stand on its own.

Perfect for readers who love:

* Dark, emotionally intense paranormal romance

* Immortal antiheroes and devotion-driven stakes

* Secret orders, hidden wars, and found family

* Love that becomes defiance

Content Note: This book contains dark themes and intense scenes, including violence, injury and blood, torture / forced restraint, psychological trauma, and situations involving coercion / control. It also includes threats to a loved one. Reader discretion is advised.

"Dark Night of the Soul by Michelle Miles is everything dark paranormal romance should be—intense, emotional, and completely consuming. I devoured it."

— Michelle M. Pillow, NYT Bestselling Author

Available in eBook, paperback, and audio!

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MICHELLE MILES believes in fairy tales, true love, and a little bit of magic in every story. She writes fantasy, paranormal, and young adult books packed with adventure, action, and swoon-worthy romance—because what’s a story without a bit of danger and a whole lot of heart? From angels and demons to dragons, elves, and time travelers, her books are filled with epic quests, fierce heroines, and the kind of heroes worth falling for.

When she's not crafting new adventures, she brings stories to life as a narrator and hosts Miles Beyond the Page, a podcast where she chats with authors about their writing journeys. A Texas girl through and through, she loves getting lost in a good book, binge-watching movies, hiking the trails, and sipping a glass of wine. Come hang out with her on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and more!

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My Best Four Years by Megan Linski 💕 New Release Blitz, Newsletter Freebie and $10 Giveaway 💕 (Contemporary Romance)

2026-09-15T00:06:00.000-04:00

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Rhe unthinkable happens, and their friendship is left in the remnants of what comes after...

USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR Megan Linski paints a hallmark to grief in this story of a heartbreaking best friend break up that’s emotionally unforgettable.

Aria and Lucky are two best friends who managed to survive high school, though not everyone did. They live in a small town that’s determined to destroy everyone’s dreams, but when they’re together, the two girls soar. The adults in their lives swear there’s no way out of their tiny hometown, but Aria and Lucky promise each other they’re going to run away together, believing the music they make is going to change the world.

Until one of them leaves, and the other stays. Aria finds herself looking back on her past, struggling to find where she belongs in a place that wishes to stomp out her light. Lucky’s rise and fall is brighter than a supernova, dazzling and destroying whatever it touches.

Then the unthinkable happens, and their friendship is left in the remnants of what comes after.

Lucky promised Aria forever. But forever turns out to be far shorter than either of them thought it could be.

An honest, endearing novel, My Best Four Years is a devastating portrayal of the power of unconditional friendship, and the loss that is felt when those we love are left behind.

“You should’ve asked that girl at the drag show on a date,” I teased as I sipped on a mocha latte. “She was checking you out.”

There was a girl who’d sat beside us in the audience. She hadn’t stopped flirting with Lucky the entire time we were there.

“She’s too old for me. She’s twenty-three!” Lucky insisted. “I need to find someone my own age.”

An impossible task, finding another girl who was proudly out and about in Foal. I was certain Lucky wasn’t the only gay kid at our high school, but she was definitely the only one who was vocal about it.

“My wife is going to be hot,” Lucky praised, and she waved her croissant around in the air. “With dark hair, gorgeous eyes, and a smart mouth!”

I smirked. My phone went off. I checked my messages, and had to scowl. Derek had sent me a ton of texts while I’d been watching the show.

Why aren’t you answering me? I’ve texted you a million times!

I quickly wrote a response.

I’m busy. Out with Lucky.

I went to pocket my phone in my purse, but it went off again. My good mood was ruined as I read his reply.

You’re always screwing around. If you don’t write this paper for me, I’m going to fail. Do you even care at all?

I didn’t respond. Derek immediately took my silence as a threat.

My mom is right about you. You’re such a distraction. I wouldn’t be failing if I didn’t have to keep up with having a girlfriend. I love you, Aria, but are you a lot of work.

I went to take another sip of my coffee, because it was the only thing that was grounding me. I wanted to sink into myself and disappear.

“He needs to stop blaming you for failing his classes,” Lucky said. “It’s his fault he’s not studying or turning in his work.”

I hadn’t realized she’d been reading over my shoulder. I put my phone away and said, “I don’t get him. He has plenty of time to finish his homework. He just screws off in class, and wastes his time! Then when he gets home, he hangs out with his friends instead of doing what he’s supposed to. It’s like if I don’t do his work, it doesn’t get done, then I get the blame when he doesn’t pass. His mom is the worst. She blames me every time he messes up.”

“Which is a lot,” Lucky said bluntly. “Ari, why are you still with him? He doesn’t treat you very well.”

I didn’t know. Derek was kinder to me than my parents were, so I didn’t think it was that bad.

“His mom pushed him down the stairs yesterday, Lucky,” I said. “She comes down hard on him when he doesn’t do well. His family expects results. He’s under a lot of pressure, so I need to be there for him.”

Lucky frowned. “That’s no excuse. It’s not your responsibility. I’m not even convinced you love him. You just stay with him because you’re too scared to date anyone else.”

I did love Derek. Yet more times than not, I wondered why I continued to stick around.

But it was what I was used to. Most people in Foal married their high school love, and I figured that, since I had found mine, I was stuck with him forever. I had to be happy with what I had, and not be selfish, because looking for something more would be, wouldn’t it?

Even if he could sometimes be really mean.

“Ari,” Lucky said quietly, and I looked up.

Her gaze embraced mine as she whispered, “You’re not too much.”

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Megan Linski is a USA TODAY Bestselling Author who lives in Michigan. She is the author of more than sixty fantasy and paranormal novels which feature themes of friendship, community, and healthy romantic relationships. She has over fifteen years of experience writing books alongside working as a journalist and editor. She graduated from the University of Iowa, where she studied Creative Writing.

Her passions include ice skating and horseback riding. In her free time she enjoys dancing in the snow and drinking fancy coffee while at her natural habitat, the mall.

Megan advocates for the rights of the disabled, and is an activist for mental health awareness.

Megan co-writes the Hidden Legends Universe with Alicia Rades. She also writes under the pen name of Natalie Erin for the Creatures of the Lands series, co-authored by Krisen Lison.

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A Field Guide to Death and Deceit by Michelle L. Cullen 💕 Behind the Scenes, New Release Blast and EXCLUSIVE $5 Giveaway 💕 (Cozy Mystery)

2026-09-15T00:05:00.000-04:00

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As Harry, Emma, and team unearth clues, they increasingly dodge the police, stalkers, and danger...

Widower and anthropologist Harry Lancaster and his Gen Z colleague Emma are back for more murder and mayhem when they stumble upon a dead farmer.

This delightful sequel to A Field Guide to Murder is perfect for fans of Richard Osman and Benjamin Stevenson.

When an odd request leads Harry Lancaster to agree to meet his former sweetheart Willow at a farm on the outskirts of town, Emma’s suspicions run high, and she insists on joining him. Instead of Willow greeting them when they arrive, they discover the farm’s owner dead, with a corn rake embedded in his back.

After being interrogated by the police, Harry and Emma return to his home to find a bereft Willow, who admits she lost her life savings in a real estate scam involving the farm. Worried Willow will become the main murder suspect, Harry decides to help her, despite Emma’s concerns.

To bring the swindlers—and murderer—to justice, Harry recruits his potentially shady, financial-whiz brother and a neighborhood teenage hacker. Then Willow’s realtor is declared missing, and Harry’s brother is caught up in the fray.

As Harry, Emma, and team unearth clues, they increasingly dodge the police, stalkers, and danger in their race to save Willow and Harry’s brother before anyone else turns up dead.

Reading the Room: Anthropology, Detection, and the Cozy Mystery

by Michelle L. Cullen

Cozy mystery amateur sleuths always seem to stumble into solving murders with surprising results. Their day jobs may look ordinary on the surface, but once a mysterious death occurs, the skills required to run their businesses morph into investigative superpowers.

A pet groomer, a tea shop owner, or a bookseller may pick up clues that trained law enforcement misses entirely. These seemingly commonplace jobs provide a steady stream of social interaction, making amateur sleuths privy to gossip, attuned to everyday routines, and quick to spot behavior that’s suddenly off. Constant contact with their communities builds trust while offering credible reasons to ask probing questions. And because so many of these everyday heroes have either pursued their work as a lifelong passion or turned to it after some staggering setback, they’ll do anything to protect what they’ve built – including chasing down a cold-blooded killer.

For those of us who love these inventive mysteries, the range of professions that double as investigative platforms seems almost endless. But one profession that, in my opinion, doesn’t get enough credit as a good foundation for detection is anthropology.

In the early days of my career, I spent a decade helping rebuild communities after war across Africa, East Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific. My job was to use my anthropological training to design and evaluate aid projects so they didn’t inflame existing tensions. This meant engaging with every walk of life and observing the full spectrum of human behavior. What I didn’t realize at the time was that this fieldwork doubled as a masterclass in writing crime fiction. The skills required were, in many ways, the same skills that make a great detective.

Noticing what most people don’t

A critical part of fieldwork is paying attention to small things: how people enter a room, where they sit, who speaks first, who makes eye contact with whom, and who carefully avoids it. When I couldn’t conduct interviews in English or French, I worked through interpreters, which forced me to read everything around the words themselves: body language, tone, hesitation, nervous tics, the sudden pivot to safer conversational ground. I became attuned to what was said, what wasn’t, and what the gap between the two might mean. That calibrated attention to detail is, at its core, an essential skill of detection.

Understanding that context is everything

Anthropologists are trained to ask why something exists in its particular form: why this object, in this place, used in this way, at this time? A detective asks the same questions at a crime scene. Every detail is a clue to something larger. The contents of a purse, for instance, can illuminate a person’s social world, economic circumstances, and private concerns, whether you’re an anthropologist reconstructing a life or a detective trying to understand why it ended.

Holding complexity without collapsing it

Anthropology demands that you suspend judgment, and fieldwork teaches you why. I witnessed the aftermath of unimaginable violence, but I also came to understand that the histories behind that violence rarely broke cleanly into victims and villains — more often individuals were a conflation of both. The ability to sit with moral ambiguity, to resist the easier story, is essential to good fieldwork. It’s also essential to good detection, where the obvious suspect is rarely the right one.

Moving between worlds

While in the field, I sat across tables from government ministers and subsistence farmers, community visionaries and stone-cold killers. Each conversation required a different approach; a different way of building trust, of making someone feel safe enough to say what they actually knew. The ability to adapt your persona without losing your footing is exactly the kind of social fluency that makes an amateur sleuth believable, and effective.

Trusting your instincts

Throughout my travels and work, when my gut told me something was wrong, it was. In fieldwork, ignoring that reflex can be dangerous. For a fictional detective, it’s the difference between solving the case and becoming part of it.

Applying these skills

Given all of this, it was hardly a stretch for me to make my amateur sleuth an anthropologist. I was able to give Harry Lancaster not just a profession for his backstory, but a whole way of seeing — one that I’d spent years developing in the field and that translated surprisingly well to the page. But anthropology is just one entry point.

What all great cozy mystery professions share is something more fundamental: they make the sleuth accessible and trustworthy, give them plausible reasons to ask questions, and position them to overhear secrets while moving through spaces where clues hide in plain sight. These sleuths don’t solve crimes through police procedure, they solve them by being socially embedded, sharply observant, and easy to underestimate. In cozy mysteries, the best detectives are the ones who would never seem like detectives at all.

A cranky widower and his spirited caregiver team up to solve his neighbor’s murder in this charming and original mystery, perfect for fans of Richard Osman and Benjamin Stevenson.

Once a globe-trotting anthropologist, Harry Lancaster is now certain that all his grand adventures are behind him. Recently widowed and suffering from a fractured hip, Harry spends his days and nights behind a pair of binoculars, nose-deep in his neighbors’ affairs. His millennial caregiver, Emma, is determined to get him out of his armchair and back into the world.

Fate intervenes when Harry’s mysterious neighbor, Sue, phones, pleading for help. But instead of rescuing her, Harry and Emma find Sue dead: poisoned, days after a break-in at Sue’s house. Harry resolves to find out what happened, and Emma insists on going along for the ride. Together, they discover motives and suspects abound in Harry’s quaint condominium community—putting them both in the crosshairs of a cold-blooded killer.

Readers of Kristen Perrin and Deanna Raybourn will be charmed by this quirky, cross-generational murder mystery.

Michelle L. Cullen has lived and traveled all over the world, from working as a bilingual secretary in Paris to backpacking around Europe, Central America, and Southern Africa to helping rebuild communities after war throughout Africa, East Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific — where she saw the best and worst of human behavior. Her lifelong fascination with people and why they do what they do, was further fueled by her academic training. She obtained her PhD from the London School of Economics’ Sociology Department and her master’s degree in anthropology from Melbourne University in Australia.

A fan of adventure, she has a black belt in Taekwondo, has summited 900 feet rock climbing, snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef, and hiked up an active volcano. She currently lives in Annapolis, Maryland, where she’s either doing yoga, playing outside, or plotting murder. She’s a proud member of International Thriller Writers, Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and The Authors Guide, and has been gleefully reading and watching murder mysteries since the age of ten.

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When Harry Met Charlie by Donna Costa 💕 Cover Reveal and $10 Giveaway 💕 (M/M Romantic Comedy)

2026-09-15T00:04:00.000-04:00

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Can two men who clash over everything ever agree on love?

Harry is a number-cruncher. Charlie is a people-person. One is bubbly and optimistic, the other serious and pessimistic. With an endless stream of verbal sparring and heated debates filling the car on their road trip from Vancouver to Toronto, they arrive at the conclusion they are complete opposites and go their separate ways.

When they meet years later – older, wiser, and love-worn – will their sparring become a prelude to romance? An exciting turn on? Will they be there for each other when it’s needed most?

Boys’ Love + Nora Ephron Fan Fiction = When Harry Met Charlie

“Fun, funny and wonderfully delightful! Reminds you of experiencing your first crush – I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough!” – Leeanne Whitehouse, Pure Country Morning Host

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Donna Costa draws on her love of romance, both novels and movies, plus her years in the aviation industry for When Harry Met Charlie. She writes in a variety of genres including YA, memoir, romance, and historical fiction. She lives in London, Ontario.

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