BOOK BLITZ & GIVEAWAY: The Art of Keeping Dangerous Books by R.J. Blain

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The Art of Keeping Dangerous Books
R.J. Blain
(The Apothecary’s Secret, #1)
Publication date: July 6th 2027
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Urban Fantasy

To master the art of keeping dangerous books, one must learn the golden rule: some knowledge should never be shared.

Bookshop owner by day, restorer of rare and dangerous books by night, Kita James is thrilled to acquire a new poisonous book from the Victorian era. From the swirling patterns on the cover to its unusual leather binding, IN SEARCH OF LIFE is truly a unique find. However, testing of the vibrant tome reveals its darker nature: the leather is that of a human along with an extinct animal from the ice age. To further complicate matters, a new radioactive element is discovered lurking within its pages.

The deeper she delves into the toxic text, the less she likes about what she learns. From the dawn of humanity, people had searched for the secrets of eternal life and resurrection. And if Lugalbanda-Alad, the author of the mysterious volume, was to be believed, he had found it.

Joining forces with Dav, a rather vocal book in her collection, Kita works to unveil the apothecary’s secret. With the right magic and a strong enough will, the forbidden lore might be able to set Dav free along with the other sentient books confined within her shelves.

But all knowledge comes at a price: if IN SEARCH OF LIFE were to fall into the wrong hands, it could usher in the destruction of all Kita holds dear and the enslavement of all mankind.

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

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EXCERPT:

Copper, when mixed with arsenite or its equally toxic cousin acetoarsenite, created a vibrant green. Some dubbed it Paris green. Some preferred the name emerald green. No matter what one called the pigment, it remained a silent killer of those foolish enough to handle it for long.

It had come as no surprise to me, when I first began learning the art of keeping dangerous books, that nobody knew for certain how many had died to the beautifully lethal covers and the pages they contained. One confirmed mortality from the pigment had involved a floral arranger specialized in artificial blooms by the name of Matilda Scheure, and she had breathed in the substance on a daily basis while going about her work.

The Victorians had adored brilliant shades, and they had unwittingly sickened themselves with color. Mercury, in the form of the vibrant vermilion pigment, could bring about madness among other things. Lead, offering shades from pristine white to fiery reds and oranges, sickened in a myriad of ways. Then there was cadmium red, which had limited toxicity unless handled often.

I marveled over how the Victorians had managed to discover so many shades of toxic pigmentation.

Within the walls of my personal library, tucked behind a secret door in the back of my bookshop, I owned books of every hue from every era I could get my greedy hands on. I’d outgrown my single shelf of emerald hue years ago, and the toxic volumes now consumed an entire wall. Each color of the rainbow offered some new and interesting way for someone to perish should they fail to handle my collection with care.

To the few who knew of my art, I offered a glimpse into a dark past decorated with a glorious veneer, one willing and able to kill at a single mistake.

I charged a reasonable amount for access to specific volumes of my archive, making use of a different room on the other side of the bookstore for those sessions. I required waivers, and I even had an agreement with an insurance company so I held no liabilities should they be sickened from the inappropriate handling of any one of my pieces.

The waivers eliminated my personal risk, as I refused to hold responsibility for the stupidity of others.

But the colors I held in safekeeping were not, by far, the most dangerous of the volumes.

Knowledge had become power, and I safeguarded all from the deepest of darkness and the brightest of light, for both, when used inappropriate and to their extreme, caused equal harm.

A little after midnight, after closing my cash, locking the doors, cleaning up the self-serve coffee machine, and otherwise preparing for yet another grind in the morning, I retreated to my sanctuary. Most of my work—and all of the magic—took place in the ten by ten closet with a ventilation fan installed, which piped through a series of specialty filters to keep any fumes or residue from making it outside. Those filters would cost me my sanity one day.

They needed to be cleaned or replaced every three weeks, and failure to do so ran the risk of making me the next victim of my collection.

The latest tome to be tamed waited within a glass box on my desk, and it was a marvel of toxicity, magic, and lore, most of which society would deem forbidden if they knew it existed. Thus far, nobody had unlocked the secrets of raising the dead, but the author of the volume had gotten uncomfortably close.

With the right materials, skills, and incantations, the dead could walk again, puppets for the book’s owner to control.

On the outside, it seemed harmless enough for those who lacked knowledge of dangerous books. Swirls of bright reds, oranges, and white decorated the spine with stamps of vibrant emerald green declaring the book to be titled In Search of Life. Everything within had been penned with a careful hand, and a date on the first page declared it to have been from the year 1725, over a hundred years before the popularization of the toxic tomes made famous in the Victorian era.

In 1725, magic had not yet been acknowledged, although society had always told tales of witches and arcane arts in hushed whispers.

In Search of Life, should I be able to authenticate it, would once again change the timeline on humanity’s introduction into practical magics and the role of superstitions in protecting from malevolent incantations. But as was the nature of my work, if all went well, only I would know.

The knowledge held within the pages, which defied time and refused to turn brittle, was best kept a secret.

Author Bio:

RJ Blain suffers from a Moleskine journal obsession, a pen fixation, and a terrible tendency to pun without warning.

In her spare time, she daydreams about being a spy. Her contingency plan involves tying her best of enemies to spinning wheels and quoting James Bond villains until satisfied.

AI is never used in the creation of RJ’s novels.

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / X


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BOOK BLITZ & GIVEAWAY: Torment Becomes Them by Warwick Gleeson

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Torment Becomes Them
Warwick Gleeson
(The American Oz Maker, #1)
Publication date: May 6th 2026
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical, Science Fiction

The War for Utopia Begins

Inspired by a mad vision of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, a centuries-old time war is being fought to determine the destiny of the human race. As the conflict rages between the early 18th century and the battlefields of World War I, Czarina Sorceress Catherine Romanova joins forces with her younger self, Princess Von Anhalt, magician Zolo Bold, and World Maker Niccolo Paganini, to face a gamut of powerful and implacable foes. The most dangerous and ruthlessly brilliant of them all, the immortal E. G. Godfellow–once known to ancient Greece as the “Scourge of the Gods”–intends to stop Catherine and her allies from rewriting the history of the 20th century.

Their bold plan, to prevent the 80 million deaths of WW II and inaugurate a new utopian vision for humankind in the 21st century, interferes with Godfellow’s plan to maintain the status quo and thereby usher in his own utopian vision of “One Earth—One Master.” Only one vision will dominate, and either way, the cost will be terrible.

Goodreads / Amazon

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EXCERPT:

AS SHE KNELT AT THE CATHEDRAL ALTAR in the year 1762 for her royal coronation as Czarina of All the Russias, Catherine Romanova felt like starting a new war. She’d already endured two hours of a five-hour ceremony while wearing twenty pounds of silk and nine pounds of Imperial Crown; and to increase the burden even further, the droning excess of pomp and boredom had drained her of patience, not to mention goodness.

Wishing to distract herself from the seemingly endless prattle of the Russian Orthodox Patriarch as he recited Old Testament scripture, as well as the oven of suffocating heat created by a hoop dress big enough to hide twenty dwarves, Catherine lifted the curtain on theater. She replayed to herself Earth’s most important war to date—the ultimate conflict to define the fate of human nature itself. Her old violin-playing mentor, Niccolo Paganini, had dubbed it “The Utopia War.”

While the aged Patriarch stumbled over a droll reading of Malachi, her musing inevitably took her back to the time just before the war, to another world at age fifteen when she lived in the Castle Bärenthoren and had been known to all of Europe as the famous and unruly Princess Fredericke von Anhalt (aka “Freddie”)—the name born by her proudly until her terribly boring coronation now underway.

Dear God, help me survive this day. My destiny is Catherine, but my soul is Fredericke.

Even though her every breath and eye blink was being carefully watched and measured by the gaseous Moscow nobles who filled the pews of Assumption Cathedral, her first memory began with a sound. A barely audible titter, like distant footsteps on decayed leaves. She’d considered the scraping sound of a mouse to be the origin, or some other invading creature, for every now and then a cat bird or a dove flew into the study and fell to the floor, finally tiring itself out with fearful flutters.

So truly, it could have been any number of things.

Nonetheless, Freddie vowed to ignore the disturbance and return to her prior task: recreating the Greek mathematics of Eratosthenes to determine Earth’s circumference while imagining herself the gallant Sir Francis Drake sailing the Azores in search of Spanish gold.

Putting quill to paper, she sketched the hull of Drake’s ship, The Golden Hind, before jotting down a few notes on the logic of Eratosthenes, and just as she measured the miles between the two cities in his equation, Syene and Alexandria, the strange tittering repeated. But louder this time. Enough to make her hand slip, the point of quill jaggedly defacing her work.

What in Beelzebub’s name? she asked herself.

The disturbance had become too curious to allow any further progress on the circumference of Earth, and though Freddie hated breaking personal vows, she rose from her writing desk, determined to learn the truth.


Author Bio:

Warwick Gleeson has lived in both LA, NYC, and D.C. He has worked many different jobs, everything from brick mason to Federal bureaucrat to small business owner. His agent is currently shopping a futuristic thriller to New York, and a screenplay or two are making the Hollywood rounds. His short fiction and poetry has appeared in many journals such as North American Review, Conjunctions, and Quarterly West. He has two grown children in their forties and is married to a most wonderful woman who is an author of historical murder mysteries and a former writer for National Lampoon magazine.

Website / Goodreads


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BOOK BLITZ & GIVEAWAY: Obsura Nights by Warren Wynn

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Obscura Nights
Warren Wynn
(Obscura Nights, #1)
Publication date: August 4th 2026
Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult

Seventeen-year-old Farris Aldan didn’t join the Sentinels to save the world.

He joined to escape insanity.

In Obscura City, contracting the whisperis means shedding your skin and becoming a monster. As a newly trained Sentinel, Farris hunts the infected, hoping vengeance will silence the guilt over his best friend Calla’s death.

Then he’s assigned his first solo mission. Track down Rena, a whisperis-infected punk rocker evading quarantine. From her black hair and beet-red eyes, she’s the spitting image of Calla. Farris can’t bring himself to arrest her. Not with that face, not with that voice.

Choosing Rena brands him a traitor. Now hunted by the Sentinels he idolized, including his adoptive father, Farris learns Rena’s connection to the whisperis runs deeper than anyone imagined. Visions of a cure guide her toward the Hollow, a hidden valley of darkness beyond the city. Only an ancient vantashade named Krieger knows the truth, but it offers a global cure for a terrible price: her life. To save Rena, Farris must risk everything–his future, his family, even the cure itself. And it still might not be enough.

Goodreads / Amazon

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EXCERPT:

Little by little, we awkwardly stumbled and sashayed toward the cluster of monsters. A littler further and we slipped into their group. Mere feet separated us from the graceful corpses.

A stench of boiled tar and kerosene swam over us. The air curdled with heat. We watched the burdeneds’ faces as we moved. No longer paying attention to us. Their shoulders, arms and chests were relaxed. Caring and glossy white eyes stared back at their deceased partners.

A small pressure pushed against my chest. Rena leaned her head against it, and I realized that she’d been shivering.

“God. I wonder when they died.” She mumbled so softly I barely heard her. “Wonder if they knew they were dyin’. What they felt when they turned into monsters.”

I shook my head since it was too risky to speak. Little by little, I moved us to the back of the room. Need to go slow so we don’t alert the burdened.

Rena looked up at me, her face mere inches from my own. “All their feelings…what happened to them when they died?” Her skin was so bruised and cut up. The dark circles beneath her eyes contrasted her increasingly pale complexion. “Their names? Their memories? Where did they go?”

My whole body ached. I swallowed. When I tried to comfort her, my mouth opened, but nothing came out.

Her hand squeezed my shoulder without a lick of strength. “I don’t wanna become like that, Farris. God almighty, I don’t wanna end up being just a memory.”

I tried to speak but again failed. Realizing my limitations, I instead pulled her even closer. Her breath felt hot against my neck. Her tears chilled my skin.

Rena gritted her teeth. Her chest shook from deep, silent sobs. “I don’t wanna die, Farris. I don’t…”

My back stung, muscles ached. Ribs throbbed and head pounded. I looked at the bandages over her eye. Around her ankle. The stains of blood on her cargos, her vest.

Nameless music played behind us. Forgotten dead danced around us. Filthy ground creaked below us.

Author Bio:

Warren Wynn is an American author writing young adult science fiction about parallel worlds, bizarre creatures, and mind-blowing twists. His passions in a previous life doing graphic and video game design heavily inspire his stories and characters. His previous novel, ‘Break the Moon,’ was published by Lost Boys Press on March 28th, 2024.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from West Virginia University, Warren left behind the mountains for the beaches of Palm Coast, Florida. If he isn’t kayaking or hiking, he’s earning grey hairs writing through the moonlight hours.

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TEASER: Turtle Lake by Robert Mihne

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Crime Thriller / Suspense

Date Published: 09-07-2026

Publisher: Mission Point Press

Turtle Lake is a gripping tale of revenge, survival, and the intricate
interplay between human nature and the natural world. The story follows Jim
Peters, the comptroller at Ramsey Motors, who uncovers a corrupt scheme by the
company and its insurer, U.S. Underwriters, to defraud employees of their
retirement and insurance benefits before moving operations overseas.
Infuriated, he devises an elaborate extortion plan to expose their corruption
and protect the employees through a spectacular plot that ends up achieving
national headlines. To accomplish his plan, Peters uses simple, everyday
methods and lessons learned from alpha predators in the natural world.

 

Excerpt

 Life is a dangerous place to be. The woods, skies, lakes, and oceans are filled with creatures bent on killing and eating each other. Nothing in nature dies of old age, as the adage goes. 

Prey animals are taken down by predators. It’s as if prey animals are made to be food. 

Carnivore predators possess razor-sharp canine-like teeth. Carnivores are the watchers from the shadows. All of them, such as lions, tigers, bobcats, and wolves, are wired the same way. They don’t eat lettuce for lunch. To a carnivore, you simply look like another rabbit in the grass. 

There’s another carnivore that is often overlooked – humans. Humans have canine teeth. They are born wired with the same instincts as the alpha predators. 

We’re taught to control it. Supposedly. 

Birds will tell you when the sun is going to come up. At the faintest glimmer of dawn’s early light, they begin to converse with each other, presumably to find out where the bugs are that day. Usually, we don’t hear them in their earliness. Our day starts later. Usually. 

Frogs and insects do the same during the pre-dawn moments, buzzing and croaking in the woods, fields, and swamps. Presumably they do this to find out where the predators are. It’s been said that frogs might be telling each other where the rattlesnakes and blue herons are at any given time. We don’t usually hear them croaking away in the early hours of the day. Usually. 

Today, however, as the woods came to life with this early morning serenade, Jim Peters could hear them very clearly. It was August of 1990. He was in his cabin in mid-Michigan, situated on the edge of a quiet, deep-woods nature refuge known as Turtle Lake. Peters was lyingin bed backwards, that is, with his feet at the head of the bed and his head at the foot of the bed, chin resting on his wrists as he looked at a model train set. 

The train set, an ancient Lionel from the 1940s, included buildings, roads, bridges, cars, trucks, a shopping center, and a train running through it. The set looked ordinary enough to the casual passerby or rare visitor to the cabin. But in fact, it was window dressing, a model of the crime scene that was to come. The train had nothing to do with it. 

In a short while, when the birds, frogs, and bugs had quieted down, Peters would push a button and Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute would float from the speakers connected to his compact disc machine. Peters liked Mozart. The music was pure and uncluttered. It flowed from one section into another so smoothly that it was hard to tell a transition had taken place. The complexities of its composition flowed as smoothly as pouring oil. 

As smoothly as the diabolical scam he was planning.

 

About the Author

Bob Milne has been hailed throughout his 60-year career as one of the
best ragtime/boogie-woogie piano players of all time. A solo concert
performer, he traveled all over the world playing for dignitaries and
celebrities as well as small town audiences. He was given the title of
National Treasure by the Library of Congress and deemed an Ambassador of Music
by the U.S. Department of State.

Bob’s extraordinary musical abilities were the subject of numerous brain
studies, which have inspired a popular RadioLab podcast.

Little did they know that Bob was also a talented writer.

For years he wrote articles about his saloon-playing days for music
publications. Many of these stories were compiled into a book called The
Journeyman Piano Player: Adventures in Gracious Dining. Bob has written reams
of poetry, some of which became lyrics to songs that he composed. The longest
piece of poetry he ever wrote was the lyric book for The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow, a grand opera he composed and orchestrated.

Mr. Milne has been fascinated by nature his entire life. At a young age he
realized that instincts are present in all species of birds, mammals
(including humans), and literally every living thing in nature. He has used
this information countless times over his lifetime to predict what the human
species will do in future situations.

Bob is now retired from the long piano tours and is enjoying his woodland
home. Today he spends his time studying nature in the woods. Signed copies of
his book may be purchased through his website.

Contact Links

Website

Goodreads

Facebook

Purchase Link

https://mybook.to/TurtleLake

Amazon

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BOOK TOUR: The Fern Flower by Kathleen Shoop

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Book Title: The Fern Flower
Author Name: Kathleen Shoop
Publication Date: August 1, 2026
Publisher: Independently Published
Pages: 598
Genre: Historical Fiction
Triggers: Set 1908-1917 so people weren’t so kind to each other. Mila’s in ballet school at one point and living away from home. She always has adult support of some kind, but faces abandonment to some degree from those she loves.

St. Petersburg 1908-1917

Born into privilege as the daughter of the Tsar’s favored vodka maker, Mila appears to have everything: wealth, status, and a household devoted to her happiness. But behind the gilded doors of her family estate, she is trapped by the cruelty of a stepmother whose greatest wish is to give birth to her own child.

Each summer on Ivan Kupala Eve, Russia turns its gaze to river bends and forest floors in search of the legendary Fern Flower—a mythical bloom said to grant fortune, power, and the deepest desires of the heart. Only one person had ever found it.

Until Mila.

Years later, in the fading grandeur of Petrograd, Mila and her friends slip into the fabled Stray Dog Café, once the sanctuary of Russia’s most daring artists and dreamers. Inspired by its ghosts, murals, and memories, Mila’s group resurrects the work she’d first imagined as a child. The Fern Flower is a breathtaking ballet drawn from folklore, magic, and the secrets of Mila’s past.

But in the fiercely competitive ranks of the Imperial Ballet School, talent is never enough. Though Mila wrote the ballet and her gifted musician friend composed its score, rivals question whether Mila is worthy of claiming the coveted lead role.

As World War I intensifies and revolution ignites, the Russia Mila knows begins to collapse. Family secrets surface, loyalties are tested, and the people she loves begin to disappear. When her parents flee and her young brother’s life hangs in the balance, Mila is faced with an impossible choice: remain with the found family who helped her chase her dreams or risk everything to save the person who needs her most.

With Russian folklore, imperial grandeur, and the fierce beauty of ballet, The Fern Flower is a sweeping tale of ambition, friendship, sacrifice, and the magic that survives even when the world is falling apart.

Buy Links:

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/m0jpWJ (Kindle & Apple)

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-fern-flower-kathleen-shoop/1150136033?ean=2940183381290

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-fern-flower

Author Bio:

Bestselling author, Kathleen Shoop, PhD’s novels have won awards in the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), Eric Hoffer Book Awards, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Readers’ Favorite, and more.

Kathleen has more than 20 years of experience in the classroom and has been featured in USA Today and the Writer’s Guide. She co-coordinates Mindful Writers Retreats and co-coordinated the 2023 Pennwriters Conference.

She frequently teaches and is a regular presenter at conferences for writers.

Author Links:

Website: http://kshoop.com

Twitter / X: https://x.com/kathieshoop

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057696591811

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kathleenshoop/?hl=en

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/kathleenshoop.bsky.social

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/kathieshoop/

Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/kathleen-shoop

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kathleenshoopauthor

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Kathleen-Shoop/author/B0051FCVQU

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/4787101.Kathleen_Shoop

BOOK BLITZ: Freedom’s End by SE Estes

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Sci-Fi / Fantasy

Date Published: May 5, 2026

Publisher: Manhattan Book Group

 

Freedom’s End is a mythic sci‑fi/fantasy saga about a reincarnating
rebel fighting to break cycles of oppression across lifetimes. Born a slave in
the mines of Septra, Paintr rises again and again—across bodies, eras,
and worlds—to confront a necromancer who seeks to enslave every sentient
mind. Blending science fiction, dark fantasy, and supernatural western
elements, the story explores identity, liberation, trauma, and the cost of
reclaiming one’s soul. With its emotional depth, genre fusion, and
expansive worldbuilding, Freedom’s End speaks to readers who love
character‑driven epics, mythic resonance, and stories about resilience in the
face of impossible odds.

 

About the Author

SE Estes is a sci‑fi and fantasy author whose work blends mythic
symbolism, emotional depth, and genre fusion. A multicultural military‑brat
upbringing and early career in computing shaped SE’s fascination with
identity, technology, and transformation. Now based in Indianapolis, SE writes
expansive, character‑driven universes—including Freedom’s End, the
first book in a multi‑volume saga about liberation and the soul’s long
journey across lifetimes.

Contact Links

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Blog

YouTube

Purchase Links

Amazon 

B&N

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BOOK TOUR: One More Hour of Daylight by C.M. Gray

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Book Title: One More Hour of Daylight
Author Name: C.M. Gray
Publication Date: June 2026
Publisher: Constance Books
Pages: 417
Genre: WW II Thriller

From the Bestselling Author of Shadowland

On the first day of World War II, a young man makes a promise—one that will shape every choice he makes for the next four years.

Essex. September 1939.

A wounded German pilot drops from a clear autumn sky into a quiet English field. Seventeen-year-old Derrick finds him—broken and feverish. Not an enemy. Just a young man asking for one small mercy before everything ends.

One more hour of daylight. That is all I ask. A chance to breathe free air before whatever comes next.

Derrick gives him until morning.

When the stretcher comes, the pilot’s last words strike Derrick like a blow he will never stop feeling.

Scotland. France. Germany. 1941–1943.

In the mountains of Scotland, they teach him how to kill, how to lie, and how to endure things that break most men. Then they give him a new name, put him on a plane, and drop him into the dark.

As an SOE operative deep inside occupied Europe, Derrick Sedgley lives on false papers, borrowed names, and nerves worn to nothing by years in the shadows. He moves agents to safety, builds escape routes, and stays one breath ahead of the Gestapo.

Then a mission collapses—and everything changes.

Forced to run, Derrick finds himself moving through the most dangerous corners of occupied Europe alongside someone whose connection to his past he cannot yet see. As safe houses fall, loyalties fracture, and the frozen passes of the Pyrenees rise ahead like the edge of the world, Derrick begins to understand something.

The choice he made in an Essex field on the first day of the war has been leading him here all along.

Some debts cannot be paid.
Some can only be carried.
And some—if you are brave enough, and fortunate enough—can finally be laid to rest.

From the quiet fields of Essex to the mountains of Scotland, from the dangerous streets of Lyon to the shadows of wartime Hamburg and the high passes of the Pyrenees, One More Hour of Daylight is an unforgettable story of courage, guilt and redemption—of ordinary people forced to make impossible choices in extraordinary times.

Some promises can survive a war.
Some people can too.

For readers who believe that even in war, what matters most is who we choose to be.

Praise for One More Hour of Daylight:

“A beautifully written book with a perfect pace that kept me reading
from start to finish.”
~ Bookcollector, Amazon 5* Review

“A confident, carefully crafted novel that handles its subject matter with restraint, earning the weight it carries.“
~ Indie Library, Goodreads 5* Review

Buy Link:

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/bz01nG

This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.

C.M. Gray’s first book, The Flight of the Griffin, was longlisted in the 2015 Times Chicken House Writing Competition. Shadowland, the first book in the Pendragon Saga, has so far received over 900 five-star reviews on Amazon. These things still genuinely astonish him, and he is deeply grateful for every one of them.

Most of his previous work has been fantasy: either pure fantasy or historical fantasy, the kind of writing where druids turn up uninvited and one of your main characters develops an unsettling affinity with wolves before you have quite decided what sort of book you are writing. Shadowland began with every intention of staying grounded in historical reality, the story of Uther Pendragon. It did not. It has turned out to be a popular book, so he does not complain.

His years travelling through Asia, India, Africa and the Middle East have a habit of finding their way onto the page. He has seen and done some fairly strange things along the way and met some extraordinary people, and writing fantasy has always felt, to him, only a short step from writing fact.

New for 2026

One More Hour of Daylight, marks C.M. Gray’s return to writing. It will be fully published in June 2026, marking a departure: pure historical fiction, no druids, no wolves. It follows Derrick Sedgley, a seventeen-year-old from Essex who makes a single moral choice in a field one September morning in 1939 and spends the next four years living with the consequences. From the Essex countryside to occupied France, from the mountains of Burgundy to the Pyrenees, it is a story about promises, betrayal, courage and the cost of doing the right thing too late.

And for those who have been waiting patiently for the Pendragon Saga to continue: the third book, Shadow’s Heir, the story of Arthur Pendragon, follows in September 2026. More on that very soon.

C.M. Gray was born in England and grew up in the Essex countryside near the Suffolk border, which is where Derrick Sedgley grows up, too. The flat fields, the big skies and the particular quality of Essex light found their way into the book, whether he intended them to or not.

C.M. Gray is now very happily settled just outside Barcelona with his wonderful wife and partner in life, Adriana.

Author Links:

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0H23SV952/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5752854.C_M_Gray

BOOK BLITZ & GIVEAWAY: One Leg on Earth by ‘Pemi Aguda

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One Leg on Earth
‘Pemi Aguda
Publication date: May 5th 2026
Genres: Adult, Horror, Occult Fiction, Thriller

From the author of the National Book Award finalist Ghostroots, a debut novel that thrills with its eerie mix of folklore and history.

Something is haunting the pregnant women of Lagos. Across the city, they are walking into water . . . and drowning.

Twenty-three-year-old Yosoye arrives in Lagos ready to start her life. Working for a slick architectural firm, she finds a city of adventure and opportunity. Her new world is one of fancy gallery openings, glamorous friends, and all the shiny potential of the future, encapsulated in projects like Omi City, the ultra-luxury development her company is building, a symbol of the dawn of a brighter Lagos.

But Yosoye’s idyllic vision of Lagos soon begins to seem naive, and its darker, stranger layers trouble her. Something is not right about Omi City, and as construction speeds ahead, stories of strange deaths in the city’s open waters reach a fever pitch. And then, after a chance encounter, Yosoye discovers she is pregnant . . . a revelation which puts her on a collision course with an inexplicable force that is as seductive as it is deadly. A masterwork by a writer hailed as “an astonishing talent” (Lauren Groff), One Leg on Earth is an ambitious novel like no other: a coming-of-age story, an uncanny exploration of motherhood, and a chilling vision of the dark side of progress.

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EXCERPT:

MIRIAM AIKI PRAYED FOR THE FRUIT OF THE WOMB for thirteen years. Thirteen years of chafed knees: blood and shredded skin staining church altars, shrine altars, her bedside rug, her mother-in-law’s living room tiles. Thirteen years begging for a miracle, for strength, for patience. Her cries were answered. At thirty-eight, her womb was unfurling its first bloody fruit.

Now, in the passenger seat of her husband’s car, she smiled at her taut six-month belly. An ugly joy stirred within her. Ugly because it sat heavy on top of her growing baby, nausea amassing saliva in her mouth. But mothers who’d hunted long for that title knew that this unpleasantness was welcome, embraced.

Miriam smoothed a hand over her lace buba. She smiled at her husband, Victor, who frowned at the standstill traffic. They were running late for his cousin’s wedding and hadn’t moved in twenty minutes. His knuckles tapped an agitated beat on the steering wheel along to soft jazz playing on the radio. Past her husband’s head, the blue BRT bus keeping them in merciful shadow advertised a “We Are Lagos” music concert. Celebrating our oneness together! Miriam turned her beaming face to her window, gap-tooth a narrow darkness in an otherwise white smile.

These shining eyes, these stretched lips, these deep dimples. The people of Third Mainland Bridge stuck in traffic with Miriam would always remember the fizzy happiness in these details.

Miriam’s bliss bubbled up, feathering her insides, shimmering around her baby, erupting from her throat in a giggle—a curious misplaced sound in that car.

Victor turned to her, startled. His hand brushed her thigh, her rounded belly.

“Are you okay?”

Miriam giggled again. Her head slid down the leather headrest, neck tilting backward for more happiness to escape, clavicle bared to her husband’s confused gaze. This frothing joy within Miriam, she wanted to warble it out, to dance through it, until she and her baby were heady with the fervor of it.

She pushed the passenger door open. Stepped out. Victor sat there, blinking in shock for what would later seem like two lifetimes. The humid air crowded in to displace cool air-conditioning. He clicked the radio off, leaned toward the open mouth of the door.

“Miriam? What are you doing?”

Miriam kicked her sandals off, flung the fuchsia-pink slingbacks behind her. One heel struck the car’s bonnet, leaving a silver chink. She wound between the bridge’s stalled vehicles: engines turned off; gears stuck in neutral. She skipped and spun and squealed. Even in the midst of that sweltering Lagos day of thumping car music and raucous engines and the truck that honked at her for dancing too close, Miriam’s squeal stood out, a siren.

Passengers lowered their half-eaten Pure Bliss wafers and leaned out of windows to watch this odd but entertaining episode. Drivers, stretching their legs in small huddles, paused their whining—about traffic and heat and wives and money and that new backache that made their worlds flush dark when they bent at the wrong angle. All necks craned toward Miriam. Hawkers hitched boxes higher and nudged each other to behold the spirited pregnant woman.

Miriam swayed, shoulders shaking with laughter at a joke nobody else could hear. Her legs kicked. Hands stretched, twirling as if being spun about. What joy! What joy!

Victor leaned on the horn. His feet hit tar, finally going after her. Had she gone mad? He yelled her name, using the tone his father wielded on his mother, demanding Miriam return to the car immediately.

But Miriam didn’t want to get back in the car. She wanted to dance, to be free, to glide forward with the happiness surging from her womb, her baby. Her husband navigated between fascinated watchers. He shouted, “Miriam! Miriam! Miriam!” But by the time he got to the railings, she had launched herself off Third Mainland Bridge, laughing and screeching into the lagoon below, belly-first, like a child jumping into the arms of a beloved parent.


Author Bio:

Pemi Aguda is a Nigerian writer known for her short stories and debut collection Ghostroots (2024). Her work often explores complex themes surrounding motherhood, identity, and the supernatural. Ghostroots, which includes previously published stories such as “Breastmilk” and “The Hollow”, was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction and received critical acclaim for its unifying themes and narrative cohesion.

Aguda’s stories have been widely recognized, earning multiple accolades, including an O’Henry Award in 2022 for “Breastmilk” and again in 2023 for “The Hollow”. Additionally, “Breastmilk” was shortlisted for the 2024 Caine Prize for African Writing. Her forthcoming novel, The Suicide Mothers, which won the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation Award, is slated for release in 2025.

Website / Goodreads / Instagram


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One Leg on Earth Blitz

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BOOK BLITZ & GIVEAWAY: Reaper’s Quest by Debra A. Kristi

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Reaper’s Quest
Debra A Kristi
(Curse of the Royal Reaper, #1)
Publication date: July 13th 2026
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Romance

Two rival reapers. A century of overdue souls. Revelations sure to crumble foundations.

Raven Gunn blamed herself and the cheat she used on her last job for her team’s assignment to the cursed reaping. Her father even packed the tool responsible for the cheat in her travel bag, silently suggesting the need, while reminding her not to trust her designated coreaper, Chace Badden. A hundred years of accumulated reapings, a prohibited reaper-tool, her born rival tasked as her partner… What could go wrong? She definitely wouldn’t allow Chace’s good looks to compromise her focus. Not. One. Bit.

Chace Badden suspected family connections were to blame for his team’s assignment, and he trusted nothing about the current reaping task. Especially not the Fae bastard showering Raven with unnecessary attention. That pr*ck needed to go. Raven was his coreaper and the pretty boy held no claim. Of course, the same could be said for Chace given Raven was his coreaper and his rival, professionalism and distance needed to remain steady between them.

But as more complications arise and old ones intensify, will Chace and Raven’s rivalry cloud emotions, hinder task success, and pave the road for, not only failure but, something far more concerning than mortal danger? Because the overwhelming number of unreaped souls is turning out to be the least of their worries.

Reaper’s Quest is the first book in an adult romantasy series that grows spicier with each book, while containing dark themes that may be uncomfortable for some readers. This series is ideal for fans of:

•Slow Burn & Tension (with plenty of action)

•Angsty, Trapped, Morally Gray Hero

•Forced Proximity

•“Who did this to you?”

•Multiple POV

Goodreads / Amazon

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EXCERPT:

Halfway across the rotunda, near the God of Death’s center statue, Chace Badden fell into step at my side, a confident swagger in his walk.

“Reaper Gunn,” he said, his delivery a smooth tease I ignored.

Even as my shoulders stiffened at the sight of him―black shirt, two unfastened buttons exposing a hint of skin, and pants snug against his body.

I dipped my gaze below his belt, and a tight breath dragged through my lungs.

Eyes up, Raven. Eyes up.

He snagged my elbow―his touch gentle, casual, as if zero tension existed between us. “Spot something of interest?”

I fought the desire to roll my eyes. Of course he’d shown up today with a megabat-sized chip on his shoulder. An ego, no doubt, inflated by his parents’ never-ending bolstering.

Author Bio:

Award winning and USA Today Bestselling Author Debra Kristi writes addicting young adult fantasy, urban fantasy, and paranormal adventures. Born and raised a Southern California girl, she still resides in the sunny state with her husband, two kids, and several rescue cats.

Unlike many of the characters in the stories she writes, Debra is not immortal, and her only superpower is letting the dishes and laundry pile up. When not busy drumming away at the keyboard spinning new tales, Debra is hanging out creating priceless memories with her family, geeking out to science fiction and fantasy television, and tossing around movie quotes.

Debra Kristi’s books are published by Ghost Girl Publishing LLC.

Visit http://www.DebraKristi.com for FREE books, new releases, and/or to become a member of the Insider’s Club.

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Instagram / Newsletter


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BOOK BLITZ & GIVEAWAY: Crater Girl by Polly Schattel

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Crater Girl
Polly Schattel
Publication date: June 28th 2026
Genres: Dark Fantasy, Fantasy, LGBTQ+

Greta Tyler has issues. She’s broke, divorced, trans, recently defrocked from her Episcopal priesthood, and her underpaid assistant hates her. But hey, things could always be worse, right?

As a social worker in a small, northern Alabama city, Greta’s just trying to do a little good in the world, and also come to terms with a complicated new life, a demanding new career, and the crushing finality that her marriage to her childhood sweetheart is over for good. But when her friend Suhey fails to show for a party, Greta suspects the worst: Suhey’s either been deported or kidnapped. Thus begins an increasingly surreal odyssey through the inscrutable byways and backroads of contemporary rural America.

Tormented by self-doubt, and with a tendency to harm whatever she touches, Greta careens through a sinister underworld she never knew existed—billionaires and busboys, asteroids and assassins, human traffickers and misfit geniuses … and also an infernal plan to radically change the world.

But first, how to come up with the rent?

Crater Girl is Polly Schattel’s genre-jumping tale of gender politics, self-loathing, clandestine organizations, interstellar geology, thuggee death cults, and the search for personal redemption in the rusted over-sprawl of the meta-modern South.

Goodreads / Amazon

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EXCERPT:

“The first time I ever heard of the concept of the dead eye was in reference to a man I knew was troubled before I’d even reached my teens. Rick M. Scharpley, who his seventh grade homeroom class called Mr. Scharpley to his face but Prick Him Sharply behind his back, was a substitute who’d been brought in to take over after our regular history teacher had broken her back in a car accident. He’d taught us through the rest of that year, a mousy, chubby man with sensible hair, sensible glasses, and a perfectly sensible face. No one knew whether he had a wife or kids, or a family back home, and he seemed normal enough to his students, even funny sometimes, until you’d spent an afternoon or so with him. Then you’d start to notice how his eyes had grown soft and buggy and darkly fascinated with you, and how the little ironic twist of his smile rarely faltered. He knew his history, and he could sometimes make stuff like antebellum Alabama halfway interesting, but the various disparate parts of him commingled oddly, which pushed him almost into full-on creepazoid territory, and you found yourself wanting “to spend as little time in his presence as possible but unable to say exactly why. In class it wasn’t too bad; his cigarette prestidigitation and his day-drinker legerdemain made a decent distraction for the after-school detention crew. But we thought even then, even as kids, that beneath his southern gentleman’s surface, there flowed an underground reservoir rich with self-loathing, a vast subterranean sea of near-bottomless black pain.

We knew this, the whole town knew this, because one sunny Sunday in that summer of 2006, Mr. Scharpley left a note magneted to the front of his refrigerator, a very personal kind of mini-manifesto within which he detailed all manners of abuses, self- and otherwise. Then he carried half a dozen syringes loaded with a potent pesticide called chlordecone into the local farmer’s market, and began injecting random crates of peaches with them. Eight people, most of them kids and old folks, had fallen into foamy-mouthed convulsions before he’d pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the frontage road.


Author Bio:

POLLY SCHATTEL lives in the mountains near Asheville, NC with her wife and three vicious and savage but very adorable animals.

Website


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