France belongs to the Gestapo. His wife is trapped inside. And the only way in is a shadow mission no one will admit exists.
Spring, 1943. Conor Thorn is sick of losing those he treasured. So after the woman he loves gets sent behind Nazi lines on a secret assignment, the frantic OSS agent is ready to move heaven and earth to get her home safe. And when British intelligence offers to send him to Paris on an off-the-books hunt for a traitor, Thorn jumps in with no backup, no cover, and no idea who he can trust.
Landing in a city where the Gestapo owns the streets and collaborators control everything else, the grief-hardened American moves forward one forged paper and one held breath at a time. But while he helps to smuggle downed airmen past Nazi patrols and tracks down the traitor, the one person he longs to keep alive remains cloaked in danger.
As Conor’s enemies close in, can the desperate agent snatch his beloved from death’s arms?
Debts Owed is the taut fifth book in the Conor Thorn spy series. If you like relentless heroes, wartime treachery, and stories inspired by true events, then you’ll love Glenn Dyer’s atmospheric World War II thriller.
Buy Debts Owed to unmask a double agent today!
Author Bio:
GLENN DYER is a former commercial television executive whose career spanned over thirty-five years. That career took him to cities such as Salt Lake City, Dallas, Washington, DC, and Denver. He returned to Park City, Utah in retirement in 2013 to write full-time. He is an associate member of the International Thriller Writers, the Author’s Guild and The OSS Society. Glenn attended Villanova University and graduated from Boston University. He and his wife, Chris, have three children, all of whom live too far away. Visit his website at http://www.glenndyer.net and follow him on Twitter @duffy_dyer and Instagram @glennduffydyer.
The Ties that Bind James Rosenberg (The Legacy of Lies Legal Thriller, #1) Publication date: July 27th 2026 Genres: Adult, Thriller
Some families build empires. Others bury secrets beneath them.
Bill Simon thought marrying Sharon Green meant entering a powerful legal dynasty and finally proving he belonged. Fresh from his honeymoon and eager to succeed at his new firm, Green & DeWitt, Bill is handed a complex real estate transaction tied to the influential Green family empire.
What begins as routine due diligence quickly spirals into something far more dangerous.
Hidden behind layers of shell companies, offshore accounts, and falsified property records, Bill uncovers connections to cartel money, political corruption, and a network of powerful men determined to keep their secrets buried. The deeper he digs, the more he realizes the conspiracy may reach directly into his father-in-law’s inner circle—and possibly into his own marriage.
As Bill digs deeper, Sharon Green fights to protect her family’s public image while uncovering other sinister connections between her family and the drug cartel. As others question the legitimacy of her father’s enterprises, she tries to find answers about the empire she was born into.
As they uncover disturbing connections between her father and the Mexican drug lord,Sharon and Bill are trapped between loyalty and truth, ambition and survival.
And in a world where power protects its own, exposing the truth could cost them everything.
The heat wafted above the scrubland. Three trucks waited in line, engines idling low in the darkness.
Each truck had a driver and one passenger, and together their primary responsibility was to get the trucks over the border less than thirty miles away.
Rafa Medina kicked at the dried ground as he waited for confirmation to move. They were still on schedule, but barely.
Luis Cortes sat in the passenger seat of the second truck, window cracked. A folded manifest lay on his lap. Medina tapped his window twice. Luis glanced over and gave a short nod.
The third truck’s driver shifted in his seat. Medina caught the movement and shook his head once. He could accept fear. Panic only caused mistakes.
Medina felt the vibration in his pocket. The signal, at last. He raised his hand.
As the trucks shifted into gear, the whine of their engines intensified. The first truck rolled forward, followed by the second, and then the third. They stayed in tight formation as they turned onto the paved road heading north.
Medina jogged to his Jeep, climbed in, and maneuvered his vehicle in behind them.
He considered moving to the front of the line to take control, but before he could decide, gunfire echoed from the brush to his right. The lead truck swerved, glass spraying off to its side.
The truck regained its footing, tires screaming, as it came out of its fishtail.
The second shot came from the opposite side of the road, from cover behind a grouping of bushes.
The muzzle flashes were sequenced and controlled. Now was not the time for panic. He knew immediately it was a rival crew, one that had studied the route and wanted it.
The first truck accelerated, pushing past the shots.
When a new round of shots burst from the right, the second truck was directly in front of it and caught a barrage of automatic fire in the passenger side door.
As the bullets tore through the truck, Luis jerked sideways, his body snapping against the window as glass exploded outward. The driver screamed and hit the gas. The truck lurched forward, out of the danger zone.
As the trucks moved ahead, Medina pulled out his Glock and aimed toward the brush where he had spotted the muzzle flashes. From his slightly elevated position, he fired twice, forcing the shooters back. They withdrew, retreating into the darkness.
Their message had been delivered.
Medina didn’t chase. The trucks came first.
He ran to the second truck. Blood was everywhere.
The driver was shaking, hands locked on the wheel, eyes wide. Medina yanked the door open and pulled him out.
“We have ten minutes. Your truck won’t make it to the border. Transfer the cargo. I’ll take care of Luis.”
The driver nodded.
Medina climbed into the cab. Luis’s eyes were open, unfocused. He checked for a pulse. There was none. This simplified matters.
Medina scampered to the other side of the truck and grabbed Luis under the arms, dragging him from the cab.
Ten minutes. That was all they had.
He pulled the body into the brush. He worked with his hands and a tire iron he grabbed from the back of the truck, digging quickly, ignoring the ache in his shoulders.
Medina lowered the body into the ground, then shoveled dirt to cover it. The land closed over the shape easily, swallowing it. He didn’t mark the grave and offered no words.
He crossed himself and then wiped his hands on his pants.
The damaged truck was next. Medina drove it behind a clump of bushes. No one would notice it for months. No one would care.
This was no man’s land.
The other trucks waited.
Medina jogged back to the road and waved the trucks forward. They didn’t hesitate. The second truck’s payload had already been transferred.
Medina climbed back into his vehicle and pulled in behind them.
The convoy moved north, engines steady.
Dust flew from their tires and then settled behind them.
Author Bio:
James Rosenberg is a 3rd generation trial attorney with plenty of stories to tell.
Inspired not only by the courtroom stories his father and grandfather used to tell
him when he was a child, but also by the wild adventures he’s encountered through
his own experience as a lawyer. James is fascinated by the intricate, interpersonal
dynamics of every trial he’s endured. Whether it’s the raw emotion on display in
court, the tension in the air that builds until someone wins, or the impact that a
case’s decision has on the parties involved, James is always paying attention and
keeping tabs on what’s happening.
In his debut novel, “Legal Reserves”, James flexes his creative muscle outside of the
courtroom to share his stories, with a fictional twist, through the eyes of archetypes
he knows well.
A native of Pittsburgh and a graduate of Taylor Allderdice High School and the
University of Pittsburgh School of Law, James has been a trial attorney in Pittsburgh
for almost 30 years. He started writing legal thrillers as a stress reducer and finds
this creative outlet to be a fun and meaningful diversion from his day job.
When he’s not trying cases, he’s either dreaming up his next book idea, spending
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 isthe 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:
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.
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.
“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.
Burn Her They Said Cherish Wright (The Anomalies of Ampara Deicra, #1) Publication date: June 26th 2026 Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Romance
In a land where Dragons are revered like Gods, a witch and her guards must risk it all.
Witches in Ampara Deicra are required to use their powers of emotional influence to benefit sorcerers. None so much as Tasch—a witch born during the Anomaly, when environmental changes caused her magic to develop unmatched abilities.
Taken by the Emperor to manage his mood, she has served by his side since early childhood. Granted the title of Imperial Grand Witch, she is protected by the strongest sorcerers in each form of magic—all Anomalies, like her—with powers beyond any before or after them.
Until a sorcerer named Varic develops abilities surpassing Tasch’s Lead Guard. A fact which the Emperor denies by hiding Varic within the Imperial Army.
Where Varic is made to grow his strength past the point he can contain it, and requires Tasch’s magic to overcome the grief of his magic causing the worst known catastrophe. They fall in love in their time together—and forge a connection which is highly forbidden.
Over time Tasch’s powers fade, rather than strengthen, while the Emperor’s greed escalates the need for resources among bordering lands, who increase their attacks on the Imperial Palace. Fearing the worst, Emperor Aldritch assigns Varic to oversee Tasch’s detail, placing the two beings who must hide their feelings mere inches from each other.
With the highest stakes they’ve ever encountered, can Tasch’s Guards save her and the citizens, with the help of their bonded Dragons?
For fans of Anathema, Dragonfall, and A Discovery of Witches comes the tale of a burnt-out witch in her thirties who is trying to survive long enough to save the citizens from their power-hungry Emperor, with the help of her Guards and the Dragons they share a bond.
The Sea Queen’s Key R.S. Kellogg Genres: Adult, Fantasy
At eighteen, Mira is one of the last humans in Breadcove Bay with formal training in Fire and Heat magic outside the faculty of Borealis University. Masitro has already lost a string of talented fire‑workers to failed confrontations with Shora, the Ice Queen, whose sightings creep closer to the city every month.
Mira just wants to get home for winter break.
The politics of a rogue ice queen and a missing mermaid queen get in the way.
• Cozy fantasy with higher stakes
• Fairytale retellings with no romance, but all the emotions!
• Stories where asking the right questions matters more than force…
Then Welcome to the Sea Queen’s Key!
—
Author Bio:
R.S. Kellogg writes the Everyday Goddess Stories, the Mermaid Magic Tales, and fiction in the story realms of Breadcove Bay and Agratica, among other places.
The Hollow Crown Martina Boone (The Five Crowns, #2) Publication date: March 9th 2027 Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Romance
Every night, magic makes him forget her. Every day, she makes him fall for her again.
Flora Domhnall survived the Hunt, claimed the Crown of Moonlight, and woke a magic unseen in Alba Scoria for over four hundred years. But her coronation didn’t end the war. The Highlands are still burning, and the immortal warrior Flora needs at her side is still bound by oaths that see her as a threat. Chyr loves her as fiercely as she loves him—but if he remembers who she is, the oaths carved into his flesh will force him to kill her.
Each morning, he wakes wary, lost to her, and dangerous. Each day, he is drawn back by echoes of a love he cannot name. By evening, tenderness returns, desire returns, and with them come glimpses of the man who chose Flora over a crown, a kingdom, and the oaths that keep him chained.
Then she has to let him go again.
The Raven Queen is still waging her war across Alba Scoria. She turns hunger, grief, and fear into weapons, leaving poisoned wells, starving villages, and broken clans in her wake. To save her people, Flora must become more than a symbol, more than a queen. She must become the healer of a wounded land—even if that means trusting the man whose love may be the most dangerous thing about him.
The war needs them both. But if Flora cannot break the oaths carved into Chyr’s flesh, the love that saves him each day may become the wound neither of them survives.
The Hollow Crown is the second book in The Five Crowns, a sweeping Celtic romantic fantasy series of forbidden magic, impossible oaths, ancient queens, Highland war, and a love story fierce enough to defy the gods. For the full emotional impact, begin with The Crown of Moonlight.
Martina Boone is the award-winning author of romantic fiction set in magical places. Her books blend lush writing, strong heroines, wounded heroes, atmospheric landscapes, history, folklore, family secrets, and magic woven through the ordinary world. When she isn’t writing, she can usually be found traveling, reading, studying history and folklore, wrangling wildflower meadows, or playing with Shetland Sheepdogs and tuxedo cats.
