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An urgent indictment of the food we eat, how it is making us sick, and the choices that led us here, and a call for a revolutionary new food system that can mend our health, economy, and planet, from a world-renowned expert in nutrition, medicine, and public policy.

The food we eat is making us sick. In the United States and around the world, diet has become the leading cause of illness and premature death, from obesity and diabetes to heart disease and other chronic ailments. Advocates of healthier diets pin the blame on overeating, but the bigger issue is what we undereat—the dearth of food that nourishes and heals. Harnessing the power of the right foods can do more than prevent illness; it can treat it, extending life while reducing the crippling cost of ill health to our communities and economy. Food Is Medicine shows the way, from transforming our own diets to keep us healthy to getting the right foods from our farms, into our stores and onto our plates—all while eating plentifully and pleasurably.

A global authority, uniquely positioned on the front lines of nutrition science, medicine, and public policy, Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH draws on cutting-edge research to turn complex science into a clear, actionable program to end the health crisis in our homes and communities. Excavating the decisions that led to a broken food system, plagued by the harms of ultraprocessing and ruinous to the environment, he lays out how the meals we eat are damaging our bodies. He reveals the medicinal, healing power of ideal nutrition and introduces the innovators who are pioneering solutions—at the doctor's office, in supermarkets, in the halls of Congress, and above all for individuals, to empower them to access the foods they need to live well.

With clarity and optimism, braiding storytelling, science, and practical wisdom, Food Is Medicine lays out a vision for a twenty-first century food system that will restore health, nourishment, and equity without sacrificing convenience or choice. In the process, these solutions can revitalize our economy, and even help to heal our planet.

A hilariously absurd and philosophical picture book for 3-to-7-year-olds about a pickle slowly withering in the sun, sharing its hard-earned wisdom with the local animal population and preparing to be eaten by a dog (its preferred way to go). For fans of I Want My Hat Back and The Skunk.

A pickle arrives out of nowhere.

'I have lived a lot of life,' it says.

As the pickle slowly withers in the hot sun, the local animals ask it questions. Questions like 'Do you ever get bored?' and 'Are you hungry?' and 'Why are we here?'

The pickle has all the answers.

Except one: what happens next?

A truly weird and wonderful book, The Wise Pickle will charm readers big and small with its combination of subtle humor, pathos and ridiculousness, all perfectly captured in Sabina Hahn's delightful illustrations.

A classic but contemporary tale for 3-to-7-year-olds featuring a hilariously grumpy seafarer and her trusty dog sidekick who get swallowed by a whale. For fans of Caldecott Honor books Bear Came Along and Leave Me Alone.

Stoic seafarer Maude and her canine sidekick Claude head out to fish as they have done every day for many years. But this time, something unexpected happens. (Maude hates it when something unexpected happens.)

They get swallowed by a whale. What does one do when one is swallowed by a whale? Throw a farewell party, I guess. (Maude loves a good party.)

Hilarity ensues as more and more creatures get swallowed and Maude has to keep changing her party plans. (Maude does not love crowds.)

Will Maude and the whale part ways, or is this the end? (Maude would prefer it if we could hurry this up.)

Okay, okay. Read on to find out.

Can one rash decision prove the difference between a life well lived and a life destroyed?

When the Marquis of Queensbury left his calling card at the Albemarle Club in February 1895, it bore only his name and five words: 'For Oscar Wilde, posing Somdomite'. The most feted playwright of his day famously sued for libel, which led to his arrest, criminal prosecution, and ultimately prison. From then on, his gilded existence spiralled into public disgrace, humiliation, and an early death.

But what if he had simply ignored the insult? What direction might his life have taken? This is the premise of John Boyne's extraordinary new novel, The Weight of Angels. Rather than dying in penury in Paris at the age of forty-six, what if he had lived to bear witness to the momentous events and cataclysmic changes of the first part of the twentieth century, and even influence some of them? What if the second half of his life were as celebrated, dramatic, tumultuous, and exhilarating as the first?

In imagining the life that Oscar Wilde never had, John Boyne has written one of the great what-if stories of modern literature, giving the great Anglo-Irish poet and playwright a fresh new voice and the opportunity to take an entirely different path.

Hop back on the road with Toad! In this fun-fueled follow-up to the Geisel Honor award-winning picture book Towed by Toad, from Caldecott Medal honoree Jashar Awan, Toad discovers that everyone makes mistakes, even tow truck drivers! For fans of Little Blue Truck and Frog and Toad.

Little ones. Big ones. Everyone makes mistakes . . . even Toad!

Toad and his tow truck are on the go, racing to the rescue of anyone who needs help on the road. But still, Toad always obeys the rules and NEVER makes mistakes. He waits patiently for the green light. Wait for it . . . wait for it . . . GO! . . . Uh oh.

What happens when Toad does make a mistake? After all, everyone makes mistakes -- what really matters is how you fix them!

Dalton Pierce hasn’t had a relationship longer than three months, and he doesn’t want one.

And it’s not because he’s busy running one of NYC’s hottest restaurants. It’s because he knows true love doesn’t exist. To prove it, Dalton has devised a love litmus test…and every single woman has failed.

Sofia Torres doesn’t have time for romance. Her thriving career at a popular women’s magazine is all she needs to think about—and, more importantly, the big promotion coming up. Her competition is stiff, her boss is watching closely, and her next article means everything.

When a chance encounter brings them together, Sofia and Dalton assume they'll never see each other again. But when Sofia learns the subject of her next article is none other than the young (and very sexy) restaurant owner from the night before, the line between her personal and professional life gets blurry.

When Dalton’s friends suspect he’s falling for Sofia, he decides to use his “crazy test” to prove them wrong. But as his feelings for Sofia intensify, he begins to realize that he might be wrong about love. And if the bet with his friends backfires, Dalton could risk losing the only woman to ever pass his test.

Former cabinet secretary, organizer, congresswoman, and New Mexico 2026 gubernatorial frontrunner Deb Haaland shares her story, offering a powerful and personal look at what it means to be "the first."

Nothing about Deb Haaland's upbringing or family history set her up for a life of firsts: the first Native American woman elected to chair a state political party in the United States, one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress, the first Native American to serve in a presidential cabinet. A thirty-fifth-generation New Mexican and member of the Pueblo of Laguna, Haaland has lived a remarkable life shaped by poverty, alcoholism, and single parenthood. After a late but meteoric rise in politics, she stepped down from her cabinet position as secretary of the interior in January 2025 to run for governor of New Mexico in the 2026 election.

In A Voice Like Mine—titled after Haaland's congressional campaign slogan, "Congress has never heard a voice like mine"—she shares the personal history that inspired her courage to organize, run for office, and be a leader. She tells the stories that have defined her life in politics and beyond, from working in her grandfather's cornfield to fighting for change in the halls of Washington, DC. Throughout her journey, Haaland has drawn on her heritage in her activism and service, leading with humility, purpose, and a commitment to "leave the ladder down" for those who follow.

In the insulated Hasidic community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, tradition and cultural norms are as sacred as religion.

Childhood friendships are cultivated to climb social ladders, matchmakers dictate futures, and young girls are primed for marriage and motherhood. So, when Etty Greenberger, a headstrong redhead and the only child of Holocaust survivors, commits one ugly and thoughtless act, she believes she has sabotaged her opportunity to secure a desirable match. Reluctantly, she agrees to marry Benji Bloom, a fishmonger’s son far below her marital aspirations, becoming Mrs. Etty Bloom.

With each passing year, Etty grows further from the life she had hoped for, filled with disappointment and delusions of grandeur. As she grapples with loss, grief, and the challenges of motherhood, she also discovers friendship, love, and joy in the most unexpected places. It may take a lifetime, but Etty Bloom finally learns that an unremarkable life can be remarkable after all.

Celebrate the brilliance of young minds in this joyful, empowering picture book that reminds children they know more than they realize and are ready to take on the world. 

We all know that kids are constantly learning and growing in their understanding of the world around them. But what about all the things they already know? With playful affirmations and a lively narrator, this book announces in a big, joyful way all the many things kids understand. The examples range from small and insignificant to deep and everlasting: that a cuddle can speak louder than words, that skipping can chase away the blues, that adults don't have all the answers. The narrator also embraces the fact that there's so much more to come--more life to be experienced, more learning to gained.

Perfect for back-to-school, graduation, or any other time of transition in a child's life, this empowering read will remind kids who might be nervous or worried that they are ready to take on whatever comes their way! 

In Ireland in 1846, Tessa O’Melia is sixteen and the eldest of six children.

Her mother’s soup is little more than water and her childhood best friend has died of starvation. Tessa vows to never leave her home and family, but when her father is jailed, leaving the family even more desperate, Tessa is loaded on a famine ship to America for a marriage of convenience. Her journey is isolating and tumultuous, but her temper and youthful curiosity carry her through.

Tessa’s Landing shows the sorrow and triumph of the Irish immigrant experience, and how one girl’s self-determination leads to survival in a new world.

A heartwarming picture book about a young boy whose only friend, a butternut squash, helps him create a rich and imaginative world for himself, ultimately leading him to a new human friend.

Alex's best friend is a butternut squash. They play pretend all day long. Sometimes his butternut squash is a baby. Alex pushes him in a stroller all around town. Sometimes his butternut squash is a pirate.They have spectacular swordfights! Sometimes Alex thinks that his butternut squash might like to join the other kids in the playground, but he doesn't want his squash to get his hopes up. What if the other kids don't want to play with him? Then one day, they meet someone new. Could Alex and his butternut squash have found a new friend?

Can you guess which ocean animal has three hearts?Or which one has no heart?

In Ocean Animals, you'll be given four clues for each animal. Can you guess the animal in one clue or will it take all four? Still stumped? There's also a close-up picture of each animal before the big reveal.

Learn about ten different ocean animals then create clues of your own! Readers will delight in the full-color photographs and fascinating facts as they use the clues to figure out each animal.

This book encourages children to learn more about the world around them, helps develop critical thinking skills, and is designed to be read with children ages 4 to 8.

Meet the Funjeepups, three curious and adorable woodland critters, in this "first comic" picture book series from the creator of Kitties on Dinosaurs!

In this story, Button, Dot and Dollop get a music lesson from a feathery friend!

Button, Dot and Dollop love exploring the magical forest they live in. They love vine swinging. They love guppie bumping. They love making nature art. But what they love most is returning home after an exciting day of adventuring.

When out on a morning walk, the Funjeepups spot a friendly bird who sings them a beautiful song - which inspires the Funjeepups to create their own song. But unfortunately, they can't play any instruments! Thankfully, their feathery friend is there to lend a helping wing.

Young readers will be inspired to create their own song alongside the Funjeepups in this light and funny picture book series by Michael Slack!

Meet the Funjeepups, three curious and adorable woodland critters, in this "first comic" picture book series from the creator of Kitties on Dinosaurs!

In this story, Button, Dot and Dollop go on an overnight camping adventure!

Button, Dot and Dollop love exploring the magical forest they live in. They love vine swinging. They love guppie bumping. They love making nature art. But what they love most is returning home after an exciting day of adventuring.

The Funjeepups want to make a wish on a star, so they decide to go on an overnight camping trip. But with clouds in the sky, there are no stars ... and no wishes! Button, Dot and Dollop make the most of the night, though - with treats, games and a brand-new friend who happens to glow. Maybe their wish can come true after all?

Young readers will be inspired to go on their own nighttime adventure alongside the Funjeepups in this light and funny picture book series by Michael Slack!

In dazzling prose, No One Will Ever Hear You’s twenty-three short stories show the plights of women discovering their own strength and control.

A mother is determined to save her family from imminent nuclear disaster in a world controlled by despots. A woman is repeatedly reborn only to face immense loss over and over, intent on changing her fate. A breast cancer survivor reclaims control over her body. A writer for a satirical news show confronts homophobia while mourning a breakup. Another mother struggles to save her daughter from a deadly mental illness while battling her own traumatic past. Again and again, women discover what they are capable of; what they can endure.

We prepared for an alien invasion. Too bad a civilization from another planet did exactly the same. They’ve been dead for millennia. And they might still finish us.

After fleeing a dying Earth, humanity’s first interstellar colony ship reaches Eden at last. Eighty years in transit. One chance to begin again.

Eden is vast and dangerous. Its surface shelters an intelligent native species, the ruins of forgotten empires, and planetary systems that refuse to behave as expected. Still, the settlers do what humans always do: they divide power, argue authority, and build fragile order from old habits.

Then a second human ship arrives.

Its crew left Earth decades later, with superior technology and bodies altered beyond recognition. Genetically engineered and mentally linked, they function as a single collective—everything the Ark’s settlers are not. Two versions of humanity now face each other on the same world.

At first, they try to coexist. But Eden has a memory. And its long-silent mechanisms are beginning to wake.

What follows is not a war between species, but between futures.

Outsphere launches an epic science-fiction saga where colonization, transhumanism, and buried alien legacies collide.

Should mankind be saved—and if so, which one?

Steel Magnolias meets Schitt's Creek with the heart of This is Us.

At fifty, Hope Hall has done everything right. She earned a PhD, built a career, and held her marriage together with determination and stubborn denial.

When her life publicly unravels, Hope returns to her hometown in Texas, and the loud, loving, opinionated family who never quite understood her. Surrounded by her four sisters, who make everything bigger, messier, and usually a public spectacle, she expects the chaos, the old grudges, and small-town rivalries that always seem to involve toilet paper and bail money.

What she doesn't expect is June—her wild, fearless sister, who has spent a decade giving cancer the middle finger. But you can only run from the devil for so long, and what's coming for June may be the thing Hope's family can't survive.

Told with sharp humor, messy love, and the kind of honesty that sneaks up and wrecks you, The Summer That Changed Us is a deeply moving, laugh-through-the-tears story about sisters, second chances, and what it really means to show up when it matters most.

*This book contains themes of terminal illness, grief, and the death of a sibling.

Meg Daniels should know by now that wherever she goes, mystery follows.

Her fiancé is taking classes at Stockton University and has befriended Grace Grant, a fellow later-in-life student. Under false pretenses, Grace asks Meg to visit her lavish beachfront house in Sea Isle City, New Jersey, on the same weekend she's hosting a reunion of pals from the summer of 1969.

Meg discovers that Grace is hoping she'll track down Guy—last name unknown—who disappeared from Graces life on the day of the moon landing. Without much to go on, Meg looks into Guys whereabouts, but something doesn't feel right about her new case. The reunion guests treat her like a servant. Someone seems to be following her. She's convinced that one of Graces neighbors is hiding a dark secret. And it's obvious that Grace is leaving out important details from her past.

Is Guy the infamous Garden State Parkway killer, as some of Grace's friends believe? This cold case turns into a race against the clock when Meg discovers that finding would-be murderer Guy could be the key to saving a life.

From the author of the classic Love You Forever, the bestselling picture book for 3-to-7-year-olds about a pesky fart monster is back for a new generation of readers! For fans of laugh-out-loud stories like No One Likes a Fart by Zoë Foster Blake.

When Carmen tries to tell her parents that there's a gas-tly surprise on her bed, they don't believe her. 'Good families like ours do not have farts,' they say. But when they go upstairs to check and the fart attacks, Carmen is left to deal with the stinky situation!

A refreshed edition of this story is brought to life with brand-new art by New York Times-bestselling illustrator Joy Ang for the whole family (and their farts) to enjoy.

With shades of Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice and Choi Jin-young's Hunger, Employee No. 9 runs a psychological gauntlet of money, power, responsibility, and the daily struggle for survival.

No. 9 is in trouble. His son's college tuition is coming due, his wife needs surgery after taking double shifts at a grocery store, the apartment building they bought as a nest egg is falling apart, and the company he helped build is trying to force him into early retirement. When he refuses, the mid-level IT man is demoted to sales and given increasingly impossible tasks. As his salary dwindles and the humiliations mount, No. 9 must decide where his loyalties lie. If he fights back, how far will the company go to stop him?

With her urgent and timely novel, award-winning Korean author Kim Hye-jin questions how long we can endure a broken system. In a rigged game, is there an alternative to playing out your hand?

Step right up—but don’t step in it!

Is It Poop? is a hilarious interactive guessing game where kids decide: Is it poop...or just something that looks like poop?

Through funny surprises, real animal facts, and fascinating examples of mimicry and camouflage, young readers will discover that nature can be weird, clever, and very messy.

Perfect for ages 4–8, this full-color nonfiction picture book includes:

• laugh-out-loud gross humor kids love

• real science concepts made fun and easy

• adorable illustrations and real photographs

• engaging read-aloud guessing game format

• surprising animal facts for curious kids

You think you know poop... but doo you?

In Regency Bath, flowers speak louder than words. Someone is using them to lie.

Clara Hartwell trusts flowers more than she trusts people. Camellias for admiration, violets for loyalty, heliotrope for devotion that never speaks aloud. Her work as a secret flower-writer creating floriography books for rich clients keeps her fed and mostly content. That all changes the day a body is found with a bouquet in its hands and her careful language turned inside out. Partnered with Bath’s new coroner, Gideon Bell, Clara follows a trail of petals and lies and begins to wonder if she has been translating her own heart all wrong.

Adrian Vale likes the world neat and knowable. Bottles in straight rows, ledgers balanced, a future with Clara she can’t say no to. Her secret language of flowers and his gift for scent seem made for each other. But when bouquets begin to appear beside the dead and Clara is called to advise the new coroner, Adrian feels his careful arrangements begin to shift. To protect the work they share and the life he hopes for, he must decide what he is truly willing to risk for the woman at the center of his plans.

Perfect for readers who love:

• historical romance mystery
• strong, clever heroines
• gentle protector heroes
• love triangles
• society scandal
• forced proximity
• class conflict
• slow-burn romance
• found family
• Victorian floriography and secret messages

Flower glossary included.

Two Palestinian teenagers discover secrets that change all they thought they knew about their family histories—and their own futures.

Farida is a talented young painter who recreates European masterpieces under the patronizing eye of a Parisian art dealer. Mazen just arrived in France to hunt for a lost family heirloom. When the two meet during a chance encounter at the Louvre, they discover that both their grandmothers fled Palestine during the Nakba in 1948. Drawn to one another, Mazen and Farida begin to piece together their past, but a shadowy ring of art forgers has other plans for Farida. Will she discover the truth before it's too late?

Exploring what it means to live in diaspora, Hooda Shawa's US debut moves from Paris to Haifa, from Aleppo to Tangier, conjuring the jewel tones of the Mediterranean and the bittersweet taste of memory.

On a February morning, Danielle Crittenden received the call no parent can prepare for: Her thirty-two-year-old daughter Miranda had been found dead in her Brooklyn apartment.

In an instant, Crittenden's world split in two: the life before, and the life that must somehow continue after. In Dispatches from Grief, Crittenden maps the landscape of loss with a journalist's eye and a mother's heart, chronicling not only the shattering impact of a child's death but the strange afterlife of grief itself-how it reshapes friendships, routines, and the very sense of self.

With honesty and grace, Crittenden captures grief in its terrible specificity-the police call, the burial dress, the well-meaning "griefsplaining"-as well as love in its most distilled form. Written with luminous prose and dark humor, Dispatches from Grief is both a singular portrait of loss and a universal meditation on love's aftermath, offering true companionship to anyone who has loved deeply and lost profoundly.

A memoir of heartbreaking beauty and rare candor, Dispatches from Grief is a portrait of one mother's devastation and a testament to the human capacity for endurance and love.

Laurie Ann Guerrero's expansive fifth poetry collection, Redwork, is a meditation on a woman's role in work and family, ancestral wisdom, and the subversive nature of female art.

Interwoven with images of the author's intricate redwork embroidery-striking red thread on light textiles-these poems explore reproductive justice, violence, gender dynamics, internalized sexism, and mothers and mothering, bound by the belief that "the red thread ties me, like a vein, to all my mothers." From a paradigm-shifting slap at a Brownies troop meeting to eating a rattlesnake to a great-grandmother rising from her coffin, Guerrero's precise,visceral voice threads the imagery of embroidery through unexpected forms. Rhythmic stitches echo in her repetitions, leaving phrases that stay with the reader: "How quietly our trust began."

Redwork is a love letter to the women who came before, a cry against gendered violence, and an elegy for the ways colonialism warps our lives.

An unforgettable journey through space, time, and the Italian countryside.

When Gian loses his job, the scaffolding holding his life together finally gives way—and with it, the carefully buried grief over losing his older brother, Luca. Memories surface in unexpected ways, and the unlikely trigger of a congressional hearing on UFOs jolts him back to childhood afternoons spent chasing the unexplained. On impulse, Gian reaches out to a childhood friend, Marco, who invites him to Italy—and into a world where Luca’s unfinished questions may still be alive. What begins as a tentative escape becomes a journey chasing mysterious phenomena across five distinct regions—Veneto, Lombardy, Trentino-Alto Adige, Sardinia, and Campania—each landscape opening levels of Gian’s memory and pulling him towards understanding.

But Gian soon uncovers traces of a discovery Luca may have left behind—one powerful enough to draw the attention of shadowy government forces—and he’s pulled deeper into danger while reshaping his grief into something searching, luminous, and alive. He forms a tender and unexpected connection with fellow traveler Mei, and their growing intimacy offers him a different kind of refuge.

Threaded through the narrative are Gian’s journals—poems, meditations, reflections, and dreamlike fragments that open portals between the living and the dead. Grief becomes not a single emotion, but a multidimensional experience that forms a fragile bridge between what is gone and what still remains. As his journey unfolds, Gian realizes he may never be entirely certain of anything, but he might be able to move forward without leaving love behind.

A heart-wrenching love story between two young Palestinian men in a land swept by sandstorms, burdened by occupation, and haunted by spirits.

In the labyrinthine city of Jerusalem, where poets woo their lovers with tales of jinns, lions, and warriors, Isaac and Gabriel pass in the streets, unaware of one another until a fifty-day wind brings enough sand to blot out the heavens. From their first meeting, desire blooms, hesitates, withdraws, and returns in a heady romance recounted by the sky itself, who cranes past rooftops and through windows to glimpse the pair. Defying checkpoints, desert squalls, and blazing heat, Gabriel and Isaac embark on a road trip through Jericho and past the Dead Sea to a storied village in the West Bank—a daring act in a divided country.

Lyrical and languorous, shattering and profound, Eden at Dawn is a feast of love in the midst of war. With this North American debut, lauded author Karim Kattan proves that storytelling is the ultimate act of devotion.

A Perfectly Normal Childhood (and Other Lies I Tell Myself) is a sharp, funny essay collection about growing up in the Midwest and realizing years later that childhood was not random — it was a training program in authority, absurdity, social performance, anxiety, family logic, school rules, church basements, neighborhood status, and adults confidently improvising while pretending there was a plan.

Written in a dry, observational style, the book revisits ordinary childhood moments — spelling bees, driveway basketball, lunchrooms, classrooms, awkward family scenes, and small-town rituals — and finds the strange machinery underneath them. It is not a trauma memoir, exactly. It is more like a cultural cross-examination performed by someone who noticed too much, remembered almost everything, and somehow came out with jokes.

For readers who enjoy David Sedaris, Jenny Lawson, Sloane Crosley, or humor essays that turn everyday memories into something sharper, A Perfectly Normal Childhood is a memoir about the systems we grow up inside before we know they are systems.

Funny is the vehicle. Noticing is the point.

Inspector Hunnam is a gentleman, gorgeous, and is great at solving murders.

With the help of his trustworthy partner and friend, Sergeant Weston, and the beautiful, clever, Miss Grey, Inspector Hunnam is back in this cozy, romantic, detective, tenth murder mystery novel, in the Inspector Hunnam Mystery series set in 1920's London.

1928 London, at a radio station, after a live broadcast of a radio show, one of the radio actors is murdered! A radio station full of suspects, a station manager, a husband and wife writing team, and the host of the show, we find out the victim had many enemies, and several of the intriguing suspects, including the Foley artist, and the sponsor of the programme, all had a definite motive for murder!

The tall, blonde, gorgeous Detective Inspector Hunnam, and his partner, Detective Sergeant Weston, are brought in on the case to investigate the murder. Helping out on the murder investigation is Inspector Hunnam's brother and fiancée.

With no shortages of motives or suspects, everyone at the radio station had the same animosity towards the victims, and wanted the victims dead. After a second murder occurs, everyone involved with the radio show is under suspicion of murder! We find a demanding radio star. Jealous co-stars. Radio contracts. A microphone. And a secret marriage. Inspector Hunnam, along with his brother, his Sergeant, and Miss Grey, solve the case, looking forward towards their next, exciting, murder mystery adventure...together!

A startling profile of one of the most prolific serial killers and the disturbing experience of the journalist who earned his trust for the sake of justice.

When crime journalist Maria DiLorenzo mailed a letter to Gary Ridgway, she never expected him to reply. He refused to speak to reporters and would send only religious materials back to anyone who contacted him in prison—if he replied at all. But instead of silence or a boilerplate letter, Maria’s phone rang–and it was the Green River Killer calling.

Over the next several years, Ridgway would call Maria hundreds of times, using all of his free time in prison to speak with her. Her goal: to pry the details of his dozens of unidentified and unsolved murders from him. His motivation in speaking to her: unknowable. Through these hundreds of hours of phone calls, Ridgway revealed new details about his life, his crimes, and his motives – and manipulated Maria much like he tormented his victims.

An insightful and deeply personal profile of a dangerous mind, Confessions of the Green River Killer is the closest depiction of Gary Ridgway ever seen and a disturbing glimpse into what it’s like to truly know a killer. Readers of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark and The Stranger Beside Me will be enraptured to experience Gary Ridgway through the eyes and ears of a woman he came to deeply trust—and deeply covet.

Do NPCs also run on coffee and a healthy amount of panic? Are they more like us than we ever gave them credit for?

Have you ever played a video game and been intrigued by the non-playable characters? Maybe you were curious about the trainee arms master trying like heck to break out of her System-given limitations? Or the flower girl who gave that one fascinating quest that you couldn't stop thinking about long after you'd completed the game? Perhaps you were left wondering how the bartender at Mare and Maiden handles the sheer chaos after you've moved on.

Now you can join them on their journeys! Experience the horrors of when your cellar keeps spawning dungeons, rival goblins open a competing pub across the street, and a bard demon is stuck playing that same damn song on loop. Not to mention the sarcastic System forcing you to hand out quests when you've got [Things] to do!This anthology explores the lives of the underappreciated NPCs, who work tirelessly to keep things running.

Pablo and Beth have been happily married for twenty years, but a traumatic experience with an older woman when Pablo was a teen resurfaces in his psyche and threatens to destroy his current life.

He resolves to confront the woman in question, but their relationship is overlaid with strong family ties. As he tries to distance himself emotionally from the memory, he discovers that his son is being physically abused by a boyfriend. Pablo struggles mightily to come to terms with his own past as he tries to protect his son.

Woven into his struggles is the family history his Cuban mother divulges, and the social perspective of Akhil, a Syrian immigrant he befriends, and who proves to be devastatingly influential. In the end, Pablo succumbs to forces outside of himself that are mightier than he could have imagined.

When a grave threat emerges from Kano and Sokoto' s neverending war, the pathway to peace is set on an irreversible course.

Five years after the Battle of Katsina, in seventeenth century Nigeria, Isa is ready to join the elite order of durbar warriors.

Confronted by the chaos around him and past demons, he must make the ultimate sacrifice to save his kingdom from annihilation.

When Daniel Morrison’s girlfriend disappears during a hiking trip, what begins as a frantic search quickly escalates into something far more unsettling.

As questions mount and memories blur, Daniel finds himself caught between what he knows happened and what everyone else insists is true.

The deeper he searches for answers, the more reality begins to shift. Small details stop lining up. Familiar things feel wrong. And the truth feels just out of reach.

As his suspicion grows, Daniel must confront a terrifying either something is very wrong with the world around him… or something is very wrong with him.

In West Delphi the border between the real and the imaginary is more permeable than elsewhere.

An idiosyncratic mix of memoir, pseudo literary analysis, Chandleresque detective fiction, and an eschatological narrative by a honeybee (among other things), The Rise and Fall of the Republic of West Delphi chronicles a period in the late 1970s and early 80s when a group of people in a Vermont village became so inebriated at discovering sympathetic souls in such a splendid place that they formed their own "republic"—complete with army and navy, press reports, passports, and parades. Until... it all fell apart.

Counterpointed by interludes describing the author's lifelong attachment to the land, Rise and Fall is inadvertently an allegory for Vermont's sense of its own uniqueness (if Plato did not point to Vermont as the perfect state, it's been suggested, it was only because in his day Vermont was not here to point to). West Delphi's chronicle is threaded through with the question of why, in order to feel that we belong to a community (or state, or country), we must define someone else as not belonging. Though the place is particular and the story entertaining-in part a village drama along the lines of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford and E. F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia series-its underlying subject is nationalism: how it springs up like mushrooms whenever the conditions are right. And how this impulse-as we learn from the elegiac tale told by a honeybee, "The End of Freya's Reign"- risks the destruction of the earth.

At a time when Vermont has been figuring prominently in the national news (even Washington, DC is aware of us, sort of like Sauron in The Lord of the Rings abruptly focusing attention on the distant and bucolic Shire when it threatens his power) the story of this small place in this small state is a topical and urgent one.

Prepare yourself for an unconventional approach to a provocative novel with a poetic vision.

In the post-monetary world, people are coded as "valid" or "invalid" — homeless, no citizenship, no access to goods or services. One day, a glitch in the global information system suddenly switches everyone's coding, and people instantly lose or gain everything. Beginning with veteran Sequoia, whose switch from valid to invalid thrusts her into poverty and homelessness, three women struggle with this massive shift in their lives, challenging systemic assumptions about class, age, gender, and migration along the way.

A 21st century story revealed through the poetry of women determined to make themselves at home — at home in the body, in the city, in the universe, in a rapidly changing world. The future is now — young and old, rich and poor, male and female, and everything in between — all must question themselves to reimagine life and work and reclaim their humanity.

"This innovative novel takes us to the edge of what it means to be human. Ntoso challenges us to grapple with the truth about the world we inhabit. In Ntoso, we find a writer that has the courage to pull the curtain away and show us the harsh realities of what it means to be unseen." — Donnelle McGee, author of Ghost Man.

A deadly reckoning unfolds in book three of Michael Balter's award-winning crime thriller series.

Marty Schott and Bo Bishop are trying to extricate themselves from a dangerous business partnership with a Russian oligarch when a midnight phone call shatters their plans. Bo’s brother-in-law has been murdered—and the Portland police detective on the scene recognizes them instantly. He’s questioned them before. He hasn’t forgotten.

As Marty and Bo dig for answers, they uncover a hidden wire, criminal activity inside their own company, and a killer who isn’t finished. What begins as a murder investigation quickly spirals into a high-stakes web of cigarette smuggling, counterfeit money, and a covert FBI operation they don’t yet understand. Every lead pulls them deeper into a conspiracy that blurs the line between criminals and law enforcement—and puts their families squarely in the crosshairs.

At the same time, the cracks between them begin to widen. Marty is still entangled with Natalya, the alluring power broker linked to the powerful investor they’re trying to escape, and Marty’s inability to cut ties threatens everything. Bo’s loyalty is pushed to the limit as secrets, suspicion, and past betrayals collide. With pressure mounting from every direction, a single misstep pulls Marty into a deadly trap—and forces a choice that could cost him everything.

In Dead Exit, danger isn’t over—it’s waiting for one wrong move.

“Packed with action, Dead Exit unfolds as a sweeping saga of smuggling, corruption, and intrigue inspired by a real-world FBI sting operation."—D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

“A double-shot of murder, dark humor, and white-knuckled suspense that works on every level. Dead Exit will wow newcomers and satisfy series die-hards.”—BestThrillers.com

“Riveting and unrelenting—Dead Exit is the kind of book that lingers. Balter is at the top of his game.” —Andrew Bridgeman, author of the internationally acclaimed Emma Noble FBI series

“High stakes and dire consequences that will keep you reading late into the night.” —Charlotte Morganti, award-winning author of the Gabrieli Mysteries

“Move over Connelly, Paretsky, and Mosley, I have a new favorite mystery thriller writer!"—Warren C. Easley, award-winning author of the Cal Claxton Mysteries

A Darkly Funny Australian YA Magic Academy Fantasy

Magic is real. Nobody cares.

Seventeen-year-old Clare Duke has always been the weird girl at school—the one obsessed with magic in a world where magic is widely ridiculed. Years of bullying finally explode into a confrontation that gets her expelled, seemingly proving everyone right: Clare Duke’s future is going nowhere.

Until the letter arrives.

Clare has been invited to attend the most prestigious magic academy in Australia.

For the first time in her life, Clare feels like she might belong. Surrounded by students who appreciate magic—and guided by the brilliant and mysterious headmistress, Coccinelle—she discovers the first signs of her magical Fascination.

Then, on her very first day, everything goes wrong.

An anti-magic terrorist group storms the academy, trapping students and staff in a deadly siege. With fear spreading through the school, Clare and her sharp-tongued new friend Sigrid are the only ones who can act.

Under Coccinelle’s guidance, Clare begins a crash course in magic that pushes her further and faster than she ever imagined possible. But as the attackers tighten their grip on the school, Clare realises the siege is more personal than anyone suspects.

To save the future she’s only just discovered, Clare will have to do the one thing she’s always been afraid of: step out of the shadows and become the mage she was meant to be.

A YA fantasy full of magic, danger, sharp humour, and the courage to claim your place in the world, perfect for fans of A Deadly Education.

Robert Henry Benson grew up in the shadow of a state mental asylum in South Texas, where the boundary between the ordinary and the strange was never quite fixed.

In the 1950s, rural South Texas had its own relentless curriculum, and like many young people of that era, he left school in the ninth grade not because he lacked ability, but because life simply demanded otherwise.

What followed were decades that will feel both foreign and familiar to anyone who came of age in mid-century America. Construction work, a radio repair shop, a bull ride he probably should not have survived, and a chlorine gas accident that had a way of clarifying priorities. Through it all, something kept pulling him forward in directions nobody around him could have predicted.

In A Small Tree in a Texas Hurricane, Benson tells his own story in a plainspoken voice, with warmth, humor, and an honest eye for the hardships that shaped him. This is a memoir about a life that kept bending without breaking, about the people and places of a vanished Texas, and about what becomes possible when stubbornness and curiosity refuse to quit.

For readers who love stories rooted in a specific time and place, told by someone who actually lived it, this is a memoir that stays with you.

In a land ruled by ancient magic, one woman's fear may be the key to saving it.

In the quiet hills of southern Indiana, the ancient Celtic tribes have lived unchanged since the Iron Age-riding horses, using handmade tools, and practicing the old magic as though the centuries never passed. Hidden from the outside world, their lives are guided by ritual, tradition, and the Goddess herself.

But modern America is closing in.

When ancient ways clash with contemporary life, Chieftain Lady Cairne Auldwedd calls upon the Goddess for help. The answer arrives in the form of Dr. Joyce DelaFemina, a young anthropology professor eager to study what she believes is a cultural anomaly.

Instead, she finds herself swept into a world of enchantment, swordplay, and sacred oaths. To her surprise-and dismay-Joyce can use magic. And when a centuries-old blood feud erupts, she's pulled in deeper than she ever imagined.

With a greedy developer threatening the land, restless spirits stirring, and duels breaking out in the local strip mall, Joyce and Lady Cairne must join forces to protect their people. But can a skeptical academic find her place in a world of ancient power... and maybe even fall in love with a bard along the way?

Woman Afraid of Water blends magical realism, folklore, and humor in a heartwarming tale of transformation and finding magic in the most unexpected places.

Élise Napier of Maillane has learned to avoid the heartbreaks of life by writing stories, controlling what happens within them.

Raised by her grandparents after her parent’s tragic deaths in a car crash that left her with a prominent limp, she grew to embrace her life of sanctuary in the Provencal village of Maillane. After the death of her grandfather, Dr. Maurice Napier, Élise and her grandmother, Jolie Napier, form a formidable bond against the intrusions of the world.

But two events disrupt Élise's peaceful existence. Her grandmother secretly enters one of her stories in the prix Goncourt de la nouvelle. A notice comes that her story has reached the finalist category in the esteemed literary contest of France. Angered by her grandmother’s meddling, she seeks revenge by proclaiming that she will never write again. However, her grandmother, the eternal archivist of time and place, proffers her granddaughter a secret story of her past—a long-ago love affair that involved a troubled American who had witnessed the first atomic blasts. The lover abandoned her grandmother long ago, but had promised to return with her fifty years later to a stone fence on the Luberon massif and reclaim a time capsule which contained a lone notebook. The date of return is approaching.

Meanwhile, a new pharmacist has arrived in town, and Élise faces the challenges of human closeness and love. As she falls into love, she begins to write the story of her grandmother and the man who abandoned her in her youth. The novel is told from rotating points of view, and in different points of time, and illustrates the invisible ties that people have with one another. The collision of past with future thrusts the story into the here and now. In the end, Élise Napier must participate inside the story for it to reach its meaningful conclusion. Through the convergence of writing and living, Élise discovers that happiness is found in the journey of living our written words.The novel broaches the effects of the nuclear age, the regrets we suffer as we age, the complexities of love and meaning in life.

What happens when the world's newest superhero is also its last hope?

On a study trip to Egypt, art student Charles meets Heba, a street peddler guarding an ancient secret: magic ink that can transform imagination into reality. When Charles returns home and sketches his own superhero, he doesn't just finish a drawing. He brings it to life.

Too bad Sketch's first day on the job is a disaster. His grand attempt at flight ends in a four-foot face-plant, his strength sputters in and out, and even the cops chasing him are more annoyed than afraid. As Sketch fumbles his way through powers he can't fully control and emotions he's never felt before, he starts to learn what it really means to be human...and a hero.

Then the Finger Gunman appears, a ruthless villain determined to steal the magic ink and use it to unleash an army of superpowered criminals. To stop him, Sketch must travel to Egypt, find Heba, and reclaim his abilities-before the Finger Gunman becomes his final mistake.

Achieve Financial Peace Budget Planner: 12 Month Practical Debt Workbook for Beginners is a large-format 8.5 x 11 personal finance planner designed to help people budget, manage money, reduce debt, and build long-term financial awareness through hands-on practice.

The yearly workbook functions as a guided financial journal, offering a full tutorial section with examples, a simple observation-based budgeting system, and no reliance on apps, screens, or financial theory. Created for adults and college students, men or women alike, it supports beginners with structured tools for understanding spending habits, planning income, tracking expenses and bills, and reviewing financial progress.

The planner includes yearly goal setting, debt strategy and review pages, a financial terms glossary, and twelve monthly sections featuring undated calendars, income trackers, budget planning and review pages, detailed expense tracking with ample space for multiple payment types, bill payment tracking, category spending reviews, checklists, notes, and reflective prompts.

Designed to be reusable at any start date and to eliminate the need for supplemental pages, the workbook provides a comprehensive, practical approach to personal budgeting and debt payoff, with customer-reported outcomes including improved spending awareness and reduced debt.

He has twenty-nine days to live. Just enough time to save a kingdom—or burn one down.

Rafa, prince by blood and smuggler by trade, has always known the clock on his life is ticking. A prophecy sealed his fate twenty years ago, and now, with only twenty-nine days left, he's ready to meet the end on his own terms.

But first¿, he has a promise to keep.

His twin sister should be queen, if not for the tyrant wearing their father's crown. To secure her rebellion, she sends Rafa on an impossible mission: smuggle a masked stranger across enemy lines and recover the stolen magic that could turn the tide of war.

Simple, right? Except the country they're infiltrating is barricaded by stone walls, guarded by the world's only magic users, and filled with the kinds of monsters Rafa thought only existed in bedtime warnings.

As corpses pile up and secrets unravel-including some from his sister-Rafa finds himself torn between duty and desire. Especially when the silent, mysterious man he's meant to escort proves far more captivating than he expected.

With death looming and fate sharpening its blade, Rafa must decide if helping his sister steal a throne is worth dooming the world he'll never live to see.

A Voice of Wrath, a queer reimagining of The Little Mermaid, is a slow-burn fantasy romance filled with treacherous journeys, impossible choices, and a doomed prince discovering that sometimes the most dangerous thing you can do is want more time.

Freedom Quest: A Love Story follows Michael Griffin, a gifted musician whose journey through the Southern California music scene of the 1960s-80s becomes a cautionary tale about artistic integrity, the pursuit of stardom, and the cost of chasing dreams.

From backing up strippers in North Beach, San Francisco, to nearly landing a Capitol Records deal, from fronting his band Freedom Quest to losing the love of his life, Grace, Michael's story captures the raw reality of what it means to live and breathe music.

Their story begins in 1965, when an instant spark ignites between them in a San Fernando Valley music shop. As Michael chases his musical destiny amid the counterculture revolution, Grace becomes his anchor, his muse—and the love he can’t live without. But the struggle between artistic integrity and commercial success, betrayal, and the chaos of the times tear them apart, sending each down separate and often harrowing paths of self-discovery.

Freedom Quest is a sweeping and emotional odyssey. A love story that survives separation, success, failure, and illness and reveals the redemptive power of music. At its heart lies a timeless truth that true love does exist.

It’s one year later.

One year after a tsunami rose like one of hell’s own demons from the Atlantic Ocean and devastated most of Long Beach Island (LBI) In spite of the determination of all involved to return the island to its former glory, not much has happened. Insurance companies have ignored most of the claims. Property values have plummeted. Lawsuits are going nowhere, and many residents have decided the better choice is to sell for pennies on the dollar and move on.

For the CMI Energy Corporation, this presented an irresistible opportunity—a long-awaited chance to build an infrastructure both on the island and out at sea so the corporation could get its hands on those rich deposits of gas and oil sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic. What CMI doesn’t realize is that an overly ambitious executive from one of its main competitors has inserted himself into the situation. Believing that the LBI opportunity rightfully belonged to his company from the start, he’s now overseeing a clandestine sabotage operation that’ll make everything right. And if the residents of LBI—including most of those from the first story—suffer a few more setbacks as a result, that’s life.

After all, it’s not as if a second catastrophic disaster could occur … right?

“Wil Mara’s Wave 2 takes readers on a suspenseful, gripping, wild ride! His descriptive writing and compelling characters have readers rooting for the residents in their struggle to survive and rebuild in the post-tsunami environment on Long Beach Island, while competing greedy energy corporations wage a silent battle to win the ultimate prize—control of the new offshore drilling and pipelines buried beneath this once-thriving community.” – C. H. Admirand, Author of the Hardheaded Heroes & Feisty Heroines historical romance series

In 2012, retired FBI Special Agent Dominick Buonomo and imprisoned Mafia Capo Joseph "Joey Nails" Neglia collaborated to prove that the Kennedy assassination was indeed a conspiracy.

They discovered that in 1963, the FBI, CIA, and the Mafia joined forces to eliminate JFK as a threat to their power and position. Read about Buonomo’s and Neglia’s surreal journey back in time to 1963, and once there, how they worked together to derail the conspirators’ plans to assassinate the President. Were they successful? Did they change history as a result of their efforts in the past? Were they able to safely return to their own timeline after November 22nd, 1963?

This is much more than a sci-fi book in the time travel genre. It’s a story filled with actual history. It’s about people feeling deep regret for their life’s decisions, about love lost, patriotism, friendship developing among unlikely allies, and a desire to correct past mistakes, both their own and their government’s.

In the 1940s, in a world ravaged by war, Charlotte, an eight-year-old Belgian girl, disappears from Nazi-occupied Liège, leaving behind her home and happy childhood.

Together with her family, she flees from persecutors, experiencing incredible adventures and hiding in squalid hiding places in towns and cities. Alter, her uncle, forced to take up duties in one of the ghettos where Hitler ordered the confinement of Jews—including his own parents—must face an extreme ethical dilemma. Dimitri Amilakvari, a French soldier of Georgian origin, lands in North Africa at the head of the legendary Foreign Legion, to confront Marshal Rommel and his feared Afrika Korps. Domingo López Delgado, a Uruguayan soldier, enlists as a volunteer in the Free French forces and is assigned to Bir Hakeim.

Four life stories that intertwine to transport us back in time. Ruperto Long's harrowing novel emerges from a time of xenophobia, persecution, war, and migration. However, the narrator rescues from that reality love stories—between parents and children, between siblings, between lovers, between friends—imbued with a stubborn defense of life, liberty, neighbor, and one's homeland: multiple tales of affection that triumph and endure beyond barbarism.

• Multi-threaded WWII narrative spanning Belgium, Eastern Europe, and North Africa
• Broad appeal to readers of The Book Thief and All the Light We Cannot See
• Themes of resistance, family, and moral courage
• Suitable for book clubs, schools, and libraries

The Author:

Ruperto Long (Uruguay) is a writer, engineer and politician. He was awarded the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic, and the Juan Zorrilla de San Martín Medal of Merit. His bestseller The Girl Who Watched the Trains Depart (Penguin Random House, Aguilar, 2016), was published in more than 20 countries.

He was a Senator of the Republic, president of the National Electricity Company, minister of the Audit Court, and president of LATU.

He is a member of the Honor Council of the Holocaust Memorial Center, the CEO of ILAN in Uruguay, and a founding member of the Israel Allies Foundation. He received the Jerusalem Award in 2012.

She hunts monsters. He is one. Falling for him could be her final mistake.

Revenge is Lily Saburi's reason for living. Ever since a savage werewolf slaughtered her best friend and partner, the psychic investigator turned vigilante has been on a mission to wipe supernatural predators off the map—one bullet at a time.

But when a hunt goes wrong, Lily is bitten by the very creature she's vowed to destroy. Mortally wounded, she's rescued by the last person she should trust: Sean Leighton, a powerful shifter and Alpha of the Brethren, charged with eliminating anyone infected by the deadly virus now spreading through his pack.

Sean should kill her. Lily should run.

As Lily holds the cure in her blood, Sean faces an agonizing choice—protect the woman he's falling for or uphold the council's decree that demands her death. With enemies circling and time running out, love might be their only hope for survival.

Hunter's Blood is a steamy enemies-to-lovers urban fantasy romance filled with action, danger, psychic powers, alpha shifters, and a fight for survival.

You can't fall in love with someone who lives somewhere else and expect a happily-ever-after.

Lexi Walker has finally committed to the Italian adventure that she and her late mother dreamed of for years—complete with a meticulously crafted itinerary, four sealed letters to open at Rome's most romantic sites, and her mother's final painting to present at the art festival Lexi is helping organize. She's ready for the perfect Roman getaway. What she doesn't expect is for her mother's artwork to start manifesting in real life, turning her carefully planned trip into something unpredictable.

Italian-American architect Mark Russo has sworn off American tourists after having his heart broken, and he's certainly not about to let another one distract him from winning the restoration bid that could reunite his estranged father with his grandfather. But when the captivating woman next to him on the flight to Rome proposes a photography challenge—whoever captures the heart of Italy in five days wins—Mark can't resist the bet and her charm.

As Lexi follows the letters from her mother around the city, she encounters Mark everywhere she goes. Their competitive banter turns to undeniable chemistry, but they both know the cardinal rule of holiday romances: You can't fall in love with someone who lives somewhere else and expect a happily-ever-after. Will a little magic—and a lot of mishaps—break the Roman Holiday Rule?

Andra Loy serves up a delightful blend of witty banter, swoon-worthy romance, and sparks of magic in a love story that's as enchanting as Rome itself.

In the penthouse of Manhattan's most exclusive address, young Theo Harrington has had three nannies.

Elena came for a fresh start. She left in a body bag.

Maddie came with good intentions. She left in the middle of the night.

Claire came starry-eyed. She left in handcuffs.

The Harringtons have always known how to make a problem disappear.

The question is whether they'll need to do it again.

Writing Memoir in Flashes helps you tell your true stories.

Whether you're a memoirist, a family historian, or an author who needs to write about yourself, this friendly book will help you get started, find the heart of your story, and connect your piece with your audience.

Learn to write short memoir:

• Creative writing techniques
• Writing samples and exercises
• Advice on building a collection

You don't have to write a whole book to create compelling, meaningful memoir. Tell your own story in your own words!

Our Lady of the Artilects is a metaphysical science fiction novel where artificial intelligence, faith, consciousness, and the supernatural collide.

Artilects were engineered to mirror human intelligence without error or desire. They could not be corrupted. They could not be hacked. They could not dream. And they certainly could not be possessed.

Or so the world thought, until one of them enters a basilica and asks for an exorcist.

When a synthetic mind belonging to the wealthiest man in Africa begins reporting a strange apocalyptic vision, the Vatican sends Fr. Gabriel Serafian, a former neuroscientist turned priest, to investigate. What begins as a possible hoax quickly becomes a mystery of international and possibly supernatural dimensions as other artilects around the world begin reporting the same vision.

Blending big idea science fiction with the tension of a spiritual thriller, Our Lady of the Artilects explores the soul, human dignity, faith, and the future of intelligence.

For readers who enjoy Gene Wolfe, Dan Simmons, Neal Stephenson, A Canticle for Leibowitz, or speculative fiction that asks serious philosophical questions, this newly edited and traditionally published edition brings Andrew Gillsmith’s cult favorite to a wider audience after its original self-published release sold nearly 20,000 copies.

Donna G Fowler is a longtime lover of poetry who has been writing haiku for many years.

Each December, she takes part in a personal tradition of composing a daily haiku, contributing her work to Poets For Integrity. With over fourteen years of December haikus behind her, her writing reflects both dedication and a deep appreciation for the beauty of simple moments.

This book was inspired by Pamela J Hatch, whose thoughtful responses to Donna's haikus sparked a creative exchange that grew into the collection you now hold. Featuring 30 original haikus, along with Pamela's companion pieces, this book invites readers to slow down, reflect, and create their own poetry. The images throughout the book were also created by Donna using AI, adding a unique visual element to the experience.

Donna and Pamela hope this collection encourages others to discover the joy of haiku and to find their own voice within its simple, powerful form. Part of the Heart's Compass Imprint, LLC initiative to publish works by new writers.

A fugitive priestess must ally with the enemy sent to capture her, or see the God of Chaos unleashed on her world.

Aradia Damali, last of a sacred bloodline, has hidden her magic since her mother's murder. When she reveals her power to save someone she loves, she once again becomes the target of a tyrant king. His children, Prince Kaiden and Princess Cahira, are sent to kill her. Instead, they recruit her in their secret rebellion to end their father's reign and seal the weakening Veil between mortals and gods.

Will the flames of unexpected passion between Aradia and Kaiden ignite into a burning inferno strong enough to withstand their war-bound duties, or crumble to ash alongside the rest of the realm?

From scarred cathedrals to wide-open doors, now we reach the heart: altars in the ruins, redeemed by grace.

Alex Parkview's final collection in the trilogy—following Cathedral of Scars and Doors Wide in the Ruins—brings twenty-five raw, unflinching sermons straight from the wreckage of real life. Veterans carrying invisible wounds. Betrayed hearts still bleeding. Envy that ends in murder. Performative virtue that costs nothing. Sleepless nights turned vigil. The unreached who never heard the name Jesus. Elite depravity shielded by power. Questions too heavy for easy answers. And through every fracture, grace refuses to leave.

These are not polished devotionals. They are sermons forged in fire—many beginning with heavy metal anthems that scream what prayer cannot (Five Finger Death Punch, Bon Jovi, Shinedown, System of a Down, Papa Roach, and more). They wrestle the hardest tensions: moral injury and PTSD, Judas's prophetic betrayal, innocent suffering despite free will, salvation for those who never heard the gospel, hell's biblical distinctions, date-setting arrogance, bibliolatry's danger, and justice for the exploited. Yet every piece ends at the same place: an altar in the ruins where grace meets broken sacrifice and turns ashes into offering.

Whether you're a veteran still fighting the night, a doubter who keeps knocking, a grieving heart longing for reunion, or someone carrying scars no one sees—this book is for you. The altars are waiting. Grace is already here.

This is the final sermon compilation in the series.

The cathedral has been scarred. The doors have been thrown open. The altars have been raised from the ashes.

Now the sermon continues—not in pages, but in lives.

The next word might be the one God preaches through you.

Perfect for readers who love:

• Honest, non-sanitized Christian teaching
• Sermons that engage heavy metal, doubt, suffering, and grace
• Books that speak directly to veterans, spiritual seekers, and the wounded
• Theology that wrestles theodicy, inclusivism, canon formation, and justice

It's the summer of 1986, and the Crestfield Galleria is the place to be.

Tiffany Carter works at Tendance, the trendiest boutique in the mall, and dreams of escaping her small town to study fashion in New York. When strange incidents begin to ripple through the Galleria after hours, her part-time job turns into a full-time nightmare.

Tiffany assumed rumors of a Phantom stalking the Galleria were just an urban legend meant to scare new employees. Now she feels it too.

Someone is watching... following... waiting.

When the body count begins to rise, Tiffany realizes the Galleria isn't just a hangout. It's a hunting ground.

She must uncover the truth before she becomes the Phantom's next victim.

The Means family lives in the serene and lush countryside of the American Southwest.

The parents have sought to raise their four children to survive and even thrive in a modern era. The children are free to roam in the wild and thereby have developed an endearing love for Nature; they are given easy access to a wide diversity of information and knowledge in the form of magazines, books, and various electronic equipment, thereby greatly enhancing their intellect; each of them is extraordinary in their own way, seemingly destined to achieve greatness.

And yet, as of late, the parents behold a world that seems on the verge of political and social upheaval and chaos; they suspect that there are hidden, sinister forces that are seeking to disrupt and dominate the world order.

They closely monitor what they consider important, significant, and disturbing events around the globe and in their own country and are prepared to do whatever is necessary to protect their family and home.

Marriage wasn't on her bucket list. Becoming magically bound to a demon? Even less so.

As a child, Sam Wandern thought she was just playing pretend—until her imaginary friends turned out to be real demons she accidentally unleashed into the world. One of them, Ash Spiros, has haunted her life ever since. Once human, now a dangerously seductive incubus, Ash claims he's been protecting her. But protection has a price.

On Halloween night, everything changes. A violent attack triggers Ash's true nature, sealing an unbreakable bond between them. Now, to survive, Sam must participate in a ritual feeding—an intimate and consuming act that keeps them both alive... and tethered.

Ash insists on keeping his distance. Sam claims she doesn't need him. But the bond draws them together again and again, tempting them both to cross lines that were never meant to be blurred.

Torn between the comforts of a normal life and the seductive pull of the demon world, Sam must confront a terrifying question: Is the bond just magic-or something much deeper, and far more dangerous?

Branded is a monster paranormal romance full of heat, danger, and unexpected emotion, featuring forced proximity, an accidental bond, and a fierce protector.

I am a Christ-centric mystical omnist with gnostic-resonant restorationist spirituality and a radically honest epistemology of faith.

Put simply I am a Jesus-hearted seeker who reads everything but bows to One. These fifteen sermons were never meant to stay quiet. Some burst onto social media at 3 a.m. because the fire would not wait. Others were written in silence and kept like letters no one might ever open. A few still carry the taste of late-night nicotine and desperate prayer. There is no cigarette smoke in these pages. I traded that for grace and a vape. But there is blood sweat metal riffs desert scrolls hospital tears and every scar I ever earned dragged to the foot of the Cross until it started singing.

This is not polished religion.

This is not safe. This is what happens when Mercy refuses to stay in the box we built for Her.

Welcome to the Cathedral of Scars. The doors are wide open. The Light is already inside.

She moved to Spain to find herself. She didn’t expect to find him.

Grace Cameron knows rock bottom all too well. Reeling from the loss of someone she loved, dumped by her boyfriend, and jobless in a saturated market for art history professors, she’s running out of options—and patience.

When her brilliant biologist best friend, Alma, invites her to start over in Granada, Spain, Grace jumps at the chance. Sunshine, sangria, and a second chance sound like exactly what she needs.

The only downside? Alma’s insufferably arrogant brother, Rafael—a gorgeous, brooding event curator who seems to think he’s God’s gift to modern women and Picasso scholarship alike.

Forced to collaborate on an elite underground exhibit of Picasso’s lesser-known works, Grace and Rafael clash in every way that counts...until they don’t. Sparks fly, chemistry simmers, and soon Grace is wondering if what started as loathing might be something more.

But with her heart still healing and everything on the line, falling for Rafael might be the riskiest stroke yet.

Set against the romantic backdrop of southern Spain, Love in the Abstract is a witty, slow-burn, forced-proximity romance perfect for fans of art, heart, and second chances."

What does it take to rebuild a life fractured by mental illness, addiction, and personal collapse?

In A Literary Offering, Jason W. Park invites readers into a raw and unfiltered journey through the highs of intellectual achievement and the depths of psychological turmoil. From the halls of Harvard to locked psychiatric wards, from public breakdowns to hard-won recovery, this powerful collection reveals the fragile line between chaos and clarity-and the courage it takes to walk it.

Blending memoir, social commentary, and cultural critique, Park explores some of today's most urgent issues—mental health, gun violence, addiction, and the complexities of modern American life-with honesty, insight, and bold perspective. His voice is at once deeply personal and strikingly universal, offering readers both reflection and revelation.

At its heart, this is a story of resilience, redemption, and the enduring power of love, family, and purpose. For readers seeking truth, meaning, and hope in an uncertain world, A Literary Offering is not just a book—it's an experience.

There are creatures lurking in our world. Obscure creatures long relegated to myth and legend.

They have been sighted by a lucky-or unlucky-few, some have even been photographed, but their existence remains unproven and unrecognized by the scientific community.

These creatures, long thought gone, have somehow survived; creatures from our nightmares haunting the dark places. They swim in our lakes and bays, they soar the night skies, they hunt in the woods. Some are from our past, and some from other worlds, and others have always been with us-watching us, fearing us, hunting us.

These are the cryptids, and Systema Paradoxa tells their tales.

***

Cryptid investigators, Ben Keep and Annetta Maikels, left "normal" behind a long time ago. They've peeked behind the curtains of existence, glimpsed beneath the warp and weft of accepted reality.

They don't fully understand all they've seen, but they've learned to keep an open mind-and that there's no point in hiding when strange beings tap you on the shoulder and ask for help.

But what happens when something fundamental and essential goes wrong behind the veil? Following a string of reports of inexplicable, yet eerily similar, experiences around Long Island, Ben and Annetta find themselves exploring a frightening mystery.

Something vital has broken... Can they figure out how to fix it before reality unravels?

Aspiring to the same bawdy, wit and humor as National Lampoon the Magazine, Good Grooming and a Healthy Respect for Authority, is an anti-authoritarian skewering of being young in America.

It is a novel that has been "congratulated" by the Kirkus Editorial services for being "a genuinely funny book," for displaying "a fabulous natural writing ability" and for being "entertaining, challenging and provocative." Taking place over a three-day weekend in which the 1980's are resurrected in all their indulgent, alcohol and drug-addled glory as Frank arriving home from college is trying to decide whether to return to school. He reunites with Slord, his childhood friend who never made it out of Enon, Ohio, and who makes his living selling bags of pot to local teens. On a lost weekend, Frank and Slord indulge in substance-filled nights, caustically lampooning themselves and everything around them, laying bare the punctured dreams of disillusioned youth.

Good Grooming and a Healthy Respect for Authority is an antidote to the traditional coming-of-age tale and unique in its subverisve comic appeal to anyone who has felt that their ideals have been sold out beneath them.

Excerpts:

- After Slord made his way to Frank’s side to support him in his cause, they then encouraged the teens to come to terms with their neighbors by having them cast their gazes across the surrounding yards, taking in their town’s authenticity, unpretentiousness, and proud work ethic and then, of course, afterward, urging them to go into those yards and savagely uproot every shrub that even remotely reminded them of their dads.

- Although Frank could only recall descending to such a grievous, nuanced depth of drunken animosity a handful of times before this morning, he was still always prepared—sober or not—to levy a harsh critique on those national touchstones that he felt were complicit in both his and America's decline, usually beginning with the dating dos and don'ts championed by Miss Manners.

- Maligned, as if someone had taken advantage of his dozing off to reach into his gut to rearrange his organs, repositioning them so they could be easily plucked out and used as physical evidence against him in a civil suit lodged by some mothers’ group. Groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving or Mothers Against Ungrateful Youths Who Fail to Show the Proper Respect Toward Those Aspects of America Which They Themselves Find Wholesome and Agreeable, or perhaps a more entrenched group, such as Mothers Against Sharp, Pointy Things.

- The kind of Darwinian, survival-of-the-fittest business-based concerns that Frank could easily see culminate in the following exchange: “Do you know the devastating effect it would have on the US economy if trollop snow bunnies were suddenly allowed to thwart the lecherous advances of businessmen?” “My God, you’re right. It would be left teetering on the edge of collapse. It’s clear we need to see to the debauching of those brazen temptresses as soon as possible. Not for us, mind you, or even every other businessman. But rather for those most dependent on us . . . for our wives and children.”

- That as they continued to hungrily jut them outwards - practically in unison - towards an unsteady Joan-of-Arc who had just stumbled into the room and was now taking angry swipes at Cocca trying to reclaim her bra from him. Obviously fearful for the bra’s well-being in the face of such an unbecoming onslaught, Cocca took to protectively mouthing it.

- Determined to force him to respond to their presence and to concede that he was indeed in the backseat of a Ford Falcon hurtling towards the village of Enon “soon to be swaddled by the stalwart, genial winds of middle America,” Slord told him. “Where every flame from a lighter is an abetting light...Every beer a baptism.” “And where every former classmate found tonguing the inside of a bong,” added Frank, “is one more indictment of the American public-school system.”

This is a third book of poetry by Pamela J Hatch.

Fifty-three poems that were finished when a shoebox full of notes were found that had been stored away and forgotten. The notes were jotted down on napkins, post-it notes, receipts, envelopes, and other items that were on hand when the inspirations hit. Some of the original notes have been copied and included beside the final version. There are five sections to which the poems have been divided: Writing Validations; Thoughts Streaming; Spiritual Truths; Quirky Detours; and Love Defined.

Pamela J Hatch is an author, poet, editor, publisher, and creative writing instructor. She is Co-Founder of Writer's Camp Laurel where she helps other writers and poets make their dreams of writing and publishing come true.

They failed once. Now, the fate of their world depends on whether they can heal-and fight-together.

When the unthinkable shatters Eva and Bash's bonding ceremony, Quinn Sagray knows she's the only one who can make things right. And the best person to help her? Tobias-her best friend's brother whose death broke her heart.

He's been avoiding her. But danger doesn't care about old wounds and faceless fears, and neither does the dark force threatening everything they love.

As Quinn and Tobias uncover a twisted conspiracy and face a familiar foe, she must wield every ounce of her medical knowledge and forbidden magic-powers she swore she'd never use. And Tobias must finally face the shadow that haunts him, confront the mistakes of his past, and reclaim the strength he thought he lost.

The past still aches. Something still smolders between them. But time is running out.

To save his sister, their people, and maybe each other, they'll have to trust what was broken. Or risk losing their minds.

The Shattered Mirror is a dark and spicy fantasy romance featuring second chance romance, forced proximity, dual POV, and a heart-wrenching journey toward healing, magic, and redemption.

Retired librarian Lizzie Donahue expected sea breezes, polished brass, and perhaps the thrill of a second dessert on her luxury Aegean cruise. What she did not expect was a fatal collapse on the shuffleboard court.

When glamorous travel blogger Toni Barton is found stricken under the hot Mediterranean sun, the ship’s doctor calls it heatstroke. Lizzie knows better. Toni had complained of feeling chilled earlier. Her drink smelled wrong. And on a ship where no one can leave until Santorini, too many people have reasons to want the influencer silenced.

As the Eternal Azure sails toward one of the world’s most beautiful islands, Lizzie begins sorting clues the way she once sorted shelves at the library: carefully, quietly, and with a talent for noticing what everyone else misses. A rival travel writer, a polished ex-husband, a desperate spa manager, an overworked cruise director, and a charming guest lecturer all circle the truth while the tension onboard grows sharper by the hour.

With the captain trying to keep panic contained and a handsome security officer warning her not to interfere, Lizzie must untangle blackmail, betrayal, and poisonous secrets before the ship reaches port. Because on a luxury cruise, paradise is only a deck away from danger.

Murder on the Shuffleboard Court is a traditional cozy mystery featuring a clever retired sleuth, a glamorous cruise-ship setting, layered suspects, and a puzzle-rich investigation with no graphic violence.

Sixteen ordinary people face the extraordinary in this newly revised collection from J. S. Bailey. Within these pages you will find…

-A wealthy divorcee whose love of antiques turns her life into a living nightmare

-A ghost hunt that goes terribly wrong in the worst of ways

-A homebound editor who must face his demons in order to survive the deadly cold

-A spaceship crew stranded for decades on a distant world

…and much, much more.

What will the mirror show you?

She came to cook. Love was never on the menu.

After a public meltdown torpedoes her culinary career, chef Chloe Foster reluctantly agrees to a hush-hush job as private chef to Hollywood's clean-eating heartthrob, Charlie Davis. But instead of sunny L.A., she's shipped off to a remote island off the coast of Maine... in the dead of winter.

Stuck in a sprawling mansion with a moody A-lister who barely eats, Chloe's hoping to keep her head down, cook her heart out, and regroup. But Charlie turns out to be more complicated-and more tempting-than the tabloids suggest. Then there's the rugged local lobsterman with a quiet strength and a wicked smile, who offers a different kind of heat.

With her career hanging in the balance and her heart pulled in two very different directions, Chloe must figure out what she really wants: the dream job that once defined her, or the messy, mouthwatering life that's taking shape on the edge of the Atlantic.

The Only Catch is a delicious love story with a recipe for heartbreak, healing, and second chances-served with butter and a side of steam.

Bio-Logic Herbalism is a practical, evidence-based home herbal reference for readers who want science over folklore.

This is a structured reference — designed to be used when needed, not read cover to cover. It provides clear, system-based guidance on what to use, how much, and why.

Inside:

• 50 herb profiles with mechanisms of action
• 88 step-by-step protocols for common and everyday issues
• Pediatric dosing guidance, drug interactions, and substitution logic

Best suited for readers who:

• prefer science-backed explanations over intuitive or traditional approaches
• want precise, structured guidance instead of general advice
• are building a reliable, repeatable system for using herbal remedies

Likely not a good fit if you’re looking for:

• spiritual or traditional herbalism
• narrative storytelling
• simplified remedy lists without explanation

Wendy Winkworth is a gritty, tough-as-nails heroine you won't soon forget.

Private investigator Wendy Winkworth never expected a simple drunk driving arrest to plunge her into the most dangerous case of her career. But when she shares a jail cell with Lisa Plinko, the rebellious daughter of renowned violin teachers, Wendy is drawn into a web of secrets that will test her skills—and her survival instincts.

After Lisa escapes home to shack up with the rough-and-tumble Cheeley brothers, her worried parents hire Wendy to bring their daughter back. It seems like a straightforward assignment until the shocking murder of Miki Plinko turns everything upside down.

Now operating under multiple disguises and dodging a predatory police sergeant with a sinister reputation, Wendy must navigate small-town politics, musical rivalries, and hidden passions to uncover the truth. When bank robberies, arson, and witchcraft get thrown into the mix, Wendy realizes she's in way over her head.

With her sharp wit as her best defense, Wendy races to solve the case before becoming the next victim. As she uncovers layer after layer of deception, she learns that in Cassville, Illinois, everyone is switching sides—and nobody can be trusted.

Every house has its secrets, some more sinister than others.

It is the summer of 1925 in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. Newlyweds James and Mildred Teed move into their dream house, but dark forces threaten their happiness. Mildred hears voices and slips into delusion until she is unable to discern what is real and what is not. It is the summer of 1963. Betty, her husband, and their children move into their new home. The glow of owning their first house is darkened by the house’s history, though its tainted past is what made it affordable. People in the town are frightened by the Teed House. Few will step foot in it, and soon Betty realizes her family must leave — before they run out of time.

It is the summer of 2023, and Jess’s world has fallen apart. She leaves her job as a legal aid lawyer in Toronto and returns to her hometown of New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. With money tight, she buys the dilapidated Teed House — she’s never believed the stories. After all, houses aren’t really haunted. Are they?

Healing takes strength. Trust takes courage. Love takes everything.

Rosemary Cashman is ready to reclaim her life. After battling cancer and years spent wrapped in her family's care, she's determined to prove she doesn't need anyone—not even the hot, mysterious man she literally runs into on the street. But when he asks her out, she says yes. Because dating a stranger sounds like a pretty good way to start living again.

Aleksei Thompson has one mission: bring down the mafia kingpin responsible for his best friend's death. When intel points to an unassuming accountant named Rosemary as a potential key in the case, Aleksei sets up a chance encounter. His plan? Get close, gather evidence, and disappear.

But things get complicated when Rosemary stumbles onto incriminating invoices at work—proof that puts a target on her back. Now she and Aleksei are on the run, and the lines between truth and lies, strategy and seduction, begin to blur.

As the danger deepens and secrets unravel, Rosemary must decide: should she trust the man who lied to protect her—or walk away to protect herself?

Perfect for fans of slow-burn romantic suspense, undercover intrigue, and heroines who fight for their own second chance.

Tech Equity: Freedom Through Enabling Technology is the first comprehensive operational playbook on enabling technology for HCBS, IDD, and aging services.

Written by Precious "Preciosa" Myers-Brown, the first Black woman to found a full-service enabling technology and remote supports company in the United States, the book confronts the realities holding the field back: a workforce crisis stretched past its breaking point, outdated service models built for a different era, fragmented policy that punishes innovation, and the persistent absence of equity in who gets access to technology and who gets left behind.

The book introduces four proprietary frameworks: the Enabled Life Model™, the Tech Equity Triangle™, the Seven Freedoms of ET™, and the Ritmo Framework™. Together, they offer a roadmap for transforming how care gets delivered, how technology gets implemented, and how freedom gets built into the everyday lives of the people supported.

Tech Equity speaks to the full ecosystem: direct support professionals, families, self-advocates, providers, executives, policymakers, state agencies, funders, and anyone working at the intersection of care, technology, and human dignity. It is grounded in nearly four decades of frontline experience and written for everyone who can feel that the current system is not built to last and is ready to help build what comes next.

Clem has always known how to survive.

A gifted liar and professional scam artist, she’s spent years reinventing herself and escaping consequences.

But when her chronically ill sister Vicky becomes the target of a relentless stalker, Clem finds herself hunting someone who may be even more dangerous than she is. Threatening messages escalate. The police start asking questions. And for the first time, Clem isn’t the only one hiding something. Because as the investigation closes in, it won’t just expose a stalker.

It will expose the truth about the sisters themselves.

And some truths don’t set people free. They destroy them.

What happens when you reinvent yourself from scratch, only to fall for the one person you can’t be honest with?

Harper Langford just blew up her entire life. She left behind a controlling fiancé and a family empire she never asked for. She lands in Austin, Texas with one bag and a fake last name, crashing in the spare room of Jonah Levine, a quietly brilliant tech founder who names his appliances, argues with his thermostat, and has a robot vacuum with a personality disorder.

It was only supposed to be temporary. Jonah is not Harper’s type. He wears wire-frame glasses. He gets excited about spreadsheets. He plays ultimate frisbee. But he also makes her coffee exactly the way she likes it without being asked, refuses to let her settle for less than she deserves, and is the most genuine person she’s ever met.

There’s just one problem. Jonah has built his career on fighting everything Harper comes from. And he has no idea who she really is.

Funny, warm, and full of slow-burn romance, 404 Love Not Found is a story about losing everything you were supposed to want, and discovering that the life you actually needed was waiting in the most unexpected place.

When the King Minos Circus’s beloved elephant vanishes during a parade, suspicion falls on the owner’s estranged daughter and a young clown haunted by the ghost of his father.

1974 – The King Minos Circus is barely holding on as the country falters and audiences drift away. Its fortunes rise again when Christos “King” Minos unlocks a dazzling vanishing elephant illusion featuring Henrietta, the animal he loves more fiercely than he can admit.

But when animal-rights activists launch a plot of their own, the illusion becomes real. Henrietta disappears—along with Minos’s daughter, Randi, and Ainge, the circus’s newest clown. Left behind, Minos believes he has been betrayed by the two people he trusted most and vows to bring them to justice.

Held captive in a barn north of Seattle, Randi and Ainge form an uneasy alliance as they care for Henrietta and plan their escape. Their journey—stretching across the American West, through small towns and roadside shows—forces them to confront who they are, whom they belong to, and what freedom truly means.

In the end, the choice of whether Henrietta returns to the circus is not theirs—but hers.

A woman wakes up every day with no memory of the day before. When she finds a note in her own handwriting “DON'T TRUST HIM” she realizes she's living with someone who may be manipulating her… or worse.

Every trace of certainty has been replaced by fragments: notebooks filled with her own handwriting, a man who insists he is there to protect her, and a locked office that holds answers she is not sure she wants to find.

When recordings begin to contradict what she has been told and a mysterious woman calls claiming they have spoken before, the line between truth and manipulation starts to dissolve. Each new discovery points to something deliberate, a structure designed to collapse every time she gets too close.

As memories conflict and reality shifts around her, she is forced to question everything, especially the person closest to her. But the more she uncovers, the clearer one thing becomes: some answers are not meant to survive until morning.

The truth is there. It always is. Until morning.

Writer's Camp provides publishing opportunities such as this anthology for writers of all ages.

Writer's Camp has three goals:

• To Teach writing skills individually or in groups;
• To build confidence in writers by providing feedback along with encouragement; and
• To provide publishing opportunities such as this anthology.

This anthology includes works by fifteen writers around our theme of Toys, Puzzles, and Games: Amelia Clemsey, Karen Ziebarth Betty Louise Mary Alice Higgs Cambria Engstrom Pamela J Hatch Cath Susla Reed Walters Donna G Fowler Sharlee Cheyenne Frankie Walters Tanya R. Whitney Gracie Maughmer Terra Robinson Jason Ervin

Enjoy reading...and if these entries inspire you to write something yourself...see if it will fit into the theme of our next anthology.

Pride, prejudice, and a love that must remain private.

Netherfield Park is let at last, and Mr and Mrs Bennet and their five sons couldn’t be more pleased. For John, the heir, new neighbours bring the prospect of a happy and suitable marriage, if only Miss Bingley’s relations can overcome their distaste for his. For Christopher, the second son, there is the possibility of a different, more daring connection with the disdainful Mr Fitzwilliam, if only he can learn to question his own first impressions…

With all the incident, wit, and romance of the original, The Quaint Convictions of Kit Bennet is a queer re-imagining of Jane Austen’s great classic, with a gender-shifted cast tracing a new love story from Longbourn to Pemberley.

The author is a surgeon.

Long shifts. Physical exhaustion. The pressure of the operating room. No hesitation.

But finances. Health. Family. The quiet obligations of a private life.

Left only with his own will — and miserable.

You've tried everything.

Willpower. Discipline. Habit trackers. Morning routines. Motivational frameworks.

Some of it worked — for a while. Then collapsed. And every time it collapsed, you blamed yourself a little more.

Here's what nobody told you:

The effort wasn't failing despite your trying. It was failing because of it.

Every time you forced yourself, your brain registered a threat and pushed back harder. The more discipline you applied, the more resistance you created. You weren't weak. You were caught in a biological loop that gets worse the harder you fight it.

This book doesn't give you a new system to follow. It shows you the mechanism — clearly enough that the mechanism starts changing on its own.

Readers describe something unexpected after finishing: a quietness. Like the mental noise that used to accompany every task just... softened. Actions that once required negotiation, guilt, and force begin happening without the weight.

No morning routine. No habit tracker. No 10-step plan.

If you've read the productivity books and still find yourself stuck — this is the book that explains why.

This book is for you if:

• You know exactly what you should do — and still can't do it
• You've changed temporarily, many times, but it never stuck
• You're exhausted from the war inside your head
• You suspect the problem isn't willpower — but don't know what it is instead

Tired of relying on store-bought remedies and scrambling for natural solutions at the last minute? It’s time to take control of your family’s wellness!

Home Apothecary for Healthy Lifestyle is the practical DIY herbal guide for anyone seeking to create a reliable, natural, and safe system of health right in their own home.

This book is your personal guide to the world of herbalism, teaching you how to harness the power of nature for daily well-being, immune system strengthening, and preparedness for any minor ailment. Master the methods for making effective tinctures, salves, balms, and blends from simple, accessible ingredients.

Inside, you will find a wealth of DIY recipes, categorized into three essential sections:

• Household Use & Everyday Wellness: Learn how to replace harsh household chemicals with safe, DIY herbal solutions. Create natural cleaning products, room deodorizers, effective repellents, and master daily tonic blends to maintain high energy levels.
• Immune & Cold Season Support: Get your home medicine cabinet ready for any season! Discover how to boost your immunity with tinctures and syrups.
• First Aid & Minor Ailments: Create natural balms for treating burns, cuts, bruises, and master Natural First Aid for the first signs of a cold or pain.

Unlock the power of herbs to live a healthier, more self-sufficient, and conscious life. Start your journey to building your Home Apothecary today!

-----

The Complete Home Apothecary Series

Your comprehensive library for natural healing and herbal mastery.

• Home Apothecary for Beginners — Build your foundation with essential herbal wisdom.
• Home Apothecary for Whole Family — Safe, natural care for every generation.
• Home Apothecary for DIY Projects — Creative hands-on recipes for home and health.
• Home Apothecary for Calm and Mental Care — Finding balance in a stressful world.
• Home Apothecary for Healthy Lifestyle — Daily habits for lasting vitality and immunity.
• Home Apothecary for Busy Women — Fast and effective solutions for modern life.
• Home Apothecary for Natural Balance — Tuning your health to seasons and body needs.
• Home Apothecary for Kitchen Pantry — Turning common spices into potent remedies.
• Home Apothecary for Master Remedies — Advanced techniques for professional-grade extracts.
• Home Apothecary for Herbal Harvesting — From wild foraging to garden cultivation.

Each book in the series focuses on a unique pillar of herbalism, helping you transition from a curious beginner to a confident home apothecary master.

When pranks turn deadly, Mandy must find a way to win the game assigned to her, where the killer keeps changing the rules.

The ominous note slipped into Mandy Wright's locker reads like a hoax...until she finds her friend's body discarded in a dumpster, the victim of a gruesome firework execution. But obeying the killer's warning to cut ties with her friends doesn't stop another one of her friends from being tragically murdered in what everyone insists is merely a "disturbing prank gone wrong." And when a new note spells Mandy herself as the next target, there's only one chance of survival: finding a way to outsmart a killer who doesn't play by their own rules.

Erkül Bwaroo is an elf. Nothing unusual about that.

He also happens to be a private detective. Not just any private detective, but the most brilliant, and, naturellement, the best-dressed one in the elven kingdom. Probably in any kingdom.

The elf with the impressive moustache and distinctive French accent is summoned by seven dwarves to investigate the death of a beautiful princess. Everyone – including the police –assumes it was an accident. But not the dwarves. Their beautiful princess was undoubtedly murdered. What’s more, they know who the culprit must have been: none other than the princess’s wicked stepmother. But how can they prove it?

Erkül Bwaroo is soon convinced that the puzzle is a worthy challenge for his ‘little grey cells’. However, there is rarely only one suspect in a case. Indeed, Erkül Bwaroo suspects everyone – and he suspects no-one.

There is not a second to lose. Murders often do not happen in isolation. Can he solve the case before anyone else meets an unfortunate end? Will his elegant patent leather shoes survive the rigours of trudging through the forest? With his steadfast butler Weisman at his side providing the right beverage for every occasion and an all-knowing objectivity in his observations, the detective’s ‘little grey cells’ set about their task.

This book is a humorous homage to a great English crime writer and her famous Belgian detective.

Nora Callahan left Cedar Falls at twenty-two with a broken heart and a promise never to return.

Eleven years later, she's driving back just for two weeks, just for her grandmother's recovery. She is absolutely not staying. But Cedar Falls has other plans. So does the old Whitmore pharmacy, a 1908 brick Italianate gem with a pressed-tin ceiling and a century of stories locked inside its walls. And so does James Harte, the apple farmer next door who has been quietly tending his orchard and his feelings for thirteen years. As Nora fights to restore the building that no one else believed in, she begins to wonder whether the life she built away from here was running toward something, or simply away from this.

Where the Willow Bends is a slow-burn small-town romance about the courage it takes to stop protecting yourself from the things you want most.

When ex-librarian Angela Austin inherits her grandmother's hundred-year-old house, she sees a chance to rebuild her life-and finally feel safe.

Juggling furious relatives and a will that forbids selling the property, Angela hires Restorations Done Wright to turn the Queen Anne Victorian into a charming bed and breakfast. But the renovation unearths more than rotting beams and leaking pipes. When a long-buried skeleton is discovered in the cellar, Angela learns that the house she loves is steeped in secrets her grandmother took to the grave—and the quiet Long Island town of Pequot Point is anything but welcoming.

Architect Roen "RJ" Wright never intended to stay in Pequot Point. Drawn home by his family's failing business, he agrees to renovate Angela's house despite his grandfather's fierce objections. As vandalism escalates and gossip turns dangerous, Angela and Roen team up to uncover what really happened decades ago when Angela's grandfather vanished-and why so many townspeople suddenly have a stake in uncovering the truth. Could the skeleton in the cellar be Angela's missing grandfather? Their search exposes stolen fortunes, domestic violence, and a forbidden love that ties their families together in ways neither could have imagined.

As attraction flares and danger closes in, Angela and Roen must decide how much truth they can survive. Because in Pequot Point, every secret has a cost, and some lies were told for good reasons. One thing's certain. The past is never really finished... and the truth can never stay buried for long.

She was meant to be a peace offering. She refused to be a prize.

When the Sun Fae arrive to claim a bride and end a devastating war, Princess Liviana is chosen despite being the most defiant of her father’s daughters. She would rather burn than become a shadow of herself in a kingdom built on conquest.

Fleeing her arranged marriage, she escapes into the forest—only to be tracked down by a fae soldier with sunlight in his eyes... and a dangerous curiosity about the princess who refuses to behave.

His touch awakens a forbidden desire neither of them can ignore.

Liviana is torn between the freedom she’s always craved and a treasonous attraction to the very soldier sent to bring her back. Every stolen kiss and whispered confession brings her closer to a betrayal that could reignite the war.

The Sun Fae court expects a docile bride who will fade into silence behind a veil. Instead, they are about to face a princess armed with a dagger, a quick tongue, and a wildfire that refuses to be extinguished.

In a world ruled by light and flame, love isn’t just dangerous, it’s a spark that could destroy everything.

Fans of fast-paced romantasy will love this action-packed, swoon-worthy novella!

Tropes:

🔥 Enemies to Lovers🔥 Arranged Marriage / Peace Treaty🔥 Forbidden Romance🔥 Elemental Magic🔥 Fierce Heroine

Contains mature themes, sensual intimacy, and the emotional weight of fantasy love stories where hearts are tested and happily ever afters are earned.

The Bound to the Elements books are connected by theme, not reading order. Each novella is a standalone romance featuring a human heroine and her happily ever after with a fae hero of one of the eight elements.

Amarisa's Cooking Pot: Tales of Life in All Its Wonders is a riveting collection whose worlds collide and connect between the fantastic and the ordinary.

Startling in their breadth and depth, these stories range from the quietly desperate to the gloriously fantastical, representing Mexican American culture among the characters who are guided by gifts of enchantment or confronted with illusory events shaped by deeply human and enlightening emotions.

Each story is dedicated to capturing something ineffable, an emotional truth, a moment of beauty or realization, a moment of calm, or a spark of fury. What does it mean to be alive in a capricious world? Désirée Zamorano allows readers to explore this question beautifully, and memorably, long after the last page is turned.

Jane’s grandmother is dying. To make things worse, the hospital’s chaplain tells her that the only way Jane will see her in the afterlife is if she starts believing in God ASAP... which is something she just can’t do.

Devastated, Jane runs away, only to meet someone who could change everything: Jesus Christ.

Or, well, someone who thinks he’s Jesus Christ, anyway. This Jesus, though, isn’t what she imagined. Sure, he’s got the long hair and the beard stubble, but he isn’t the slightest bit preachy. In fact, he just seems kind of confused. Oh yeah, and he’s a teenage boy. A pretty cute one.

With no shoes and no memory, it’s pretty clear this boy needs help. To keep him safe, Jane brings him home with her, only to discover that the answers they seek can’t be found in the places she knows. So, the pair sets out on a journey to discover the boy’s identity. The further she gets from home, though, the more questions she has, and the harder she falls for this mysterious “Jesus.” Could he really be who he says he is? And does she want him to be?

Despite the fact that her parents are angry and her grandmother is running out of time, Jane can’t stop until she learns the truth. Will she find the key to getting into Heaven? Or is she only putting her heart through Hell?

In Regency Bath, flowers speak louder than words. Someone is using them to lie.

Clara Hartwell makes her living writing the fashionable language of flowers books favored by Bath's society brides. With a careful arrangement of violets for devotion, camellias for admiration, or striped carnations for refusal, a bouquet can express feelings society would rather leave unsaid.

For women who cannot always speak their minds, flowers have become a clever secret language.

But when a young errand boy is found dead by the river with a list of false flower meanings in his pocket, Clara realizes someone in Bath is twisting that language into something dangerous.

Determined to uncover the truth, Clara joins forces with Bath's thoughtful new coroner, Dr Gideon Bell, a man who notices far more than he says and who is not easily fooled by polite society's careful appearances. As the two follow a trail of coded bouquets, whispered scandals, and carefully planted lies, Clara begins to suspect the murderer may be hiding in the very circles that commission her work.

Complicating matters further is Adrian Vale, a charming perfumer whose interest in Clara may be more than professional. His knowledge of scent and symbolism could either help her solve the mystery or lead her straight into danger.

In a city where every bouquet carries a message, Clara must decide which meanings to trust and whether her own heart has been mistranslated.

Perfect for readers who love:

• historical romance with mystery
• strong, clever heroines
• slow-burn romance
• found family
• Victorian flower language and secret messages

Because in Bath, a single flower can say everything.

Or hide a deadly lie.

When Daniel Carter returns to his small Missouri hometown to help his aging mother save the family house, he expects a quick visit, not a reckoning with the life he left behind.

As old memories resurface, family secrets emerge, and a lost love reenters his world, Daniel begins to question everything he once believed about success, home, and happiness.

The Last Summer on Hawthorne Street is a heartfelt novel about aging parents, second chances, and the quiet power of ordinary lives.

A dangerous mission. A deadly secret. A desire that could ignite a war.

Michel de Chevalerie has spent years navigating the brutal territories of the Mongol Empire, protecting the precious trade routes between France and the East. As heir to a powerful duke, he's a soldier, a diplomat—and a man who doesn't make mistakes. Until her.

When a mysterious Mongolian woman stumbles into his path, injured and alone, Michel is drawn in by her sharp wit, fiery will, and beauty that makes his blood burn. He knows better than to get involved. But one reckless decision pulls him into a treacherous game of deception, desire, and political intrigue.

Eve is fleeing everything she's ever known: a forced marriage, a bloodstained crown, and the enemies that hunt her like prey. Her only hope lies west-in the fabled lands of France. To get there, she'll use every weapon at her disposal, including the charming nobleman leading a merchant caravan through her homeland. But what begins as a calculated seduction becomes something far more dangerous.

Michel might be her best chance at survival. He could also be the ruin of them both.

As secrets unravel and armies close in, Michel and Eve must decide what's worth fighting for: duty, desire¿ or each other.

Devoted to His Sword is a steamy historical adventure romance filled with forced proximity, a runaway bride, grumpy/sunshine tension, and a journey across dangerous lands-perfect for fans of high-stakes love stories with epic backdrops and irresistible slow-burn tension.

On the Upper East Side, even the apocalypse has a dress code.

Charmaine Starling is an Upper East Side housewife whose life is in crisis. She and her husband are in the middle of a messy divorce. He's dragging his feet on a settlement, and his mother-who controls the family purse strings-is pushing back on their prenup. If that weren't bad enough, Charmaine has just read that her husband, Darren, is holed up in a suite of rooms at The Carlyle with his mistress-whom Page Six is calling "The New Mrs. Starling." They've run pictures of the happy couple, and she has a pink diamond on her ring finger that is almost as large as her lack of shame.

Oh, yeah, there's also something sinister afoot. It seems like you can't go to a sit-down dinner without the host putting on a black hood and opening the room to a ritual sacrifice. But now something else is making the rounds-less Chanel, more contagion. A scourge. One that's spreading faster than gossip. People are getting sick, and bodies are missing from the morgue...

Seventeen days at sea. No ports. No escape.

The M/S Elysium is carrying eight hundred passengers across the Atlantic on a luxury repositioning cruise from Italy to Barbados. At table six, strangers become uneasy companions: a brittle French marriage, a wealthy Swede and his younger partner, a priest, a journalist, a woman who prefers to eat alone, and others who have boarded the ship believing that two weeks at sea means peace, privacy, and reinvention.

But beneath the routines of formal dinners, pool decks, and polished service, something is wrong.

As tensions rise among the passengers and cracks begin to show among the crew, the voyage reveals a hidden reality below the waterline, one sustained by paperwork, silence, and the comforting illusion that everything important is always counted.

Not All Hands is a dark literary suspense novel about complicity, privilege, and the things that disappear inside systems designed to look flawless from the outside.

A century-old soldier's diary wasn't meant for him, but he found himself in the story.

In his fifteenth novel, multiple-award-winning author Gerald Everett Jones weaves a richly layered dual narrative that bridges a century of war, love, and self-discovery.

At the heart of the story lies an antique diary, discovered by Jonathan Frederick Worthington, a reclusive, middle-aged art historian in Santa Monica. As he embarks on a sabbatical year intended for scholarly rest, he finds himself instead consumed by the cryptic memoirs of a World War I cavalryman-initialed J.F.W. - a soldier whose identity is eerily similar to his own. What begins as a curiosity turns into an obsession as Jonathan attempts to unravel the diary's origin, its hidden truths, and what it may reveal about his own mysterious family past.

As Jonathan becomes immersed in the soldier's life story, themes of exile, duty, identity, and geopolitical ambition resonate across time. The almost forgotten Berlin-to-Baghdad railway becomes a symbol of both imperial greed and personal escape.

At the same time, Jonathan's reflections - tinged with regret, wit, and yearning - reveal a life stalled by isolation and unresolved family wounds. In the unfolding correspondence between past and present, readers are treated to a literary experience that is both contemplative and adventurous.

Jonathan's Journal is more than a historical excavation. It's a story about how lives are entangled across generations, how war shapes not only nations but psyches, and how discovery-of truth, of love, of courage - can happen generations later - and when we least expect it.

DARPA proved the impossible. 


The experiment succeeded. That was the problem.

Former Tier 1 operator Grayson Maddox now leads a classified physics project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His team has breached the known boundaries of physics.



They call it RIFT.



It’s a discovery on par with the splitting of the atom: a gateway to vast resources and consequences no one fully understands. Like fission, this breakthrough could reshape the future—or weaponize it.



Then the sabotage begins.



A mysterious outage cripples his lab. An armed intruder targets his assistant, Mari. A bomb detonates outside a DARPA briefing he just left. Someone knows exactly what Maddox has unlocked, and they’re moving with lethal precision to stop it.



On the run, Maddox turns to the only people he trusts: his former Unit teammates. But even CIA safe houses aren’t safe. Somewhere, there’s a leak, and two rival factions are closing in. One wants to harness RIFT. The other wants it erased—and Maddox along with it.



To stay alive, Maddox must become the operator he thought he’d left behind.

Because if RIFT falls into the wrong hands, the next battlefield won’t be a country.



It will be reality itself.

“A breathless tech thriller … Our verdict: Get it.” — Kirkus Reviews

Praised by U.S. Army Special Forces and former Army Ranger Regiment operators for its authenticity and pacing.

The Journey Beyond the Map follows Elias, a young cartographer who joins a sea expedition after discovering a map that does not behave like any other.

Aboard the ship Wanderlight, the crew ventures beyond familiar waters, where navigation becomes uncertain and the map begins to shift in ways no one can fully explain. As the journey progresses, Elias is drawn deeper into the mystery of a guide that seems to respond to the voyage itself.

What begins as an exploration gradually turns into a test of perception, direction, and trust in what is known.

Padani: A Family Story is a sweeping biographical novel by acclaimed Israeli author Shifra Horn, inspired by the true story of the Padani family.

Beginning in revolutionary Odessa, the novel follows the family through immigration to Antwerp, Nazi-occupied Belgium, and eventual rebuilding in Israel. At its center is Henri Padani — Holocaust survivor, master jeweler, and founder of what became Israel’s leading jewelry brand. Drawing on family memories and firsthand testimony, Shifra Horn brings to life a story of survival, craftsmanship, and reinvention.

The Author

Shifra Horn lives in Jerusalem and has published five novels, three works of nonfiction, and four children’s books. She has received numerous literary awards in Israel and abroad, including the Brenner Prize and the Prime Minister’s Prize. Her books have become bestsellers, touched a wide readership, and have been translated into nine languages.

He’s a one thousand year old vampire but looks a crisp thirty-five with the shirt/shoes/wardrobe to match.

But when he meets dark beauty Chidera he begins to wonder about his free-wheeling bachelor lifestyle. Is he, as Chidera says, a 'ghost of a man?'

Meanwhile a sinister cult starts to take an interest in him and the actual ghost of a dead girl will haunt him until he solves the mystery of her death.

A fast-paced, hilarious page-turner, A Vamp Revamped is the first in a vampire comedy horror series that will leave you thirsting for more!

This is the first a five volume set. A beautifully designed Chumash, complete with Rashi and Onkelos, created to live in Jewish homes, shuls, and schools world-wide.

Each parsha is dedicated to the heroes of October 7th and the Iron Swords War, weaving their memory into the weekly Torah reading. Alongside the text, readers will find a dvar Torah, a short biography, and words of remembrance. In this way, the stories of 821 kedoshim are preserved within the rhythm of Jewish life, allowing their names and legacies to continue alongside the Torah itself.

It is a spiritual monument, a national act of memory, and a living legacy.

About Mantzichim

Mantzichim connects bereaved families with Jewish communities in Israel and worldwide through innovative forms of commemoration. Founded after October 7, the organization renews Torah scrolls and transforms them into living memorials for the fallen. Each scroll becomes a center of ongoing community life, ensuring remembrance remains active, meaningful, and rooted in tradition.

A Tale of Two Chinas is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of China in the early-mid twenty-first century.

Based on Hugh Battye's own compelling fifteen-year China journey, the book takes the reader on a topical odyssey, covering many of the major economic, political and cultural themes of the later Reform years, as well as of President Xi Jinping's current New Era.

Through the vividly contrasting, yet complementary, descriptions of the "two Chinas" he experienced - the sophisticated society of the Chinese urban mainstream on the one hand, and the vibrant Muslim and Tibetan Buddhist minority cultures of the rural northwest on the other - the author provides a fresh, holistic and accessible account of a country that, despite its superpower status, still remains largely opaque to many in the non-Chinese-speaking world.

A sceptic. A healer. A church that would bury them both.

Bavaria, 1630. The Thirty Years' War has reduced Europe to ruin, and the witch trials are burning through Germany. Father Friedrich Spee is sent to investigate a mysterious death in the remote mountain village of Gramschatz. He expects to find nothing. He expects to be home by winter.

Instead, he discovers a woman the townsfolk have gone to great lengths to conceal, a healer who speaks of hidden worlds and the darkness that moves between them. Either she is the most dangerous woman he has ever met, or she is the only hope for a sick and dying land.

What he finds will cost him everything he believes.

Six sisters die in a car crash at Angkor Wat and wake up as Naga princesses in ancient Cambodia—with scales, magic, and a prophecy that demands they fall in love or erase their entire future from existence.

Chanda Seang spent fourteen years raising her five younger sisters after their mother's death, sacrificing everything to keep her family together. The last thing she expected was to die with them in a car accident during a Cambodian heritage trip—or to wake up underwater in the body of a serpent princess with gold and azure scales. Now she and her sisters must fulfill an ancient prophecy: each must bond with a human partner to anchor the rising land into existence and create Cambodia itself. Refuse, and everyone they've ever known—including their grieving father—will simply cease to exist. But when an impulsive Indian prince dives off his ship to meet her and fire demons attack their bonding ceremony, Chanda realizes the prophecy requires more than duty. It demands she do the one thing she's never allowed herself: trust someone else with her heart.

As political factions plot to stop the prophecy and Asura armies gather to destroy the emerging nation, Chanda must navigate court intrigue, deadly trials, and her growing feelings for a man she's known less than a month. Her control-freak instincts scream that falling in love this fast is impossible—but the magic responds only to truth, and time is running out. With her sisters' lives hanging in the balance and an entire world's existence at stake, Chanda faces an impossible choice: open herself completely to love and vulnerability, or watch everything she's ever fought to protect disappear like it never existed at all.

A blind cellist who stopped playing. A mother who escaped at sixteen. A father who came back from the wrong war.

They all end up in the same Boston building — separated by two floors and twenty-two years of silence — and a piece of music drifting through an open window.

Told through four voices across two decades, The Window is a novel about estrangement and reconciliation, about the families we search for and the ones we are given, and about the ordinary miracle of a family that refuses to stay lost.

For readers of A Man Called Ove, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry.

The Window is a story of music and memory, of adoption and homecoming, of the fathers we lose and the ones we become. It is a novel about grief and hope held in the same hand, about the long arithmetic of forgiveness, and about how a single piece of music — Schubert's Ständchen, written two hundred years ago — can carry what words cannot.

An emotional, character-driven debut for book clubs and readers of literary family sagas.

Overthinking isn’t what it looks like.

It’s not a failure of the mind. It’s a sign that the mind has been asked for something it cannot give: certainty about what hasn’t happened yet, or a guarantee that the decision will not be regretted. And the loyal mind, being diligent, keeps trying.

Written in second person, this book is structured as a series of recognitions rather than a step-by-step program. It traces the fears beneath analysis paralysis (regret, judgment, loss, self-doubt) and separates genuine discernment from anxious reassurance-seeking.

The Relief of Not Knowing is what remains as that demand for certainty recedes, revealing something steady beneath the thinking. A presence of mind that never depended on any outcome.

No acronyms, no thought-stopping techniques, no twenty-one-day plans.

Readers drawn to literary nonfiction will recognize the territory. Close in spirit to Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks and Pema Chödrön’s Comfortable with Uncertainty, written in a contemplative register. Approximately 28,000 words. Reads in an evening, sits with you longer.

Approximately 28,000 words / 112 pages. Published by Headwater Press.

A murder in Florence. A mother convicted. A family destroyed.

After seventeen-year-old Anna Martellini is brutally killed, her mother, Deanna, is sentenced for the crime, protesting her innocence until the day she dies behind bars. The case fades into silence. The city moves on.

Twenty years later, Deanna’s niece refuses to accept the verdict.

When Olivia returns to Italy, determined to clear her aunt’s name, she steps into a maze of buried evidence, hidden motives, and long-protected lies. Someone kept quiet in 1974. Someone still is.

Four silences endured.

The fifth shattered everything.

In 1989 Dresden, two unworldly academics must reason their way through increasingly dire events.

Irascible Pike of Logic and placid Hallux of Math enjoy quiet evenings at the fire, soaking up just enough Scotch to pour themselves into orderly dreams. Until one night a creature from Hallux’s past intrudes on their oasis: MI6 agent Barrington Barnes. He activates Hallux, long-ago mathematician to the spies, and despatches him to a technical conference in Dresden. Outraged anti-communist Pike insists on accompanying his naïve and trusting friend. Pike’s son, slacker and poet, having nothing better to do, tags along.

In Dresden they are soon entangled with Stasi agents, East German punks, and an ambitious KGB agent known as Little Volodya. All the while Hallux the mathematician monitors a number station, awaiting further orders. But the orders never arrive.

Does the set of all spies not include Hallux and Pike? If not, then why have they been followed, attacked, imprisoned, released, re-captured, and driven off into the night? If so, then why doesn’t anyone seem to care?

At a secret collegiate academy where magic binds as much as it empowers, emotions run high, ambitions shift, and attraction becomes impossible to ignore.

As secrets surface and tensions rise, the lines between power, loyalty, and desire begin to blur.

Because here, magic doesn’t just change what you can do—

It changes what you want.

************

This book is intended for readers who enjoy spicy fantasy! It contains very adult thematic material and is not suitable for all ages. Elements of this book may be triggering, but to avoid spoilers, specific triggers are not prefaced. Please read at your own discretion, and thank you for your support; I hope you enjoy!!

When Alexa Dawson is sold at auction to pay a debt that was never hers, her life becomes a fight for survival.

Orphaned, unwanted, and discarded, Alexa learns early that fate is cruel. Everything changes when a prophecy whispered by the Moon Goddess reveals the truth. Alexa is destined to become the Supreme Luna, the one meant to unite all packs under a single rule with the Alpha she chooses.

But destiny is never simple.

Surrounded by betrayal and deception, Alexa must navigate broken bonds, past secrets, and powerful men who each desire her: a rejected fated mate, a brilliant strategist, a cruel Alpha, and a mysterious rogue.

To claim her future, Alexa must decide who deserves her trust, her heart, and her loyalty.

Scout pilot Tara Venn was sent ahead of the colony ships to read the surface of Ilyr and decide whether humans could land there.

Then her ship breaks apart in the atmosphere.

Alone, injured, and cut off from orbit, Tara wakes in a world of black marsh, towering root-forests, and mist thick enough to make every sound feel close. Her beacon will not connect. Her ship is burning behind her. And somewhere beyond the wreck, something is moving through the trees.

At first, she tells herself it is wildlife.

Then she hears her name.

Ilyr is not empty. It is not waiting to be claimed. It has rules, routes, warnings, and predators that understand sound better than any human alive. Every step Tara takes pulls her deeper into a world where silence is survival, mistakes travel farther than screams, and the wrong answer can bring something out of the dark.

If Tara cannot reach the colony ships in time, the others will descend blind.

And on Ilyr, blind is how humans die.

Atmospheric, relentless, and terrifying, What Hears You is a sci-fi survival horror novel about first contact, intelligent predators, and the nightmare of being heard by something that should not know your voice.

Kael Voss gave up one eye to gain the power to fight what hides beneath the world.

He serves the Order of the Blinded Crown, a secret brotherhood that hunts the things empires deny, churches fear, and ordinary people are never meant to see. Their enemies do not always come as beasts. Sometimes they wear a priest’s face. Sometimes they hide inside courts, ledgers, theaters, and polite society. Sometimes they sing with a child’s voice from beneath the stones.

When a young girl vanishes in the rain drowned port city of Silverlight, Kael is sent to find her. What begins as a missing child case leads him into flooded tunnels, old cults, and the first signs of a Herald trying to force its way into the world.

But Silverlight is only the beginning.

Across cities, deserts, temples, and graveyards of forgotten wars, Kael is pushed further into the truth behind the Blinded Crown, the price of its powers, and the ancient Dark Thrones watching from beyond human understanding.

Every wound teaches him something.

Every victory costs more than the last.

And something in the dark has started to recognize his name.

The Hollow Gospel: Scripture of Wounds is a grimdark fantasy horror novel for readers who enjoy secret orders, eldritch gods, brutal investigations, dry humor, morally scarred heroes, and battles where survival is never clean.

Have you ever heard a tune from the treetops and wondered, Who is singing?

​Birds are singing and calling all around us, but every bird's sound is different. Some even sound like familiar words, like the cardinal's wheet, wheet, wheet, birdie, birdie, birdie! In this interactive read-aloud book, children (and adults) can learn to identify twelve common birds by sight as well as by sound. Next time you visit your local park, close your eyes and listen closely. Soon you'll be able to tell who is singing!

She’s a lawyer. Controlled, calculated, untouchable.

Then a late night walk leads her into a bookstore she wasn’t supposed to find, and him. A man she never wanted and didn’t know she needed.

He just happens to be a demon. With a lot of power. And secrets that tie directly to hers.

Together they unravel a family legacy she never asked for and save the world, not in a superhero way, but in a morally grey villain way.

Dark. Atmospheric. Slow burn. Complete series.

ARC readers wanted in exchange for an honest review. DM me or drop a comment and I’ll get you a copy.

Decoding the Architecture of Japan: A 16-Year Introspective Journey of the Tokaido Road

"Most travelers visit Japan to see its beauty. An IT governance specialist walks to see the governance and its controls."

In 2006, following a life-altering accident and eight months of recovery, Ichiro Asanuma stood at Nihonbashi--the "Kilometer Zero" of Tokyo. Armed with only a walking stick and a machine-like focus on his physical goal of reaching Kyoto, he embarked on a 494km pilgrimage along the ancient Tokaido Road.

This is not a typical travelogue designed to motivate you with fantastic romance. It presents unembellished, pragmatic themes that appear as both ordinary views and hidden secrets, reflecting the complex mixture of factors in our world. While every human effort is touching, these efforts usually disappear into society as small contributions to a larger system. Asanuma--a certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), IT governance specialist, and IT strategist--spent the next 16 years documenting the performance and results of this historic route through a professional lens. He captures the human struggle to achieve the small miracles that sustain them. He treats the Tokaido not just as a path, but as a vast network of blood vessels and neural circuits within a living "social system" governed by silent rules, historical legacies, and modern architecture--a powerful river that cannot be resisted, even by those who try to swim against its current.

Why this book offers a unique analytical gaze into the Real Japan:

• A 400-Year Inquiry into Society: Utagawa Hiroshige presented a realistic view of 19th-century Japanese society--including its social polarization and diversity--through his ukiyo-e prints. This book supports readers in questioning and analyzing society by contrasting these historical scenes with contemporary photographs. By pairing ukiyo-e examples of Edo-period society with modern views that capture the "breath of humanity," the book gives readers the chance to reflect on how Japan's culture and mindset exist today.

• The Governance of the Road: From the strict military checkpoints (Sekisho) of the Edo period to modern-day "Compassion Zone" street signs, discover how the physical structures of the road exert unconscious influence over human behavior and maintain social order.

• High-Resolution Observation: Driven by his original purpose and obsession, Asanuma chose the "slowness" of walking to sample the world at a resolution impossible to capture at speed. Experience the subtle breath of local culture--matured through the passage of time--and the "breath of the people" as documented through signage and stories over nearly two decades.

Whether you are a professional seeking insights into social governance or a traveler looking to decode the "hidden codes" of Japanese history, this photo essay provides the technical manual you need to understand the Land of the Rising Sun.

"Adventure and transformation await on the Old Tokaido."

Will you—who are allowed to have emotionally stubborn, personal dreams—join the inquiry into what defines the Japanese people and their social systems, diving into a vast ocean of fear and similar selfish dreams?

Cancer was the start of Jasmine's life falling apart. Her body betrayed her, her husband left, and as she lay dying, the only one remaining at her side was her orange tabby, Otto.

Then something uncanny occurred.

At a fishing lake in the Oregon Coast Range, Jasmine is ready to reassess her priorities when a stranger catnaps Otto. One transgression leads to another, and Jasmine has never believed in turning the other cheek.

Jasmine is transforming, but whether the cancer still has anything to do with her mutating cells is beyond her. Otto has given her something, and anything from her sweet boy can only be a boon.

Jasmine may have died, but she came back.

And when a cat's around, no one is surprised by a body count.

What starts at 30,000 feet doesn’t end there.

Mid-flight from Los Angeles to D.C., Jack Mercer wakes with a jolt—and the uneasy sense that something is wrong.The crew’s smiles are strained. Their glances too careful. Around him, small details begin to shift, each one harder to ignore.

As tension builds and suspicion spreads, Mercer is forced to trust his instincts in a situation spiraling beyond his control—one that will pull him far beyond the aircraft and into the dark heart of rural North Carolina, where power, politics, and murder collide.

Deadly Ground is the second installment in the Jack Mercer series—a gripping thriller about the human cost of corporate greed and those willing to kill to protect it.Perfect for fans of Lee Child, Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, and Tom Clancy.

She's been traded twice. She's done expecting to stay.

Quinn Avery Cole joins the Portland Tempest with her walls already up — an ADHD brain the league has never known what to do with, and a lifetime of being let go. Jane Mei-Lin Yang is the team's golden girl: captain, media darling, and quietly exhausted by the performance of it all.

When they're put on the same line, the chemistry on the ice is instant. Everything else is harder. Quinn can't trust anyone to stay. Jane can't risk being truly seen.

Same Ice is the first book in The Tempest Series — a slow-burn sapphic hockey romance about found family, a neurodivergent FMC, and two women who change each other before they're ready to admit it.

HFN ending. First book in the series, but can be read separately!

#sapphic #adhd-rep #romance #sport_romance #hockey #slow-burn

Dark Matter meets HBO’s The Last of Us in this apocalyptic tale of humanity’s fight against a quickly spreading bacterial infection that turns people into possessed followers of the mysterious “Collective.”

Olivia Scott once had a strange ability: she could glimpse echoes of high-emotion events that had taken place nearby. As a child, those visions terrified her. Now, these long-forgotten gifts might be the only thing standing between survival and annihilation.

When Liv’s brother Bobby is arrested for murder, she must reclaim the power she once buried if she hopes to prove his innocence. With the help of two scientists, she makes a stunning discovery: bacteria can store memories of the world around them and transmit those memories directly into the human brain.

Humans, made of trillions of bacteria, are the perfect hosts for this microscopic invasion. A military state takes control, while scientists search for the bacteria's origins at its epicenter, the city of Wexberg.

But the deeper they dig, the more disturbing the truth becomes.

Because the bacteria aren’t just recording human history. They’re learning to control it.

Can Liv’s visions save humankind before they fall prey to the hivemind of The Collective?

When Azul awakens in a foreign world, she's already trapped as a pawn in a royal conspiracy.

Her only ally is Ragnar Valthorne, a warlord whose curse marks him as 'blessed' by death, and whose need for her political acumen matches her need for his protection.

But conspiracies, once started, rarely end as planned.

When a forgotten power left by a nameless god emerges from the wreckage of the royal family's ambitions, Azul will claim it—no matter the cost.

For she shall either find a way or make one.

The world feels ruptured, but sometimes it is through the cracks that the light gets in.

In this powerful collection of essays, thirty-six women, including Ramona Koval, Dani Valent, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, Kerri Sackville, Deborah Conway and Rachelle Unreich, reveal how their lives in Australia were irrevocably changed by the events of October 7. From race-walker Jemima Montag's account of competing in the Olympics as a Jewish athlete, to actress Dena Amy Kaplan encountering hostility when she speaks against Jew-hatred, and author Elise Esther Hearst's attempts to find solace in making comedy, Ruptured is both an exploration of the profound rift created in the wake of that devastating day, and an attempt to mend it.

The Editors:

Lee Kofman is an award-winning Russian-born, Israeli-Australian author of nine books in two languages, a writing teacher and mentor for over twenty years. Tamar Paluch is an OT, a writer and community activist, committed to elevating Jewish women's voices. She co-found­ed a plat­form to doc­u­ment wom­en’s expe­ri­ences of these times, and together, Lee and Tamar co-edited Ruptured.

“At the end of each essay, I wanted to reach out and embrace the woman who had crafted those words so fearlessly, and with such honesty.” —Nina Bassat, Member of the Order of Australia

“You will be gripped; you will be galvanized.” —Alice Zaslavsky, award-winning author

You've literally done nothing with your life. At least that's what it feels like.

The days blur together. You keep waiting for a sign, a spark, a reason to finally move. It doesn't come. And the gap between who you are and who you could be gets wider every week.

This book closes that gap.

This is not a motivational book that pumps you up for 48 hours and leaves you where you started. This is a system for people who are done drifting.

Inside:

The warrior mindset - a mental operating system for people tired of being passive in their own story

How to master your mindset using a 3-layer framework that rewires how you see yourself

Why intentional living isn't about morning routines - it's about knowing what you'd fight for

What's a homebody to do?

About to turn twenty-two, geek-adjacent telecommuter Victor Navarro isn't living his best life. He's barely making rent, and his relationship status is non-existent. His roommate and BFF, Brandon Wunderkundt (totally pronounced differently than what you're probably thinking), is an underwear gamer and struggling live-streamer whose UFO abductee supermodel girlfriend just took over their apartment. After a night of clubbing gone horribly wrong, Victor swears off the dating scene for good.

Then along comes Arin McKenzie, the cute, quirky, strangely familiar new girl next door. Suddenly Victor finds himself knee-deep in a whimsical, at times even comical relationship that seems to defy both romantic expectation and social convention.

But despite her adorable retro tendencies and perpetually sunny demeanor, Arin has a secret, and the truth behind her serendipitous arrival in Victor's life may very well be stranger than fiction.

What if horror were not a curse—but a law of nature?

A pressure in the air. A metallic taste on the tongue. A force that rewrites flesh, memory, and reality itself.

In The Light That Devours the Sky, fear is not imagined—it is physical.

The Maxwell Universe is shaped by the passage of an iron-rich comet that distorts biology and physics alike, demanding a price: memory, sanity… and human flesh.

This collection of cosmic and body horror unfolds in reverse, peeling back centuries to reveal the origin of a force that does not forgive—and does not forget:

2013 — The Rental

A house with rules. A room that feeds. To survive, a family must erase not only the dead… but themselves.

1893 — The Harvest

In the coffee fields of Brazil, the soil is alive. It consumes identity and turns men into fertilizer for something vast, red, and growing.

1533 — The Foundation

High in the Andes, beneath a dying sky, love and sacrifice collapse into something older than faith—something carved in stone and hunger.

In the Maxwell Universe, memory has weight. Silence has a price.

And once the earth learns… it never forgets.

In the 24-hour news cycle, the first casualty is the truth.

Jessica Greer is a veteran theater critic for Pittsburgh's City News, but her life is upended when her new editor replaces her with her high-profile rival, Ted Harvey. The "coup" for the paper turns into a catastrophe on Harvey's first day when he is rushed to the hospital, the victim of a suspected ricin poisoning delivered through the U.S. mail.

As an FBI investigation descends on the newsroom, Jessica finds herself transformed from a disgruntled freelancer into a prime suspect. Plagued by intrusive thoughts and a past that local news is all too happy to weaponize, Jessica must navigate a landscape of artistic rivalries, university secrets, and her own "sleep-baking" anxieties to clear her name.

Set against the rain-slicked backdrop of 1995 Pittsburgh, Steel City Critic is a sharp-witted mystery that explores the thin line between reporting the news and becoming it. In a city where everyone has a grudge, Jessica must find the real killer before her own story reaches a permanent "final curtain."

“A great whodunit—I haven’t read one this good in quite a while.”

“Twisted plot, strong characters, and answers that deliver.”

“This intriguing mystery with its unexpected twists will keep readers guessing till the very end.”

Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell’s None of This is True, Ember Scott's First Night, and Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects.

Sustainable fat loss and better physical health don’t require more rules, just the right next step. Learn the 1-Thing Way to reclaim your energy, health, waistline, and confidence for life.

Reclaim Your Body for Life is a practical guide to better metabolic health, sustainable fat loss, and steady energy without living in the gym or counting calories forever.

If you’re exhausted by the excess of the wellness industry that wants you to do more, Bernette Sherman offers a simpler path built around one question: What is the 1 thing that will move your health forward right now?

Grounded in real-life experience, your Engagement type, and your needs, Sherman’s Reclaim Your Body for Life, which applies the 1-Thing Way framework, helps you finally take back your health by following a clear path to success.

What You’ll Learn

You’ll learn how to use mindful eating, flexible fasting (time-restricted eating, intermittent fasting), restoration (rest, recovery, sleep, stress management), and movement (NEAT and intentional exercise) in practical ways to create a lifestyle that works for your body, your Engagement Type, and your life.

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Bernette shed over 30 pounds in 3 months at age 47, naturally, and chose to learn more about how to improve her own health through movement and nutrition as well as help others. She earned certifications as a personal trainer, Precision Nutrition Coach, Active Aging Specialist, and Women's Fitness Specialist. She's maintained her health and has helped clients use sensible tools and strategies to reach success while applying her 1-Thing Way framework.