Book Promo
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH
FROM JAMES Y. BARTLETT: THE ORGAN JOB: A Musical Mystery Featuring Johann Sebastian Bach (The Bach Musical Mystery series Book 1)
Award-winning historical novelist James Y. Bartlett has reimagined the great German composer and keyboard virtuoso Johann Sebastian Bach as a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Keith Richards in this imaginative new historical mystery.
During a visit to the German city of Kassel to inspect the church’s newly constructed pipe organ, (based on an actual event in his life) Bach, his wife Anna Magdalena and his cousin and personal secretary Elias Bach (who serves as Dr. Watson to Bach’s Sherlock) discover that the pastor of the church may have murdered his young wife.
And while they investigate that, Bach learns an old adversary from his past is a guest of the Prince of Hesse, and he plots some musical revenge.
While the heads of Bach scholars may explode, Bartlett has created a delightful contrapuntal mystery set in the heart of 18th century Germany that music and mystery lovers are sure to enjoy.
FROM JAMES Y. BARTLETT: The Coffee Garden: A Musical Mystery Featuring Johann Sebastian Bach (The Bach Musical Mystery series Book 2)
Bach is back and investigating another musical mystery!
In this second novel in the Bach Musical Mystery series, award-winning historical novelist James Y. Bartlett has taken the real-life incident that Bach scholars call ‘the Prefect Affair’ and kicked it up a few notches into a musical whodunit.
When Bach’s First Prefect – the student leader at the St. Thomas School in charge of the main choir – suddenly disappears after an ugly incident at a wedding, the school’s headmaster moves to appoint his favorite student to the position, over Bach’s objections.
While the City Council mulls over the conflict between the two, Bach, his cousin and advisor Elias Bach and Bach’s wife Anna Magdalena Bach search Leipzig for the missing boy. All while Bach is preparing for the summer concert series he conducts in the Coffee Garden outside the city walls. And his daughter Dörte begins a friendship with a controversial woman poet.
In the end, truth becomes known, scores are settled, and Bach conducts a triumphant concert in the Coffee Garden before the King himself, featuring Anna Magdalena, once a promising professional singer herself.
Bach scholars’ heads may explode over Bartlett’s audacity in creating this new Bach persona, but music and mystery lovers alike will delight in this contrapuntal story set in 18th century Germany.
FROM HOLLY LEROY: Street Crimes
STREET CRIMES – Global EBook Award Nominee and Mystery Fiction Medal winner.
Holly LeRoy offers this 21,000 word collection of short stories that are “…sometimes funny, sometimes disconcerting, sometimes plain terrifying. Perfect if you like action-packed suspense.”
MISTAKE PROOF – “Due to a run of bad luck and a string of some very uncooperative ponies, I owed a lot of money to a mob bookie.” A bank robbery goes very wrong in this noir story.
RARE JUSTICE – Private Investigator Jillian Varela tries to solve a pro bono, murdered-child cold case, with a potentially dying client. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it’s going to end well.
HOLLYWOOD HITMAN – Spend time with the beautiful people, where an enterprising hit man takes care of a Hollywood couple’s marital problems with a unique and permanent solution.
THE GAME’S END – Return to Jillian Varela’s world, as she races to save the life of a naive heiress who only wanted to know if her boyfriend had been cheating on her. Instead, she could wind up on death row.
FROM DALE COZORT: Aztec Gods: A Snapshot Explorer Novel
Martin Bragg is a Snapshot Explorer, flying into wild, unexplored alternate realities in search of adventure, treasure and video of strange cultures or animals he can sell to TV networks or big Internet companies. He doesn’t want to be a conqueror or king, but he finds himself among modern US mercenaries trying to set themselves up as God kings of an Aztec empire that has survived almost unchanged into the modern age in a hidden alternate reality.
Modern weapons versus arrows and obsidian swords. It should be an even bigger mismatch than the historic conquest. The Aztecs already have Gods, though, and they are far more terrifying than airplanes and machines guns.
FROM MARY CATELLI: The Lion and the Library
The library holds many marvels. Lena and her betrothed Erion had found things that helped the beleaguered Celestians of the city.
But when the king’s caprice decides to sacrifice Erion to protect himself, Lena can only hope a legend can help her. A legend of just kings. And lions.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Perfect Darkness
What would perfect darkness look like? And what would happen if you saw it?
When Pavlik becomes obsessed with the idea of seeing perfect darkness, it becomes a distraction from the pod’s duty as asteroid miners. Little does he know that danger lies in opening one’s mind to the things that lurk in perfect darkness. Things that endanger his pod-brothers, even all of Briar’s Children.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: Bite Sized (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 1)
Meg Turner has been a vampire for twenty years. Her favorite food is rapists. Which is how she met Andi Donahue, her new best friend/ girl Friday.
And then the nightmares start. And the bodies start showing up–bled out and raped. Just like Meg was. They don’t have a whole lot of time to stop the killer before he strikes again, and only one way to stop the killer.
But how can Andi help Meg stop a killer she can’t even see?
FROM KAREN MYERS: Mistress of Animals: A Lost Wizard’s Tale (The Chained Adept Book 2)
Book 2 of The Chained Adept.
AN ERRANT CHILD WITH DISASTROUS POWERS AND NO ONE TO STAND IN HER WAY.
Penrys, the wizard with a chain and an unknown past, is drafted to find out what has happened to an entire clan of the nomadic Zannib. Nothing but their empty tents remain, abandoned on the autumn steppe with their herds.
This wasn’t a detour she’d planned on making, but there’s little choice. Winter is coming, and hundreds are missing.
The locals don’t trust her, but that’s nothing new. The question is, can she trust herself, when she discovers what her life might have been? Assuming, of course, that the price of so many dead was worth paying for it.
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Your writing prompt this week is: drink.
According To Hoyt 
“So, you don’t drink just blood”?
“Yes, my dear. I drink fear, I drink terror, I drink the life-force of humans… like you.”
Taking a small sphere from her purse, she said, “let’s see if you can drink sunlight”.
After the vampire turned to dust, she said “it looks like he couldn’t”.
LikeLike
Forgot to click the box.
LikeLike
“Karl! A hockey wedding proposal?”
“Yep – gonna give her d’rink at d’rink.”
“I’ll drink to that!”
LikeLike
I was going to load up a carp, but couldn’t catch one at such short notice. Now, was Karl going to do this publicly, like on the Kiss-cam?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, as publicly as a small town rink might afford; most of those can barely afford the lights for the game.
He’s hoping for a Kiss-Karl.
LikeLiked by 1 person
He should have eaten and drunk before he left, he realized. But that was the least of his troubles then. The cold air helped clear his thoughts, and he still carried food.
And water.
He drained the bottle without so much as a pause. He’d have to find another spring.
LikeLike
”Drink.”
”What’s in it?”
She rolled her eyes. ”Some orange juice, and about $700,000 worth of nanites. It should repair the multiple gunshot wound damage and take care of the burns in about three hours. The collapsed lung and the hole in your liver will take about four. The broken bones will start knitting right away, but they’ll not be done for a couple days.”
Long pause. “Pulp free?”
LikeLike
“Picky, picky, picky”
XD
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Take a drink, lassie.” Arthur Lordsley’s breath stank of liquor and the cheap cigarettes he always smoked. “I told ye, take a drink.”
The odor rising from the glass being pushed into Amanda’s face made her stomach churn. But her back was against the wall — and even if she could escape to the side, her stepmother was waiting to grab her and wrestle her into submission.
There was a sudden bang and everything shattered. Amanda awoke bathed in sweat, gasping for breath.
It was just a dream. Except the knowledge gave her no comfort. She hadn’t dreamed about that house, about her father’s drunken rages and efforts to force strong drink on her, for years.
At least she hadn’t awakened Colin. He had an important meeting tomorrow, one that could make or break his career here in the States.
She hauled herself out of the bed, parted the curtain just enough to peek out at the cars parked along Illinois Street, illuminated by the globular streetlights so warm and unlike the big sodium lights on Lincoln Avenue several blocks to the west of here.
She didn’t see any sign of an accident, up or down the street. An accident on Lincoln Avenue might carry this far, but it would have to be truly bad to wake her up indoors with windows closed. Maybe one of the neighbors banging a door? The neighbors behind them did tend to fight a bit.
No use worrying at this point. Amanda crawled back under the covers, reminding herself that she needed a good night’s sleep as well.
But it bothered her that this particular nightmare should return now.
LikeLike
Okay, I’m hooked. Then what happened?
LikeLike
“Here, have a gulp of this!” said Elmer the Aspiring Wizard. The vial he proffered was filled with an orange-ish liquid that bubbled and fizzed, like Nehi soda.
“Not on your life!” said his companion. “The last guy who tested one of your concoctions is a hedgehog to this day!”
LikeLike
The belligerent drunk lay in a damp, messy pile on the barroom floor, while Jenkins, Nigel Slim-Howland’s cyborg butler, calmly returned to his employer’s table. “People of his sort frequently underestimate my capacity for drink,” he said calmly, “but it is quite impossible to besot someone wholly invulnerable to spirits.”
LikeLike
On a dark, stormy night patrons of the inn appreciated the roaring fire and hot drinks. The door swung open for a heavily cloaked stranger. Glancing around, mesmerizing gaze fixing on the waitress, he smiled, displaying elongated canine teeth. With a slight Balkan accent he said, “I need a drink.”
Rgrds,
RES
LikeLike
On a dark, stormy night patrons of the inn appreciated the roaring fire and hot drinks. The door swung open for a heavily cloaked stranger. Glancing around, mesmerizing gaze fixing on the waitress, he smiled, displaying elongated canine teeth. With a slight Balkan accent he said, “I need a drink.”
Rgrds,
RES
LikeLiked by 1 person
How the @!#$%! did I double post that? Word Press Delenda Est.
Rgrds,
RES
LikeLiked by 1 person
They drank from the flowers. Lelio swallowed. He was thirsty, he would like to drink like that, and for a golden, glowing moment, he stretched his wings and drank.
“None of that,” said Father.
Lelio blinked. He stood on the path.
“You were daydreaming,” said Father, gruffly. “Come along now.”
LikeLike
Like that imagery!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve read several of James Y. Bartlett’s golf murder mysteries (yeah, that’s a thing) and enjoyed them immensely. I think I may have to check out his J.S. Bach mysteries. The idea of the great composer being a sleuth sounds preposterous, but knowing Bartlett, he’ll have pulled it off brilliantly.
LikeLike