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
https://amzn.to/47S8i6eFROM SEAN FENIAN: In Flux
Years ago, Justin—we’ll call him Justin—escaped from a hated orphanage, and from his own time. Now he will give a woman whom he does not know a last-second escape from hers—and also from her imminent brutal murder. Together, they will learn and share mysteries and wonders, pain and joy, make new friends and face new challenges, in a strange place outside of time and space as we think of them, where possibility can become reality—if your will is strong enough, and your vision clear and firm.
But be careful. There are deadly dangers hiding within the Flux.•••••
Sean Fenian’s new novel In Flux draws inspiration from sources including Jack L. Chalker and Julian May, in a setting with distant echoes of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, to tell a vaguely steampunk-era tale—but without the steam. It isn’t really an alternate-history novel—but it does contain alternate histories; and it isn’t really a time-travel novel—and yet it does feature time travel, of a sort.
FROM I. M. LERNER AND CATHERINE OSORNIO: The Hidden Entrance (Under the Staircase – An Economic Adventure Series for Kids Book 2)
On a hunch, he pressed down on the ledge, first on Hubris and then on Nemesis.
Crrrr….
The click-clackety sound of moving gears creaked loudly on the other side of the wall.
Slowly the bookshelf slid aside, revealing a dark hallway.
After spending the summer discovering the Under the Staircase Society, Nate, Maya, and Maggie are finally back at school. But while Nate would be happy puttering in his workshop and tinkering with his 3D printer, he can’t stand by as their beloved Apprenticeship Program comes under attack. The discovery of The Road to Serfdom sparks a chain of events they could never have expected. From Cipher Wheels to Cicero, secret desks to hidden passages, the kids must solve the mystery…before it’s too late!
Under the Staircase® Books A mystery and adventure series that teaches treasured values: personal responsibility, individual liberty, and economic freedom.
Psst! Parents & Teachers: The second book in the series introduces a variety of Friedrich Hayek’s economic concepts—individualism and collectivism, the knowledge problem, the fatal conceit, and other topics—using examples from kids’ day-to-day lives in school, with friends, and in familiar situations.
FROM CAROLINE FURLONG: The Guardian Cycle, Vol. 3: Neptune’s Envoys and Other Stories
There is no need to be afraid of the dark. But what about fearing that which lives in the dark? What if those shadows have teeth and glittering, hungry eyes?
Darkness conceals many Things better avoided. Meet the miner who delved too deep beneath Luna’s surface for treasure, yet lived to return and tell the tale in Despot Hold ‘Em. Follow Damien Fraser as he collects diamond rain from the cloud depths in Neptune’s Envoys – if he can avoid the Devil sharks. But are the Devils the worst things there?
Allan Kearney defeated the demons seeking his soul after escaping death in a Nihanese prison camp. Now, with the help of Michio Oshika and assembled allies, he plans to infiltrate the camp to free the other prisoners. But so much blood has been spilled that the ground is ripe for a Hellmouth to open. The demon priest who branded Allan and killed so many others is dead, yet another may appear, one who could draw a different demon to his aid with the right sacrifice….
FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Richmond Resistance: Twelve Tales of Quiet Defiance: (The Detective Stories)
The Richmond Resistance: Twelve Tales of Quiet Defiance
In the not-so-distant future, liberty hangs by a thread—and Richmond, Virginia, becomes the unlikely frontline in a quiet war for freedom.
When a buried federal directive threatens to strangle private life under the guise of climate compliance, disillusioned cybersecurity analyst Will Becker sounds the alarm. Teaming up with a retired Army colonel, a rogue engineer, a blogger-turned-homesteader, and a civics teacher with a hacker past, they form a decentralized network of resistance.
Through twelve bold, witty, and often deeply personal episodes, the Richmond Resistance battles everything from AI-enforced zoning codes and digital currency trials to false emergencies and algorithmic overreach. Each story is a stand-alone mission of smart, nonviolent defiance against creeping collectivism—and a tribute to the American spirit of independence.
Set in neighborhoods and suburbs across Central Virginia, The Richmond Resistance is a fast-paced speculative adventure brimming with humor, technical savvy, and moral clarity. Fans of Sarah A. Hoyt, Burn Notice, and The Adjustment Bureau will find much to love—and much to fight for.
FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: The Groundskeeper: Have A Dead Night: A Cozy Supernatural Mystery
As the cold rain falls on Belleview cemetery, Apprentice mediator Chloe Brandt is shifting from raking fallen leaves to solving mysteries for the living and the dead. If it’s not one thing, it’s another as a fallen tree, a new case, and an unexpected result all collide with a summons from a colleague. Now Chloe and her boss Mr. Cruor are headed for the deep hollers of Appalachia, to attempt the unraveling of a fifty-year-old tragedy, and they are walking right into an ambush. One wrong step, and the dead stay restless forever.
FROM RACONTEUR PRESS, EDITED BY NICK NETHERY: Mercs and Mayhem
We’ve collected eleven stories of mercenaries, spanning a broad range of genres and settings. A group of raiders sneaks into an enemy stronghold to open the way for their fellows, and find it to be very filthy work. An indentured drop trooper stumbles over a treasure of incalculable value, which might still be more trouble than it’s worth. Five soldiers of fortune wonder if what their client wants them to do is too much to risk the stain on their souls. A hyper-corporatized mercenary conglomerate hilariously, and brutally, reduces everything in battle, even blood and souls, into a dollar value.
Enjoy these tales and lift a glass, or say a prayer, for those who wage war for profit. Whether long ago, far in the future, or just yesterday, these soldiers of fortune are honored in these pages.
FROM GRAHAM BRADLEY: Fossil Force
FROM SAM ROBB: Sigils Paperback
An open door is an invitation… but you may not like what waits on the other side.
James O’Neil is about to learn the hard way that names have power, and his graffiti tags can open doors in the forgotten byways of Pittsburgh. After an accidental summoning of a powerful and malevolent Fae, he only manages to escape by the intervention of other taggers. On the run, James needs allies, and answers, but everything seems to be conspiring against him and his world is falling apart around him. He can’t fight this alone…
FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet (Family Law Book 2)
In the first book of this series “Family Law”, Lee’s parents and their business partner Gordon found a class A habitable planet. They thought their quest as explorers was over and they’d live a life of ease. But before they could return and register their claim Lee’s parents died doing a survey of the surface. That left Lee two-thirds owner of the claim and their partner Gordon obligated by his word with her parents to raise Lee. She had grown up aboard ship with her uncle Gordon and he was the only family she’d ever known. Him adopting her was an obvious arrangement – to them. Other people didn’t see it so clearly over the picky little fact Gordon wasn’t human. After finding prejudice and hostility on several worlds Lee was of the opinion planets might be nice to visit, but terrible places to live. She wanted back in space exploring. Fortunately Gordon was agreeable and the income from their discovery made outfitting an expedition possible. Lee wanted to go DEEP – out where it was entirely unknown and the potential prizes huge. After all, if they kept exploring tentatively they might run up against the border of some bold star faring race who had gobbled up all the best real estate. It wasn’t hard to find others of a like mind for a really long voyage. This sequel to “Family Law” is the story of their incredible voyage.
BY GEORGE O. SMITH, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Pattern for Conquest (Annotated): The classic space opera
The Loard-Vogh were conquering the galaxy. They could not be stopped. When they got to Earth, they would conquer, even though it was known across the galaxy as The Planet of Terror.
The Loard-Vogh would win.
Humanity must lose.
But mankind has a secret weapon, one so sinister that no power in the galaxy can stand against it…
- This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new Introduction by D. Jason Fleming giving historical and genre context to the novel.
FROM HOLLY CHISM: Meals on Wheels (Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 4)
Not by the (nonexistent) hair on her chinny-chin-chin…
Meg Turner, vampire, accountant, ruler of her own small territory. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? Not if you ask her, it doesn’t. Because the world’s going mad, the idiot mortals in charge are forcibly shutting down the economy without the understanding that it won’t start up again as easy as it’s going down, nor that it’s creating a nasty blood shortage for hospitals, much less vampires.
Even better, the head of her line is invading her dreams again, and teaching her history of all things. And teaching her about the laws, and why they’re there. It’s not just to avoid being noticed by humans capable of staking, beheading, and burning vampires during daylight hours—a vampire that breaks fundamental laws turns into something worse than a vampire.
And she’s got a bunch of those knocking at her border, wanting to come in. Worse yet, they’re sending their day-help into her territory to kidnap their meals, and they keep mistaking her for prey. And leaving their discarded empties in her territory to make it look like she’s draining humans without concern for the laws.
This really isn’t looking good, and it’s really not safe for her still-living friends and family.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: A Hymn for Those Who Fall Forever
Endings always hurt, but Vitali Grigorenko never expected a nightmare in orbit.
Assigned to command the last flight of the orbiter Baikal, Vitali had started the mission in a nostalgic mood. That went out the airlock when he saw the body tumbling through space just beyond the flight deck windows. A body in NASA blue, not Russian tan.
Now he’s trying to get to the bottom of a murder in space, and his own country’s space program as much a hindrance as a help. It’s becoming clear that politics is involved, on both sides of what used to be the Iron Curtain, and he’s going to need to go clear to the top.
A short story of the Grissom timeline.
A
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: BREAKABLE
According To Hoyt 
Need more coffee before I can attempt a vignette. ☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕
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Not exactly a vignette, but I found a Yoo-Toob video about Jovan Hutton Pulitzer. He’s been doing a forensic audit of the 2020 election in Arizona, and he’s found conclusive evidence of massive election fraud. The entire political machine has been trying to stop him, of course, and he says somebody tried to kill him 3 years ago. So far, no court has dared to even look at the evidence.
The audit group has spent over $3 million on the audit, but they’re running out of money. If they do, if they are forced to shut down the audit, all the evidence it’s taken them 5 years to collect will no longer be admissible in court — and now the enemies know exactly what needs to be disposed of. They need about $400,000 to keep going through next year’s election. He has a GiveSendGo page:
https://www.givesendgo.com/SaveTheEvidence2020/donate
I’m kicking in 100 bucks. If a few more Huns want to contribute, that will help. This looks like the only chance we’ve got to prove what was done to us in 2020, and maybe get some of the perpetrators locked up. At least make sure they’re not in charge of elections any more!
Maybe they can get those vote stealing machines discredited, too. It seems that election shenanigans perpetrated through the machines are not considered criminal acts under existing law. That’s OK for now; he’s found crimes aplenty committed with the paper ballots.
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This story smells off. If such a trove of such dynamite evidence has so breakable a chain of custody, why have the country’s conservative Millionaires an’ Billionaires let it get so near breaking?
This vignette is sure to irritate you, O reader. Quick, ask yourself whom you’re mad at? At Give-Send-Go scammers (if scammers they be)? At whomever put that evidence in such–surely intended–peril, if this is legit? At me, for raising the issue?
Gonna be some of each.
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She hurried onward, and he offered her his arm.
They did not have to walk quickly to reach the others. Sonia and Jasper were arguing, amiably, about whether a bridge was enchanted for endurance. Her anxiety was assuaged by a glance: a good sturdy bridge, in no danger of breaking.
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Blink, blink…is it morning yet? Great set of promos!!! I’ve already read most of them and can HIGHLY recommend them!
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It took Brenda a moment to recognize the song as a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Everything is Broken.” The typically bouncy J-pop delivery and instrumentals caught her by surprise, to the point it took her a moment to actually hear the lyrics instead of just the delivery.
I’m definitely going to have to find out what show that version’s from.
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My penurious Norwegian friend can’t catch a break: he’s homebound, because broke Brekken’s brakes are broken.
I do try to wait for promo-day, but this week I just happened to be on the Raconteur Press Substack, and, well, …
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“It is breakable,” she said. “Your attacks will stop them, as they stopped the labhallan.”
“No,” said the stag-man. “Lucius, you must do that. Alone. Jon, only intervene if you must.”
The boy who had worn that hawk mask nodded, and the one with the bear mask.
“First, we must misdirect it.” She turned to the boy with the fox mask. “What you did to the bird? Can you do it to them?”
The boy nodded eagerly. “I’m Stephan,” he said brightly. “Asteria can do it, too.” The cat-masked girl looked at him, but did not take off her mask.
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After tomorrow morning, things would never be the same. Max would be far away, to be evaluated by professional scouts. Cari would be home, sweating out university admissions. Cari always thought she could endure nearly anything, but she wondered if the next twelve hours would make her snap or collapse.
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At the station, Cari tried to keep her chin up. “Don’t get hurt trying out for those pro teams,” she said, attempting a smile.
“Don’t worry,” chuckled Max. “This body’s pretty unbreakable.”
They both heard the train whistle. “But my heart’s not,” thought Cari.
“But my heart’s not,” thought Max.
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You beat me to the sappy stuff- that was my first thought, as well.
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You beat me to the sappy stuff- that was my first thought, as well.
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Enough with the corniness! One more:
————
“Blast!” snarled Nigel Slim-Howland as he switched off the television. “The Cincinnati Bengals have scored eighty points in their last two matches, but have managed to lose both of them!”
“Indeed, sir,” said Jenkins, Nigel’s butler. “It would appear their defense is not as unbreakable as one would hope for.”
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Solomon knew me far too well. Everything in my day cabin that was breakable was removed and stored away safely well before Commadore Jabrine came on board.
“Captain Lissa?” he asked and bowed in proper Court style right now-thirty degrees from the waist, right hand on his heart and left hand behind his back-to me. “A pleasure to meet you at last.”
“A pleasure as well, Commadore,” I sighed. “Tea?”
“Certainly,” he replied, and came in, seeing the simple stoneware tea set on the table. “I apologize for the interruption of your current charter, and I will make sure your clients understand that this was under duress.”
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Alan rubbed his bloodshot eyes with the back of his fists, vainly trying to push away the weariness. The discarded papers and pencil nubs scattered across the desk joined the other mathematicians in mocking his intellect. Backlogs of intercepted messages grew with each passing hour; perhaps ENIGMA really was unbreakable.
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Historical vignette. I really dig that!
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(Part 1/2)
“So can you crack it? Or is it unbreakable?” My voice was steady and easy and level as I said it. Which I considered something of a victory.
“The short answer is, maybe. The long answer is maybe also, but better.”
She smiled, did Arcadia Retrouve (as she styled herself here); knowingly but not at all unkindly. “You’ve just datapoked me a 37-and-a-half K file with no context and no provenance beyond its associated-data header. Now I really can’t explain to most of my clients why that’s a bad thing, or how if any message is short enough there literally is no possible one best or ‘right’ decryption without simply knowing — I could say ‘unicity distance’ and explain it all day long and still leave them cold — but it is possible I could work with it, anyway. The only true answer is, maybe.
“And on the other side of things, even a ‘literally unbreakable’ one time pad or Vernam cipher is almost ludicrously breakable if you’re stupid or careless enough to re-use a key, even once — see the pre-millennium case of the ‘Venona intercepts’ from the old Cold War — so again… maybe.”
And she smiled, again. “At least it is 37.5 honest binary K, and not those moronic debased decimalised K. And at least you don’t have the look or the sound of one expecting the most dazzling sort of miracles. Done swift for a ha’penny bit or sixpence, too.”
And she looked at me, cooly and objectively as any might expect in this urban-neighborhood district of Ambrose City. Not so seedy, not nearly any downtown “hotspot” but still (if I read the hybrid mon on her door aright) in something of a Yak truce-treaty zone. Not a place you let your 360-awareness lapse, or fell into a trance contemplating your handheld.
“The confo BI agent I fed this thing to seemed to think, at least if the description in its own message header was right, that it’s stuck deep in the early 21st century, cryptographically speaking. Which is ancient.”
She chuckled, still holding my eye. “You’d likely be amazed how very, ah, classic much of what people use around here is. But there’s even a good reason people use stuff like that, from the late pre-quantum era or thereabouts. This is New Bedford Falls, this is Ambrose City, and it’s not always a good idea to catch the eye of the right-wrong people. Truly up to date, genuine strong crypto can be an announcement you’ve something worth hiding. And, for that matter, massively-quantum double-parallel computing really can do some near-miracles… for any of the few who can afford it.
“So, old AES and NGES and so on, with a doubled key length over the once conventional wisdom on what you’d need, still works okay unless your Alice pulls up the roidsmasher cannons, so to speak. But, maybe your implementer was dizzy enough to still use pre-Q ‘public key’ methods? Those are so bad broken, I could fire up my surplus little chillbox and crack any of that old stuff in a jiffy. You know, based in factoring ‘n’ discrete logs ‘n’ pre-quantum stale cream puff crap like that. Shor’s algorithm chumbait.”
She’s testing me, scrolled through my mind. Maybe I had given a bit away in my initial snapmessage, or a bit more than I’d meant…
“I think I know what you just said, Arcadia. Almost certainly. But getting a flash-briefing on applied cryptography from some BI session isn’t at all the same as actually knowing this stuff, far less being able to do any of it; which is of course and naturally why I’m here.”
One of her (very black, like the rest of her short hair) eyebrows quirked up at the end a bit. “Say, do you really depend on Borrowed Intelligences so much as all that? Or are you simply depending on them being on-track with their own no-logs claims, so you don’t have to kill anyone for there to be no-one and nothing to tell the tale of your soft little snap-chat?”
I felt myself smiling outright. “Not nearly as much up on old turn of the millennium ambiance as you seem to be, Arcadia, but… ‘whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’. And, in a no-logs BI chat, stays there too.” I waved at the (obviously) retro printed-paper posters on her wall. “Mucha, I get, even though he was 19th not 21st. But who exactly are ‘Valerian and Laureline’ there? From the ‘Bandes Dessines D’Autrefois’ I’d have to guess French, and some bit later than the Mucha’s from, but otherwise..?”
“That’s a very interestingly convoluted way of telling me, no, you don’t have your head up the BI-sphere’s, mmmf, bum quite as far as that. Which for me is a good thing. I can and have done extracts for people who truly do exist in a world as seen by ‘artificial intelligence’ as it looks at our world. Like living life by looking always in a mirror. Gah.”
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(Part 2/2)
“And that is what they used to call it, before ‘borrowed intelligence’ got into the conversation. It’s amazingly like statistical crypto, really; you use the statistics of massively large numbers and lakes and oceans of data to do things you usually couldn’t do any other way — so almost all of the ‘breaks’ not based on big dumb mistakes have worked just that way.
“Or little, dumb mistakes; which are a crackster’s gainly pride and joy.”
I felt myself smile, softly. “There is a bit more to it than that. Earlier you said something about ‘no context and no provenance’ — so would it be better to start over and give you the rest of both?”
She nodded. “Always. At least for someone like me. You wouldn’t be here if you were holding anything world-wrecking, and you couldn’t hide it if you had it anyway, and walked in here, regardless.” Matter-of-fact, level.
Though her regardless, of me and my safety also, it’d be had come across quite very sharp and clear, no less for being a trifle implicit.
“I… suspected someone I know, someone close to me, might not be telling me the truth, on something important. So I fished around a little, and I asked my BI a few questions, and garnered some conventional wisdom. Then, once I’d fluffed up my nerve, I downloaded a ‘promiscuous message sniffer’ and ran it — and this one message, authenticated and enciphered, passed all the filters. For all the credible parameter settings I could use. And then my cheap little cracker programs and those confidential BI crackers did their routine best, and all came up far short, and so here I am.
“Which reminds me… there’s about 53 TB of ‘relevant’ data from the same source with the exact same protocols, or so my BI’d guessed.” I pulled it from my coat and extended it (half-palm size as two soda crackers, with a ridiculously larger capacity than a mere few dozen terabytes) to her.
Arcadia (or ‘Arcadia’) absolutely grinned. “Just like they say, sometimes context is everything. With that much ‘context’ I could very likely run a simulated oracle attack on that single message of yours, for instance. Ah, large numbers, big data and all of that. And if they’re not lying and this really is all based in AES OCB2f from the early 21st — well, they’ve said ‘attacks only get better and cracks only get wider’ since at least then.”
And then she tilted her head a little to the side, and looked at me in a way that was exponentially closer to ‘piercing’ and ‘wise’ than I’d seen, or would ever have expected (earlier) from anyone as young as her. Pursed her lips just a little.
“George, before I begin, if you want to retain me to do this, I’m only to ask you one more thing. Are you really sure you want the answer to this? It might quite well be breakable, the secrecy on this message. I might be able to do that for you — but do you want it? ‘Don’t ask the question if you don’t want to know the answer’ as they say, and all..?” Her voice was far less technical; almost even, well, personal. Though I’d met her six minutes or so before that exact moment. And this was, yet, near-downtown Ambrose Bierce City.
“I want to know, Arcadia. I need to know this.” Again, level and steady. Good on me, right?
She pointed to the infowafer I was still holding out. “That I can most likely break; though, as said, no guarantees ever till it’s done. It concerns me otherwise, though; and this is based solidly on the intuition that’s guided me all through my cipher studies and my work as a cracksman.
“And right now, George, it’s absolutely screaming at me to make sure first before I crack this,” and then her finger shifted to point quite directly at my heart, “that I’m not going to crack that, too, in your next breath.”
Her eyes actually shone a little in the shop’s oldish incandescent light.
“Very few ciphers are unbreakable, though most cipherings never break. And as I do very directly know myself, almost no hearts are unbreakable either.
“So, ask your own heart once again, George; before I set to work.”
(based on a very little of pre-existing setting; and a bit of actual cipherology too)
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