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 SARAH A. HOYT: Christmas In Time: A Collection of Short Stories

Christmas In Time: Six Stories of Time Travel and Second Chances

Time is not an Ocean. But then again it is.

From award-winning author Sarah A. Hoyt come six tales of time travel, parallel worlds, and the furthest reaches of space—all bound together by Christmas miracles and the choices that define us.

Meet Time Corps agents who risk madness to prevent reality from splintering. Follow a mathematician pulled into a parallel universe where his twin captains starships between worlds. Watch as mysterious children arrive from impossible futures, and discover Victorian lighthouses that serve as anchors in the storm of time itself. Journey from blood-soaked space stations to asteroid colonies at the edge of the known universe.

This collection includes “What Child Is This,” a prequel to Hoyt’s acclaimed novel No Man’s Land, revealing how a child’s accidental time-slip can save a man’s life and create the bonds of family love.

FROM CELIA HAYES: Return to Alder Grove

Love in all the wrong places – Caro Robertson was a professional researcher, employee and occasional on-air reporter for a national public radio outlet; the perfect job, the perfect condo, the perfect fiancée. She had the college education, the job, the social position, the perfect life … and then in one fell swoop, everything went sour. Wrong. Disastrously wrong. In the space of a single week, she lost her beloved pet, the perfect fiancée and then her job. What was left for her, but to return to Alder Grove, the little town in Texas where she lived as a child and try to rebuild that life and a new career?
Mark Bascomb – owner of a small fabrication business, small-town handyman, veteran and high-school drop-out; everything in life that Caro Robertson wasn’t. Could they find common ground with each other, a common interest, even love, when they are so different?
Find out when the sparks fly in Alder Grove, in this short romance novel by the author of the Chronicles of Luna City, and the Adelsverein Trilogy.

FROM M. C. A. HOGARTH: Clays Upon the Sands (The Stone Moon Trilogy)

The treasured anadi who must learn what it means to choose… the mysterious chenji whose magic comes at a terrible price… the jeweler who finds that love requires facing the unknowable future… and the Claw of the empire who discovers that loyalty has limits. Clays Upon the Sands, volume 2 in the Jokka Clays series, collects seven more stories of the Jokka of Ke Bakil, an alien species with two chances to change sexes: female, neuter or male… a species where destiny and biology intertwine in ways both beautiful and heartbreaking. Whether it’s accepting an unwanted Turning, defying an empire’s cruelty, or learning that some truths can only be spoken in the dark, each Jokkad must navigate the complex currents of identity, duty, and desire.

Seven voices. Seven transformations. A world where nothing is certain but change itself. Come explore.

FROM NATHAN BRINDLE: I’m the Beautiful But Evil Space Princess Who Rules A Galactic Empire But Really Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone: Volume 2 (I’m The Beautiful But … Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone!)

Princess Regnant Alice and her companions, after a trip to Prince Daniel’s world Xeros, and a visit to Lost Terra and a meeting with Michael, the mysterious, ancient human, have been directed by Michael to travel to Mahoukai — a world of magical beings who will be able to properly train and guide Prince Daniel’s sister Alouette in the use of her inborn magical powers.

But a nagging question continues to bug both Alice and her father, Roger; what is really going on, back on Capital? Is a revolution brewing? Is the Lord Chancellor, Rupert, somehow involved, and at what level? Eventually they must bid a reluctant farewell to the Mahoukaian Great Mages of Antiquity, and end Alice’s six month absence from her Throne.

And what they find on Capital is far, far beyond anything they might have imagined from 50,000 light years away.

The second volume of the BBESP light novel!

BY GEORGE WASHINGTON OGDEN REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Three by Ogden: A Pulp Western Omnibus

Three classic Westerns by Ogden:

The Baron of Diamond Tail

The Diamond Tail Ranch was supposed to be a sure-fire money-making business enterprise. Former Senator Nearing had convinced many friends back East to invest in it. But it has been losing money for five years or more.

Fresh of a hitch in the Navy, Ed Barrett hires onto the Diamond Ranch to try his hand as a cowpuncher. And also to check up on his family’s investment, now his responsibility since his father died while he was in the service. Why isn’t the ranch paying? Who is rustling the cattle? And what is the hold that the foreman, Findlay, has over former Senator Nearing?

George Washington Ogden’s well-constructed tale is full of gun-blazing action, rip-roaring adventure, and well-observed detail from a period he lived through himself.

The Long Fight

For years, old Solomon Heiskell told anyone who would listen that his land had oil in it. After years of drilling, and finding nothing but dirt and rock, his son Ared gave up the dream and took up sheep farming, even as so much oil was being discovered a few miles away that Oil City sprang up overnight. But when his flock is slaughtered in the night, and his father vanishes, Ared uses his remaining capital to buy a drilling rig and hire out to any of the smaller landowners in the area that will have him. The big money doesn’t want competition from wildcatters, they want control. And his father’s reputation as an eccentric shadows the son.

But come what may, Ared Heiskell has signed on for — The Long Fight!

The Trail Rider

In the heart of Kansas, Texas Hartwell arrives seeking a fresh start, only to be drawn into a web of deceit and danger. Hired as a trail rider, Hartwell’s life takes a dark turn when he is framed for introducing infected cattle onto the range. As accusations fly and tensions rise, Hartwell must fight to clear his name while navigating a landscape rife with betrayal and unexpected alliances.

Amidst the chaos, Hartwell finds solace in his love for Sallie McCoy, the dedicated schoolteacher who sees the truth in his eyes. Yet, his path is complicated by Fannie Goodnight, a woman caught in the crosshairs of the cattle rustlers, who harbors a secret affection for him. Uncle Boley, the loyal bootmaker, stands steadfast by Hartwell’s side, offering unwavering support in the face of adversity.

Hartwell must confront his enemies, unmask the traitors, reclaim his honor and protect those he loves.

Join Texas Hartwell on a journey of redemption and resilience, where the line between friend and foe is blurred, and the true measure of a man is tested.

FROM RACONTEUR PRESS: High Class Muscle (Raconteur Press Anthologies)

In the shadows between law and chaos, there are always men willing to get their hands dirty… but even the roughest men have lines they won’t cross. From rain-soaked city streets to war-torn alien landscapes, from 1940s Arizona to cyberpunk futures, these stories follow enforcers, fixers, and hard cases who make their living in the gray areas of justice. When push comes to shove and everything is on the line, they face the ultimate question: What separates a man doing his job from the monsters he fights? The answer lies in where they refuse to compromise, that line that defines who they are when all other choices have been stripped away. Dive into tales of detectives battling shadows and saving innocents; protagonists drawing moral lines in corrupt worlds; private eyes and ex-soldiers facing impossible choices, and learn what it means for a man to be High Class Muscle.

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: Took Their Wages (Space Law Science Fiction)

Returned from long years in interstellar space to longer decades missed on Earth, a starship’s crew face their biggest obstacle yet: Human Resources.

Fresh off their victorious defense of a starship captain on mutiny charges, attorneys Calvin Tondini and Sara Seastrom must now pivot to a new challenge: defending the same starship crew’s hard-earned salaries. Bureaucrats citing relativity want to apply a different clock than bargained for in the crew’s original contract.

Whatever may be said about Einstein, time, and space, the crew’s attorneys know that money isn’t relative.

Check out Took Their Wages for a sober analysis of this timely question.

A science fiction short story.

FROM MICHAEL CORBETT: Crack Of Thunder; Swing Of Fate: A Baseball Story

Crack Of Thunder; Swing Of Fate is set in central Florida in the spring of 1998. It is a teen sports story that follows the journey of 12-year-old Patrick Collins as he navigates the challenges of participating for the first time on a Little League baseball team, the Yankees. Based on actual events the story explores themes of personal growth, teamwork, rivalry, and the pursuit of excellence. Successful as a player on a physically demanding Pop Warner football team Patrick is skilled on the gridiron at making rapid decisions on the fly. New to the sport of league baseball, Patrick struggles with the batting, catching and throwing skills required. His greatest struggle is the intense confrontation between pitcher and batter. Mother Nature threatens the Yankees success. Spring and summer thunderstorms in Florida equal the world’s maximum thunderstorm areas of equatorial Africa and the Amazon basin. Mother nature can determine which team wins.

FROM THOMAS E. MCLANAHAN: Pranked

Professor Harold Pippinger is close to the end of a long career. He dreams of retiring with an “emeritus” title. But his hopes are upended after one of his students, an angry young woman named Mona Morrisset, accuses him of sexual harassment. He is suspended from the teaching that he loves and tossed into the looking-glass world of Title IX enforcement, where no one in the all-powerful Office of Diversity and Inclusion will tell him exactly what he’s done. Meanwhile, Mona realizes she’s set more powerful forces in motion than she intended. She’s tortured by second thoughts. If only she’d waited, given herself time to think before calling the Bias Response Team. Her anguish increases when the case leaks and violent protests erupt over what campus feminists see as the school’s endemic sexism. When the mayhem gains the attention of state lawmakers, the future of the entire college is thrown into doubt. Harold twists in the wind as he awaits the decision of the Special Examiner assigned to hear his case. When it leaks, the shock waves reverberate from the college to the state capital.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Jovian Frontier: Humanity’s First Push Beyond the Asteroid Belt (The Outer Worlds Saga Book 1)

The year is 2239, and humanity stands on the brink of its greatest expansion yet. From the mining outposts of Ceres, the crew of the Aurora Venture launches toward Jupiter’s moons—Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto—with orders to establish permanent survey bases and expand the reach of the Outer Worlds Fleet.

But the Jovian frontier is far more dangerous than expected.

Lysa Hartmann battles a resurging claustrophobia that threatens to undermine her ascent through the Fleet. Dr. Senzo Marik, haunted by a past tragedy on Ceres, faces unsettling seismic anomalies beneath Europa’s ice sheets. Engineer Eila Trujillo fights a losing race against the environment as melt shafts collapse and radiation storms close in. And Captain Roald Jin must decide how far he’s willing to go to save his people—even if it means sacrificing mission-critical equipment.
When a catastrophic icequake traps crew members deep under Europa’s surface, the team braves unstable tunnels, rising meltwater, and collapsing caverns in a desperate rescue. Joined by late-arriving specialist Grigor Valko, they discover that survival on the frontier demands both courage and unbreakable unity.

The Jovian Frontier is a gripping tale of exploration, danger, and the enduring human spirit—an opening chapter to a sweeping saga of expansion toward Saturn and beyond.

FROM FRANCES DECHANTAL: Death Comes to the Science Fair

Laurel floats disconnected from her new teaching position at a Catholic school. Homeschooled herself, she questions whether she can fit in. When she rescues children from a car crash the school staff leap to help her. And gossip about it.
An unexpected mentor, her first grade students, and a handsome firefighter all conspire to break through the wall she’s built against the school. She learns to delight in everything from her students to the Christmas pageant.
As mysterious incidents start to proliferate Laurel struggles for answers. A sudden death brings everything to a head. Can Laurel work out the mystery of who is damaging the school and why, before the body count starts to rise?
If you like young heroines steadfastly working to get things right, you’ll love this cozy voyage of schoolhouse mystery and self-discovery. Pick up a copy today to join Laurel in her new life.

FROM STUART SCHWARTZ: Campus Crucible

In Virginia’s fog-choked Blue Ridge Valley, one slashed throat ignites a holy war that threatens to level two universities. Televangelist Phineas Barnstable is found butchered in his tithe-funded mansion, and the leaked video of his corpse detonates a scandal that bankrupts his namesake Christian college. Its only hope: a high-stakes merger with secular Blue Ridge Valley University, championed by iron-willed president Riley Dennison—ex-Army CID, cybercrime hunter, and visionary architect of a research powerhouse poised to dominate directed-energy and biomedical photonics.
But foreign powers and a shadowy American billionaire will kill to stop it.

As Bible-thumping zealots clash with masked faculty radicals and outside operatives flood the valley, bodies fall with surgical precision—lasered hearts, designer toxins, livestreamed executions—each murder staged with twisted theatrical flair. Racing the clock, Riley and velvet-on-steel security chief Victoria Lehman must expose a conspiracy spanning Tehran, Beijing, fake NGOs, and a trusted insider intent on burning it all down. All the while, battling the destructive culture of failed American higher education.

FROM DALE COZORT: Wokuo Incursion

Invasion from an alternate timeline?
It’s December 1937 in a world exactly like ours except that it is about to veer wildly into alternate history. It’s less than two years before World War II broke out historically in Europe. War has already come to much of Asia, with Japan invading China. An isolationist US fears it will be drawn into that conflict, especially after the Japanese sink the US gunboat Panay. Just when President Franklin Roosevelt thinks he has that crisis under control, he faces a bigger issue. High tech descendants of the Wokuo, Japanese pirates and smugglers who should have vanished over three hundred years ago, flood into the Pacific coast off California.

The Wokuo are both refugees and invaders, fleeing from war in an alternate reality where they survived and grew strong, while looking for new conquests to replace their lost empire. They set their sights on California. President Roosevelt sends disgraced former Colonel Martin to California to organize resistance to the invaders, but the Colonel has his own issues, buried deep in his brain and waiting to cause disaster.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Workhouse War

An afternoon for sketching in peace – that was all Nadine Darby wanted. She thought she was taking a shortcut to get past an overgrown levee and gain a better view of the Mississippi for some landscape work. Instead she ended up somewhere else. A place called Elyssium, where the past walks alongside the present. Where you can see a modern car pull up and a Confederate Navy officer climb out, talking on a cellphone.

On the riverbank Nadine met a strange little man who told her he was an artist as well, and showed her his sketchbook to prove it. But no sooner had Nadine made her first friend than she discovered all was not well. She watched in helpless horror as a young man was pursued, arrested and beaten by thugs from an institution that goes by the official name of the City Orphanage, but is generally called the Workhouse by the inhabitants of Port of White Fleet.

Nadine can count herself fortunate that she fell into the company of a man who has little use for this organization. But his efforts to help her attain her artistic ambitions instead attract the attention she must avoid, and draws her into quarrels that have simmered for decades.

Can Nadine thread her way through the myriad perils of this world and save herself and her new-found friends? And even if she defeats the Workhouse, will it be at the cost of losing everything she’s found here?

FROM RACONTEUR PRESS: Goblin Bazaar (Raconteur Press Anthologies)

Goblin Bazaar, then, is merely another offshoot of the uncanny, popping up like a mushroom on the village green. Offering strange wares, you must tread with caution into its aisles. Remember, always be wary, because gaining the desires of your heart may not grant you what you wish…

The stories in this volume deal with those who buy things that haunt them. Those who cheat and discover the consequences of their actions. The truth behind real customer service. The humans who seek to keep the goblins at bay. The ins and outs of running a booth at any market, be it craft or goblin – some things are universal!

FROM MEL DUNAY: Wolf’s Trail (Hunter Healer King Book 1)

The name’s Chloe Fortebat, and I don’t understand this place at all.
I left my father’s ranch to come to the Old World, a place of airships, steampower, and monsters that nobody talks about. Now I’m dodging giant werewolves with fangs the size of my knife. My only guide is a monster hunter who doesn’t look the part: a quiet, sharp-dressed medical man with a mysterious past. But he knows how to stop these werewolves, and he’s my best chance at surviving the Old World.
My name is Dr. Maxim os Storm, and I hunt the beasts that haunt the night.
A werewolf has set his mark on Miss Fortebat, but this brave lady would rather fight him than let him make her his tool. My only chance of curing her lies with an ancient machine, hidden by my people in the caves beneath Wolf Island. She and I must work together to keep that artifact out of the werewolf’s grasp at all costs, for he would put it to a terrible use. But I can only help her if I take on a responsibility I’ve already rejected once: the kingship of my people.
For fans of Lindsay Buroker and Patricia Briggs, here is a dual POV gaslamp fantasy with monster hunting, a slow-burn romance subplot, and a reluctant king facing his destiny. Book 1 of the Hunter Healer King Trilogy.

FROM MARY CATELLI: Treachery And Spells

Two novellas of magic and adventure. . . Caught between pirates who would force him to use wizardry in their aid, and a king who would force him to spy, Alik will need every scrap of wits and wizardry to forge his own path. A curse of ill luck leaves Perriel and Gareth trapped in an endless winter, with only the faintest hope of breaking free.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Certified Public Assassin

Molly McGuire: murder for hire…

Working as a Certified Public Assassin was, after all, the fastest way to pay down millions of dollars of medical debt. Between that payment and the student loans from getting her associates’ degree, she’s barely making enough to keep body and soul together, but the debt’s almost gone.

Except…she’s paid her student loans. Many times over. There’s something going on, and her handler can’t figure out what. Hiring a hacker to track whatever’s glitching in the student loans database and programming seemed to be a logical next step; however, it isn’t just a glitch. Somebody’s got it in for Molly…and for everyone that has a license to kill.

This has barreled from circumstance through happenstance, and straight into enemy action. But who’s the enemy?

FROM KAREN MYERS: Second Sight: A Science Fiction Short Story

A Science Fiction Short Story

BORROWING SOMEONE ELSE’S PERCEPTIONS FOR A POPULAR DEVICE CAN ONLY MEAN COMMERCIAL SUCCESS. RIGHT?

Samar Dix, the inventor of the popular DixOcular replacement eyes with their numerous enhancements, has run out of ideas and needs another hit. Engaging a visionary painter to create the first in a series of Artist models promises to yield an entirely new way of looking at his world.

But looking through another’s eyes isn’t quite as simple as he thinks, and no amount of tweaking will yield entirely predictable, or safe, results.

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: No Man’s Land: Volume 1 (Chronicles of Lost Elly)

Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable—and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire—Skip to his friends— has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.

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: women