Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

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, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. By clicking through and buying (anything book-related, 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. Remember though all of these submissions are from people willing to be associated with this blog. So if you’re trying to buy from people who don’t hate you, this is a good place to start.– SAH

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER: A Stranger at the Door (Family Law Book 9)

Life never seems to get less complicated for Lee. The Earth Claims Commission collapsed when North America, was driven from the heavens by Central. What else to do but repossess it if they weren’t going to pay the royalties due? That meant seeing to it’s governance. She never aspired to being a sovereign. With a little luck she could govern with a really light hand by appointing a pair of Voices. She had good examples in doing that in her ally Heather, Queen of the Moon.
Her quiet home was much less quiet after she gave shelter to her Badger friend Tish and her brother. At least the Badger Voice and Ambassador owed her a big favor for taking the teenagers in. Any year now she’d start collecting on those favors instead of paying them out.
What was to be a quiet day trip found her in the middle of a civil war, and if that wasn’t enough there were mysterious aliens quietly spying on her and her allies. Of course they had to DO something about that.

FROM PAM UPHOFF: Profit & Freedom (Chronicles of the Fall Book 23)

The disruption of the attack on the 300, and then the invasion has left twin sisters unsupervised . . .

Noeme and Juna Jaeger, at the age of fifteen, might have put a toe over the line of strict legality to make sure they stayed safe . . . then they helped a couple of their friends . . .

And then . . . why not? Why not turn it into a business? Save some other kids, and make money doing it! What could possibly go wrong?

EDITED BY DAVID BADURINA: Pet Monsters: Ten Tales of Monsters and the Kids Who Befriend Them (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 78)

You were a weird kid once. So were they — right up until the monster showed up.

A boy brings a rotten sandwich back to life and discovers the truest friend he has ever had. A lonely girl pulls a crashed alien out of a cornfield. A grieving kid hides a fire-breathing salamander in his dead father’s office. And out past the porch light, something with too many tentacles is looking up at the same stars — and quietly noticing the marriage coming apart inside the house.

Pet Monsters gathers ten original stories about the strange, misunderstood creatures that crash into ordinary lives, and the children brave enough to love them back. They are funny, they are frightening, and underneath every one of them runs the same current: what it costs to be an outcast, what it means to finally be understood, and how much it hurts to let go.

For readers raised on E.T., The Iron Giant, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, and for anyone who still, on the right kind of night, half-hopes to find something waiting at the edge of the yard. In the tradition of Ray Bradbury and Joe Hill: ten tales where childhood wonder shades, story by story, into the uncanny and the unforgettable.

Ten authors. Ten monsters. One anthology about the friends we lose, the people we become, and the small impossible miracle of being seen.

BY CHARLI COX: Fae Wars: Fire and Ice: Northwest Front Volume 2 (The Fae Wars Book 13)

Can a human magic user re-ignite the flames of resistance against the Fae who have conquered our world? When the missiles and tanks and guns have failed, lying in twisted, blackened ruins, can a teenager girl and her supernatural mentor turn the elves magic back against them?

Eighteen-year-old Ashleigh Greene has already paid a terrible price, losing her family in the war. Driven to starvation and hunted for killing an elven lord in self-defense, she flees into the forests of the Pacific Northwest. There legends walk the earth and she forges an unbreakable bond with Gunny, a powerful Sasquatch who swears a life debt to her. As ancient magic returns to the world, Ash awakens to a dangerous gift of her own, an elemental control of fire that can be a weapon, if she can only learn to use without hurting herself or her friends.

Joined by a found family of rebel soldiers, unconquerable civilians, giants, a sentient cougar, and orcs who have turned against their masters, Ash is drawn into a desperate fight that leads from hidden mountain camps to the occupied streets of Seattle and deep beneath the volcanic slopes of Mount Rainier. Together with her friend, Shelly, a former soldier who has her own battles to fight within the Resistance, she must confront a ruthless elven war mage and forces that could tear the land itself apart.

As fire and ice collide in the frozen wilderness, Ash must master her power and decide how far she will go to protect the only family she has left — before it consumes her and everyone she loves.

FROM LEE ECKHARDT: RED GIANT: (Kardyshev-4)

A Kardyshev-1 culture can harness the energy sources of a single planet. A Kardyshev-2 culture can control the energy sources of an entire solar system. A Kardyshev-3 culture could harvest the energy of a whole galaxy. And a Kardyshev-4 culture…?
This is one of the questions facing Captain Meridian IkedaCagney and her crew of Vanguard explorers as they attempt to solve the mystery of the Nibelungen, an extraterrestrial species that roamed the Galaxy for thousands of years and then, suddenly, vanished without explanation. Did the Nibelungen actually become a transcendent Kardyshev-4 culture, or were they annihilated by some hostile alien force? If so, does this force still exist, and could it be a threat to the human race? And how does that fit in with the violent human cult that worships the Kardyshev-4 ideal?
These are questions that must be answered, and those answers might well be found in the vicinity of a Sun-like star that mysteriously jumped several billion years of stellar evolution to become a red giant virtually overnight. Those answers, however, will come at great cost, a cost far greater than Captain IkedaCagney and her crew could ever suspect…

FROM CLAIRE MERRICK: The Screaming Tree

The Screaming Tree divides the town of Verity, Tennessee, east from west. Its two knothole “Faces” gaze out like ancient lords over the half they claim as their own. As long as the spirits remain content, the town thrives, but everyone fears what might happen if their feud spills beyond the branches.

When 13-year-old Bea Durant and her father move into their new home, they are presented with the Rules for their side of town: Never paint the house anything but green. Hang a wind chime to be warned of foul moves. No matter how loud or sudden, never investigate the Screaming.

Bea never considered herself a rulebreaker. She has better things to do like make new friends and fit in at a new school. But a reckless decision on a stormy night draws the spirit from the opposite side of town to her doorstep. Specifically, into her bedroom. She’s left with no choice but to shelter the injured mage…and hope his mortal enemy doesn’t discover them. To protect her new home, Bea might have to break every Rule that has kept Verity safe for centuries.

EDITED BY CHRISTOPHER R. DINOTE: Forgotten Fronts Wyrd Warfare (Raconteur Press Anthologies Book 79)

There’s a rule in every fighter squadron: a story only counts if it’s at least ten percent true.

The eleven stories in Wyrd Warfare: Forgotten Fronts clear that bar and then some — they just happen to be the ten percent nobody wants to say out loud. A gunnery range that swallows the men who guard it. Crusaders staring down something older than their faith. Silver-loaded muskets in a Revolutionary forest. A Korean retreat where the cold isn’t the only thing hunting the column. From the blitz, to the Winter War, to a sky full of dragons over 1922 America, these are the battles history filed under “best forgotten.”

Edited by a retired Air Force colonel who’s heard every war story worth telling — and a few that shouldn’t be.

FROM MARY CATELLI: The Wolf and the Ward

A wolf wanders the land. . . .

Charity had thought it dreadful, being sent like a package to a man who might refuse to take her on as a ward. But when a wolf comes to look her up and down in the woods, and the man she is sent to greets her, making her wonder if she remembers something that never happened, she finds that there are problems far worse than that in the duchy.

FROM J. P. JOHNSON: A Hint of Malice: Book One of the Lexington Saga

When legends walk among men, the first casualty is the world you thought you knew.

Ten years after civilization fell, Lexington, South Carolina is the closest thing to hope left in the American South. Hard eyed volunteers on horseback patrol the borders. Men and women who remember the starving times work the fields. Children go to school. It’s a hope, and a start, but in the new world information is the difference between living and dying.

The Mayor has a tool for this problem — the tough scouts of the 1st Cav. They’re already riding hard into Georgia, looking for a warlord, but what they find is something much worse and far older. The Fall did more than end civilization; it pulled back a veil, and on the other side, the gods are not dead. They never were; they simply learned to look like ordinary people.

Back in Lexington, three strangers walk through the gates: a storyteller with a gift for finding trouble, a girl who sees things she shouldn’t, and a small gray dog that is a great deal more than he appears. They’ve come looking for safety. What they’ve brought with them is a war that has been going on for generations.

A Hint of Malice is the first book in The Lexington Saga — where The Stand meets American Gods in the heat and ruin of the post-apocalyptic South

FROM SCOTT JONES: Justice Ends: A Thomas Cole Book

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A young woman, drugged and assaulted, reaches out to Ex Army Ranger Thomas Cole seeking justice. In his hunt to find her an outcome she can live with, Tom uncovers a dark web of violence and corruption leading to a Compound isolated deep in the Tennessee woods, a compound whose members are too rich and powerful for law enforcement to touch. When another woman disappears, Tom knows he is the only hope of exposing the true purpose of the Compound, of tearing the cover off and exposing the evil to the world.

FROM DALE COZORT: New Galveston Book 1: Operation Croatoan

In February 1939, with World War II looming, the US Navy held a massive naval exercise in the Caribbean, involving almost fifty thousand sailors and marines. President Franklin Roosevelt personally attended.

In this alternate history novel, the US of 1939 disappears at the peak of the exercise, along with the rest of the New World. In its place is a New World still inhabited only by Indians.

While the US remnants try to make a new home for themselves, Nazis, Fascists and Japanese Imperialists scheme with Aztecs and other Indian powers to take over the resource-rich and now nearly defenseless New World.

Nazi Germany pours resources into it’s navy and into an advanced new generation of cargo planes. By summer 1941, the Nazis are ready to move. A mysterious “Operation Croatoan” is at the core of their schemes. Milo Gentry and a handful of other Americans race to figure out what the Axis powers are up to and stop them.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: The Lion and the Lizard (Timelines Book 2)

Thirty years ago, Dr. Ariela Rivers Wolff, M.D., Ph.D., AKA The Lion of God, had a pretty exhausting week.

Her world was invaded by time-traveling soldiers, she was nearly turned into human toothpaste by an experimental dimension jumper when she went to find her parallel “Dad,” who just happens to be able to borrow a Space Force fleet to come and take out her world’s invaders . . . and then she found out she was considered by those same invaders to be a saint in their odd religion, and one of the targets of their invasion. If that wasn’t enough, she nearly fell completely out of the universe into a time rift, being saved only by the skin of her teeth by her parallel “Dad”.

After all that, learning she was going to be the one to bring universal healing and long life to the human race in her particular timeline was just the icing on the proverbial cake.

Anybody else would go home, turn off their phone, pull all the blinds, lock all the doors, and take the rest of their life off. But Ari isn’t “anybody else”. And her cult of admirers across two timelines won’t take “nobody home” for an answer.

Fast-forward thirty years. Scientists have detected radio transmissions in an unknown language from several hundred light years away. And now she’s been asked to use her special “saintly” skills as demonstrated on her last “mission” to make first contact with whoever they are.

And that’s only the beginning.

Looks like Ambassador Dr. Ariela Rivers Wolff, M.D., Ph.D., is going to have another pretty exhausting week. Or six.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: THE LAST VAMPIRE: A Secret History Science-Fiction Gothic (Science Fiction Singles)

For centuries humanity feared monsters.

Vampires in the castles of Europe.
Hair-covered giants haunting the wilderness of the Americas.

The truth was far stranger.

Long before recorded history, two dying extraterrestrial civilizations crashed upon prehistoric Earth after a catastrophic interstellar war that extinguished nearly all intelligent life in the galaxy.

One species became the source of vampire mythology:
elegant nocturnal refugees who survived through secrecy, ritual, and influence.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: The Space Race Trilogy Omnibus: Time Slips, The Secret of Pad 34, Beach House on the Moon, Plus two exclusive new essays

All three books of the Space Race Trilogy, now together with two exclusive new essays.

Time Slips

What if our most treasured verities were in fact wrong?

To be selected for Project Mercury and be one of America’s first astronauts was a dream come true for test pilot Deke Slayton. But fellow Mercury astronaut Al Shepard kept telling old stories from his native New England, tales of monstrous entities like Cthulhu and Yog Sothoth. Earlier generations had viewed them as demons, but might they in fact be aliens, here long before humanity?

Soon Deke discovers evidence that something is watching the US space program. Something that begrudges humanity the stars and would put a ceiling on human attainment. Something that can manipulate time itself.

HP Lovecraft wrote that we dwell on a placid island of ignorance amidst the dark ocean of infinity, and that we were not meant to travel far.

What might the US space program have looked like in a cosmos filled with hostile eldritch entities? Would they notice us as playthings? Or as a nuisance to be dealt with?

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Done With Mirrors: A Collection of Short Stories (Sarah A. Hoyt’s Short Story Collections)

DONE WITH MIRRORS

From Prometheus Award winner Sarah A. Hoyt comes a dazzling collection that showcases why her work has appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, and Weird Tales—and why readers can’t get enough.

Magic-soaked noir in 1920s Denver. Mirror-hopping time lords fleeing across infinite universes. Survival in John Ringo’s zombie apocalypse. Murder and mystery in the world of Darkships and Rhodes. Each story in this collection pulls you into a different world—and refuses to let go.

Previously published in acclaimed anthologies from Baen and Chris Kennedy Publishing, these nine tales span Hoyt’s most beloved universes alongside standalone adventures. Whether she’s writing in Ringo’s Black Tide Rising series, exploring her own Darkships and Rhodes worlds, or crafting speculative noir that defies categorization, Hoyt delivers the vivid storytelling and emotional resonance that has earned her a devoted following.

From rain-slicked streets where magic and murder collide to the far reaches of space-time itself, Done With Mirrors demonstrates the genre-hopping brilliance of one of speculative fiction’s most versatile voices.

Nine stories. Nine worlds. One unforgettable collection.

Contains the short stories: Honey Fall; Scrubbing Clean; Last Chance; Great Reckoning in a Small Room; Horse’s Heart; Do No Harm; Dead End Rhodes; Knights of Time; Done with Mirrors.

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 to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: discreet.