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 PAM UPHOFF: The Pine – Wicker Feud (Chronicles of the Fall)

A short novel of events centuries before the Chronicles

Fifty years ago, a judge had a strong precognition, and executed a young lord, heir to the leadership of the Wicker Family, for crimes nearly serious enough for such a harsh sentence. But now the judge has died, and Lord Friedrich Wicker is free to take out his revenge on the surviving Pine Family. And he’s planning on killing every single one of them . . . Especially the seventeen-year-old Lord Karlheinz Ingolf Pine.

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Hunter and Hart: Familiar Generations Book 11

“Uncle Jude, Beth saw a glowing white deer.”

When his student reports her classmate’s tale, Jude feels a chill. Deer from Celtic mythology rarely bring good fortune, even when seen by multiple people. Still, he hesitates. Could it be a transformation? An illusion? A practical magical joke? The duties of father, husband, Hunter, deputy, and employee keep Jude—and his Familiar Shoim—occupied.

Then the first teen, a sorcerer, goes missing.

Tangled magic and a summoning “from long away” draws Jude’s family deeper into danger. When the deer and the magic behind it threaten his wife and children, the stalk among shadows turns into a Hunt. One that draws on lore of the Old Land and power from the New.

Ancient darkness and modern evil both lurk behind the glowing white hart. The Hunter in Shadows must go wary, or he may loose more than just his life in the gathering storm.

FROM DALE COZORT: Nazi Treasure Hunt Book One: Marsh War

Marsh War is an alternate history novel set in the aftermath of an alternate World War II where Hitler went for Moscow rather than the Caucasus in spring 1942. As a result, World War II in the east stalemated deep inside Soviet prewar territory. The Soviets were too weak to push the Germans out, even when the western allies pushed into Germany. Diehard Nazis fled to the German-held Soviet Union and held out there for years until the western Allies crossed into Soviet territory and destroyed them.

With the Soviet Union battered and partially occupied, the United States emerges from World War II as the World’s only real Great Power. Great, right? Not really. In 1949, two years after they destroyed the last conventional Nazi resistance, the US still occupies large parts of the western Soviet Union and has been sucked into the treacherous politics of the Polish/Soviet border regions, with nominal allies close to war with each other over economically valuable and ethnically mixed areas.
Stalin pursues his intrigues in this dangerous region, while Nazi remnants scheme to regain power.

While the US settles in for a postwar boom, US occupation forces in the Soviet Union search for missing German scientists, Nazi advanced technology and looted Nazi treasures. They also search for missing loved ones and brace for a coming war they are woefully unprepared for.

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY: PLANTING LIFE: Shut the Kingdom (Near Future Science Fiction Adventure)

Nominated for the 2026 Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

The road to Mars has to start somewhere. It might as well be central Virginia.

Jack Darien scorns his parents’ path. After the disaster at his father’s Mars settlement, the high school senior scraps both his lifelong interest in space exploration and his college plans. Even his rescue of a college student from assault doesn’t make him see his own future any differently.

Jack becomes obsessed, however, when one strange comment from the attacker draws him to unravel secrets at the former Superfund site that is now Webb University, the school where his returning father teaches and eco-restoration reigns. What starts for Jack as a distraction from thinking of his future turns into a dangerous journey that puts him, his mother, and sister at risk. As for his father, Jack decided long ago the man was on his own.

Jack’s determination to chart his future clear of his father’s failures hits a snag when he learns the school’s hidden mystery. Unfortunately, those determined to bring Webb down learn it, too, and ratchet up their own efforts toward Webb’s destruction.

Planting Life is an immersive young-adult science fiction adventure. If you like unearthing secrets, a dogged hero, and reckless courage under threat, you’ll love Laura Montgomery’s near future coming-of-age saga.

FROM LEE ECKHARDT: THE EMPTY PLACE: A Novel Of Suspense

The Hamner place, an abandoned farmhouse near the Beaumont Ranch summer camp. The Hamner place, where, it is said, an entire family was murdered, slaughtered by a deranged serial killer who was never caught. Fifteen-year-old Evan Houghton has always believed that to be camp legend, but as the summer wears on he becomes less sure – Rod Chamov, the camp’s oddball, claims he can see lights in the Hamner place, strange green lights that no one else can see. No one, at least except Katherine Matheson, who has a psychic gift that tells her that there really is a presence in the Hamner place, an evil presence that is patiently waiting for a victim. Could it be the spirit of the serial killer? The ghosts of his victims? The reality is more incredible than either Evan or Kathy could ever guess… Note: Katherine Matheson appears again in ‘You Can’t See Us’ NOTE: Katherine Matheson appears again in ‘You Can’t See Us’.

FROM NATHAN C. BRINDLE: On Account of a Dame (Timelines Universe Book 9)

Welcome to the New Jazz Age!

It’s the Roaring Twenties all over again — well — the 2120’s, that is. Where New York City has reverted to its Jazz Age roots of two centuries before. What’s missing? Prohibition, and gun control. What’s not missing? Tough guys, and the dames who (sometimes) love them. Gin joints. Speakeasies. Dance halls. The Social Register is still a thing, and the Beautiful People litter the society pages of the local hypernews sites.

Enter a typical gumshoe private detective — a member of that high society himself, yet a man who left society long ago for other pursuits. And his latest client, a rich young woman of leisure, who needs her new husband followed.

Throw in the recently-crowned queen of one of Chinatown’s tongs, a beautiful investment wizard from upstate, and a hundred million dollars in assets, and suddenly it’s all

On Account of a Dame

FROM HOLLY CHISM: Fire and Forge (Modern Gods Book 3)

Long after their worshipers are forgotten, the gods are still holding up a corner of the bar at the Godshead Tavern. Some have learned since their stories became myths, some never did, and some are still finding old curses coming back to haunt…

Poseidon wants Artemis to lift Medusa’s curse so he and Medusa can resume relations, while Chronos seeks another chance to be whole and get to know his kids.

Meanwhile, Ares falls head over heels for a mortal half his size who manages to kick his ass not once but twice, and Loki’s son is trying to rebuild his life (and his credit) after a short marriage to Pandora.

Life and love runs smoothly for no one, god or mortal. And another disaster is brewing…

FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Bowl of Red (The Shifter Series Book 4)

Dragon shifter Tom Ormson wanted two things: to serve killer souvlaki at his Colorado diner and enjoy married life with his pregnant panther-shifter wife. Instead, he got unwanted psi powers and a dragon triad syndicate demanding his leadership.

When Kyrie’s grandfather is found murdered, police officer Rafiel—Tom and Kyrie’s closest friend—must solve the case while being pulled into a power struggle for lion clan leadership. With all shifter clans in turmoil, separating allies from suspects becomes a deadly game.

The suspect list grows wilder by the minute: murderous chicken shifters, a skull-collecting otter who teaches art history, a Minotaur delivery man, chaos-causing spider monkeys, and an alligator shifter who might be a double agent. Meanwhile, Rafiel’s dragon girlfriend visiting town might get caught in the crossfire.

In Goldport, Colorado, the special of the day comes with a side of shapeshifter chaos. Just don’t ask about the capybara incident.

FROM KATHLEEN KEITH: The Miserable Marriage Handbook for Women: How to Survive and Grow While Trapped in a Miserable Marriage

Perhaps the most important relationship book of the decade, The Miserable Marriage Handbook for Women addresses one of the biggest secrets in our culture—the appalling way that women are treated by their husbands or partners in the privacy of their homes. If you are in a miserable marriage, getting out of one, or haunted by memories of a destructive relationship, this book is for you.

‘You Are Not Alone’ are the words author Kathleen Keith uses to begin this book in which she shares the Survive and Grow Steps she developed to rescue herself from a miserable marriage and save her sanity and her life. The author pulls back the curtain on the fundamental issue for every woman trapped in a miserable marriage—we know that the ‘really nice guy’ we are married to, isn’t. We know it’s a lie. No one believes us if we tell the truth about our life with him.

And no one is sympathetic to the word ‘trapped’ because only those of us who have experienced the misery of life with a narcissist, passive aggressive, addict (anger, substance, porn, gambling, online gaming) and abuse, know how trapped we are.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Khuldhar’s War

The war was over, but where was the peace the victors had promised?

Geidliv the Tyrant was dead, and the rogue nation of Karmandios now lay in ruins, its people prostrate before the occupying armies of the five allied nations. But now the winners are quarreling among themselves, and where brothers fight, enemies will enter to widen the gap.

Merekhet is a man torn between competing loyalties, tormented by guilt over his past failures. Raised the scion of a Karmandi noble family, he discovered upon puberty that he was in fact the son of a senior war commander of the telepathic People of the Hawk. Yet he could not entirely disavow his mother’s people, and thus became entangled in Geidliv’s regime and his nephew Khuldhar’s doomed attempt to fight it.

Now Merekhet has evidence that Geidliv used telepathy and the bioscience of the mer-people to create a living weapon from Khuldhar’s genetic material and hid it in plain sight. Worse, a former ally now estranged is seeking that weapon, and must not be allowed to capture it, lest all the world of Okeanos fall to far greater tyranny than Geidliv could ever have hoped to create.

Merekhet must regain Khuldhar’s confidence, and together they must find the five young men who are the keys to Geidliv’s final vengeance weapon.

FROM JOHN BAILEY: The Long November: A Novel of Friendship, Duty, and the Battle of the Wabash (Historical Fiction)

In the autumn of 1791, three young men from a German settlement in western Pennsylvania answer the new republic’s call and march into the Northwest Territory with General Arthur St. Clair’s army. Jacob Bauer is a blacksmith’s son, quiet and methodical, who reads the ground around him the way he reads iron. Eli Schaeffer is the miller’s son, warm and quick, whose easy charm conceals a steadiness that only reveals itself under pressure. Nathan Reist is the schoolmaster’s son, bookish and earnest, who has read everything available about the territory and the confederation they are marching to meet—and who understands, more clearly than any of them, what they are walking toward.

On the fourth of November, 1791, they find out.

The Battle of the Wabash—known to history as St. Clair’s Defeat—remains the worst defeat ever suffered by the United States Army at the hands of a Native American confederation, a catastrophe born of inadequate preparation, corrupt supply contracts, and a commander who had been warned explicitly what the wilderness required and could not, in the end, provide it. The confederation force under the brilliant Miami war chief Mihšihkinaahkwa—Little Turtle—had been watching the column for weeks. They chose the hour and the ground, and they were not wrong.

The Long November follows Jacob, Eli, and Nathan through the campaign and its aftermath: the road-cutting and the short rations and the first desertions, the four of November itself and what it demanded of each of them, the brutal retreat through the Ohio country and the weeks at Fort Jefferson while Nathan fought fever and Jacob refused to leave. And then, across the years that followed—the return home, the marriages, Nathan’s book, the slow arc of the republic learning from what had been lost—the novel asks what it means to survive something and carry it, and what the men who did not survive were owed by the nation they served.

Written in the tradition of American historical fiction at its most serious—plain prose, honest about cost, heroic where heroism is earned and not where it is not—The Long November is a novel about friendship as the most durable form of courage, about the difference between duty written on paper and duty owed to the man beside you, and about the particular kind of gratitude available only to those who have been somewhere that showed them what home was worth.

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: SCENT.