The Deadly Tea by Rachel Dacus – Spotlight and Giveaway

July 20, 2026 By 2 Comments

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Rachel Dacus will be awarding a $20 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Most sleuths don’t have the advantage of talking to the murder victim for clues, but Saffron has a window into the afterlife. The problem is, she’s not a detective and has no wish to be.

In the charming heart of London’s Notting Hill, Saffron juggles motherhood, running an animal welfare foundation, and counseling recently deceased spirits—the invisibles. But her peaceful routine is upended when a spirit insists she solve the mystery of his untimely death. Lucas Troy pops into her awareness claiming he was killed and demanding she figure out who did it. He wants justice before he’ll agree to move on. ButSaffron’s role isn’t to play detective, but to help each invisible plan for the next adventure in living. She asks Lucas if he suspects anyone in the circle at his aunt’s tea party where he died. He can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill him, but he persuades Saffron to interview them all.

She feels for Lucas, who had hardly begun his life, and she tries to persuade him that he can have a great future next lifetime, but finally she gives in and agrees to a little investigating. If she finds out something, perhaps he’ll agree to move forward. But the closer she gets to the possible killer, the more she’s in danger. Saffron has no wish to join Lucas in The Room Over There.

Settle in to a cozy mystery with a touch of the supernatural, the heartwarming chaos of family, and the charm of London’s Notting Hill. “Interesting characters, intriguing mystery.”

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It was glorious to dawdle around the bohemian and vintage shops on Portobello Road, and the addition of rare April sunshine in London made it seem to Saffron like her spa day. Not that she ever got to have those, as most mothers of young children didn’t. But today, browsing and shopping, she indulged herself in a glorious solitude amid the crowds. This busy street was her paradise, and she needed just a few more things for the children’s Easter outfits, but hoping not to find them too quickly.

Traffic and people swirled around her, and she thrilled to the bright colors, food stalls, brushes of music wafting out of open doors. She would forever be a tourist in her adopted city of London. Notting Hill was so like her San Francisco Bay Area, but snootier. In many ways, more exciting.

Peering into windows, she thought about the perfect bow tie she wanted for Percy’s suit, so her seven-year-old son didn’t look like a tiny banker. Four-year-old Freida could use a flower pin for her pinafore dress. Focusing on these ideas was such a pleasure. Saffron tried to wipe the smile off her face, remembering that Londoners did not walk around smiling, though Californians often did.

A passerby jostled her, and as she stopped to check her bag, a low voice drifted down. “Hey! Anyone here?”

Hella damn. An invisible. Another drifting spirit.

“I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m busy, as you can see. You can see me, right?”

“I see a lot of hair. Curly. Are you some kind of animal?”

Saffron huffed. “You’re looking at the top of my head. Come down lower, so you can see my face.”

Some might call it being haunted, but Saffron called it helping invisibles. She wasn’t often contacted by newly dead people, but occasionally one popped into her vicinity. They always needed orientation and comfort after the trauma of dying.

About the Author: Rachel Dacus is the author of eight novels and five poetry collections. Her fiction features love and relationships, exotic locations and intrepid heroines, and emotional journeys of self-discovery, all with a touch of the supernatural. Her poetry, stories, and essays have appeared widely in print and online literary journals and anthologies. She enjoys life in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area, with its coast and trails where she walks her tiny but mighty Silky Terrier with her architect husband.

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The Dead Hour by Thomas Grant Bruso – Spotlight and Giveaway

June 25, 2026 By 2 Comments

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Thomas Grant Bruso will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

PI Bradshaw receives a late night call from a client desperate to find her missing daughter. The woman asks to meet him at a storage unit in upstate New York. The woman hangs up before Bradshaw can inquire further. Woken by the jarring news, Bradshaw decides to meet the frantic, mysterious woman pleading for his help.

Working as a private investigator has its drawbacks. Bradshaw often receives prank calls from clients with run-of-the-mill requests and chooses his cases wisely. But there is something unusual and unnerving about this particular call. The hopeless plea in the woman’s voice and the anonymity of her demand ignite a maelstrom of questions.

While Bradshaw decides whether the call is worth pursuing, a young dead girl from the Other Side visits him, demanding attention and seeking help for the request he just received. Who is this spirit? What does she want? And how is she linked to the caller?

Enjoy an Excerpt

Thunder cleaved the sky, pulling me out of my foggy dream.

In the glass, a flash of white light and a dash of movement scurried past my periphery.

I shuddered at the pale flesh of a disfigured face sneering at me.

I turned.

Nothing — a line of locked unit doors.

Then footsteps, sprinting away, and a gaggle of laughter from around the corner, along the corridor.

“Hello?” I yelled, chasing another phantom. My legs felt like rubber bands as I dashed to the end of the long hall. I stopped at the stairwell door, out of breath.

The sound footsteps seized. But intoxicating laughter followed.

“Who’s there?” I yelled. “This isn’t funny.”

A mockery of demonic laughter filled the air and cooled my skin.

I stepped back, drew a breath.

Behind me, one of the two elevators dinged. The doors opened.

Curiosity consumed me.

I should not have turned around to the sound.

The lights went out when I did, plunging me into complete darkness.

Up ahead, the exit signs flickered.

I reached into my coat pocket and gripped the small bottle of mace I carried with me when working cases. My heart thrashed behind my ribs, like a pack of hungry rats gnawing through the lining of muscles, tendons, and intestines.

A coldness coiled in the space behind me. A round of knuckles tapped against my head, and the sound of teeth clicked close to my ear. I ran toward the elevator doors. They closed before I reached it.

I banged hard on the doors and pressed the down button several times.

In the dim light of the corridor, I noticed shadowy movement from something skittering across the wall, a chittering screech of insectile legs rushing at me in the dark.

I raced a few feet to the left of the elevators to the stairwell door.

Locked.

About the Author Thomas Grant Bruso knew he wanted to be a writer at an early age. He has been a voracious reader of genre fiction since childhood.

His literary inspirations are Ray Bradbury, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Jim Grimsley, Karin Fossum, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Bruso loves animals, reading books, and writing fiction, and prefers Sudoku to crossword puzzles.

In another life, he was a freelance writer and wrote for magazines and newspapers. In college, he won the Hermon H. Doh Sonnet Competition. Now, he writes and publishes fiction and reviews books for his hometown newspaper, The Press-Republican.

He lives in upstate New York.

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The Lie That Could Save Her Daughter or Destroy Everything by Alix Nichols – Guest Blog and Giveaway

June 24, 2026 By 1 Comment

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Alix Nichols will be awarding a digital box set of her bestselling series The Darcy Brothers to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

The Lie That Could Save Her Daughter or Destroy Everything

One of the questions that stayed with me long after I finished writing A Duchess with a Secret is this: Does protecting someone you love justify hiding the truth?

It’s a question Eva, the heroine of my novel, has been forced to confront in the most painful way. For years, she has lived with secrets — some forced upon her, others she chose to keep in order to shield the people she loves.
Now she finds herself standing at a crossroads where the “right” choice could hurt the very person she’s trying to protect.

Eva has spent much of her life enduring, first from her parents, then from her husband. She knows better than most how silence can feel like safety… and how it can also become its own kind of prison. But when the truth she carries has the power to change everything for her daughter, the lines between protection and deception become dangerously blurred.

At the same time, Alex is facing truths of his own — about his family, his inheritance, and the man he thought he was.

Their stories collide in a place where love doesn’t simplify moral choices or make the path clearer. It just makes the stakes higher.

Eva must decide what she’s willing to sacrifice. When her darkest, most dangerous secret becomes too heavy to carry alone, she’s forced to make an impossible choice.

If you’ve ever wrestled with a similar dilemma, I think you’ll understand Eva’s struggle. And if you want to find out what she ultimately chooses, and whether her whirlwind romance with Alex can survive that choice, I hope you’ll pick up A Duchess with a Secret!

For sixteen years, they’ve hated each other…
and craved each other.

Widowed and betrayed, Eva Castellane will do anything to protect her daughter’s inheritance.
Standing in her way?
Alex Castellane—her late husband’s steely, magnetic half brother.
The man poised to take it all.
Her worst enemy.
Her forbidden temptation.

Stuck together in the family castle, their legal fight spirals into war…
until a common threat forces a reluctant alliance.
Desire blurs the lines.
Chemistry sizzles.
Rules get broken.

But as the verdict nears, one slip could unravel Eva’s explosive secret…

A Duchess with a Secret stands alone within the Montevor Royals Saga. It is a spicy contemporary enemies-to-lovers romance with forced proximity, family secrets, and a hard-won HEA.

Enjoy an Excerpt

“He’s here,” Millie whispers.

I don’t look. I don’t need to.

The man she’s warning me about radiates a chill so palpable I can sense which door he entered through. The air in Fort Vauclairt’s reception hall, warmed by hundreds of flickering candles and the breath of mourners grows colder by the second.

Of course, Alex would show up! Nothing like a funeral to size up how much of the estate he can have, just because he happens to share the same father as Geoffroy.

I’m being unfair, I know.

After all, Alex is the old duke’s second son. In neighboring France, the math prodigy would’ve inherited half of the duchy when Rodolphe passed.

Then again, there are no dukes or duchies in the Republic of France, nor are we subject to its laws. We’re old school in Mount Evor. Here, the principles of primogeniture and representation still reign supreme. The firstborn takes it all. The child comes before the sibling. With both Geoffroy and Julian gone, Millie’s birthright ensures that she inherits everything.

The only way Alex Castellane gets a chunk of the estate is if Geoffroy named him in his will. Which I know he didn’t. My late husband and his younger half brother had been estranged long before I met and married Geoffroy Castellane, a dashing widower twice my age.

Alex will get nothing or next to nothing. And Millie will be the next Duchess of Rohinn.

He knows this, of course he does. Yet he carries his tall, infuriatingly well-proportioned form with confidence, which lends an air of legitimacy to his potential claims.

About the Author Alix Nichols is a caffeine addict, a longtime fan of Mr. Darcy. She pens sexy romantic comedies and romantasy. Her books have been described as “pure pleasure” (Kirkus Reviews) that “keep fans of romance hanging off the edge of their seat” (Romantic Times).

At the age of six, she released her first book. It featured highly creative spelling on a dozen pages stitched together and bound in velvet paper.

Decades later, she lives in France and still writes. Her spelling has improved (somewhat), she has become a Kindle Scout winner, Chanticleer First Place winner, USA Today bestseller, Book Riot’s Top 100 Must-Read International Romance author, and Amazon All-Star for being one of the 100 most-read authors in Kindle Unlimited.

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The Engine in the Sky by V.C. Harrison – Spotlight and Giveaway

June 18, 2026 By 1 Comment

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. V.G. Harrison will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

When Professor Meridia Vail’s space station is hurled across time and dimensions, she and the rest of the Bridgeway crew wake on an alternate Earth that’s only five years into the future but looks like it’s a century behind her technology. Their goal is to reclaim their crippled station, return to their dimension, and hope that a mysterious interdimensional illness doesn’t kill her and her people first.

Stuck on a backwards version of her own planet, Meridia must deal with governments who want her technology and intelligence agencies who want control. Nobody trusts anyone, and the longer they delay, the closer the Bridgeway gets to a catastrophic reentry.

However, the greatest shock comes when Meridia meets her doppelganger, a brilliant mechanic with a loving family that leaves her heart aching for the life she could have had.

As time is running out for her crew and New Earth, Meridia faces an impossible mission: return to the station, save her crew, and prevent a global disaster. Duty first. Family second. When Meridia is thrust into a situation where the two become synonymous, she must decide how much she’s willing to risk for a world she’s sworn to save and a life she can never have.

Enjoy an Excerpt

“Hold on.” Riser nearly spit up his fruit juice. “We’ve been thinking about that. Go through the steps. We must turn on all the primary batteries and hope none of them received any significant damage from the explosion that sent us here. That’s first. Without them, we might as well be talking about taking over a model airplane.”

“It would also require an emergency chain of command.” Goodwin crossed his arms. “While Professor Ferrera is the senior-most member of our crew and a military man, he can’t make that kind of a decision. He would need to have his clearance codes reinitiated, and last I recall, there wasn’t any time for Captain Kasongo to do that.”

“Cal can do it,” I interjected. “The problem is that we need someone who’s skilled enough to hack the main computers remotely.”

“De Rieux’s dead.”

De Rieux was one of our computer science whizzes from Canada. Like the others, his body had been flown back to his respective country for a head-of-state-type burial. I hated that none of us could be there for him. If you were a member of the crew, then you definitely crossed paths with him at some point.

“What about the De Rieux of this world?” Riser asked. “I hear you’ve been gallivanting around the US—what’s your counterpart like?”

“She’s brilliant like me.” I half-smiled at the thought of that one spark of happiness since our arrival here. “And even though she’s only designed futuristic cars and the like, she has some serious insight into how things work in our world without having ever seen it.”

“Oh, of course she does.” Cal tried to hide his seriousness, but a chuckle failed him. “She’s brilliant, remember? Not that you’re biased or anything.”

About the Author: Amazon best-selling author, V.G. Harrison enjoys creating smart heroines who are more comfortable dealing with things like Fine-structure constant and quantum entanglement than the fallout from their conflict. She loves to write stories that leave her audience so engaged they can’t sleep at night, thinking about the possibilities.

V.G. holds a Bachelors in Biomedical Engineering and a Masters in Information Technology. When she’s not writing, she’s an IT manager for a healthcare information systems company.

Her ever-growing list of hobbies include astronomy, attending comic cons, keeping an eye on the cryptocurrency and stock markets, hydroponics gardening, hiking, and connecting with her daughter, Collie, on a cool level.

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Move Me by Lynn Crandall – Spotlight and Giveaway

June 15, 2026 By 3 Comments

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Lynn Crandall will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

An Aeon by birth, Diane Butler knew when she walked away from her fellow Aeons that she wanted certain things: wealth, power, acceptance. But she’d come to realize she didn’t belong with Dark Sides and joined in the battle to save Auralia from darkness. But when her past comes after her, she understand that she can’t escape it with a simple name change.

A surprise encounter that turns ugly pits lone Emmett Forrest against thugs determined to hurt Cassie. With each threat out cold on the ground, he believes he’s done. But when the men report the incident to the Auralia Police Department, he can’t avoid the drama or the intrigue surrounding her.

Enjoy an Excerpt

“Anyone else bored as sin? We stopped the Irish mob and Dark Sides from taking over Auralia in December. January and February, we took some time to recover from Dark Sides’ Project Reckoning. I know you all have been tending to your personal lives, your relationships, and your careers, but for me, those two months were the epitome of boredom. Now March is almost over, and still boredom reigns.”

“Diane—” Braden started.

“Cassie,” she interrupted. “Try to remember, Braden. I’ve told you so many times that I’m using my middle name now. I’m not Diane anymore.” She pouted her lips.
Braden nodded. “Yes, sorry. You’re Cassandra Butler now, not Diane Butler.”

“Cassie. I told you, Cassie for short.” She swept her gaze around the living room at Braden and Payson’s house and flung her hands up. “I swear, it’s not that hard to remember my name. I made a change, I’m not Diane. I’m not that woman any more. I’m aligned with light and love. I’m Cassie. Cassie. Cassie Butler. Gauzy, gossamer, and open, not rigid, harsh, or angry Cassie.” The rock lodged in her gut weighed her down. Was she different? Truly? She’d been putting in the work with her counselor, Claire Eve Kelly, to make the change permanent. But with the chaos of the past not far behind, she ached for the excitement of the life she had. The parties, the conniving to get what she wanted. It had all been so mesmerizing.

About the Author After cutting her writing teeth as a feature writer for commercial and trade magazines, a reporter for newspapers and radio, and an executive editor for a communications company, award-winning author Lynn Crandall tuned her voracious appetite for stories to writing contemporary and paranormal romance, women’s fiction, and romantic suspense. In her books, she enjoys taking readers on emotional journeys with relatable characters who refuse to back down, and face challenges and tribulations with heart and soul. She believes every love has a story, and hers is with one handsome husband and a large, beautiful circle of family, including her cat Winter.

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The Super Seeders by Miles Hillmann – Spotlight and Giveaway

June 10, 2026 By 1 Comment

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Miles Hillmann will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

The Super Seeders is based on first-hand accounts from the scientists, breeders, and curators who have built the seven pillars of today’s plant genetics revolution. It begins with the guardians of global gene banks, conserving the rare and diverse crop genes that form agriculture’s safety net. From these collections, plant geneticists are now unlocking hidden traits with fast-moving genome technologies, transforming the possibilities of crop improvement.

International research centres and the groundbreaking Plant Treaty have opened the floodgates for the free exchange of genetic material, enabling a new wave of discovery. Crop breeders are translating these breakthroughs into reality, delivering drought-tolerant, disease-resistant, and higher-yielding varieties for farmers.

The book raises a pressing question: will this revolution reach the 70 percent of Africans who still depend on subsistence farming? The answer will shape not only the future of food in Africa, but the future of food security worldwide.

A story of ingenuity and urgency, The Super Seeders captures the hopes and challenges of the women and men driving a genetic transformation of agriculture—and the farmers whose lives depend on its success.

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Nikolay Vavilov was born in 1887 in Moscow to a merchant family. His father had endured poverty due to repeated crop failures and food rationing, which fuelled Vavilov’s early obsession with eradicating famine.

At the start of the twentieth century, he established the Plant Institute in a former palace on Leningrad’s Herzen Street. In the 1920s, Vavilov and his young team embarked on global expeditions to collect rare seeds, tubers, roots, and bulbs, which they brought back to the seed bank for sorting, cataloguing, and storage.

More than any other person before or since, Vavilov sampled the bounty across five continents. His expeditions went from interior China to the Pamir highlands and the Afghan plains, through the semi-arid steppes of Iran, Iraq, and Georgia to North Africa and Europe, and in the Americas from the Amazon to Central America and northwards to the USA.

One of Vavilov’s major contributions was his theory of plant origin. His global observations led him to hypothesise that the centre of origin of a cultivated plant could be traced to regions where its wild relatives displayed maximum adaptability. In 1920, he expanded this theory, asserting that the region of greatest diversity for a plant species represents its centre of origin. Ultimately, he identified thirteen world centres of plant origin and established one hundred field stations to conserve and evaluate the world’s plant diversity.

About the Author

Miles Hillmann is a lifelong entrepreneur with a career that bridges scientific curiosity and hands-on innovation, from his early work at the Kabanyolo Agricultural Research Station in Uganda during Idi Amin’s fall to experiencing food shortage and famine in the Ethiopian Central Highlands. His work encompassed everything from agricultural development to building flash flood irrigation food-for-work systems.

His first company developed processes for food industry materials. Concurrently he pioneered real-time organic material analysis. He then created one of the UK’s major pollution control companies supplying specialist materials to companies in Europe, Nigeria and the Middle East. This led him to establish companies in e-commerce, accredited pollution control training and flood control.

This book is the story of the scientists, curators, and plant breeders leading this movement, told in their voices, through his lens.

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Daisy’s Creature by M.L. Knight – Spotlight and Giveaway

June 9, 2026 By 1 Comment

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. M.L. Knight will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Please click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Ashmore was like any other town.

It held secrets.

Legend says…only the blood of a Sanderson can revive it.

And it’s been sleeping for centuries.

Until Daisy.

When Creature awakens, the residents of Ashmore get more than they bargained for.

And he gets more than he can chew.

With every bite, he’s changing.

Into what?

The only thing he craves to be.

Daisy’s.

Enjoy an Excerpt

Lucas waved a hand in a distinct direction she didn’t glance at. “Is it true, then? Y’all are the guardians or some shit over a petrified demon, and that’s why your mom needs to oversee the sale?” He tilted his blonde head. “You know, we used to come out here and dare each other to go up and touch it. The thing’s creepy as fuck.”

Sidney let out a nervous giggle, but she avoided looking where Lucas had gestured as well. “Very creepy. I don’t know how y’all sleep in the house knowing it’s in your yard.”

Daisy feigned nonchalance and shrugged, refusing to admit to herself or them that she found the thing fascinating in a macabre way.

It truly looked like a demon from hell—minus the horns and tail. It possessed big, leathery wings that lay flush against its back, blending in with the black tattered clothes draping over its lean body, absent of any fat. Claws adorned its bird-like feet, the heels coming to a point that also had a claw.

Feet meant for grabbing prey off the ground.

She shook the thought off. Under the low moonlight, it would be hard to see the thing with its grey-black skin, arms tied and looped around the back of a twelve-foot-tall stake.

According to Mom, the thing had been there for generations, never moving and never changing. The townspeople knew all about it, and, obviously, the kids made a game out of approaching it.

About the Author: M.L. Knight is a self-published author who enjoys things that go bump in the night. Her favorite horror movie is Evil Dead 2 and her favorite holiday is Halloween. She channels her love for the strange and unusual by writing erotic, horror-inspired stories. When she’s not cooking up something dark and depraved, she’s tackling her never ending TBR, studying for her nursing degree or lifting heavy weights. And she’s got one question to ask you. What’s your favorite scary movie?

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Moccasin Trace by Hawk MacKinney – Exclusive Excerpt and Giveaway

June 3, 2026 By 1 Comment

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Hawk MacKinney will be awarding a $15 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

…it was about the land.

It is July of 1859, a month of sweltering dog days and feverish emotional bombast. Life is good for widower Rundell Ingram and his hazel-eyed, roan-haired son, Hamilton. Between the two of them, they take care of Moccasin Hollow, their sprawling ancestral plantation home in the rolling farming country outside Queensborough Towne in east Georgia. Adjoining Ingram lands is Wisteria Bend, the vast slave-holding plantation of Andrew and Corinthia Greer, their daughter Sarah, and son Benjamin. Both families share generations of long-accepted traditions, and childhood playmates are no longer children. The rangy, even-tempered Norman-Scottish young Hamilton is smitten with Sarah, who has become an enticing capricious beauty—the young lovers more in love with each passing day, and only pleasant times ahead of them.

…but a blood tide of war is sweeping across the South, a tide that will forever change everyone and everything.

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Wisteria Bends, the Greer Plantation—thousands of acres of cake-icing cotton rolling over the gentle foothills of east Georgia that bordered the somewhat lesser acreage of Moccasin Hollows. The Hollows and its vested lands weren’t extensive by cotton standards. Hard work by Rundell and Hamilton, and jealously guarded with the usual Southroner passion for land. Ingrams and Greers were bred, borne and nurtured on old family crown grant lands. Money was vulgar. All that mattered was the land.

About the Author: With postgraduate degrees and faculty positions in several medical universities, Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem. His professional writing includes articles on chordate neuroembryology, and aerospace research on muscle metabolic behavior in multi-orbital environments.

In addition, Hawk has authored several works of fiction including a historical romance Moccasin Trace which was nominated for both the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award. His Cairns of Sainctuarie Science Fiction Series and his Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series have received national and international attention. He is currently working on a series of horror/suspense novels.

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What Remains After by Pauline J. Grabia – Spotlight and Giveaway

June 3, 2026 By 1 Comment

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Pauline J. Grabia will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

SOME STORIES DO NOT END WHEN THE DANGER PASSES.

Beth Clark has not returned to her hometown in decades, since the childhood she survived there nearly destroyed her.

When her estranged mother dies, Beth comes back to rural Alberta for a funeral that feels carefully rewritten. The eulogies are tidy. The past is sanitized. But inside the abandoned bungalow where she and her brother once lived, Beth finds objects that shatter the illusion—and awaken memories of abuse, neglect, and the systems that failed to protect her.

When Beth’s younger brother is critically injured in a sudden accident, the present collides with the past. Keeping vigil at his hospital bedside, Beth is drawn back into the summer that changed everything: the violence in their home, the silence of those who should have intervened, and the foster family whose quiet faith offered the first real safety either child had known.

Told across dual timelines, What Remains After is a literary psychological suspense novel about trauma and memory, belief and betrayal, and the long, unfinished work of survival. It asks what it truly means to forgive—and what remains when the truth is finally spoken.

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Frigid cold seeped through Beth’s gloves from the steering wheel of her rental car to her fingers; her arthritis flared. The ache in her joints echoed the pain in her heart. Why, after all this time, with her specialized education and training as well as years of personal trauma therapy, couldn’t she shake the anxiety and hatred that still clung to Virgie’s name, and to that of her Uncle Gary?

Otto was composed. Somehow, he’d managed to recover. But she was still a mess. As a trained therapist, she told herself she should be able to work it out, but she couldn’t.

She drove up and down the quiet streets of the town. Except for a new grocery store that had replaced Gordon’s after it burned down about five years earlier, not much had changed. Like the church, the community seemed frozen in time. Truck models were newer, and teens wore different clothes, but the vibe of Coverville stayed the same: slow, conservative, and decaying. Around here, stories were currency, and nothing else. They didn’t step on others’ toes. Mind your own business. Keep moving.

Beth didn’t understand why she paused in front of the small, condemned bungalow with its rotting fence, missing shingles, and boarded-up windows. It looked like the only creatures that had lived there in years were cockroaches and mice. But they had been there long before the human residents moved out. Virgie was the last to leave when, six years before, Alzheimer’s had left her unable to care for herself any longer, and she ended up in a home.

Rebecka told Beth that Otto had thought about taking Virgie in, but Rebecka stood her ground. She wasn’t going to live under the same roof as his mother. Forgiveness was one thing; sharing a home was another. Otto did what he always did—sacrificed. He found a great nursing home, but it was also expensive. Beth suspected her brother had made up the difference out of his own pocket, since Old Age Security and Canada Pension didn’t cover the entire cost.

About the Author Pauline J. Grabia is a Canadian novelist whose work explores trauma, memory, faith, and the moral consequences of silence. Writing under the Stories of Consequence banner, she is drawn to stories that face difficult truths without spectacle and seek light without sentimentality. What Remains After is a literary psychological suspense novel rooted in rural Alberta and shaped by questions of survival, forgiveness, and what endures.

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Love Across Time by Beth Ford – Spotlight and Giveaway

June 1, 2026 By Leave a Comment

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Beth Ford will be awarding a $20 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour. And click here for our review.

Ashley and Thomas, a medieval knight, are in 1377 England, escaping from present-day immigration authorities intent on capturing Thomas. Having fled to the past to ensure their togetherness, Ashley is faced with adapting to fourteenth-century life, while Thomas, new to his title as Baron after his older brother’s death, is called to Parliament, encountering enemies there and at court as he struggles to build his own alliances.

Ashley’s work at a monastic hospital is deemed “miraculous” but draws unwanted attention as potential witchcraft. Meanwhile, becoming embroiled in a political movement, she realizes too late it’s a plot against the King.

How can Ashley conform to social expectations, counter the plot, and still keep her relationship with Thomas, in all the turmoil?

Enjoy an Excerpt

Ashley struggled to absorb the bucolic version of Salisbury she glimpsed through the trees. The road that had so recently—to her mind—trundled along the base of the low green hill had transformed into a simple dirt track. A mile or so off, the spire of Salisbury cathedral stuck out in the landscape, surrounded by low buildings. Around her, everything else was silent.

Except for the pounding of her heart and Thomas’s steadying breath beside her.

He tugged her gently back into the woods. “We can’t risk anyone glimpsing you from the road.”

Right. She looked down at her clothes. Denim, polyester—fabrics that didn’t exist here, in the time that Thomas hailed from. The time that she had abruptly landed in with no preparation or planning.

She glanced back to the clearing in the woods that held the flat, mossy rock she and Thomas had just knelt at in 2022 and risen from in 1377—the year it had been for Thomas when the rock had abruptly deposited Thomas in her time earlier that summer. She recalled the sixteenth-century manuscript they found in the university database in Southampton when searching for answers to his situation, the manuscript that had given them the key to getting Thomas home.

There is sayde to be much magik and manye secretes on Salisbury plain. A person can fynde their greatest heart’s desire in that playce. This person shoulde return to the same stane with a clere purpose in his heart and mak the prayer again. But ev’ry time the magik is called on, there may be other consekwences, therfor it should be used only when absolutly necesary.

Calling on the magic had been absolutely necessary. They had been pursued up this very hill by the police who were intent on viewing Thomas only as an illegal refugee with no papers and Ashley as his accomplice. And in the moment while they waited to be caught, while Thomas and Ashley held hands and closed their eyes hoping the magic would deliver Thomas home, the mossy rock had known her own heart better than she had—it had sent her to the past with Thomas, and she knew that decision was right. Ashley prayed there would be no negative consequences such as were hinted in the manuscript.

About the Author: Beth Ford writes historical and time travel stories that transport you in time. She is the author of the novels In the Times of Spirits, Love Between Times, Love Across, Time, and After the Spirits Come: A Continuation of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. She also writes the Cassie Woods, Reporter historical mystery romance novella series. Her work has also appeared in a variety of literary journals. She lives in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

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