Title: Spindrifts Author: A-M Mawhiney Genre: Young Adult Dystopia
Racism, climate change, and violence are in the past. The new world values respect and collaboration with others. But are there secrets lurking in the shadows of the Land of Hope? What truth about the past is being covered up?
When fifteen-year-old Fania returns from Immersion, she is shattered to learn that the next phase of her education is at home with Alicia, her granny. She had hoped for something far grander that would prepare her for an important role with the Earth Project. Their two strong personalities clash as Fania begins to learn more about the past and her family’s role in it.
As Fania grows in confidence and power, she starts to wonder exactly what secrets Alicia is keeping in her underground lab. After Fania discovers the truth, she finds her calling: one that has the power to change everything.
I’m supposed to write in my journal every day. Sure. Like that’s the best use of my time. They said it’d be a private place to think, but I’ve wondered about that. I can think in my head without writing my thoughts. Just in case, I always use my disconnected tablet for the real journal, encrypted with three protective codes and in a language I developed myself. I know this might be over the top, but I’ve felt better knowing no one can read my actual journal. So, people can read how excited I am about my apprenticeship, but privately I’m totally dissed. I really want to learn about people From Away, and instead I’m apprenticing with Granny, my great-grandmother, who’s spent most of her life close to home in her research laboratory, two miles down an ancient mine shaft. It used to be where they studied mysteries of the universe! How the heck did that work?
I’ve always loved Granny. I’ve felt as though we’ve had a special relationship, and I’ve missed spending time with her. I just never thought they’d give me a responsibility so far removed from what I really want to be doing.
Ezma told me I’ve many skills and a strong aptitude for analytical thinking. I know what that means. It means sitting in an underground lab every day for the rest of my life. I guess I wasn’t very good at hiding my feelings because Ezma felt she had to remind me what Granny does is very important. Then she asked me a curious question.
“Do you know what she does?”
Well, of course I do! I explained, “Granny is the researcher who found the serum. She said it was a fluke.”
That comment made Ezma laugh, hysterically almost. “Well, Fania, you’ll find there’s a lot you can learn from Alicia. I hope you’ll keep an open mind.”
When I boarded the transport to head home after two years at Immersion, my patch reminded me to change my timer back to the village’s schedule. The health patch is a misnomer; it’s actually an up-to-date example of bio-merged nanotechnology. This latest gen’s so far advanced compared to the primitive models my grandparents used when they were young—those things they wore on their wrists. Now the healer implants the technology at birth where it merges with our brainwaves. It has reciprocal transformational capabilities, but I’ve been told there are limitations so it can’t change the basic personality or natural abilities of anyone. The patch transmits and receives communications, monitors personal health data, and provides all my reading materials. Everyone in our territory has them, so far as I know.
A-M Mawhiney was deeply moved by the events of 2020 and the cries from advocates fighting for equity and justice for people living precarious lives because of structural barriers and discrimination. As a former social worker and academic she has spent her career seeking ways to improve lives of marginalized learners through inclusive education for all students. Mawhiney has hope for a better future for us all. Her vision of what this might look like inspired her to write Spindrifts.
Anne-Marie lives in Sudbury, Ontario, in the territory of the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek in the Robinson-Huron Treaty Area, with Dave McGill and their canine companion, Charlie.
Lady Ophelia is the last of her sisters to be unmarried! She knows she has to find a husband, but she’s been on the shelf for three seasons. When she finds a mysterious guide in Hatchards she forms a plan!
It just so happens that her brother’s best friend is happy to help her practice the instructions in the guide. Until they’re caught of course! Can the guide lead to happy ever after, or will scandal ruin Lady Ophelia’s chances?
A Brazen Agreement by Tamara Gill
Miss Sutton Howard needs to marry, and soon, there are only so many years a lady can endure the title of Wallflower. After a disappointing first season and the many that followed, her sixth will be her last and most successful. The Wallflowers Guide will ensure her season ends well. All she needs to do is find a gentleman suitable to be her husband.
Logan Carleton, Earl Jersey, knows it’s time to find a wife, if only the one woman he had lost through no fault of his own several years ago, wasn’t still on the market and complicating his life in London. Their bickering is no use, and before they cause another scandal, they must work together to gain what they both desire, spouses, just not with each other. But when two people are thrown together with an entwined history, complications arise, along with desires that may not be smothered a second time no matter how hard they try.
A Duke at Midnight by Stacy Reid
Miss Sarah Bellamy hopes to meet a gentleman at midnight, before she settles into the respectable and lonely life of a governess to two little girls. And her dreams come true. In the dark of the night, she is willingly seduced by a devastatingly handsome gentleman.
One night of bliss to discover he is not only a Duke but her future employer. A difficult adjustment to be so near and yet so far from the man of her dreams. She tries to suppress all hopes of more but finds herself inexorably drawn to the one man she knows she cannot have…
When decidedly on the shelf, a lady must sometimes take matters into her own hands and throw rules aside and do what one must to gain a husband.
Sutton raised her brows. Well, what did that mean? Was the guide giving her permission to misbehave? She pursed her lips in thought before the sound of another patron talking nearby caught her attention. Sutton slammed the book closed and quickly slid it back under the bookcase just as a couple passed her farther down the aisle. Sutton left the store, walking back to Hanover Square with determined strides, her maid hard on her heels. One must take one’s life into her own hands if one were to gain a husband.
Which would mean she had to be determined and go after what she wanted. She stopped on the footpath in thought. Did she like any gentleman enough for her to behave in such a way? To act instead of waiting for the gentleman to always come to her?
Sutton started off again, stepping around a large gentleman before slamming directly into a wall of muscle. She stumbled back, her footing beyond redemption before she landed with an oomph on the flagstone path. “Oww,” she complained, stopping herself from rolling a little and rubbing her behind in a most unladylike way. She glanced up, about to give a set down to the oaf who had run into her before the words dried up in her mouth. The horrified sight of Lord Jersey met her eyes. Logan Carleton. Of course, it was him she had slammed into. No one else would get in her way like that man did. Ass that he was.
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USATODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR, Eva Devon, was raised on literary fiction, but quite accidentally and thankfully, she was introduced to romance one Christmas by Johanna Lindsey’s Mallory novella, The Present. A romance addict was born. She devoured every single Lindsey novel within a few months and moved on to contemporary and paranormal with gusto. Now, she loves to write her own roguish dukes, alpha males and the heroines who tame them. She loves to hear from her readers. So please pen her a note! evadevonauthor@gmail.com
Tamara is an Australian author who grew up in an old mining town in country South Australia, where her love of history was founded. So much so, she made her darling husband travel to the UK for their honeymoon, where she dragged him from one historical monument and castle to another.
A mother of three, her two little gentlemen, a future lady (she hopes) keep her busy in the real world, but whenever she gets a moment’s peace she loves to write romance novels in an array of genres, including regency, medieval, and time travel.
Tamara loves hearing from readers and writers alike. You can contact her through her website at www.tamaragill.com.
USA Today Bestselling author Stacy Reid writes sensual Historical and Paranormal Romances and is the published author of over twenty books. Her debut novella The Duke’s Shotgun Wedding was a 2015 HOLT Award of Merit recipient in the Romance Novella category, and her bestselling Wedded by Scandal series is recommended as Top picks at Night Owl Reviews, Fresh Fiction Reviews, and The Romance Reviews.
Stacy lives a lot in the worlds she creates and actively speaks to her characters (aloud). She has a warrior way “Never give up on dreams!” When she’s not writing, Stacy spends a copious amount of time binge-watching series like The Walking Dead, Altered Carbon, Rise of the Phoenixes, Ten Miles of Peach Blossom, and playing video games with her love. She also has a weakness for ice cream and will have it as her main course.
To be the first to hear about my new releases, get cover reveals and excerpts you won’t find anywhere else, sign up for my Newsletter @ https://www.stacyreid.com/#newsletter/
The Tower Card: Upheaval, Crumbling Foundations, Chaos, Awakening The Sun Card: Enlightenment, Joy, Success, Vitality
Rachel Ferrer fled the church when she was eighteen, burying her trauma to chase her dreams, only to have them thwarted when her husband died shortly after their son was born. Now she and her tarot-reading roommate do their best to get by.
Nicolas Rivera should be happy. He answered his call to the ministry and has held a position in the church he grew up in for more than a decade. He’s married and he loves his kids, but something in him has shifted and the life he thought he wanted doesn’t feel like it fits anymore. When his childhood best friend’s widow reappears in his life, Nicolas tells himself that his desire to be near Rachel is altruistic.
Until it isn’t.
Rachel and Nicolas have been on the periphery of each other’s lives for years, but when their worlds collide, attraction sparks, lightning crashes and the walls they have been hiding behind begin to crumble.
Lightning Crashes is an exvangelical romance that examines what happens when we build our lives on faulty foundations and what can happen when we leave that behind and step into the sun. Follow Rachel and Nicolas down the path of temptation, through their yearning slow-burn, and into their happily ever after.
Rachel had been chatting with Nicolas so long in the hotel’s lounge that when he stood to head back to his room after yawning for the fifteenth time, it only seemed natural to follow him. She’d meant to break off at the stairwell and head to her room, which was three floors up, but he was so busy telling her about how they’d had to move a felled tree to get a generator out to a clinic on the outskirts of town and how that was why he couldn’t wait for sleep, that when he opened his door, she just sort of followed him inside without thinking. He didn’t seem to have thought about it either until he shut the door behind her, and they were shrouded in darkness.
His voice trailed off and Rachel noticed how close he stood. She took a step away, but her back hit the door. Nicolas craned his neck and leaned backward; Rachel wondered if he could see anything in the dark room. She could only make out his outline from the faint glow of the emergency night light in the bathroom to her right.
“Roommate’s not back yet, no worries about waking him up.”
“Oh, that’s good,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
Rachel meant to apologize for invading his space, but suddenly he was invading hers as his hands traveled up her arms to grip her shoulders.
Rachel felt tears ping at the corners of her eyes, even as heat and excitement sparked through her as Nicolas pressed into her space, trapping her against the door in a swirling vortex of potential. “Then why?”
She couldn’t even form the rest of the words in the sentence, but Nicolas didn’t need them. One finger traced a path of flame up her neck and tipped her chin up to where his eyes shone in the dim light. “I was afraid,” he said. “Hell, I’m still terrified, but when I saw you so happy, so free, that night, while I was still working through my anger and my pain . . .” He shook his head. “I still wanted you just as bad as I had before, I didn’t want to bring you down. So I ran, and I have regretted not kissing you and telling you how much I want you in my life every day since.”
“Oh” was all Rachel could say as tears did fall. She’d spent those first few days after the night at Paradox in a state of nervous anticipation. Should she text him again? Should she wait? Should she move on? What had she done to scare him off? Why didn’t he want her? Had Naomi missed a knot on her stupid string? Had she remembered to burn it on the full moon?
But here he was, pressing her against the door with his full body in a dark hotel room, kissing away her tears, and it hadn’t been anything to do with her or with Naomi’s spell after all. He’d been afraid he would bring her down. How did he not know that he was the only one she’d ever wanted?
“Rachel?” His voice was low, like a soft rumbling of thunder in the distance, even as she could feel his breath on her neck.
“Yeah?” She could barely choke out the word around her surprise. Her hope.
“Can I kiss you?” The rumble was closer this time. Deeper. Longer. More dangerous.
“You don’t have to ask,” she said, even though she knew she was playing with fire.
Sure enough, the second Nicolas’s lips met hers, her whole body ignited all at once as if she’d been struck by lightning. Rachel welcomed the burn as she surged up onto her toes to throw her arms around Nicolas’s shoulders so she could reach his lips more easily. They were plump and firm and sweet, and he still tasted so much like the cookies, Rachel thought she might be able to devour him whole.
Marla Holt believes in second chances, romance, and the radical notion that everyone deserves a happily every after. She’s living her own fairy tale, writing contemporary romance novels in her Kansas farmhouse with her husband, three boys, three cats, and flock of imaginary sheep. Follow her at marlaholt.com or on Instagram as @marlaholtauthor
