Excerpts - Tor/Forge Blog

Excerpt Reveal: You Deserve to Know by Aggie Blum Thompson

February 19, 2025February 18, 2025Ariana Carpentieri2 Comments

A brand new suspense novel from “the master of the suburban scandal” (Samantha M. Bailey), Aggie Blum Thompson.

Neighbors Gwen, Aimee, and Lisa share more than playdates and coffee mornings on their tranquil street in East Bethesda. They confide their deepest secrets, navigate the challenges of motherhood together, and provide a support system that seems unbreakable.

But when Gwen’s husband is found murdered after one of their weekly Friday night dinners, the peaceful quiet of their cul-de-sac shatters. The seemingly idyllic world of the three close-knit mom friends becomes a web of deception, betrayal, and revenge.

As the police investigate, the veneer of friendship begins to crack, revealing hidden tensions, clandestine affairs, and long-buried jealousies among the three women. With suspicions mounting and the neighborhood gripped by fear, Gwen, Aimee, and Lisa must confront the chilling truth about their husbands, and the sinister undercurrents in their own friendship.

You Deserve to Know will be available on March 11th, 2025. Please enjoy the following excerpt!

CHAPTER ONE

She has a sneaking feeling that her friends are talking about her. Anton and Lisa, outside on the patio, keep glancing at her through the kitchen window, where Aimee stands at the counter, dressing the salad. They’re sitting at the large patio table, too close together, too close for other people’s spouses, that is. What are they whispering about?

Her.

Aimee is sure of it. Probably talking about that stupid argument that she had with Lisa earlier, and the way she stormed off. Not stormed, exactly, but Aimee stood up so abruptly that her chair scraped the flagstone in an earsplitting screech as she announced, “I’ll get the salad.”

From where she stands inside her kitchen, Aimee has a good view of the two of them at the table. Through the large sliding doors to the right, she can see the whole of her backyard. At one end, all six of the kids are running around, jumping on the trampoline, chasing the dog. A plume of smoke curls from around the side of the house where her husband, Scott, and Lisa’s husband, Marcus, are presumably manning the grill, a behemoth of a thing she gave to Scott for Father’s Day a few months earlier.

Lisa and Marcus.
Gwen and Anton.
And Aimee and Scott.
The three families live on the same cul-de-sac, Nassau Court,

in East Bethesda, just outside Washington, D.C. The five younger kids are all close in age and attend the same school—both sets of twins in first grade and Noa in fourth grade, while Lisa and Marcus’s son, Kai, has just started middle school. The three families have spent so much time together in the past year that Aimee can read Anton’s and Lisa’s body language even thirty feet away.

Gwen appears beside her with a bowl of potato salad.

“I think that salad is ready, girl,” she says. “You’re whipping it like it’s egg whites.”

Aimee looks down at the metal salad servers in her hands. She drops them in the bowl and sighs.

“What were you staring at?” Gwen asks.

“I was watching Anton and Lisa. I think they’re talking about me.”

“Hmm. Knowing Anton, he’s telling her to calm down, maybe not be so judgy?”

“Or maybe he agrees with her,” Aimee says. “That my mothering leaves something to be desired.”

Gwen sucks in her breath. “No. You’re an amazing mother. She was being a—”

“Don’t say it.” Aimee turns to smile at Gwen. Three-way friendships are tricky. She was friends with Lisa first. For a few years, they were the only families with kids on the cul-de-sac. When Gwen and Anton moved in next door a year ago, the three women formed a trio. Aimee loves having two close friends on her block that she can count on. Loyalty is everything to her. Sometimes, though, she senses an undercurrent of competition between her two friends.

“I appreciate your coming to my defense, but I’m fine,” Aimee says. She doesn’t want to encourage Gwen to say anything negative about Lisa. She loves Gwen, considers her one of her closest friends, but she can be a little sharp.

Still, Aimee is a bit stung by Lisa’s earlier sanctimonious outrage. Her tone was nasty. You let your daughter do what?

Gwen snorts and pulls open the sliding door to the backyard, and Aimee follows her, clutching the large wooden salad bowl as if it might protect her from incoming arrows.

This is their Friday night ritual. The three families pile into one of the backyards and either grill or order takeout. In the cooler weather, they build a fire and roast marshmallows. Sometimes they drink too much. Sometimes people say things they shouldn’t. But mostly they have fun.

“It’s getting chillier, but I’m so glad we can still eat outside.” Aimee puts the salad down and takes a seat across the table from Anton. The air has the slightest crisp to it, a hint of the autumn to come.

These cloudless September days are her favorite time to be working. In the fall, her landscape design business does not have to deal with the frantic panic of homeowners who want instant flowers in the spring, impatient with the pace at which most plants grow. In the fall, she gets a different sort of client. The ones interested in reshaping their yards, preferably with native plants—her specialty. She’d like to transition to only native designs, but the market isn’t there yet. People love their boxwoods and crepe myrtles.

“What’s this?” Gwen sits down next to Anton and picks up his glass, which contains one large square ice cube sitting in a golden-brown liquid, before taking a sip.

“Blandon’s.”

“Anton. Really. You brought your own?” She smirks at Aimee as she says this, her tone halfway between teasing and mocking. Ribbing her husband is a regular thing for Gwen, which sometimes leaves Aimee uncomfortable at the obvious underlying tension. She wouldn’t do that to Scott, nor he to her. They made a promise to each other to never become a publicly bickering couple. On the surface, Gwen and Anton seem perfect. Anton, the successful writer and university teacher, their beautiful twin boys, and sophisticated Gwen, who works part-time at a Georgetown PR firm and directs her excess creative energies into complicated holiday displays, interior design, and her own flawless appearance.

Aimee always feels slightly unkempt around Gwen. Probably because her own wardrobe consists of Carhartt jackets and cargo pants, and her hair is always up in a messy bun. Not that Gwen has ever said anything to make Aimee feel less than. Gwen can’t help it if she’s one of those moms who makes every other woman feel slightly inadequate.

Anton reaches into a bag at his feet and pulls out a bottle shaped like a large glass grenade, a wide grin on his face. His contribution to Friday nights has been to introduce everyone to expensive alcohol. Aimee chalks this up to his being a writer. She pictures him at home every day, sitting in front of an old typewriter, surrounded by books, sipping bourbon. She once shared this flight of fancy with Gwen, who laughed and said that when she gets home from her work, she often finds Anton in his underwear playing Fortnite.

“Want some?” Anton asks as he holds the bottle in the air. “I’ll take an old-fashioned,” Aimee says.

He cringes in exaggeration, pulling at his clipped beard. “I can’t let you pollute my Blandon’s, but I think Scott’s got some Maker’s Mark in there I can use.” He stands up.

“He definitely does,” Aimee calls after him. “On his beautiful bar cart.”

Once Anton is out of earshot, Aimee turns to Lisa. “Did you see the bar cart Scott bought? It was made in Denmark in 1960 and he’s very, very proud of it.”

“Ooh, mid-century modern,” Gwen says. “Who’s the designer?”

Aimee shrugs. “Beats me.” Her husband’s fascination with Scandinavian mid-century modern furniture is a passion she doesn’t begrudge him, but one she doesn’t share. It seems all the men she knows in their forties and fifties have developed some strange hobby. Anton and his top-shelf liquor—he’s always traveling far distances to pick up some limited-edition bottle—or Scott and his hours spent online hunting down some Danish chair. And Lisa’s husband, Marcus, took up cycling during the pandemic and now heads off every weekend at the crack of dawn in some neon spandex outfit.

“Of course, we’re going to have to trade that thing of beauty in for a locked liquor cabinet at some point,” Aimee says. “I found Noa pouring apple juice into a martini glass from the shaker the other day.”

Gwen laughs. It’s supposed to be a funny, self-deprecating look- at-the-things-our-kids-get-into story. That’s what mom friends are for, to make you feel less alone in your parenting challenges. But when Aimee looks over at Lisa, her friend’s face is frozen in a neutral mask. Aimee feels an uncomfortable twinge in her stomach. The way she parents her nine-year-old daughter has become something of a sore subject with Lisa. Leaning across the table to touch her hand, Lisa smiles. “Listen, I’m sorry about what I said earlier.”

Aimee shakes off Lisa’s hand and tucks a loose curl back into her top bun. “Oh, it’s okay, I get it.” She doesn’t get it. Why Lisa lit into her like that, in front of everyone, for letting Noa visit one of her clients. But she’s trying to avoid a repeat of the conversation.

“You’re an awesome mother,” Lisa says, gathering her long black hair and pulling it over one shoulder.

“Yes, she is!” Gwen says. “In fact, I think we’re all killing it.” “It’s just, how well do you know this woman, Aimee?”

Gwen groans. “Unbelievable,” she says. “Just drop it.”

“Look, I know you mean well, but I’ve got this, okay?” Aimee

stares into Lisa’s almost-black eyes. She is not about to relitigate why she’s been letting Noa spend time visiting one of her clients. The woman, a retired elementary school teacher named Cathy, is perfectly harmless in her baggy Eileen Fisher clothes and chunky black glasses. She wants to hire Aimee to replace the azaleas on her sprawling front lawn with native plants to attract butterflies and birds. When Aimee first went out there to brainstorm design ideas about a month ago, she hit it off with Cathy. On her second visit, she brought Noa, who discovered Cathy had not just a cat, but three newborn kittens, after which she insisted on coming back whenever Aimee went. And yes, over the past few weeks, Aimee has let Noa spend a few hours here and there at Cathy’s to play with the cats. Aimee doesn’t tell Lisa and Gwen that Noa’s fourth grade is off to a rough start, that words like ADHD and sensory processing issues have been bandied about. That being around those kittens makes Noa’s face light up, a welcome contrast to the defeated state in which she comes home from school every day.

Aimee isn’t ready to admit to herself what challenges Noa might have, can’t even bring herself to open the psychologist’s report that arrived in her inbox a few days ago.

And why should she have to say any of this to Lisa? To Gwen? Why should she have to justify herself?

She doesn’t have to. Anton comes back with drinks, followed closely by Scott and Marcus carrying trays laden with burgers, sausages, and grilled corn. Any further conversation is impossible, about Aimee’s parenting choices or anything else. Smelling the meat, the children converge on the table. Lisa and Marcus’s son, Kai, hangs back with Noa, but the four younger kids swarm the food.

“Slow down, boys!” Gwen stands and begins delivering commands while Marcus struggles with the tongs, distributing the slippery hot dogs. Finally, the boys step back and Kai and Noa hold out their plates.

“You two are so patient,” Lisa says to Kai and Noa. “Thank you for letting the younger boys go first.”

All the parents pitch in to get the kids settled with condiments and bean salad, with napkins and forks. This shared sense of responsibility, that they are all helping to raise each other’s children, has created a tight bond. Aimee’s heard people complain that the D.C. suburbs are cold and unfriendly, too transient to make any real connections, so she feels extra lucky to have this circle of friends. They seamlessly step into and out of each other’s lives—picking up one another’s kids at school, for example, or checking if anything is needed before going on a Costco run.

Scott sits next to her, slipping his hand behind her neck and giving it a little rub.

“How’s Bethesda’s most innovative gardener doing?”

She laughs. That accolade was bestowed upon her company by Bethesda Magazine last spring, and he’s called her that ever since. “It’s been a long week.” She needs to tell him about Noa’s psycho-educational report. They usually sit down after dinner on

Sundays to go over important things. She can tell him then. “Then drink up!” Anton says. “How’s the old-fashioned?” Aimee takes a big swig, catching the cherry in her teeth. It’s delicious, and as the bourbon does its job, her stress begins to melt.

After dessert, as everyone is getting ready to leave, Aimee hunts for a book on gentle parenting that she found useless but promised to lend Gwen. She remembers leaving it in the laundry room, and heads there to look. A little buzz from the bourbon has her a bit fuzzy but in a good way. Behind her she can hear the chaos of kids and adults, who have all moved from the backyard through the house and into the large foyer. As she grabs the book from a basket of random things, Aimee senses someone behind her and looks up to see Anton standing there.

“Hey.” She straightens up and holds out the book. “Gwen asked for this.”

He doesn’t take it, but he wobbles a little, and Aimee realizes he’s drunk. It’s not the first time she’s seen him this way. Last winter break, when the three families went to Vermont together, Anton drank so many IPAs that he passed out in the snow outside the Alchemist Brewery in Stowe.

“Listen—about before, you know with Lisa . . .” His voice trails off. He witnessed the worst of Lisa’s nasty comments about Aimee’s parenting.

Aimee waves her hand. She doesn’t want Anton getting involved. She can handle Lisa. “I’m fine. No hurt feelings here.”

“Yeah, that’s not it,” he says, irritated, vibrating with nervous energy. He glances behind him as if to make sure no one is listening and turns back.

“Anton?” Gwen calls from the foyer.

“I think Gwen’s looking for you.” Aimee puts her hand on his arm, gently nudging him in the direction of the front door.

Gwen appears. “There you are! Didn’t you hear me calling? We have to go. The boys are really tired.” The tension in her voice is evident. Gwen doesn’t like to let the ugly parts show. It’s all about control with her. Tidy house. Twins in matching clothes. Job at a prestigious PR firm with high-powered clients. The only thing that refuses to bend to her will is Anton.

He’s a hot mess.

And tonight, he is messier than usual.

Gwen maneuvers around her husband and gives Aimee a hug. “Thanks for bringing the potato salad,” Aimee says. “Here’s the book I told you about. It just ended up making me feel guilty, but maybe you’ll get more out of it.”

Gwen takes the book and turns to go, but Anton doesn’t follow her. Not right away. He leans into Aimee, as if for a goodbye hug, but instead he hovers, his mouth inches from her ear.

Aimee can feel his hot breath on her neck, smell the bourbon. The intimacy of someone else’s husband so close unnerves her. She instinctively pulls back, but not before he whispers something in her ear.

“You deserve to know.”

Click below to pre-order your copy of You Deserve to Know, available March 11th, 2025!

Excerpts / New Releases / What's New

Excerpt Reveal: Dark Vector by Ward Larsen

January 22, 2025February 20, 2025Ariana Carpentieri

The first book in a blockbuster new series from USA Today bestseller, Ward Larsen!

In the wilds of Siberia, a top-secret Russian fighter goes missing on a test flight. The Russian Air Force begins a search, oblivious to their error: they are looking in the wrong spot. The pilot, Colonel Maxim Primakov, has crash landed during an attempted defection.

The new chief of CIA clandestine operations, David Slaton, wants desperately to find him, but only one man is in a position to reach Primakov—Tru Miller, a rookie operator. Slaton plots a rescue deep inside Russia, not realizing that he will have to outfox the one other man who knows the truth. Victor Dubonin is a general in Russian intelligence. His search for Primakov is deeply personal—and if he doesn’t succeed it will cost him his life.

Soon a small group of Americans, including its top female test pilot, Kai Drake, find themselves hunted in the wilds of Russia. Their survival will depend on one thing—just how resourceful and lethal they can be.

Dark Vector will be available on February 4th, 2025. Please enjoy the following excerpt!

CHAPTER ONE

Colonel Maksim Primakov walked across the ice-clad tarmac of Skovorna Air Base, his boots crunching over frozen sleet. The big hangar lay before him, its high western wall catching the last rays of dusk as another frigid night descended. A Test Pilot First Class in the Russian Air Force, Primakov cut an arresting figure in his flight suit and winter jacket. He was tall and square-jawed, and his pace was steady. His carriage bordered on arrogant. The close-cropped brown hair was more a habit than a concession to regulation, the sign of a man who had neither the time nor inclination to bother with more.

Primakov drew to a stop near the hangar, then turned and surveyed his surroundings. Not for the first time, it struck him that Skovorna looked more like a salvage yard than an air base. The other airfields where he’d been stationed in recent years invariably flew advanced jets. Most of the ones he saw here had not turned a wheel in years. The skeletons of two IL-76 transports lingered at the fence line, their frames rusting after having been cannibalized for spare parts. A once-sleek MiG-29 stood statue-like on two flat tires, access panels on its belly swinging limp in the glacial breeze. Legend had it that the jet had diverted here due to a rough-running engine. A fleet-wide lack of fuel pumps, combined with rampant organizational ineptitude, had eventually doomed the aircraft to rot.

A year ago, Skovorna Air Base had been all but abandoned, an outpost from another era fading to irrelevance. Two rescue helicopters had operated from the main hangar, and an army training detachment taught survival skills to recruits in the surrounding forest. Those complementary missions—teaching soldiers how to survive harsh conditions, and retrieving those who failed—were all one needed to know about the airfield’s remoteness. The nearest city of note, Chita, was two hundred miles west. The closest depot for food and supplies, a logistical outpost of the 29th Army, was a two-day drive in the summer.

In winter Skovorna could only be reached by air. Weeds thrived amid the cracks in the ramp and windows in the outbuildings failed in storms. On that sad trajectory, the airfield had been a year, perhaps two, from complete abandonment.

Then, last summer, Skovorna had been thrown a lifeline.

With the opposite of fanfare, its two active units were reassigned elsewhere. Soon after, construction crews began arriving. To any casual observer, of whom there were few—only the most ambitious trappers and hunters from Olinsk—the alterations at the airfield would have appeared trivial. The big hangar was sealed and spackled, and the main runway and a single taxiway were refurbished. The living facilities were updated, although not enlarged—the unit preparing to take up residence was roughly the size of the old detachment. From a distance, and particularly from above—the only direction that mattered—Skovorna would appear little changed. It had been selected for rehabilitation for two reasons. First was its remoteness. The second, and far subtler, a tribute was its proximity to the Chinese border.

There were now three airworthy helicopters on the tarmac, Hip J models brought in for logistical support. Near the Hips was a transiting AN-26 transport that had arrived yesterday with an extensive array of test equipment. The markings on the cargo jet attested that it was Russian Air Force, although the provenance of what it carried, Primakov suspected, was likely from farther south. And then, of course, there was the other aircraft—the one parked in the heated main hangar whose doors were shut tight. The one that was Skovorna Air Base’s raison d’être.

Primakov turned back to the hangar, and his pale blue eyes canted downward to study the parking apron. The concrete was dusted lightly with snow, but thankfully there was no ice. Taxiing an airplane here in winter was sometimes closer to ice skating, but thankfully there had been little precipitation in recent days, even if the temperatures held fast to the standards of the Siberian Plateau. It was the second week of January, and the program was on schedule, the only setback having been one major storm during Christmas.

Headquarters was pleased.

The colonel scuffed a boot over the ramp, and beneath the snow he noted a few loose chips of concrete. He frowned. This was one of his ongoing crusades. The surface was beginning to disintegrate, damaged by too many brutal winters, yet further repairs would induce delays. To mitigate the risk, he had ordered the active taxiways be swept every morning, and a second time in the afternoon if a flight was scheduled.

He checked the nearby vehicle apron and saw the big sweeping machine sitting idle. Primakov walked over and found no one inside the cab, yet when he opened the door a bit of warmth drifted out. A vodka bottle lay on the floor, the last drop sucked out of it.

His anvil jaw clenched.

Like any Russian military officer, he was accustomed to such battles, yet Skovorna was supposed to be different. The mission here was an experimental cooperative, a model venture between two great nations. It was working, to a point. Not once had Primakov had a request for funding or personnel denied, and the men and women assigned to the project—fifty-six in all—were among the finest in the Russian Air Force. Unfortunately, these days “the finest” was an appallingly low bar.

It hadn’t always been so. During his company grade days, unburdened by commanding anything beyond his own airplane, Primakov had viewed the service as mostly competent. In those years, when the oil had been flowing, and when Europe had been a beach vacation rather than enemy territory, the Russian Air Force had been functional. He remembered new aircraft arriving from the factory, and having enough fuel to fly them. The crew chiefs had been capable, and even the conscripts did their year of compulsory service with little complaint. The horrors of Afghanistan had been largely forgotten, yet there were still enough skirmishes in the Middle East and the Caucasus to keep everyone sharp. Altogether, Primakov had felt as though he was part of an effective fighting force.

Then the rot had begun. The looting by the oligarchs turned excessive, and the regime overreached in Syria and Crimea. The death knell, plainly, had been the invasion of Ukraine. Experienced mechanics had been issued rifles that belonged in a museum and hauled off to the front. Stockpiles of hypersonic missiles and precision munitions, many of which Primakov himself had been involved in testing, were exhausted within months, most of them wasted on civilian targets. Against a far weaker Ukrainian Air Force, Russian fighter jets largely remained grounded. Deep targets were struck not by Russian bombers, but by cheap drones purchased from Iran and North Korea. Within two years the service had been nothing short of gutted.

There was a time when all of that had bothered Primakov.

But no more.

He kicked the sweeper’s door shut and set out across the ramp.

Click below to pre-order your copy of Dark Vector, available February 4th, 2025!

Excerpts / New Releases / What's New

Excerpt Reveal: My Three Dogs by W. Bruce Cameron

September 20, 2024January 6, 2025Ariana Carpentieri

My Three Dogs is a charming and heartfelt new novel from the #1 bestselling author of A Dog’s Purpose, about humankind’s best, most loyal friends, and a wonderful adventure of love and finding home.

When a tragic accident separates three dogs from their human, they find themselves up for adoption — separately. But Riggs, a dedicated, loyal Australian Shepherd, refuses to see his family torn apart. After the exuberant and fun-loving doodle Archie and quick-witted Jack Russell Luna are taken to new homes, Riggs’ powerful herding instincts send him on a journey to bring his pack back together again.

Cameron’s signature style shines in this whirlwind of a novel that showcases how determination, instinct, and love can make a family whole once more.

My Three Dogs will be available on October 29th, 2024. Please enjoy the following excerpt!

CHAPTER ONE

The morning air brought Archie the scent of freshly cut wood, a peculiar odor with which he had become very familiar over the past several weeks. Barely out of the puppy stage, the six- month-old Labradoodle was too young to really remember the snow from earlier in the year. For him, the strong Colorado sun had always warmed his brown fur and of late had even become a little uncomfortable. A thin tree nearby was struggling to fully leaf out and provided scant shade. He contemplated scratching at the dirt to try to excavate down to cooler soils, but felt too lethargic in that moment to move.

Archie didn’t like being alone and wished anyone or anything would come along to relieve the tedium, but today was much like the day before and the day before that. Sharp percussions punc- tured the stillness, but the dog was accustomed to the noise and didn’t so much as flick an ear. The man with a name that sounded to Archie like “Face” was doing something inside a structure sev- eral yards away. Other men were there, too, and handed long pieces of wood to each other and carried heavy tools and would sit and eat at least once in the middle of the day. They spoke to each other continuously, but rarely to Archie.

Archie was connected to a short chain that drew furrows in the soil when he dragged it over to his water bowl. Sometimes he drank without thirst as a way to relieve his boredom.

Archie yawned and stood up, shaking his curly fur. A fragment of memory came back to him. He’d been dreaming. His dream concerned the first man he had lived with, a man named Norton.

Norton was very friendly and played with Archie every day. Archie could still remember, though, the time when all the play ended. Norton had come and knelt and held Archie’s head in his hands, staring into his eyes. Something about that occasion had stilled Archie, and he ceased his puppylike capering and gazed back at Norton.

“I am going to be leaving you now, Archie. I’m so sorry,” Nor- ton had intoned solemnly. “I may not be coming back for a long time. You’ll be living with my brother, Damien. He’ll take good care of you. Okay, Archie?”

Archie had heard a question associated with his name, but had understood nothing else other than the odd, vague sense that something weighty and grave was happening. He wagged when Norton stood and embraced the man people called Face. “Take care,” Face said. And then Norton left, and Archie never saw him again. Instead, Archie went to live with Face.

Face was not much like Norton, though they carried similar odors. Human skin gave off a distinctive smell when frequently baked in the sun, and both men had darkly tanned faces and arms. But where Norton had laughed a lot and was very amused when Archie would pounce on tossed balls or thrown sticks, Face didn’t seem to have time or inclination for any games like that. He rarely spoke to Archie, but he did bring him every day to this place of banging wood and buzzing machines. When it rained, Archie lay in the resulting mud, and it clung to his snarled fur. When it was hot, like today, he sprawled out in the sun and panted.

With Norton, Archie had slept inside on a bed. With Face, Archie went home and was led into the backyard, where a chain very similar to the one he was wearing would be affixed to his collar, and then he would remain there overnight. This was the life of a dog, and Archie just accepted it.

Archie felt abandoned on the end of his chain. He could smell his own feces nearby. Norton always scooped up his leavings, but Face just left them lying there in the dirt. This was something else Archie had to accept.

He had gone back to lying down, yawning, not so much sleepy as just exhausted by the sheer inactivity, when his ears picked up the sound of a vehicle bumping its way up the short, rut- ted driveway to where all the other trucks were parked. Archie raised his head, curious. The vehicle stopped, and a cloud of dust pursued it and then overcame it, settling on the gleaming finish.

There was a creak, and a man stood up out of the truck, a man Archie had never smelled before. He took a couple of steps forward, his hands on his hips, watching Face and Face’s friends working. Then the new man turned and looked at Archie.

* * *

Riggs watched in irritation as Luna attacked yet another dog toy, a stuffed lamb with a missing ear. Luna went after the thing as if in a fight for her life. A five-year-old, quick-moving Jack Russell, she more than outmatched Riggs’s own energy. Australian shepherds are far from lazy dogs, but after six years of living with Liam, Riggs had become accustomed to a simple life of patiently waiting for their person to come home before going berserk. Luna, it seemed, simply couldn’t suppress the need to move.

Most days, after lying in her dog bed for a little bit, Luna would suddenly go at her toys, growling, jumping on them, even throwing them across the room and then racing after them as if the animals had assumed actual life and run away from her predatory pursuit.

Riggs was not sure why it bothered him that Luna played like this. There was a disorder to the whole thing, something that offended Riggs’s basic sensibilities. The toys were now scattered around on the rug as Luna gave up on the lamb and suddenly went after a small, brown, monkey-faced animal that had long ago lost its shape to dog teeth.

Luna kept glancing at Riggs as if trying to entice him into helping her with her assault. Riggs just watched, feeling his ir- ritation grow. He knew that when Liam came home, he would patiently round up the scattered dog toys and put them all back in the basket. Why didn’t Luna understand that the basket was where the stuffed animals belonged?

Just as abruptly as she had pounced, Luna decided to put an end to the mayhem. Abandoning the monkey, she ran and nimbly jumped on the sofa, ignoring Riggs’s glare.

Dogs were not supposed to be on the couch. This had been made very clear by both Liam and Sabrina. Though Sabrina had only been around for a few winter-summer cycles, she was as in charge as Liam as far as Riggs was concerned. If she didn’t want Luna on the couch, Luna should obey her. That was just good dog behavior.

From her raised position, Luna triumphantly surveyed the room. Her gaze managed to avoid meeting Riggs’s eyes. Then her attention became riveted on a stuffed cow that was lying like a corpse on a throw rug. Riggs knew what she was going to do before she did, watching the excitement spread through her muscular little body like an electric current. She tensed, lower- ing herself, and then, with a quick burst of speed, Luna dove off the couch and charged at the cow, her nails scrambling across the hardwood floor as she built momentum. When she pounced, her forward motion pushed both the rug and the stuffed cow under an easy chair. She turned and stared at Riggs in disbelief. What had just happened?

Riggs wasn’t sure why the stuffed cow was now under the chair, nor did he have much interest in what Luna proposed to do about it. It was her fault.

Riggs watched as Luna circled the chair, sniffing frantically at her prey. She tried lying down and shoving her face toward the stuffed animal. Her teeth fell just short of snagging one of the cow’s limbs. She circled a few more times, clearly frustrated. Riggs watched with his usual disapproval. What did Luna pro- pose to do? She kept snorting as she jammed her face as close to the cow as she could manage. Then she sat back, her eyes bright, cocking her head.

Was she now pondering how to tip over the chair? Riggs didn’t know but thought that even if the two of them worked together, they would find such a task physically impossible, and anyway, there was no way the two of them were going to work together. Riggs simply refused to participate in her silly games. Sabrina would be especially aggrieved if she came home to find the furniture upended.

Luna eased forward, put her front paws on the throw rug, and began digging at it, pulling it with her forelimbs. She pulled and heaved, tugging with her teeth.

It seemed pretty pointless, but then Riggs watched in aston- ishment as the rug came out from underneath the chair, pulling the stuffed cow with it.

When Luna jumped on the toy, she turned and faced Riggs in absolute triumph.

Unwilling to give her any satisfaction at all, Riggs looked away, put down his head, sighed, and closed his eyes. His senses told him they were a long way from having either Sabrina or Liam come home. Luna’s antics were just one of those things Riggs had to accept.

* * *

Archie saw exciting potential in everything, and the arrival of this new man was no exception. When their gazes locked, Archie wagged his tail vigorously, pawing a little bit at the air, indicating to this new person that he should know that the most fun dog anyone could ever imagine was straining right there at the end of this chain, ready to play, ready to chase balls, ready to go for car rides or do anything else any human could think of.

The man named Face walked out of the construction project, smacked his hands on his pants, and came forward with one hand extended. The new man reached out and shook it.

“You’re Liam?” Face asked.

The man nodded, glanced one more time at Archie, and then turned back to talk to Face. “I am. And you’re Face?” he asked tentatively.

Face nodded. “Name’s Damien Fascatti, but people just call me Face. Almost thought your call was a joke—who puts money down on a place sight unseen? But that’s your business.” He turned and gestured to the structure. “Well, there she is. Fram- ing’s just about done. Plumbing, electrical, everything’s ahead of schedule, if you can believe it. Got a good crew this time. Come on in. I’ll show you around.”

The two men moved toward the half-built structure, but be- fore stepping inside, the new man turned and locked eyes with Archie.

For some reason, Archie shivered.

Click below to pre-order your copy of My Three Dogs, available October 29th, 2024!

Excerpts / What's New

Audio Excerpts with Daniel Henning: Somewhere Beyond the Sea

September 9, 2024January 6, 2025Tiana Tolbert1 Comment

Hope is the thing with feathers. And hope is the thing with fire.

We’re so excited to give you a sneak peek into the magical world of Somewhere Beyond the Sea, the much-anticipated sequel to TJ Klune’s beloved The House in the Cerulean Sea! With audio excerpts charmingly narrated by Daniel Henning, you can dive back into the heartwarming journey of Arthur Parnassus and his wonderfully unique family like never before.

And did we mention the gorgeous golden yellow sprayed edges? Somewhere Beyond the Sea welcomes you back to Marsyas Island, where hope takes flight—and maybe even catches fire. Take a listen below and enjoy!

Chauncey Meets the Other Children

Arthur Returns to the Island

Arthur vs Rowder

Order Somewhere Beyond the Sea

Excerpts / New Releases

Excerpt Reveal: Rough Pages by Lev AC Rosen

August 16, 2024October 1, 2024Ariana Carpentieri

Set in atmospheric 1950s San Francisco, Rough Pages asks who is allowed to tell their own stories, and how far would you go to seek out the truth.

Private Detective Evander “Andy” Mills has been drawn back to the Lavender House estate for a missing person case. Pat, the family butler, has been volunteering for a book service, one that specializes in mailing queer books to a carefully guarded list of subscribers. With bookseller Howard Salzberger gone suspiciously missing along with his address book, everyone on that list, including some of Andy’s closest friends, is now in danger.

A search of Howard’s bookstore reveals that someone wanted to stop him and his co-owner, Dorothea Lamb, from sending out their next book. The evidence points not just to the Feds, but to the Mafia, who would be happy to use the subscriber list for blackmail.

Andy has to maneuver through both the government and the criminal world, all while dealing with a nosy reporter who remembers him from his days as a police detective and wants to know why he’s no longer a cop. With his own secrets closing in on him, can Andy find the list before all the lives on it are at risk?

Rough Pages will be available on October 1st, 2024. Please enjoy the following excerpt!

CHAPTER ONE

“You ready for this?” Elsie asks. We’re standing over her car—a gold Jaguar convertible—both of us looking down at it like it’s a body laid out for viewing in church and not just sitting in the garage under her bar. “It’s been a while.”

“I wanted to give them some time without me,” I say. “I’m bad memories.”

There’s no body here, but if there were, we’d be bringing it back to life.

“Nine months is a longer time than some. I thought you were never going back, honestly,” she says, sliding over the door and into the driver’s seat, the pants of her sapphire-blue suit not even catching on the edge. I don’t tell her I never thought I would, either. I figured they’d be happier without me, that the invitations were just out of politeness. But now I need to return. Not for the family, though—something I can’t tell Elsie.

“I guess it’s just been long enough.” I try to get into the car like she did but my foot catches and I tumble in, my head landing in her lap. She bursts out laughing. That’s Elsie, she’s always laugh- ing. She makes for a good landlord in that way.

“Really don’t want to go, huh?” she asks, tucking her black bob behind her ears.

“Just my feet,” I say, righting myself. “The rest of me can’t wait.”

She smirks and pulls out fast, leaving the garage under the Ruby and heading out into San Francisco.

“I hope they don’t think of death when they see me.” I’m sur- prised when I say it. I hadn’t meant for that thought to escape my head.

She laughs in the wind like I’m being funny. Around us the buildings are rising up like the fingers of a closing fist, the sun low enough on the horizon the sky is going yellow.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” she says. “They don’t remember you with death. That was Alice. She was the murderer. You were the one who caught her.” They—the whole family. The one Elsie is a part of, even if she doesn’t live there. I met them nine months ago, spring of ’52. A queer family out at a private estate, safe from the world, they thought, until one of them was murdered.

“I was there for one of the worst parts of their lives.”

“You helped them get through one of the worst parts of their lives,” she corrects. “And now you get to be there for some of the good ones. You earned that. They believe it, even if you don’t. I believe it.”

I don’t say anything. Maybe she’s right. It was my first case, the case that saved me, showed me what living a real queer life— even if a secret one behind closed gates—could look like. I found the murderer in their midst, saved the Lamontaine soap empire. But that meant dredging up a lot, picking at everyone’s lives, all while they were already in pain. I wouldn’t want to remember me, if I were them. And now they have a new baby—adopted by Henry and Margo to the outside world, who thinks they’re the couple. But really, adopted by all of them—Elsie, Margo’s girl- friend, and Cliff, Henry’s boyfriend, and Pearl, Henry’s mother, if not by blood. It’ll be a strange life for the baby, keeping that secret. If it doesn’t get out before she can talk.

Elsie reaches forward to turn on the radio. Eddie Fisher is crooning “Anytime.” Elsie starts singing along.

“For someone who runs so many musical acts,” I say, “people would think you have a better voice.”

“I don’t sing around people. Only friends. And how about you, big shot? You can identify any song from the first few notes, spend all your money on records, and I’ve never heard you sing.”

I blush. “I’m worse than you.”

“Sing with me,” she says. And what the hell, I do. We’re both terrible, howling over Eddie, as she drives us across the bridge and out of the city. We keep singing with the next song and the one after that, until I feel hoarse. Then I just watch the ocean go by on my right, the sun sinking into it like a copper penny thrown in a wishing well. I wonder how much they’ve all changed. I wonder if they all really want me there, or if it’s just Pearl again, extending an invitation for everyone without asking them.

And I wonder why Pat, the family butler and now my good friend, called me, and said he needed me to come, his voice a hushed whisper into the phone, scared, before he said not to tell anyone.

When Elsie pulls up to the gate, I get out to open it, and the smell of flowers hits me, familiar and comforting and sad all at once. Even in February, they bloom.

I was so worried about them being ready to see me, I realize I never wondered if I’m ready to see them. I pull the gate open, wait for Elsie to drive through, and close it again, making sure to lock it. The estate looks mostly the same. Flowers everywhere, glowing in the pink light of sunset. They sway toward me, and I don’t know if it’s a welcome or a warning. This is where my story started, after all. Well, my latest story. Lavender House, Pearl hiring me for my first case, meeting Elsie, becoming a PI over her gay club, starting to try to have a real life again. This was even the case I met Gene, my boyfriend, on. So much started here, and I’m grateful to it, but looking out on it, I wonder if this is somehow a bookend. If now it’s going to take back everything it gave me.

“Stop staring and get in,” Elsie says from the car. I follow her order and she drives us down to the roundabout. The house seems the same—a beautiful, huge art deco thing, surrounded by flow- ers of all colors, especially lavender. The driveway is white stones, which look silvery in the dark. The fountain at the center of the roundabout isn’t scorched anymore; they must have fixed that. It gleams and sprays arcs of water in every direction, like a flower. I never got to see it working before. It’s pretty. The sound of the water is peaceful.

Pearl comes out of the house first, her arms wide, a smile on her face. She looks the same: sixties, short, with short black hair, in a yellow blouse and white skirt.

“We finally got you here,” she says, hugging me before I’m even done getting out of the car. I glance up at the windows of the house. They’re curtained, but light shines through. No shad- ows standing in them this time.

“It’s good to see you,” I say.

“Elsie says you’re doing well, and I appreciated your Christmas letter,” she says. “But you should have come sooner.”
“I wanted to give you time, and then the baby—”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Andy.”

“He’s worried you’ll look at him and see death,” Elsie says, from the other side of the car.

Pearl’s face goes blank with shock for a moment, and I almost want to turn to Elsie, glaring, and tell her to take me back home. But then there’s a flicker of honesty, relief on Pearl’s face—yes, she does look at me and see death. After all, her wife died less than a year ago. She blinks, shakes her head.

“I see more than that, Andy.” She doesn’t lie, at least. “I see a new chapter for all of us. You included. And I see someone who looks like he hasn’t had a good meal in months. Elsie, what are you feeding him?”

“I don’t feed him,” Elsie says, headed to the door. “I just water him.”

Pearl throws her head back and cackles at that one.

“Well, come in, come in, come in . . .” She turns, waving me toward the door. Pat is standing there, waiting.

“Can I get a minute to say hi to Pat?” I ask, keeping a smile on. “I know he’s about to go help in the kitchen, so if this is my only moment . . .”

“He’ll be with us after dinner, he’s practically our nanny,” Pearl says as we walk to the door. Pat gives me a tight hug. “Oh, but sure, it would be rude if the first time he spoke to you he was serving you dinner.”

She goes inside, and Elsie follows, giving us a curious look. Then it’s Pat and me standing outside. The landing in front of the door has a beautiful art deco curve over it, and it casts both of us in shadow. Pat’s always been slender, but he seems thinner than before, his pale skin gaunt in the dark, his eyes wide. He’s in his fifties, but handsome, with high, delicate cheekbones and usually a wry smile. Not tonight, though.

“What’s going on?” I ask in a low voice.

“Thank god you’re here,” he says, barely a whisper, as he fum- bles in his pocket then takes out some cigarettes. I get out my case and light one for him before he drops them all on the ground.

“Pat? They’re going to be wondering.”

Pat was probably the first real welcome here. Pearl was kind, but she was hiring me for a job. Pat was honest—about my past, what people thought of me. He was sympathetic, and welcomed me despite everything; my being a cop until just a few days before meeting him, and my having been cold to him at the bars, cold to everyone in the community unless I wanted to be alone and naked with them. Hell, even then. Pat taking me under his wing was more than I deserved. He was funny, too, often singing and always smiling. That all seems gone now though, replaced with the kind of raw fear I’ve seen in the faces of clients before.

“You in trouble?” I ask.

“Maybe,” he says, looking at the ground, then at his cigarette. “But worse, if I am, then so is everyone in this house.”

“What?” I ask, my body cold.

He doesn’t say anything and instead inhales deeply on the cig- arette, then coughs. I realize I’ve never seen him smoke before. He coughs for a moment longer, while I wait. Finally, he looks at me.

“You know how I like to read,” he says, and I nod, thinking of his room upstairs, every wall a shelf filled with books, every table covered in them. “Well, on my day off, I usually help out at Walt’s, the bookshop up in North Beach.”

I shake my head; I don’t know it. “Help out?”

“The owners are gay. Howard and DeeDee, old old friends, both loved books, so they opened the place years ago. They stocked a lot of gay titles, so I got friendly with them, and last year they decided to start a book service, you know, sending members one book a month that’s hard to get otherwise, or maybe trying to publish some new ones themselves.”

“A book service?” I say, wondering how that could be so much trouble.

“There’s a publisher who’s been selling gay books through the mail for years, Greenberg. Sold over a hundred thousand cop- ies of The Invisible Glass. People want queer books, Andy. Don- ald Webster Cory, remember, who wrote The Homosexual in America—he started his own book service with the same idea, and so Howard and DeeDee thought, why not us, too? Just in Cal- ifornia, for people who came into the shop, people we knew . . . at first.”

“Isn’t Greenberg the one being sued by the post office? Looking at jail time, maybe.” The smoke curls from his cigarette, fading as it reaches out to the garden outside our little alcove, like it can’t escape.

Pat looks down at his hands again. “Yes. But that’s why it’s so important, Andy. These are our stories, and we need to read them, no matter what the government says. We need to read them so we know there are more of us out there, a community waiting. One guy wrote in, some college kid in Fresno, said he found a slip to sign up in a book in another store, and he signed up immediately. He’s never met another homosexual, and these stories are . . .” Pat dabs his eyes. “Howard wrote him back. He writes all of them back, so they don’t feel alone.”

I nod. “Okay. I get why this is important.” I’ve never been much of a reader, but maybe if I’d read more when I was on the force, I wouldn’t have felt quite so alone. “So what’s the danger?”

“The shop has been closed for at least a week and DeeDee and Howard haven’t been answering their phones, either. I went by on my day off, and no one was there. I’m worried. They hardly ever close this long, and never without telling me.” He takes an- other drag on the cigarette and looks at it as if he thought it would taste better.

“Maybe there was an emergency?” I ask.

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m talking to you. I’m worried that the government found out, the post office told them, and . . . sending obscene material through the mail is a federal offense, right?” He lets the cigarette fall from his hand and it lands with a splatter of red embers. He stomps it out.

“Sure, but how would that be bad for you, or the family?”

He swallows and looks up at me. Pat is usually so filled with mirth and mischief, but now he looks truly scared. “Don’t you get it? We mail subscribers the books. That means we need . . . their names, addresses . . .” He turns away, steps out of the alcove down onto the roundabout. The stones crunch under his feet and the light from the house hits him, pale and yellow. I follow him down.

“There’s a list,” I say, realizing. “A list of homosexuals.” As we walk from the house, the smell of smoke fades and the flowers’ perfume becomes stronger, overwhelming.

Pat nods. “Hundreds. And I’m on it. And I mail the ‘illicit material,’ too. If the government finds out and decides to investigate . . .” He stares up at the sky.

“They could figure out everyone here. And then the adoption . . .” It hits me all at once. Adoption is tricky. The government investi- gates the families. The Lamontaines must have had to play pretend for a long time just for the adoption to go through. If the govern- ment finds out the family employs a homosexual, even if they pre- tend they didn’t know . . . I swallow.

He nods, looking back at the house and then walking along the side of it. There are bare trees here, with long, thin branches. I remember they bloomed pink, once. When we’ve reached the side of the house, he steps off the roundabout onto the grass and kicks it. “They’ll take her away. I’m so sorry, Andy. I just . . .” He looks down again and starts crying. I reach forward to put my hand on Pat’s shoulder.

“Okay, Pat. I’ll look into it. And if they do have the list, I’ll figure out how to make sure the family stays safe.”

He reaches out and clutches my hand tightly in his. “Thank you, Andy. I’m so scared. What if I’ve ruined everything?”

I don’t say anything. I don’t have the words to tell him that maybe he has.

Click below to pre-order your copy of Rough Pages, available October 1st, 2024!

Excerpts / What's New

TJ Klune’s Farewell to the Wolves

July 27, 2024October 1, 2024Tiana Tolbert

As the release of the final installment, Brothersong, draws near, beloved author TJ Klune reflects on the journey of his much-adored Green Creek series. Klune bids farewell to the characters and stories that have captured the hearts of readers worldwide. Join us as he shares his thoughts and emotions on concluding this remarkable saga, offering fans a heartfelt glimpse into the end of an era.

Read TJ Klune’s piece below, and make sure to pre-order your copy of Brothersong, coming 7/30/2024

by TJ Klune

Ten years ago, in 2014, I started to write a story about a place called Green Creek, and the people who called the town home. It wasn’t meant to be a paranormal fantasy book. Instead, I wanted to write a queer take on Romeo and Juliet about two families who were at odds with each other. And then I decided to make it about werewolves, for some reason. I don’t know. Just go with it.

Brothersong is the finale of a series that I did not expect to write when I first began Wolfsong a decade ago. But the more I spent time with these characters, the more I learned about them, the more I wanted to stay in that world. Yes, it meant breaking hearts and piling angst on top of angst and yet, I knew the characters could handle it, so long as they had each other.

After all, isn’t that true to life?

Through Wolfsong and then Ravensong and Heartsong, I got to do something very cool: I was able to follow the same characters for literal years of their lives. Think about it: when Wolfsong opens, Ox Matheson is just a boy. By the time the series finishes, he’s a man in his thirties. I watched him grow up, make mistakes and learn from them, become the man I always knew he’d be. It was and remains a unique experience in my writing. I’ve never written such an extended period of time involving specific characters before. It taught me a lot. It also made me want to bang my head against the nearest hard surface every now and then.

And look, I know that people want more of these characters. They want to see what happens after the final page. To be honest, I’ve considered it. I’ve thought about writing another book or three in this series, but something has always stopped me. To write more in this world would mean putting the Bennett pack through more shit, and I have to wonder: when is enough enough? Undoubtedly, I could spin some tale about the aftermath of the first four books, and what it looks like when the wolf world attempts to move on from kings and queens.

Let’s nip this in the bud right here, shall we? I won’t write another book in this series. I’ve told the story I wanted to tell. Each book has its own meaning, its own purpose, while the overarching story plays out by the very end. I tied up most of the threads I thought needed to be tied up, and the ones that aren’t, well. I think it’s always good to leave a bit of mystery behind.

I have favorite parts of each book. I love Wolfsong because it allowed me to try a different type of way to tell a story. I love Ravensong because having two jerks in their forties get a second chance at life and love is so, so important. I love Heartsong because of how much it messed with the perception readers had of the series.

And I love Brothersong because of Carter and Gavin. Carter, who showed he had limitless depth to his heart and soul. Gavin, who fought the monster within to try and find his place in the world. Isn’t that just so human of them? Regardless of whatever else they are, those two (and all the others) are so wonderfully and heartbreakingly human. And even more, they act like people do: the good, the bad, and the ugly. How many times did you want to scream at the characters for the decisions they made? A few times? A dozen times? Isn’t that life?

I thought my time with Green Creek was over. And then Tor came knocking, and the books found new life, new readers, new people to cry over those fuckin’ werewolves. Many of you did it on public transportation—which, you know, is a choice. You think I’m joking, but I’m not. Out of everything I’ve written, I’ve heard from more readers about this series when they chose to read it on a bus or a train or a taxi or a plane. Why do you like sobbing in public?!? (That is not kinkshaming.)

Thank you. Thank you for loving these characters as much as I do. Thank you for inviting them in, going on a journey with them, and feeling as protective of them as I do. It’s funny: I never expected these books to go as far as they have. If you’d have told me in 2014 that ten years on I’d be gearing up for the last book to come out (again), I’d have thought you out of your mind. I’m very lucky to do what I do. And any success I’ve had is in no small part due to the readers who go on these adventures with me. One last time, shall we? One last time into Green Creek (and the world beyond). One last time to see the pack come together to protect their home from forces that would take everything from them. I have a feeling they’re about to kick some major ass.

packpackpack

Check out The Green Creek Series and pre-order the new hardcover edition of Brothersong—available on July 30, 2024!

Excerpts / What's New

Excerpt Reveal: Passion for the Heist by K’wan

July 20, 2024October 1, 2024Ariana Carpentieri

A crime would bring them together, grief would bind them and love would make them famous.

Parish “Pain” Wells is a man freshly reintroduced to society, after serving time in state prison. Prior to his fall, Pain had been a heist man who showed the promise of someone who could go on to be a legend. His trajectory changed on the night he had made the mistake of accepting a ride from a friend, and found himself behind bars for the one crime he hadn’t committed. Several years later, Pain returns home to a world that wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire. The only one who still remains in his corner is his ailing grandmother. It’s for her sake that Pain tries to stay on the straight and narrow. He’s tired of breaking her heart and vows to be a good grandson, but when her medical bills start mounting he finds himself backed into a corner. He needs money, fast, and there’s only one way he knows how to get it.

Since her parents died and Passion Adams found herself a ward of her estranged uncle, a gangster who everyone calls Uncle Joe, her life has been on a constant downward spiral. She moves like a ghost from one day to the next, numbing her pain with drugs and alcohol, while seeking thrills in unsavory places. One morning Passion finds herself the victim of a robbery and the thieves snatch from her the only thing of value that she has left in the world, a locket containing the ashes of her deceased parents. Passion is devastated, fearing she would never see the locket again until it shows up later in the hands of a handsome stranger, who brings something into Passion’s life that has eluded her since the death of her parents… hope.

The two broken souls find themselves inescapably drawn into each other’s orbits, and begin their journey of finding lives outside the ones of poverty and sorrow that their worlds had condemned them to. But when shadows from both their pasts threaten their happiness, Passion and Pain set out on an adventure that would make them hunted by law enforcement and celebrated by the underworld. What initially starts out as a mission of vindication quickly turns into a fight for survival.

Passion for the Heist will be available on August 27th, 2024. Please enjoy the following excerpt!

CHAPTER ONE

Percy Wells, known to those who had found themselves on the wrong end of his skill set as Pain, was no stranger to violence. In fact, his earliest memories of life had been born of violence. One that stood out to him was when his father had laid his mother out with a short right hook. Seeing his father lay hands on his mother wasn’t an unusual thing. The few times he could ever remember his father sparing enough time to come around his mother, they were either fighting, getting high, or fucking. Sometimes all three in one visit.

Pain would’ve been lying if he told you that he could remember what had prompted his father to strike his mother that particular time. What made this situation remarkable was the speed of the strike and the amount of blood it drew. It was akin to watching a rattlesnake tag an unsuspecting rodent. The gash opened by the punch was a small one, but it bled like his father had hit an artery in his mother’s head. That day was one of only three or four times Pain could remember ever seeing the man who creamed in his mother and passed on not only his name, but the generational curse he carried. Pain was born into and had lived with violence all his life, but none of it was quite like what he currently found himself in the middle of.

There were over a dozen men clustered into the common area shared by the unit of the prison Pain had occupied for the last eight months of his four-year stretch. He used the word occupied instead of resided because the latter would’ve implied he could even fathom the thought of ever looking at prison as somewhere he’d gotten comfortable enough to make a home of. As far as he was concerned the few correctional facilities he’d passed through during his bid were simply temporary stops on the road he found himself on. Now that he’d traveled it once, he knew where the potholes were and would be able to avoid them if, God forbid, he ever had the misfortune of coming that way again.

Fists flew while homemade blades flashed in the dim yellow lights that hung from the ceiling of the unit. A good portion of the men who were in the common area that day were engaged in a hellish battle that teetered along the lines of becoming a riot, had the numbers been greater. Those who weren’t getting into it did their best to try and avoid being mistaken for an enemy of one of the opposing sides and attacked by accident, or try to keep from being splashed by the blood that seemed to be flying everywhere. It was no easy task for the neutral parties because as far as the active combatants were concerned, anybody that wasn’t on one of their sides was fair game. When the stakes you were playing for were life and death, there were no gray areas.

To Pain’s right, a man yowled. Pain turned in time to see his belly being ripped open with a jagged screwdriver that was wielded by another inmate. The wails of the wounded were deafening in his ears, and twice he almost slipped in the blood that was rapidly coating the floors. If he had to describe the situation in a word it would’ve been chaos. What made it worse was that this was a chaos of his own making. Pain had been the match that ignited this powder keg.

A shadow descended over Pain, cast by a man who stood around six-five with a body mass that easily tipped the scales at three hundred pounds. His ugly face was one that was familiar to Pain. He had never bothered to learn the man’s Christian name, but he was known to inmates and guards alike as Brute. The moniker spoke to his character because for all intents and purposes that’s just what he was, a brute. In every facility he’d been a guest of, he survived by preying on both the weak and the strong. He wasn’t particular about whose food he ate, so long as he went to bed full every night. In Brute’s hand was a length of shaved pipe that had been pried from a bathroom sink, flattened on one end and sharpened to a razor’s edge. The homemade weapon dripped with the blood of the inmates Brute had carved through during the battle to be granted a private audience with Pain. The men who he had cut down were little more than collateral damage, but his beef with Pain was personal. The hateful glare Brute leveled at him said as much.

Had it been a movie this would’ve been the part where the hero and villain exchange some well-scripted banter about what had brought them to that point, but this wasn’t an action film. It was real life. There were only five words spoken, all by Brute, but they carried the weight of everything that was going on around them: “You owe me a kiss.” Then it was lit!

Brute moved with a speed that should’ve been impossible for a man his size. Pain barely avoided the strike from the pipe/spear that was thrust at his face. The blow had been meant to blind him, but missed its mark. A coolness settled in Pain’s cheek, just below his left eye. Then the burning kicked in. Pain knew that he was cut, but didn’t have the chance to assess the damage before Brute was back at him. This time he went for Pain’s gut in an attempt to impale him. The spear met with some resistance when it contacted the body armor under Pain’s shirt. The armor was comprised of nothing more than duct tape and the jackets of a few hardcover books Pain had stolen from the prison library. The book covers kept Brute’s spear from emptying Pain’s insides, but didn’t stop the point from piercing the fat of Pain’s stomach.

Brute smirked triumphantly before driving his weight at Pain, forcing him against the nearest wall. The more pressure he applied, the deeper Pain could feel the spear pushing into his gut. There was no question that he was about to become another notch on Brute’s belt. As his wound leaked, his life began to flash before his eyes. He thought of all the things he had done, as well as the things he would never do and the people he would never see again. His eyes latched onto an image of his grandma reaching out to him. He’d never have a chance to thank her for all she’d done for him. No . . . he couldn’t go out . . . not like this.

As if by an act of sorcery, a weapon appeared in Pain’s hand. It was a bedspring that had been hammered as straight as it could be and sharpened into a needle-like point. The end was wrapped in toilet tissue and held to the spring by layers of heavy tape, which allowed a more secure grip. Pain studied it for a brief moment as if trying to figure out what it was and where it had come from. Then the homemade weapon spoke a single word that would make everything clear to Pain: Live.

Moving as if animated by some unseen force, Pain raised his hand and drove the bedspring into Brute’s neck. The bigger man paused as if trying to determine if he had just been stung by a bee or a mosquito. Pain didn’t leave him long to wonder. He ripped the coil from Brute’s neck and hit him again. This time it was in the forearm, which got him to slacken his grip on the spear. Pain ignored the fire in his belly and cheek and went into survival mode. He hit Brute over and over with the coil, striking him in the face, chest, arms, whichever parts of his body he could get to. Brute was so flustered he abandoned his spear and rushed at Pain. He managed to grab Pain around the throat and began choking him, sending them both falling to the ground. The whole way down, Pain kept hitting him with the bed spring. There was so much blood that there was no way of telling where Pain’s injuries began and Brute’s ended.

He couldn’t remember how it had happened, but somehow Pain found himself on top of Brute, straddling his chest. Fighting was going on all around him, but Pain shut it out. His focus was locked on Brute. The big man’s once-white T-shirt was now stained deep red. He was bleeding from the wounds gifted him. Brute was broken and probably not long for the world unless he received immediate medical attention. The king of the cellblock had finally been dethroned. It was done.

There was a moment of hesitation on Pain’s part until his eyes met Brute’s. Even on the threshold of death, there was still defiance in his predatory glare. Pain’s brain was suddenly flooded with the memories of the injustices he and so many others had suffered at the hands of the bully. There was only one way to purge his brand of evil from the world. Pain raised the hand holding the bed coil, poised for the killing blow, and struck with everything he had. Had his blow rung true it would’ve punctured Brute’s brain and ended him for all time, but this was not to be.

An unseen hand grabbed Pain by the wrist and pulled him from the giant just before the blade contacted his skull. Pain landed on his back and before he could right himself, the body of a fallen combatant landed on top of him. This was followed by another and then another and so on, to the point where Pain found himself trapped under the weight of the men. It was suddenly very hard to breathe, and for a time Pain experienced what it must’ve felt like to drown. Only he wasn’t drowning in water, but in blood. There was a sliver of light at the end of the dark tunnel of flesh that he was trapped in. An outstretched hand beckoned to him. Without thought, Pain grabbed the hand and held on for dear life. Slowly, he found himself being pulled free, and when he broke the surface of bodies he inhaled the precious life-giving air. Pain was thankful to whichever angel of mercy had pulled him free and was about to tell him as much, when he found himself pulled into a reverse choke hold. He struggled but could not budge the muscular arm that was crushing his windpipe. With some effort he managed to turn his head enough to get a glimpse of whomever was strangling him. Who he saw was no angel of mercy, but a demon.

Brute stood behind him wearing a sinister grin and flashing a mouth full of bloodied teeth. He leaned in and pressed his blood- stained cheek against Pain’s, his breath hot and foul. He ran his course tongue over Pain’s ear before whispering into it: “Now, about that kiss.”

* * *

Pain was awakened by the sounds of his own screams ringing in his ears. He instinctively leapt to his feet, ready to continue the fight for life or death that he had been locked in. Yet when he looked around he didn’t find Brute, as he was expecting, but an older man wearing a bus driver’s uniform.

“Take it easy, buddy. I was just trying to tell you that this was the last stop.” The bus driver finally found his voice. He was no longer touching Pain’s arm, and had moved himself to a safer distance.

The words came out like gibberish to Pain, as the sleep fog was only slowly rolling back from his brain, but his survival instincts were moving much faster. Near-feral eyes flashed to a point just beyond the bus driver. A woman had paused in her exiting of the bus to see what would become of the crazed man in the back seat. She wasn’t alone. There were at least a dozen pairs of eyes on him with looks that ranged from confusion to fear. Two young girls seated near the front of the bus were even recording him with their camera phones while trading snickers. Pain felt like an animal on display.

“Did you hear what I said?” the bus driver asked calmly.

Pain didn’t answer right away. He was still half expecting the mirage of being on a bus to fade and to discover that he was still behind the wall. His gaze went beyond the bus driver and focused on the road-stained windshield of the bus. Just outside, above the thickening traffic, the sun was just rising over a skyline that Pain knew all too well. “No more locked doors,” was all Pain offered in way of a response.

Pain brushed past the startled driver and through the gawking people toward the exit. He almost twisted his ankle and fell in his haste to get off the bus. The smells and sounds of the hectic city seemed to assault him all at once, making him feel like he was suffering from sensory overload. He had been caged so long that feeling the cool predawn air on his face felt like an extension of the nightmare he had been having on the bus. “No more locked doors,” he repeated like a mantra. When Pain looked up and saw the night sky had begun to fade, and the sun was just about to announce its presence, he felt his eyes moisten in joy. It wasn’t a nightmare, but a dream. After years of incarceration, Pain was really home.

Click below to pre-order your copy of Passion for the Heist, available August 27th, 2024!

Excerpts / New Releases / What's New

Excerpt Reveal: A Certain Kind of Starlight by Heather Webber

June 19, 2024August 15, 2024Ariana Carpentieri

In the face of hardship, two women learn how to rise up again under the bright side of the stars in A Certain Kind of Starlight, the next book from USA Today bestselling author Heather Webber, “the queen of magical small-town charm” (Amy E. Reichert)

Everyone knows that Addie Fullbright can’t keep a secret. Yet, twelve years ago, as her best friend lay dying, she entrusted Addie with the biggest secret of all. One so shattering that Addie felt she had to leave her hometown of Starlight, Alabama, to keep from revealing a devastating truth to someone she cares for deeply. Now she’s living a lonely life, keeping everyone at a distance, not only to protect the secret but also her heart from the pain of losing someone else. But when her beloved aunt, the woman who helped raise her, gets a shocking diagnosis and asks her to come back to Starlight to help run the family bakery, Addie knows it’s finally time to go home again.

Tessa Jane Wingrove-Fullbright feels like she’s failing. She’s always been able to see the lighter side of life but lately darkness has descended. Her world is suddenly in shambles after a painful breakup, her favorite aunt’s unexpected health troubles, and because crushing expectations from the Wingrove side of her family are forcing her to keep secrets and make painful choices. When she’s called back to Starlight to help her aunt, she’s barely holding herself together and fears she’ll never find her way back to who she used to be.

Under the bright side of the stars, Addie and Tessa Jane come to see that magic can be found in trusting yourself, that falling apart is simply a chance to rise up again, stronger than ever, and that the heart usually knows the best path through the darkness.

A Certain Kind of Starlight will be available on July 23rd, 2024. Please enjoy the following excerpt!

CHAPTER ONE

From the Kitchen of Verbena Fullbright

Sweet without salty is like hooting without hollering. They’re best together. Salt brightens flavors and lifts the texture of a cake, helping it stand tall and proud. Doesn’t everyone need a boost up every now and again?

ADDIE

Rooted deep within a woman’s complex DNA was the right to pick and choose the traditions and societal conventions she followed. This was especially true for matriarchs, the backbones, the older women who had seen it all, heard it all, dealt with it all, and no longer gave a flying fig what others thought. After years of living, of giving, of conforming, she now played by a set of rules carefully crafted from experience.

I personally believed southern women took this notion to a whole other level and kept that in mind as I studied my daddy’s older sister, Verbena Fullbright, fondly known by those closest to her as Bean.

Sitting primly, properly, on a stool pulled up to a stainless steel counter, Aunt Bean had her rounded shoulders drawn back, her head held high. Earlier today she’d been to see her lawyer, old Mr. Stubblefield, so she wore a long-sleeved leopard-print maxi dress and leather slingbacks instead of her usual baking attire. Her hairstyle was a cross between a pixie cut and a pompadour, the color of merlot. Her fingernails were painted black, a polish that would surely raise eyebrows around town if the people here didn’t know her and her funky style so well.

It was clear that even while feeling puny, Aunt Bean had stuck to her own particular notions of what was right and proper. She’d never attend a business meeting without wearing heels, even if her swollen feet had to be wedged into the shoes.

“Lordy mercy, those pearly gates are in for a mighty reckoning when I come calling. The heavens will be shaking,” Bean said theatrically, humor vibrating in her loud voice.

Her spirited statement was punctuated by two quick thumps of her wooden walking stick on the cement floor, the dramatic effect unfortunately mellowed by the stick’s thick rubber tip.

“Quaking, even,” Delilah Nash Peebles said as she removed a cake pan from an oven and slid it onto a multi-level stainless steel cooling rack that was taller than she was. She glanced at me, the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes crinkling. “We all know Bean won’t be knocking politely. She’ll thunder on in and try to take over running the place.”

Mid-January sunshine poured in through the glass front door and tall windows of the converted big red barn on Aunt Bean’s vast property. It was the temporary home of the Starling Cake Company while the bakery’s Market Street location underwent a massive renovation.

I’d arrived a half hour ago and had been feeling a sense of déjà vu since—because this space had previously housed the bakery when it had been a home-based business. The air was once again scented with Aunt Bean’s homemade vanilla extract—along with a hint of chocolate and coffee from the mocha cakes currently baking—and everything looked the same as it used to when I was a little and practically glued to her apron strings. Three double ovens on one wall. Two stainless steel workstations. Four stand mixers. The decorating corner. An old range. Two massive refrigerators. A large bakery case.

And just like old times, I fell straight into helping where help was needed. Currently, I was dusting greased cake pans with cocoa powder while trying not to flat-out panic about my aunt’s health issues.

“Plus,” Bean sniffed loudly, indignantly, “I have a few grievances that need airing. Saint Peter’s going to get himself a right earful.”

Delilah added two more pans to the rack. “It’s no secret that you have a knack for speaking your mind. If I had a dollar for every time you’ve fussed about fondant, I’d be a rich woman. Poor Petal was fixin’ to pitch a hissy fit when you told her you wouldn’t use it for her wedding cake.”

“Petal Pottinger?” I asked. “She’s getting married?”

I felt a deep ache, one I had become familiar with since moving away from Starlight, from home, twelve years ago. It came from feeling like I was missing out. Mostly because I was.

“Sure enough. She’s getting hitched to Dare Fife next weekend in the ballroom at the Celestial Hotel,” Delilah said. “I’m convinced he’s the only good apple to fall from his crooked family tree. He’s almost twenty-two and hasn’t been thrown in jail yet, unlike the rest of the men in his family. Has himself a good job, too, at the flour mill.”

Dare Buckley Fife. My stomach rolled with worry for Petal, because around here, the Buckley name was synonymous with danger, with dishonor, with damage.

Bean shifted on the stool. “That Dare’s a good boy, so Petal might be all right at picking men, but God love her, she ain’t got the sense God gave a goose when it comes to cake. I call it fondon’t for a reason. And I’ll keep on saying it until my very last breath.”

“Can we not?” I asked, releasing a pent-up sigh. “We don’t need to be talking like you’re standing on death’s door, Aunt Bean.”

Because she wasn’t. She wasn’t.

“Now, Addie, it’s just talk,” she said. “But you know how I feel about dyin’. I’m not the least bit scared of it, though I hope it’ll hold off a good while. I’ve still got some livin’ to do.”

She might not be scared, but I sure was.

I’d known Bean hadn’t been feeling well for months now. After a bout with the flu last November, she’d started having trouble standing for long periods of time and walking distances without feeling out of breath and woozy—which was why she’d gotten the walking stick. I’d chalked up her slow healing simply to getting older. She was closing in on sixty-four, an age when most would be thinking about retiring. But not Aunt Bean.

Like generations of Fullbright women before her, she’d devoted her life to baking. To sharing with others, through cake, the ability to see the bright side of life and its possibilities.

When people tasted one of her confections, they were flooded with pleasant sparks of warmth and happiness as glimmers of hope and optimism, comfort and contentment filled emotional cracks created by life’s trials and stresses. Her cakes healed the soul and enhanced the inner light that helped guide people through hard times and enabled them to find silver linings in even the toughest situations.

For the bakery’s customers, the effects of the cakes lasted a good long while. Weeks. Sometimes months.

For the women in our family, the ability to see a bright side and all that came with it was a near constant in our lives, first appearing almost two hundred years ago after a star fell from the sky onto family land. Legend was that somehow the fallen star with its special glow had given us the gift, and we felt honor bound to use it to bring light and hope and brightness to others.

But beyond the glimmers, our bright sides also included the ability to see the good in a person, something that was revealed when we looked deeply into someone’s eyes. The glow of an inner light showed us the people who were kind, decent. And warned of those who were not.

Right now, though, as I sat in the barn kitchen, I was struggling to see any kind of light. There was no silver lining to be had.

When Bean had called this morning, telling me to get myself immediately back to Starlight for an emergency family meeting about her future plans, I’d felt an ominous chill that couldn’t possibly be related to retirement. A dark cloud descended.

Gloom followed me as I made the hour and forty-five–minute trip southeast from my apartment in Birmingham to the property that had been in our family for generations. The cloud had lifted only slightly when I’d found Aunt Bean waiting to welcome me with open arms.

Like always.

Immediately I’d noticed the physical changes in her. She’d puffed up a bit since I’d last seen her at Christmastime. Swelling. Edema. Then she told me she’d been to see a cardiologist in Montgomery earlier this week and he’d run a test that was worrisome.

I didn’t know how to process the information. Not the shock of it and certainly not the sprightly tone Bean and Delilah were using in talking about her possible death, of all things.

I lifted a cake pan, holding it carefully as I turned it this way and that, coating the surface in cocoa powder while I tried to think of something to say. Anything. But all the questions, all the love I had for my beloved aunt, were tangled up in a painful lump in my throat.

Currently, Delilah worked at my side, scooping dark batter from a stainless steel bowl into the pans I’d already set aside. Aunt Bean’s Moonlight Mocha cake was my favorite, rich and fudgy with a decadent mocha filling and frosting.

The massive kitchen, which took up the whole ground floor of the barn, was quiet this afternoon, a rarity for a Friday. I was surprised the other two Sugarbirds—the collective nickname of the bakery’s employees, not including Aunt Bean—weren’t here working. Then I realized Aunt Bean had planned it that way. So she could have this talk with me without everyone butting in.

“I need your help, Addie.” Aunt Bean’s gaze leveled on me, light yet serious. “With my plans for the future, now that I’m dealing with this heart dropsy.”

Heart dropsy. Such a cutesy term for heart failure.

It’s what the preliminary test suggested. The doctor had prescribed medications, but a more aggressive treatment plan wouldn’t be decided until other tests were completed.

Delilah flashed me a sympathetic look as Aunt Bean said, “You know I’m a planner at heart.”

She always had been. She was a list maker, an organizer, a get-it-done and do-it-right kind of woman.

“In light of my current health issues,” she said, “I thought it best to do some advanced planning for the family businesses. Just in case.”

Just in case.

Wrapped tightly in sweet vanilla, the words whirled around as I pieced together what she truly meant: Just in case her prognosis was poor. Her heart incurable. Her condition terminal.

Pulling over a stool, I sat down before my knees gave way.

While there were two family businesses, the Starling Cake Company and Starlight Field, the bakery had always been my happy place growing up. Working alongside Aunt Bean and the Sugarbirds and my best friend Ree had been a joy. It was a place filled with love and happiness. A place to create and share. It was where I started to heal after my daddy’s death. Where possibilities seemed endless. Where hope was always in the air, along with the scent of vanilla.

One of the hardest things I’d ever done was walk away from it.

From this whole town, really.

“Though I’ve had plans in place for a long time now,” Bean said, “it’s been a minute since they’ve been updated. They weren’t nearly as detailed as I’d have liked them to be with itemization and whatnot.”

“Sure am glad I’m not George Stubblefield today.” Delilah let out a small laugh as she referred to our family’s lawyer, but I noticed mournfulness now glistened in her dark gaze, nearly hidden behind a pair of hot-pink cat eye glasses.

I was relieved to see the sadness, consoled by the fact that I wasn’t the only one devastated by Bean’s health troubles. Delilah had only been putting on a brave face.

I suspected Aunt Bean was doing the same. There was no way, none at all, that she was taking this situation blithely. Aunt Bean was simply trying to find the light in this darkness, something that came as naturally to her as breathing.

But sometimes there was no bright side to life’s most painful moments.

I knew that better than most anyone.

“Hush now.” Aunt Bean waved her off. “There are still directives that need to be fine-tuned, but for now I’m satisfied with the progress.”

Plans. Directives. She was talking about her will.

“Oh lordy.” Delilah filled another cake pan. Her silvery-black hair sat atop her head in a braided crown, and there was a smudge of flour on her dark nose. “No doubt there are spreadsheets.”

Aunt Bean said, “Of course there are spreadsheets.”

She rested her hands atop the walking stick. On her wrist was a simple gold watch that had a tiny blue sapphire set into its face. It was a throwback to another time with its narrow shape and crown and needed winding every day. Some of the links were shinier than others—recent additions, I realized, most likely to accommodate the swelling.

Trying to distract myself, I grabbed another stack of pans to grease and flour. I knew from experience that tonight the baked cake layers would be crumb coated and refrigerated. Tomorrow morning, they would then be fully frosted and decorated. The take-out window would open at ten A.M. and because the cakes were sold first come, first served, without a doubt, by nine thirty there would be a line of cars flowing down the driveway and along the county road, hazard lights flashing as people patiently waited to for a taste of magic to heal their souls.

Aunt Bean went on, saying, “I’m not worried about the fate of the bakery. It’s the field that concerns me.”

At the mention of the field I vehemently shook my head and reached for the star-shaped sapphire pendant that hung from a long chain around my neck. It had been a gift from Aunt Bean when I was little, and holding it had always brought a small measure of comfort—something I needed desperately right now.

“All right, punkin. We won’t talk about it right now, but it has to be discussed soon.” Her voice was steady, strong. “We must plan ahead to ensure that Winchester Wingrove does not gain possession of the starlight field.”

The field was the site where a star had fallen in 1833 during a massive meteor shower, creating a shallow crater, a star wound. On days when the sun shone brightly, come nighttime in that grassy, bowl-shaped field, glowed a certain kind of starlight. It rose from the ground, a shimmery curtain of blue and yellow and silver and green that danced across the earth like aurora. In that magical light, those in need of guidance received the gift of clarity.

“Winchester, the greedy, self-serving money-grubber, will do everything in his power to get his hands on the field.” Bean’s walking stick once again banged the floor, two quick bursts, the sound still disappointingly muffled in comparison to her vehemence. “Particularly since Constance Jane has passed on, God bless her soul. She was the only thing keeping him in line for so long.”

Winchester’s wife, Constance Jane Cobb Wingrove, had been able to keep him in line because, as one of the heirs to the Cobb Steel fortune, she controlled the family purse strings. Strings he had very much been attached to. Everyone knew he’d only married her for her money. When she’d passed away two years ago, she’d left Winchester a very wealthy—and untethered—man.

“If he excavates the starlight crater, all its light will disappear.” Aunt Bean shook her head as if she could not conceive of that level of stupidity. “I—we—cannot let that happen.”

Winchester, who came from a long line of notorious conmen, cardsharps, counterfeiters, pickpockets, gamblers, and thieves, had become captivated with the starlight field as a young man who’d been in and out of trouble with the law. That was when he discovered an old family journal containing a recounting of the night the star fell, one that spun a fanciful story of how the star had shattered into diamonds when it hit the ground.

That same journal also revealed a long-forgotten fact: the starlight field had once belonged to his family. The knowledge ignited within him a powerful jealousy, lighting a fire that still burned to this day. He made no secret of wanting the land back, of wanting to explore the diamond legend, and vowed that he wouldn’t rest until the field was his.

He’d been a thorn in side of the Fullbright family for decades.

Bean rubbed the face of her watch, her gaze steady on me. “The issue at hand, as you might have surmised, is Tessa Jane.”

I dug my nails into my palms. Tessa Jane was Winchester’s only granddaughter—and also, thanks to an extramarital relationship the family didn’t like to talk about, Aunt Bean’s niece. For a while, Tessa Jane and her mother, Henrietta, had lived with Constance Jane and Winchester here in Starlight. But when Tessa Jane was eleven, her mama, for reasons unknown, had packed up their Cadillac and moved them six hours away to Savannah, Georgia.

It was a move that had confused many around here, considering how close Henrietta was with her mama.

But for me, I’d felt nothing but relief.

Aunt Bean was worried now because half the starlight field belonged to Tessa Jane. It was currently being held in trust but would be released at the end of February, on her twenty-fifth birthday.

“I hardly imagine Tessa Jane would disregard your recommendations, Aunt Bean,” I said carefully, trying to keep my own feelings for Tessa Jane out of my voice. “She adores you. And she loves the field.”

Once, when she was all of nine or ten, Tessa Jane had insisted Aunt Bean buy all the single bananas at Friddle’s General Store instead of a complete bunch because she hadn’t wanted the single bananas be lonely. That was the kind of person she was. She had always been a soft, gentle soul in a world full of sharp, hurtful edges.

I added, “Has she said anything that would make you question her desire to keep the land?” Tessa Jane certainly hadn’t said anything to me, as I hadn’t seen or talked to her in more than a dozen years. To say that we had a complicated relationship was putting it mildly.

“Not in the slightest,” Aunt Bean said. “She’s been rather preoccupied as of late.”

I fought through a wave of guilt for not being more involved in Tessa Jane’s life and slid a cake pan down the counter. “Then you have nothing to worry about.”

“We all know that when it comes to the Wingroves nothing is ever that easy, especially when Winchester holds so much sway with her. But I’ve done come up with a plan to head him off at the pass. A fair one, I believe.”

I suspected she had many plans, all stored up like the alluring jars of colorful sprinkles, dusting sugars, nonpareils, and edible confetti that sat on the long shelves in the cake decorating corner. Enchanting, yes, but also incredibly messy and frustrating if you weren’t careful.

Aunt Bean said, “But my plan is complex, which is why I need your help.”

Delilah snorted. “Her plan has more layers than an apple stack cake.”

Aunt Bean threw her dear friend a droll look, then in a supremely measured tone that set off high-pitched alarm bells in my head, said, “It must be completed in stages. In order to help me with those stages, Addie, you’ll need to move back to Starlight for a spell.”

My hand froze and cocoa powder drifted like dark snow onto the cement floor. “Move back?”

Emotionally, it had been hard enough visiting Aunt Bean and the Sugarbirds. Every few months, I’d arrive like a whirlwind to catch up with everyone, indulge in the local gossip, visit the shops, and soak up all the love and affection I could, tucking it away for the lonely days ahead. But I never stayed longer than a day or two. And each time I left, it was with tears in my eyes and wishes that I could stay.

Even thinking about moving back stirred up all kinds of emotions I’d tamped down for years, making me lightheaded and queasy.

I’d left for a reason. And that reason hadn’t changed in all the time I’d been gone.

Bean’s gaze held steady. “As much as I feel like I’m Superwoman most days, I know that whatever is ahead for me, health-wise, is best conquered with all the help I can get. I’m going to need extra assistance with the bakery, plus rides to and from doctor’s appointments and such.”

Knots formed in my stomach as a long-kept secret perched on my lips. I clamped my mouth shut to keep from speaking. I couldn’t blow it now, after all this time. It had been kept safe nearly twelve years, ever since the warm summer day Ree had taken her last breath.

But no one knew why I left. So Aunt Bean didn’t know what she was asking of me.

“You can work from anywhere, so why not move back here?” she asked, calmly, reasonably, as if she had anticipated any potential excuses. “We do have internet. This isn’t some backwoods, Podunk, one-stoplight town.”

Starlight, Alabama, had all of two stoplights. And though it was off the beaten path, it was hardly unimportant like Podunk suggested. Tourism was the main industry of this town, drawing crowds from all over the world. It thrived on legend, on folklore, on starshine.

I stood and made my way to a back window. Over a low fence, down the slope of a gentle hill, and beyond a stretch of pasture, there was a grass-covered indent in the earth. It was where, all that time ago, the fallen star had hit the ground.

During the day, there was nothing to suggest this land was special. But at night, when the starlight rose from the crater, swirling and twirling, there was no denying it was pure magic.

The starlight drew dozens of visitors every night. Even on cloudy days when the aurora was lackluster, it was still bright enough to be a guiding light, to provide clarity to those in need.

But I didn’t need the starlight to know what I wanted.

I already knew. I’d longed to come home for a good while now.

Yet, how could I possibly keep quiet if I moved back? I couldn’t keep a secret to save my life, which was why I’d left in the first place. It had been the only way to safeguard what had been shared with me—information that would destroy the lives of people I cared for. People I loved.

With an ache in my chest, I looked upward and saw a flock of silvery starlings flying toward the farmhouse. Usually the birds stayed in the trees that bordered the starlight field, but in times of trouble they flew nearer, as a reminder that they were always keeping watchful eyes over the family. I wasn’t surprised to see them now, considering Bean’s health worries—and her current request.

“You can set up a sound studio in the storage room upstairs here. Or,” Bean said, oozing practicality, “in a closet in the farmhouse.”

She was right. I was a voice actor. I owned all the equipment I needed and often worked out of a converted closet in my apartment. But moving here would mean taking time off in order to get a studio set up and ready to record. It would be a headache but doable.

“It’s not forever,” Aunt Bean added, her tone light in a desperate attempt to brighten the darkness.

The meaning hiding behind it’s not forever tore open my heart and made me suddenly wonder if she knew more about her condition than she was letting on.

I turned away from the window and glanced at Delilah, looking for confirmation that Aunt Bean was sicker than she’d told me, but Delilah had her back to me as she placed a cake into one of the ovens.

Aunt Bean tapped her stick again, twice. “What say you, Addie?”

I took deep, even breaths, trying to fight the surge of panic threatening to swallow me whole. My gaze fell on the cake pans lined up on the shelves. It lingered on jars of rainbow sprinkles. I studied the bottles of vanilla extract that Bean had made herself, focusing on the long, dark vanilla beans soaking in bourbon. Then my gaze dropped to the head of my aunt’s walking stick, which was shaped like a starling. The carving was intricate and delicate yet somehow able to bear her weight, her troubles.

Moving back to Starlight was going to be challenging, but I couldn’t turn down Aunt Bean. Not after all the years she’d held me close, kept me safe, helped me through the darkest times of my life.

No one knew me like she did. My daddy and I had moved in with her when I was just four years old—right after my mama left town. Left us. And after Daddy’s death when I was ten, I’d stayed put, my mama too happy living a carefree life by then to return to mothering.

I’d do anything for Aunt Bean.

“Of course I’ll come back.”

She smiled, the melancholy in her eyes shining as bright as the stars she loved so much. “That’s my girl.”

Outside, car tires crunched on the chipped-slate driveway, and I hoped it was another Sugarbird arriving to assist with the massive workload still to complete. Help was more than welcome to clear the production list and also, hopefully, rid the air of its heaviness. All the talk of Bean’s plans and uncertain future could be tucked away for another time, after I let it sink in. Settle.

A moment later the front door creaked open. Warm wind whistled in, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of light I hadn’t seen in years as Tessa Jane tentatively stepped inside.

“Hello,” she said, her gaze searching our faces. “I’m not too early for the family meeting, am I?”

I’d have recognized her anywhere with her big blue eyes, pale blond hair, and the dreamy ethereal haze that had surrounded her since the day she’d been born, like she’d been dropped straight out of the heavens and into a bassinet at the Coosa County hospital. I stifled the shock wave at seeing her and threw a look at Aunt Bean, who was already greeting Tessa Jane with an effusive hug.

Slowly, I stepped forward and mentally prepared myself to greet the last person I’d ever expected to see today.

Tessa Jane Cobb Wingrove Fullbright.

My half sister.

Click below to pre-order your copy of A Certain Kind of Starlight, available July 23rd, 2024!

Excerpts / Featured / What's New

Excerpt Reveal: Rumor Has It by Cat Rambo

June 1, 2024June 11, 2024Tiana Tolbert

The crew of the You Sexy Thing navigates the aftermath of facing down a pirate king and the relationships that they have created with one another in Cat Rambo’s action adventure science fiction Rumor Has It, the third book in the Disco Space Opera.

The crew of the You Sexy Thing have laid a course for Coralind Station, hoping the station’s famed gardens will provide an opportunity to regroup, recoup, and mourn their losses while while finding a way to track down their enemy, pirate king Tubal Last.

All Niko wants to do is pry their insurance money from the bank and see if an old friend might be able to help them find Last. Unfortunately, old friends and enemies aren’t the only unreliable elements awaiting her and the crew at Coralind.

Each will have to face themselves—the good and the bad—in order to come together before they lose everything.

Please enjoy this free excerpt of Rumor Has It by Cat Rambo, on sale 9/24/24

CHAPTER 1

Chaos brews in the space between the stars, where one might expect a vacuum and chill wastes. However, plunging through Q-space, plowing through a section of the distance hidden from most voyagers, you see the loops and snarls in reality, the unnecessary curlicues and furbelows and gimcracks that the universe has chosen to add—weirdly and bizarrely, here and here alone—which is why most people find it unsettling.

Q-space is where probabilities slide and skew like missiles skidding on ice, where logic steps out the door to pause for a smoke break, briefly replaced by its much less sane cousin wearing torn fishnets and an inverted beret that might have once been raspberry velvet. Q-space is where strange discoveries are made, unlikely coincidences are forged, and the unimaginable shows up on every side.

You Sexy Thing loved Q-space. It moved with a grace that it really wished someone had noticed but had resigned itself to no one doing so. It eased through it like a watermelon seed squirted between thumb and forefinger, moving unimaginable distances, and at such a speed that the ship had little time to examine its surroundings, catching only glimpses as it hurtled on.

In Q-space, mathematics can do odd things, can balloon and shrink in unexpected ways. Numbers are more whimsical there, or at least more prone to strange, inexplicable convulsions. But in the here and now, math behaved more predictably. And sometimes disappointingly.

Captain Niko Larsen added up the figures by hand, and then had the ship double-check them. They remained the same. She leaned back in her chair and knuckled at the back of her neck, trying to smooth out the knotted tension there.

On the asset side: the handful of credits left from their last pop-up venture, most of that profit gone to refueling costs and Gate charges.

On the debit side: the fact of those ongoing fuel costs, Gate charges, and other ways the Known Universe charged for existence within it, such as taxes, tariffs, surcharges, delivery charges, fees, tips, gratuities. Etc.

The debit side was so much larger than the asset side. She leaned forward to stare at it for a long moment before pushing the datapad away.

There was a touch of hope. If she could get at the money from their insurance claim, the money for the destruction of their first restaurant, the Last Chance, back on TwiceFar Station. But doing that meant going someplace expensive. Very expensive.

So expensive that if they went there, they might end up stranded. With only that handful of credits to satisfy a host of necessities.

But that chance was their only one, as far as she could see. So the only other question was, in telling the rest of the crew about her plans, how much she would reveal of the direness of their resources. It would encourage a small measure of conservation of those resources, but at the cost of a drop in morale and rise in anxiety. No, that wasn’t worth it.

“Coralind,” Dabry breathed in a reverential tone that delighted Niko’s heart in a way it hadn’t been delighted for a while. In front of him was a bowl of spiced bits of protein, smelling of cumin and iron, beside another of soupy yellow sauce. He was filling rounds of dough with both, pinching them closed with expert ease before arranging them on a nearby platter.

The others in the kitchen had mixed reactions. Lassite simply nodded as though in confirmation. Atlanta blinked and made a mental note to look up the destination as soon as possible. Talon shrugged while Rebbe, leaning against the wall, continued to watch the room as though it was full of dangers, without paying much attention to what Niko actually said.

Skidoo squealed. “Is being a garden there from Tlella and some of its people.” She undulated in delight. “Is being places to swim, is being places that is being only water.”

Gio, sorting through peppery corms and picking off the odd scaly leaf or two, gave a soft hoot of appreciation, eyes bright. Trade, he thought. Good trade at Coralind, some of the best in the Known Universe. And Festival time! Who wouldn’t want to be on Coralind at Festival time? This was an excellent choice.

Milly’s shoulders stiffened for a moment, then relaxed as she watched the others. They’d be happier, at least, and happier meant more ready to respond to her advances. She’d been trying to win back their trust for a while now, but the ship’s atmosphere hadn’t really been conducive. She put down the pastry knife she’d been polishing and asked, “That’s where the gardens are, eh?”

Gio nodded, signing, “Hundreds of them. Almost as good as planet-grown. Sometimes better, they say. They’ve been growing for centuries now, inside that planetoid. Food you can get there that you can’t get anywhere else.”

Dabry gave off shaping dumplings, putting a lower hand to the counter as if to catch his balance at the thought.

“I’ll have to tell Skidoo to put together a list of the restaurants there,” he said thoughtfully. “So we can go over it, look for gaps.”

“That is certainly one way of looking at it,” Niko said dryly.

He raised an eyebrow. “What’s wrong with that approach?”

“You will be in a place with ingredients that you may never find in their prime again,” she explained. “Cook the meal of your heart, cook something that you love.”

She had thought him motionless already, but at her words, he became utterly still, as though holding his breath. Then he let it out and said, his voice tight, “I’ll have to think about that.”

She had not thought to touch old wounds, but she had. And realized, just as quickly, that to say anything drawing attention to her blunder would be to offend even further. She cast about for words, glancing around the kitchen, and was grateful when Milly rescued her. “Will you tell everyone the full details at the meal? Neither Jezli or Petalia is here.”

“I could tell them right now,” the ship offered.

“No, that’s my job,” Niko said.

“Technically, I am the communications systems.”

“Technically, you should wait to be ordered before acting on that order,” she snapped.

“Very well.” The ship was currently thinking about ways to express irritation, and everyone jumped when eyes suddenly manifested in the upper walls and ceiling, rolling in their sockets. They were then absorbed in a process that took considerably longer than their appearance, which everyone watched with horrified fascination, including the imperturbable Lassite.

“I grasp your meaning,” Niko said when the process seemed complete and no further eyes were in evidence, “and would prefer you not express yourself in that way again.”

“In what way?” the ship said suspiciously, worried about the boundaries of this particular order. “With eyes?”

Niko paused, working through the wording, and decided upon, “By manifesting organs specifically for the sake of a gesture.”

“Mmm.” The ship filed the definition away to examine later for possible loopholes, including the precise definition of “organs,” but refrained from more “gestures.” There were plenty of other possibilities. What, for example, if it created a servitor and then had the servitor perform the gestures? It would attempt that experiment later.

Niko found Jezli in the lounge, reading. Jezli set down her reader and gave Niko her unfailing, maddeningly courteous attention.

“We are bound for Coralind next,” Niko informed her. “That will be a suitable place for you to leave the ship and find some other berth.”

“Admit it, Captain,” Jezli Farren said with an easy grin that might have had an edge of mockery to it. It was a tone familiar to everyone on the days when Jezli was feeling particularly brittle and missing her former companion, Roxana, and seeking to divert herself. “Rumor has it you’d miss me if I were gone.”

“You are a scoundrel and a con artist and the only reason you are still on this ship is because you are the sole person who understands how to operate that thing,” Niko snapped. Jezli had, as ever, managed to get under her skin with only a few words. “But how complicated can it be, telling Petalia to pull the trigger?”

Around them, the ship listened without commentary. It had found that the conversations between Jezli and Niko were highly entertaining, and even more so when they forgot that it was listening.

The “thing” in question was, for once, not the ship itself, You Sexy Thing, but the ancient alien artifact currently resting in one of the aforementioned ship’s holds. Nicknamed the “Devil’s Gun,” it was an implement of assassination.

Unfortunately, not one that could assassinate the only person they needed to kill before he could kill them.

Jezli poked at her pad. “Three days to Coralind,” Jezli said, looking at it. She was about to say something else, but there was a rustle at the doorway. She looked up; Niko turned, uncrossing her arms.

Petalia, the Florian who was both Niko’s ex-lover and current constant antagonist, as well as the only person who could fire the Devil’s Gun, stood there. They were tall and female in form, their skin and hair white and fine, the latter strewn with tiny blossoms. They smelled of ice with an edge of sweetness, and as always, their eyes were fixed only on Niko.

“Coralind?” they demanded, stepping into the room. “Why there?”

“You mentioned yourself that it’s tied into Last’s net of contacts. We may be able to backtrace from there. And I’m going to visit an old friend who may have other thoughts on how to find word of Tubal Last,” Niko said.

She returned Petalia’s stare. The notion flickered through Jezli’s head that they looked like an artistic tableau embodying complexities of emotion, and she framed it from several angles to amuse herself. She had stood as though to leave, but had failed to exit. She thought they had forgotten her presence, which they had.

“Coralind.” Petalia loaded the word with scorn. “Who do you know in that tawdry place?”

Niko refrained from taking offense, leaving her tone mild and emotionless as pudding. “Someone I knew during some of my final years with the Holy Hive Mind.”

Petalia frowned. Niko thought about the years Tubal Last had spent monitoring Niko while whispering lies about her into Petalia’s ear, and wondered how close the monitoring had been. Very close at times, it seemed. Leaving off that angle of questioning, Petalia pursued others.

“How long will we be there? Are you planning some other ridiculous restauranting enterprise?”

“That is how we make our living, with ridiculous restauranting.” Niko’s even tone faltered toward the end of the sentence, so slightly it would have been imperceptible to anyone who didn’t know her well.

Jezli continued to amuse herself, imagining a camera at different vantage points around the room, thinking about how she would have blocked the ongoing scene if she were a theatrical director, detailing it with careful precision.

Petalia’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not Festival time there, is it?” they demanded. “That would be insane.”

This time, Niko’s eyes wandered, seeking Jezli’s. Her lips quirked. “Well,” she said, and Jezli held her breath. “Certainly it would be, and certainly it is, but that is exactly what we are doing.”

“Just when I thought it was impossible to like you much better,” Jezli said. “You are a daring woman.”

“Desperate, perhaps, rather than daring,” Niko said, her tone softer than it had been.

Petalia glanced between the two, and their eyes filled with an emotion Niko had not seen in their pale depths for a long, long
time. The moment hung in the air, and who knows what might have happened if Skidoo had not entered just then.

“Is being interrupting?” Skidoo’s three turquoise eyes swiveled independently, regarding each of them simultaneously.

Petalia drew themself up to glance down at Skidoo. “You are interrupting nothing,” they said with icy hauteur.

“Well, scan you being all Ruler of Known Space,” Jezli said admiringly and over-sincerely, folding her arms as she leaned against the wall.

Petalia huffed out derision, dropped a nod at Niko, and stalked out. Skidoo’s unoccupied eye chose Niko as its new target.

“You are terribly good at getting under their skin.” Niko turned to Jezli, pointing a finger at her. “I’ll thank you not to exercise your talents on those on board under my protection.”

“And the ship,” she added, glancing upward.

“Thank you, Captain.” You Sexy Thing considered this permission to enter the conversation. It had been desperately trying to understand the nuances of the last few minims, which had seemed very significant in all sorts of ways it could not comprehend.

For example, each of the three participants had experienced an elevated heart rate—but why? Had there been subtle threat displays it had failed to decode? It played its memories over several hundred times while waiting for the conversation to go on.

“I apologize.” Jezli spread her hands in an expansive gesture of helplessness. “I don’t mean to. It just slips out sometimes.”

“Rein it in.”

Jezli dropped Niko a salute that somehow managed to be sardonic. How did the woman get that into the gesture? Niko couldn’t quite figure it out, but it was definitely there. She decided, with an effort, to let the matter go.

One of Gnarl Grusson’s main traits was that he had never, ever, been able to let something go, and that particularly held true of grudges. And while over the course of his existence, he had accumulated a freighter hold’s worth of such grudges, the one that currently burned in his burly chest, so hotly that no other could contend with it, was one involving Niko Larsen.

“Thought she was done with me, leaving me there to die,” he muttered to himself once again. The words elicited a sidelong look from his second-in-command, but they knew better than challenge him. He had been poring over star charts, figuring fuel costs and times, and had narrowed the possibilities down to three. She could only go so far, so fast, and her resources were limited. The first possibility was Broohaven. Tempting, with all its information networks, but the Broons didn’t go in much for culinary pleasures. They were all about efficiency and delivering maximal nutrition in minimal time.

The second possibility was Droon. Plenty of tourists there, plenty of places to play at feeding people for coin. But Droon was on the outskirts, and close to a single transit point, as opposed to the third possibility.

That third possibility . . . well, how could anyone who’d checked their calendar want to avoid such potentially profitable chaos and hubbub?

And from there, there were plenty of other port possibilities for the next stop.

He muttered to himself, and his second-in-command kept pretending not to notice. The captain had been given to this ever since they’d rescued him from where he’d been stranded on the space moth.

Personally, the second had mixed opinions about the necessity of that rescue. This, too, he kept to himself, his attention on the captain.

Lips pursed in deep consideration, Gnarl passed gas, paying deep attention to the act, then spoke to the second.

“Set course for Coralind.”

Pre-order Rumor Has It Here:

Excerpts / Featured / What's New

Excerpt Reveal: A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher

May 27, 2024June 11, 2024Tiana Tolbert

From New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author T. Kingfisher comes A Sorceress Comes to Call—a dark reimagining of the Brothers Grimm’s “The Goose Girl,” rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic.

Cordelia knows her mother is . . . unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms—there are no secrets in this house—and her mother doesn’t allow Cordelia to have a single friend. Unless you count Falada, her mother’s beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him.

But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t evil sorcerers.

When her mother unexpectedly moves them into the manor home of a wealthy older Squire and his kind but keen-eyed sister, Hester, Cordelia knows this welcoming pair are to be her mother’s next victims. But Cordelia feels at home for the very first time among these people, and as her mother’s plans darken, she must decide how to face the woman who raised her to save the people who have become like family.

Please enjoy this free excerpt of A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher, on sale 8/06/24

CHAPTER 1

There was a fly walking on Cordelia’s hand and she was not allowed to flick it away.

She had grown used to the ache of sitting on a hard wooden pew and being unable to shift her weight. It still hurt, but eventually her legs went to sleep and the ache became a dull, all-over redness that was easier to ignore.

Though her senses were dulled in obedience, her sense of touch stayed the strongest. Even when she was so far under that the world had a gray film around the edges, she could still feel her clothing and the touch of her mother’s hand. And now the fly’s feet itched, which was bad, then tickled, which was worse.

At the front of the church, the preacher was droning on. Cordelia had long since lost the thread. Lust and tithing were his two favorite topics. Probably it was one of those. Her mother took her to church every Sunday and Cordelia was fairly certain that he had been preaching the same half-dozen sermons for the past year.

Her eyes were the only muscles that she could control, so she was not looking at him, but down as far as she could. At the very bottom of her vision, she could see her hands folded in her lap and the fly picking its way delicately across her knuckles.

Her mother glanced at her and must have noticed that she was looking down. Cordelia’s chin rose so that she could no longer see her hands. She was forced to study the back of the head of the man in front of her. His hair was thinning toward the back and was compressed down at the sides, as if he wore a hat most days. She did not recognize him, but that was no surprise. Since her days at school had ended, Cordelia only saw the other townsfolk when she went to church.

Cordelia lost the tickling sensation for a moment and dared to hope that the fly was gone, but then the delicate web between her thumb and forefinger began to itch.

Her eyes began to water at the sensation and she blinked them furiously. Crying was not acceptable. That had been one of the first lessons of being made obedient. It would definitely not be acceptable in church, where other people would notice. Cordelia was fourteen and too old to cry for seemingly no reason—because of course she could not tell anyone the reason.

The fly crossed over to her other hand, each foot landing like an infinitesimal pinprick. The stinging, watering sensation in her eyes started to feel like a sneeze coming on.

Sneezing would be terrible. She could not lift her hands or turn her head, so it would hit the back of the man’s head, and he would turn around in astonishment and her mother would move her mouth to apologize and everyone would be staring at her for having been so ill-mannered.

Her mother would not be happy. Cordelia would have given a year of her life to be able to wipe her eyes. She sniffed miserably, her lungs filling with the smell of candles and wood polish and other people’s bodies. Under it all lay the dry, sharp smell of wormwood.

And then, blessedly, the preacher finished. Everyone said, “Amen,” and the congregation rose. No one noticed that Cordelia moved in unison with her mother.

No one ever did.

“I suppose you’re mad at me,” said her mother as they walked home from church. “I’m sorry. But you might try harder not to be so rebellious! I shouldn’t have to keep doing this to you, not when you’re fourteen years old!”

Cordelia said nothing. Her tongue did not belong to her. The person that smiled and answered all the greetings after the sermon—“Why Evangeline, don’t you look lovely today? And Cordelia! You keep growing like a weed!”—had not been Cordelia at all.

They reached home at last. Home was a narrow white house with peeling paint, set just off the road. Evangeline pushed the front door open, walked Cordelia to the couch, and made her sit.

Cordelia felt the obedience let go, all at once. She did not scream.

When Cordelia was young, she had screamed when she came out of obedience, but this gave her mother a reason to hold her and make soothing noises, so she had learned to stay silent as she swam up into consciousness, out of the waking dream.

The memories of what she had done when she was obedient would still be there, though. They lay in the bottom of her skull like stones.

It was never anything that looked terrible from outside. She could not have explained it to anyone without sounding ridiculous. “She makes me eat. She makes me drink. She makes me go to the bathroom and get undressed and go to bed.”

And they would have looked at her and said “So?” and Cordelia would not have been able to explain what it was like, half-sunk in stupor, with her body moving around her.

Being made obedient felt like being a corpse. “My body’s dead and it doesn’t do what I want,” Cordelia had whispered once, to her only friend, their horse Falada. “It only does what she wants. But I’m still in it.”

When she was younger, Cordelia would wet herself frequently when she was obedient. Her mother mostly remembered to have Cordelia relieve herself at regular intervals now, but Cordelia had never forgotten the sensation.

She was made obedient less often as she grew older. She thought perhaps that it was more difficult for her mother to do than it had been when she was small—or perhaps it was only that she had learned to avoid the things that made her mother angry. But this time, Cordelia hadn’t avoided it.

As the obedience let go, Cordelia swam up out of the twilight, feeling her senses slot themselves back into place.

Her mother patted her shoulder. “There you are. Now, isn’t that better?”

Cordelia nodded, not looking at her.

“I’m sure you’ll do better next time.”

“Yes,” said Cordelia, who could not remember what it was that she had been made obedient for. “I will.”

When her legs felt steady enough, she went up the stairs to her bedroom and lay on the bed. She did not close the door.

There were no closed doors in the house she grew up in.

Sometimes, when her mother was gone on an errand, Cordelia would close the door to her bedroom and lean against it, pressing herself flat against the wooden surface, feeling it solid and smooth under her cheek.

The knowledge that she was alone and no one could see her—that she could do anything, say anything, think anything and no one would be the wiser—made her feel fierce and wicked and brave.

She always opened the door again after a minute. Her mother would come home soon and the sight of a closed door would draw her like a lodestone. And then there would be the talk.

If Cordelia’s mother was in a good mood, it would be “Silly! You don’t have any secrets from me, I’m your mother!”

If she was in a bad mood, it would be the same talk but from the other direction, like a tarot card reversed—“What are you trying to hide?”

Whichever card it was, it always ended the same way: “We don’t close doors in this house.”

When Cordelia was thirteen and had been half-mad with things happening under her skin, she shot back “Then why are there doors in the house at all?”

Her mother had paused, just for an instant. Her long-jawed face had gone blank and she had looked at Cordelia—really looked, as if she was actually seeing her—and Cordelia knew that she had crossed a line and would pay for it.

“They came with the house,” said her mother. “Silly!” She nodded once or twice, to herself, and then walked away.

Cordelia couldn’t remember now how long she had been made obedient as punishment. Two or three days, at least.

Because there were no closed doors, Cordelia had learned to have no secrets that could be found. She did not write her thoughts in her daybook.

She kept a daybook because her mother believed that it was something young girls should do, but the things she wrote were exactly correct and completely meaningless. I spilled something on my yellow dress today. I have been out riding Falada. The daffodils bloomed today. It is my birthday today.

She gazed at the pages sometimes, and thought what it would be like to write I hate my mother in a fierce scrawl across the pages.

She did not do it. Closing the door when she was home alone was as much rebellion as she dared. If she had written something so terrible, she would have been made obedient for weeks, perhaps a month. She did not think she could stand it for so long.

I’d go mad. Really truly mad. But she wouldn’t notice until she let me come back, and I’d have been mad inside for weeks and weeks by then.

Since her mother was home today and unlikely to leave again, Cordelia took a deep breath and sat up, scrubbing at her face. There was no point in dwelling on things she would never do. She changed out of her good dress and went out to the stable behind the house, where Falada was waiting. The stable was old and
gloomy, but Falada glowed like moonlight in the darkness of his stall.

When Falada ran, and Cordelia clung to his back, she was safe. It was the only time that she was not thinking, not carefully cropping each thought to be pleasant and polite and unexceptional. There was only sky and hoofbeats and fast-moving earth.

After a mile or so, the horse slowed to a stop, almost as if he sensed what Cordelia needed. She slipped off his back and leaned against him. Falada was quiet, but he was solid and she told him her thoughts, as she always did.

“Sometimes I dream about running,” she whispered. “You and me. Until we reach the sea.”

She did not know what she would do once they reached the sea. Swim it, perhaps. There was another country over there, the old homeland that adults referred to so casually.

“I know I’m being ridiculous,” she told him. “Horses can’t swim that far. Not even you.”

She had learned not to cry long ago, but she pressed her face to his warm shoulder, and the wash of his mane across her skin felt like tears.

Cordelia was desperately thankful for Falada, and that her mother encouraged her to ride, although of course Evangeline’s motives were different from Cordelia’s. “You won’t get into any trouble with him,” her mother would say. “And besides, it’s good for a girl to know how to ride. You’ll marry a wealthy man someday, and they like girls who know their way around a horse, not these little town girls that can only ride in a carriage!” Cordelia had nodded. She did not doubt that she would marry a wealthy man one day. Her mother had always stated it as fact.

And, it was true that the girls Cordelia saw when riding seemed to envy her for having Falada to ride. He was the color of snow, with a proud neck. She met them sometimes in the road. The cruel ones made barbed comments about her clothes to hide their envy, and the kind ones gazed at Falada wistfully. That was how
Cordelia met Ellen.

“He’s very beautiful,” Ellen had said one day. “I’ve never seen a horse like him.”

“Thank you,” said Cordelia. She still went to school then, and talking to other people had not seemed quite so difficult. “He is a good horse.”

“I live just over the hill,” the other girl had said shyly. “You could visit sometime, if you like.”

“I would like that,” Cordelia had replied carefully. And that was true. She would have liked that.

But Cordelia did not go, because her mother would not have liked that. She did not ask. It was hard to tell, sometimes, what would make her mother angry, and it was not worth the risk. Still, for the last three years she had encountered the kind girl regularly. Ellen was the daughter of a wealthy landowner that lived nearby. She rode her pony, Penny, every day, and when she and Cordelia met, they rode together down the road, the pony taking two steps for every one of Falada’s.

So it was unsurprising when Cordelia heard the familiar hoof-beats of Ellen’s pony approaching. She lifted her head from Falada’s neck and looked up as Ellen waved a hello. Cordelia waved back and remounted. Penny shied at their approach, but Ellen reined her in.

Cordelia had never ridden any horse but Falada, so it was from Ellen—and from watching Ellen’s pony—that she learned that most horses were not so calm as Falada, nor so safe. When she was very young and the open doors in their house became too much, when she couldn’t stand being in that house for one more second, she would creep to Falada’s stall and sleep curled up there, with his four white legs like pillars around her. Apparently most people did not do this, for fear the horse would step on them. Cordelia had not known to be afraid of such a thing.

“Oh, Penny! What’s gotten into you? It’s just Falada.” Ellen rolled her eyes at Cordelia, as if they shared a joke, which was one of the reasons that Cordelia liked her.

“Penny’s a good pony,” Cordelia said. She liked it when Ellen complimented Falada, so perhaps Ellen would like it when she complimented Penny. Cordelia talked to other people so rarely now that she always had to feel her way through these conversations, and she was not always good at them.

“She is,” said Ellen happily. “She’s not brave, but she’s sweet.”

Ellen carried the conversation mostly by herself, talking freely about her home, her family, the servants, and the other people in town. There was no malice in it, so far as Cordelia could tell. She let it wash over her, and pretended that she had a right to listen and nod as if she knew what was going on.

Cordelia was not sure why Ellen rode out to meet her so often, when she could say so little, but she was glad for the company. Ellen was kind, but more than that, she was ordinary. Talking to her gave Cordelia a window into what was normal and what wasn’t. She could ask a question and Ellen would answer it without asking any awkward questions of her own. Most of the time, anyway.

It had occurred to her, some years prior, that not all parents could make their children obedient the same way that her mother made her, but when she tried to ask Ellen about it, to see if she was right, the words came out so wrong and so distressing that she stopped.

Something about today—the memory of the obedience or the fly or maybe just the way the light fell across the leaves and Falada’s mane—made her want to ask again.

“Ellen?” she asked abruptly. “Do you close the door to your room?”

Ellen had been patiently holding up both ends of the conversation and looked up, puzzled. “Eh? Yes? I mean, the servants go in and out of my dressing room, but I always lock the door to the water closet when I’m in it, because you don’t want servants around for that, do you?”

Cordelia stared at her hands on the reins. They were not wealthy enough to have servants, and there was an outhouse beside the stable, not a water closet. She pressed on.

“Does your family think you’re keeping secrets when you do?”

The silence went on long enough that Cordelia looked up, and realized that Ellen was giving her a very penetrating look. She had a pink, pleasant face and a kind manner, and it was unsettling to suddenly remember that kind did not mean stupid and Ellen had been talking to her for a long time.

“Oh, Cordelia . . .” said Ellen finally.

She reached out to touch Cordelia’s arm, but Falada sidled at that moment, and Penny took a step to give him room, so they did not touch after all.

“Sorry,” said Cordelia gruffly. She wanted to say Please don’t think I’m strange, that was a strange question, I can tell, please don’t stop talking to me, but she knew that would make it all even worse, so she didn’t.

“It’s all right,” said Ellen. And then “It will be all right,” which Cordelia knew wasn’t the same thing at all.

Category: Excerpts

Excerpt Reveal: You Deserve to Know by Aggie Blum Thompson

CHAPTER ONE

Click below to pre-order your copy of You Deserve to Know, available March 11th, 2025!

Excerpt Reveal: Dark Vector by Ward Larsen

CHAPTER ONE

Click below to pre-order your copy of Dark Vector, available February 4th, 2025!

Excerpt Reveal: My Three Dogs by W. Bruce Cameron

CHAPTER ONE

Click below to pre-order your copy of My Three Dogs, available October 29th, 2024!

Audio Excerpts with Daniel Henning: Somewhere Beyond the Sea

Chauncey Meets the Other Children

Arthur Returns to the Island

Arthur vs Rowder

Order Somewhere Beyond the Sea

Excerpt Reveal: Rough Pages by Lev AC Rosen

CHAPTER ONE

Click below to pre-order your copy of Rough Pages, available October 1st, 2024!

TJ Klune’s Farewell to the Wolves

Check out The Green Creek Series and pre-order the new hardcover edition of Brothersong—available on July 30, 2024!

Excerpt Reveal: Passion for the Heist by K’wan

CHAPTER ONE

Click below to pre-order your copy of Passion for the Heist, available August 27th, 2024!

Excerpt Reveal: A Certain Kind of Starlight by Heather Webber

CHAPTER ONE

From the Kitchen of Verbena Fullbright

ADDIE

Click below to pre-order your copy of A Certain Kind of Starlight, available July 23rd, 2024!

Excerpt Reveal: Rumor Has It by Cat Rambo

CHAPTER 1

Pre-order Rumor Has It Here:

Excerpt Reveal: A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher

CHAPTER 1

Pre-order A Sorceress Comes to Call Here:

CHAPTER ONE

Click below to pre-order your copy of You Deserve to Know, available March 11th, 2025!

CHAPTER ONE

Click below to pre-order your copy of Dark Vector, available February 4th, 2025!

CHAPTER ONE

Click below to pre-order your copy of My Three Dogs, available October 29th, 2024!

Chauncey Meets the Other Children

Arthur Returns to the Island

Arthur vs Rowder

Order Somewhere Beyond the Sea

CHAPTER ONE

Click below to pre-order your copy of Rough Pages, available October 1st, 2024!

Check out The Green Creek Series and pre-order the new hardcover edition of Brothersong—available on July 30, 2024!

CHAPTER ONE

Click below to pre-order your copy of Passion for the Heist, available August 27th, 2024!

CHAPTER ONE

From the Kitchen of Verbena Fullbright

ADDIE

Click below to pre-order your copy of A Certain Kind of Starlight, available July 23rd, 2024!

CHAPTER 1

Pre-order Rumor Has It Here:

CHAPTER 1

Pre-order A Sorceress Comes to Call Here:

Posts navigation