Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Undercover Bookshop by Katherine Reay, which releases on October 6th 2026.

Recently moved to the English Cotswolds, Gemma Brown desperately wants to create the kind of idyllic life she’s read about in her favorite mystery novels, with herself as the leading lady. But fitting in proves difficult as Gemma is more adept at solving mysteries and setting up the village’s first bookstore than she is at baking cakes or grasping social niceties. Nevertheless, she finds a friend in Peggy, a young woman recently moved to town herself, and Ursula Beurton, who is not only the village’s best baker but an enigmatic figure who sparks controversy in the small-town gossip network.

As Gemma spends more time with Ursula, she begins to suspect all those novels are affecting her thinking. The oddities she starts to notice must be her imagination because, if not, they point to something far more dangerous than winning the local baking contest or being placed on the church committee. Could her neighbor be a real spy?

Following her instincts and a few skills learned through fiction, Gemma soon becomes embroiled in an international intrigue involving the village’s mysterious benefactor, Lady Marchmont, MI5, and the KGB. In an unexpected twist, however, Ursula asks Gemma for a favor which may endanger all their lives as their next chapter unfolds in Gemma’s new venture, the Undercover Bookshop.

EXCERPT

PROLOGUE

Tuesday, 5 November 1991

LONDON, ENGLAND

We are delighted to announce that Ruth Werner’s bestselling novel Sonja’s Rapport has released an English translation under the title Sonya’s Report. Mrs. Werner will be traveling throughout November and December to promote sales and has personally requested an evening event at The Undercover Bookshop. Please reply if 4 December is available. Books and promotional materials to follow.

Ruth Werner.

I draw in a deep inhale and it catches in my throat. The world blurs at its edges on the exhale, and I drop onto the stool behind the shop’s customer service counter, laying down the letter. It shouldn’t shock me, yet it does. It’s certainly a surprise. Ruth Werner is coming to England. Ruth Werner is allowed to come to England.

After all these years . . .

Easy, Nora. Easy now.

The words come to me without prompting, as if pulled from thin air and the distant past. Just as she had so often said them all those years ago. Well, not quite as she said them. Much has changed in forty-­one years. One thing in particular. Nora.

My thoughts flit from my relationship with the bestselling author to our country’s decades-­old entanglement with her. Why is the government letting her in? No one outside a select few knows what she’s done since her escape in 1950. No one knows she might now be called a friend rather than one of our greatest foes. And, considering who she is, even that’s an open question.

What a powerful enemy she was. She ran the Soviet Union’s biggest ring of informants and spies, passing along top-­secret economic, military, and financial data—and more. She was responsible for giving—­via “handling” Klaus Fuchs—­the Soviets the atomic bomb, along with advantages that put them ahead of Great Britain at nearly every step during those beginning Cold War years.

I close my eyes to consider what game is being played. Is the government trying to rehabilitate her reputation in England? Will they share what she’s done for Britain to placate her detractors? A derisive laugh escapes at the impossibility of that. Certainly the Soviets would shut down such a publicity stunt.

Granted everyone seems to believe the Soviet Union will fall soon and that it’s no longer a viable threat, but when is the KGB not a viable threat? One does not betray it and live to tell the tale. Her work—­our work—­will remain a secret. Probably long after we both are dead.

Nevertheless, I look around my bookstore, the second love of my life, and wonder what will become of it. And what will become of me, if there is a game playing in the geopolitical background—­there are always at least a few games running—and I’m the pawn to be sacrificed.

I run my hand over the printed letter. Excitement and dread, in equal measure, war within me. She is coming to England and my bookshop will host her. This will happen. There is no escaping it. I simply pray I haven’t been duped by her, that what we’ve done over these past years has been what I think it’s been—­good work—­and, perhaps, she truly does mean to atone for the damage she caused.

Another deep breath and my heart calms. I haven’t been duped by her because I am not the scattered young woman—searching for home without an understanding of what it meant, distracted by life, by hope, and by dreams—­she found standing outside her door that long-­ago cold January morning. I grew under her tutelage, and I have carried her lessons further. My mind grew focused. My attention grew sharp. My thinking slowed until I could strategize, make connections and inferences almost as effectively as she did. I have not been her pawn. I have grown into her equal.

Yes, she taught me a great deal, but I made my own decisions, too, even back then. I did not follow her blindly. Perhaps I even taught her something. Perhaps that is why the government is letting her into England. Perhaps all is well and this is nothing more than a book tour.

Or perhaps she’s got another move up her sleeve.

After all, this isn’t simply a bestselling novelist we’re talking about. Ruth Werner is merely her pen name. This is the Soviet Union’s most famous and most celebrated spy. Ursula Kuczynski Beurton.

And with Ursula, nothing is what it seems . . .

Excerpted from The Undercover Bookshop, by Katherine Reay. Harper Muse, 2026. Reprinted with permission.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Portrait of a Haunting by Madison Tyler Nelson, which releases on October 6th 2026.

To Tatum Alexander, the Sight—her ability to see spirits—has always been more of an affliction than a gift. Having inherited the power from her mother, Amarina, an infamous artist known for murdering her lover and using his blood for her final painting, Tatum has been reluctant to step into her talent or even get close to the man she loves.

She’s been able to find a safe space to hide her Sight with the largest witch coven in Manhattan and her best friend, Mischa. But when Mischa is murdered, the act eerily connected to Amarina’s own crime, a traumatized Tatum must reckon with both the loss and the sudden surge of spirits vying for her attention and her life.

The spirits have a message: the murderer is coming for her next and a price must be paid. To learn the truth of her past and catch the killer she’ll have to rely on her loved ones’ helping hands—some witchy friends, the man who won’t let her go, and her eternally perplexing mother—in order to embrace her Sight while keeping them all safe.

The clues will lead Tatum to a dangerous secret that Amarina has spent decades trying to keep. And when the secret is out, Tatum will be forced to risk it all.

EXCERPT

Tatum Alexander knew the ghost would spot her that morning, no matter how badly she wished he wouldn’t. With her back to the subway doors, the train moving swiftly beneath her feet, it was almost too easy for him. She had nowhere to hide, and she had no protection—no help—because her goddamn sunglasses were stashed in her wool coat at home.

She would’ve liked to blame her forgetfulness on the springlike air that had taken over Manhattan, forcing her to switch to a bomber jacket, but in truth, she was slightly hungover and incredibly late. Now it was like the heavens above were determined to smite her for a Friday night of gin and bad choices.

Usually, the shaded frames kept them out—kept them from noticing her.

She never stared, never turned their way, but all they had to do was spot her gray irises. The pale shadow color matched the sheen cast across those who roamed between worlds, and they knew. Tatum was their beacon, their lighthouse, calling them out of their personal abyss, no matter how much she wished the terrible light inside her would burn out.

The whispers, the sense of someone standing right behind her, started when she was four years old. Her mother taught her, from a very young age, that hauntings didn’t just happen to places. They happened to people, to things, to moments in time. When Tatum had asked Amarina Alexander if she was crazy, her mother had shaken her head and said it was simply the family curse: ingenuity.

Tatum knew the truth, though, even back then, seeing it for exactly what it was: bullshit.

Now, at twenty-eight, she was practically her own version of a haunted house—her eyes were the windows, and her lips, the door. She had no control over the things she saw, the things she heard, or even the way her mouth parted instinctually, desperate to answer things un-seen. No matter where she went, spirits hung around, lingering pests she seemed unable to shake. Carrying their baggage like ants, they waited as though she had any clue how to help them.

She’d learned ways around the Sight—the sunglasses being one of them, headphones to block out the whispers being another—but that morning, she was on her own. The train was humming along when a tattered man suddenly clambered through the door at the end of the carriage, fleeing from the connecting one. He stumbled through the crowded car, but her fellow riders remained unbothered, ducking slightly out of his way—Just another day. There was a shine to his skin, a cocktail of body odor and grime dominating the space as he hurried along. He cursed, swaying and lurching, as though something was chasing him.

Suddenly he spun, spit flying from his chapped lips. “Stay the fuck away from me!”

Around Tatum, people lowered their heads, their eyes trained forward. The air in the car changed from dull to tense, and Tatum knew what they were thinking. She would’ve thought the same thing if she’d had the luxury. Unstable. Sick. Insane. To them, the man was running from nothing. There was no threat to flee from.

But Tatum saw what he was trying to outrun, and honestly, she didn’t blame him.

The spirit following him was tall, a shadow of a man, his dented skull brushing the ceiling of the car lightly. The side of his face was bruised, caved in, forcing his smirk to remain crooked. There was a strange elegance to him, even in death. His dark hair was neatly brushed back, and he sported a collared shirt in an eggshell white, the shade stark amongst the bloodstains. His dark-washed jeans were dirty, covered in black and brown filth, like he’d been dragged across the tracks they moved along.

She let her gaze wander, eyes unfocused, refusing to make contact. He wasn’t the first ghost she’d seen in the crowded tunnels—people would be surprised to learn how haunted city transit systems were—but she’d never seen something like this. She’d never seen one look so determined, so sure of himself.

“You can see me,” the spirit said. His voice was a roar, crashing through the silence of the car, but only two people could hear him. “You can help me.”

“Guy.” The tattered man’s head twitched in a furious reply, gesturing from his dirty clothes to his stained skin. “I can’t even help myself! No one helps anyone! Leave me alone!”

There was an eagerness to the man’s movements, as if he’d been in situations like this before. The train tilted around a bend, but he didn’t notice, backing away as commuters shifted out of his path.

“If you’d just stop for a second,” the ghost said quietly, exasperated, inching closer, “you’d understand I’m not asking for much.”

The man continued moving, passing Tatum without sparing her a look.

Her eyes dropped, knowing what to do, but she couldn’t stop herself from listening as the man’s reply came through in a mumble. “Nothing from you people is ever easy.”

The ghost moved with a swagger, brushing through commuters, unbothered as they shivered. He was so set on his target that he didn’t notice Tatum either.

Her eyes were trained on the floor, head tilted casually as she tried to ignore the scene in front of her. Her dark hair slipped over her shoulder, a wave falling in front of her face, but she didn’t move.

Just another commuter. No ghosts to see here.

“Trust me.” The spirit’s voice was suddenly so soft it could’ve been a purr, and he closed in on his prey. “Just come here. Just listen.”

The words were what made her look. Tatum couldn’t help herself.

She lifted her chin toward the ceiling, prepared to study the list of stops above her head, but her eyes found the spirit and she froze, unable to look away.

Stunned, she watched as the ghost, flickering between reality and the underworld, reached with both hands and finally caught up to the man—but that wasn’t the strange part. Ghosts loved a chase, loved any chance to get close to life. After all, they had nothing but time. Her mother said that ghosts just wanted to be remembered.

But this wasn’t just a chase.

Unlike the commuters he’d slipped through with ease, mist disintegrating around life, the ghost touched the man and, for one moment, was no longer just a shadow.

He gripped the man’s wrists and held him tightly, just enough to force his victim to freeze, before his misty gray hands merged with his prey’s twitching palms. The spirit looked down in both shock and confusion. A strange ripple of black and gray moved across the poor man’s skin as living and dead became one.

Impossible.

The spirit had gone from shadow to corporeal, from smoke to flesh. Soul and body had become one, and his victim watched in horror, unsure of what to do, of how to move.

Tatum’s phone vibrated in her hand but she ignored it, locked in on the scene. On instinct she let out a stunned gasp, a sound she couldn’t have fought if she’d tried. Only two people noticed her reaction—and they were the last two she would have wanted.

It was the spirit who saw her first, his head snapping sharply, turning on its axis. His wide eyes met hers, his swamp of black pupils finding her gray irises. She’d been seen.

It was over. He’d beg for help. He’d antagonize her when she couldn’t respond. He’d follow her all day, until she could shake him—

But the spirit didn’t react the way others usually did. He didn’t lurch, desperate and scrambling, toward her. He wasn’t eager. He wasn’t even excited.

He was as stunned as she was.

His crooked lips parted and he released the man he held, ignoring him as he clattered to the floor. The crack of the man’s fall startled the passengers around her, but nobody moved. The ghost took two large steps backward so that he was standing right in front of her, and, despite herself, Tatum couldn’t look away.

She’d never seen him before, but he seemed intent as he mulled over his words. She straightened when he raised one twisted hand, his fingers pointing toward her as he stepped away. She was ready to ignore his questions, to turn her head from his demands, but he surprised her for a second time.

“I know you.” There was a cockiness to his tone, a sharp edge that made her feel like she’d missed a joke, but she couldn’t react, couldn’t ask questions. If she did, she’d look as unstable as the man scrambling across the floor of the car. Instead, Tatum lifted her chin and swallowed, letting her gaze rest on the advertisement across from her.

The ghost chuckled. “Yes, I definitely know you.”

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Cozy Little Christmas by RaeAnne Thayne, which releases on October 6th 2026.

Hannah’s built a full life for herself in the warmth of her close-knit town, with her family, her work and her music. And when her dear friend Morgan desperately needs her help, Hannah temporarily steps in to care for Morgan’s children. That’s what friends do—especially at the holidays. But she never expected to run into Wes Kenner…

Moving back home is the last thing K9 law enforcement officer Wes Kenner ever wanted. It’s where he fell in love with Hannah—and where an accident changed his mother’s life forever. But when his grandfather needs a helping hand, he can’t say no. It’s the perfect opportunity for him and his beloved K9, Kodiak, to recover. Still, seeing Hannah again fills him with regret—and hope.

After all this time, Hannah still represents all of the joy and light Wes pushed out of his life. Everything he’s desperate to get back. And as Hannah brings much-needed holiday magic to Morgan—and her kids—he realizes this is his chance. Because this Christmas, all he wants is her.

A cozy and uplifting reunion romance about two exes who work together at the holidays to help a family in need—and realize their Christmas wish is for a second chance with their first love.

EXCERPT

Hannah did her best over the next two days to put Wes Kenner out of her head. It wasn’t easy, especially with him living so close to her. Every time she passed his grandfather’s house and saw a light inside, she wondered what he was doing.

The day after she saw him at the Shelter Inn, she caught a glimpse of him shoveling snow as she was heading home from work. She hadn’t slept much that night.

Now as she drove to her first appointment of the day—­a resource class at the elementary school, where she worked with children who had speech difficulties—­she held her breath as she passed Stanley’s house and carefully averted her gaze. She didn’t want to catch even a glimpse of a shadow moving across a window.

Luck was not with her, though. A block from Stanley’s house, after she had finally let out a breath and relaxed, she glanced out the windshield and spotted two figures on the sidewalk.

Even if she hadn’t recognized the dog, she would have known that was Wes. His gait and form were painfully familiar to her.

When she saw the gorgeous Malinois limping along beside Wes, his hind leg still heavily bandaged, her heart squeezed with sympathy.

What happened to the dog? And why was Wes on leave?

She hadn’t heard any buzz around town that might explain the circumstances. Stanley hadn’t said anything to her either. Was Wes in some kind of trouble? Was he considering leaving the police force?

It was none of her business, she reminded herself. Nothing Wes Kenner did was any of her business now. He had told her that plainly years ago when he walked away from everything they once had without a backward glance.

The memory hit her like a physical blow, transporting her back to that cold winter night when her world had shattered.

She could still hear his voice, as cold as the air around them. I’m sorry but I can’t do this right now. You, this. I can’t be what you need.

She had been completely wrecked, unable to comprehend how he could dismiss everything they had meant to each other so easily.

She remembered returning to her college apartment in Utah feeling like a zombie, completely dead on the inside. Somehow she managed to function—­to attend class, go to her various music practices, even perform as the lead singer in a popular local folk band. But she had only been going through the motions of life, as if her heart had been replaced by a metronome—­still ticking but completely mechanical.

For months afterward, she would catch herself texting him but deleting before she could send, dialing his number, only to hang up before it could ring. She kept thinking it was all a nightmare. That once he had his head together, he would realize how much he needed her.

Excerpted from Cozy Little Christmas, by RaeAnne Thayne. MIRA, 2026. Reprinted with permission.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Witch Trial by Harriet Tyce, which is out now.

Let the Witch Trial begin . . .

When eighteen-year-old Christian Shaw is found dead in a park, the city of Edinburgh is stunned—and the shock only deepens when police charge her best friends, Eliza Lawson and Isobel Smyth, with the murder. As social media explodes in a tizzy of theories and headlines scream for justice, rumors of bullying are overshadowed by something more wicked and frightening: whispers of dark rituals, feverish obsession, and a teenage pact gone wrong.

When the trial begins, everyone in Edinburgh clamors for a front-row ticket to the show: to look upon the murderous Eliza and Isobel with their own eyes. Everyone, that is, but Matthew Phillips, a respected heart surgeon picked for the jury. But, as the trial unfolds—and the girls’ lawyers offer a surprising and unsettling defense—the reluctant Matthew finds himself questioning everything: the motives, the evidence, even his own judgement. Then he begins to have strange visions of terrifying things—hallucinations he tells himself. After all, witchcraft isn’t real . . . or is it?

Who is telling the truth? Who can be trusted?

And what really happened to Christian Shaw?

EXCERPT

First, do no harm.

But there’s always a moment when it’s too late, the point past which the decision could have been made, the one from which no harm was done. So many smaller choices leading up to that moment, each a nail hammered into something we see only afterwards is a coffin.

Matthew Phillips doesn’t know that this is one of those moments. As he walks through the door of the High Court, he’s not thinking about the forks ahead, the road less travelled that brought him here. It’s all behind him – work, wife. Other woman. The moment the jury citation arrived on his doorstep he knew what he wanted to do. And now he’s here, every finger crossed that he’ll be one of the lucky ones actually drawn to sit on a jury trial.

The longer the trial the better.

He could have told the court straightaway that he had a holiday booked. The citation said explicitly they’d take that into consideration, he’d be able to move his jury duty to a different date.

He didn’t. Nor did he tell Rosalind he wouldn’t be going away with her on a long-awaited week away, the first holiday without their daughter now that she’s safely packed off to university. The holiday he’d explicitly promised wouldn’t be cancelled because of work, regardless of what might be happening.

He didn’t discuss it with Rosalind at all.

Nor Olivia. Though he’s not thinking about her just now. He could have cited work as another reason to be excused.

Matthew can’t be spared. Dominic made it very clear. Mrs O’Neill is a triple bypass – Adam is far too cack-handed to trust with it, however keen he is – there’s a stent to fit and a dinner that night at the New Club at which he’s due to stand proxy for Dominic, the senior surgeon’s trip to New York with his new girlfriend (brunette, young, the opposite in every way from his soon-to-be ex-wife) taking priority over even such an honour as this invitation. I can’t believe they won’t let you off. Haven’t you written to them? Since when were doctors eligible, anyway?

They’re eligible. They’re also eligible for excusal as of right, if they bother to apply to the court within seven days of receiving the citation. All Matthew needed to do was tell them what he did for a living and he’d be off the hook. A rare benefit of always being up to his elbows in someone else’s blood. He didn’t say that to Dominic though. He didn’t say anything. No point. Dominic never listens, even at the best of times. Too many letters after his name.

Matthew knows perfectly well that in trying to escape, all he’s doing is piling up the problems that will be waiting for him when he returns to work. He’s not a man who dodges his responsibilities; he takes his job seriously. It’s always a matter of life or death. But opening the jury citation, he felt like he’d won a golden ticket. If he’s stuck in court, no one can get to him.

And now he’s here. He waits outside the entrance for his turn to go through security, a queue to the only kind of holiday Matthew can permit himself to take. A matter of civic duty, with only one responsibility, to determine whether someone is guilty or innocent? Sign him up, please. It’ll be a welcome break from all the usual shit. And God knows, he needs a break. He’s so tired . . . Regardless of the sun, sea and sangria Rosalind was seeking, it was never realistic to expect a man in his position to spend a week lounging about on a beach as though there were nothing more important to be done. She knows it, too, deep down. Or at least she will, once she’s calmed down. He’ll explain it all to her. Soon.

As soon as he’s through the metal detectors, he sees the court official he’s been told to expect, a man in a suit and a long black gown. Matthew tells him who he is, shows him the folded piece of paper he pulls from his pocket. Before Matthew can say anything else, he’s directed off to a small room, nothing in it but a few rows of chairs occupied by a couple of people already waiting.

The room is steadily filling up. All the potential jurors are keeping themselves to themselves, perched on hard seats, eyes fixed to their phones. Every one a smartphone. Matthew thinks smugly about his basic brick phone, the way he’s avoided the addiction from which the rest of the world suffers. An analogue man in a digital world, proud of it too. He’s come prepared with a paperback, a reissue of an old classic with an introduction by a Scottish author he likes. It seemed appropriate with its crime themes and Edinburgh setting. But gripping as it is, it fails to capture him. He’s too on edge.

He puts it down to reread the instructions that were sent with the letter, though he’s read them so often he can quote most of it from memory, he’s been so keen to be involved. He’s held hearts in his hands; Matthew wants to know how it would feel to hold someone’s liberty, too, delving into the depths of someone else’s dark desires for once, rather than constantly being confronted by his own.

He glances round the room, checking out the competition. There’s around thirty people in the room now. The chairs are nearly all full, the air beginning to thicken with conflicting perfumes, sweat. A faint whiff of old cigarette smoke from a woman by the door. With any luck he won’t get stuck next to her, the ashtray pall sickening him to his core. He cut someone open the week before last who was on forty cigarettes a day and he could have sworn the same stench came off the man’s greying lungs, seeping through Matthew’s surgical mask, crawling into his mouth.

He shifts from side to side in his seat. The caffeine from an espresso he drank earlier is jangling through him, his tongue thick and his foot twitching. One of his eyelids, too. The man sitting opposite him doesn’t look comfortable, either. He keeps crossing and uncrossing his legs, constantly in motion, as is his neighbour, a woman in her mid-forties with a fair, brittle bob and a large handbag through which she keeps rummaging. Matthew glances at her only briefly but she catches his eye, her irises a washed-out blue, as pale as her sandy-coloured hair.

‘I’m not going to be able to do this,’ she says. ‘How do you mean?’

‘If they call me, I won’t be able to do this. I can’t. I need to be at home for my daughter. There isn’t anyone else.’

‘How old is your daughter?’

‘Sixteen. But she’s a very young sixteen.’

‘Right,’ he says. The man sitting next to her rolls his eyes as if he’s heard her say this a hundred times already this morning. ‘It’ll be fine,’ Matthew says. ‘You just explain it to them if

they call your name.’ ‘You really think so?’

‘I’ve told her this,’ her neighbour says. He stands up, stretches, wanders away.

‘He keeps saying it’ll be fine, but I’ve heard they’re strict. They don’t care about anything other than their precious trials. What if I can’t get out of it? What if I get caught up in something that goes on for weeks? What if it’s a child abuse case? I really couldn’t cope with that. I mean, as a mother it would kill me to have to look at any terrible photographs . . .’ Her voice trails off. ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ Matthew says again, the words automatic. He’s looking at her more closely now, a prickle in his scalp. Her voice might sound jumpy but there’s something calculating in the way her eyes are set, the tip of her nose pink, almost quivering. Like she’s thinking about potential horrors, relishing the thought. Matthew stands up and moves away too. A woman in a black gown comes into the room. ‘I’m the Clerk of Court,’ she says. ‘Before we go into the court for the ballot to empanel the jury, I’m going to read some names to you. If you have knowledge of any of the people that I name, if you know them personally in any way, I’d ask you to speak to me privately. Attract my attention and I will come over to you.’

A pause, an intake of breath. ‘Isobel Smyth. Eliza Lawson.’

Girls’ names, not the neds he was expecting. There’s a ripple in the room, a gasp of recognition. Something stirs in the back of his mind, a vague sense of familiarity.

‘Does it count if it’s from the news?’ the awful woman says. Matthew glances over at her, repulsed by the excitement he sees shining in her eyes.

‘Beyond the news,’ the court clerk says. ‘If you know them personally, as I said.’

The woman shakes her head. No one else speaks.

Matthew’s wracking his brain but he can’t place the names he just heard, despite his normally excellent memory. A headline he’s read, maybe? Not like he ever has time to spend reading the news, surfing the internet. The others certainly seem to have heard of them, all of them sitting up a little straighter, heads alert instead of slumped down into their phones. Matthew’ll find out soon enough, if he’s lucky.

Last chance. He could choose to make his excuses, get out of this. It’s not like his job isn’t important. A literal heart surgeon, as his daughter would say.

But he doesn’t want to. He wants the escape of this. He wants to run away.

‘Please follow me.’ The clerk is now standing by the door. No one has pulled her aside, all obediently lined up behind her instead. The sandy-haired woman from before stands beside him, the calculating expression still on her face. She licks her lips, the tip of her tongue flicking from one side of her mouth to the other. She wants gore, Matthew can see that now. She wants to pore over photos of pain, of extremity, twisted limbs and bloodied flesh.

Matthew is about to turn away, but not before she meets his gaze, an eyebrow raised as if in recognition. For a moment it’s as if she sees his soul, greets it as like meeting like. Shame writhes in his stomach, a tightening and twisting. He might know her voyeuristic desires, her longing to wallow in the horrors inflicted by a crime, feast on the suffering of those hurt by it.

But with that one glance, straight into the core of him, she knows that these are his longings, too.

The post Read An Excerpt From ‘Witch Trial’ by Harriet Tyce appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Winterset Hollow by Jonathan Edward Durham, which releases on October 6th 2026.

When Eamon and his two closest friends, Caroline and Mark, journey to Addington Isle, they hope to explore the island that inspired their favorite book, Winterset Hollow—a timeless tale about a tribe of animals preparing for their yearly end-of-summer festival. But when the trio break into the author’s apparently abandoned estate, they discover that much of what the world believes to be fantasy is real, and that the truth behind their beloved story is darker and more dangerous than they ever imagined. In fact, making it through the final chapter might just cost them everything.

How do you celebrate Barley Day? You run, friend. You run.

EXCERPT

But as they drew closer, Eamon could see it wasn’t quite the quaint and cozy place he had always imagined. Addington Isle was a massive piece of earth, and it looked to stretch for miles in every direction. The coastline was cluttered with jagged rocks, and the island’s shoulders were so brawny that it was impossible to tell exactly where the shore began to turn. It was daunting, but the sheer scale of it promised so much wonder that even the very first groan from the rickety dock sent shivers through Eamon’s soles.

“Third floor! Women’s lingerie, homewares, and Addington Isle,” boomed Captain Gene. “The rest of the tour is unguided, and I don’t really have the right insurance for this, so if you happen to get hurt . . . congratulations! You live here now.” He lugged the cooler to the edge of the dock and set it down with a thud. “And let’s try to keep this quicker than a three-hour tour, okay? Weather comes in awful quick out here.”

The landing beyond the dock was hopelessly overgrown, and the rest of the place didn’t look much different from where they stood. There was an old boathouse keeping watch over it all, but it was rotten and ruined and leaning to the east as if it wanted to sip the morning sun. It was a wild place now, but there was some strange beauty in that too. A realignment. Almost as if Edward had taken from it what he needed, and now that he had passed, it was once again free to be what it pleased. And though Addington was gone now, his mark was still there, and there was no darker stain than the fence that surrounded the manor’s grounds.

It was a great iron thing. Easily two stories tall and made of heavy bars that were spaced too tightly for even a slender man to pass through. And though there was a drive that wound all the way back to where the house itself stood, it was blocked by a stately gate emblazoned with the letter A and secured by heavy chains. Eamon strained to see through the bars, but Addington’s home was set too far back, and he could see nothing but the mansion’s great spire stretching just above the canopy.

The leavings of money were everywhere, but it wasn’t all from his book. In fact, Edward Bartholomew Addington was a titan long before he’d even conceived of Winterset Hollow. And before he was even born, the world knew his name.

His family had been textile royalty in England for generations, so he was already wealthier than any man should rightly be when he decided to spread their interests overseas in the early 1900s. And where royalty go, castles surely follow, so it was all rather unsurprising when he commissioned a lavish Victorian manor to be built on his very own island. It was a jewel in its day—sprawling gardens and facilities for every occasion, and more rooms than he could count. And though every bit of it was built for Edward, it was enjoyed by thousands more.

Addington was a socialite born and bred, and his home quickly became the hub of high society in the still-nascent Pacific Northwest. The grounds played host to every party, feast, and ball worth attending for decades after its gates first opened. And politicians, artists, actors, writers, and barons of industry alike all came in droves to be a part of the supposed devilry.

And as the twenties truly began to roar, Winterset Hollow started making waves among the literati, and Addington’s name was on nearly everybody’s lips. A prince in so many ways. And to hear his court tell it, the festivities didn’t stop until the crush of the Great Depression and Addington’s untimely passing emptied the manor forever.

Eamon wrapped his paws around the iron bars, and though he knew he’d never be on the other side of things, he still felt welcome in a strange way. As far as he was concerned, it was an honor just to commune with the ghosts of the place. A privilege just to bear witness to its bones. Everyone who was anyone was a guest on Addington Isle in its day, and now John Eamon Buckley was too.

Once everyone had their fill of puttering around the clearing and throwing gauzy stares through the fence, they all gathered by the gate. Rowan, the other redhead, and his college roommate, Patrick, each lit a candle and tucked them into the links of the chain, as if they had come to say goodbye to some dearly departed friend. Paige and Thomas, a young couple who had come with their friend, Gareth, the one-man welcoming committee from the pier, found a few flowers scattered among the brush, and tied them into little bouquets, which they set at the base of the gate. And the two oldest travelers, Talia and Percy, who seemed a bit more serious than the others, each slipped a handwritten letter through the bars as if Edward himself had been expecting them.

Caroline had been something of an artist in her younger days, so she left a collection of sketches she had drawn as a child. One rabbit, one bear, one fox, and one frog. Eamon himself hadn’t thought to bring anything in the way of an offering at all, so he collected a handful of rocks that had been polished smooth by the tide and simply spelled out thank you on a patch of ground just to the side of the entrance. It was nothing fancy, but he meant it with his whole heart. And though he knew it was foolish to imagine Addington’s work somehow meant more to him than it did to the others, he still couldn’t help but think it.

Winterset Hollow was the story of a community of animals that never saw a sour day until a curious rabbit named Runnymeade poked his nose where it didn’t belong. He spooked a pack of war-weary buffalo who were headed west in search of better land and sweeter food, and what followed was a tale about the Hollow’s first brush with the real world. And the first Barley Day that almost wasn’t. It was a simple story. But to Eamon, it was a salve. And it was proof he wasn’t alone. It was validation and it was encouragement, and it somehow grounded him and took him somewhere else at the same time. And he still believed with every fiber of his being that if it hadn’t been for Addington’s book, he might not be around to appreciate its lessons. Winterset Hollow saved him, and that little pile of rocks, meager as it was, was the sincerest thank you he had ever offered to anybody.

After everybody had said their piece at the gates, they all felt a little more connected, so it wasn’t long before conversations began about favorite characters and important passages and which adaptations everybody loved or hated. To nobody’s surprise, Gareth was quick to profess his love for Flackwell, the theatrical frog who prided himself on his cooking skills. And Thomas, who was a cook at some nothing chain restaurant in some nothing suburb, couldn’t help but agree.

Talia and Percy, who wasted no time in announcing themselves as PhD candidates in English literature, praised the complexity of Phineas Fox. They went on about his searing flaws and generational emotional baggage, and how his tragic turn was nothing more than suppressed self-hatred and fragile masculinity finally bubbling to the surface after so many years. It was all very exhausting, but in the spirit of the day, everybody seemed happy to swallow their exasperation and let their sermon run its course.

Caroline was the first to speak up for Binghamton, the builder bear with the heaviest hammer in the land. She admired his quiet, constructive nature—always there to fix a neighbor’s hut or build a new table when a family welcomed a child, and never one to ask for a reward. Bing loved his craft, and needed nothing more out of life. And Caroline wished she could somehow bottle his quiet confidence. He was a talisman for her, and though Bing was just a figment of some author’s imagination, he always held a special place in her flesh-and-blood heart.

Patrick was the first to bring up Runny, the rabbit. And his roommate, Rowan, seemed happy enough just to nod and smile in agreement as his friend spoke about his penchant for politicking and unquenchable curiosity. Runny was gregarious and impulsive, and Patrick seemed very much the same. But as he spoke about his connection with the character, Eamon, who loved Runny dearly, held his tongue. Because even though he had a deep affection for the rabbit, some things were just for him. He knew how it felt to make a decision that would change everything, and to loathe himself for it. He knew the terror of new things and new faces too. And, of course, he knew all too well the pull of the rye.

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What was your inspiration behind writing Chloe’s story? When did it change from just an idea into an actual plan for a book series?

Growing up, I loved reading fantasy stories and actually came up with Chloe Vega as a kid, but I never once considered becoming an author until I got to college. I went in with the intention of entering politics and was working on a campaign internship in Summer 2018 when I saw news coverage of kids in tears as they were separated from their immigrant parents at the border. That, combined with the lack of representation of Latines in books, films, and media, was what kickstarted this series. I wanted to write something those kids could read; not to make them forget about their reality, but to show them that the situation they’re in doesn’t define them. They, too, could be the heroes of their own story.

Who are Chloe’s mentors in the books, and why is it important for a character like Chloe to have those mentors?

When Chloe arrives at the academy, the students all get assigned to small groups called “familias” and each family is assigned two godparents, a Madrina and a Padrino. Madrina and Padrino become huge mentor figures for Chloe, and constantly have to remind her that it’s okay to ask for help. For a daughter of undocumented immigrants like Chloe, asking for help doesn’t come easily, so having Madrina and Padrino as figures she can trust and turn to for anything she needs becomes crucial.

In the first book, Chloe is forced to confront one of her biggest fears: being separated from her family. What personal journey does Chloe go on in this book that you’d like readers to make note of?

At the end of Book 1, something huge happens that changes Chloe’s life forever. In Book 2, she is grappling with the weight of this change, one that many members of the magical community don’t believe she deserves. Confidence has never come naturally to Chloe, so to navigate this change and step into her power, she’s going to need to learn to shut out the voices telling her she’s undeserving, all while the world is at stake, of course. It’s the perfect read for anyone who has ever experienced imposter syndrome!

What do you hope readers will take away from this series?

I’m a firm believer that art is a digestible way for people to learn about others’ experiences and gain empathy. If the Chloe Vega series becomes a gateway for parents to have conversations with their kids about immigration, I know I’ve done my job. If those kids read the story and feel represented and seen, I know I’ve done my job. But more importantly, if my books inspire future generations to tell their own stories, especially if they feel like it would fill a gap that hasn’t been filled yet, that would be the ultimate gift.

What’s next for Chloe?

We’ll see! My hope right now is that this lands in as many readers’ hands as possible. Chloe Vega’s world is so massive, and I have plenty of ideas up my sleeve. If you enjoyed reading, please tell your communities about it and spread the word!

Will you be picking up Chloe Vega and the Missing Unseen? Tell us in the comments below!

The post Q&A: Leslie Adame, Author of ‘Chloe Vega and the Missing Unseen’ appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

INtrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Set the Record Straight by Hannah Bonam-Young, which is out now.

On the very first day of her dream job, Clara messed up. Her photography idol, and new boss, assumed that Clara would be bringing her girlfriend to their upcoming gallery opening, and Clara, in her nervousness, failed to correct her.

This is an issue for two reasons: Clara is single and is most definitely (probably) straight.

Evan was recently dumped by her fiancée for a shared co-worker and is still trying to figure out where it all went wrong. So when she finds out that the happy new couple will be hosting the staff holiday party, she is determined to find a date.

Together, these two lifelong friends hatch a plan to get through Clara’s gallery opening and Evan’s holiday party by pretending to date one another.

It should be easy . . . right?

But Evan quickly realizes that pretending to date her straight best friend, whom she’s had a crush on for half her life, maybe isn’t the best idea. Meanwhile, Clara surprises even herself as she begins developing real feelings for Evan. . . .

Will the two make it out of the holiday season as friends—or ring in the new year as something more?

EXCERPT

One
Clara

The rain ricochets off the sidewalk and raps on my umbrella, the sound like a drumline tapping on a single snare. There’s a distant honk, some nearby yelling, splashing of tires. All the sounds that remind me of how much I’ve missed Toronto. Five months away managed to simultaneously feel like five minutes and five years.

It’s bitterly cold today, but not even that can stop the smile on my face or the pep in my step as I walk toward the gallery. I switch the umbrella from one hand to the other, then back again, the anticipatory energy building up in my chest and expanding its way out in movement as it so often does.

I knew while finishing my graduate degree in the spring that Loretta Stole’s gallery, DebuTaunt, only hired one new candidate per year. I also knew that they only took applicants in the winter season following a successful fall run. And if it wasn’t so successful, they didn’t take them at all. But I refused to work anywhere else but for my idol and took the risk.

I had some other offers, sure. I impressed my professors, shook the right hands, and got the interviews lined up in case. I just wanted more. I wanted Loretta-a world-famous, high-concept photographer with an almost forty-year career that I envy.

And while most of my fellow graduates are now shooting weddings for their third Ashley and Brad of the month, reminding kids to remove their fingers from their noses, or posing models in a way that makes their bones sharper, I’m here.

My roommates, Leah and Jen, haven’t been shy about admitting they see this gig as a major downgrade, being that it’ll be mostly scheduling meetings and coffee runs, but I don’t agree. Not at all. Because watching this gallery operate, being a part of that, it’s one step closer to having the career I want. Loretta’s career, to be exact. And this exact job forty-odd years ago, working for her idol, is how Loretta Stole got her start. That’s probably why she has hundreds of applicants every year.

Call it prideful, because it is, but I knew I’d get it. I’m damn good at what I do, and this is what I’ve been working toward since my seventeenth birthday.

I had come downstairs to a stack of pancakes, a tender note from my mom—who’d left for her shift at the ER already—and a gift sitting next to my father’s plate: a neatly tied red ribbon around an emerald-green box. My first camera.

I ran outside immediately with it clasped in two fists. Time slowed as I brought it up to my eye, looked through the lens, and clicked the shutter without a single thought of composition, angle, or perspective.

But even still, I was flooded with pride when I looked at that small playback screen. It was a photo only I could have taken. Not because of skill, that would come later, but because I was the only one in that exact place at that exact time. The tree was blown by the wind in a way that it would never be again. A moment so entirely unique that it would have disappeared forever if not captured by a seventeen-year-old girl and her cheap, entry-level Canon.

Pure magic.

From the second I heard the first click, I was hooked. Enraptured by the idea of collecting unique moments in time. Hoarding stills, poses, and views only I was present for.

I went from Clara, the fairy-sized girl from the middle of nowhere set to attend school for nursing—like her mother and aunts all did—to Clara, the one who constantly had a camera around her neck.

Convincing my parents to let me apply for an undergrad in image arts wasn’t as hard as you may expect, considering they are both working—class, no—bullshit folks from farm country. I think they were just happy to see their only child finally passionate about something.

For most of my life prior to that point, I’d have considered my parents worried about me. I was one of the rare unicorn little girls who was diagnosed with ADHD early. Mostly because my mother fought every doctor that said I didn’t show the classic signs (aka, I didn’t have a penis) and won.

The medication kept me pretty listless. The doctors were aiming for me to be more go with the flow, but I landed somewhere around lazy river. My parents tried all sorts of things. Different motivators, medications, diets. But ultimately, I wasn’t a bad kid, and they eventually just learned to let me be. I did my homework most of the time, had a few friends, got decent grades, kept a clean room, and didn’t really talk back.

But they never stopped encouraging me to find something that ignited a fire in my belly. Like my mom with medicine and my dad with growing crops.

So when they, in perhaps a last-ditch effort, gave me yet another hobby that I could hyperfixate on for a week or two, then quickly drop, I doubt they were expecting it to stick. But it did, and they were thrilled.

My dad came home with a nicer camera three months later. My mom would set up bowls of fruit while packing her work lunch at four a.m. just because it gave me something new to photograph.

And when I turned eighteen, got into the university I wanted, and got off those meds—mostly because I kept forgetting to go to the pharmacy—the world opened up. It felt as if I had been wearing 2D glasses at a 3D movie.

Suddenly, my photography got better, I was happier, and—this could be unrelated—I finally got boobs.

Ten years and thirty thousand dollars in student loans later, here I am. Crossing the street toward the DebuTaunt Gallery. First day as the assistant to Loretta Stole. She was one of my third-year professors during my undergraduate degree, but my obsession with her started far earlier than that. Leah and Jen, who I live with now and met in that class, hated me at first. I wouldn’t (couldn’t) stop listing off Loretta’s many accolades to them and anyone else who would listen.

But the joke’s on Leah, Jen, and all those other students who called me, often affectionately, a kiss-ass. Because it paid off. I’m here.

I fix the lapel of my beige trench coat, fold and tap my umbrella under the gallery’s awning, and take a deep breath. I encapsulate the moment as I normally would with my trusty Lumix S5, then push open the chic, two-story glass door toward my new beginning.

Excerpted from Set the Record Straight by Hannah Bonam-Young. Copyright © 2026 by Hannah Bonam-Young. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Engineering a Love Story by Kathleen Reidy, which releases on October 6th 2026.

It’s the year 2000—dot-coms, Bush v. Gore, and sky-high San Francisco rents. But while the country swoons with irrational exuberance, Chelsea Lefevre’s life is deflating faster than a tech bubble.

She’d had everything she thought she was supposed to want: a house on Boston’s North Shore, exquisite wedding china, a Waspy mother-in-law. A safe, steady marriage.

But after a mortifying slip-up, Chelsea finds herself heading into the 21st century alone. Her lifeboat? A new job advising tech execs, taken to escape the misogyny she endured as a software engineer—only to discover she has a surprising knack for spotting the next hot thing.

Determined just to stay afloat, Chelsea doesn’t have time to wonder if anything beyond safe and steady is possible.

Then, on a West Coast assignment, she meets Seth Murphy, a magnetic sales executive at one of the country’s hottest startups. Professional boundaries make him off-limits, but she can’t resist his pull. What begins as a secret, casual affair soon jeopardizes Chelsea’s career, her newfound independence—and her heart.

From Chapter 1

By the time I pull my car up the sloping rise of our drive, I’m ready to confess. From behind my steering wheel, I see Ash is in the garage, already in his skintight kit and fiddling with a road bike he’s about to ride. He turns at the sound of my engine switching off, and I lift my fingers from the wheel in greeting.

This will be the catalyst, finally. The shove that pushes us into the conversation I’m now certain we need to have.

I planned it all out on the plane, everything I want to say to him. I refused snacks and even ginger ale as I rehearsed this speech I’m about to deliver. There are the facts and then there is the fault, which is all mine.

Slowly, I open my car door and step out. From my trunk, I lift my suitcase, and then I rattle to a spot just outside our open garage door. Afternoon sun warms my back, and there’s more heat in the day than when I left. The air seems brighter. The lilac hedge we inherited when we bought this house a year ago has also popped, filling the breeze with a sweetness that makes me think the seasons changed too in the quick week I was away.

“Hey,” Ash calls from inside the garage, his voice as cheerful as the weather. “Welcome home.” Crossing to where Ash crouches with a wrench in his hand, I keep my gaze steady, attempting to avoid the familiarity all around me. There are Ash’s old bikes and his piles of gear. Boxes of oddball wedding gifts we haven’t in five years felt the need to unpack. Two plastic bins holding college memorabilia, each neatly labeled: Chelsea, Ash.

When I reach Ash, I perch on an overturned milk crate, far away, on the off chance he might lean to kiss me. And I’m aware of watching myself in this moment, when everything is about to change, but this person sitting next to me, this person it seems has always been sitting next to me, has no idea.

“Good trip?” Ash asks, his hands and attention still fixed on his bike.

I nod, pressing my palms into the thighs of my jeans, not daring to even utter our usual pleasantries. If I don’t speak immediately, my certainty might slip, this sureness that slid like a warm glove over my body in the past twelve hours.

I hadn’t expected to find clarity in Orlando—no one probably ever expects that. I was enthusiastic though, flying from Boston down to Florida last Sunday for my first trip to The Gilroy IT Symposium, an event known affectionately as only The Symp around the office. Everyone said The Symp wasn’t as glitzy this year. With the latest rout two week ago, the Nasdaq has lost more than half its value since the start of the year, the froth of the nineties finally overflowing. But not even the bursting of the dot-com bubble could deflate my new-girl energy. After six bewildering years struggling as a woman in the world of software engineering, I’m late to the news you can feel jazzed about something you’re being paid to do.

But at The Symp, I got carried away.

“I’m tired, though,” I say, unable to stop the truth from slipping out. “Listen, I need—”

“Are you sure it’s just the travel wearing you out?”

From my side view, I scrutinize Ash’s face, wondering if he somehow already knows. But his half smile tells me he’s speaking of something else entirely.

One morning back in January, Ash asked me to stop taking the pill. “We could get moving,” he said then, his eyes pointed down as he adjusted his tie. He wants several kids, to be a family like the one he grew up in, and I’ll turn thirty later this year. “It’s a new millennium,” he added. “Could be a milestone in more ways than one.”

What Ash doesn’t know is that when I left for Orlando last Sunday, I actually was late. But my cycle isn’t regular, I couldn’t be sure, and so I stayed quiet. I might want children … someday. And with Ash I’d have Kelsey children, who’d learn all the ways to act in the world—such a gift! I just haven’t felt ready to have those children quite yet.

Then my period arrived as soon as I checked into my floral, Floridian hotel room, and I was swamped by an unexpectedly strong wave of relief. It felt like a bonus, another month when I didn’t have to worry too much about those children, beautiful as they’d undoubtedly be in their tennis whites. After throwing my stained underpants into a seashell trash can under the sink, I left that hotel room buoyed, practically bouncing my way into The Symp.

And that’s when I first met Walter. I tumbled into him right there in the hotel hallway.

“No,” I say to Ash. “It’s not that.” Telling him about my pregnancy scare isn’t part of my plan. It would be cruel to dangle this in front of him if I’m only going to snatch it away.

Ash nods, not interrogating me about my period or anything else. But then Ash isn’t one to make a fuss. He loves his cycling, the world humming by amid a steady whir. Sometimes I think his warm, safe spot as the youngest child in the Kelsey family wore away all his rough edges and jagged bits. I’ve never seen Ash inflamed about anything—or anyone.

The plastic slats of the crate are sharp against my thighs as I lean forward, intending to speak. But the motion pushes my cell phone from my pocket, and the device, slim and silver, clatters on the cement floor. Ash looks at my phone.

“Tried to call you on that thing a couple of times this week,” he says.

I tell him I kept forgetting the phone in my hotel room, avoiding his inherent question of why I never called him back. “I’m just not used to it yet,” I add.

Ash nods again, an easy acceptance I don’t deserve. His gaze shifts back to his bike.

“Listen,” I try again. “We have to—”

“I know,” he says, plucking a tire spoke. “I’m just headed for a quick one. Then we’ll go.”

I sit back. “Go?”

Over one arm, Ash tosses me an odd look. “Aren’t we driving up tonight? I told my folks to expect us, but late.”

“Right,” I say, startled into remembering that I booked the early return to Boston this morning so I’d arrive home with enough time for Ash and I to drive to his family’s place on Squam Lake tonight. Just a few weeks ago I arranged these details, so sure I was then of my plans for this weekend—and my life.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Dark Messiah by Sara Z. Carson, which is available now in eBook format with hardcover releasing on November 3rd 2026.

In 1975 San Francisco, 15-year-old Nell’s world has been ripped apart by her younger sister’s sudden, tragic death and her parents’ subsequent divorce. As her mother desperately reaches out for solace from any quarter—new hobbies, new philosophies, new relationships—a boyfriend leads her into the cult of a charismatic man known as Father. His message of peace and healing proves irresistible, and soon Nell and her mother join his mysterious Church of the People.

As they are drawn increasingly into the vortex of the Church, the community comes to consume their lives, and Nell’s concerns begin to build. She becomes enrolled in the school they operate, is intimidated into adopting their ways of dressing and acting, and is removed from her home.

At the same time, the dangers lurking in the cult’s shadows emerge: threats, physical abuse, and the sudden disappearances of members to Father’s new “utopian” community deep in the jungles of South America. When Nell is secreted there alongside their fellow followers, they come under Father’s power as never before—with horrific and devastating consequences.

By turns sensitive and shocking, powerful and poignant, Dark Messiah is a story of a girl becoming a woman as her life is stolen from her—and a mesmerizing debut from a new voice in contemporary fiction.

EXCERPT

The dinner service started at five o’clock. Hundreds of people streamed in, and we took places behind the warming trays, serving the food. Monica had instructed us to be generous, like the Sermon on the Mount, she said, referencing the loaves and the fishes. “There will always be enough food.”

There were so many small children, so many elderly people. I lost count of how many I served, how many times empty trays were swapped out for full ones.

I was so hungry that, on one of the many trips back to the kitchen, I grabbed an almost-neon-pink cookie off one of the trays; I took two bites before I realized it was chalky and anise-flavored and I threw it out. Even in my hunger, it was inedible and I wouldn’t be able to choke it down.

When everyone had been fed, we started cleaning up. I was distracted by my aching stomach, but I forced myself through as I walked up and down the rows, gathering used plates and cups, quickly filling a garbage bag, and then another, and then another. When everyone had been fed, we started cleaning up. I was distracted by my aching stomach, but I forced myself through as I walked up and down the rows, gathering used plates and cups, quickly filling a garbage bag, and then another, and then another.

People were sweeping, washing dishes, carrying newly cleaned platters and trays back to the buses. Leftovers were laid out in the disposable aluminum trays. We waited for all of the elderly members and younger kids from the Temple to eat before we got in line. My legs were shaking. There wasn’t much left—macaroni and cheese rinds, sliced white bread and scrapings of butter, abandoned green beans in oily water. I took two pieces of bread.

Mercifully, Lucille found me, her face still lit and joyful and betraying none of the exhaustion I felt.

“There’s a place upstairs we can watch from,” she said to me conspiratorially. “It’s quiet.”

She took me up to a balcony where some of the other members were seated in small clutches. Looking down in the darkness, we could see everything: The church was packed, the pews filled, people crowded onto the floors and leaned up against the walls.

A famous politician stood up at the pulpit. The buzzing crowd seemed to know they should silence themselves as he said into the microphone, his voice sonorous, “We’re going to start the show in a moment, so please, if you haven’t, take your seats.” As the room quieted, the political leader took on the role of a hype man.

“Let me present to you a man who, with his church, is changing the world. He is a combination of Reverend King, Angela Davis, and Albert Einstein … and he wants to make all of our lives better. He wants to show you the Lord, our God, and how the Lord operates through each of us from the moment we are born, and all you need to do is let him shine from within you. Because we have the power.”

He paused dramatically.

“I’d like you to show a warm welcome to the membership of the Temple of God’s Love Everlasting, who have already served you a delicious dinner. That’s the kind of meal the Temple offers each of its members, every day, and feeds to the neediest members of the San Francisco community. Please, get on your feet for the blessed man we call Dad.”

There was wild cheering, as there always was when he arrived on a scene. How did they know? I didn’t know that his visit had been hyped by flyers that had been handed out through the neighborhood and in the church over the past few weeks, and that a few attendees had been promised a few dollars for showing up to cheer.

He walked out, Jim McGuigan in front of him, his hand not-at-all-subtly resting over his coat near his waistband, showing he was armed (as he always was) with his Colt .45. Dad was in his usual sunglasses, dressed in an impeccable puce three-piece broad-lapeled suit with a wide, matching tie and a black dress shirt. He looked almost glamorous as he bounded up the altar to the podium, eventually raising his hands in the air to lower the volume of the crowd. But it had the opposite effect. The crowd was already on their feet and their clapping gradually merged into a thrumming unison, their expectations and energy massing as they anticipated his miracles. The Peace Train came out and sat carefully on either side of the broad set of stairs leading to the pulpit, a well-composed rainbow of our best-looking young people, all of them clad in casual, understated clothing. Mother had dictated for years that the youth choir never “put on airs” when doing outreach. They never dressed up fancily if they were visiting a neighborhood where Dad wanted to raise spirits rather than funds. When the event was a fundraiser, however, they would wear polished suits and dresses to warm the hearts of the checkwriters.

Dad continued to hold his hands up, beaming smugly, a smirk more than a smile, as he waited until the crowd began to quiet and took their seats. He placed his hands on either side of the podium, his charisma at a controlled intensity, poised for a nuclear reaction.

Everyone was still for a second before Dad started preaching.

“I want to start by talking about the King James Bible. King James wanted you enslaved.”

The crowd was rapt but still. Dad’s anti-Bible openings put him on a shaky tightrope.

“I want you to know about what is in your Bibles. We’ll leave with you this little booklet—” he held up a copy of a tract, “The Great Truth,” which he claimed to have written while unable to sleep after an assassination attempt while he was on a return visit to Indiana in October of 1968—“You can read for yourself. While we ask for a nominal fee to cover the cost of the mimeograph, we’ll give it to you for free. King James sent for the first of our people”—here was Dad showing how he identified with the almost entirely Black audience—“here. King James owned slaves. He killed slaves. He even murdered his own family. He was a drunk and he was a child molester. The king of England made himself a Bible to suit him, rather than following the true word of God.”

He hadn’t lost them. A few scattered, tentative amens came up from the crowd.

“In fact, it sounds an awful lot like something our leaders now would do—write themselves a set of rules, pretending it was the word of God, and saying, ‘This is what I follow.’ Think about old Ronnie Ray-gun demanding the blood of young protesters. Or Richard Nixon and Bob McNamara, somehow able to sleep at night after sending our children, our communities, to fight in their treasonous wars. You know how they sleep at night? They just choose the rules they like and think of themselves as holy men.”

This invited more sounds of agreement.

“Life would be simpler if we could simply trust and believe all of our leaders—whether it’s your minister or your president. But if I don’t tell you, then you’ll be lost. I want to tell you the story of one of our congregants. He didn’t know the truth, back in 1942, when they came”—here he knocked on the podium— “rappin’ on his mother’s door one night and yanked his mother out of her home. You know where he was? He was fighting for freedom in the war. His mother was a precious woman minding her own business, and they took her out. They put her in a truck and sent her to the desert of Colorado, where she spit her stomach out piece by piece with cancer, and they wouldn’t even give her an aspirin, claiming she was a spy. Her son was given a Purple Heart for his valor during the war, while his mother was imprisoned by our government.

“The government took away her land. She died before her son could see her again. Her son came to us broken, alcoholic, angry. We were able to have her body moved from Colorado to San Francisco, so now he can visit her grave. Now, he’s a proud member of our community.” He paused here. Utter silence. He had their attention. I wondered who he was talking about. I couldn’t remember seeing anyone Asian at our services, but the room was big. “If you don’t like the truth, that’s your problem. I am in the truth business. Your government will not protect you when times get tough; they will take from you, they will destroy you. The government is filled with King Jameses, with Ed Davises—”

The mention of the LAPD Chief of Police drew jeers and boos, a few people standing as they did so. “They will turn on you when you become inconvenient. And I am inconvenient, and that is why I am here.”

Now the anger turned into applause. “I am a reverend, I am a father, not just in the service of the Lord but to all of my congregants … what I am not is a fraud who preaches on Sunday and takes your money on Monday. Those of you who’ve gone to church your whole lives, have you ever asked, where is the money? Where is Black people’s money? It’s in these churches, it’s in your poisoned water, it’s in the shabby housing the government puts you into, it’s in the pockets of leaders who do not care about you.”

There was murmuring acceptance.

“That’s right! They’re gonna use the Bible against you on the last day, when they take you for your final ride, when they round you up …”

He took a deliberate long pause here.

“… because they said, ‘The book says obey those who rule.’ Now you know that’s not right. My white friends in the government back in San Francisco”—he laughed here, and everyone else did, too— “They say to me, ‘I saw Roots. I must apologize’—but they still expect obedience, for you to forgive them their trespasses without being angry.” He lowered his voice. “I am here to tell you these messages of silence, of obeying, of enduring cruelty—these messages must be reconsidered.”

It was uncanny how these strangers listened to him, hypnotized. How we all listened to him. I believed everything he was saying, too, this strange mix of unvarnished and reconsidered American history, of the wrongness of the Bible—even if he’d likely heard it from someone else rather than discovered it through his own divinity.

The amens during his pauses grew more confident but were not full-throated—he couldn’t yet be entirely trusted.

“The apostle Paul said anybody who prays to an unknown God is blasphemous. The God of King James is a God of hypocrisy who demands you endure evil blindly. You say, ‘Well, this is what we must learn to live with.’ But you don’t have to. You can find the true kingdom of God, you can find more than simply enduring the pain and the abuse, here on earth, amongst men. And we—all of us in the room—we can see it. We can touch it. It’s right here with us.”

Another pause.

“At least, that’s what Jesus had to say about it. But then again, he was just the Son.”

There was laughter.

“Jesus told us to build the kingdom of heaven on earth—on earth as it is in heaven, we say. Revelation tells us of a heaven on earth. Jesus said heaven is within you. Heaven is nigh. Where the spirit of God is, there’s liberty. When the spirit of God comes, he says, you will feed the hungry and clothe the naked and take in the stranger and release the prisoners. That is how God will judge us. Not whether you spoke in tongues or belonged to the Baptist Church or the Methodist Church or the Church of God. None of it means anything, my friends. You have to follow the spirit of God.”

He waited for the amens to die down. I realized I was clutching the railing so tightly my hands were cramped.

I wanted to hear more.

“I’d like to give you a sense of how the spirit of God, of Jesus, works through our younger members. They’re going to sing a few songs for you.”

The choir stood in unison, recognizing their cue. A stripped-down version of the band—drums, bass guitar, lead guitar—accompanied the Peace Train as they sang Sly and the Family Stone, then a tear-jerking rendition of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” I watched in amazement. They were so gifted.

Dad stepped down from the lectern while they performed. Now he was standing closer to the crowd, on the floor, with a microphone. “How touched by God are these children?” he asked, leading another round of applause. “We find Christ in them. And we must find Christ in ourselves. There’s no God in the sky; there’s no Christ in the sky. Those white men in charge, driving those big Cadillacs, exploiting every one of us with their unsafe workplaces, empowering the establishment pigs to chase us and hunt us and shoot at us—they do all of this to suppress this country’s uncomfortable truth, which is: All these men care about is money. They don’t care about people. They don’t care about the future. They don’t care about you, or these children.”

He looked out into the crowd.

“Is Glenn Stanley’s mother here?”

There was murmuring before a tiny woman, wearing a black sheath and cat-eyeglasses—she looked impossibly frail in that moment, old in a way I’d never seen—stood tentatively.

“Give me your hands, Mrs. Stanley.”

The aisle found room for her to move to him. He took her hands, and then took her into his arms, in a long hug. The room transformed with sounds of crying.

“Ma’am,” he said, pulling back so he could hold the microphone to his mouth. “I am sorry for your loss. And I am sorry for what those men did to your son. And I want to apologize for their bad actions. Your son did not deserve to die.”

We were swallowed by the applause, the joy, the relief. Dad’s hug with her lasted a long moment, before Mother took over the embrace. Dad returned to the front of the church.

I had never seen anything like it.

“Here is my offer to every one of you: If you want to go to freedom, we’ll get you home to true freedom, with us, tonight. I don’t care if you haven’t got a dime to your name, we’ll put you on the bus. We’ll put clothes on your back. We’ll take you home with us. We do in every city we visit.”

I now understood what the empty bus was for. “We just … we just take people? Now?”

Lucille put her finger to her lips to shush me, and nodded. Jennifer had now joined us and grinned a little.

“We can promise you a better life, a more meaningful life. We’re the healthiest people and the freest people. Maybe tonight you’ve heard a little bit from my family about the land we’re calling Concordia, in the heart of one of the most beautiful countries you’ve ever seen, where, if you are lucky enough to go, you will be surrounded by the spirit of God. I got seniors down there building sidewalks. They’ve got a new life. We have to hold them down!”

Dad laughed loudly at this and so did everyone else. He’d told us a lot of things about Concordia, but none involved centenarians building sidewalks.

“I have men living great lives in our community who have been veritably raised from the dead, whose lives were in ruin. Henry, one of our older members, is a Black man who was arrested at the age of sixty because he was helping poor people. His Baptist church wouldn’t get him out of jail. But we got him out. I said, I’ll get him out in twenty minutes, because he is a good man. I got him out. And when I got him out he was healed, raised from the dead, from a life of vice. Had a broken leg. Now he walks freely.”

This was complete fiction, but I knew it didn’t matter. Henry could only walk with a cane on his best days, which were rare.

“Henry is so powerful. He lifts me clear up off the ground and hugs me, holds me in midair. And he’s nowhere near ready to stop. Henry’s only eighty now, so he’s practically a kid.” He laughed again, and his voice dropped to a more intimate tone.

“You may be asking yourself, ‘I’m not good-looking, I’m not bright, I have nothing to offer. What should I do?’ I’ll tell you what we do, how it makes us stronger together: We share. Our seniors can travel all over the United States in the buses we own. Any church could do what we do, but they don’t, because there’s too much money being siphoned off for the preachers.”

He nodded at the choir to start singing again, quietly, accompanied by an acoustic guitar. I was frozen. “Before we do anything, though, we’ve got to do some healing. I need to show you faith in action, the way our human faith, our togetherness at the Temple, has created moments of transcendence. How we have been able to rise above our mortality, accomplish things we could never do apart or alone. He took another step toward the audience, almost setting himself in the middle of the aisle between the front pews. “Just put your hand on your neighbor’s. And I’m telling you, you can have life. I can say a lot of things here tonight, but you come out and see how I live; you’ll see I practice what I preach. We’ll hold up the bus long enough for you to go home and get your little bit of things.”

The crowd stirred, as if there was deliberation.

“We need you to build our heaven on earth. And I want you to look, because you’ll go out and see a little bit of heaven. How much? Four hundred acres of community. Big, beautiful homes. A great big dining room. Two hundred different crops. Mineral streams. No impure air. Never gets too cold. Never gets too hot. I am talking about heaven on earth.”

He scanned the crowd, as if he was waiting for inspiration.

“As our hands are joined, may the spirit of revelation move each of you. If you don’t get your mind healed, all the healing in your body won’t do an ounce of good.”

He backed up suddenly.

“There’s no embarrassment, nothing to be ashamed of in the presence of God. I’m beginning to hear a revelation now.”

He looked at the children in the choir; they were gently swaying. “Please, keep on singing, my children.”

He pressed his right hand to his temple.

“Is there a Katherine Sawyer here? I am looking for Katherine Sawyer.”

A surprised-sounding woman called out, “Me?” She said it as if it were a question.

Dad stepped down the aisle and found her outstretched hand and guided her to step over two people blocking her exit from the pew.

“Did you have a doctor tell you there’s something wrong with your gut?” He stuck the microphone in her face.

She was barely audible, her whispered “yes” echoing over the audience.

Katherine’s cheeks were bright, and she wore a neat, shiny bobbed wig. Her figure was misshapen, making it uncomfortable to look at her, with ankles thicker than her calves, her wrists emerging in small swells from the cuffs of her dark blue blouse. She had a brilliant smile but sad eyes. Her desperate hope overwhelmed the room, choking us with anxiety.

“Ma’am, your radiance is hiding terrible pain. Is it not?”

She nodded, pressing herself into Dad as he put his arm around her, pulling her close.

“Tell me about your pain. It’s ulcers, no?” “Yes, sir.”

She looked uncomfortable as she stared around the room, the center of attention.

Dad motioned across the room with a broad wave of his arm. “Can we, brothers and sisters, my children, all raise our hands, and our voices, and our prayers in this moment on behalf of our sister Katheine and what she has endured, and ask the Lord to cast this pain out?”

Amens, applause, noise burst out around the room. It went on for a few moments until Dad suddenly roared into the microphone.

“Let the good Lord hear you!”

The noise crescendoed with foot stomping that shook the room.

Dad passed the microphone and its snaking cord to Jim, who was suddenly at his side. Dad raised both of his hands up and brought them down on Katherine’s head. It didn’t seem like he struck her, but he was intentional and forceful. Katherine crumpled to the ground.

I gasped. Everyone cheered. Dad took the microphone back. Jim locked his arms around her and pulled her up, her legs wavering as she regained her footing. “When you stand on your own again, your pain will be gone. Your ulcers will be healed.”

Katherine looked dazed, wavering, but suddenly threw her hands in the air, joyously yelling, “It’s gone! I’m saved! It’s gone!”

As the cheering continued, I curled into myself, uncomfortable. None of it made any sense but it was happening.

Later, Dr. Linc—Dick Lincoln, the church’s doctor—stepped in as Dad was laying hands on a familiar-looking woman with a grown-out, dishwater-blonde shag and a large mole on her cheek. I had met her. She said her name was Sally.

“Sally Jenkins … you have a darkness eating at you, correct?” “I do, I have a tumor in my lungs.”

She was so much shorter than Dad, she looked up at him with a hopeful smile.

Dad put his hands on her face, then on her throat, until she began coughing heavily, the noise increasingly repulsive as Dad moved the microphone closer to her mouth. The noise was almost unbearable as she produced something Dad caught in his hands. He held aloft in triumph a wad of purplish gore, which he wrapped in a handkerchief and handed to Dr. Linc, who looked at it carefully.

“Dr. Linc, is it a tumor?” Dad’s voice was garrulous.

“I’d have to look at it under a microscope, but it seems so,” he replied, a bit of mirth in his voice.

“Sister Sally Jenkins … you are cured!”

The audience went wild again, stomping and clapping away any questions about faith, at least for this evening.

Dad had won over another audience on this night with his folksy preaching about the hypocrisy of every other church and the most gregarious Temple members cajoling everyone.

At midnight, we got back on the buses, but we didn’t move. “When are we leaving?” I asked Jennifer, unable to suppress a yawn. “We all wait until everyone who is coming with us is here. We don’t want to leave anyone behind.”

Our buses sat in that lot, the refractory haze making total darkness impossible, until all of the carefully, lovingly dispatched members returned with total strangers carrying a few necessities—prescriptions; toothbrushes; photo albums; pilled, crocheted blankets; reading glasses; social security cards; and birth certificates. These strangers were now family.

It took less than two hours.

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Ava Reid takes a fantastic idea and imagines it in unexpected ways. This is really a rollercoaster of a book with surprises around every corner. You’ll be pulled in by the intrigue and backstabbing but you will stay because of the layered and interesting characters at the heart of the story.

In this book, the characters really shone for me. Klaudia, Julian, Giselle, and Nadiya feel distinctive and three-dimensional and I enjoyed moving between each of their perspectives. They all bring their own abilities to the table, but also shoulder their own secrets and traumas. These are deeply damaged teenagers forced to become weapons for their country. Their intellect is deadly but the situation they end up in might just cause the world to implode. I did have a particular love for Giselle’s ability, which is an eidetic memory. This is something so fascinating and I loved how Reid explored its uses and potential exploitation. It is a blessing and a curse, combined with a sharp mind and the way everyone makes assumptions about Giselle. In fact the story loves to play with expectations and go beneath the surface of the carefully constructed facade you may see at first.

Of course, this is fitting for a story often preoccupied with deceit and games within games. Not everything as it seems here. The primary story is very compelling within the walls of the shadowy and all-powerful Valeran Academy. A secret base that pushes its students to their limits and often forces them to attend to save themselves. The stakes are high but Reid pushes them even higher as this dangerous conspiracy starts to unfold. This is an alternative world where the paranoia and tension of the Cold War never ended. That heightened state of claustrophobia is palpable as this conflict continues to rage on in the background.

This is a fantastic book that takes me right back to the heyday of YA dystopian and I think might just usher in a renaissance. It is so cleverly put together, it really feels like a puzzle box for you to solve. There are so many layers to the story with the characters, the central mystery and the political machinations moving beneath it all. It is a refreshing take on the idea of gifted kids and speaks to the intense burnout and pressure. This is a pressure cooker like no other with the constant competition a microcosm of the warfare going on under the surface of the world. Reid weaves this in with political parallels to our own world and the increasingly polarised nature of society. Here, the truth shall come to light but the cost of it will not be light. I liked how Reid wove in these political elements, making the entire story feel like ripples in the water. These actions will have consequences, but who knows how far they may reach and what knock-on effects they will have. You feel like you’ve scratched the surface of this intense world and leaves plenty of room for an excellent sequel. Reid certainly leans towards this with a devastating and explosive ending that leaves you demanding answers immediately.

Winterveil is the whisper in the darkness, walking on a knife edge with intrigue, political moves and world-shattering revelations.

Winterveil is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.

Will you be picking up Winterveil? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis

Bestselling author of A Study in Drowning and Fable for the End of the World Ava Reid is back with a thrilling new duology unlike anything you’ve read before.

It’s a game—until it’s war.

• A disgraced politician from a powerful American dynasty.
• A coldly brilliant strategist who will sacrifice anything to win.
• A former pageant queen with a talent that could change the world.
• An expert female soldier with an enigmatic past—and a dangerous secret.

In an alternate future where the Cold War still rages, four precocious teenage criminals with dark skills and darker secrets are offered a fresh start at a secret military academy. But instead of training to end the war, they find themselves on a mysterious mission that will test loyalties, forge romances, and maybe end the world as they know it.

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