Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Lowe Job by Grace Alexander, which releases on June 16th 2026.

When Lili Lowe gets caught having an affair with her married boss, an admired politician, she finds herself at the epicenter of a scandal that could dismantle her life as she knows it. She turns, as many daughters would, to her mother. Yet Lydia Lowe is a former talent agent, and it’s not long before the whole world knows the name Lili Lowe.

As the spotlight brightens on Lili and her three younger sisters Stevie, Iris, and Katie, the Lowe women’s lives are changed in ways they could never have predicted. It’s soon clear that fame and fortune, comes with a price—and sometimes, the louder one’s voice (especially a woman’s), the more others will seek to silence it.

With a potent blend of spectacular style, compulsive voice, sharp social commentary, and ferocious heart, The Lowe Job is escapism with teeth: a contemporary book club novel for the modern reader looking for fresh fiction that is at once funny, sexy, incisive, and heartfelt.

Chapter 1

It started with a blow job.

They had aspirations for it to become the most notorious blow job of all time. It was a lofty aim. They knew that realistically they were never going to beat that blow job—you know the one—but the least they could do was try.

Theirs involved a politician too. A young, charismatic, liberal politician. That’s what the press would home in on when they reported on it. Liberal. Said as though the word were synonymous with sex worker.

As liberal with his politics as he is with his sex life.

Never mind left wing, what’s he doing with his left hand in that photograph?

Is this what woke looks like?

Teddy Landen caught with his pants down—and not because of his policies this time.

Landen blows it with his assistant.

There’s no denying sexual relations between Landen and that woman.

But who is that woman?

Who is that woman?

Who is she?

“My name is Lili Lowe.”

It was her first time in a television studio. Simon Steen was an up-and-coming, soon-to-be-infamous broadcast journalist. He had found his moderate fortune working as a talent agent but had become bored with celebrities who were too tight to pay for an assistant, making inordinate demands at unconscionable hours. He didn’t spend six years making coffees at the largest agency in London to book trains for a list of semifamous soap actors. He wanted to be the one making the demands, doing the grilling. He carried that chip on his shoulder every time someone sat on the chair in front of him under those studio lights. He was an attack dog. He was exactly what Lydia Lowe had wanted for her daughter’s first interview.

“And who are you, Lili Lowe?”

“That’s a bit existential,” she smiled coyly. Lydia, standing beside the studio camera, nodded her head approvingly.

“You don’t need to come out of this being liked, darling. Not yet,” Lydia had told Lili in the car on the way to the studio. “You put their favorite politician’s cock in your mouth, so no one’s going to like you too much at the moment, sweetheart. But you do need to come out of this being known. If people think you’re innocent, caught up in a politician’s ego, then they’ll coo over you for a minute and move on. If you leave a sour taste in their mouths, then they’ll spend weeks trying to spit you out. You’re buying us time, so that we can take control of this situation. You don’t want to go down in history as his mistake, darling. You want him to go down as yours.”

“OK, Mum,” Lili said, picking at a piece of hard skin at the side of her thumbnail.

“It’s a balance though, sweetheart. They need to dislike you but not despise you. They need to be intrigued by you. You need to be redeemable.”

“That’s very specific. How am I meant to do that?”

“You’ve been doing it all your life, darling.”

“How do people know you?” Steen probed.

“I was Teddy Landen’s assistant.”

“Teddy Landen the MP?”

“Yes.”

Lili stifled a smile. It was enough to entice Steen. “Have you been in a car with Landen recently?”

“Yes,” Lili replied. She took a deep inhale through her nose.

“When?”

“Sixteenth of September.”

“And what were you doing in the car?”

“We were working.”

“Is that all you were doing?”

“Well.” She exhaled this time. Loudly, pensively. “No.”

“Is this you?”

Steen held up an image in front of his face, tilted more toward the audience than Lili. The same image flashed up on screens around the studio and on televisions around the country. A flashbulb illuminating the backseat of a Mercedes car. Lili is on her knees in the footwell, leaning over Landen’s lap. His trousers are down. His hairy legs are strikingly pale in the light of the reporter’s preflash. His hand is halfway to his face in a pathetic attempt to hide his identity. Lili has her hair pulled up in a high bun, her side profile showing. Some will say she’s smiling in the image. She knew what she was doing, they’ll comment. What can I say? I was enjoying it, she’ll tell those who ask.

Steen handed her the photograph. She nodded solemnly.

“It is.”

“Did you know that he was married? Is married?”

“I did.”

“Are you a homewrecker, Miss Lowe?”

“Unintentionally, Simon. Yes, I am.”

“Was it unintentional though? Really?”

“Well, I mean, I didn’t fall onto his penis, if that’s what you mean.”

Some of the audience gasped, others laughed.

“So you knew what you were doing?”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“You suppose so?”

“I knew what I was doing in that moment, but I didn’t appreciate the gravity of my actions and what the after-effects would be.”

“The gravity being . . .?”

“His wife, his career. My career.”

“You’re worried about your career in all of this?”

“Of course I am. Wouldn’t you be?”

“I wouldn’t be caught doing that in the back of a car with my married boss!” Drops of spit from Steen’s mouth smacked Lili’s face.

“You wouldn’t be caught,” she said. “That’s the only difference, Simon.”

It was the performance of a lifetime. Perhaps it was beginner’s luck, or perhaps it was something very different—a distinct lack of reflection, because it was the moment before the whole world began to hold a mirror up to her life.

The furor around the Steen interview was instantaneous. Everyone had seen the images. They all had an opinion on the Teddy Landen debacle. But until that point, Lili had been an appendage. Following the Steen interview, Lili was the beating heart of the scandal.

Lydia’s plan was simple—start with Steen and focus one hundred percent of the interview on the scandal. Answer all his questions. Give the audience what they wanted. Other journalists would want a piece of the action—hyenas on the carcass. Lili was to let them feast, and then she would rise from the ashes. Eventually, she would be invited to speak just as Lili Lowe, not as Lili Lowe who sucked the dick of a politician in the back of a parked Mercedes.

Lili was witty, charming, candid. She was every talk show host’s dream. At first, the audiences loved to hate her, but soon they loved to love her. The hosts loved her too. Her exposure exploded. Like a volcano, you couldn’t walk the crater without feeling her heat.

Her next venture was lined up ready—a reality show, following Lili in the days after the scandal, showing her harassed by the paparazzi, bullied on the internet, shamed as she walked down the street. They were already filming when she went on Steen. Lydia had hired someone she knew from her days working on a soap opera. She would sell the footage to the producers of their reality show for half a million pounds. The family’s fee for participating in the series would be negotiated on top of that. No one would wonder why they were filming Lili during those early days. They would just consume it, like pigs at a trough.

Excerpted from the book THE LOWE JOB, provided courtesy of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright © 2026 by Grace Alexander. Reprinted by permission.

The post Read An Excerpt From ‘The Lowe Job’ by Grace Alexander appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Restless Bones by Gillian French, which releases on June 16th 2026.

When a missing woman’s body is discovered in a submerged car one year after her disappearance, Shaw Connolly is called to process the scene. She finds a single print belonging to a long-dead female ex-con; could it be the key to identifying the murderer? As usual, Shaw won’t stop looking until she’s dredged up more than a few hidden crimes.

All the while, Shaw’s past won’t let her go. Just as the Connolly family begins to find some peace after the arrest of Shaw’s sister’s killer, Anders Jansen, Shaw receives a request from her state police contact. Anders, in prison awaiting trial, has claimed responsibility for the murders of two other young women whose cases have grown cold over the past decade. But he refuses to help the police unless Shaw agrees to act as a special consultant in the search.

Despite her misgivings—Anders’s love of malicious mind games is as toxic as ever—Shaw could never prolong another family’s suffering. Her agreement to assist jeopardizes not only the fragile healing of her own family’s wounds, but the rebuilding of her marriage and her relationship with her youngest son, who’s colliding with some hard truths of how cruel people can be. It seems, for Shaw, closure is a long way off . . . but danger may be closer than she thinks.

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The post Read The First Chapter From ‘Restless Bones’ by Gillian French appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Three Hitmen and a Baby, which releases on June 16th 2026.

Assassins Anonymous isn’t just a weekly recovery meeting for reformed killers—it’s also a family.

When Valencia receives troubling news that her brother has gone missing, she wants rush off to LA to find him. But she can’t bring her baby girl, Lucia.  Enter the other members of Assassins Anonymous—Mark, Astrid, and Booker, who offer to watch the toddler while she’s gone. After all, they’re three of the deadliest, most highly skilled people on the planet; what could go wrong?

Turns out, a lot. Shortly after Valencia leaves, Mark is summoned to the lair of Zmeya, a Russian mob boss calling in a deadly favor—she wants him to kill Astrid, his protege and friend. Mark refuses, but Zmeya reveals that she knows the identity of Mark’s ex-girlfriend . . . and his son. Either Astrid goes, or they do.

Meanwhile, Lucia spikes a dangerously high fever, and when Booker and Astrid take her to urgent care, they realize too late, that their fabricated identities are a real liability. Also, they don’t know Valencia’s last name, let alone Lucia’s. They can hardly blame the staff for calling the NYPD.

Suddenly the splintered group is on the run from both the Russian mob and the police, dodging bad guys and do-gooders while trying to find refuge in a city full of surveillance cameras—all without killing anyone. That is, until Zmeya captures Sara and Bennett, and Mark is ready to throw his sobriety out the window.

EXCERPT

MARK

Financial District

A bullet slams into the facade of the building next to me, narrowly missing my head. It spits out a hail of dust and stone fragments. I skip to the side and nearly stumble trying to
avoid it, but still manage to suck some of it into my lungs as I regain my footing.

Running, not for my life, but for the lives of everyone I know.

Wall Street is a ghost town at three in the morning, the sidewalks clear and the shutters drawn. Bullshit, this city never sleeps. It’s so quiet it feels like it’s been roofied. Still, we’re in the heart of the city’s surveillance network.

The sheer edge of Manhattan looms in the distance: South Street, running along the shoreline and underneath the FDR

Drive. The East River surges and swells just beyond that, frigid and dark. I’m close enough I can smell the brackish mix of salt and trash.

With the way the February air is slicing my exposed skin, that water is not going to feel good. But two more gunshots whiz over my head, so it’s the safest bet. I pump my legs harder, coughing the dust from my lungs.

This is it then.

When you’ve lived the kind of life I have, you wonder what it’s going to look like at the end. People like me don’t tend to pass quietly in our sleep. The best we can hope for is a bullet to
the head, because at least that’s quick.

To me, a bullet was always the kindest death I could grant someone. Knife wounds take time to bleed out. They hurt.  Throwing someone off a roof, they have time to think about
the impact. A well-placed bullet just turns the lights off, quick as flipping a switch.

Considering my collection of sins, a bullet is probably too kind.

Not that I didn’t try to be a better person.

Not that it worked.

Five years sober. I held on to the bumper of that goddamn wagon with my fingernails, knuckles white, struggling at every turn. And there were a lot of them.

Then I lost my grip.

Davit Nozadze, dead in the middle of the street.

Did I ever stand a chance?

I make it to South Street, keeping the FDR’s support pillars between me and my pursuer so they can’t get a clear shot, buying me enough time to reach the water’s edge.

Just as I’m about to grasp the railing, a voice behind me calls
out, “Stop!”

I put my hands in the air and turn to find a slight figure in dark clothing, a balaclava wrapped around their face, only their eyes visible. I lean against the railing and breathe air into my ragged lungs.

“Go on then,” I say. “It’s late, and I’m tired.”

The figure pauses, cocking their head to the side like they want to ask a question, or share a thought. Then they raise a gun.

I’m too far away and it’s too dark for me to tell the make and model. Which upsets me a little. I feel like that would be a nice thing to know—what kind of gun, exactly, is going to take out the Pale Horse.

It ll probably end up a collector’s item.

Fifty yards away. A monkey could make that shot. In the interest of moving things along, I pull my own gun, my trusty Sig Sauer P365, from the holster on my hip. If I’m going to go,
it ought to be with a full hand.

I think about Lucia and Astrid and Valencia and Booker and Ms. Nguyen and Quraishi. Sara and Bennett and Lulu and Kittie Smalls. The tiny constellation of a life I built, and what it’s going to look like with me gone.

The self-pitying part of me says they’ll be better off.

That’s probably not the way theyre going to see it.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot cha—

God comes down from the heavens on high and flicks me in the center of my chest with an almighty finger.

Wait, no, that’s a bullet.

The sharp crack of the gun seems to hit my ear a millisecond later. My gun flies from my hand as I’m jerked back. I hear a splash. The world has erupted into a cacophony of sensation and adrenaline that overwhelms me. I try to pull air into my lungs, but they don’t seem to be working correctly.

My body wants to fold forward to protect itself, and it takes every ounce of strength I have to push myself back, over the railing, and I tumble into the freezing embrace of the river, cold like I’ve never known cold, and my vision blurs and everything slows… slows…

ONE WEEK AGO

TUESDAY

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its
malignity.
—SYLVIA PLATH, “ELM”

ASTRID

Church of St. Jude, Chelsea

*m the second to arrive. I’ll never be first, because Mark is always first. He’s here now, hunched in a folding chair, his sandy hair hanging in his eyes, tapping away at a laptop perched on another chair in front of him. He glances up at me and offers a half-hearted salute before going back to the computer.

I hang my jacket on a hook by the door and head to the kitchenette, taking the brown paper bag out of my purse. A new coffee place opened around the corner from me, and they
sell ground beans by the pound. Flavored coffees taste funny to me, but this place uses some sort of natural roasting method, so the hazelnut tastes like hazelnut, not a chemical spill.

I fill the reservoir of the coffee maker, once again glad we’ve finally stopped using the stupid pod brewer. It was wasteful and the flavors were gross. Mark loved it for ease of use, but also because he has the palette of a toddler, and he liked the birthday-cake-flavored pods.

So one day when no one was looking I popped off the back, snapped something that looked important, feigned ignorance, and replaced it with this: a sixty-ounce Technivorm Moccamaster. It cost four hundred bucks and looks like a rocket ship, but damn if it doesn’t make good coffee.

“Stupid piece of…” Mark mutters from the corner.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Hmm.” He looks up at me, like he forgot he just saw me walk in. “Ms. Nguyen and Quraishi were going to patch in, but Zoom doesn’t seem to be working.”

“Where are they now?” I ask, placing a filter in the basket and filling it with grounds.

“Hanoi.”

A smile spreads across my face. The older members of our group: Ms. Nguyen, a former covert intelligence operative, and Quraishi, a reformed terrorist.

When we brought Quraishi in almost three years ago, they formed a quick friendship. Last month they decided to take a trip together; Ms. Nguyen was born stateside and had never been to Vietnam, where her parents emigrated from.

“I wonder how long their little Eat Pray Love thing is going to last,” Mark says, closing the laptop and leaning back in his chair.

I put the basket in place, click the button to start the coffee brewing, and catch a glimpse of the purple hair tie wrapped around my wrist. My heart twists into a knot. I pull the elastic taut and snap it against my skin, savoring the sting of it. Then I join him in the circle of chairs. “I hope they’re having fun.  They deserve it.”

Mark’s eyes narrow. “You don’t think theyre. . .”

“First off,” I tell him, “that’s not our business. Second off, probably yes.”

Mark laughs and looks around the room. “Meetings just feel a little empty without them here, right?”

As if on cue, there’s a soft chime, meaning someone has keyed in the code on the security door. Valencia strides in with Lucia and Booker, all of them layered in jackets and scarves for the brisk weather.

Lucia looks like a cartoon character in her pink puffy jacket, earmuffs, and huge fuzzy mittens. The second she sees us she breaks into a run, heading first to Mark, climbing into his lap and giving him a hug.

“Unca Mark,” she says.

Mark kisses the top of her head, his face plastered with a massive, goofy smile. “Hey there, sweetpea.”

She comes over to me next, wrapping her tiny arms around my legs. “Unca Astid!”

I poke the tip of her little red nose. “Aunt Astrid.”

“Mark said to call you ‘unca, like him and Unca Booker.”

I hold her tight and tell her, “You can call me anything you want, little love.” I look up at Mark, who is holding in a laugh, and mouth the word, Prick.

He shrugs, then gets up to greet Booker and Valencia, who are squaring their coats away on the rack. Booker is growing out his beard, and it’s coming in thick with flecks of gray. Any-
one else might look like the Unabomber, but on him it looks distinguished. Valencia, meanwhile, pulls off her wool hat to reveal a freshly shaved head.

“V, what’s with the cue ball look?” Mark calls out.

Valencia rubs her hand over the stubble. “One less thing to worry about.”

Lucia joins them, and Valencia lowers herself to one knee, undoing the girl’s winter gear. When she’s done, Booker scoops her up and says, “Time for donuts and Bluey. How does that sound?”

“One donut,” Valencia says, raising a sharp eyebrow.

Booker nods. “I know, I know.” He plops Lucia on the brown leather couch in the corner with her iPad and noise-canceling headphones, then steps to the box of donuts next to the coffee maker. He turns his back so he can place two on a plate—both strawberry-frosted with sprinkles—and sets them down next to her. Lucia looks up at him and Booker puts a finger to his lips.

Valencia sees this and rolls her eyes, then betrays the slightest hint of a smile.

Our weird little family.

Booker, former mercenary.

Valencia, former covert CIA operative.

Mark, formerly the Pale Horse, the world’s deadliest assassin, employed by a clandestine group called the Agency.

I worked for them, too, and I was known as Azrael. The Angel of Death. Mark was the organization’s top hitter. I was second, though I think that had more to do with gender politics than relative skill. Because twice me and Mark nearly threw down, and both times I’m pretty sure I could have taken him.

But those ego-drenched days are gone. Still, there’s something sweet about watching four former killers melt like ice cream in the sun around this little girl.

Valencia and Booker sit with Mark in the circle. I go to the coffee maker, now finished with its task, and pour out four mugs. Soy creamer and Splenda for Mark, black for the rest of us. Valencia appears at my side and grabs two of them, helping me carry them over.

There are three empty chairs. A ritual for our meetings—leaving a chair out for missing or deceased comrades.

One each for Ms. Nguyen and Quraishi.

One for Kenji, the former leader of the group—a reformed Yakuza hitter who sacrificed his life for Mark. I never got to know him, and I wish I did, given the reverence in everyone’s
voices when they speak about him.

“So…” Mark says, taking a sip of the coffee, and his eyebrows shoot up. “Damn, Astrid, this is good.”

“Told you,” I say. “Not everything needs to taste like candy.”

“But life is a little better when it does.” Mark places the cup on the floor next to him, then picks up the remote and hits a button. It engages a white-noise device that’ll prevent anything we say from being recorded, and keep anyone from eavesdropping on us. One of the security upgrades Mark added to the space after he bought it.

After our last space was blown up by a bunch of mercenaries.

I miss St. Dymphna’s. I think we all do. It was the first place we came together. The first place I realized I could forgive myself for the things I’ve done—or some of them, at least. The road hasn’t been easy. It took me getting kidnapped, thrown in a black site prison, and forced to face my accumulated traumas, just to feel comfortable enough to share during the meetings.

But when I did, it was like a floodgate.

This place, the Church of St. Jude, is where the dam broke, and it’ll always be special to me. Mark has spent a considerable amount of time and money setting the space up for us. Security, comfort, everything we need. And the exact same shade of robin’s-egg blue painted on the walls.

Because blue is calming, and we can all use a little of that.  Especially when you’ve spent most of your life riding shotgun with the Grim Reaper.

“Before we begin,” Mark says, “any announcements or anniversaries?”

Shaking heads, all around the circle.

“Okay,” Mark says, glancing at Lucia to confirm the headphones are on. “Assassins Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other, that they may solve their common problem and help each other to recover. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop. We are not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution; our primary purpose is to stop killing and help others to achieve the same.

“We do not bring weapons into Assassins Anonymous, nor prior political affiliations. If any of us were known by any particular handle or nickname, we do not use it here. We share our
stories, but we obscure details as best we can. If any of us seek to bring in new fellows, we agree to have them properly vetted. This is to protect us, not just from prying ears, but from each other.”

We take a moment of silence for fallen friends.

“Valencia,” Mark says, “could you read the steps?”

Valencia nods. In a regular AA meeting, you’d read from a handout, but we like to avoid putting things in writing.

“Every time…” Booker says.

Mark smacks Booker’s knee with the back of his hand.
“That’s right. Every time.”

Valencia begins:

“One, we admitted we were powerless—that our lives had become unmanageable.

“Two, we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

“Three, we made a decision to turn our will over to the care of a higher power, as we understood it.

“Four, we made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

“Five, we admitted to our higher power, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

“Six, we were ready to have our higher power remove all these defects of character.

“Seven, we humbly asked it to remove our shortcomings.

“Eight, we made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

“Nine, we made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

“Ten, we continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

“Eleven, we sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our higher power as we understood it, praying only for knowledge of its will for us and
the power to carry that out.

“Twelve, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others like us, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

“No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints…”

Booker and Mark chuckle because, traditions.

“The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual
lines,” Valencia says.

Mark claps his hands. “Excellent. Who wants to go first?”

I raise my hand, and everyone turns to me.

“Tm Astrid, and it’s been almost three years since I killed someone,” I tell them.

From THREE HITMEN AND A BABY  by Rob Hart, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2026 by Rob Hart.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Stargazer of Nantucket by Julie Gerstenblatt, which released June 9th 2026.

Massachusetts, 1851

Winifred Starbuck wants only one thing: to join her parents on their final merchant voyage–from Nantucket Island to bustling San Francisco, then across the glittering Pacific to the distant ports of China. Yet renowned trade captains Nell and Peter Starbuck have forbidden their daughter from coming aboard on the adventure of a lifetime. So Winnie does what any strong-willed eighteen-year-old would do: she stows away.

Once the ship sets sail, Winnie is plunged into turbulent waters, treachery, and the thrill of life on the high seas. As she drifts farther from shore, and closer to fabled Canton port, she uncovers a long-buried secret–one that reveals the truth behind her parents’ desperate fear. And as she continues to chart her own course, she’ll have to plumb the depths of her courage to take on a world far bigger–and more dangerous–than she ever imagined.

EXCERPT

Prologue

Aboard the Shooting Star

May 18, 1838

This is the story of a mother, a father, a daughter, and a ship.

The ship set sail from Nantucket and navigated the seas in search of fortune. The husband captained the vessel with skill and speed. In China, the merchant wife purchased tea and silk and porcelain and carpets and furniture and more and more tea to sell in America for incredible profits.

When they departed from the harbor at Canton, the mother, the father, and the daughter were happy. The father had shown off his beautiful ship and family to the other sea captains and China merchants. The mother had found a superior supplier for ginger and had procured the lowest price for the freshest tea of the season. The daughter, having just that very day turned from four fingers old to five—a whole hand! So big!—was happy because she was on an adventure with her parents. She was happy because she was always happy at sea.

The ship, too, was happy, weighed down as she was with rare and prized commodities from the far side of the world, her sails filled with wind, the American flag proudly waving from her stern. While spending several months in port as the merchant wife bartered and made her deals, the ship had been caulked and tarred and mended, her sails repaired and her hull tended to by the captain husband and his crew. Together, they had survived typhoons, hurricanes, and the doldrums. Together, they would head home.

Only, sometimes, a happy story gets interrupted. Sometimes, even on a happy ship, a sailor goes mad, losing his mind from a potent combination of drink and opium and isolation, and it drives him to a deranged act.

“Get me off this ship!” the madman cried, his eyes bloodshot and face hollow in the moonlight.

It was a calm and balmy night. The ship had recently passed Sumatra and was charting its course through the Java Sea. After dinner, the mother, father, and daughter had joined the crew of thirty men for a bonfire on the deck. There had been revelry, with the redheaded steward teaching the golden-haired daughter yet another shanty, and the daughter telling a spooky ghost tale, delighting the crew more than frightening them with her lisp and her innocent emerald eyes.

A sailor with wild black hair and a tiny black dog danced a jig, and the girl and her mother danced with them. Her father played the fiddle.

And then the madman had demanded to disembark. “Now!” he said, and, “I must go now!” and, when the redheaded steward and the cook named Cook and even the nasty third mate who nobody liked tried to subdue the sailor and lock him in the brig, he fended off their grasp and pulled a knife from his sleeve. “Now, you bastards, now!”

As the crew decided what to do to rid themselves of this madman—head back to Jakarta? Push on to Bali? Let him go adrift in a lifeboat?—the crazed sailor grabbed hold of the daughter and disappeared into the belly of the ship, the girl’s screams echoing through the night.

The madman jiggered open the iron lock on the door of the ship’s hold using the tip of his knife and slipped inside. He dropped the daughter to the hay-covered floor and barricaded them in with crates of potatoes, bags of flour and grain, and a giant wooden desk commissioned especially for the governor of Massachusetts. “Be quiet!” he yelled at the daughter. “Stop crying!”

But now he wanted to cry, too, confused and maniacal as he was. He inhaled and exhaled deeply, trying to make his addled mind think. For what had he gotten himself into? Locked in the hold with the captain’s little girl? It would be the death of him.

There were shouts from the hallway outside, attempts to break down the door. The girl’s cries turned to whimpers. She crawled away on hands and knees and the mad sailor lost sight of her in the dark room.

No matter. What he needed now was a gun. Ammunition. Feeling his way with his hands, he began to search for the right crate. He knew the captain kept a cache of weapons here, should the ship ever be attacked by pirates or mutineers. Was he a mutineer? No, he wasn’t trying to take over control of the ship. He just wanted to leave. But maybe, by causing this chaos, he was indeed a mutineer? He would save that question for another time. Ah! He found it. The crate with munitions. Although he couldn’t read, he had helped load this crate onto the ship many months ago and recognized the black markings on top.

Hiding behind some wooden chests on the other side of the room, the daughter started to hum, the tune of the new shanty fresh in her mind, the humming soothing. It wasn’t one of her mother’s lullabies, but it would have to do. Her song echoed through the high-ceilinged chamber, bouncing off the crates of exported tea and exotic fruits, elaborately carved lacquered furniture and beautiful, hand-woven textiles. The Chinese goods hid the daughter from view and further confounded the madman.

“Stop your singing, child!” the madman yelled.

And the daughter did stop singing. But not because she wished to obey him. Rather, because, through the hatched skylight above, she could see her mother looking down at her, a lantern in her hand. Mother! she almost called out. But her mother pressed her pointer finger to her lips. Shhhhhh.

Shhhhh, the girl pantomimed back.

Stay put, the mother mouthed, her palm out flat. Don’t move.

The daughter nodded. She would stay put. She wouldn’t move. She would listen to her mother.

And then, someone broke a small hole in the wall using a wooden beam like a battering ram. The madman loaded a bullet into the pistol and cocked the handle. Maybe he could beat this. Maybe he could be free.

But it was a small hole, only big enough for a tiny dog to jump through. The man laughed as the pup yipped away and tried to bite his ankles. From the other side of the wall, the men kept striking the wood until the hole enlarged enough for one man to snake his way in and rush toward the madman.

The madman shot at the sailor, the one with the wild black hair, the owner of the annoyingly yippy pup, but his aim was off, and he ended up shooting the sailor in the leg.

The sailor fell to the floor and groaned, bleeding.

“Open the door for us, you lucky sonofabitch!” another sailor shouted to the injured crewmember.

The sailor crawled toward the door, removing the barricade as quickly as possible so that his mates could enter and end this.

Knowing that a swarm of sailors would arrive any moment, the madman tried to grab more bullets, but his hands were shaking badly and he ended up dropping the gun. He dashed to the other side of the room and slid into a corner behind a case of kumquats, almost bumping into the little girl.

Now the daughter was unsure what to do. Stay put? Listen to her mother, even still?

And then, from above, another sound: the hatch with its grated skylight was yanked from its metal hinges. Both the madman and the daughter looked up.

“Mama!” the girl cheered, reverting back to the babyish name she had called her mother before turning five fingers old.

“My darling,” the mother said, jumping onto a stack of crates piled high. She stepped down and reached out her arms.

But before the two could embrace, the madman stepped between them and once again procured his knife. He wasn’t so mad as to kill the child, no. But kill the mother? Why not.

The mother, having so very much to live for, would not die tonight. She reached into the right-hand pocket of her beautiful, fine silk dress, pulled out a small pistol, and shot the madman in the heart.

Did the mother, the father, the daughter, and the ship live happily ever after?

You’ll have to read on to find out.

The post Read An Excerpt From ‘The Stargazer of Nantucket’ by Julie Gerstenblatt appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis from Shattered by Dr. David Jeremiah with Sam O’Neal, which releases on June 16th 2026.

In a world turned upside down by the cataclysmic events of the Rapture, the unraveling of divine prophecies stirs chaos and uncertainty. Saul Katz, a gifted scientist, finds his life irrevocably changed as he joins the 144,000 chosen evangelists.

In the shadows of Istanbul, John Haggerty embarks on his own perilous journey, driven by vengeance. He holds Matthias Vilks, the ominous face of the Antichrist, accountable for the collapse of America and his own heart-wrenching loss. But between the dangerous lures of power and the call to resist the satanic forces gathering, Haggs finds his choices shadowed by peril.

As darkness gathers and prophecy, betrayal, and redemption intertwine, faith and courage are the world’s final bastions of hope against impending doom.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from We Are Gathered Here Today by Bobby Finger, which releases on June 16th 2026.

At 36, Finlay Hightower has attended countless incredible, cringe-worthy, and disastrous wedding celebrations with his best friends. Their secret to surviving wedding chaos? The Hour of Disrespect—a pact to reserve judgement to one hour after the couple’s Big Day, protecting the wedding glow and leaving only with the good memories.

But this next wedding will test their decade-old tradition in more ways than one. Now, one of their own is getting married—Fin’s beloved cousin, Elaine—at a Wild West-themed venue in the sweltering Texas summer heat that is as meticulously itineraried as it is kitchy. Reserving opinions won’t be easy, and on top of that Fin has a secret that threatens his officiant duties: he’s just gotten engaged to the man of his dreams, and a sense of unease has him questioning if he believes in the institution of marriage at all.

As Fin joins the rambunctious and increasingly unhinged “queer table”, old friendships are tested and new relationships are formed. Will each guest hold back their particular views on love, commitment, and the wedding before Elaine can say “I do”? And if not, could those confessions ultimately give Fin the courage to uncover his truth?

Like any good wedding, We Are Gathered Here Today is funny, heartfelt, and full of surprises. Like any terrible wedding, it’s something you’ll never forget.

EXCERPT

THURSDAY

June 6

The frequency of receiving wedding invitations had slowed down just as everything else in Fin’s life seemed to be speeding up. Algorithmically recommended content displayed on every app in-
stalled on his phone constantly reminded him that time moved faster as you got older, not that he needed a stranger’s insistence for him to notice something so grimly, crushingly obvious. The planet was getting hotter more quickly. The threat of fascism was rising. Even the lines around his eyes were deepening over time, a fairly recent change that made Fin realize his own vanity was dwindling quicker than he ever predicted it would. So much was happening all of the time, so little of it could be ignored, and the gravest irony was how quickly everyone—himself included—was able to forget. Minds could only hold so much information, Fin often thought, and at some point in the past ten years the human brain had reached its biological limit. Old data was forcefully purged in order to make room for new entries, and in just under a
decade his and everyone else’s brains had transformed into perpetually revolving doors that took in new visitors as swiftly as they spit old ones out. There had to be a reason for the way everyone was feeling, he decided, and it might as well be that.

Well before the great quickening, weddings were a balm to Fin because they were a pause. A time to sit at a big round table with the past, present, and future, holding all three tight before they inevitably went back to where they belonged. That they were also a place to hear “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” in its most satisfying, hopeful context was the icing on the fondant on the cake. To Fin, leaving a wedding—even a terrible one—was always a moment of profound, all-encompassing sadness. A wedding bouquet ascended into a world at a standstill and was caught in fast-forward. But, oh, what it felt like for a wedding to
begin—especially a wedding weekend. The gift of stretched-out time was, to the wedding guest, greater than any KitchenAid mixer or honeymoon fund contribution could be to the wedding couple, and more meaningful than any speech or heartfelt, handwritten card. For Finlay Hightower, it was a one that opened itself the moment his plane touched down on the weekend of his cousin Elaine’s wedding. He’d spent the morning moving at five hundred miles an hour, and with the piercing screech of rubber on tarmac, he’d abruptly come to a complete stop.

The flight arrived ten minutes early, after one full The Devil Wears Prada and roughly one-third of The Fugitive—post-bus crash but before anyone actually believes Dr. Richard Kimble’s wife was killed by a one-armed man. Fin transferred the unopened novel he’d bought at a LaGuardia Hudson News and the
empty notebook he’d packed—with the sole purpose of filling it with his officiant speech—from the seat pocket to his backpack.  He quickly disembarked the plane, grimacing at the instant oppressiveness of the central Texas heat he’d escaped over fifteen years ago that pierced through the gaps of the jet bridge before inhaling it deeply and deciding it was, actually, not that bad every once in a while. He pulled out his phone and sent a text to Jacque, his closest friend, who’d also been forged in fire.

Here! No bags! Terminal A!

I think I literally watched your plane land. Leaving the cell phone lot shortly. Pee now if you have to. I come bearing snacks and drinks for the ride so we won’t have to stop.

Fin smiled at her thoughtfulness. Jacque Aguilar. Funnier, smarter, sillier, kinder, and easier to love than he; she was his favorite person to be in a car with. He didn’t miss driving, and often pointed out New York City’s mostly efficient public transportation system as the fundamental reason he could never see him-
self living anywhere else, but he did miss riding shotgun with Jacque at the wheel. During their time in college in the mid-aughts, back when gas was cheap, they’d often just hop in her Chevrolet Cavalier and go for a drive. From Austin to New Braunfels and back, stopping for snacks and soda somewhere in
between, or toward Johnson City in the Hill Country. Sometimes they’d just loop around the city, from I-35 to Ben White, north on MoPac, and 183 back toward the highway. It was a time for them to relax and to catch up on the day, divulge their latest unrequited crush, and with any luck, grab dinner at the end of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, a busy intersection in Austin’s east side with their favorite fast food filling every quadrant. A little Popeyes, a little Taco Cabana, a Frosty from Wendy’s, eaten together in the final choice’s parking lot before returning to the apartment complex where they shared a staircase and a wall, tucked into a million sprawling live oak trees that, he figured now, had probably been ripped out of the ground to make way for a high-rise.

When the window rolled down he saw the Styrofoam cup first; Jacque held it over the passenger seat, shaking it slightly, tauntingly, as if it were a beverage he was forbidden from ever tasting. She was in a T-shirt and shorts, the same as he, and her long black hair was pulled into a crisp, shiny ponytail held by a white tie. “Welcome to hell,” she said, finally revealing her face from behind the cup as the cold escaped through the window. “I got it sweet, because I knew you wouldn’t have ordered it that way yourself.”

Jacque was right about the sugar because she tended to be right about everything involving Fin. Since they’d met due to a militant tenth grade English teacher’s unwavering semester-long seating chart, during which they began passing notes back and forth to each other with sleights of hand that made them both feel like David Copperfield, she had him all figured out. When he came out to her the following year, while thumbing a wall of DVDs at Hollywood Video and desperately avoiding any and all eye contact, she congratulated him for finally working up the nerve, and then, to his shock, proceeded to come out herself.  “But what about Manny?” he said after she used the word “lesbian,” referring to her on-again/off-again who graduated the previous year.

“Manny’s just a dildo with a disgusting man attached,” she said, pulling a copy of Under the Tuscan Sun from the wall. “Plus,the only other dykes around here don’t know they’re dykes, and
I don’t want to be any closet case’s first. Second, sure. That’s fun. But not first.”

Just before heading up to Austin for college, he came out to a second person: his beloved second cousin Elaine, with whom he shared a sibling-like friendship that, while close, lacked the un-
burdened freedom that he could have with someone outside of his family—someone like Jacque. It never felt worthwhile to tell his parents, whom he assumed already knew, or his other high school friends, none of whom he cared about all that much. They were straight women, most of them, and he feared the conversations that would ensue from any kind of dramatic sit-down event. They would be too excited, perhaps grimly so, and worse, they may even make it about themselves. He feared the why didn’t you tell mes or I always suspecteds and every reaction in between, so he swerved himself away from such conversations entirely. In college—ninety miles away in the liberal, notably “weird” city of Austin—he would be gay from the jump, a man crisply, confidently defined, and his life would finally begin. Not anew, exactly, as Elaine and Jacque would be right there beside him, perpetual reminders of his past, the only friends who had the privilege of knowing his prologue, and the only ones who seemed to give more than half a shit about all the chapters that would be written later.

He made other friends in college, of course. Good friends, though no other bond ever quite matched the one he shared with Jacque and Elaine, and Fin barely kept up with any of them after leaving town. It wasn’t codependency, exactly, but it was profound, unwavering comfort. They were each other’s home base.
After every hookup—good or bad—party—good or bad—and most days of classes—always awful—they relied on each other to listen, usually briefly, and then, simply, to be there. Fin’s decision to move away after college came as a shock to both of them, but was never discussed with bombast or fear. The two most important women in his life had no interest in joining, but the invitation was more than enough, and Fin was confident that they knew that Fin knew the two of them would always be around if and when he were to return without ever saying the words out loud.

“Be safe and be happy,” Elaine said to him as he lugged his two rolling suitcases into the airport more than fifteen years earlier. Then Jacque tearfully yelled, “I love you! Make good choices!”

“T love you too,” he said right back, eyes on the doors sliding open with a whirr before he was in range of their sensor, beckoning him in and far, far away. He and Jacque had never used the word “love” to each other until that very moment—it was never their little clique’s style—but once released into their personal lexicon it became the closing assertion of their every conversation. The love had always been there, something totally opaque hovering in the space between them, but it just hadn’t ever felt like something worth addressing until the space was about to become as vast and painfully stretched as it felt like it would then. Since then he couldn’t remember a conversation they’d had that didn’t end with a “love you.”

Jacque waited until they headed west to ask the question. As the surface beneath her tires transitioned from the smooth, recently repaved Interstate 35 to Highway 90’s lighter, coarser grit—the kind that made the spinning of a car’s wheels suddenly, almost violently apparent—she turned down the radio and cleared her throat. “So how’s Mark? WillI ever meet him or should I start worrying that he’s a figment of your imagination?”

Fin took a long sip from his cup, sucking the remaining ounce or so of tea from the bottom until making a noise he’d wished could act as the entirety of his response. Thinking of Mark then, that rattling, cacophonous whoosh of a straw’s last gasp for liquid was just about representative of how he felt. “He’s good.  We’re good. Living together is surprisingly good. But I’d rather talk about you,” he said, sipping from the empty cup with even more force. Jacque shook her head and made Shania Twain’s voice louder than either of them could ever hope to overpower.  When she rolled down the windows, Fin reached his hand out and grabbed the upper part of the passenger door, where it met the roof. Country music sounded better in the country—the actual country—and all music sounded better on the open road.  With what looked like miles of long, nearly empty highway in front of them, he tapped his fingers to the beat and realized that even though he’d heard this song a thousand times before, it’d never sounded better than it did right then.

“What’s there to say?” Jacque said. “Work is busy and depressing, just like it always is.” Jacque began working at the public defender’s office immediately after graduating from law school,a job she took for its security as much as she did for its virtues. She explained that it offered her little free time to do much at all, let alone date, but that she’d been going to the gym every morning for the past year, which had done wonders for her mental health.

“How’s your mom?”

“A total mess, as usual,” Jacque said. “But ultimately fine, also as usual. My dad ended up giving her some money so the threat of her moving in with me has been lifted. At least for the next six months.” She kept her eyes on the road as she spoke, the joy in her voice suddenly absent now that her parents had been brought up. “He’s still an asshole and so is his girlfriend—he’s back with Monica, by the way—but he’d never let my mom down. I do believe that. And if he dies first, she’ll still get money, despite Monica’s resounding objections.”

“How do you know for sure?”

“Because I drew up the will,” she said proudly. “It’s so fucking funny that he didn’t take his wedding vows seriously until after breaking them. Or maybe it’s just tragic.”

“Well I’m glad she’s okay. I wish we had time to see her.”

“You just wish we had time for her to cook menudo for you.”

“Of course I do.” Growing up, Nora and Samuel offered Fin the closest glimpse into the intricacies of marriage apart from his own parents. Their marriage was the polar opposite of his own parents’ in every possible way—they were divorced, outgoing, talkative, and honest—and he’d been fascinated by their relationship from the moment Jacque introduced them. They’d only been married for the first five years of Jacque’s life. After the divorce, caused in part by Samuel’s affair, and in part because they finally understood they weren’t the right people for each other, there was a simmering period where they co-parented from afar, taking the time they each needed to lick their wounds.

By the time Fin came into the picture they had eased into a life of being, simply, best friends of one amazing daughter they created together. When Fin came over to watch a movie, as he did most weekends, Samuel would usually be there, milling about in the kitchen, eagerly accepting a meal, and talking about work and, eventually, complaining about his relationship with Monica, the woman he’d had an affair with. They kissed each other goodbye on the cheek, then the moment he was out the door Nora would collapse on her recliner and vent to both Jacque and Fin about whatever he’d said that had annoyed her. Nora and Samuel spoke more to each other as a divorced couple than Fin’s own parents did as a married one, and when alone in his own bedroom listening to the rustlings of their wordless evening routine through the
crack under his door, he wondered if they’d be happier divorced.  They never fought, but Fin always interpreted their silence as pain. How strange that, in those moments, neither of the fullest examples of marriage in Fin’s young life seemed to make any damned sense.

From WE ARE GATHERED HERE TODAY by Bobby Finger, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2026 by Bobby Finger.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Hot Wings and Homicide by Carmela Dutra, which is out now.

Business at Kluckin’ Good is smoking hot. To keep momentum going, Beth and her twin brother, Seth, just scored a prime spot at the Flavors of the Bay Food Festival. For three and a half days, food lovers will flock to the Bay Area’s biggest culinary event to enjoy gourmet food trucks, cook-offs, and live music, but this recipe for success is also the perfect setup for murder.

When the infamous food critic Brad Dawson—also Beth’s ex—turns up dead, the only clue at the scene of the crime is a Kluckin’ Good tumbler mug. The timing couldn’t be worse. Beth and Brad were seen in a heated altercation, and days prior, witnesses saw Seth punch Brad. Suspicion naturally falls on the twins. With the cops hot on their trail, Beth will have to avoid the flames to clear their names and save her food truck’s reputation.

But the chickens are out of the coop, and as Beth digs into Brad’s final hours, she will uncover rivalries, grudges, and a different side of Brad she never knew. If she doesn’t crack the case soon, she might be the next one to get cooked. Best of cluck!

A mouthwatering mystery for fans of Joanne Fluke that will leave you peckish for more.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Devils We Know by L.T. Thompson, which released on June  9th 2026.

We need to find Death.

Cas, Remy, and Finn are on the run from the Order of Lazarus, a secret society that wants to use Cas’s prophetic powers to capture Death and ensure that only the “unworthy” and “immoral” will meet their ends. Which will not only upend nature’s balance but also tear apart the only place the friends have ever felt safe to be themselves: Aboard the Mori, where Cas can live openly as a trans boy, and where Remy and Finn are beginning to fall for each other. No matter what, they can’t let that happen.

To protect their found family of queer sailors, the three teens will need to find Death first and strike a bargain of their own. But the society is hot on their heels-and so is a demon who’s determined to claim the soul he’s owed.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Nantucket Second Chances by Pamela Kelley, which releases on June 9th 2026.

Nantucket is the perfect place for a new beginning.

Claire Shipman never imagined she’d be the single mom of a teenager, going through a contentious divorce, and unexpectedly pregnant. On the bright side, at least she’s on Nantucket, where she grew up, and where her mother and grandmother welcome her home with open arms.

For years, Claire lived an enviable Manhattan lifestyle. Until her ex had a marriage-ending affair and also lost his job and all their money. Claire’s high school friends invite her to their book club and an off-hand joke that she could sell one of her Hermes bags sparks a business idea. 

Her friend’s brother, Cody, is a furniture builder with a spare storefront. He’s initially skeptical about the prospects of a “used handbag shop”.

But Claire is determined. With the support of Lily, her mother, grandmother, old friends and new, she begins to build a true second chance at a new life.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Based on a True Story by Sarah Vaughan, which releases on June 9th 2026.

All families have secrets. But it’s the lies that can kill.

A lavish seventieth birthday party. A body found on a storm-lashed beach. And a secret that someone is dying to tell. . . .

Famed children’s author Dame Eleanor Kingman has summoned her family and friends to her exquisite manor house on the cliffs. They’re celebrating her birthday—and her latest number one bestseller in her series of books based on a mother fox and her cubs.

But the night before the party, Eleanor receives an email that threatens to expose the lie she’s kept up for over half a century.

Someone knows her secret. Is it her estranged literary agent? Is it her ex-husband, to whom she no longer speaks? Is it the nanny she fired all those years ago, who always did have a knack for storytelling? Or is it one of her three daughters, all of whom have a stake in the publishing empire she has built…

With a television crew arriving to film a documentary of her life, Eleanor needs to find out who sent the email—and preserve her legacy and multimillion-pound career.

But when push comes to shove, and it’s time to tell the truth will anyone actually believe her?

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