Friday, August 14, 2026

Adventure Spotlight: Second Chance Highway by Lori Keesey

Ginny Carmichael’s road trip begins as an act of escape, but Second Chance Highway is interested in what happens after physical distance has been created between a woman and the life that has harmed her. Traveling with her baby daughter, Ginny encounters people who offer kindness without demanding anything in return, while the road steadily carries her toward an estranged mother and wounds that cannot be left behind simply by crossing state lines. Lori Keesey’s sequel to Always Think of Me places faith, forgiveness, and restoration alongside the practical courage required to begin again, turning the highway itself into part of Ginny’s reckoning with what freedom might actually mean.


Second Chance Highway by Lori Keesey

Second Chance Highway

A Sequel

Fantasy / Action & Adventure / Christian

Date Published: June 9, 2026

Publisher: Clay Bridges Publishing

Find Second Chance Highway on Goodreads


༺ ABOUT THE BOOK ༻


Sometimes, the second chance we truly need is the one we give ourselves.

 

Ginny Carmichael feels trapped in her abusive relationship until an otherworldly visit ignites her determination to break free. With her baby daughter in tow, she embarks on a courageous road trip that not only takes her away from danger but also leads her to unexpected kindness, genuine connections, and profound forgiveness. 

 

Along the way, she meets a compassionate waitress, a spirited aunt, and ultimately her estranged mother, who may hold the key to her healing. As Ginny approaches her destination—and the truth about her worth—she discovers that escape was never the destination. Wholeness was. 

 

Second Chance Highway is a poignant tale of faith, friendship, and the path to restoration and redemption, and is the sequel to the award-winning Always Think of Me.


༺ WHY READ THIS BOOK ༻


Second Chance Highway centers its story on an important distinction: getting away from danger and recovering from it are not the same thing. Ginny’s decision to leave is only the beginning. The people she encounters on the road—a waitress, an aunt, and eventually the mother from whom she has been separated—become part of a much more difficult process involving trust, forgiveness, and the rebuilding of her sense of worth.

 

The supernatural element also gives Ginny’s departure an unusual starting point without removing the human work that follows. Her journey still depends on choices, relationships, and a willingness to confront painful family history. Readers interested in faith-centered fiction that treats restoration as a process rather than a single dramatic moment may find that emphasis especially meaningful.


༺ WHO WILL LOVE IT ༻


This sequel may appeal most to readers who want character-driven Christian fiction concerned with recovery, family relationships, and the difficult work of forgiving without pretending that harm never occurred. Ginny’s journey combines a literal road trip with a return to unresolved relationships, giving the story room for both outward movement and inward change.

 

Those who have already read Always Think of Me can continue Ginny’s story here, while readers drawn to women rebuilding their lives after controlling relationships may connect with the book’s focus on agency, motherhood, faith, and learning to accept genuine kindness after living with fear.


༺ ABOUT THE AUTHOR ༻



Lori Keesey is the author of Second Chance Highway, the sequel to the award-winning Always Think of Me. Lori discovered her love for writing at a very young age and then pursued a professional writing career as a journalist, freelance writer, and communication consultant. She graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park.

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༺ LAST WORD ༻


The most significant distance Ginny travels in Second Chance Highway is not measured by the miles between her old life and her destination. Leaving gives her the opportunity to survive; the harder question is what she will build once she is no longer organizing every decision around fear. That distinction gives the novel a more thoughtful definition of a second chance than simply starting over somewhere new.

 

Ginny’s encounters along the road also suggest that restoration can arrive through unexpected people as readily as through long-awaited reconciliations. Her destination matters, but so do the moments that gradually challenge what she has learned to believe about herself. In that sense, the highway is less an escape route than the place where Ginny begins deciding what she will carry forward—and what she is finally ready to leave behind.



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Middle Grade Fiction Book Reveal: Zombie Zoo by Melanie Abed

A strange outbreak on the island of Tub begins with an especially alarming symptom: orphans are turning into wood-eating zombies. In Zombie Zoo, thirteen-year-old naturalist Felix Fizzystyxx can no longer remain safely in his tree fort observing the world from a distance. Solving what is happening in Spinachi means joining forces with Ninja, a fiercely instinctive investigator whose methods are very different from his own. Their partnership gives this supernatural mystery an unusual engine, pairing scientific observation with intuition as the two trace a contaminated water supply, a glowing substance, and a plague that was deliberately unleashed. With biology, chemistry, and the scientific method woven into the mystery itself, Melanie Abed gives the zombie adventure a decidedly curious streak.

Zombie Zoo

Adventures in Tub (Felix & Ninja, Book 1)

Upper Middle Grade

Date Published: 09-15-2026

Publisher: Oculus Print

Find Zombie Zoo on Goodreads


༺ ABOUT THE BOOK ༻


Two orphan loners. One supernatural plague. When wood-eating zombies threaten their island, mismatched investigators Felix and Ninja must combine science and instinct to save Spinachi-before they're next.
 

ZOMBIE ZOO is Book 1 in a five-book middle grade adventure series for readers ages 8-13, blending paranormal mystery, zombies, unlikely friendship, and STEAM-powered problem-solving.


When 13-year-old aspiring naturalist Felix Fizzystyxx discovers that orphans at Wayward Amok Orphanage are transforming into wood-eating zombies, his quiet tree-fort observations are no longer enough. Someone has deliberately unleashed a strange plague on Tub's island town of Spinachi-and they're still out there. 
 

To find a cure, Felix must team up with Ninja, a shadow-dwelling orphan who trusts her instincts and never backs down. Intense and razor-sharp, she notices what others overlook and lives up to her name as the island's most mysterious sleuth. With their eccentric mentor Doc Brunne compromised and the town's water supply contaminated by a glowing bioluminescent substance, the two mismatched investigators must combine scientific observation with sharp intuition to stop the outbreak before their island home is devoured.


Set on the fictional island of Tub, this fast-paced, humorous adventure naturally weaves in STEAM concepts-biology, chemistry, bioluminescence, water systems, pattern recognition, and the scientific method-within an age-appropriate supernatural mystery. Themes include unlikely friendship, identity, trust across differences, courage, and finding your voice when adults won't listen.
 

Featuring diverse protagonists, quirky humor, spooky-but-fun scares, and strong female and male leads. ZOMBIE ZOO is ideal for reluctant readers and fans of Max Brallier's The Last Kids on Earth, B.B. Alston's Amari and the Night Brothers, and Goosebumps. Comprehensive educator resources-including discussion guides, vocabulary lists, STEAM extension activities, and printable maps-support classroom use, library programming, book clubs, and make this title ideal for cross-curricular lessons bridging ELA, STEAM, and SEL.


༺ WHY READ THIS BOOK ༻


Zombie Zoo makes its investigation depend on two very different ways of understanding a problem. Felix approaches the outbreak as an aspiring naturalist, observing evidence and looking for explanations, while Ninja notices details and trusts instincts that Felix might miss. That contrast matters because the mystery itself is built around clues with scientific possibilities: contaminated water, bioluminescence, patterns, and a plague affecting the island's orphans.

 

The wood-eating zombies add the wonderfully odd complication that Tub itself is vulnerable. Stopping the outbreak is therefore about more than escaping monsters; Felix and Ninja have to understand what is happening and find a cure before their wooden island home is devoured. For younger readers who like their spooky stories mixed with puzzles, humor, and experiments in thinking, the premise gives them plenty to investigate alongside the characters.


༺ WHO WILL LOVE IT ༻


Young mystery solvers who enjoy following evidence may find Felix and Ninja's investigation especially appealing, while the wood-eating zombies and threatened island give horror-loving middle grade readers a supernatural hook without abandoning the book's stated spooky-but-fun approach. The STEAM elements also make this an interesting match for children who like asking how things work rather than simply accepting that something strange has happened.

 

The story may have particular appeal for ages 8-13 who enjoy unlikely partnerships, eccentric settings, and protagonists whose different strengths become useful when adults cannot solve the problem for them. Its educator resources also give teachers, librarians, book clubs, and families ways to extend the fictional mystery into conversations and activities involving science, language arts, and social-emotional learning.


༺ ABOUT THE AUTHOR ༻



Melanie Abed is a behavioral expert turned story weaver. She believes dragons are real but hiding, and finds thunderstorms equally delightful and terrifying. A tea-loving bookworm, she champions young minds and writes to help kids discover their superpowers are real.

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༺ LAST WORD ༻


A town called Spinachi, an island called Tub, and zombies with an appetite for wood give Zombie Zoo a playfully peculiar identity before the investigation even begins. The more interesting idea beneath that setup, though, is the partnership between two orphan outsiders who solve problems differently. Felix's observations do not make Ninja's instincts unnecessary, and Ninja's sharp perception does not make Felix's scientific thinking irrelevant. Their differences are part of the solution.

 

That makes this first Felix & Ninja adventure worth watching for middle grade readers who prefer mysteries that give them clues to consider rather than asking them only to outrun the monster. When the monster also happens to be eating the island, solving the science becomes rather urgent.

 



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Thursday, August 13, 2026

Psychological Thriller Spotlight: The Weight of Cold Things by Lisa Towles

Wyoming ranch country and the frozen industrial edge of Alaska sit thousands of miles apart, but in The Weight of Cold Things, the distance between them begins to collapse around Deputy Sheriff Gree Gooding. Lisa Towles sends Gree north in search of a missing sheriff while the unresolved death of her husband, buried family history, a mysterious black-ops program, and a landscape capable of killing in minutes tighten around the investigation. The result pairs the grit of a contemporary Western with a conspiracy thriller whose secrets have been accumulating beneath the ice for decades. 

 


The Weight of Cold Things

by Lisa Towles

Genre: Psychological Thriller, Arctic Noir

While searching for her missing boss, a Wyoming Deputy Sheriff accidentally discovers a secret facility and conspiracy of silence surrounding a series of mysterious deaths in Deadhorse, Alaska.

༺ ABOUT THE BOOK ༻

Wyoming Deputy Sheriff Gree Gooding has one mission: find her missing boss. The trail leads four thousand miles north—to Deadhorse, Alaska, an oil-drilling outpost clinging to the edge of the Arctic Circle. A place where daylight is rationed, where the cold can kill in minutes, and where her husband AJ, a petroleum geologist, vanished six months ago. 

 

The clues don't just point to her boss's disappearance. They reach back into Gree's own past— to the Wyoming ranch she left behind, to the family secrets buried in its soil, and to the grief frozen like permafrost inside her. 

 

When the investigation cinches around a decades-long cover-up — a black ops program called Arc Dominion — Gree realizes someone's been waiting for her. Someone knew she'd follow the thread. This was never about a missing sheriff. It's about the conspiracy AJ died trying to expose — and whether she can finish what he started. 

 

The cold doesn't forgive.
It doesn't forget.
And it's about to give up its dead. 

 

For fans of Yellowstone and The X-Files — where neo-Western grit meets a decades-long government conspiracy buried beneath the Arctic ice.


༺ WHY READ THIS BOOK ༻

 

The investigation in The Weight of Cold Things is compelling because Gree is following more than one disappearance. Sheriff Peter Barrett is missing, but AJ’s death six months earlier is still shaping nearly every decision she makes, and the trail north begins connecting the two cases in ways that challenge what she thought she understood about both men. Towles uses that overlap to make grief part of the mystery rather than simply part of the protagonist’s backstory. 

 

The geography gives the novel another distinctive edge. Gree moves between Wyoming ranch country and Deadhorse, Alaska, where an oil-drilling outpost, Arctic conditions, and the history surrounding Arc Dominion create a setting that is both physically dangerous and central to the conspiracy itself. The supplied excerpt also reaches back to Prudhoe Bay in 1974, signaling that the secrets Gree encounters were set in motion long before her investigation began.


༺ read an EXCERPT ༻

Prologue

 

Winter, 1974 - Prudhoe Bay, Northwest Alaska

 

They gutted an iceberg with two sticks of dynamite, forty years ago when the shabby construction camps rose on the iconic Dalton Highway. Oil was struck in Prudhoe Bay in 1968, setting off an irreversible string of events: an ecological nightmare, an eight-billion-dollar pipeline transporting crude oil 800 miles south from the North Slope to Valdez, and passage for seventy thousand oil workers to the most menacing outpost on earth: Deadhorse. 

 

A stolen scrap of bread. Chronic insomnia. Drug abuse. One worker snapped, nicking dynamite from the munitions depot, flailing his arms, all the while forgetting how fast the detonating cord burns to the quick. The shock wave bulleted shards of ice in every direction, thrusting the assailant twelve feet in the air in a whirl of fire and black smoke. He became the first prize, the Number One. His victim, the second man, escaped. 

 

It took two days for the particles to clear the air, finally revealing an exquisite, dome-like crevasse in the ice the depth of five residential garages — one after the other in a long, hollow train. Except this garage had no yard outside because nothing grew in this place but resentment. No gas grill on a redwood deck, no family huddled in the adjacent house. Only the unrelenting cold and ice: on the floor, walls, ceiling. He loved it that way, the Caretaker, the exclusivity of his access and the singularity of his dark secret. 

 

That spring, the suited men came in droves sporting fine clothing and city shoes to explain the gravity of their problem, which later evolved into their pitch. Well, their problem had just solved itself, hadn’t it? No one knew about this place and nobody but him would ever find it. Some secrets were just not for sale.


Chapter 1

 

Present Day December 18 - Inglewood Ranch, Cody, WY

 

I could feel it in my bones, this unspeakable energy of change. Not a buzz, it was more like a low hum I could almost hear when I closed my eyes and got real still. I’d woken with it today, of all days, this visceral knowing that despite the regularity of my errand, it would have a disruptive impact on my life, such as it was. My work in Jackson, a five hour drive from our family ranch in Cody, was an odd arrangement to begin with, and the two-bedroom condo I rented near the Teton County Sheriff’s Office was uninhabitable without AJ. Even still, there was something else in the air today. Cholo, our ranch hand and my lifelong friend, sensed something too, though it wasn’t his way to articulate his thoughts. Instead, he put cinnamon in the coffee, his quiet way of offering comfort. I could smell it the whole way in from the barn. 

 

I’d gone out before first light, watching the fluff of gray dawn cover my beloved Inglewood, hoping to shake the image of a recurring dream and to brush AJ’s quarter horse, Rain. At first, it was to console him, knowing horses had unique and profound ways of grieving. Lately, though, the cold vigil seemed more about me. Rogue, the word had been coming to me since AJ’s death — a blurry dream-hand opening to a tiny piece of paper on which a single word was written. Was it him reaching out from his watery grave? What did it mean? 

 

Cholo passed me a cup when I reached the kitchen, shutting out the ten-degree wind chill behind me. I unzipped my coat and sipped quietly just inside the door, letting the hot coffee slide down my throat, waiting for whatever his face was preparing. 

 

“Been three weeks now.”

 

I nodded, three weeks since Sheriff Peter Barrett disappeared — my boss, mentor, now another silent ache in my heart. 

 

“I heard about the fire,” he added. “How many is that now?”

 

“Does it matter?” I asked him. “Seven.”

 

“You think they’re connected. Don’t you?”

 

I shrugged, pretending. But any sane person would. “I’m not an arson investigator. Bryce at the State Fire Marshal’s Office is looking into it.” 

 

“Really?”

 

I laughed. “Come on. Bryce has a good team working for him. I know two of those guys.” 

 

“They haven’t been out here since Thanksgiving.” Cholo stared back, thick brows angled over large, black eyes. 

 

“I know, okay? What do you want me to do? I’m not the sheriff.” The words caught in my throat. 

 

“You never know about people,” he said with that quiet wisdom I’d never seen in anyone else, like he understood the longings in my heart for answers that hadn’t yet come. Peter Barrett, Jackson’s most beloved sheriff, vanished three weeks ago today. 

 

Cholo was right about Bryce, too. Interagency politics aside, I’d need to call and follow up on the arson investigation they said they were running. Add it to the growing list. 

 

He took a long sip, still watching me.

 

“Well, spit it out already,” I said.

 

“I can’t take you to the airport.”

 

“It’s alright, I’ll get an Uber.”

 

Cholo’s jaw was set tight but his eyes were uncertain, like he was trying to think of an excuse but couldn’t do it. 

 

“What’s the big deal?”

 

“Woody’s gonna take you.”

 

“Woody!” My voice cracked like a whip. I set the cup on the counter with a clunk and rezipped my coat. Ah…the cinnamon. Son of a bitch. 

 

“He wants to talk to you.”

 

“Does he now?” I grabbed the warm mug for reinforcement and sucked down the last three gulps. “Does he want to talk about how he stole two of our horses, stole money from me? He robbed us, Cholo, all of us. And by doing so, he broke something precious.” I didn’t like the sound of that word, precious. Made it seem like Woody was important to me, and despite the intrusive logic of that truth, there was no place for Woody here anymore. 

 

“He says he’s sorry.”

 

“Not to me he didn’t. Besides, sorry’s just a word.” Already mad at seven in the morning, great. I zipped my coat and turned my back to him, facing the door. “A real apology is a change in behavior.” My eyes were wide as I waited for him to take my challenge. To come to Woody’s rescue, explain how the drugs made him do it or the excuse-of-the-day. 

 

Still fuming, I left via Uber at 7:30 a.m. without another word to either Cholo or my dad. Woody could kiss my ass as far as I was concerned. I’d have to pay for my cold heart, of course. The world has a quiet way of keeping score.

***

By 3:00 p.m., I was standing on the corner of Wave and McClellan Streets in Monterey, California. Eleven hundred miles away in historic Cannery Row, a sliver of sea was visible between the brownstones on Lighthouse Avenue. The sun felt warm on my face and bare arms. Mid December in California, I’ll be damned. A premonition, I couldn’t put my finger on it, made me take notice, warning me to be careful. Something bad was coming. 

 

Ash was right, I was loath to admit. There were holiday decorations and tacky music everywhere, but it just didn’t feel like Christmas in a hilltop penthouse overlooking the ocean, waves beneath me reflecting a cloudy sky. The beauty of California’s coast was unmistakable, but in my heart, Christmas was indelibly marked by snow. 

 

“Is that you?” Cholo asked me later, answering his mobile on the third ring.

 

“I guess. Some version of me, anyway.”

 

“What are you doing out there, Gree? You hate California.”

 

He knew, of course; we’d discussed it back and forth for weeks. Why go now, why go at all? After being on and off the market for ten years, my mother’s condo had finally found a buyer. I came here to sign papers, to once again acknowledge the sting of her death and bring my feet one step closer to the present. But that wasn’t what he was asking. Like all Cholo’s questions, they were part real world and part spirit world. I knew what he meant. I just wasn’t sure I was willing to answer yet. 

 

“How’s Dad?” I deflected.

 

“He’s concerned about how it will look to the community, you leaving town after Peter’s disappearance.”

 

“I don’t recall asking his opinion.” He was right, though. It was too sudden, but it would be a short trip. Besides, everything was broken right now anyway. 

 

“No, but he’s always willing to share it, isn’t he?”

 

“Yeah,” I laughed.

 

“He’s splitting wood right now,” Cholo said.

 

“Great idea for a man who just had a heart attack.”

 

“Come on, it was a mild one. He didn’t even know he was having it. Besides, it’s gonna be zero tonight. We’ll be using that wood.” 

 

I guess I shouldn’t complain. The fact that they were staying in the same house, after such a long standoff, was nothing short of miraculous and I had nothing to do with it. Maybe the rock of resentment got too heavy to haul around anymore. I was dying to know who thawed first, but I’d never ask. You didn’t do things that way out here. Not in Wyoming, not in this family. 

 

“Could you make sure he’s got a jacket on? For God’s sake keep an eye on him. If left to his own devices he’d chop wood in a—” 

 

“Gretchen.”

 

It was my dad’s voice now, Ash Gooding, former Sheriff of Park County, who to this day insists on calling me by my birth name instead of the nickname my mother gave me. 

 

“How’s sunny California?”

 

It was meant as an insult. Everyone in town got lots of mileage from the fact that I wasn’t a native of Wyoming, even though I’d lived there since I was five. 

 

“It’s midnight, Wyoming time. What are you doing up this late? Do you miss me that much?” I joked to an awkward silence. I rambled on for a while, telling him about the dark orange sunset I’d seen from the balcony after signing a four-inch stack of papers. Hadn’t they ever heard of digital copies? Apparently, this mortgage company insisted on paper-everything. Ash listened. I heard the clinking of ice in his glass. Would this be his third or fourth by now? I decided not to mention the wood chopping. 

 

“You didn’t tell her?” he mumbled to Cholo. “Mmm.”

 

“Tell me what?”

 

A murmur of conversation in the background. Maybe his hand was covering the phone. And maybe this was what Cholo was hiding from me this morning. 

 

“Dad, what is it? Tell me.”

 

“I can’t. Gotta show you. Guess we’ll have to wait till you get back.”

 

Sonofabitch. I knew my dad, and that meant no manipulation or psychology would wriggle out of him whatever he was keeping from me. After signing over ownership of what had been my mother’s dream home, I left the key with the bankers and took with me a cedar box of my mother’s mementos, which I would undoubtedly squirrel away somewhere and forget about for the next decade. All the better, right? Avoidance, since AJ’s death six months ago, had become a sort of new religion. Didn’t avoidance almost always turn to cancer somewhere down the road? 

 

When I got back, I didn’t bother going home first before looking for Ash. He’d planted an evil seed of dread and apprehension, and he knew it too. Maybe punishing me for something; he’s a Gemini after all. I flew into Cody from San Francisco instead of Jackson, where I’d worked for the past twelve years as deputy sheriff under Peter Barrett, one of the kindest men I’d ever met. Why did I feel like Ash’s secret had something to do with him? The buzzing in my bones this morning...maybe that was the warning. Jesus, no. Not that. The vague comfort of the word missing was too hard to give up. 

 

Three in the afternoon to Ash Gooding meant five o’clock somewhere. There's this ratty bar on the edge of town called Stagecoach, Ash’s favorite. Drafty as hell with dusty floors, swivel stools, and random darts scattered on the floor looking for their board, threatening tetanus. Weird part about it was that the owner isn't a wrinkled prune of a man but someone belonging on the cast of Below Deck, a body intended for board shorts, tanned legs and a white polo shirt hauling up ropes with three-ply triceps. He was trying to be unassuming in a plain brown t-shirt stretched out at the neck, pretending he didn't care about his looks. His artificially whitened smile betrayed the deception - laughing eyes with something sinister behind them, a joke no one knew about but him. 

 

“How’s it going?” the guy asked.

 

I exhaled. “G&T, please. Been a long day.”

 

“Coming up.”

 

When Runway Model set down the glass, I suddenly didn’t feel like talking. The weight of air travel, of the milestone I’d crossed and today’s sad anniversary, burned behind my eyes. They watered as I took the first swallow. I turned on the stool to look around. Ha, I knew it. 

 

“Ash,” I said, walking across the creaking floorboards. “What are you doing here?”

 

“Waiting for you.”

 

“Drinking here alone, that’s what.”

 

“What's wrong with that?”

 

“You can come to my house in Jackson and drink with me. Wouldn't that be nicer?”

 

He laughed. “Not necessarily. Besides, too long a drive.”

 

“Look, you can stay here and punish yourself for Mom's death all you like. I know what day it is.” 

 

The slap of the men’s room door distracted us from the tension. It was a sad old story with no ending. I smelled Cholo’s Irish Spring soap behind me. I turned, my left arm involuntarily reaching for him, tugging the frayed edge of his Carhartt jacket. 

 

“Well.” I stood back a ways. “You two got real chummy in the one day I left town.” They were looking sideways at each other in some silent communication. Ranchers at a bar in the middle of the afternoon; it didn’t make sense. “What’s the deal?” 

 

Cholo nodded. “You’d better sit down.”


༺ WHO WILL LOVE IT ༻

 

The Weight of Cold Things should appeal most strongly to thriller readers who like investigations with several layers operating at once: a missing sheriff, a dead petroleum geologist, unexplained fires, family secrets, and a covert program whose history reaches back decades. Gree is also carrying enough personal history into the case that readers who prefer psychologically complicated investigators have more to follow than the mechanics of the conspiracy alone. 

 

The novel’s combination of Wyoming ranch life, Arctic oil country, law enforcement, fringe operations, and buried institutional secrets also makes it a natural fit for those drawn to neo-Westerns and conspiracy fiction. The tour describes the blend as Yellowstone meeting The X-Files, which captures the unusual territory Towles is working in: grounded family and regional tensions pushed into a mystery that keeps widening beyond the local case.


༺ ABOUT THE AUTHOR ༻

Lisa Towles believes stories hold the world together - and the best ones expose what we hide even from ourselves. She builds that belief into her main characters - Mari Ellwyn, Angus Mariner, Kurt Farin - each one drowning in dark secrets, running from unthinkable truths. The award-winning author of 14 mystery thrillers, her books pull readers into worlds of global espionage, fringe technology, and shadow governments. Her titles include Terror Bay (NYC Big Book Award), Codex (BookFest First Place), The Ridders (American Fiction Award), and her E&A Series thrillers Hot House and Salt Island both reached Amazon Kindle #1 Bestseller. 

 

Her next thriller, The Weight of Cold Things - described as Yellowstone meets The X-Files - publishes in August 2026. When she's not writing, she interviews authors on her Story Impact Podcast and coaches writers on how to be visible and memorable to readers. Follow her to get notified of new releases.


༺ CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR ༻

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༺ GIVEAWAY ༻

Follow the tour HERE for special content and a giveaway!

Enter The Weight of Cold Things Giveaway Here

 


༺ LAST WORD ༻

Cold is doing more than setting the atmosphere in The Weight of Cold Things. It preserves what has been hidden, hardens grief, and turns Deadhorse into the kind of place where the past can remain untouched for years—until Gree starts asking the wrong questions. Her search for Peter Barrett keeps circling back to AJ, her family, and a history she has spent considerable energy trying not to examine too closely. 

 

Gree is not arriving in Alaska as a detached investigator. She is already grieving, angry, suspicious, and carrying unfinished business from Wyoming. That makes the conspiracy personal before she even understands its scale. Readers who like their thrillers grounded in character as much as danger may find that tension—between the case she is pursuing and everything she would rather leave buried—one of the strongest reasons to follow her north.



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Christian Living Spotlight: Selling God's Way by Michael Hamer

Sales advice often concentrates on technique: how to find prospects, ask better questions, overcome objections, and close the deal. Michael P. Hamer approaches those same professional responsibilities from a different starting point in Selling God’s Way: Maximize Your Income And Business Relationships. Drawing on a sales career that began in childhood and eventually included nearly three decades in Washington, DC radio and television advertising, Hamer connects the practical mechanics of selling with biblical principles, service, and the way business relationships are treated long after a transaction is complete.


Maximize Your Income And Business Relationships

Business / Economics / Christian Living

Date Published: June 16, 2026

Publisher: Lucid Books Publishing

༺ ABOUT THE BOOK ༻

 

Selling God’s Way is a book that explains how to apply biblical principles to all aspects of professional selling: Prospecting, Questioning, Presenting, Closing, Servicing, and Handling Objections. Filled with biblical scripture and stories, the book presents the best way for any salesperson to maximize their income and business relationships, regardless of religion. Many people all over the world, and throughout all of time, believe that biblical wisdom remains the most valuable forever.


༺ WHY READ THIS BOOK ༻

 

Hamer organizes Selling God’s Way around the actual stages of professional selling rather than treating faith and business as separate subjects. Prospecting, questioning, presenting, closing, servicing, and handling objections each become places to consider not only effectiveness, but conduct. That structure gives the book a practical focus: the biblical principles are being applied to recognizable situations salespeople encounter in their work. 

 

His emphasis on relationships is equally important. After years in advertising sales and sales management, Hamer became concerned by what he saw as a decline in service-minded behavior and people-centered priorities in business. The result is a sales philosophy concerned with how business is done as well as what it produces. Readers interested in ethical selling, Christian approaches to business, or a relationship-centered alternative to purely transactional sales methods will find that distinction central to the book.


༺ WHO WILL LOVE IT ༻

 

Selling God’s Way is aimed most directly at people whose work involves selling, particularly those who want their professional methods to reflect biblical principles rather than treating faith as something separate from the workday. Sales representatives and managers can approach the book through its attention to specific parts of the sales process, while Christian business owners may be drawn to its larger concern with service and relationships. 

 

Hamer also states that the book is intended to be useful regardless of a reader’s religion, so its audience is not limited to explicitly Christian workplaces. Someone interested in ethical sales practices, long-term business relationships, and a less transactional understanding of success may find the author’s perspective worth considering even when approaching the biblical material from outside his faith tradition.


༺ ABOUT THE AUTHOR ༻

Michael P. Hamer is a lifelong salesperson whose journey in selling began at the age of seven on the streets of Gary, Indiana, where he sold eggs with his grandfather, a deeply religious man who helped shape Michael’s values and work ethic. Throughout high school and college, Michael continued honing his sales skills, selling products typical of his peers, books door-to-door in Los Angeles, and advertising space at a theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

 

Michael graduated from Boston University with a degree in communications, concentrating in advertising and marketing. Following graduation, he spent nearly three decades in advertising sales within the radio and television industries in the Washington, DC market. Over the years, he held a wide range of leadership roles, including Account Executive and General Sales Manager. 

 

In his final media position, Michael served as Sales Manager for WAVA Radio, a Christian teaching and talk radio station. Throughout his career, he earned numerous awards and recognition for both sales performance and management excellence. Despite his success, Michael observed a growing lack of service-minded behavior and people-centered priorities in business. Motivated by his love for salespeople and his deep commitment to God’s Word, he wrote Selling God’s Way to offer a faith-based approach to ethical selling that strengthens relationships, reduces stress, and aligns business success with biblical principles.


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༺ LAST WORD ༻

 

What distinguishes Selling God’s Way is the decision to bring questions of faith and ethics directly into the mechanics of selling. Hamer does not leave those ideas at the level of general business philosophy; he connects them to prospecting, questioning, presenting, closing, servicing, and objections—the points where a salesperson’s priorities become visible in actual interactions with customers. 

 

His long career in sales gives that discussion an additional layer. The concern behind the book is not simply how to earn more, but how professional success and stronger business relationships might develop together rather than at one another’s expense. For readers examining the role faith, service, and personal values play in their working lives, that is the conversation at the heart of Hamer’s approach.



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Christian Living Spotlight: Grab Another Gear by Wayne Williams

A stalled life does not always look like a failed one. It can look productive, established, even successful while the person living it knows something has stopped moving. In Grab Another Gear: Disrupt the Norm. Ignite Your Passion., Wayne Williams uses the language of shifting gears to examine that uncomfortable space between what has worked before and what needs to change next. His perspective is rooted in leadership, entrepreneurship, relationships, faith, and the experience of having to reassess direction when simply continuing in the same gear is no longer enough.


Disrupt the norm. Ignite your passion.

Business / Leadership / Religion / Christian Living

Date Published: April 15, 2026

Publisher: Lucid Books Publishing

ISBN-13: 9781632969262

༺ ABOUT THE BOOK ༻

 

Coasting feels comfortable until you realize it’s costing you everything. You weren’t built to settle, to grind through the motions, to let fear and exhaustion call the shots. But somewhere along the way, you got stuck. Stuck in routine. Stuck in expectations. Stuck in a version of yourself that plays it safe instead of stepping fully into who you were meant to be. 

 

This book is your invitation to grab another gear. To stop waiting. To start moving. To rediscover the strengths, passions, and relationships that make life rich and meaningful. Because your life isn’t meant to be endured. It’s meant to be lived fully, boldly, and with impact. 

 

In these pages, you’ll discover how to:

*Break free from the patterns that keep you stuck
*Step into your strengths and uncover what truly drives you
*Build relationships that fuel your purpose and legacy
*Stop coasting and start living with intention, passion, and courage
 

You have more to offer than you realize. More influence. More purpose. More fire in your soul than you’ve dared to believe. This is about unlocking your potential, making a difference in the world around you, and discovering life as it was intended for you to live. 

 

The road is open. The next gear is yours to take. Will you join me on this journey?


༺ WHY READ THIS BOOK ༻

 

Williams builds his message around a useful distinction: changing gears is not simply another way of saying “work harder.” The idea is to recognize when the gear that carried you through one season no longer fits the terrain ahead. Grab Another Gear applies that question to identity, legacy, relationships, and decision-making, giving the familiar language of personal growth a more concrete framework. 

 

The perspective also comes from someone who has had to navigate significant shifts himself. Williams built a multi-million-dollar telecommunications company, guided it through near-death moments, and ultimately through a successful exit. That background matters here because the book’s challenge to examine success, purpose, and direction is connected to lived experience rather than presented only as theory. Readers interested in the intersection of leadership, faith, personal responsibility, and meaningful change have several avenues into the conversation.


༺ WHO WILL LOVE IT ༻

 

Grab Another Gear is particularly suited to people who have already built a career, business, ministry, family life, or other substantial commitments and are questioning what should come next. Its focus on getting unstuck without reducing change to greater speed or effort should also resonate with leaders facing transition and people reconsidering the habits and expectations that have been directing their choices. 

 

The Christian-living dimension will matter to readers who want questions of purpose and calling considered alongside practical concerns such as leadership, relationships, legacy, and decision-making. Williams’s entrepreneurial background adds another point of connection for business owners and leaders who know that outward achievement does not automatically answer the more personal question of whether they are still moving in the right direction.


༺ ABOUT THE AUTHOR ༻

Wayne Williams is a guide, coach, and activator who unlocks growth in people and organizations. He's a devoted husband to his wife, Terina, and a father and grandfather who makes sure his family feels deeply loved. Wayne’s entrepreneurial drive took him from building a multi-million dollar telecom company, guiding it through near-death moments to a successful exit, to launching ventures shaped by innovation, integrity, and risk-taking. His love for the wilderness fuels his commitment to preserving traditions of pioneering, hunting, fishing, and land stewardship, while his heart for people drives him to restore lives and relationships. 

 

Known as a disruptor at heart, Wayne leans into stuck systems and unspoken tensions, not to create chaos but to spark transformation. He thrives in complexity, cuts through noise to find what matters most, and fights to surface ideas that release others into their calling.


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༺ LAST WORD ༻

 

The most interesting question behind Grab Another Gear is not how much more a person can accomplish, but whether continuing in a familiar pattern is still serving the life being built. Williams approaches change through the vocabulary of movement, yet his premise leaves room for a shift to mean something more deliberate than acceleration. Identity, relationships, legacy, faith, and the decisions that connect them all become part of deciding which gear actually belongs to the road ahead. 

 

That makes this a timely choice for established leaders as much as people standing at an obvious crossroads. A life can need recalibration before it looks broken from the outside, and recognizing that difference may be precisely where a meaningful change begins.



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Urban Fantasy Spotlight: Graves Robbed, Heirlooms Returned by Ashley Capes

Reed Lavender has an unusual advantage for a detective: the dead can tell him their last words. The trouble is that one final sentence rarely provides a tidy answer. Ashley Capes builds the Reed Lavender series around that complication, giving Reed one life as an investigator and another as a reaper while steadily tangling the two together. 

 

Beginning with a dead teenager whose case the police consider closed, the series moves through missing family members, captured reapers, troublesome gods, and questions surrounding Reed's own parents. Melbourne provides the urban backdrop, but Reed's ability to listen to the dead gives these mysteries their distinctive pulse—and sometimes leaves him with more questions than he had before.


Graves Robbed, Heirlooms Returned

Reed Lavender Book 1

by Ashley Capes

Genre: Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Mystery

Goodreads


༺ ABOUT THE BOOK ༻


He can speak to the dead. But will giving them justice get him killed?

 

Reed Lavender lives two lives—one as a detective and another as a reaper. Hearing the last words of the dead is a handy skill in his line of work, but magic can’t solve all his problems. While investigating the case of a teen runaway, he learns his cousin is missing. Racing against the clock, Reed soon finds himself trapped in a vast conspiracy.

 

A cult is capturing reapers to siphon their powers and his current case is somehow connected. But the deeper he digs, the more dangerous and convoluted the trail becomes. As his two lives get tangled, Reed realizes if he can’t solve the case and save his cousin, the man who listens to the dead will end up joining them.

 

Graves Robbed, Heirlooms Returned is the first thrilling urban fantasy novel in the Reed Lavender series. If you love snarky heroes, twisty mysteries and plenty of magic, delve into Graves Robbed, Heirlooms Returned!

 

**Get it FREE!**


༺ WHY READ THIS BOOK ༻


Reed's supernatural ability does not replace detective work; it complicates it. The dead can offer him their final words, but those words may be cryptic, mundane, or nearly useless without the investigation needed to understand them. That limitation gives the paranormal element a particularly good fit with the mystery structure: magic can provide a clue, but Reed still has to determine what the clue means.

 

The opening case also gives the larger supernatural conflict a human center. Reed begins with Elise, a teenager whose death might otherwise be dismissed, and his determination to find answers for her pulls him toward a conspiracy involving captured reapers. Add the disappearance of his cousin and unresolved questions about his parents, and Reed's professional investigations become increasingly difficult to separate from his own history.



༺ WHO WILL LOVE IT ༻


The Reed Lavender series is suited to urban fantasy readers who want the mystery to matter as much as the magic. Reed's ability to retrieve a dead person's final words gives crime-solving a supernatural edge without handing him an easy solution, while reapers, cults, Spirit-Worms, gods, and divine artifacts steadily expand the world around the investigations.

 

Readers who appreciate a snarky protagonist carrying a stubborn sense of responsibility should also find plenty to work with here. Reed keeps pursuing answers for people who can no longer demand them for themselves, even as those investigations lead directly into dangers involving his family and the supernatural forces operating throughout his city.


༺ read an EXCERPT ༻


Graves Robbed, Heirlooms Returned (Reed Lavender: 1)

 

Chapter 1

 

In the bright moonlight, Reed Lavender inserted his best crowbar into the pine box where the top met the sides and wrenched the steel down. Wood squeaked and he shuddered. Worse than fingernails on a blackboard. He lifted the lid free, resting it against the freshly turned earth – which, unlike the sound of an opening coffin – was an almost pleasant thing. A pungent scent, but real. Honest. Worms and bugs, minerals and secrets lived in the earth; when you got right down to it, grave dirt wasn’t really any different to regular dirt.

 

And he was certainly down to it now, about to be elbow-deep in a coffin.

 

Again.

 

But for what they’d given Elise, the word ‘coffin’ was a stretch. A pine box wasn’t much of a final resting place – dignity hardly came cheap in Rikerton’s funeral home and unclaimed bodies were lucky to avoid the incinerator. Or maybe that would have been better. Dust to dust and all that.

 

“But then you’d be out of work,” he told himself.

 

Elise the runaway – that’s what the police thought she was – lay in her dirty jeans and the same faded Pink Floyd t-shirt she wore when she walked into the cafe two days back. Her arms lay at her sides, cuts on her palms mostly hidden. Her face had been covered... by a used napkin. “Jesus, Jennings, that the best you could do?” Reed growled. At least the napkin was in one piece; the undertaker had been known to be far more slipshod at times.

 

Reed lifted the napkin... and ground his teeth.

 

She’d been beaten blue. Deep bruises swam across her cheeks, one eye swollen shut and the other just as blackened, torn skin at her temple. Jennings had cleaned her face up well enough but there were still leaf fragments and dried blood in her hair. The pallor of death had washed out Elise’s freckles, mere suggestions crossing her bent nose. God, what is she, fifteen? She looks so small.

 

Reed tossed the napkin aside and unwound his scarf, folded it and placed it over her face, standing still a moment, shaking as he blinked. The night air ran chill fingers across his now-exposed throat and the back of his neck. Finally, he took a breath and leant over the coffin, where he lifted her arm. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he said softly, twisting her silver bracelet up to the moon. Only the letters ‘Elise’ engraved there. Really, there was little he could learn from a perfunctory glance at her clothing and jewellery that the police wouldn’t have already catalogued. He’d check that later, of course – but Elise deserved more.

 

No, he’d have to wake her up – sort of.

 

Her last words would maybe be enough of a clue. Most folks didn’t have much to say, right before the end. Sometimes it was a scream or a grunt if he was unlucky. Other times, they addressed their killer. Or a loved one, perhaps, if the death was peaceful. Not that I’ve heard a lot of those in my time.

 

There’d been a man out west, he couldn’t recall where - so many cities and towns blended together - whose last words had been an apology for burnt toast. After that, the poor guy hadn’t said a thing before being t-boned at an intersection by a bus an hour later, two blocks from his office.

 

But sometimes, a person’s last sentence held a clue.

 

“Come on, Elise, tell me something I can use.”

 

If she didn’t, he had no other supernatural tricks up his sleeve either, since he couldn’t simply call upon her spirit. It would have made things much easier and allowed him to stop violating peoples’ graves but sadly, he wasn’t that lucky.

 

Reed removed the scarf a moment, took her cold hands and closed his eyes, sending his awareness down through her mute fingertips, pushing his way along quiet veins until he reached her chest, still echoing with the memory of a million heartbeats, then at last up the throat to the tongue; the tongue which remembered everything.

 

But it would move only once more.

 

“In the name of Mors, speak any that you might,” he whispered. “I’ll help you if you can.”

 

Her body resisted.

 

Not unusual. It meant reliving the pain and shock – why wouldn’t her body want to fight that? It was at rest now, if not at peace. But he had to know. Reed pushed harder, pouring both his hope and anger into the request. “Please, Elise.”

 

A flicker, a tiny sound as her jaw shifted.

 

He opened his eyes and leant close. Would it be a scream? A clue? Nonsense? Her voice was little more than a rasping whisper, such as might easily be mistaken for a breeze, but he caught the words.

 

“Wow, what a beautiful view. This is some place; you can see half the city from here.”

 

Then silence.

 

“Shit.” Poor girl, she probably never saw it coming.

 

Reed lowered Elise’s hands. Half the city. That hardly narrowed things down – there were only hundreds of such high points available. But it probably put the owner in a certain tax bracket at least. He shook his head. No assumptions. It was his first rule. And that went for murder too – maybe it was an accident. Still, something happened to bring Elise’s life to an unjust end.

 

He had to find out; no-one else was looking and Elise’s grandmother deserved answers. Even unpleasant ones, he supposed.

 

Reed placed the scarf back over the girl’s face and reached for his shovel.

 


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Graves Robbed, Heirlooms Returned

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༺ CONTINUE THE SERIES ༻


The Radiant King

Reed Lavender Book 2

 

Things aren’t exactly getting easier for Reed Lavender.

 

Old obligations and new cases are piling up but in the aftermath of Feronia’s defeat, answers are still too thin on the ground. But one clue – his father’s knucklebone – might just lead to something big.

 

To learn the truth about his parents’ disappearance, Reed will have to take the fight to whoever is behind the growing turmoil in his city. And if the rising number of Spirit-Worms, needy Gods, vindictive lawmen and only somewhat-helpful cousins don’t stop Reed, then his sense of duty might do what the others cannot.

 

Because Reed now finds himself caught between two goals – solving the murder of Elise or chasing down whoever stole the Goddess’ hand, an unfathomable thief who might hold answers about his parents…

 

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Summer in the City

Reed Lavender Book 3

 

Reed is about to snap - and this time, nothing is going to stand in his way when it comes to getting answers for Elise, not even a supposedly long-vanished Sumerian God.

 

Or so Reed thinks.

 

But summer in the city isn't going to be like the others. The city itself isn't quite the same either, and even if you're lucky (or cursed) enough to count the children of Gods among your friends, nothing is ever simple...

 

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༺ ABOUT THE AUTHOR ༻


Ashley is a poet, novelist and ex-teacher living in Australia.

 

He taught English, Media and Music Production, he ‘sang’ in a metal band, worked in an art gallery and for a few years, slaved away at music retail. (For a few years, he was also a legal secretary).

 

Aside from reading and writing, Ashley loves (indoor) volleyball, Studio Ghibli and Magnum PI.


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༺ LAST WORD ༻


Reed Lavender's gift is compelling precisely because it has limits. A dead person's last words may point him toward the truth, but they cannot tell him how all the pieces fit together. That leaves room for the detective behind the supernatural ability—and for cases in which justice depends on Reed being willing to keep digging when everyone else has stopped.

 

Across the three books featured here, that search for answers widens from Elise's death into Reed's missing family, divine interference, and increasingly strange trouble throughout his city. For an investigator who makes a habit of listening when the dead speak, ignoring unfinished business was probably never going to be an option.

 



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