Category: Fiction

Review: Mercy

His daughter was taken. He’ll never get her back.

Set in the near future, Matt Deal is a British businessman married into a wealthy Florida family.

Mercy, his fifteen-year-old daughter, is the glue in his rocky marriage to Lorey. His life is changed forever after Mercy is brutally sexually assaulted on a Destin beach leaving her in a persistent vegetative state.

Trusting the local detectives to bring the rapists to justice, mixed martial arts expert Deal concentrates in vain on his Florida gym business, only to have his world further explode on learning the men responsible for his daughter’s injuries may escape justice. Deal is isolated and at his wit’s end after his rich father-in-law sends death threats blaming him for all these ills.

Who can he turn to? Where can he go? What will he do? Who can he trust?

Will he return to a post-Brexit Britain or ultimately will he seek revenge?

*** Trigger Warning ***
Contains a scene of sexual violence and some scenes of explicit consensual adult sex. (less)

Review: Black Jade

Could an old-fashioned ballgown be used to commit murder?

Daiyu Wu is aware that fear of the Yellow Terror has made her nationality a rare breed in the Lone Star State. Being Chinese and blind makes her doubly unique in 1930 Dallas. Despite these impediments, anyone who dismisses her for either fact does so at their peril.

One day, at her family-owned laundry business, Dai detects the scent of burned garlic. With the help of her companion, Jacques, the source is soon discovered. It is a green ballgown. The gown has money pinned inside it to pay for the cleaning, but oddly, it came with no address label to identify its owner. Her extensive knowledge leads Dai to believe someone has committed murder using arsenic. The perpetrator is trying to use White Laundry to hide the evidence. But no mention of foul play turns up in the newspapers, and there’s not enough proof to convince the police there’s been a crime.

Her curiosity and intellect stimulated like never before; Dai ignores the possible consequences and sets out to solve the mystery with the help of her canine companion, Prince Razor, and her confidant, Jacques Haskins. It’s either that or let the killer get away with it – assuming a spoiled popinjay, his jealous self-appointed girlfriend, and Dai’s overprotective parents don’t get in her way.

Review: The Collar and the Cavvarach

Bensin, a teenage slave and martial artist, is desperate to see his little sister freed. But only victory in the Krillonian Empire’s most prestigious tournament will allow him to secretly arrange for Ellie’s escape. Dangerous people are closing in on her, however, and Bensin is running out of time.

With his one hope fading quickly away, how can Bensin save Ellie from a life of slavery and abuse?

Review: Blood Parish

How does the disappearance of 19 high school baseball players remain a mystery for 30 years?

Angel Blondeaux had been taught since birth to never betray family, only to escape the clutches of home to become an FBI agent. For generations, Blondeaux has been the name to respect in Moreau Parish and the name to fear. Crime is no longer a part of life, but a lifestyle woven into the fabric of the parish. So, when Angel Blondeaux had graduated Quantico, she was rejected by the family like a bad organ.

The matriarch of the Blondeaux clan is Angel’s grandmother Paulette. Paulette’s successor was to be Angel’s aunt Lorna, until her mysterious death places the role of heir up for grabs. The FBI forces Angel to return home for her aunt’s funeral, only to discover a new will has been drafted, leaving Angel the house and an immense plot of land, along with the buried secrets of the missing baseball players.

Review: Chloe After Dark

Moving on from a painful breakup with her boyfriend, beautiful Chloe Milano takes a job as a radio host at a steamy late night erotic radio station to pay off her debts and make ends meet. But she gets a lot more than she bargained for when she becomes entangled in the salacious fantasies of after-hours callers…

Review: Edge Case

When her husband suddenly disappears, a young woman must uncover where he went—and who she might be without him—in this striking debut of immigration, identity, and marriage.

After another taxing day as the sole female employee at her New York City tech startup, Edwina comes home to find that her husband, Marlin, has packed up a suitcase and left. The only question now is why. Did he give up on their increasingly hopeless quest to secure their green cards and decide to return to Malaysia? Was it the death of his father that sent him into a tailspin? Or has his strange, sudden change in personality finally made Marlin and Edwina strangers to each other?

As Edwina searches the city for traces of her husband, she simultaneously sifts through memories of their relationship, hoping to discover the moment when something went wrong. All the while, a coworker is making increasingly uncomfortable advances toward her. And she can’t hide the truth about Marlin’s disappearance from her overbearing, eccentric mother for much longer. Soon Edwina will have to decide how much she is willing to sacrifice in order to stay in her marriage and in America.

Poignant and darkly funny, Edge Case is a searing meditation on intimacy, estrangement, and the fractured nature of identity. In this moving debut, YZ Chin explores the imperfect yet enduring relationships we hold to country and family.

Review: Who Did You Tell?

Astrid is newly sober and trying to turn her life around. Having reluctantly moved back in with her mother, in a quiet seaside town away from the temptations and darkness of her previous life , she is focusing on her recovery. She’s going to meetings. Confessing her misdeeds. Making amends to those she’s wronged. If she fills her days, maybe she can outrun the ghosts that haunt her. Maybe she can start anew.

But someone is tormenting me now. Someone knows where I am and what I’ve done.

Someone knows exactly what Astrid is running from. And they won’t stop until she learns that some mistakes can’t be corrected. Some mistakes, you have to pay for . . .

Review: Monster Hunter Bloodlines

The chaos god Asag has been quiet since the destruction of the City of Monsters, but Monster Hunter International know that he is still out there, somewhere—plotting, waiting for his chance to unravel reality.

When Owen and the MHI team discover that one of Isaac Newton’s Ward Stones is being auctioned off by Reptoids who live deep beneath Atlanta, they decide to steal the magical superweapon and use it to destroy Asag once and for all. But before the stone can be handed off, it is stolen by a mysterious thief with ties to MHI and the Vatican’s Secret Guard.

It’s a race against time, the Secret Guard, a spectral bounty hunter, and a whole bunch of monsters to acquire the Ward Stone and use it against Asag. For as dangerous as the chaos god is, there is something much older—and infinitely more evil—awakening deep in the jungles of South America.

Review: Archer of the Heathland: Intrigue

rogue Duke, a beautiful woman, and a deadly mission.

Weyland, the best archer in the king’s army, wants revenge for the slaughter of his family. But when he stumbles across a murdered man with a secret and he saves a duke’s life in battle, he finds himself entangled in noble intrigues of the worst kind. A copper coin, a princess, and a beautiful tavern girl push Weyland’s skill and loyalty to the limit. Now Weyland has to survive long enough to fulfill his promise to the Duke without getting so deeply ensnared in noble intrigues that he cannot escape.

This novelette introduces the new adventure series Archer of the Heathland. Book One of the series, entitled Deliverance, picks up the story of Weyland’s son, Brion, and his desperate flight into the heathland.

This is an adventure series perfect for fans of John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, Christopher Paolini’s Eragon series, and George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire series.

Reviews © Copyright 2022 Korra Baskerville