Spotlight: This is Halloween by Sarah Branson

(A Blue Spruce Hills Novella)

Publication date: September 17th 2026

Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Midwife. Halloween. A Pennsylvania hill town. A ghost with an agenda. A historian with patient eyes.

Jules Lockwood, nurse-midwife and family nurse practitioner, wants two years of loan forgiveness and a one-way ticket to Australia. Her obstacle: a town that keeps finding reasons to need her.

Eli Matthews, Blue Spruce Hills town historian, is the kind of man who came back when it mattered and stayed. He brings coffee every morning without being asked.

Agnes Bell, midwife, 1856 to 1931, has been waiting in Blue Spruce Hills since her death for the right pair of hands to pass her work to. She has found them. She is not subtle about it.

On Halloween night, when the veil between past and present is at its thinnest, everything Jules came to Blue Spruce Hills to avoid arrives at once.

This Is Halloween delivers the satisfaction of a woman choosing herself and her work on her own terms, a slow-burn romance that earns every moment, and a ghost story that will make you wish you could have known Agnes Bell.

• small town romance
• ghost mentor
• found community
• slow burn
• woman finding home
• past and present collide
• reluctant to stay
• Halloween setting
• professional woman romance
• haunted by the past (literal)
• second chance at belonging

Heat level: closed door
Series: Blue Spruce Hills, Book 1 — standalone, complete story, no cliffhanger
POV: third person limited, Jules
Tense: past
Setting: small Pennsylvania town, October through May
Comp titles: The House in the Cerulean Sea; Beach Read; A Discovery of Witches
Content notes: pregnancy and birth depicted (clinical, not graphic); brief mention of historical pregnancy loss (off-page); deployment/absent spouse (minor character)

Excerpt

Juliet "Jules" Lockwood had sworn exactly six times since leaving the highway and crossing the Blue Spruce Hills town line. All six had been silent. All six had been necessary.

She pulled her Subaru into the gravel lot beside the Blue Spruce Hills Community Clinic and sat there longer than necessary, hands wrapped around the steering wheel like the car might attempt escape without her. Outside, the October sky was an intense blue with a few white clouds scudding across it. A carved pumpkin grinned from the clinic's front step. Orange lights shaped like leaves were looped around the porch railing. Just up the street, a plastic skeleton swung from a telephone pole, rotating haphazardly in the wind.

Jules stared at the skeleton. The skeleton appeared to stare back.

She opened the car door, stepped out onto the gravel, closed her eyes, and took a deep inhale. Wood smoke and baked goods, harvest-sweet with cinnamon and nutmeg. It was, Jules thought grimly, aggressively charming. She took a step and nearly collided with a man holding a cardboard tray of coffee.

"Oh! Sorry!" he said, immediately steadying both the tray and her elbow with equal care. He was tall and laid back, with dark hair that the wind had done something unrequested to and kind brown eyes, soft and patient, the sort of eyes that suggested the person behind them listened when you talked. He wore a canvas jacket the color of cedar bark and was smiling with the easy confidence of someone who had nowhere to be and was fine with that. "You must be Jules."

She froze. This was... unfortunate. Because those eyes were going to be a problem. She recognized his type immediately, the way one would recognize a load-bearing wall, structural and quiet, that the whole room organizes itself around without anyone quite noticing. Those eyes reflected the sort of steadiness that belonged to men who stayed. She had believed that about someone once. Believed it comprehensively and inconveniently, and at considerable personal expense. Never again.

"I'm Eli Matthews," he said, and held out the coffee tray. "Town historian and unofficial town greeter. I brought options. Decaf, regular, and one with oat milk, because the clinic called ahead and..." he paused, reconsidering his own sentence, "okay, I asked Margaret at the post office, who asked Clara at the bakery, who said she had heard that you'd mentioned oat milk to someone at the gas station in Lehighton."

Jules stared at the tray. "That's a significant intelligence operation for a cup of coffee."

He smiled, a little sheepishly. "Small town. We have patterns." He glanced at the pumpkin on the porch. "Also, it's October. We take hospitality seriously in October."

She reached for the oat milk coffee. Behind her, someone cleared their throat very distinctly — the throat-clearing of someone who had been waiting a respectable amount of time and was now done waiting. Jules's hand tightened around the cup.

She recognized that sound. She knew it the way she knew a change in barometric pressure, in her teeth, at the base of her skull, in the specific cold that moved along her spine when something was present that had no business being present.

Absolutely not. I am not doing ghosts again.

She turned slowly.

Buy on Amazon | Bookshop.org

About the Author

Award-winning feminist speculative fiction author Sarah Branson spent close to thirty years as a midwife before turning to fiction, writing tales of action, adventure, revenge, and romance rooted in the strength and resiliency of the human spirit. Her New Earth universe imagines a future where diversity of identity is simply the texture of life, with honors including the 2022 Kindle Book Award for science fiction, the 2025 Wishing Shelf Book Award Gold Medal for A Pirates' Pact, and a Foreword Indie Award Honorable Mention for For the Love of Glitter. Her two newest releases expand beyond New Earth: This Is Halloween, a cozy women's fiction novella in the Blue Spruce Hills series (September 17, 2026), and Life Ends, Love Remains: A Revolutionary Ghost Story, a literary paranormal novel set in Ridgefield, Connecticut (early October 2026). Sarah lives with her husband in Connecticut.

Connect:

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This is Halloween Blitz

Spotlight: Poontown: A Novel of Chasing Tarpon and Glory by L.M. Weeks

Pub Date: September 15, 2026

Genre: Fiction/Contemporary

Publisher: South Fork Publishers LLC

Five Teams. Five Days. One Legendary Fish 

Award-winning author and three-time tarpon-tournament Grand Champion L.M. “Mark” Weeks welcomes you to Poontown, where obsession, memory, and fish collide.

The Sabalo Cup Invitational is the most prestigious tarpon fly-fishing tournament in the world, attracting an unforgettable collection of obsessives, oddballs, and glory-chasers to the sun-scorched backcountry and turquoise ocean of the Tequesta Isles. For five brutal days, elite guides and determined anglers battle giant tarpon, sharks, weather, rivals, aging bodies, and their own stubborn ambitions in pursuit of victory.

The competitors are as colorful as the waters they fish. A burned-out lawyer chasing one last shot at glory. A French magnate who somehow arrives at every tournament start looking like he never went to bed. A retired exotic dancer turned psychologist battling self-doubt as fiercely as the fish themselves. Together, they plunge into a world where carefully crafted plans unravel with spectacular efficiency.

Naked Frenchmen. Jet ski disasters. Crocodile encounters. Midnight rescue missions. And somewhere amid the chaos swims the fish of a lifetime.

Wildly funny, surprisingly moving, and drawn from decades of real-world tarpon fly-fishing experience, Poontown is an authentic adventure about obsession, friendship, redemption, and the dreams we keep chasing long after common sense tells us to quit.

Perfect for fans of Carl Hiaasen, Patrick D. Smith, and character-driven adventure fiction filled with humor, heart, and unforgettable characters.

Excerpt

Excerpt from Poontown: A Novel of Chasing Tarpon and Glory by L.M. Weeks (South Fork Publishers, LLC, 2026), Reprinted with permission.

The sixteen-pound tippet parted like a strand of hair, and the hundred-pound tarpon, its scale-covered back glittering in the sun like green chain mail, swam free near the surface. It readjusted its enormous protruding lower jaw—slightly dislocated from being relentlessly pulled on—rose to gulp air, and disappeared into the deeper water off the edge of the flat.

Iain Holden smiled. “A little too much heat?”

“Yeah, I figured I might break her off at that angle, but I wanted to push it to the limit.” Greg Johnson fought fish to the breaking point on practice days, and he knew his guide wasn’t angry. He wanted to experience how the rod felt in his hands when he popped the tippet—the weakest part of the clear leader—on a big tarpon. Then, during a tournament, he could dial the pressure back to eighty percent to bring his target to hand quickly without overstressing the line.

Greg’s eyes lingered in the fish’s direction, feeling the familiar mix of exhilaration and frustration from losing a big tarpon. June couldn’t come soon enough. The Sabalo Cup, named after the Spanish word for tarpon, kicked off in just a couple of weeks, and Greg had never felt more prepared or confident.

Everything Greg had done—selling his law practice, fishing obsessively, forcing himself into the gym, practicing his casting until his shoulder whined—had made him the best fly angler he could be. 

Landing seven giant tarpon before 2 p.m., an extraordinary number to catch and release in one day, Greg had already experienced the best fly fishing of his life. String after string of massive sea creatures poured into the shallows. From a distance, they looked like ants marching across the flat; as they approached, their size—and Greg’s excitement—increased.

The often-finicky tarpon had been particularly bitey, sometimes even fighting with each other over Greg’s three-inch long beige pink squid fly. “They’re like piranhas today!” Iain said, laughing, after one particularly vicious eat.

At first, Greg had been happy just getting invited to compete in the Cup, but as the years wore on without winning, he wondered if he was just a loser who had abandoned a seven-figure career to participate in a tournament that didn’t even pay out a cash prize. Winning would prove to himself and everyone else that he deserved to fish the Cup.

His knee throbbed as he shifted his weight, reminding him of the previous year’s meniscus surgery. The infirmity had thrown him off balance often enough that he wore a knee supporter when fishing, but he tried not to obsess about it. 

Greg also wanted to win for Iain.

Iain was a highly competitive former college linebacker-turned-professional tarpon guide, whom Greg had convinced to be his tournament partner. They’d fished together for decades, and Iain had helped Greg land the biggest fish of his life. Winning the Sabalo Cup would guarantee Iain product endorsements and business from top anglers for the rest of his career. But more than anything, Greg knew Iain wanted to have his name on the trophy alongside his heroes in the guiding community.

Greg believed in their chances in part because he and Iain had already won two of the other major tournaments: the Megalops and the Dimock. But the Sabalo Cup was different. As the oldest and most prestigious of the tarpon tournaments, it was the Olympics of saltwater fly fishing. The others were qualifiers.

And it was crunch time. Unless they won this year, it was the last time they could compete before needing to requalify by winning one of the other tournaments again. And Greg, approaching fifty-five, didn’t think he had it in him to qualify for another Cup.

As if reading the turmoil in Greg’s mind, Iain said, “Given the way you’re fishin’, if I can find you fish, we could win this tournament. All we need to do is beat Nathan and Landon.”

Is THAT all?! Greg thought. “Right. The only problem is they’re the best team on the planet—no pressure there.” Greg knew Iain was trying to be supportive, but five consecutive years of getting your ass kicked by the dynamic duo had a way of making one pessimistic.

As Iain idled back to retrieve the twenty-four-foot push pole he’d planted in the bottom to protect their spot on the sand bar while they’d fought the fish, Greg took two bottles of water from the cooler, then shut the lid quietly and sat on it. Needing relief from working the tarpon in the oppressive heat and humidity that enveloped them like steam in a Turkish sauna, he emptied the liquid in one bottle over his head, savoring the blessed coolness. He mixed a packet of electrolytes into the other and chugged its contents. They had two hours of fishing ahead of them, and he wanted to preserve his energy.

Greg had grown up fly fishing for trout but didn’t venture into the ocean until after law school. He had always loved the sport, and he became addicted to saltwater fly fishing after catching his first striped bass, an eight-pound “schoolie,” by far the biggest fish he’d ever caught on a fly rod.

It was downhill from there. A guide told him, “Striped bass are the gateway drug to saltwater fly fishing. Catch one on fly, and twenty years later, you’re throwin’ pink synthetic chickens at marlin.” That summed up the progression of Greg’s career as a recreational saltwater fly angler, except that tarpon was his drug of choice.

Twenty years later, he fished for more than three months a year during the annual migration in the spring and early summer when tarpon congregated around the Isles to eat palolo worms and spawn offshore on the big moons. He had been fishing for so many days straight this season that he’d lost track of the clock as the days melded into one another and the beard on his usually clean-shaven face grew longer. He loved the eternal feeling of being on the water, in the zone, day after day as if time had stopped.

Greg heard two boats approaching from behind.

He looked back and frowned when he saw the skiffs coming off plane. Each boat carried a guide and an angler. He and Iain knew the guides.

The skiffs had come south from Seminole Sound, through the creek into Archelon, a beautiful and productive basin.

That morning, when Iain had said they were going to fish the rising tide at Archelon, Greg promised to back him up despite his concerns about the Meister brothers, known as the “Archelon Nazis.” Now, with his risk-averse lawyer senses kicking in, he wasn’t so sure it was a good idea to confront them. 

Greg had fished this coveted bar in Archelon for years—a place that, on the right tide, held enough fish to prove that he had the chops to win the Cup. If only he could fish it without interference from the guides he saw in the oncoming skiffs.

As the two skiffs closed to within fifty feet, Iain, standing in front of the console with a hand on the steering wheel, said in his south Seminole drawl, “Hi, boys. What’s goin’ on?”

Oh shit. Here we go, thought Greg.

Buy on Amazon

About the Author

L.M. (“Mark”) Weeks is the bestselling and award-winning author of Bottled Lightning, an international lawyer, and a three-time tarpon-tournament Grand Champion. He is also a multiple fly-rod world-record holder.

Born in Alaska and raised in Idaho, he began fly fishing for trout and steelhead at a young age. After moving to New York for law school, he discovered saltwater fly fishing and later fished extensively throughout Asia while living in Japan, winning a sea-bass fly-fishing tournament and setting records along the way. 

What began as a passion became an obsession, cured only by chasing fish around the globe. He took up tarpon fishing in his forties and, after meeting tarpon tournament Grand Champions Eizo Maruhashi and Andy Mill, set his sights on the tournament circuit.

At fifty-six, Weeks stepped down as managing partner of the Tokyo office of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP to pursue tournament fishing—and to write. His goal was to win one of the “Big Three” invitational tarpon tournaments in the Florida Keys by age sixty and write a novel about tarpon fly fishing.

There were two problems: He had no tournament guide, and he had yet to be invited to compete. He eventually partnered with Captain Andy Thompson and earned invitations to the Big Three and the HLM Tarpon Cup. Together they won the Don Hawley Invitational Tarpon Fly Tournament twice and the HLM Tarpon Cup. Years later, Weeks was appointed chairman of the Hawley.

Throughout his years of tarpon fishing, he kept detailed notes about life on the water and the stories he heard there. As the saying goes, people will tell you things on a skiff they’d never tell their therapist. Poontown grew out of those experiences and stories

Spotlight: Falling for Peachtree Bluff by Kristy Woodson Harvey

Welcome to Peachtree Bluff: a sweet, cozy small town where family is everything. The “go-to for elevated beach reads,” (People), Kristy Woodson Harvey, returns just in time for pumpkin spice season.

The air is crisper, the water is calmer, but, when it comes to the Murphy family, nothing is ever quite as simple as it seems.

Youngest sister Emerson is busy planning her dream wedding to Kyle. But her difficulty expanding her family is overshadowing her joy. Pregnant middle sister Sloane and her husband Adam’s dream house has turned into a nightmare. Everything is over time, over budget, and Sloane is over it. Eldest sister Caroline, as always, is there to swoop in and get her sisters’ lives under control. Until her focus is more than a little shifted by Emerson’s hunky costar who manages to sweep her right off her feet—just as her not-quite-ex-husband decides it’s high time he begged Caroline for a second chance.

Matriarch Ansley and her new husband Jack have finally hit their stride. But when a scandal that would affect every single Peachtree Bluff citizen comes to light—and it seems like Jack just might be at the center of it—Ansley questions whether he is actually the man she thought he was.

Through it all, these women must rely on their powerful family bonds, and the quirky characters and small-town charm of the place that, no matter what, always calls them home.

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Audible | Hardback | Bookshop.org

About the Author

Kristy Woodson Harvey is the New York Times, USA TODAY, and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of fourteen novels, including Summer State of Mind, Beach House Rules, and the Peachtree Bluff series. Many of her novels are in stages of option or development for film and television. She has been featured on Good Morning America, in Southern Living, Cosmopolitan, People, and many others. Kristy is the winner of the Lucy Bramlette Patterson Award for Excellence in Creative Writing and a finalist for the Southern Book Prize, and her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Parade, Traditional Home, USA TODAY, Country Living, and many more. Kristy is the cocreator and cohost of the hit weekly web show and podcast Friends & Fiction with fellow New York Times bestselling authors Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, and Patti Callahan Henry. She is also the cofounder of the award-winning interiors site Design Chic, with her mom, Beth Woodson. She lives on the North Carolina coast with her husband, son, and dog, Salt, where she is (always!) working on her next novel.

Spotlight: Less the Horror than the Grace by Robert Owens Scott

Genre: Women's Historical Fiction, Folk Horror, Old Gods Alive Today

A modern retelling of the Medusa myth set in a snake-handling church in Tennessee in the summer of 1920 as they vote to ratify women's suffrage for the entire United States.

It's the summer of 1920 and the hollers of Tennessee are dripping with humidity and tension, the electricity in the air broken only by storms and, if you're lucky, a travelling revival. The most famous features a lady preacher-who bestows the power on her listeners to become greater than themselves, and to handle the most venomous snakes without fear, investing them with a spiritual power they've never known.

Miles away in Nashville, the state legislature is about to vote on Women's Suffrage. If it passes in Tennessee, it will become law of the land. If it fails, the measure is all but dead. It's clear the measure will pass or fail on the slimmest margin of votes and both sides are upping the ante by playing dirty.

Elsewhere in Nashville, Theo Hood graduates from seminary. The son of his denomination's founder, he secretly plots his own course to bring religion into the future by embracing science and the new psychology of Dr. Freud, framing theology which gives new importance to listening to women.

Because of his unconventional views, Theo is sent as a "participant observer" to the mountain hamlet of Parthenon because strange reports have been filtering in. His long journey through the woods and into the mountains is wound with confusion and strange sightings, on top of which, Theo arrives just in time to attend the funeral of the pastor he was supposed to observe-who was killed by a snake bite. The popular female revivalist becomes the new pastor.

Welcomed into the home of the mayor, who's also the local state legislator, Theo can't help but notice a strange pall over the town. He finds an unexpected kinship with Minerva, the pastor, who seems to have unusual powers. As Theo becomes immersed in the life of the citizens-falling in love with one of them-he is confused by what seems to be supernatural goings-on. And listening, actually listening, to the women shocks him more than anything.

During the final push of the country's most famous suffragettes-including the leader, Bernadette Shaw, who can see death in the future of many-Theo fights to find out what's really going on, is allowed into the fellowship of women and nearly dies for it, before finding an unexpected ally as the legislators ready to vote for women's suffrage face what Theo knows to be a supernatural battle.

Excerpt

THUNDER

Chapter One

Glory

They say the great revival that swept Tennessee in the election year of 1920 started small, at a coal camp meeting in 1910, when a spirit-filled preacher of the fair sex handled snakes as a sign of divine power. The forces she wielded that night were ancient and unconditional. They were enlivened, terrified, and enthralled. What occurred had neither rational explanation nor practical means of control. 

It simply was.

The miners needed an outlet, God knows. Strike talk ran rampant, though they couldn’t speak their grievances in the open. But they could sure as shit mutter curses against the owners, and they did, constantly. On Monday, that guy from Nashville – the one who looked more like a weasel than any man they ever saw – went on about how the bosses were honorable men who cared for them and their families more than any union ever would. He also let them know that those fine fellows wouldn’t hesitate to boot them all out on their ungrateful asses and watch those beloveds starve if they so much as thought about unionizing come January.

Winter felt a long way off on that sweltering July night. Clouds sealed the sky like wax on a canning jar. Thunder rumbled low, nagging, and unrelenting. Normally you’d hope for the rain to bust loose and bring a little blessed relief. That night, though, the heavy air held so much water you might drown and your body would wash down the mine shaft, where you’d slide on your butt to the pits of hell. The lightning flashes in the sky came from over the ridge, but everywhere the air felt full of electricity, crackling and dangerous.

Nobody heard tell of any revival meeting. The bosses harshly forbade public gatherings. Three men on a match would constitute a violation and be fired before they got a decent lungful. When the singing started, though, the men and boys young as eight who’d worked all day hacking coal from the earth headed over, curious, in ones and twos and threes. When the miners failed to show up at their shacks for dinner, the wives and sisters and kids too young to start their lives in the mines came looking. 

Somebody started clapping along with the song. Women and children joined in. Pretty soon the tattoo spread throughout the crowd, which numbered thirty or forty, all told. You couldn’t see who led the singing, whether it was a man or a woman. The husky voice carried far and soared high and low. 

A song that was familiar had to be a hymn. The grownups knew they’d heard it at church back when they’d bounced on their mothers’ knees. They couldn’t place it, exactly, but they sang along all the same. Words like “praise,” “glory,” and “hallelujah” rode on the simple tune, and by the chorus all the gathered souls sang as one. 

The mine bosses sauntered out of their rough wood office, their faces stormier than the night. A goddamned public gathering right when we outlawed such goin’s on. Would they put up with such disobedience? They’d report this outrage to the owners in due time. Right then, though, they may as well try to stop the river during a flood. Instead of objecting, they joined in. 

The religious among those present – and who lived in the Tennessee mountains in those days save good Christians? – could see what was happening plain as day: the Spirit was moving in their midst.

The song ended. Darkness descended. Silence fell along with it. Nobody spoke or even coughed. The children sat as hushed as the elders. After some amount of time – from a minute to an hour, depending on who told the story later – a voice sounded from the front. Rich and deep like a tenor, yet instantly recognizable as womanly. 

“Glory,” it said. And again, “Glory.”

Then silence. Heavy. Pregnant. Even the cicadas and katydids liked to hold their breath. 

“Holy,” said the voice. “Holy. Holy.”

Folks here and there repeated the words back to her, but nothing quelled the feeling of hushed awe. 

Buy on Amazon | Bookshop.org

About the Author

Robert Owens Scott was an Emmy-winning writer and editor and graduate of Union Seminary. He lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. 

Sharon Linnéa is the author of the bestselling Eden thrillers with Chaplain (COL) Barbara Sherer from St. Martin’s, as well as an award-winning biographer.  Sharon his currently writing the Bartender’s Guide to Murder mystery series, which begins with Death in Tranquility. 

http://www.SharonLinnea.com    http://BartendersGuidetoMurder.com

Spotlight: The Last Summerville by Annabelle Lewis

Publication date: September 1st 2026

Genres: Adult, Psychological Thriller, Romance, Suspense, Thriller

Twenty-two-year-old Georgia Parker already carries more regret than most people twice her age. Practically an orphan, she’s reeling from the death of her grandmother, Mimi, the one person who made her feel safe from the chaos of her mother’s world. Alone in Carson City, Nevada, Georgia is determined to start over, to stand on her own. Yet Mimi’s final words echo in her mind: Take risks. Trust people again. Be brave.

Then Heath Summerville steps into her life—charming, magnetic, protective, and so perfectly attuned to her needs it feels like fate. But the closer Georgia gets, the more she feels the pull of something she can’t name—something just beneath the surface of his charm.

Strange silences. Half-truths. High-society circles and an ancestral house that feels more like a trap than a refuge.

Lies are waiting to unravel. And by the time Georgia sees the truth, it might already be too late.

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

“Get me out of this godforsaken town and back to civilization,” Vicky grumbled.

Georgia, behind the wheel, glanced at her mom, Vicky, who was shakily applying lipstick while looking in a handheld compact mirror. Vicky clicked it shut, then pulled down the passenger visor, only to find the old car devoid of a larger mirror. She swatted it back up, then garbled a sound of exasperation before diving back into her purse in search of something else. 

Georgia didn’t see the lure of Las Vegas like her mother did. It was one of many differences between them. “No!” she suddenly exclaimed when Vicky put a cigarette to her lips, intending to light it. “Not in the car.”

“Why are you such an old damn scold, Georgia?” Vicky scowled. “You’re twenty-two years old, for fuck's sake. Your holier-than-thou bullshit has gotten worse. Every time I see you.”

Vicky shook her head, then turned to stare out the window. Georgia swallowed back the words she wanted to throw in her mom’s face. 

Not today. Not after all they’d been through.

They spent the rest of the drive to the Carson City airport in awkward silence. Georgia pulled to the curb at the departures area and then walked to the back of the Ford Bronco to help retrieve the bags. Vicky took them, mumbled goodbye, and walked away without a hug.

“Goodbye, Mom,” Georgia called loudly as she shivered in the cold, standing next to the back of her Mimi’s Bronco. She watched Vicky drag her bag, her head bowed, her eyes already on her phone. She didn’t turn to give Georgia one last look of goodbye, nor acknowledge Georgia’s use of the tender moniker of “mom,” rather than the usual “Vicky.” It hurt. But why Georgia expected Vicky to suddenly become maternal was the bigger question. And neither of them had made falsely loving or empty promises to keep in touch. 

Buy on Amazon | Bookshop.org

About the Author

Annabelle Lewis—a pseudonym for the author—lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Regrettably? Perhaps. She still believes she’s a Texan even though the math no longer supports that. Nor her birthplace. Nor her residence. No offense, Minnesota. You’ve got your good points too, but only about six months of the year.

In her youth, Annabelle was a complete failure. Ask anyone who knew her. Any of her teachers and family would tell you this. High school graduation was a sad day for all when Annabelle walked proudly off the high school stage, her thoughts consumed with boys, beer, and after-parties, and later into the arms of her parents. Her father’s laughter and singular remark? “I didn’t think you’d make it. Get a job at the post office, they have a good retirement plan.”

A high bar and words to live by, but Annabelle wanted more. She needed to flunk out of college too. But damn, she sure did have a good time. Trivial arrest records not-withstanding, it was a growth period for our girl. And if you look closely, you’ll see a bit of what was to come when she majored in criminal justice. Her lifelong aspiration was to become a judge. Hmm.

For better or worse, Annabelle didn’t graduate from college but did find gainful employment and a fulfilling career. This path ended when she became a mom. Married to her wonderful George, who to this day can hardly remember an actual proposal, Annabelle finally became a mother. She didn’t have a clue how hard she would need to work to keep those self-imposed requirements of Downey-fresh, iron-pressed sheets, home-baked meals, and mom-of-the-year awards arriving. She composed a small self-affirmation song and made her children sing it to her for money. She was a very good mom.

After clearing the largest hurdles of motherhood and regrettably, begrudgingly, and not-without-tears, launching her children onto the world, she looked around and realized she had a lot to say. Picking up a laptop, she got to work.

Annabelle spends her days continuing to tackle the challenges of motherhood, for both her humans and canines. She also writes. And reads. And cleans. And cooks. And bakes. And cleans again. She also supports her husband, George, in an administrative capacity for their small business. She’s in charge of payroll and cuts George’s checks. This leads to no marital acrimony.

In the beginning, with the blank page staring at her and possibly in a hostile mood after being literally mauled by a dog and by the world in general, she had an idea. What if she could wield a force of good upon unsuspecting evil-doers? What if she had the resources to get the job done without dealing with committee and anyone else’s whiney-ass opinions? 

It was gold. It took off. Annabelle sat down and began to write and couldn’t stop. To date, having written over a million words in the Carrows Family Chronicles and her second series on the Boston Clairvoyants, several items have become quite clear. Annabelle had a lot to say. Annabelle really enjoys writing. And although she hates all things technology, she begrudgingly pounds her head on her desk daily as obstacles are thrown in her path. Almost a hero. 

Since entering her world of make-believe, she has rebelled against all intrusion of real-world responsibilities. Her house is a mess, but she tries. Her family is fed, but more often than not, on takeout. She vows to shower every day, but no, it’s a vow she’ll never keep. Her friends are neglected, but not in her heart. 

Read her mordacious blog! Read her books! Follow her on social platforms! Sign up for her newsletter! These are all good things. What are you waiting for? Jump into bed with Annabelle. She’s having a swell time. You should join her. theannabellelewis.com annabellelewisauthor@gmail.com IG and Twitter: alewisauthor 

Connect:

https://theannabellelewis.com/

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https://www.facebook.com/AnnabelleLewisAuthor/

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The Last Summerville Blitz

Spotlight: The Hocus Pocus Handbook by Ann Aguirre

Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca

Pub date: September 1, 2026

From New York Times bestselling author Ann Aguirre comes a cozy fae fantasy romance featuring a sunshine-shadow slow burn, a grumpy-butsecretly-tender love interest, an unforgettable found family, and a world lush with wildcraft magic.  

Thea Winter didn't choose to be a changeling, stolen from the mortal world as a baby, raised in the wildlands by a hobgoblin named Mudge who taught her everything worth knowing. How to read the weather in a crow's wing. How to barter with brownies. How to stay alive in a world of capricious fae courts. What Mudge couldn't teach her was how to stay out of trouble. Which is why she's entangled in a objectionable marriage of convenience.

Or would be, but her spouse bolted. Now she has to hunt down Devan J. Fenelon, but she's been saddled with a taciturn, humorless hunter known as Winter's Hound. He answers only to his cousin, and she's not looking forward to this quest at all. 

Kerboros has survived the Winter Court by being exactly what they made him: relentless, invisible, and careful never to want anything at all. His life is an endless series of ceaseless commands from his reprehensible cousin, Lord Liskaal. Since his father's failed rebellion, Kerboros has been permitted to survive only as an example to others, an object lesson as to how far one may fall. But traveling with Thea―wild, warm, impossible Thea―is a glorious torment for an enforcer who has never known freedom. 

She is sunshine. He is shadow.

Their love is forbidden, but when irresistible force sweeps up an immovable object, the resulting reaction might be magical…

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About the Author

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Ann Aguirre has been a clown, a clerk, a savior of stray kittens, and a voice actress, not necessarily in that order. She loves video games, Korean dramas, music, dogs and cats, and staring at the sea. Though she writes all kinds of genre fiction, she has a major soft spot for a happily ever after.