Spotlight: Spies Like Me by Doug Solter

(The Gems, #1)

Publication date: October 4th 2016

Genres: Thriller, Young Adult

Synopsis:

They offered Emma revenge…

When she discovers her father’s plane crash wasn’t an accident, sixteen-year-old Emma wants to punish those responsible. Even if it means becoming a spy for a mysterious organization known as The Authority. They want Emma to join the Gems…four teenage girls with unique skills…who know how to handle dangerous spy missions around the world…like storming a mountain stronghold to stop terrorists from incinerating the world’s food supply.

The Authority thinks Emma is the missing link to make this team work.

Emma thinks The Authority is her only chance for revenge.

Spies Like Me is the first novel in The Gems Young Adult spy thriller series, although all books in the Gems world can be read as standalone adventures. This is a fast-paced action story with diverse characters, cool spy gadgets, girl-power bonding, deep family secrets, ruthless villains, twists and turns, and a romance with a complex boy to figure out.

Excerpt

The school’s auditorium stage was bathed in colors. White for the actors. Orange for the wooden set representing the faraway pyramids of Egypt. Blue to emphasize the painted sky backdrop above it all. It was the opening night performance of The Spy Who Loathed Me.

Emma Rothchild strutted across the stage in a gorgeous floor-length silk dress, her costume for this scene. Tonight, she craved the eyes of the audience and knew this dress guaranteed their full attention. 

Emma was deep into character. She was Russian spy Olga Tetrovich. Emma had studied online videos of Russians speaking candidly and mimicked their accents as best she could. Her drama teacher had complimented Emma on her dedication to the craft.

The MI6 spy George Bond followed Olga on stage, but hid behind a fake tree. The actor’s rich brown skin might be a shock to the 007 spy traditionalists in the audience, but Emma hoped that his performance would win them over. Bond was following her in this scene, thinking she would lead the English spy straight to the microfilm that was stolen from him by a Brazilian dwarf named Tatu. 

From a souvenir stand, Emma picked up a clay model of the pyramids, something a tourist would buy at a market. She smashed the stage prop against the table in dramatic fashion and held up the roll of microfilm hidden inside so the audience could see it.

George Bond made his move. He crept up behind Emma without detection while she slipped the microfilm into her small hand purse. Emma’s hand came out holding a cap-gun revolver. She pivoted on her heels, making her dress swoosh around her ankles, and aimed the gun at Bond. The move looked great in rehearsals.

“I don’t think so, Mr. Bond,” Emma said, with her gentle Russian accent. “Our brief partnership is at an end. I have what my government wants. Now I will take my revenge. Do you remember that man you killed in Vienna?”

“Yes, I do,” George Bond said.

“He was my lover.”

Emma waited for Bond’s next line.

But the actor hesitated. 

Emma was about to lose it. Did Lewis forget again? They’d rehearsed this scene, like, twenty times.

“What do you have to say about that, Mr. Bond?” 

The line was an ad-lib, something to draw the next line out of the boy’s mouth.

Lewis’s face was a river of sweat as his eyes glazed over, the actor turning himself into just another tree on stage. 

“Your silence is a good enough confession for me. Any last words before I fire?” Emma went off script, but Lewis could pick his line up there. She was trying to help him.  

But the boy shook his head. Lewis wasn’t taking the hint.

Emma pulled the trigger and the gun hammer snapped forward. She squeezed the trigger numerous times in a series of loud snaps. Emma dropped the weapon. “You planted that empty gun in my handbag, didn’t you?”

Lewis nodded. Okay, he’d reacted to that ad-lib. 

It was a sliver of hope, so Emma went with it. “Then I’ll have to kill you with my bare hands.” Emma approached Lewis with her arms raised in a karate-looking stance. The boy blinked, still trapped inside his scary place. What could Emma do now? Physically attack him? Bond was supposed to seduce the Russian agent, not have her attack him.

Then a breath of inspiration hit her.

Emma grabbed Lewis’s shoulders. She guided him over to a bench on the set and made him lie down. Emma plopped her body on top of Lewis and pretended to struggle with him. Emma whispered into his ear, “Now get up and glare at me, Lewis.”

His eyes blinked again. Lewis rolled out from under her and stood on stage. Emma pressed her back against the seat of the bench and stayed there while Lewis glared.

Emma labored her breathing, as if she were being seduced. “Oh, why can I not kill you, Mr. Bond? What power do you hold over me?”

Lewis didn’t move, his glare frozen on his petrified face.

Emma knew this would work better if Lewis helped sell it, but…she lifted herself from the bench like a graceful ballerina, trying to act seduced by Bond’s man-powers. “Why can I not kill you, Mr. Bond?” she repeated.

Emma went for his lips, kissing Lewis with passion, as if the male spy had successfully messed with her brain. As Emma eased her lips away from his…life came back into Lewis’s eyes. He gripped Emma and pulled her towards him and they kissed again. 

Finally, the boy was acting.

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Paperback | Bookshop.org

About the Author

Doug Solter has worked behind the scenes in television for over twenty-five years. He began writing screenplays, then made the switch to young adult fiction. Doug respects cats, loves the mountains, and one time walked the streets of Barcelona with a smile. Doug is a member of SCBWI, IBPA, and Pennwriters.

If you would like to know when his next book will come out, please follow him on Amazon or visit his website at dougsolter.com and sign up to receive emails about new releases and special giveaways.

Connect:

https://dougsolter.com/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/213511822445205/

https://www.instagram.com/dougsolter/

https://www.youtube.com/user/dougthewriter

https://x.com/DougSolter

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6127991.Doug_Solter

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Spotlight: Omega’s Choice by Michelle Minnie

(The Omega Chronicles, #1)

Publication date: March 27th 2025

Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Romance

Synopsis:

Helena has led an often restrictive life as a sacred Omega wolf and Princess of the Lichtenberg line. With unimaginable power, come responsibilities and dangers that fill her days, but the time has come for her to choose her Alpha and enjoy the freedom of her very own pack. Alpha Aldric Forst has been seriously scarred in numerous battles for his King while leading armies in the fight to protect their lands from the growing evil. Knowing his ability to attract an Omega mate was slim and he’d resigned himself to a life of loneliness filled with duty to his pack and King Leonidas.

Princess Helena has other ideas for the massive wolf, who both intrigues and sets her heart on fire. At the choosing ceremony, she intends to make her intentions of mating with Aldric Frost known to all. However, an evil is lurking inside the castle walls waiting for its chance to steal away the Princess and as many other Omega wolves as possible. Can Aldric uncover the traitor in time or are the lonely Alpha’s dreams destined to remain just that, dreams.

Buy on Amazon

About the Author

Michelle grew up with a love of reading and writing as most authors do but her desire for action and adventure led her to create worlds far different from her own. With creatures of myth and legend, as well as from her imagination, Michelle crafted entire universes into her pages where she brings her characters to life in a stunning array from shifters, witches, demons, ogres, gods, fae, fairy, and dragon, to countless more. Hold on tight as her high fantasy stories take you on journeys to faraway lands where nothing is as it seems.

Connect: https://www.instagram.com/authormichelleminnie

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Spotlight: Meant for More: Following Your Heart and Finding Your Purpose by Karen Olson

Pub Date: September 10, 2024
Genre: Memoir 

Do you feel you are meant for more?

Many people feel a deep longing for something more, for richer meaning in their lives, but are unable to identify where that longing is coming from or how to come to terms with it. Many people seek happiness through acquiring material goods or achieving status, only to find a lack of fulfillment. At one time, Karen Olson, a successful marketing executive, felt the same.

Then, one fall day in 1981, as she hurried to a business meeting in New York City, she noticed an elderly, homeless woman outside Grand Central Station. Impulsively, Karen darted across the street and bought the woman a sandwich and an orange juice. She listened to the woman’s story and learned her name: Millie.

This small act of kindness changed the trajectory of Karen’s life. Karen dedicated her life to those in need and founded Family Promise, a national nonprofit organization that helps homeless and low-income families. Today, the organization boasts more than 200 affiliates across the country, with more than 180,0000 men, women, and children served each year. In Meant for More, Karen tells her story, from tragedy in childhood to an adulthood full of compassion and service, which has made her stronger, healthier, and more fulfilled than ever before. 

With firsthand testimonials from Karen and other volunteers, Meant for More is an inspiring call to action: when you reach out beyond yourself and seek to make a difference in the lives of others, happiness will catch up with you.

Excerpt

Compassion is an incredibly powerful agent for healing and transformation. If someone has ever been kind to you when you were down then you know how intensely appreciated support can be. Just the simple act of having someone care for us or be present can touch us and warm our heart. Because it restores our spirit, kindness and compassion can lift us up and inspire us to change our lives.

Interestingly, some people are astonished to see how much their simple acts of generosity affect others. But when they do realize how big the impact they had was, it moves them. They discover immense empathy in themselves that they did not necessarily know they had.

Pace, a senior executive at Sandia National Laboratories, is a great example of a person who discovered a newfound sense of purpose and fulfillment when he became an overnight volunteer for Family Promise. His story is a testament to the transformative power of giving back and cultivating a more expansive heart. It’s stories like his that shine a light on the remarkable character and empathy of our volunteers.

Pace

In 1993, I was transferred to lead another organization within the laboratory. My associates were throwing me a going-away party. Several people, mainly scientists, stood up to give testimonials; however, I only remember one.

When the scientists had finished talking, a secretary, Alice, whom I did not know well, shyly raised her hand for permission to speak. Alice shared the story of a chance encounter with me several years earlier when I had come to her aid one wintry night when she got a flat tire that left her stranded.

Alice told everyone about the evening that she left work. There was a sudden cold snap, and it started sleeting. Before she reached the main road, she pulled over with a flat tire, but a stream of cars continued to pass by, causing her to panic. Alice noticed someone pull up behind her, get out of their car, and knock on her window. It was me. Ignoring the conditions, I went ahead and changed her tire. Alice recalled that I wasn’t dressed for the weather, but didn’t seem to mind. She said, at that point, I stopped being “just a suit” and became a human being to her.

Touched by her thoughtful words, their effect extended beyond that party. In the following days, I reflected on how my simple, automatic response to her situation had made such a lasting impact on her. It wasn’t significant to me because I’d done this before and had forgotten about the encounter with Alice. However, it was of importance to her. I concluded I could do more to make a difference in people’s lives. I didn’t want to be known as a “suit.” That began a more thorough search for meaningful ways to assist people. Unknowingly, Alice opened my heart to become more expansive.

I got involved with Family Promise when my church, First United Methodist, helped start the Albuquerque affiliate. Due to my hectic schedule, family, work, and church seemed to be the only things I had time for. However, the program appealed to me emotionally, and overnight hosting was something I could fit into my busy life because I had to sleep. So, in that position, I slept overnight at the church. Then, before I headed to work, I would prepare and serve breakfast.

Every quarter, at my church, they select a different coordinator to oversee the program. Very quickly, I recognized it was suffering from a lack of continuity, so I volunteered to coordinate. In addition, I wanted to contribute some management skills to the program, and I became the program coordinator for more than eleven years.

I have retired from my job at the laboratory and now conduct research on physics that might lead to new energy sources, so I’m working fewer hours. Consequently, that allowed me to devote more hours to Family Promise. I led our congregation’s hosting of homeless families by recruiting and coordinating the work of approximately fifty volunteers who provided families with essential respect and loving-kindness, as well as food, lodging, and transportation.

When I began helping on weekends, I got to know our guests personally. They would open up to me and, without asking, tell me their stories. Like Alice, I got to know them as “real people.”

On the weekends, I prepared breakfast for our guests and planned recreational activities for families. Our activities ranged from yoga sessions and mountain hikes to bowling, and my wife Nancy assisted me with the program. Hospitality isn’t just a word to use with Family Promise. We invited our guest families to our home. We had a zip line in our backyard that we invited them to try. Although it was only about fifteen feet high, it was high enough to provide our guests with the experience of tackling their fears and persevering. On weekends we began holding mock job interviews, and these have since been incorporated into the day program that our guests attend. As an experimental physicist, I can fix almost anything, so I helped our guests with car repairs and occasionally organized dinners for volunteers to facilitate training, and building rapport. After every hosting, I emailed an after-hosting report to volunteers, sharing significant milestones our guests had reached so that they can see how they had touched the lives of our guests.

I keep in touch with many of the families we’ve hosted. I remember one of the first families who graduated from our program. About a month after that hosting, I saw the family in a local restaurant. Their five-year-old son ran up to me and gave me a big hug, which surprised me because I didn’t think they would remember me. I deemed it another “Alice experience” —when we care and act, we make lasting changes in people’s lives.

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Paperback | Bookshop.org

About the Author

Karen Olson, the founder and CEO emeritus of Family Promise has dedicated her life to transforming the present and futures of homeless and low-income families. Karen has rallied more than a million volunteers nationwide, fostering an extensive network of support for the vulnerable. Also, because of all the efforts of the volunteers, the organization has been able to assist over a million people experiencing homelessness.

Before her remarkable transition into the realm of social advocacy, Karen demonstrated her leadership prowess as a manager at Warner-Lambert. However, her leap into the world of nonprofits truly underscored her compassionate spirit and steadfast determination. 

Karen’s efforts have been duly recognized, and she has received numerous awards. Some of them include President George H.W. Bush honoring her with the prestigious Annual Points of Light Award, and the New Jersey Governor’s Pride Award recognizing Karen’s remarkable social-service contributions. The American Institute of Public Service also bestowed upon her the Jefferson Award, acknowledging her tireless public-service efforts.

In 2019, Karen experienced a freak accident that left her in a wheelchair. While it has changed her life, Karen continues to be involved. 

Spotlight: Another Fine Mess by Lindy Ryan

Making sure dead things stay buried is the family business...

For over a hundred years, the Evans women have kept the undead in their strange southeast Texas town from rising. But sometimes the dead rise too quick–and that’s what left Lenore Evans, and her granddaughter Luna, burying Luna’s mother, Grace, and Lenore’s mother, Ducey. Now the only two women left in the Evans family, Luna and Lenore are left rudderless in the wake of the most Godawful Mess to date.

But when the full moon finds another victim, it’s clear their trouble is far from over. Now Lenore, Luna, and the new sheriff—their biggest ally—must dig deep down into family lore to uncover what threatens everything they love most. The body count ticks up, the most unexpected dead will rise–forcing Lenore and Luna to face the possibility that the undead aren’t the only monsters preying on their small town.

Excerpt

Chapter 1

Sissy Broussard, September 1999

Sissy Broussard disliked a lot of things.

She disliked the kind of rain that came down in sheets, the scratch of a brush through her hair, the chalky pills Mother pushed down her throat every evening. Scents of citrus and mint and pepper. Loud noises. Cold. Sissy especially disliked the necklace Mother gifted her last birthday. She disliked the way it fit, too tight around her throat, how Mother insisted that she wear it, that it looked so pretty on her. She disliked the cool metal clasp that pulled at the hair at the nape of her neck, the glitter the necklace left along the edges of her vision, the silver charm that jangled loud enough to hurt her ears.

But most of all, Sissy disliked cigarettes.

Especially the ones in the green and white package, she thought and sneezed. The acid and peppermint made her nose itch and her lungs burn—which put Sissy in a predicament, because the mint cigarettes were Mother’s favorites.

Mother did her best to control the cigarette stink, but she could pump the air inside the house thick with all the Glade she wanted and it would still smell like burning menthol, but with the added fumes of Vanilla Breeze and Rainbow Potpourri. Sissy let the choker squeeze her throat, pull her hair, clink against her chest because Mother said it was important, but the curling acrid smoke that stunk up her beautiful coat and made her sneeze?

That she could not abide.

“Don’t you go sneakin’ out tonight,” Mother reminded her from behind the acidic fog, forever worried about cranky Mr. Gordon, who opened his front door and made sweet sounds whenever Sissy walked by. “Too many gone missing lately,” Mother said. “Don’t want nobody makin’ off with my pretty girl.”

Sometimes Sissy listened to Mother’s warnings and sometimes she didn’t, but the concern that she’d wander too close to the old man’s porch was wholly unnecessary.

Offensive, really, Sissy thought. She disliked Mr. Gordon, with his loud catcalls and coffee stink almost as bad as Mother’s cigarettes. His frizzy brown hair and frizzy brown eyebrows and frizzy brown beard. She only ever walked on his side of the road to get a better look at the birdbath on his front lawn, and even that she preferred to watch from the comfort of her favorite reading chair.

Aside from a little window shopping, birds were too much trouble for Sissy to bother with.

Too much, really, for Mr. Gordon to bother with. If he wanted to invite birds to his yard, he already had a perfectly good nest perched right on top of his head.

But Sissy disliked involving herself in anyone else’s business almost as much as she disliked anyone involving themselves in hers. And so, after a lazy Sunday spent lounging in her favorite reading chair, caught in a beam of warm September sunshine, she nibbled at the dinner her mother served, enjoyed the clack-clack-clack of the spinning wheel on her favorite game show, and then, when Mother retired to the back bedroom to smoke herself to sleep, Sissy pushed open the screen door and went out to get some fresh air.

The night’s warm breath pushed the cigarette odor out of her nose, tickling along her back as she padded down the center of the quiet residential street.

Daytime strolls were fun but when the sun went down, Mother went to bed, Mr. Gordon shut his door, and all the silly birds that flitted about the ugly concrete eyesore in his front yard hid themselves away for the night.

Everything else woke up.

Sissy knew every house on her street, every pet, every sound, all the way from the small house with the red shutters where she and Mother lived to the two-story at the opposite end of the block where a bratty Pomeranian yipped from behind the window every time Sissy strolled by. Now, from her viewpoint in the middle of the streetlamp-shadowed road, everything lay before her, spread out in every direction—the neat little houses all in a row, with their matching shutters and matching front doormats and closed garages. A few porch lights were on, but all of the windows dark. A tall trash bin punctuated the end of every driveway, lids closed to keep out the sort of nocturnal critters that dined on refuse and rubbish.

That don’t have mothers to lay out their meals for them.

Sissy disliked Mother’s habits as well as her gifts, but she quite liked her daily servings of cold fish and liver pâté.

Tomorrow morning the big green truck would make its way down the street, snatch up the plastic cans waiting at the end of each driveway, and gobble down their insides, just like they did every Monday morning—just like Sissy did when Mother served treats of chilled cream and crust in a special dish on the kitchen counter.

She listened to the sounds of night as she passed the tall can at the end of her driveway, the abandoned birdbath two doors down on the left, the square tubs the lady across the street always put out one night too early, on green trash night instead of blue recycling night. Sissy crept just outside where the streetlights touched, where the sparkles on her necklace didn’t glimmer in her peripheral vision. Her ears quirked at the tiny nicks of squirrel claws on bark, the scuttle of nocturnal critters as they skittered around, the crunch of dry leaves scattered against curb walls.

A possum hissed at her as she passed, but Sissy ignored it.

A squirrel chittered overhead, but she—

A flick of fur caught her eye.

Sissy froze. The stupid silver charm on her neck tinkled at the abrupt stop, then lay quiet against her chest. She stood stock still, the coldest thing in the warm autumn dark, not a wiggle of nose or twist of ear. Her eyes locked on the small tuft of what might be a tail, might be a paw, half-hidden behind one of the big green bins at the end of somebody’s driveway. She scented the air. Whiffs of moldy food scraps and drying leaves, a trace of Pomeranian scat on the downwind, but nothing that smelled like dinner.

Moonlight deepened the shadows around the trash can, outlining its edges with thick black borders. Even with her night vision, Sissy couldn’t make out the fine details of the brush of fur, but she lowered herself onto her haunches and listened.

A twig snapped. A mouse, maybe.

The brush of fur moved, became a ball of dark.

Raccoon, Sissy guessed as the fur swelled around the moon-shadowed edges of the can and she caught the scratch of nails against asphalt. Some little bandit, hoping it could wrench open the tall bin’s lid with its little humanlike claws, scavenge around in the filth within.

Electricity surged under Sissy’s skin. Dinners nibbled out of a tin were easy and cheap, but she’d trade every last puck of tuna and saucer of cream in Mother’s kitchen for the feel of a fresh catch between her teeth. A taste of raw meat.

A mouse would make for a delightful midnight snack, even if it would mean extra bathing tomorrow as Mother cleaned the blood from her fur.

Tomorrow Sissy would have all the daylight in the world to bathe, to snooze, to sneeze.

Now in the fresh air and wane of last night’s full moon, she’d hunt.

She crouched low enough that her small, lithe form might become nothing but a blur on the pavement, a smear as easy to overlook as an oil stain. As the snarl of dark hair that tried to hide in the can’s shadows.

Sissy’s ears twitched, her stomach rumbled, when the trash can growled. Definitely not a mouse, then. Not a raccoon, either.

Mr. Gordon?

Sissy’s ears flattened against her head. Her whiskers worked, her fur jumping up at the roots when an odor almost as acrid as Mother’s stupid cigarettes infiltrated her nostrils. The scent tore the hunger from her instantly, and a new instinct flooded through her. When Sissy pushed her body against the hot top now, it wasn’t so she could watch the creature behind the bin.

The ball of dark shifted, stretched, stood on all fours. The mass of fur and teeth atop its shoulders turned toward the street. Sissy stayed still as a statue while gleaming eyes cast out into the night, searching the shadows, scanning the dark—catching the sparkle of Mother’s necklace around Sissy’s neck.

The cat sprang to her feet and ran.

Another snap, another growl, and the predator behind the trash can gave chase.

The silver bell on Sissy’s collar screamed against the sound of the beast’s feet as they pounded behind her on the pavement—a ting, ting, ting, tracking her every step as she raced away from the thing behind her.

Her paws left asphalt, hit grass, slid over sidewalks, driveways, porches, as she fled, the neat little houses all in a row, their matching shutters and matching doormats and closed garages, all suddenly strange and unfamiliar.

She did not see Mr. Gordon’s house, his stupid birdbath.

Didn’t see the recycling tubs, set out a day early.

Didn’t see Mother’s house.

Sissy saw nothing but black. Smelled nothing but fear.

Heard nothing but the sound of her own collar, making it so easy for the monster to close in.

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

About the Author

Lindy Ryan is an award-winning author, anthologist, and short-film director whose books and anthologies have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist and Library Journal. Several of her projects have been adapted for screen. Ryan is the current author-in-residence at Rue Morgue. Declared a “champion for women’s voices in horror” by Shelf Awareness, Ryan was named a Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree in 2020, and in 2022, was named one of horror's most masterful anthology curators. Her novel Bless This Mess is currently a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award. Born and raised in Southeast Texas, Ryan currently resides on the East Coast. She is a professor at Rutgers University. You can visit her online at lindyryanwrites.com.

Spotlight: Midnight in Soap Lake by Matthew Sullivan

Publication Date: April 15, 2025

Publisher: Harlequin Trade Publishing / Hanover Square Press

A lake with mysterious properties. A town haunted by urban legend. Two women whose lives intersect in terrifying ways. Welcome to Soap Lake, a town to rival Twin Peaks and Stephen King’s Castle Rock.

When Abigail agreed to move to Soap Lake, Washington for her husband’s research she expected old growth forests and craft beer, folksy neighbors and the World’s Largest Lava Lamp. Instead, after her husband jets off to Poland for a research trip, she finds herself alone, in a town surrounded by desert, and haunted by its own urban legends.

But when a young boy runs through the desert into Abigail’s arms, her life becomes entwined with his and the questions surrounding his mother Esme’s death. In Abigail’s search for answers she enlists the help of a recovering addict-turned-librarian, a grieving brother, a broken motel owner, and a mentally-shattered conspiracy theorist to unearth Esme’s tragic past, the town’s violent history, and the secret magic locked in the lake her husband was sent there to study.

As she gets closer to the answers, past and present crimes begin to collide, and Abigail finds herself gaining the unwelcome attention of the town’s unofficial mascot, the rubber-suited orchard stalker known as TreeTop, a specter who seems to be lurking in every dark shadow and around every shady corner.

A sweeping, decade-spanning mystery brimming with quirky characters, and puzzle hunt scenarios, Midnight in Soap Lake is a modern day Twin Peaks—a rich, expansive universe that readers will enter and never forget.

Excerpt

1

Abigail 

Something was there. 

An animal, Abigail was certain, loping in the sagebrush: a twist of fuzz moving through the desert at the edge of her sight. The morning had already broken a hundred. Her glasses steamed and sunscreen stung her eyes— 

Or maybe she hadn’t seen anything. 

Yesterday, while walking along this desolate irrigation road, she’d spotted a cow skull between tumbleweeds, straight out of a tattoo parlor, but when she ran toward it, bracing to take a picture to send to Eli across the planet—proof, perhaps, that she ever left the house—she discovered it was just a white plastic grocery bag snagged on a curl of sage bark. 

Somehow. Way out here. 

The desert was scabby with dark basalt, bristled with the husks of flowers, and nothing was ever there. 

When Eli first told her he’d landed a grant to research a rare lake in the Pacific Northwest, Abigail thought ferns and rain, ale and slugs, Sasquatch and wool. 

And then they got here, to this desert where no one lived. Not a fern or slug in sight. 

This had been the most turbulent year of her life. 

Eleven months ago, they met. 

Seven months ago, they married. 

Six months ago, they moved from her carpeted condo in Denver to this sunbaked town on the shores of Soap Lake, a place where neither knew a soul. 

Their honeymoon had lasted almost three months—Eli whistling in his downstairs lab, Abigail unpacking and painting upstairs—and then he kissed her at the airport, piled onto a plane, and moved across the world to work in a different lab, on a different project, at a different lake. 

In Poland. 

When she remembered him lately, she remembered photographs of him. 

The plan had been to text all the time, daily calls, romantic flights to Warsaw, but the reality was that Eli had become too busy to chat and seemed more frazzled than ever. This week had been particularly bad because he’d been off the grid on a research trip, so every call went to voicemail, every text into the Polish abyss. And then at five o’clock this morning, her phone pinged and Abigail shot right out of a drowning sleep to grab it, as if he’d tossed her a life preserver from six thousand miles away. 

And this is what he’d had to say: 

sorry missed you. so much work & my research all fd up. i’ll call this weekend. xo e

As she was composing a response—her phone the only glow in their dark, empty home—he added a postscript that stabbed her in the heart like an icicle.

P.S. maybe it time since remember using time to figure out self life? 

What kind of a sentence was that? And what was a “self life” anyway? 

Abigail had called him right away. When he didn’t pick up she went down to the lab he’d set up in their daylight basement. She opened a few of his binders with their charts of Soap Lake, their colorful DNA diagrams, their photos of phosphorescent microbes, as cosmic as images from deep space. She breathed the papery dust of his absence and tried to imagine he’d just stepped out for a minute and would be back in a flash, her clueless brilliant husband, pen between his teeth, hair a smoky eruption, mustard stains on the plaid flannel bathrobe he wore in place of a lab coat. 

From one of his gleaming refrigerators, Abigail retrieved a rack of capped glass tubes that contained the Miracle Water and the Miracle Microbes collected from the mineral lake down the hill— she sometimes wondered if her limnologist husband would be more at home on the shores of Loch Ness—and held one until a memory arose, like a visit from a friend: Eli, lifting a water sample up to the window as if he were gazing through a telescope, shaking it so it fizzed and foamed. And then he was gone again. 

She hated that she did this. Came down here and caressed his equipment like a creep. Next she’d be smelling his bathrobe, collecting hairs from his brush. It was as if she felt compelled to remind herself that Eli was doing important work and, as the months of distance piled up, that he was even real. 

Back when they’d first started dating, Abigail had been the busy one, the one who said yes to her boss too much and had to skim her calendar each time Eli wanted to go to dinner or a movie. Of course her job as an administrative assistant in a title insurance office had never felt like enough, but when she mentioned this restlessness to Eli, finding her path—figure out self life—had suddenly become a centerpiece of their move to Soap Lake. But they got here and nothing had happened. It wasn’t just a switch you flipped. 

Abigail slid the tall tube of lake water back into its rack. Only when she let go, the tube somehow missed its slot and plunged to the floor like a bomb. 

Kapow! 

On the tile between her feet, a blossom of cloudy water and shattered glass. 

She stood over the mess, clicking her fingernails against her teeth and imagining microbes squealing on the floor, flopping in the air like miniscule goldfish. She told herself, without conviction, it had been an accident. 

And then she stepped over the spill, put the rack back in the fridge and, surprised at the immediacy of her shame, went for a walk in this scorching desert. 

It stunned her, how harsh and gorgeous it was. 

Loneliness: it felt sometimes like it possessed you. 

She hadn’t spoken to anyone in over a month, outside of a few people in the Soap Lake service industry. There was the guy who made her a watery latte at the gas station the other morning, then penised the back of her hand with his finger when he passed it over. And the newspaper carrier, an old woman with white braids and a pink cowgirl hat, who raced through town in a windowless minivan. She told Abigail she was one DUI away from unemployment, but the weekly paper was never late. And the cute pizza delivery dude who was so high he sat in her driveway on his phone for half an hour before coming to the door with her cold cheese pizza, saying, Yes, ma’am. Thanks, ma’am, which was sweet but totally freaked her out. And the lady with the painted boomerang eyebrows in the tampon aisle at the grocery store who gave her unwanted advice on the best lube around for spicing up menopause, to which Abigail guffawed and responded too loudly, “Thanks, but I’m not even goddamned forty!” 

At least she’d discovered these maintenance roads: miles and miles of gravel and dirt, no vehicles allowed, running alongside the massive irrigation canals that brought Canadian snowmelt from the Columbia River through the Grand Coulee Dam to the farms spread all over this desert. The water gushed through the main canals, thirty feet wide and twenty feet deep, and soon branched off to other, smaller canals that branched off to orchards and fields and ranches and dairies and soil and seeds and sprouts and leaves and, eventually, yummy vital food: grocery store shelves brimming with apples and milk and pizza-flavored Pringles. 

Good soil. Blazing sun. Just add water and food was born. 

Almost a trillion gallons a year moved through these canals. T: trillion. 

All that water way out here, pouring through land so dry it crackled underfoot. 

She halted on the road. Pressed her lank, brown hair behind her ear. Definitely heard something, a faint yip or caw. 

She scanned the horizon for the source of the sound and there it was again, a smudge of movement in the wavering heat. Something running away. 

A few times out here she’d seen coyote. Lots of quail, the occasional pheasant. Once, in a fallow field close to town, a buck with a missing antler that looked from a distance like a unicorn. 

Not running away, the smudge out there. Running toward. She was nowhere near a signal yet her instinct was to touch her phone. She craned around to glimpse the vanishing point of the road behind, gauging how far she’d walked and, if things got bad, how far she’d have to run. 

Three miles, minimum. Six miles, tops. 

Definitely approaching. 

Not something. Someone. 

A human. Alone. 

Running. A boy. 

A little boy. Sprinting. 

Abigail froze as their eyes met, and suddenly the boy exploded out of the desert, slamming into her thighs with an oof! He wore yellow pajamas and Cookie Monster slippers covered in prickly burrs. 

He clung to her legs so tightly that she almost tipped over. When she registered the crusty blood on his chin and cheeks and encasing his hands like gloves, she felt herself begin to cry, scared-to-sobbing in one second flat. 

Deep breath. Shirt wipe. 

“Hey! Are you hurt? Look at me. Are you hurt?” 

The boy wasn’t crying, but his skin was damp and he was panting hot and wouldn’t let go of her legs. She felt a hummingbird inside of his chest. 

She knelt in the gravel and unfolded his arms, turning them over at the wrist. She lifted his shirt and spun him around as best she could. He had some welts and scratches from running through the brush, and the knees of his pj’s were badly scuffed, but he wasn’t cut, not anywhere serious, which meant— The blood belonged to someone else.

Excerpted from MIDNIGHT IN SOAP LAKE by Matthew Sullivan. Copyright © 2025 by Matthew Sullivan. Published by Hanover Square Press, an imprint of HTP/HarperCollins.

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

About the Author

Matthew Sullivan is the beloved author of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, an Indie Next Pick, B&N Discover pick, a GoodReads Choice Award finalist and winner of the Colorado Book Award. He received his MFA from the University of Idaho and has been a resident writer at Yaddo, Centrum, and the Vermont Studio Center. His short stories have been awarded the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editors’ Award for Fiction. His writing has been featured in the New York Times Modern Love column, The Daily Beast, and Shelf Awareness amongst others.

Author Website: http://matthewjsullivan.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mickmatthew1/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matthew.j.sullivan.77/ 

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5690035.Matthew_J_Sullivan

Spotlight: Just A Little Crush by Carly Phillips & Erika Wilde

Release Date: April 15

It’s just a little crush. What could possibly go wrong?

I’ve had more than enough relationship drama to last a lifetime, so romance with Stevie Palmer, the gorgeous server I had a hot one-night stand with, isn’t in the cards. However, she would make the perfect fake girlfriend to help me win my custody battle.  

When I offer her an obscene amount of money to play along, she agrees. I insist this arrangement is strictly business. No feelings.  No complications.

Easy, right?

Except nothing about Stevie is easy. She’s unexpected softness, stubborn as hell, and impossible to ignore. I tell myself I can keep my hands off of her.  That I can ignore the way she makes me feel. Then one kiss turns into another. One night into more. And suddenly, our perfect little arrangement is anything but simple or straight forward. 

With so much at stake, can I turn our fake relationship into a real happily ever after? 

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Audible | Paperback

Meet Carly Phillips

Carly Phillips is the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of over eighty sexy contemporary romances featuring hot men, strong women, and emotionally compelling stories her readers have come to expect and love. She is happily married to her college sweetheart and lives in Westchester County, NY. She is the mother of two adult daughters and three crazy dogs who star on her Facebook and Instagram pages. She loves social media and is always around to interact with her readers. Way back in 2002, Carly’s book, The Bachelor, was chosen by Kelly Ripa and was the first romance on a nationally televised book club. Carly loves social media and interacting with her readers. For more information on upcoming releases, sign up for her newsletter (below) and receive two free books!

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To learn more about Carly Phillips & her books, visit here!

Connect with Carly Phillips: https://www.carlyphillips.com/ 

Meet Erika Wilde

Erika Wilde is a Bestselling author and is best known for her super sexy Marriage Diaries series and The Players Club series, and has also co-written multiple series with Carly Phillips, her best friend and writing buddy for the past twenty years. She lives in Oregon with her husband, and when she's not writing you can find her exploring the beautiful Pacific Northwest. For more information on her upcoming releases, please sign up for her newsletter (below).

Newsletter: https://erikawilde.com/

To learn more about Erika Wilde & her books, visit here!

Connect with Erika Wilde: http://www.erikawilde.comcontact@erikawilde.com