Spotlight: Dollface by Lindy Ryan

Horror author Jill has just moved to suburban New Jersey, hoping to fit in with the new PTA moms and maybe not weird everyone out with her Final Girl coffee mug. You know. Make some real friends.

But then a plastic face-masked serial killer begins slashing their way through town, one overly made-up mom at a time. The police are incredulous. The moms are indignant. And Jill is slowly wrapped into a killer’s murderous spree, until she might just be the last woman standing.

A delightfully murderous novel that is equal parts scathing and salacious, Dollface will win you over with its gossip and gore, one body at a time.

Excerpt

Someone once said that a mirror is a girl’s best friend.

Someone lied.

Fourteen wrinkles. Sixteen, if I count the creases where my dimples used to be, the cute, pinprick divots now reduced to thin cracks running in parallel lines on either side of my mouth. I count them, of course, because what fun would criticizing my flaws be if I didn’t throw in some math, too?

My stomach clenches. Even when I pick myself apart, I can’t help but go the extra mile. Two birds, one stone—or whatever that saying is. My darling husband glares at me every time I use it. It’s been nearly twenty years since Rob and I met while interning at PETA, but we still do our best to avoid meat, dairy, and cruel animal idioms.

Maybe that’s the problem? The caverns under my eyes, the dark half-moons, persist whether I sleep four hours or eight. Maybe I need more collagen in my diet.

A voice buzzes against my ear as the phone grows warm in my hand. I set it on the soapstone countertop and push in AirPods. Half a second later, Bluetooth resumes. “And then somewhere in the northern Mojave,” the voice in my ears says, “we came across these incredible hot springs. I just stripped down naked and—”

My body pressed against the edge of the vanity, my breath fogs the mirror as I lean in to scrutinize my former dimples under the bathroom microscope. Bathrooms: a nicer way of saying private, personal hells. Who needs fire and brimstone when you have recessed fluorescents and a full-length mirror? This might be the master bathroom, but we both know who is in charge.

“You should have seen it,” her voice goes on, “an oasis in the middle of the desert. It was the perfect setting for inspiration—like, it’s perfectly safe and beautiful, but could turn spooky in a heartbeat. That’s the best kind of scary, right? Like, when it’s not supposed to be?”

The voice becomes tinnitus as I wipe my breath-fog away.

It’s not just the dimples.

My lips aren’t totally recognizable anymore either. These, too, have begun to wilt, the slabs pale and ringed with withered edges, like peach skin sucking itself dry around uneaten fruit. My nose seems steeper. Eyelashes, thinner. My skin appears ashen under the bright lights, and a concerning amount of what I hope is not jowl trims the underside of my jaw. A fold runs diagonally down the length of my cheek from where flesh pressed against bedsheets all night.

Heeere’s Johnny! My reflection flinches when Jack Torrance’s maniacal grin shines back at me in the bathroom mirror. Forget Shelley Duvall. In the oversize horror-movie T-shirt and sleep-swept inkblot hair, I look like the Bride of freakin’ Frankenstein.

A yawn slips out and my reflection grimaces at the quick peek of double chin. I feel like the Bride of freakin’ Frankenstein.

I want to scream with her, rage against this monstrous shell I find myself looking out of. But if I do, Tanner will wake and come running, Lugosi hot on his heels. The retriever I wouldn’t mind, but the few moments of quiet I get in the morning before my eight-year-old erupts from his bed?

Those are precious.

“And then we rappelled down this limestone—” The words pinch off when the bud ejects itself from my ear. I push it back and screw it against the side of my face like a bolt on a monster’s neck. I miss the rest of her sentence, but that’s okay.

Downstairs, among a sea of moving boxes I’ve yet to unpack, Tanner’s third-grade school supplies lurk in disorganized piles—colored folders with pockets (no brads), No. 2 pencils (pre-sharpened), glossy yellow card-stock packages with rainbows of crayons, colored pencils, and markers (washable and nontoxic). Spirals (wide ruled). Glue sticks (four). I managed to find my laptop charger and a box of hardcovers I’m supposed to sign for some bookstore in the Midwest, but I still haven’t unearthed the box that contains my son’s lucky green vinyl lunch box with the broken zipper. Stacks of New Student paperwork await completion on the kitchen countertop, and our dog smells like road trip.

I think my husband got misplaced in the move.

I haven’t touched my manuscript in over a week.

The details change but the headache doesn’t. We’ve done this exact same thing twice in the past ten years. Doesn’t matter that Rob’s command in the Coast Guard is Department of Homeland Security and not Defense, there’ll be no permanent home base for this military family. It gets harder, not easier, the effort of uprooting and reestablishing our household tangled with both the constant ache in my upper back and the road map winding across my forehead.

And that’s probably that’s why I became an author. A girl needs more than her child and partner. Books make it easier not to feel lonely, even if all your closest girlfriends are fictional.

I close my eyes and scream on the inside, long and hard and raspy just like the poor Bride. Then I let out a deep sigh and blink my eyes open.

So, sixteen wrinkles then. Sixteen seams weave across my face, like if I shake too hard, my skin might split apart. One thick, wet schlorp and all my stuffing spills out. Bride of Frankenstein, I can handle, just please, please, don’t let me turn into my mother.

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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. ​Born and raised in Southeast Texas, Ryan currently resides on the East Coast.​​​ She is a professor at Rutgers University.

Spotlight: Ace by Kat Mizera

Release Date: February 23

AVAILABLE IN KINDLE UNLIMITED

He lives in the shadows.
She’s the one he never forgot.

Life as a CIA operative is full of danger but it’s also painfully lonely. Living under the radar doesn’t leave room for relationships, let alone the white-picket-fence future she wanted.

There was someone once.

I walked away.

And I never stopped regretting it.

Now my years of service are catching up with me, and I’m finally ready for something different. I just never expected that change to be Shannon—or that she’d be in serious trouble.

One kiss. One mistake. One feeling I can’t shake.

The man in me still wants her.

The soldier in me will protect her at all costs.

She doesn’t want my help. She doesn’t trust the life I live. But I’m done walking away—especially when someone is watching her, closing in, and pushing us toward a confrontation neither of us is prepared for.

Even if saving her means losing her… again.

This romantic suspense features second-chance love, a protective alpha hero, high-stakes danger, and a woman who may be the key to his redemption—or his undoing.

Author's Note: Ace falls into the Royal Protectors series as book 1.5 and was formerly published under the title "Cocky Protector" as part of the Cocky Heroes Club series.

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Meet Kat Mizera

USA TODAY Bestselling Author Kat Mizera was born in Miami Beach with a healthy dose of Wanderlust. She's lived from coast to coast, and everywhere in between, but home is wherever her family is. A devoted mom and wife to her wonderful and supportive husband (Kevin) and two amazing boys (Nick and Max), Kat loves to travel the globe with her adventurous, hockey loving family. Greece is at the top of that list. She hopes to one day retire there, spending her days writing books on the beach.

Kat is former freelance sports writer who now writes steamy hockey romance about her favorite fictional teams, the Las Vegas Sidewinders and the Lauderdale Knights. The library of novels she's penned also include sexy contemporary stories about baseball stars, alpha sex club owners, bodyguards, rock stars, and royalty. Regardless of genre, her books about bad boys with hearts of gold will steal your breath, rock your world and melt your heart.

To find out about Kat Mizera’s upcoming releases and giveaways, sign up for her newsletter here

For more information on Kat Mizera and her books visit: https://katmizera.com/

Connect with Kat Mizera: https://katmizera.com/pages/contact-kat

Spotlight: Side Hustle by Wendy Gee

Charleston’s top investigative TV reporter, Sydney Quinn, lives to expose the city’s darkest secrets. So when a former firefighter takes two paramedics hostage, she talks her way inside, offering to gather intel in exchange for a story that could boost her career.

But when Sydney finds the body of her friend, a local insurance executive, at the scene, the scoop of a lifetime turns personal. The hostage-taker swears he’s been framed, pulling Sydney into a web of cybercrime, stolen identities, and corporate corruption that stretches far beyond Charleston’s polished waterfront.

As she chases the truth through encrypted files and backroom deceptions, Sydney uncovers ties to a shadow network of hackers. Busting them should be routine…except she’s unraveling faster than her investigation. Haunted by the ambush she survived while embedded with the Marines in Iraq, she’s been outrunning her ghosts with fast cars and faster pitches at the batting cage. But when the cybercriminals turn their sights on her, Sydney must face her worst memories—and choose who to trust—before her name ends up on the next body tag.

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About the Author

After a successful career in the U.S. Navy, Wendy Gee now channels her boundless energy into community volunteering, leaving no stone unturned—or unpainted—at the Charleston Fire Department, Friends of the Lewes Public Library Board of Directors, and Sussex County Habitat for Humanity. A proud graduate of the University of Michigan, University of Arizona, Naval War College, and Old Dominion University, Wendy combines her academic prowess and life experiences into her writing.

Residing in Lewes, DE, she is an avid golfer, a diehard Detroit Tigers and Lions fan (even when they’re not winning, but so excited when they are), and a pickleball enthusiast who’s always ready to serve up some fun. Her work has been shortlisted with Killer Nashville and the Writer’s League of Texas. And as a lifetime member of Sisters in Crime, Wendy’s passion for the mystery genre is no secret—though she might leave a few clues lying around just for fun. Learn more at: www.wendygeeauthor.com

Spotlight: Red Star Rebels by Amie Kaufman

It’s 2067, and the Graves family has transformed Mars from a lifeless rock into a chaotic patch of settlements. You can buy a one-way ticket to a new life--if you're rich.

Enter Hunter Graves, the handsome, ambitious grandson of the man who settled Mars. With spectacularly bad timing, Hunter arrives at the United Nations base just as an emergency evacuation sends everyone scurrying for safety. Except he’s left behind. Uh-oh.  

Also stranded: Cleo, a sharp-tonged stowaway with no intention of dying today, and even less patience for overconfident trust fund boys. But the enemy of your enemy might just help you survive, so here we are.

It turns out the evacuation is just a cover for the mercenaries who come next, and the plan to blow up the base--and every trace of their crime--in eight hours.

Now, Hunter and Cleo have one shot to stop the explosion, escape alive, and deal with the inconvenient fact that they're falling for each other.

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About the Author

Amie Kaufman is the New York Times bestselling co-author of the Illuminae Files and the Aurora Cycle, with Jay Kristoff, and the Starbound, Unearthed, and Other Side of the Sky series with Meagan Spooner. Raised in Australia and occasionally Ireland, Amie has degrees in history, literature, law, and conflict resolution, and is currently undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing. She lives in Melbourne with her husband, daughter and rescue dog, and an extremely large personal library. You can learn more about Amie at her website, on social, or via her podcast. 

Spotlight: Tiny Little Earthquakes by Hays Blinckmann

Elliot Hase is a sharp, observant nine-year-old girl growing up on a horse farm in 1980s North Carolina, where the adults are far less stable than the barn animals. Her mother, a charismatic alcoholic with a flair for drama and denial, careens through life in a haze of wine and self-pity. Her father, a distant doctor with a new family and a wife who rewrites history, offers more guilt than guidance. Caught between the two is Poppy—Elliot’s older sister, partner-in-crime, and cautionary tale—whose battles with addiction and self-destruction echo through Elliot’s own attempts to break the cycle.

As Elliot navigates funerals, failed interventions, AA and Al Anon meetings, and an elite boarding school that teaches more about co-dependency than calculus, she slowly begins to question not just the people raising her, but the identity she’s been forced to adopt to survive them. Her coming-of-age is shaped by secrets she didn’t ask for, betrayals she doesn’t deserve, and moments of brutal clarity that land like aftershocks.

The central conflict is Elliot’s internal struggle to define herself apart from the chaos of her family—trying to reconcile loyalty to her mother and sister with self-preservation, and survival with healing. Through humor, heartbreak, and sheer stubbornness, she learns that resilience isn't about being unbreakable—it's about breaking and rebuilding, again and again.

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About the Author

Hays Blinckmann is a writer, journalist, teacher, and recovering painter. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Tufts University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She lives in Key West, Florida, with her husband and two sons. Her other novels include In the Salt, Where I Can Breathe, Here, Kitty, and the young adult novel Yell Out Loud. They are available on Amazon and at bookstores throughout Key West.  If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.com. As this is a published novel, your reviews and recommendations on social media help Tiny Little Earthquakes reach a wider audience. Thank you for spreading the word—places, people. Places! For more about Hays, visit: www.authorhaysblinckmann.com and follow her on IG @authorhaysblinckmann.

Spotlight: Breaking the Barnyard Barrier by Linda Rhodes

In the late 1970s the golden valley between Utah’s Wasatch Mountains was home to some of the best dairies in the country. That was also where Linda Rhodes, a newly minted large animal veterinarian, had to prove that a woman could do what the Mormon dairymen were sure was a man’s job. She was often scared that they were right. Throughout her experience, she tackled a menagerie of challenging medical and surgical cases that forced her to be fearless. Every bovine life she saved helped her confidence grow, but each failure left her feeling defeated—as did the mounting tensions between pursuing a demanding career and saving a crumbling marriage.

In Breaking the Barnyard Barrier, Linda Rhodes tells the story of how a woman, through grit and tears, made her way in a man’s world and blazed a path that prevailed against career stereotypes.

Excerpt

I emerged from the cramped car, stretched my arms over my head, and took a deep breath. The sweet scent of lilacs was a wonderful change from the stench of West Philadelphia. My sister, Anne, carried her daughter, Satya, seven years old, fast asleep, into the house. Vincent pulled boxes out of the car and piled them on the driveway. The chickens ran to greet us, cackling, looking for their dinner of corn. The setting sun cast a warm light on the meadow, and the peepers sang down by the pond. Vincent put his arm around me. We stood, silent, and gazed at the rolling green hills east of the house. I leaned my head on his shoulder.

Vincent sighed.

“What?” I asked.

“Long day,” he said.

After my Philadelphia life was packed up and the rental cleaned so I could get my deposit back, we left Philly around three in the afternoon, arriving in Freeville, New York, a few miles outside of Ithaca, after four hours on the road. Anne, Satya, and Vincent came to Philadelphia to celebrate my graduation from Penn Veterinary School in late May 1978. I had just turned twenty-nine, and after four years of living apart from him, I was ready to start my life with Vincent—and, hopefully, a job as a large animal veterinarian in the rolling hills and meadows around Ithaca, New York.

_____________________________________

Anne, Vincent, and a group of musicians and friends lived communally in an old Victorian house in Freeville while I was studying in Philadelphia. Now I was happily done with living in a city and the rigors of veterinary school. We had planned to settle into a life—Vincent playing music with his brothers, me working as a large animal vet in the local dairy farms. It would be so good if we could finally be together after four years of Vincent in Freeville and me living in the gritty world of West Philadelphia, but in spite of months of trying, I hadn’t found a job. We both knew that meant our dream was in jeopardy, but we avoided talking about what might come next.

For now, it was enough to breathe the scent of lilacs and lean on each other. The screen door banged. Anne threw some cracked corn out the back door for the chickens, already busy pecking. I plopped down on the porch steps.

“Seems weird not to have a schedule,” I said. My life had been defined for the last four years by a hectic rush of classes, labs, and clinics.

Vincent smiled. “Maybe you can take a few weeks to slow down,” he said.

My back against the porch railing, I stretched my legs out. Th peepers down by the pond were getting louder, fireflies flashed in the grass, the last of the light slanted across the meadow.

“I guess I could try that,” I said, and we both laughed.

“It’s getting dark,” Vincent said. “I’ll get your stuff and put it in the cabin.”

The Freeville house functioned as a commune, with most of the original founders who had moved into the house in 1974, when I moved to Philly, still there. During the four years I toiled away at vet school, the vegetable garden had grown large and weedy, a few more cats had turned up, and the attic and basement filled with the boxes and miscellaneous detritus of various musicians who came and went.

The cabin, a tiny one-room shed behind the house, would be fine for now, but I hoped in a few weeks I would find a job with a salary so that Vincent and I could move someplace to avoid the chaos of the commune. I wanted to celebrate finally being Dr. Rhodes, but instead I worried. Starting in early spring of 1978, long before graduation, I searched for a job in large animal practice, but it had gradually become clear that finding a job taking care of cows near Freeville was going to be much harder than I had expected. Degree in hand, no job, student loan payments due in a couple of months, I had a bank account so close to zero that the bank might close it out.

The countryside around Freeville was filled with dairy farms. New York State was the third largest producer of milk, after Wisconsin and California. Prosperous dairy farms dotted the landscape. Since the beginning of vet school, my plan had been to return to Freeville. I’d spent the spring of my senior year interviewing for all the jobs listed in the area. No one would hire me.

The pink sunset clouds darkened to gray. Anne was in the kitchen singing along with the radio. She chopped zucchini and onions into the oil-coated wok, making stir-fry for dinner. The light was on in Vincent’s little cabin. I rolled my shoulders, stretched to reach my toes, and yawned. My exhaustion from the last four years settled over me like a heavy blanket. There was still a long way to go until

I was a practicing veterinarian.

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About the Author

Linda Rhodes began her career as a dairy cow veterinarian after she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania summa cum laude in 1978. After several years in dairy practice, she was granted a fellowship at Cornell University, where she obtained her PhD in 1988. The rest of her career was spent in the pharmaceutical industry, helping to develop medicines for many species of animals. She retired in 2016 and has subsequently served on several corporate and start-up boards in the animal health industry. She has received the Iron Paw Award for her lifetime achievements. Breaking the Barnyard Barrier is her first book.