The Vessels Series by Anna M. Elias blitz with giveaway
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The Vessels
Anna M. Elias
Genres: Adult, Science Fiction, Supernatural
The Vessels is a supernatural sci-fi trilogy by screenwriter Anna M. Elias. In this thrilling and emotionally captivating novel series, police detective Tallulah Davis loses everyone that was ever important to her. Ready to end her life, she is saved by a secret Vessels program in Reno, Nevada and leads a diverse group of equally broken strangers who become human Vessel hosts for spirits that return to seek forgiveness, restore love, and right wrongs from their past. By doing so, the spirits elevate humankind and earn their place in Elysium. But — not every journey goes as planned, not every spirit seeks redemption, and not every Vessel survives. Especially when the spirit of a serial killer returns and goes rogue in his quest for revenge.
In The Coin: Book 2, the Vessels brave their most life-threatening journeys yet. Tal is forced to the brink of death and a new Vessel arrives with a shocking surprise. Meanwhile, Eric’s spirit fights to come back through one of the ancient Vessel coins.
In The Return: Book 3, Eric is back and bonds into a new Vessel whose vicious desire for power and revenge equals his own. Until a new and powerful Spirit Guard arrives to help stop Eric’s rising tide of evil for good. But doing so will come at a price that pits spirits against Vessels, love against hate, and father against son in a war only one side can win.
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EXCERPT:
Excerpt from “The Vessels” (Book 1) — Chapter 27, The Rogue
(Eric is the serial killer spirit that returns and goes rogue for revenge. He is the primary villain throughout the series.)
Flesh and mist swirled together until they painfully regrouped into Matheus’s sick and weakened body. He collapsed on a filthy sidewalk just off a back alley, organs sliding back into place, heart struggling to beat. Horns honked and traffic flew past while Eric waited for Matheus’s scrambled brain to fire up his parasympathetic nerves and bring things back online. Transport was as easy as breathing in a Vessel, but in an average human, especially one this feeble and infirm, it was like trying to hurl a tornado.
The nearby dumpster dribbled foul juices. Homeless people and prostitutes walked the dirty streets of gang-tagged stores, and a pawnshop’s neon sign flashed advertisements for slot machines.
Downtown Reno.
Eric recognized it from trips he’d taken in human life. He’d transported them here from San Francisco, targeting that new Vessels Program the Spirit Guard had mentioned. They must be close.
In India, where he’d entered this plane, the Program was based in an orphanage forty kilometers from the lake. Here, it must be that homeless shelter on the corner, the one with the soup kitchen entry on one side and the gated courtyard. All these Programs were alike—based in some kind of overlooked business that served others, near a lake owned by an indigenous tribe, and run by a bunch of do-gooders out to make the world a better place. The whole thing made him sick. Only the strongest, toughest, and most self-serving would survive, so why bother with anyone else?
Outside the shelter, a petite woman with wavy hair leaned against a SUV, a hybrid, of course, from the looks of it. She spoke to a thirty-something, blond man behind the wheel. The Rogue felt the tattoo around the man’s ankle, as well as his inner strength. This man was a Vessel, albeit newly marked, and he didn’t yet have the coin.
Perfect.
Author Bio:
Anna graduated from the University of Florida and began her career as Don Johnson’s assistant on the TV series, Miami Vice. She worked in production for years on feature films like Nell, 12 Monkeys, A Time to Kill, Practical Magic, and My Dog Skip before turning her hand to screenwriting. She has written many films and TV scripts, paid indie assignments, short films, and a book adaption with and for a legendary actor. “The Vessels” marks Anna’s debut novel series.
Anna’s passion for justice is integral to her writing. She loves to create entertaining and inspiring stories for stage and screen where her diverse, underdog characters defy the odds and buck the system for unexpected impact and change.
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Blood Sacrifice by Q. Turner blitz with giveaway
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Blood Sacrifice
Q. Turner
Publication date: November 18th 2023
Genres: Adult, Cyberpunk, Dystopian, Science Fiction
Welcome to the Isulum Empire. Inflation is high, trust in the government is low, and unrest is growing. Here, oligarchs live offshore on superyachts with their pleasure androids, far from tax obligations and the crumbling, crime-ridden city center. The rest of the population retreats into the digital world of Parallel, a sanctuary that offers daily respite from the real world.
Many of Parallel’s users have rallied around the speaker Rita Shor, who challenges the empire’s class division and the injustices faced by women. Shor and her followers adamantly oppose the radical ideologies of another charismatic speaker, Doctor Gagarin Sokolo, who promotes extreme misogyny in an effort to address the empire’s declining birth rate.
Neither Shor nor Sokolo realizes that in the depths of Parallel, a team of hackers is working hard to unite their disparate followers under a singular purpose: to dismantle the Isulum Empire.
As Shor and Sokolo’s lives become further intertwined, the empire’s fate rests in their hands. But the price of victory may prove far greater than they ever imagined.
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EXCERPT:
The stars look like dull old diamonds now, not like when we were young and would lie on the high desert dunes, feeling the chilly northern winds sweep the day’s heat away.
We could trace the swirling ribbon of the universe across the sky, asking each other why God would care about this hot little world on the edge of the Milky Way. How easy it used to be to find the star that, even in total darkness, could guide us back to the Ishti capital, far across the barren sand.
Since the forced migration, since entering the walled, foreign Empire of Isulum, I’ve lost sight of the stars we used to know. All I can see when I look up is an odd, murky hue, darkness saturated with artificial light, arid dust, and smog.
But on nights like this one, when the rolling blackouts sweep through the Diegan Blocks ghetto and the buzz of the neon ads outside of my grimy windows temporarily click off, I can climb to the roof of my apartment to escape the oppressive heat. If I’m lucky, I can catch a glimpse of a dim, winking star or two.
On nights like those, I look up at the stars and wonder, wherever you are, if your soul gazes at the stars too, surprised by how far we’ve gone from heaven.
Tonight, the rolling blackout silenced my rumbling air conditioning unit, allowing the stale hot air to smother my home.
A Waseda android waits with me in the darkness. She waits for the dark to pass and for the police to take me away. The purple Bors mark below her left eye that marks her as inhuman glows dimly, illuminating shadows about the room. Tonight, blood covers my body, adding a regretfully soothing, sticky sensation to my fingers.
It is a strange time to atone, my dear friend Auria, but I know that if my prayers have never before reached the ears of God, you’ll happily receive them. You see, I’ve been staring at my husband’s dead body for an hour now, his Waseda here beside me. And I’ve been too terrified to move.
Author Bio:
Q. Turner is a marketing professional for sustainable and renewable energy companies during the day and writes in the evenings.
Specializing in science fiction and short stories inspired by her global travels, Turner has recently penned her debut full-length science fiction novel, “Blood Sacrifice.”
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The Buffalo Butcher by Robert Brighton blitz with giveaway
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The Buffalo Butcher: Jack the Ripper in the Electric City
Robert Brighton
Publication date: October 8th 2023
Genres: Adult, Historical
Has Jack the Ripper returned?
Summer 1901, and the great Pan-American Exposition welcomes the world to Buffalo, New York—Queen of the Lakes . . . the Electric City. Eight million visitors throng the bustling boomtown—all of them looking for a good time.
While the Pan-American blazes bright, in its shadow lies a zone of darker pleasures: the Tenderloin District, a rabbit’s warren of saloons, brothels, and ask-no-questions hotels. In this sprawling vice quarter, fully as large as the Exposition itself, fairgoers can indulge their less innocent appetites.
As heat and swarming crowds choke the city, the bodies of prostitutes begin turning up, slashed and mutilated by a pitiless hand—their flesh carved with strange symbols. Their gruesome murders are a final indignity worked on once-hopeful young women.
Some say the killings are the work of the Devil himself. Others hint that the Whitechapel Murderer, Jack the Ripper, has crossed the Atlantic to resume his bloody career. Yet the city’s power brokers—afraid of any publicity that would harm the Exposition—turn a blind eye to the victims.
As the bloody summer wears on, only one thing is clear: it’ll be up to the working girls themselves to stop the carnage. And in The Buffalo Butcher, five of them will stand together to confront the killer . . . and to reclaim their humanity.
An important new novel by Robert Brighton, acclaimed author of the Avenging Angel Detective Agency Mysteries.
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A NOTE TO THE READER:
From The Author…
Eight million people—about one in nine Americans—came to Buffalo, New York, to see the “Pan.” The cynics thought it was nothing more than yet another bloated world’s fair. But most found the Electric City to be an expression of all that was good and hopeful: the unity of North and South American nations, the triumph of Man over Nature, and the advent of the modern scientific and engineering marvels that would herald a new century of peace and prosperity.
We can debate which camp won out, but one thing is certain. The assassination of President William McKinley in the Pan-American’s Temple of Music drew a curtain forever over the promise of the Pan— and left Buffalo with a bitter legacy that is remembered even today.
The Buffalo Butcher also takes us into a darker side of bright, up-and-coming Buffalo, then the nation’s fastest-growing city. We visit the back alleys of the Tenderloin District, a large red-light zone in the heart of downtown, where most anything was tolerated by city officials and police, so long as it stayed put. Hundreds of brothels and low-end dives huddled together in the Tenderloin and existed—for the most part—on the exploitation of young women who often had no other good option.
It’s an unflinching and sometimes hard-to-bear story of the real evil that walks among us, the warped and wicked who prey on the vulnerable, and how they work their black magic. I could not turn away from that part: If you’re looking for a ‘cozy mystery’, this ain’t it—I had to tell the story in a way that would do honor to the victims, and without any sympathy for the devil.
Yet, I think, Butcher it is also a story of friendship and love, decency and honor, and perhaps most of all courage, among a group of outcast women confronting loneliness, condemnation, shame, and loss. The masks come off in The Buffalo Butcher, and while as always I hope you’ll find it a good read, I hope too that you’ll find the story as touching as I did—even if a little spooky.
Author Bio:
Award-winning author Robert Brighton is an authority on the Gilded Age, and a great believer that the Victorian era was anything but stuffy. In his Avenging Angel Detective Agency Mysteries, Brighton exposes the turbulence of the era – its passions, dreams, and disasters – against a backdrop of careful research on the places, sights, sounds, and smells of the time.
When he is not walking the streets in the footsteps of the Avenging Angels, sniffing out unsolved mysteries, Brighton is an adventurer. He has traveled in more than 50 countries around the world, personally throwing himself into every situation his characters will face – from underground ruins to opium dens – and (so far) living to tell about it.
A graduate of the Sorbonne, Paris, Brighton is an avid student of early 20th Century history and literature, an ardent and relentless investigator, and an admirer of Emily Dickinson and Jim Morrison. He lives in Virginia with his wife and their two cats.
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Principles of Emotion by Sara Read Blog Tour
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Title: Principles of Emotion
Author: Sara Read
Publisher: Graydon House
Publication Date: January 9, 2024
Page Count: 292
About the book:
A brilliant mind needs a strong heart.
Mathematical genius Dr. Meg Brightwood has just completed her life’s work—a proof of a problem so impenetrable it’s nicknamed the Impossible Theorem.
Reclusive and burdened by anxiety, no one took Meg seriously before. Now everyone wants to get their hands on what she alone possesses—especially her own mathematician father. Having grown up a prodigy in a field plagued by sexism and plagiarism, Meg opts for a public presentation so there is no doubt of her authorship. But a panic attack derails her plans. Defeated, Meg returns to the decaying house where she lives alone and locks away the one and only manuscript of her proof.
Then chance sends her the unlikeliest of allies. Isaac Wells—carpenter, high-school dropout, in trouble with the law. And the one love of Meg’s life. Fifteen years ago, they never did more than hold hands. Now adults, they reach toward each other through the minefield of the past and find a tenuous space where they can love and be loved for who they are.But when Meg goes to retrieve the Impossible Theorem, she finds it missing. Will she fight for the achievement of the century and the love of a lifetime?
Find this book online:
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Excerpt:
Chapter 1
The night before Lila’s funeral, I rose from my nest on the couch in my study on the third floor of the tower. I had not been sleeping well. Across the room, a damp wind blew through the open window. With both hands, I wrestled it down. The windowpanes and sashes were curved to match the walls of the tower, and they tended to stick. This one wouldn’t shut the last inch, so I gave it up, turned off the lamps and returned to my couch, pulling a throw blanket over my legs. Outside, bluish beams of streetlight illuminated the top limbs of the trees as they swayed in the wind.
Since Lila’s death, I had felt so unmoored that it was almost a physical sense of drift. After spending nearly every hour of every day spooning applesauce off her chin, drawing her ancient arms through threadbare sleeves, bathing and changing her, waking up when she cried out in the night, I felt her absence like a missing a chamber of my own heart. So I went where I always went when I needed an anchor. Back to Frieholdt’s.
My family thought I was in denial, spending the days and nights after her death closed in my study, but it wasn’t denial. It was comfort. As Lila’s needs had increased, I’d had less and less time for Frieholdt’s Conjecture, and now after all that time away, I had new perspective, like seeing it for the first time. I could feel the answer just at the extremity of my understanding.
I was also exhausted. I tugged the blanket toward my chin. Past the rain-rippled windows, the air, water, and trees all moved in apparent entropy—so much turbulence against the unmoving light—and as a mathematician’s mind tends to do, mine searched for patterns. They were always present, and always changing.
I must have slept, because I woke to dark and stillness. The fitful rain had stopped. A single cicada chirped in the top of a tree. As I ascended into a sleep-loosened consciousness, a light glinted—a bright, inner North Star—and in less than an instant I was on my feet, as awake as I had ever been in my life.
Comprehension cannot be predicted. It may come when bidden, one may struggle after it for a lifetime, or it may wait two hundred years to send its bright ray through the darkness. That night, comprehension picked me. It picked four in the morning, after a week of relentless, grief-driven focus. But it found me ready. I knew from a lifetime of training that when the ray of light appeared, I had to keep my eyes on it and not look away, no matter the consequences.
Though the rest of the third floor was a glorified attic with sloping roof and dormer windows, the tower room maintained the grandeur of the rest of the house. I paced the floor, eyes closed, head tilted up.
I forgot the emptiness of the bedroom below my feet where Lila had breathed her last breath. I followed the bright rail of my thoughts as they plunged through the darkness, skimming along, light and swift to the very center of Frieholdt’s Conjecture where I could finally see the last remaining knot. It lay within the Gault function, itself contained within the Wang-Hickman method, a central tool used to predict the motion of noncompressible fluids. The threads grew clear, loosening, almost floating.
From a bent bit of gutter, a single rivulet of water tap-tapped onto the balcony. The pattern began to form.
Turbulence: resistance. Constraint pulling inward. And in parallel, release: spooling out. The opposite of friction. Twin forces, intertwined, dancing.
Math is logic purified to its essence. And logic seeks order and sequence. Deep within that last tangle, I separated the radiant strands. I restrung them and laid them straight, end to end, and at last—at last—they formed a jetway to the center of the universe.
Feet barely touching the floor, I went to my board—five feet tall and twelve feet wide, built to fit the curved wall, with a hand-carved ledge at the bottom—and lifted a cool piece of chalk between my fingers.
Daylight shone through the windows when I woke, still clutching the nub of chalk.
There on my board were a series of functions and shapes in green, white, and yellow. A dimensional representation. A kind of mathematical shorthand.
At that moment, it was not something I could have presented even to another mind such as my own. Still more a small pot holder than a perfectly woven tapestry, but it was all there. So much simpler than I had imaged. As if it had been there all along—which, like all math, it had.
Done.
Twenty-three years of study. Done.
My hands trembled. I blinked, sure that it would disappear or dissolve into nonsense as it had done so many times before. I turned my back, crossed the room, and looked at it from a distance.
Still there.
I opened the window and looked out. Back in the early spring, a work crew had started a renovation on the big house across the street. Men. Trucks. Lumber. The damp smell of oak and grass wafted in. It made me think of Isaac.
I wished I could tell him I did it. I really did it. He always believed I could, if for no other reason than I believed it myself.
There’s a feeling when you meet someone, that somehow you’ve known them all your life. And not even all your life. Like you’ve known them all of some other life where you are completely yourself. Not the one you’re living, where you are who people expect you to be, but some better life. The one you should have been living all along. That’s how it was with Isaac.
No one in my family had known him except Lila, and now the memory was mine alone. And perhaps even Lila didn’t know what we became to one another.
I turned and looked at my board again. It still seemed impossible, but there it was, and the afterglow of epiphany was heaven. Breathless astonishment. A floaty, weightless feeling in my chest. I had done it. At last. And after so many years, it came in such a sudden burst of light.
This would vindicate me. It would prove that Dr. Margaret Brightwood was not a batshit-crazy recluse after all. This would vindicate the little girl who people read about in the news, who had so much power and so much promise.
A soft creak from the third-floor stairs startled me, and I jumped to my feet. No one ever came up here.
“Who is it?” I pressed a hand over my racing heart.
“Meg? Are you all right?”
The door opened, and my panic melted, replaced by that fullness of heart which so often ends in tears. Sweet Lizzie. More sister than cousin. The Sun to my Moon. Her golden hair was tied up, but a fallen strand stuck to her black dress.
I plucked the loose hair off. “What are you doing here?”
“Are you okay?” She looked at me, then scanned the room for—what? “They sent me to look for you.”
“Oh my god.” The funeral. I spun around. “Oh my god. What time is it?”
My clothes. They weren’t even pressed. I had barely slept. I ran past Lizzie and headed for my bedroom. They would all be waiting. My father. My sister. The pastor.
“Meg, you look pale.” Lizzie followed me. “First tell me if you’re okay.”
“Yes, I was—” I stabbed my arms into a black shirt. Legs into slacks. “I was working.”
They would be waiting. Expecting me to drop everything. To run and fulfill my part in this ritual obligation. I sat on the floor to pull on my boots.
But why?
Funerals are for the living. For people who want or need to grieve together. Here’s the truth. As tiny as Lila was, and as hard as she tried not to be a burden, the last years of her life had been a constant struggle, and grief had been my daily companion. I was spent.
My father had visited occasionally. The minister dropped by for a few minutes each week. And my older sister—had she even seen the inside of the house in five years? In the last months, caring for Lila had consumed everything. I slept next to her so she wouldn’t be alone.
My obligations were done. I didn’t need a funeral. I didn’t need to weep and hug a bunch of strangers dressed in black. I only wanted some time to walk the house before the sense of her presence was gone forever.
Lizzie examined me with her gentle eyes. “So…are you done? Working?”
Strong emotions competed for dominance, and extreme exultation was the first to break through.
“Yes, I’m done. I’m finally done.” But laughter gave way quickly to defensiveness. “I have been care-giving twenty-four seven. I swear to god, I haven’t had an uninterrupted hour in I don’t remember how long. And now I finally, finally have the space to think, and you know what? I did it. I did it. And I just want a few fucking minutes to enjoy it.”
By the end I was almost yelling. Then, of course, I wanted to cry. Lizzie didn’t deserve to be yelled at.
She dropped to the floor and put her arms around me. Lizzie was small, slim, and fit. Five years my junior and unfazed by my moods.
“You did what?” she said.
“Frieholdt’s. I solved it.”
“Meg, that’s amazing.”
“I miss her,” I said. “I miss her so much, but it’s been so long since I’ve been able to focus.”
“It’s all right, sweetheart.” Lizzie held tighter.
“I’m not going. I can’t.” I leaned into her embrace. “Maybe Dad’s mad that I’m not there, but he’ll see. They’ll all see that my whole fucking life was worth something.”
Lizzie kissed my cheek. “You were already worth something.”
Then she got out her phone and sent a text, leaning her shoulder firmly against mine like a mare to a skittish foal. “They can finish without us.”
“Lila wouldn’t mind. She never wanted a church funeral or a grave.”
“Plus it’s hot, and the pastor is so boring.” Lizzie put her arms around me again. “Remember when he came over and Grandma would be like, ‘Oh here comes Mr. Finkley, bless his heart.’”
I laughed, so grateful they sent Lizzie. With Lila gone, she was the one person on god’s green earth I could be myself with.
We spent the rest of the morning with photo albums, cross-legged on Lila’s big bed.
“Oh, remember this?” Lizzie held up a picture of the two of us. We were maybe eight and thirteen, standing arm in arm on a rock, a broad shining river behind us. Lizzie had been a sturdy reed of a girl, whereas I had grown curves early and stood as if I were trying to hide them. But we were both smiling and squinting in the sun.
“Harpers Ferry,” Lizzie said. “Lila walked that entire trail with us.”
“Dad didn’t want to let me go.” I took the picture and looked at it close. “But Lila made him.”
Lizzie wept, and I held her in my arms feeling only a hollowness in my throat.
I had wept when Lila started struggling after words for everyday things. When she asked me to stop the crying of a baby only she could hear. When she forgot my name.
I had nothing left.
At that moment I grieved not for the old woman, but for the young, strong Lila who hiked with me and Lizzie to the Shenandoah that day. The last and only person who could get my father off my back.
Excerpted from Principles of (E)motion by Sara Read. Copyright © 2024 by Sara Read. Published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
About the Author:
SARA READ is cofounder of #momswritersclub. Originally from Washington, DC, she tried the nine-to-five life for about a nanosecond before moving to rural Virginia to become a flute-maker’s apprentice and traditional fiddle player. A cancer survivor herself, Sara now has the distinct privilege of caring for cancer patients as a nurse. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with her husband, two teens, a terrier and three snarky cats. sararead.net
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Cover Reveal: Utopia by Marie-Hélène Lebeault
**This post contains Amazon affiliate links which will allow me as an associate to earn a small commission on any purchase made through the link of the products I share. This commission in no way changes the pricing of any items for the buyer.**
Utopia
Marie-Hélène Lebeault
Publication date: January 15th 2024
Genres: Adventure, Post-Apocalyptic, Science Fiction, Young Adult
A Clean YA Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Adventure
Three extraordinary teenagers, each an outcast in their worlds, unite to reshape the destiny of a utopian society. Ryn, who couldn’t adapt to life under the sea, Eira, born above the clouds but unable to breathe the thin air, and Aiden, rejected by the subterranean civilization, embarks on a thrilling journey to Vancouver’s utopia. They’ll challenge the elders, confront hidden truths, and discover the power of unity in a fast-paced young adult sci-fi adventure that explores the boundaries of human resilience, and the promise of a better world.
Utopia is a What Happens Next? novel developed from the Under the Ice short story.
Author Bio:
Marie-Hélène is a Canadian Speculative Fiction author. She writes young adult quest and adventure stories rooted in fantasy, magic and time travel. With important coming-of-age lessons at the core of her writing, teens and adults alike will revel in the fantastical journeys of her characters. When not immersed in magic and mystery, you’ll find Marie-Hélène hiking, cycling, or lying on the beach with a good book. She lives in Quebec, Canada with her grown children.
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