Excerpt from Shadow of the Eternal Watcher My beater Ford Galaxie swerved across Wilshire as I fought to keep it between the white lines. I probably shouldn’t have driven. It was late—after midnight—and I’d already had a few too many. Though that’d never stopped me before. The car groaned as I jerked the wheel back to center. Missed the sidewalk but might’ve taken someone’s mirror with me. Impossible to know for sure. Didn’t feel too bad about it either way. People knew the risks parking in LA. At least I’d made incredible time. Threw the jalopy into park just past Fairfax and stared at the neon sign for my favorite watering hole. The thing sputtered, missing a few letters, but clearly read The Lazy Giant. The street was deserted except for a few homeless catching a wink in the cold. This bar defined dive. And not in a hip way that made it a draw. That’s why I liked it. Out of the glove box, I grabbed my wallet and cell phone, leaving behind my 9mm. Guess I felt lucky on a couple of counts that night. Checked myself quick in the reflection of the window. Looked like I’d been…

From Hard Copy by Fien Veldman Excerpt prepared for Fresh Fiction   Excerpt 1 Page 23 – 32 Word Count 1076   A message pops up on my screen. An event has been added to the shared calendar. How much effort will it require? I need to know in advance. Will it be physically demanding? I’d rather just stay in my little office. I hear enthusiastic footsteps approaching, then the click of the door handle. My colleague from PR sticks her symmetrical face round the door. ‘I don’t know if you’ve already seen it, but we’re having a picnic at lunch!’ She closes the door. I hate picnics. They’re just like karaoke: everyone gets dragged in and you’re the grouch if you complain. The door opens again.   ‘By the way,’ she says. ‘Isn’t the heat in here suf­focating? We could do something about it, move the printer or something.’   Move the printer?   ‘Oh, it’s no big deal,’ I say, feeling a drop of sweat rolling down my armpit. My hands leave moist marks on the printer, on my keyboard, on the letters. My legs stick to the chair. ‘I have a fan.’   ‘OK!’ The door is…

SPELLSTRUCK by Jaclyn Reding, Excerpt     “Maybe we should try coming up with the perfect recipe for a man over this bottle of Grenache. One who doesn’t use a grandmother’s quilt to paint, and who shows up when he says he will.” Hallie snickered, then snorted. The wine and the moonlight stealing through the kitchen window made her game for just this sort of mindless fun. “So, the recipe for a perfect man, huh? It would be a challenge. Sort of like revamping what Mother Nature concocted the first time? Actually, this could be fun. What should we include for the first ingredient? Hmm. Irish. Definitely Irish.” Jenna grabbed pen and paper from the counter by the blender, jotting it down while Hallie thought out loud further. “And I’m thinking a really big—” “—heart,” Jenna finished, shooting her sister a reproving glance. “So he can love the woman to whom he gives that heart utterly and completely.” Jenna drew a fanciful heart in the very center of the page, then penciled in an arrow à la Cupid for good measure. “Okay, okay,” Hallie agreed. “Add two cups of ‘tall.’ He has to be six feet at least. We don’t…

EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT – First Kiss: Wanting a Family Man by Dani Collins   I’m thrilled to be returning to Fresh Fiction with an exclusive excerpt from the third book in my Raven’s Cove trilogy, WANTING A FAMILY MAN. In WANTING A FAMILY MAN, Trystan is finishing out the season as a whale-watching captain on British Columbia’s isolated west coast. Cloe is his baby sister’s aunt, someone he hasn’t decided yet whether he can trust. Cloe is starting her life from scratch after her last boyfriend took everything. Trystan and Cloe are warily starting to like each other as they walk through an abandoned town. Nature has begun swallowing up the past and their own romance is starting to blossom. If you love a slow-burn to sexy romance full of a closely-knit community, laughs and a few tears plus tons of heart, you’ll adore this series.       Trystan absently helped himself to a huckleberry as they passed a bush growing out of the top of a broken, rotting stump. Cloe stopped in her tracks. “Can you eat those?” “I just did. They’re like blueberries only red.” That one had been a little tart because they weren’t quite ripe yet….

Calay hit the deck. The impact knocked the wind clean out of her lungs. She gasped, coughed, fought to breathe. Until she heard the horrific, awful screech behind her. She writhed, flung her head in the opposite direction. There was no missing it in the dim lighting of the hallway. Through a cloud of dark brown dust, at the other end of the corridor was an Other in full form. It’s grey, raw-looking swollen body teetered on pin-sharp malformed limbs, its joints sharp as knives. Patches of short, wire-thick hair jutted out in every direction between pustules and spines, the hump on its back grazed the ceiling with each undulating, foul breath. Gods. It was one thing to see the Others in a galaxy far removed from her own, but here, on Earth, within the Resistance walls, was another thing entirely. One Calay wanted nothing to do with. Through the haze, the creature’s cracked lips seemed to smile. If it was possible, she would have sworn her heart stopped in that moment. It jumpstarted when Adam lunged from the hallway. His eyes wild, clothes disheveled. He raised a machete above his head and hollered an ungodly sound. Calay choked back…

Darla dragged Jerry toward the bleachers. She was dressed in the same uniform as the other two cheerleaders: a sleeveless green top with Statesmen printed in gold script across the front, a green skirt trimmed with gold and ending significantly above her knees, tiny white socks, and green athletic shoes. Matching ribbons secured her honey-blonde hair. Initially, Jerry thought the tiny sparkles on Darla’s face were glistening sweat, but with a second glance, he determined it was glittery make-up. Her lips were painted sports-car red. And she smelled like someone set off a bomb in a candy shop: bubble gum, chocolate, and Peeps. The effect was like a punch in the gut, and he found it challenging to breathe. They took seats in the first row, and Jerry forced himself to maintain eye contact, staring at irises the color of a putting green framed by impossibly long lashes. “This is so exciting!” Darla tapped away on her phone. “We’re going to be in the school newspaper.” “I’m not sure exciting is the word I would choose to describe what happened to your teammate.” “Oh right.” Darla’s expression became subdued. “Do you have to write about that? It’s so depressing. Couldn’t…

Credit: Excerpted from SNAKE OIL, provided courtesy of Mariner Books/HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright © 2024 by Kelsey Mueller.     When the reporter from Entrepreneur rings the bell, I’m in the kitchen, chopping vegetables in a silk jumpsuit. Onions sweat in butter on the stove. Jeremy Krill wears dark jeans, expensive Italian loafers, and a baby blue fleece with SAN FRANCISCO embroidered across the chest. The cold summer weather takes even prestigious journalists by surprise. I settle him in at the kitchen island. Cooking for writers is one of my tricks. It’s hospitable and familiar, while giving me an excuse to turn away, pause, as if concentrating on some critical issue of heat or seasoning. “I hope you like mushrooms,” I say. “This is a recipe from my first cookbook.” He sets up his recorder, his leather notepad. We talk early days of Radical—starting the company in my college apartment, dropping out, growing fast, early employees working until dawn in the dusty shell of an old community center in the Mission, formulating products in the same kitchen where people microwaved lunch and made coffee. Making the leap into tech with our app, growing faster, faster, until we ’re nearly outgrowing the…

PERSUASION WAS LENNON’S last class of the day, and she arrived just a few moments before the period began. The class‑ room was already full, students seated behind all but one of the twelve desks in the room. On each of them, there was a small glass cage that contained a single live rat. Dante stood at the front of the classroom—dressed smartly, in wool trousers and a white button‑down, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows to expose tattooed forearms. If he had any memory of their encounter outside of Irvine Hall, he gave no indication. “Lennon, nice of you to join us. Have a seat.” She claimed a desk in the middle of the room, stared into the cage in front of her. The rat on the other side of the glass was dun brown with a little white patch on its left ear. He was shaking. “I have no idea if you’re a boy or a girl, but I’m going to call you Gregory because you look like one,” said Lennon in a whisper, and the rat looked up at her, nose twitching, as if he understood.   “What’s the difference between training and an act of…

1     “Wait…you’re not still running that book club you started in high school, are you?” Gia Rossi had been shopping at her local grocer when her sister called. “I’ve never really stopped. Not completely.” She switched her phone to her other ear, so she could use her more dexterous left hand to steer her empty shopping cart across the parking lot to the reclamation point. “Most of the members weren’t your friends. They were just people who blindly followed you no matter what you did,” her sister pointed out drily. Was there a hint of jealousy in that response? Margaret, who’d been known as Maggie when they were kids but now called herself a more distinguished Margot, was only thirteen months younger than Gia, so just one year behind her in school. Margot hadn’t been nearly as popular—but it was because she’d never done anything exciting. She’d been part of the academic group, too busy excelling to be going out having fun. “A few of them were close friends,” Gia insisted. “Ruth, Sammie and a handful of others are still in the book club with me, and we rotate picking a read.” “Seriously? It’s been seventeen years since…

THE HIDDEN GIRL extract – PROLOGUE   The old woman stared at Leah, then smiled, her face creasing into a thousand wrinkles. Leah thought that she must be at least a hundred and fifty years old. All the children at her junior school said she was a witch and they howled like banshees as they passed her near-derelict cottage on their way home through the village after school. To the adults, she was old Megan, who took in injured birds and used herbal concoctions to mend their broken wings. Some said she was mad, others that she had the gift of healing and strange psychic powers. Leah’s mother felt sorry for her. ‘Poor old biddy,’ she’d say, ‘all alone in that damp, dirty cottage.’ Then she’d tell Leah to collect a few eggs from the hen-shed and take them round to Megan. Leah’s heart always beat with fear when she knocked on the crumbling door. Usually, Megan would open it slowly, peer round and grab the eggs out of Leah’s hand with a nod. The door would close and Leah would run as fast as she could back home. But today, when she had knocked, the door had opened much…