Today's Featured Books

Do you struggle with chronic illness? Have you been searching for a more effective approach to healing? Noëlle Janka’s Rebel Healing is unlike any other book you’ve read about healing. This insightful guide offers a fresh perspective on the complex relationship between individual well-being and the larger societal systems that contribute to chronic illnesses. Rather than treating illness as an individual matter, she shows readers that their illness is not their fault and points them to the power and agency they have to heal themselves and the systems that made them sick in the first place. 4.8 stars, 33 ratings. FREE - SHOP NOW / 

Today, LitNuts is shining a spotlight on the recent release of Blood Red Deceit, a new suspense thriller from author and former homicide detective Steve Rush.

"To call this a 'thriller' is a huge understatement. Whiplash pace, high octane, high body count. I lost track of the betrayals in the labyrinth of the plot." ~Lynnette Baughman, author of Lost Almost

Bonus for writers
Get Kill Your Characters: Crime Scene Tips for Writers, tips from a former homicide detective and forensic investigator on how to write realistic crime scenes. 

Blood Red Deceit

Ridge Warner donated blood to save his fiancée. But in the process, he exposed a dark secret and opened a window for which she wants him dead.

Gold medals and fame personify the life Angel Meade wants people to see—until a pint of blood Ridge Warner donates to keep her alive alters her future and darkens life's luster to a permanent eclipse over her soul.

Ridge meets the unexpected in Woodland Park, Colorado, three days before his marriage to Angel when he learns more than he cares to know about his fiancée after he agrees to investigate a murder where an IED exploded at the scene.

The matter intensifies when Angel's best friend discovers evidence linking Angel to the murder and IED, which draws Ridge back into the case in search of the reason for Angel's treachery.

Experience the suspense and unexpected climax in Blood Red Deceit as it shows how one person's ambition succumbs to the relentless grip of deceit.

Kill Your Characters: Crime Scene Tips for Writers

2023 Silver Falchion Award Finalist

There's a dead body on the floor, and your detective character has to learn every detail about the crime in order to solve the case and bring the murderer to justice. If you're not an experienced forensic investigator, how can you describe the manner of death accurately so that the evidence means what you want it to mean?

Kill Your Characters by former detective and forensic investigator Steve Rush gives you the tools you need to pass the inspection of all the armchair detectives (and more than a few real ones) out there. Rush's extensive experience is accumulated in a series of writing tips and activities that will significantly improve your story. Kill Your Characters is for any author looking to elevate their murder scenes with credible and authentic details.

About the Author

    

Free online: Strong Women, Strange Worlds. Described as "a tasting menu of speculative fiction delights," this event features six authors who get eight minutes each to share their science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Wednesday, September 20, 7 PM EDT. 

“You had the power all along, my dear.” ~Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

September is World Alzheimer’s Month. "By far, the most tender love story I've read in a very long time." "Had me laughing and crying." What if the person who knew you best and loved you most forgot your face and couldn't remember your name? A retired Cape Cod couple struggles with Alzheimer’s disease. "More than a romance... we are taken on a journey of emotional decision making." "Marianne’s writing is easy to read, well crafted, and tells a beautiful story of tragedy, commitment, and everlasting love." 4.4 stars, 400+ ratings. From $0.99 SHOP NOW / 

In the middle of a winter storm, I’m stranded and desperate. I have no food or money to feed my two little girls. Then it's Sheriff Kellan and his twin brother, Fallon, to the rescue. They take us to the breathtaking lodge of their friend, Luke, who says we can stay as long as we like. Considering the rush of emotions I feel when these three ex-military alphas melt like puppies for my little girls and the way they look at me with such admiration and yearning, I should be grateful. But my husband is a dangerous man with connections. Could this all be a ticking time bomb? From $0.99. Free via KU. SHOP NOW / 

Congratulations to Charlotte Stuart and Vine Leaves Press on the release of Raven's Grave.

★★★★★ “A deeply moving story of murder and cultural erosion in an Alaskan Tlingit fishing village during the late 1970s.” ~James W. Ziskin, author of the award-winning Ellie Stone Mysteries

Raven's Grave

A young boy dies during a midnight ceremony. A fish buyer and $75,000 goes missing. And a runaway becomes the object of an Alaskan wilderness search.

It is 1979 in a small native village in Alaska accessible only by boat. The local Tlingits continue to honor many traditions of the past, although increased contact with the outside world is accelerating a cultural shift. Caught in a slipstream of time, the village has become a curious blend of old and new.

When a young boy dies from a potion that was supposed to cure his limp, all the evidence points to the teenage shaman as the killer. It is up to Jonah St. Clair, the only police officer in the village, to solve the murder and, at the same time, find the missing fish buyer. To do so, he must use both his police skills and his knowledge of the local culture.

During his investigation, Jonah becomes prey and predator in a nighttime chase through the Alaskan wilderness and barely survives a rugged boat trip in dangerous waters. In the end, he discovers the bittersweet secret of the Raven’s Grave.

Praise for Raven's Grave
★★★★★ “A masterfully woven mystery...vivid and haunting.” ~Kathi Daley, USA Today Bestselling Author

★★★★★ “Charlotte Stuart’s evocation of the power of Alaska’s untamed wilderness on its inhabitants and her readers is palpable and profound." ~Gerald Elias, musician and author of the Daniel Jacobus mystery series

★★★★★ “Teeming with authenticity and rich cultural detail. A wonderfully satisfying novel.” ~James W. Ziskin, winner of the Anthony and Barry awards for Best Paperback Original, and the Macavity Award for Best Historical Novel

Free online: Readings from the Room. Located in downtown Boston and near public transportation, The Writers’ Room of Boston provides a safe and accessible location for writers working in every literary genre. The Room also provides free virtual programs and events open to the public, including readings this week from poets Daniel Brock Johnson and Richard Hoffman. Tuesday, September 19, 7 PM EDT. 

“Boston has opened and kept open, more turnpikes that lead straight to free thought and free speech and free deeds than any other city of live or dead men.” ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Reunited by a dark twist of fate, they find treachery and betrayal lurking in every corner. Can they piece together the clues before their time and luck run out? Mateo will do anything to escape his former life of crime. One last undercover assignment for DAG will ensure his freedom and put a major drug dealer out of business. But when things go sideways, he must choose between his op and the only person who ever believed in him. Part of the DAG Team Series. 5.0 stars, 19 ratings. From $4.95 SHOP NOW / 

Congratulations to Melanie Brooks and Vine Leaves Press on the release of A Hard Silence, a memoir that gives readers an intimate glimpse into the author's memories of coping with the tragedy of her father's illness and enduring the loneliness and isolation of not being able to speak.

★★★★★ "Melanie Brooks is that rare writer who can delve as deeply into the world of ideas as she can the pitted terrain of the human heart." ~Andre Dubus III, author of Gone So Long

A Hard Silence by Melanie Brooks

In the mid 1980s, Canada's worst public health disaster was unfolding. Catastrophic mismanagement of the country's blood supply allowed contaminated blood to be knowingly distributed nationwide, infecting close to two thousand Canadians with HIV. Among them was Melanie Brooks's surgeon father who, after receiving a blood transfusion during open-heart surgery in 1985, learned he was HIV positive.

At a time when HIV/AIDS was widely misunderstood and public perception was shaped by fear, prejudice, and homophobia, victims of the disease faced ostracism and persecution. Afraid of this stigma and wanting to protect his family, Melanie's father decided his illness would be a secret. A secret they'd all have to keep. They did not know that her father would live past that first year, but he did. And for ten years before his death in 1995, from the time she was thirteen until she was twenty-three, Melanie's family lived in the shadow of AIDS. She carried the weight of the uncertain trajectory of her father’s health and the heartbreaking anticipation of impending loss silently and alone. It became a way of life.

A Hard Silence is an intimate glimpse into Melanie's memories of coping with the tragedy of her father's illness and enduring the loneliness and isolation of not being able to speak. With candor and vulnerability, Melanie opens her grief wounds and brings her reader inside her journey, twenty years after her father died, to finally understand the consequences of her family's silence, to interrogate the roots of stigma and discrimination responsible for the ongoing secret-keeping, and to show how she's now learned to be authentic.

Praise for A Hard Silence
★★★★★ "A book with a universal message of love, and the courage every single one of us needs to navigate our way to personal, familial, and communal healing." ~Michael Patrick MacDonald, author of All Souls

~★★★★★ "Those of us whose family members were contaminated by HIV/AIDS around the same time shared her feelings, the agony of family secrecy and the fear of stigmatization." ~Vic Parsons, author of Bad Blood: The Unspeakable Truth

★★★★★ “Fills me with a sense of urgency, gratitude, and awe.” ~Abigail Thomas, author of Still Life

★★★★★ “This beautifully rendered memoir asks important questions about the complexities of loss and grief, the roots of stigma and shame, and the courage necessary to endure that resonate in this new and unfortunate age of social exclusion.” ~Richard Blanco, author of The Prince of los Cocuyos

★★★★★ “A vivid and thoughtful exploration of a daughter’s grief for her father, and a family’s unwanted place in history, A Hard Silence movingly depicts the long toll of stigma and the healing power of words.” ~Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body

★★★★★ “A profound and riveting journey through shame and grief, A Hard Silence is, quite simply, unforgettable.” ~Monica Wood, author of When We Were the Kennedys

★★★★★ “In this important and profound narrative, Brooks chronicles what gets us all through times of grief: love, empathy, even vulnerability. And, most importantly, nurturing a sense of wholeness, even as it slips from us.” ~Sue William Silverman, author of How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences 

Free online: Evergreen - The History of Little Tokyo. Join Edgar Award–winning author Naomi Hirahara for a dive into the history of Little Tokyo through her newest book, Evergreen, the story of a Japanese American nurse’s aide who navigates the dangers of post–World War II as she attempts to find justice for a broken family. Sponsored by the Japanese American National Museum. Saturday, September 9, 2 PM PDT. 

"In a time of destruction, create something." ~Maxine Hong Kingston