Today's Featured Books

We're just 2 days away from the release of Martha's Notebook by C. Fulster, the first book of a new zombie apocalypse trilogy that includes a viral outbreak, zombies, and AI gone wrong. Pre-order now to get your copy on October 1.

Bonus: Get the e-book for a special price of $2.99 now through October 5. (After that, the e-book will be available at a regular price of $4.99.)

Martha's Notebook

Before the incident, Martha’s biggest worry was her parents’ divorce. Now she’s hiding from a zombie horde hell-bent on annihilating humankind nicknamed “Chippers.”

But this attack wasn’t spurred by a viral outbreak. Instead, these zombies seem to be puppets of an AI technology gone rogue, and with every day that passes, it’s learning more about how to accomplish its sinister goal.

But why is an AI creating, controlling, and upgrading zombies—and more importantly, how do you stop an ultra-intelligent, world-ending technology that can shift course at a moment’s notice?

Only one thing is clear: there’s no going back.

Martha’s Notebook is the electrifying first installment of a new sci-fi horror trilogy that will keep you on the edge of your seat with every twist. Jam-packed with survival, suspense, and existential dread, it’s sure to satisfy any post-apocalyptic fiction enthusiast.

About the Author

      

Today, LitNuts is shining a spotlight on the work of Lancelot Schaubert, author, editor, and producer of albums, films, and photo novels. The works in today's special edition newsletter run the gamut from science fiction to humor to social commentary. Read on to learn more.

“Lancelot Schaubert writes with conviction but without the cliché and bluster of the propaganda that is so common in this age of blogs and tweets. Here is a real practitioner of the craft who has the patience to pay attention." ~Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove, bestselling author of Common Prayer and The Awakening of Hope

Of Gods and Globes

Author and editor Lancelot Schaubert rounded up sci-fi and fantasy writers to write about cosmic influence. The fantasy writers took a more mythological approach, speaking of the symbolic (or perhaps godly) Mercury and Mars and Neptune. The sci-fi writers tell you what it’s like to live on Jupiter and Uranus. All of them, though, speak of the influence of what one writer called "the music of the spheres."

Books in the Series:

1. Of Gods and Globes: A Cosmic Anthology
2. Of Gods and Globes II: A Cosmic Anthology
3. Of Gods and Globes III: Trigger Warnings and The Abyss

Praise for contributors to the Of Gods and Globes anthologies
"As in all her books, Juliet Marillier shows the strength and power that women can control regardless of their place in the world or society in which they are born." ~TOR

"Cohen has real talent with character development and interaction and prickly, defensive, sympathetic heroins." ~BookLife

"Schaubert’s words have an immediacy, a potency, an intimacy that grab the reader by the collar and say ‘Listen, this is important!’” ~Erika Robuck, author of Hemingway’s Girl

Bell Hammers: The True Folk Tale of Little Egypt

Pranks. Oil. Protest. Jokes between newlyweds. And one hilarious siege of a major corporation.

Remmy grows up with Beth in Bellhammer, Illinois, as oil and coal companies rob the land of everything that made it paradise. Under his Grandad, Remmy learns how to properly prank his neighbors, friends, and foes.

Beth tries to fix Remmy by taking him to church. Under his Daddy, Remmy starts the Bell Hammer Construction Company, which depends on contracts from Texarco Oil. 

Together, Remmy and Beth start to build a great neighborhood of "merry men" carpenters: a paradise of s’mores, porch furniture, newborn babies, and summer trips to Branson. Then a faulty Texarco oil derrick falls down on their house and poisons their neighborhood's well. 

Poisoned wells escalate to torched dog houses, stolen carpentry tools, cancelled contracts, and eminent domain claims. Sick of the attacks from Texarco Oil on his neighborhood, Remmy assembles his merry men: "We need the world's greatest prank. One grand glorious jest that'll bloody the nose of that tyrant."

Praise for Bell Hammers
"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as told by Gabriel Garcia Marquez if Marquez lived in rural Illinois and only told stories to his grandkids. Seriously a delight to read." ~Colby Williams, author of Small Town, Big Money

"Humor, compassion, and heart." ~Brian Slatterly, editor of The New Haven Review

"Emotionally stirring with both a vulnerable sensibility and rawness." ~Natalie Gee, Brooklyn Film Festival

Least of These Least

Least of these least. The biblical verse fills us with dread: Where have we overlooked the hungry, the sick, the refugee, the homeless, the naked, the prisoner? When have we neglected to quench, feed, heal, host, and visit?

The dread grows: When, specifically, have we done so to Jesus himself? What have you done for Him through those you have every right to hate, shame, mistrust, avoid, or resent?

Praise for Least of These Least
"Lancelot Schaubert writes with conviction but without the cliché and bluster of the propaganda that is so common in this age of blogs and tweets." ~Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove, author of Common Prayer and The Awakening of Hope

    

Free online literary event: The Back Room. Join authors Rose Carlyle (No One Will Know), Madeline Martin (The Booklover's Library), Mansi Shah (A Good Indian Girl), and Marybeth Mayhew Whalen (Every Moment Since) as the discuss their work, play a game of 20 Questions, and meet in online breakout sessions for informal conversation with book lovers. Sunday, September 29, 7 PM ET.

"Autumn…the year’s last, loveliest smile." ~William Cullen Bryant

Today, LitNuts is shining a spotlight on the work of Julie Ryan McGue, an award-winning author who writes about finding out who you are, where you belong, and making sense of it all. 

“An inspirational story of perseverance and resiliency...about the discoveries that searching for the truth reveals—how it sets you free and offers the gift of love.” ~Linda Joy Myers, founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers and author of Don’t Call Me Mother

Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging

Julie is adopted. She is also a twin. Because their adoption was closed, she and her sister lack both a health history and their adoption papers—which becomes an issue for Julie when, at forty-eight years old, she finds herself facing several serious health issues.

To launch the probe into her closed adoption, Julie first needs the support of her sister. The twins talk things over, and make a pact: Julie will approach their adoptive parents for the adoption paperwork and investigate search options, and the sisters will split the costs involved in locating their birth relatives. But their adoptive parents aren’t happy that their daughters want to locate their birth parents—and that is only the first of many obstacles Julie will come up against as she digs into her background.

Julie’s search for her birth relatives spans eight years and involves a search agency, a private investigator, a confidential intermediary, a judge, an adoption agency, a social worker, and a genealogist. By journey’s end, what began as a simple desire for a family medical history has evolved into a complicated quest—one that unearths secrets, lies, and family members that are literally right next door.

Praise for Twice a Daughter
"An engaging, endearing chronicle of a woman’s quest to find her origins." ~Kirkus Reviews

"A compelling, poignant memoir about the search for truth and belonging." ~Readers' Favorite

Awards:

• National Indie Excellence Awards Finalist in Parenting & Family
• International Book Awards Winner in Parenting & Family
• International Book Awards Finalist in Best New Nonfiction, Nonfiction: Narrative, and Women’s Issues / Women’s Studies
• Independent Press Awards Distinguished Favorite in Parenting & Family
• CIBA Nellie Bly Book Awards Finalist
• NYC Big Book Awards Winner in Personal Growth
• NYC Big Book Awards Distinguished Favorite in Parenting & Family
• Living Now Awards Gold Winner in Memoir—Female

Belonging Matters: Conversations on Adoption, Family, and Kinship

Belonging Matters supports the adoption community while creating a conversation with those not directly touched by adoption. The collection explores the pursuit of identity and the boundaries of family and kinship. It challenges the reader to embrace all of who we come to be, and to discern with whom and where we belong. Because belonging defines the human experience, and it is what nourishes our spirit, fuels us with purpose, and compels us to soar beyond the limitations of our lived experience.

Praise for Belonging Matters
"Rich with compassion and wisdom." ~Midwest Book Review

"A narrative where the pursuit of identity intersects with human connection." ~American Writing Awards Book Reviews

Awards:

• Literary Titan Book Award Winner
• Finalist in the Wishing Shelf Book Awards
• Firebird Book Award Winner
• Finalist in the Annual National Indie Excellence Awards for Book Cover Design and in the Personal Growth category
• Finalist in the International Book Awards in Parenting & Family category
• Nonfiction Winner, Honorable Mention in New York Book Festival

Twice the Family: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Sisterhood

What is it like to grow up as an adoptee and be raised with your identical twin?

In this coming-of-age memoir, set in Chicago’s western suburbs during the 1960s to 1980s, adopted twin sisters Julie and Jenny become the oldest daughters in a big family made up of a mixture of adopted and biological children. The twins’ sisterly bond is tight as the two strive for individuality, identity, and belonging. But Julie’s parents’ continual addition of adopted and biological children to the family leads to a number of painful experiences: they encounter infertility, infant mortality, a child with special needs, and then, when Julie is sixteen, a sudden family tragedy.

Faced with these challenges, Julie questions everything—who she is, how she fits in, the circumstances of her adoption, where she belongs, her faith and idea of family. As their family values, parental relationships, and sibling bonds are tested, Julie realizes her adoptive family is held together by love, faith, support, and her parents’ commitment to each other and family. But the life her parents have constructed is not one that Julie wants for herself—and as she grows older, she realizes how her parents’ goals and dreams differ from her own, and how the experiences that have formed her have provided a road map for the person and mother she wants to be.

Join author Julie McGue on this journey of identity and individuality, searching for answers through tragedy and adversity.

          

Free online: A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages. If you are interested in the history of the Middle Ages, you won't want to miss this free online event! Join British historian, professor, and author Anthony Bale as he discusses his new book, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: The World through Medieval Eyes. Thursday, September 26, 6:30 - 8:00 PM EDT. 

“Travel opens the mind in unpredictable ways.” ~Anthony Bale, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages