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Hi reader,
No new book from this house today, and I want to say plainly that this is on purpose rather than something slipping.
Three books landed a week and a half ago: a cash register that only rings when someone is lying, a dragon who hands over every choice instead of taking one, and the book that finally moves the whole Thornbound Chronicles onto new ground. That is a genuine amount to read, and the kindest thing a small publisher can do after a wave like that is get out of your way for a week rather than compete with itself for your attention. If you have not started any of the three yet, this is the week. The letter that landed the morning after they shipped, with the case for each and which one fits which mood, is here.
Here is what is not pausing, though. Common Ground at Mercy General's advance copies went out to Clara's launch team yesterday. That is Book 4 of the Mercy General Series, out October 2, about a hospital director who has held up a small-town hospital alone for sixteen years and the turnaround consultant who is the first person in sixteen years she cannot manage. If you want to read Clara before anyone else going forward, the team is open: tick her name on the Read It First form and you will be first in line for whatever she sends next.
And The Second Family, Kira Deveraux's Rowe Capital Series Book 3, arrives a week from today. It is the sharpest premise we have published this year: a former prosecutor who has spent two years building the case against her own father, and the man hired to catch her, who works out who she is in four days and does not tell anyone. Wednesday's letter last week had the opening pages, here. This Wednesday you get the scene where he gets caught keeping her secret.
Read them before anyone else. Read It First is the launch team: a free advance copy about three weeks before release, in exchange for one honest review on launch day. You tick which authors you want, so nobody gets a book that is not for them. Join here.
If a book from this house reached you this summer, an honest review is still the single most useful thing you can do for it. Not a kind one, an honest one. It is the one lever we have that cannot be bought.
Something for the quiet week. Our podcast, Story Worlds, lives on YouTube. A week with no new release is a fair week to actually sit down with the first episode, "Every Book Is a Doorway," if you have been meaning to and haven't yet. Watch it here, and subscribe to the channel here so the next one turns up on its own.
Jessie's giveaway is still open, too: one free ebook of Feathers and Phantoms, entries close September 30, and she will remind you how to enter on Monday.
Know someone who needs a reading list rather than one more book? Forward this. They can subscribe straight from the site.
What did you actually pick, of the three from last time, and are you glad you did? I ask because I genuinely don't know yet, and I would like to.
Happy reading,
Lori Collins
Publisher, JL Collins Publishing
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