Hi reader,

The Second Family, Kira Deveraux's third Rowe Capital book, went out into the world yesterday, and I want to tell you honestly why this is the one I've been quietly looking forward to all year.

Sloane Marchetti spent two years secretly building the case that will send her own father to prison. Elias Reyne was hired to find the family's leak and hand her over, and worked out inside four days that she is exactly who they think she is. He never told anyone, because his own name is buried one layer beneath the same structure she is about to burn down. Two people who survive by reading rooms, put in a house that is watching them both, falling for each other in the space between two silences. Slow burn, mutual deception, no cheating, no cliffhanger, and an eyes-open happy ending. It stands alone.

Buy it direct from the store, paperback $14.99: books.by/jlcollinspublishing/the-second-family

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A giveaway you might have missed. Jessie Clark has one running this month: a free ebook copy of Feathers and Phantoms, no purchase necessary, entries close September 30. I'll let her explain it properly on Monday, since it's her book and her question to ask, but if you want to get ahead of it, the short version is: answer one question by email. Monday's letter has the question and the address.

Twelve days out. Clara Langford's Common Ground at Mercy General, Book Four of the Mercy General Series, arrives October 2, and her launch team already has their advance copies. More on that Wednesday.

The small thing that matters most. If any 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.

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: readitfirst-jlcollinspublishing.beehiiv.com/p/read-it-first

Worth a listen. Our podcast, Story Worlds, lives on YouTube. The first episode is "Every Book Is a Doorway," and a book about two people lying to each other for three hundred pages is its own kind of doorway. Watch: Every Book Is a Doorway and subscribe to the channel: youtube.com/@JLCollinsPublishingLLC

From the kiln bench. The other half of this house is Glassbound Ink, my fused and stained glass studio, and this Saturday evening it has a booth at Magic Over Murray, the balloon festival at Murray Park, from 5 to 9 PM. If you are anywhere near Murray, come find me under the balloon glow. And if you like the glass side of things, the studio has its own short Saturday letter: glassboundink.beehiiv.com

If you want the run-up to this one, Wednesday's letter, with the scene where Sloane finds Elias's name in her own file, is here, and the letter before that, about the case she built against her father, is here.

Know someone who needs a reading list rather than one more book? Forward this. They can subscribe straight from the site.

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Sloane and Elias lie to each other for most of a book and it still reads as love by the end. What's the line for you, between a lie that protects someone and a lie that just delays the truth?

Happy reading,

Lori Collins
Publisher, JL Collins Publishing