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Hi reader,
Three books went out into the world yesterday, from two authors, in three genres that share almost nothing except the house that published them. That is either wonderful or ridiculous depending on your view of publishing, and I have made my peace with it being both.
Rather than describe them again, here is the more useful thing: which one is actually for you this weekend.
Pick The Auction House Affair if you want to be outsmarted fairly. Jennie Wren Foster, third Crabapple Antiques Mystery. A regional auction house comes to Kettlebrook, a plain rosewood writing box vanishes out of a locked hall, and the cataloguer is dead at the foot of the loft stair by morning. Addie Wrent has a brass cash register on her counter that does not ring things high because they are valuable. It rings them high when they are lying. Cozy, closed door, murder off the page, and every clue you need is on the page before the ending. Read it with something hot to drink.
Pick Ashmarked to the Exiled Dragon if you want to be undone slowly. Kira Deveraux, third of the Ashpeak Alphas. A cartographer arrives to find the enemy kneeling at her sister's gate, and then the bond she swore would never choose her chooses her anyway. What makes it work is what he does about it, which is nothing at all. He hands her every choice, including the ones that cost him, and she has no defense against being let go of gently. Open door, enemies to lovers, and an ending she has to choose on purpose.
And The Shatterfield if you have been waiting on the Thornbound Chronicles. This is Book 3, and it is the one where the map changes. The realm beyond the eastern water finally arrives, the Shorn cross west in their hundreds, a third court is seated in council and named permanently on the record, and a man who has gone his whole life without a surname gets his bloodline written back into the history that erased it. Asymmetry, sacrifice, and a third mark named at last. It is the book the first two were building toward, and it moves the whole series onto new ground.
One more is already on its way. Kira Deveraux's The Second Family arrives September 18. It is Book 3 of the Rowe Capital Series and the premise is the sharpest we have published this year: a former prosecutor spends two years quietly building the criminal case against her own father, and the man sent to find the family's leak works out in four days that it is her, and does not tell them. The advance copies went out to the launch team this morning.
One more thing, and it's a fun one. Jessie Clark has a giveaway running this month: a free ebook copy of Feathers and Phantoms, no purchase necessary, entries close September 30. She'll walk you through it properly on Monday, but the short version is: reply to Monday's email with your answer to one question, and you're in.
The small thing that matters most. If any book from this house reached you this summer, an honest review is the single most useful thing you can do for a small press. Not a kind one. An honest one. It is the only lever we have that we cannot buy, and it is what decides whether the next reader ever sees the book at all.
Read them before anyone else. Our launch team is Read It First: a free advance copy about three weeks before release, in exchange for one honest review on launch day. You tick which authors you want on the form, so nobody is ever sent a book that is not for them. Join here.
Listen along. Our podcast, Story Worlds, lives on YouTube, and the first episode is "Every Book Is a Doorway." Given that this weekend asks you to choose between a haunted antiques shop and a dragon's stronghold, it is a fairly on-the-nose place to start. Watch it here and subscribe to the channel so the next one finds you on its own: here.
If you want the run-up to this weekend, the countdown letter is here and the morning-after letter for the August books is here.
Know someone who is forever asking what to read next? Forward this. They can subscribe straight from the site.
And tell me which one you picked, and whether it was the mood or the cover that decided it. I have a theory about that and I want to be proved wrong.
Happy reading,
Lori Collins
Publisher, JL Collins Publishing
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