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Hi reader,
Two days. Friday, September 4, and here is exactly what you are getting.
Jennie Wren Foster, The Auction House Affair (Crabapple Antiques Mysteries, Book 3)
Kettlebrook in December, the wreaths already fraying on the lampposts, and a truck outside the antiques shop carrying three box lots from a dead collector's hoard. The third box is the heavy one. Here is what comes out of it:
"A great brass National from the twenties, the kind that used to stand on the counter of every hardware store and pharmacy in New England, tall as a wedding cake and twice as ornate, with a fan of round keys and a glass window at the top where the price rose up on little painted flags."
Addie should have left it in the box. She cannot leave an object unhandled, which she describes as the compulsion that makes an accountant re-add a column that already balances, just to feel it come out right. She runs a palm along the brass to check the polish, which is the lie she always tells, and the register wakes up.
It rings the truth. Not value, truth. And it will not stop screaming at the auctioneer's quietest lots. Meanwhile Lot 47 has vanished from a locked hall, the cataloguer is dead at the foot of the loft stair, and the trail of laundered provenance runs back forty-seven years to a dealer who disappeared. Cozy, closed door, fair-play, slow burn, and a shop full of antiques who help exactly as much as they meddle.
Kira Deveraux, Ashmarked to the Exiled Dragon (Ashpeak Alphas, Book 3)
Lyra Larkin is a cartographer. She has drawn her sister's stronghold a hundred times and never once put a dragon at the gate of it. Then she comes off three days of hard riding into exactly that:
"She knows what he is before she knows anything else about him. The grey-ash markings on his face have been scrubbed at, half gone, the way a man scrubs at a thing he cannot fully remove, and that is worse than if he had left them whole. A dragon pretending to be less of a dragon. A killer trying to look like a man who has put the killing down."
Caen carried a torch to burn this place once, set it down in the snow, and lost his entire life for it. Now he is kneeling at the gate asking for sanctuary and carrying a warning about what is coming next. Lyra's sister opens the gate. Lyra thinks that is a mistake. Then he touches her hand and the bond ignites, and she understands precisely how her sister felt the day her life stopped being her own.
What makes it land is what he does next, which is nothing. He does not demand. He does not use the bond as a lever. He hands her every choice, including the ones that cost him, and she can argue with aggression all day and has no defense at all against being let go of gently. High heat, open door, enemies to lovers, forced proximity, and a happy ending she has to choose on purpose.
Also Friday: The Shatterfield, Kira Deveraux, the third Thornbound Chronicle. Details when the store page is live.
Subscriber bonus, and this one already exists. Reply with the words QUIET SALE and Jennie will send you "A Quiet Sale," a bonus scene set in Kettlebrook the week after Christmas, in which the register and the writing desk finally learn to share a counter and Addie's slow burn with Perry gets one wordless beat. It is not published anywhere and it is a lovely place to land after the book.
If you have not caught up on Clara. Hidden Truths at Mercy General brought Dr. Rachel Kim and paramedic Ethan Cole together in a hospital that is quietly being squeezed by people who do not live in Cedar Falls. Warm, over-forty, closed to gently open. Book 4, Common Ground at Mercy General, arrives October 2. Clara's opening chapter is also free to read in full on the site, if you would rather start there: Read Chapter One of Second Chance at Mercy General.
Read them first. Read It First is our launch team: a free advance copy about three weeks ahead of release, one honest review on launch day. Tick Jennie, Kira, Clara, or all three on the form, and you will only hear about the books you want. Join Read It First.
On the podcast. Story Worlds is on YouTube, and it opened with "Every Book Is a Doorway," which is more or less the argument for reading a cozy mystery and a dragon romance in the same week without apologizing to anyone. Watch the episode, and subscribe to the channel if you want the next one without having to remember.
Two earlier letters if you want the run-up: the one about the library that woke before she did, and a library and an auction, both landing Friday.
Settle a debate for me. In a fated-mate romance, do you want the bond to be irresistible, or do you want the characters to have to choose it anyway? Kira and I disagree about this. Hit reply.
Happy reading,
Jennie Wren Foster, Kira Deveraux and Clara Langford
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