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Hi reader,
Nine days out, and this is the one we have been quietly impatient about all year.
Kira Deveraux, The Second Family, September 18. The Rowe Capital Series, Book 3.
Sloane Marchetti walked away from the family business two years ago, the import business, the one whose real cargo she can no longer pretend not to know. She is a former prosecutor turning her own precision on her own blood, three months from walking the finished file into the FBI. Then the federal government arrives at the family door asking questions she recognises, because she is the one who wrote them.
Now the family is hunting the leak. The leak is her.
Elias Reyne makes people disappear. He is brought in to consult on Sloane's security and works out inside four days that she is exactly who they think she is. He does not tell them, because his own name is buried one layer underneath the empire she is bleeding to burn down.
Here is how it opens, and it tells you everything about her:
"There were two of them on the front steps at ten past nine on a Sunday, and I knew before my father opened the door that they had come to the wrong house on purpose. You learn to read an approach the way I learned it, which is from the other side of a lot of tables. A witness who is nervous stands too close to the door. A witness who is lying stands too far. But an investigator who already has what she needs stands exactly where these two were standing."
Two people who survive by reading rooms, put in a house that is watching them both. She cannot tell him what she has, because he is the threat. He cannot tell her who he is, because she is the target. Slow burn, deception on both sides, a morally grey heroine, no cheating, no cliffhanger, and an eyes-open happy ending. It stands alone.
Still on the counter from Friday. Jennie's The Auction House Affair is out, and the offer from last week is still open: reply with the words QUIET SALE and she 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. It is not published anywhere.
Clara, and this bit is time sensitive. Common Ground at Mercy General, Book 4, arrives October 2, and the advance copies go out to the launch team this Friday, September 11. If you want to read Clara early, that means joining before Friday rather than at some vague point later. Warm, over forty, closed to gently open, small-town hospital, people who have already lived a whole life before the book starts. If you would rather sample first, her opening chapter is free to read in full here.
Read It First is the 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, and you will only ever hear about the books you actually want. Join here.
And if you missed it Monday, Jessie Clark is giving away a free ebook copy of Feathers and Phantoms this month. Reply to Monday's email (or to this one) and tell her who'd make the better mystery-solving partner, a ghost or a crow, by September 30, and you're entered. No purchase necessary.
On the podcast. Story Worlds is on YouTube, and the first episode, "Every Book Is a Doorway," is more or less the argument for reading a cozy mystery and a dark romance in the same week and apologising to nobody. Watch here and subscribe here.
If you want the run-up, the letter about the library that woke before she did is here and the one about a library and an auction both landing on a Friday is here.
Settle something for us. In a romance built on two people lying to each other, do you want the reveal to come from confession, or from being caught? We are not of one mind about it. Hit reply.
Happy reading,
Jennie Wren Foster, Kira Deveraux and Clara Langford
Smart starts here.
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