Celebrating and supporting the indie author community
Welcome to the first edition of the weekly Newsletter! Thank you for signing up!
Editor’s Note
New Releases and Featured Promotions will always be free to view in every edition. To help cover the time it takes to compile the Newsletter, there is a paid subscription option which entitles subscribers to be in the Featured Promotions. Please read the About and T&Cs sections to discover more about subscriptions and how you can contribute material to the Newsletter.
New Releases
Darke Apocalypse by Lee Hall
A purge is coming to Darke Heath and the assembled Order of the Following heroes must fight to survive their final chapter.
After the awakening of a force unparalleled to anything seen before they will face their biggest and deadliest challenge yet. Forces that were once opposed must align whilst the origins of the Order and legendary founder Hudson’s story is revealed along with the revelations, twists and turns that follow the epic conclusion to the series.
The darkness stretches way beyond anyone could ever comprehend and not everyone will survive as Blake Malone stands at the forefront of what lies beyond the true darkness.
The Frosted Roses by Julianne Munich
A Sorceress suffering from her past. Young couples forced apart. An arrogant Law Officer. A tyrant Mage Lord.
Beneath a secret enchanted village in 1770s France, disobedient Mages are cast away in the Glass Dungeon under a cruel regime. Among them is Mathilde, left with her family secret and a lifetime of mistakes. Sleep—and dreams of her estranged son—are the only respites from her despair.
Her clever cousin, Armand, leads a motley crew of allies known as 'The Frosted Roses'. The gang dreams up a plot to break into the Dungeon and organize a daring coup d'état.
A war between Mages begins. Liberty and freedom will depend on the group's magical gifts, cunning, bravery—and true love.
The Frosted Roses is the final instalment of the Mages in the Mundane trilogy, filled with 18th-century charm, magic, redemption, and romance.
Living with the Past by Holly Ellis
Margaret, a middle-aged, small-town native, dreams of traveling with her husband, Jack. But, after reuniting with her former lover, Lillian, Margaret realizes her life is not as happy as she once believed, starting an identity crisis that could tear her family apart. Margaret is forced to choose between her identity or her family. Will she risk it all for the love of her life or will she return to the life that was chosen for her?
Living with the Past is an LGBTQIA+ and women's fiction story that follows Margaret’s journey, past and present, as she accepts her sexual identity by rejecting outdated social standards while exploring a mother’s journey to self-discovery.
Talia: Heir to the Fairy Realm, Book 1 by Joel C Flanagan-Grannemann (now available in audiobook format)
A wicked twist on Sleeping Beauty!
What if Maleficent were Aurora's mother, and what if she wasn't really evil?
An epic, female-forward fantasy adventure. Book one of Servants of the Moon and Sun.
Talia, the young, Iridescent-winged heir to the fairy realm, and the heir to the human realm, Prince Bastile, embark on a secret love affair that has wide-ranging consequences for both their worlds. Certain elements within each society hate the other side, and the realms have a long history of warring with one another. Talia, her maid, her eight ladies, and her heir’s guard (nine female fairy soldiers) soon find themselves alone on an adventure through the lands of the fairy realm in search of information on a reviled ancestor, the Exile Queen.
While Talia has always aspired to bring peace to the two realms, her evil aunts (known as the Three Sisters) and others within both the fairy and human courts conspire to thwart her ambitions, not understanding the ancient prophecy they are about to set Talia on the path to fulfil.
Beyond the Secret by S J Walls - click here to download for free from NetGalley for a limited period!
An elderly widow is found dead in her cottage, on the West Coast of Ireland. The death should have been unremarkable, but the events that unfold in the days following, change her granddaughter's life forever.
Preparing for the funeral Lucy White stumbles across a secret she was never supposed to unearth. She was born into the top echelons of a New York crime family. In 1984 her mother testified against the mob and entered a witness protection program.
Lucy's ordinary life is suddenly turned on its axis. Her crusade to find the family she never knew about gets her trapped in the New York criminal underworld until the FBI, deploy for a second time the resources of WITSEC and extract her from the mob's grip, back to a life of safety and anonymity, like her mother decades earlier.
If No One Speaks: A Short Story Collection by Sam Szanto
The majority of the stories feature displaced or alienated female protagonists. There are sub-themes of love, loss, incarceration, the forbidden and female solidarity. The protagonists are a variety of ages in diverse situations, in settings spanning the globe, including: a Russian prison, a Bangladeshi brothel, a Thai jail, a Madrid market and the English Lake District.
Brian, Created Intelligence by A J Pagan IV
Within a four foot stainless steel cube, a bodiless brain is awake, thinking, computing, knowing. Brian was created by genetic engineer Dr. Ellie Parsons, and neuroscientist Tom Marshall, at biotechnology company Dipol Inc., in San Diego, CA. Ethical questions abound as they hide Brian's true identity from him and the world around. To Brian, he's merely artificial intelligence, tasked with creating even more intelligent systems. To Ellie and her company, he's a means to an end, to create true artificial intelligence using his genius and the brain computer interface attached to his only true organ. All is as well as it can be until the day a psychotic agent of DARPA, Jonathan Volt, commandeers it for use in none other than militarization. Once Ellie neurally links herself to Brian, all bets are off to ensure his safety as his entire life is literally on the table.
*** Indie authors! Have you just released a new book or made one available to pre-order? Send in a link! Note: The Editor is unable to individually notify everyone / tag them on social media when their new books are included in the Newsletter. ***
Featured Promotions
*** Promote your books / blog / website / services HERE! ***
How to appear in Featured Promotions, which all readers and subscribers can view:
Become a paid subscriber for only £5 per month (a little over $6) and be entitled to advertise in the Newsletter once a month. Or, contribute a book review (see below), which, if used in the Newsletter, entitles you to a Featured Promotion in a subsequent Newsletter!
News Round-Up
The winners of the Feed My Reads Awards were recently announced, the votes having been cast through Survey Monkey. Click here to see the list of award winners!
The BBNYA (Book Bloggers Novel of the Year Awards) Semi-Finalists were recently revealed. Supported by TheWriteReads, BBNYA is an annual indie book award hosted and judged completely by book bloggers from all over the world. The winner of the 2022 Awards will win 1000 Euros and more fabulous prizes! Click here to see the semi-finalists on the BBNYA website.
Historical fiction author Clare Flynn won the Indie Champion of the Year Award at the Romantic Novelists Association Industry Awards.
*** News wanted! Awards, interviews, sales milestones, blog tours, giveaways, etc. If you have indie book related news, send it in! ***
Book Reviews
SibWins by Morton R Reader, reviewed by N S Ford
This intriguing novella is a mini soap opera which follows the dynamics between two couples and how they’re affected by what happens on a game show, SibWins. I was genuinely interested in the characters because they were so relatable and flawed. The author follows what each of them is thinking and examines their motivations. Not only does the book engage with the cult of celebrity, it has a music element which appealed to me, as one of the characters, Kevin, was an 80s goth and his job now is matching songs to films and TV shows. He always has a suitable lyric for any situation. In summary, SibWins is a contemporary drama which takes a wry look at families and relationships.
Waystations Trilogy by N C Scrimgeour (Those Left Behind, Those Once Forgotten and Those Who Resist), reviewed by Sifa Elizabeth Poulton
A planet unable to sustain the humans living on it and a captain determined to journey into the depths of space to save every one of them is how the Waystations Trilogy begins. What follows is an action packed ride of first contact, epic space battles, intergalactic squabbling, and a countdown to a forgotten enemy's return. This sci-fi has everything a space opera fan might want and more, with a cast of characters struggling to decide which side they are on, who they can trust, and how far they'll go to save those they feel responsible for. See full review of the first book here.
*** Book Reviews wanted! Write a review (300 words max) of an indie book you recently enjoyed. If the review appears in the Newsletter, you can have a Featured Promotion! ***