The grass was always greener in another dimension.
In a fantastical steam-powered world, eccentric aristocrat and secret arms dealer, Miss Constance Haltwhistle, has been blackmailed into stealing alien artifacts from the crown heads of Europe. Only the shady but annoyingly handsome US spy, “Liberty” Trusdale, can help her execute her perfect palace heists. As Constance creates chaos and mayhem across the Continent, monstrous creatures are plotting an interdimensional invasion of Earth. Will Constance and Trusdale stop bickering long enough to end the war of the worlds before it starts?
If you enjoy stories inspired by HG Wells’s War of the Worlds, you’ll love this gaslamp romp across an alternate 1890s Europe where our bickering heroes may just be the bad guys.
Review
In a fantastical steam-powered world, eccentric aristocrat and secret arms dealer, Miss Constance Haltwhistle, has been blackmailed into stealing alien artifacts from the crown heads of Europe. Only the shady but annoyingly handsome US spy, “Liberty” Trusdale, can help her execute her perfect palace heists.
This is such a wonderful story with the alternate histories and the great characters. The humor and the quips between Constance and Trusdale will have you grinning. Add in the ingenious assortment of weapons, the secrets and the betrayals and you have a mystery that will keep you coming back for more.
The narrator, Erin Bennett, does a very good job with all the banter!
Need a cute, witty mystery…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.
In 1795, Catherine the Great of Russia was in search of a bride for her grandson Constantine, who stood third in line to her throne. In an eerie echo of her own story, Catherine selected an innocent young German princess, Julie of Saxe-Coburg, aunt of the future Queen Victoria. Though Julie had everything a young bride could wish for, she was alone in a court dominated by an aging empress and riven with rivalries, plotting, and gossip—not to mention her brute of a husband. She longed to leave Russia and her disastrous marriage, but her family in Germany refused to allow her to do so.
Finally, Tsar Alexander granted her permission to leave in 1801, even though her husband was now heir to the throne. Rootless in Europe, Julie gave birth to two—possibly three—illegitimate children, all of whom she was forced to give up for adoption. Despite entreaties from Constantine to return and provide an heir, she refused, eventually finding love with her own married physician.
At a time when many royal brides meekly submitted to disastrous marriages, Julie proved to be a woman ahead of her time, sacrificing her reputation and a life of luxury in exchange for the freedom to live as she wished. The Rebel Romanov is the inspiring tale of a bold woman who, until now, has been ignored by history.
Review
I love this time period in history. It just amazes me how much we actually know and how much is missing.
Julie led a very unique life. She married so very young to the an heir to the Russian Throne. She married Constantine, Catherine the Great’s grand child. But life was not easy for her. She had to deal with learning a new religion and all the new rules for an Empress of Russia. Plus, her husband was very abusive. She begged to leave on numerous occasions. She was finally granted her wish to leave Russia. Julie proceeded to live her life as she wanted.
I had no idea about Julie. She was a person who went after what she wanted when she was supposed to conform and be submissive. I loved learning about her and everything she went through to live her life.
The narrator, Jennifer M. Dixon, had some tough pronunciations to tackle. She handled it like a pro!
Need a well researched book about a woman ahead of her time…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today!
I received this audiobook from the publisher for a honest review.
A twisty tale packed with juicy surprises.” –Kimberly Belle, internationally bestselling author of The Paris Widow
She thought she was the only one lying about her identity. Until she stepped into her sister’s life.
Charlotte Kane has always dreamed of a different life, one where she isn’t living paycheck to paycheck. An existence worlds away from the chaos of her own. Then her estranged mother dies, and Charlotte makes a stunning discovery—she has an identical twin who was given up for adoption.
Acelynn Benedict is polished, successful and seems to have everything Charlotte yearns for—a wealthy, doting family in Savannah, a handsome boyfriend, a great career. She’s just as surprised as Charlotte to learn she has a sister. But when tragedy hits and Charlotte is forced to assume Acelynn’s identity in a desperate moment, she uncovers something altogether darker…
No one in her sister’s life is quite who they seem to be. And every discovery leads Charlotte deeper into a web of deadly secrets. Charlotte may have wanted Acelynn’s life, yet now that she’s living it, she wants out. But if she reveals the truth about herself, it will mean returning to her old life—and she’s already a dead woman there.
Review
Acelynn Benedict is polished, successful and seems to have everything Charlotte yearns for—a wealthy, doting family in Savannah, a handsome boyfriend, a great career. She’s just as surprised as Charlotte to learn she has a sister. But when tragedy hits and Charlotte is forced to assume Acelynn’s identity in a desperate moment, she uncovers something altogether darker…
“Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!” This quote came to mind on more than one occasion as I was reading this book.
This story just keeps twisting around itself and, as a reader, you start second guessing your first thoughts. I mean…you have identical twins separated at birth! I love it when a book makes me question my sanity and this one definitely does.
At first, I did not really like Acelynn. I thought she was going to be a bit whiny….but oh no! Then there is Charlotte. You know something is up with her, you just can’t quite put your finger on it. But those are not the only characters you have to worry about. You must read this to find out!
The narrator, Romy Evans, had great intensity. She really nailed these characters!
Need a twisted tale which will have you guessing…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today!
I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.
For everyone who loved The Bear! An utterly winning, crowd-pleaser of a novel about a disgraced celebrity chef, her striving protégé, and their path through the kitchen to redemption.
Regina Benuzzi is Queenie B—a culinary goddess with Michelin Star restaurants, a bestselling cookbook empire, and multimillion-dollar TV deals. It doesn’t hurt that she’s gorgeous and curvaceous, with cascading black hair and signature red lips.
She had it all. Until she didn’t.
After an epic fall from grace, Queenie B vanishes from the public eye, giving up everything: her husband, her son, and the fame that she’d fought to achieve. Her shows are in rerun, her restaurants still popular, but her disappearance remains a mystery to her legions of fans.
Local line cook Gale Carmichael also knows a thing or two about disaster. Newly sober and struggling, Gale’s future dreams don’t hold space for culinary stardom; only earning enough to get by. Broke at the end of the week, he finds himself at a local soup kitchen in one of the roughest parts of New Haven, Connecticut. But Gale quickly realizes that the food coming out of the kitchen is not your standard free meal—it is delicious and prepared with gourmet flair.
Gale doesn’t recognize Regina, the soup kitchen’s cranky proprietor, whose famous black mane is now streaked with gray. It’s been more than ten years since Queenie B vanished into her careful new existence. But she sees Gale’s talent and recognizes a brokenness in him that she knows all too well. The culinary genius in hiding takes him under her wing.
Teaching Gale, Regina’s passion to create is reignited, and they both glimpse a shot at the redemption that had always seemed out of reach. When Gale is chosen to compete on the hit cooking show, Cut!, it’s a turning point for them both.
It’s Gale’s time to shine. And that means Queenie B might just have to come out of hiding…
Review
Gale doesn’t recognize Regina, the soup kitchen’s cranky proprietor, whose famous black mane is now streaked with gray. It’s been more than ten years since Queenie B vanished into her careful new existence. But she sees Gale’s talent and recognizes a brokenness in him that she knows all too well. The culinary genius in hiding takes him under her wing.
I really enjoyed this tale. It does have a bit of a slow start. But once I got into it, I flew through it. I was rooting for Regina (Queenie B) and Gale from start to finish.
Regina is a tough character that will come close to breaking your heart. With her past and the way she has chosen to live her present..she cannot help but pull at your heart strings.
Then there is Gale. He is also struggling with his inner demons but I wanted him to win this cooking show contest so badly…you will have to read this to find out!
I learned so much about the cutthroat business of chefs and restaurants. Such drama and stress in this profession. The author did a fabulous job exposing the reader to this side of the kitchen doors!
The narrator, Eva Kaminsky, was Queenie B! She had great emotion and just made this book come alive!
Need a book with characters you want to succeed in every way possible…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.
I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.
For historical fiction fans of women’s untold true stories, an early twentieth century novel about Jo van Gogh who battled the male-dominated art elite in her fifteen-year crusade to save her genius brother-in-law Vincent from obscurity.
In the tradition of The Paris Bookseller and Her Hidden Genius, the story of a real woman overshadowed in history by the giant talent she saved, Vincent van Gogh.
How did a failed belligerent Dutch painter become one of the greatest artists of our time?
In 1891, timid Jo van Gogh Bonger lives safely in the background of her art dealer husband Theo’s passionate work to sell unknown artists, especially his ill-fated dead brother Vincent. When Theo dies unexpectedly, Jo’s brief happiness is shattered. Her inheritance—hundreds of unsold paintings by Vincent—is worthless. Pressured to move to her parents’ home, Jo defies tradition, opening a boarding house to raise her infant son alone, and choosing to promote Vincent’s art herself. But her ingenuity and persistence draw the powerful opposition of a Parisian art dealer who vows to stop her once and for all, and so sink Vincent into obscurity.
Saving Vincent reveals there was more than one genius in the Van Gogh family.
Review
This is the wonderful story of Jo van Gogh. She was the wife of Vincent’s brother. When her husband, Theo, passed away. Jo took up his passion for art. She did this so her young son would have an inheritance. But her strength and ingenuity gave the world a magnificent gift.
Jo was truly a smart lady. She struggled against the restrictions of unmarried women and her family. But her intelligence and fortitude kept her going.
This is a very well researched novel and I learned a great deal. It does have quite a few mundane details but this is just a minor issue.
Need a unique historical fiction…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.
Two half sisters on a road trip to see their dying father end up miles from where they expected in an emotional novel about secrets, forgiveness, and what it means to be family by the author of La Vie, According to Rose.
Zahra Starling and her younger half sister, Aurora, have nothing in common. Not their childhoods or their personalities. And certainly not their outlooks. After a terrible loss, Zahra prefers the solitude of her LA kitchen to people, especially family. Bubbly Aurora, a rising Hollywood starlet, has everything she’s ever dreamed of, except a relationship with her sister.
Then comes a plea from their dying father, who wants both daughters by his side. He has a secret to share that’s been a long time coming.
It’s Zahra’s last chance to bring closure to the past, even if traumatic memories mean there’s no way she’s stepping foot on a plane. For Aurora, road-tripping to Seattle is the perfect escape and the chance to win over prickly Zahra.
What starts as a rough ride reopening old wounds evolves into something neither expects. When they finally reach their destination—and the truth that awaits them—the sisters will need each other like never before.
Review
Zahra and her half sister, Aurora have been summoned by their father to Seattle. Zahra refuses to fly and Aurora is more than happy to hide out in a car for this long road trip. But what awaits them in Seattle is not exactly what either one expects.
Y’all! This book was very close to a 5 star read. The only issue I had was the ending. It seemed to drag on and it just needed a bit of cleaning up.
That being said…I loved this book. I enjoyed how these characters developed and how their story unfolded. These two sisters could not be more different. Zahra is a bit rough around the edges and Aurora is bubbly and a people pleaser. But, their secrets and the past hurts start to melt away on this road trip and this story soon became a novel of love, forgiveness and friendship.
Need a heartwarming tale with characters that will draw you in and keep you there…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today
Sharp Objects meets I Have Some Questions for You in this haunting novel—inspired by a true story—about a crime writer who risks everything as she investigates the mystery of two deaths, decades apart, at a crumbling Vermont orphanage.
On a blistering summer day in 1968, nine-year-old Tommy vanishes without a trace from Coram House, an orphanage on the shores of Lake Champlain. Some say a nun drowned him, others say he ran away. Or maybe he never existed. Fifty years later, his disappearance is still unsolved.
Struggling true crime writer Alex Kelley needs a fresh start. When she’s asked to ghostwrite a book about the orphanage—and the abuses that occurred there—she packs up her belongings and moves to wintry Burlington, Vermont.
As Alex tries to untangle the conflicting stories surrounding Tommy’s disappearance, her investigation takes a chilling turn when she discovers a woman’s body in the lake. Alex is convinced the death is connected to Coram House’s dark past, even if local police officer Russell Parker thinks she’s just desperate for a career-saving story. As the body count rises, Alex must prove that the key to finding the killer lies in Tommy’s murder, or risk becoming the next victim.
Drawing inspiration from the real-life stories of St. Joseph’s Orphanage, Coram House “reckons with both the long aftermath of violence and the hazards of writing true crime. It is an eerie, suspenseful mystery, sure to find readers among fans of Tana French” (Flynn Berry, author of Northern Spy).
Review
Struggling true crime writer Alex Kelley needs a fresh start. When she’s asked to ghostwrite a book about the orphanage—and the abuses that occurred there—she packs up her belongings and moves to wintry Burlington, Vermont.
Alex is a character I had mixed feelings about. She tends to jump to conclusions and she also does not seem to be a very nice person. And usually characters like this throw me off. But, the intensity of this tale had me captivated. I could not get this orphanage and the trauma surrounding it out of my head.
Even though I saw the twist coming, I am still giving this 5 stars. I loved the history of the orphanage and all the creepiness that this added to the tale.
Need an intense, creepy read with a twist…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.
I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Calamity of Souls comes David Baldacci’s newest novel, set in London in 1944, about a bereaved bookshop owner and two teenagers scarred by the Second World War, and the healing and hope they find in one another.
Fourteen-year-old Charlie Matters is up to no good, but for a very good reason. Without parents, peerage, or merit, he steals what he needs, living day-to-day until he’s old enough to enlist to fight the Germans. After barely surviving the Blitz, Charlie knows there’s no telling when a falling bomb might end his life.
Fifteen-year-old Molly Wakefield has just returned to a nearly unrecognizable London. One of millions of children to have been evacuated to the countryside Molly has been away from her home for nearly five years. Her return, however, is not the homecoming she’d hoped for as she’s confronted by a devastating reality: neither of her parents are there.
Without guardians and stability, Charlie and Molly find an unexpected ally and protector in Ignatius Oliver, and solace at his bookshop, The Book Keep. Mourning the recent loss of his wife, Ignatius forms a kinship with both children, and in each other they rediscover the spirit of family each has lost.
But Charlie’s escapades in the city have not gone unnoticed, and someone’s been following Molly since she returned to London. And Ignatius is harboring his own secrets, which could have terrible consequences for all of them.
As bombs continue to bear down on the city, Charlie, Molly, and Ignatius learn that while the perils of war rage on, their coming together and trusting one another may be the only way for them to survive.
Review
This story follows two young teenagers, Charlie and Molly. These two are from totally different backgrounds but somehow they come together to be great friends and help each other through this terrible war.
I enjoyed these two characters, especially Charlie. He is a bit of a rounder and he gets himself in a mess a time or two. Then there is Molly. She does not take no for an answer. She has some gumption, for sure!
This story is a unique take on what transpired during WWII in London. It is more about friendship and staying friends through the hard times.
The narrators, David Baldacci; Stewart Crank; Alexandra Boulton; John Lee; Nicola F. Delgado; Matthew Lloyd Davies; Joe Pitts, made a fantastic team! I love lots of narrators to a story. Just makes it more real and full of life.
Need a completely different WWII novel…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.
I received this novel from the publisher for a honest opinion
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mercy Street, a tense, propulsive family drama set in Shanghai, where a fractured American family faces its complicated past
Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: their 22-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit and run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.
The accident unearths a deeper fissure in the family: the shocking event that ended the Litvaks’ marriage and turned Lindsey against them. Estranged from her parents, she has confided only in her younger sister, Grace, adopted as an infant from China. As Claire and Aaron struggle to get their bearings in bustling, cosmopolitan Shanghai, the newly prosperous “miracle city,” they face troubling questions about Lindsey’s life there, in which nothing is quite as it seems.
With her trademark psychological acuity, Jennifer Haigh delivers a taut, suspenseful story about family, secret lives, and the unbreakable bond between two sisters, the fabled red thread that ties them together across time and space.
“Ms. Haigh is an expertly nuanced storyteller long overdue for major attention. Her work is gripping, real, and totally immersive, akin to that of writers as different as Richard Price, Richard Ford, and Richard Russo.” ― The New York Times
Review
Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: their 22-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit and run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.
I loved the unique differences between the characters. Not sure if I can describe quite what I mean. Just know that every single character is different and they have something unique that draws the reader to them. They have quirks that every one of us can relate to, especially in the time of stress. And these parents are under immense pressure.
This tale had me really wondering where it was going. There were so many directions this author could have taken this story. I love the direction she chose and the secrets that were kept…even from the reader!
I have read several books by this author and they have all been wonderful! And this one is another good one!
The narrators, Katharine Chin; Yu-Li Alice Shen, are superb!
Need a suspenseful tale full of secrets…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.
I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.
A lake with mysterious properties. A town haunted by urban legend. Two women whose lives intersect in terrifying ways. Welcome to Soap Lake, a town to rival Twin Peaks and Stephen King’s Castle Rock.
When Abigail agreed to move to Soap Lake, Washington for her husband’s research she expected old growth forests and craft beer, folksy neighbors and the World’s Largest Lava Lamp. Instead, after her husband jets off to Poland for a research trip, she finds herself alone, in a town surrounded by desert, and haunted by its own urban legends.
But when a young boy runs through the desert into Abigail’s arms, her life becomes entwined with his and the questions surrounding his mother Esme’s death. In Abigail’s search for answers she enlists the help of a recovering addict-turned-librarian, a grieving brother, a broken motel owner, and a mentally-shattered conspiracy theorist to unearth Esme’s tragic past, the town’s violent history, and the secret magic locked in the lake her husband was sent there to study.
As she gets closer to the answers, past and present crimes begin to collide, and Abigail finds herself gaining the unwelcome attention of the town’s unofficial mascot, the rubber-suited orchard stalker known as TreeTop, a specter who seems to be lurking in every dark shadow and around every shady corner.
A sweeping, decade-spanning mystery brimming with quirky characters, and puzzle hunt scenarios, Midnight in Soap Lake is a modern day Twin Peaks—a rich, expansive universe that readers will enter and never forget.
Author Bio:
Matthew Sullivan is the beloved author of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, an Indie Next Pick, B&N Discover pick, a GoodReads Choice Award finalist and winner of the Colorado Book Award. He received his MFA from the University of Idaho and has been a resident writer at Yaddo, Centrum, and the Vermont Studio Center. His short stories have been awarded the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editors’ Award for Fiction. His writing has been featured in the New York Times Modern Love column, The Daily Beast, and Shelf Awareness amongst others.
An animal, Abigail was certain, loping in the sagebrush: a twist of fuzz moving through the desert at the edge of her sight. The morning had already broken a hundred. Her glasses steamed and sunscreen stung her eyes—
Or maybe she hadn’t seen anything.
Yesterday, while walking along this desolate irrigation road, she’d spotted a cow skull between tumbleweeds, straight out of a tattoo parlor, but when she ran toward it, bracing to take a picture to send to Eli across the planet—proof, perhaps, that she ever left the house—she discovered it was just a white plastic grocery bag snagged on a curl of sage bark.
Somehow. Way out here.
The desert was scabby with dark basalt, bristled with the husks of flowers, and nothing was ever there.
When Eli first told her he’d landed a grant to research a rare lake in the Pacific Northwest, Abigail thought ferns and rain, ale and slugs, Sasquatch and wool.
And then they got here, to this desert where no one lived. Not a fern or slug in sight.
This had been the most turbulent year of her life.
Eleven months ago, they met.
Seven months ago, they married.
Six months ago, they moved from her carpeted condo in Denver to this sunbaked town on the shores of Soap Lake, a place where neither knew a soul.
Their honeymoon had lasted almost three months—Eli whistling in his downstairs lab, Abigail unpacking and painting upstairs—and then he kissed her at the airport, piled onto a plane, and moved across the world to work in a different lab, on a different project, at a different lake.
In Poland.
When she remembered him lately, she remembered photographs of him.
The plan had been to text all the time, daily calls, romantic flights to Warsaw, but the reality was that Eli had become too busy to chat and seemed more frazzled than ever. This week had been particularly bad because he’d been off the grid on a research trip, so every call went to voicemail, every text into the Polish abyss. And then at five o’clock this morning, her phone pinged and Abigail shot right out of a drowning sleep to grab it, as if he’d tossed her a life preserver from six thousand miles away.
And this is what he’d had to say:
sorry missed you. so much work & my research all fd up. i’ll call this weekend. xo e
As she was composing a response—her phone the only glow in their dark, empty home—he added a postscript that stabbed her in the heart like an icicle.
P.S. maybe it time since remember using time to figure out self life?
What kind of a sentence was that? And what was a “self life” anyway?
Abigail had called him right away. When he didn’t pick up she went down to the lab he’d set up in their daylight basement. She opened a few of his binders with their charts of Soap Lake, their colorful DNA diagrams, their photos of phosphorescent microbes, as cosmic as images from deep space. She breathed the papery dust of his absence and tried to imagine he’d just stepped out for a minute and would be back in a flash, her clueless brilliant husband, pen between his teeth, hair a smoky eruption, mustard stains on the plaid flannel bathrobe he wore in place of a lab coat.
From one of his gleaming refrigerators, Abigail retrieved a rack of capped glass tubes that contained the Miracle Water and the Miracle Microbes collected from the mineral lake down the hill— she sometimes wondered if her limnologist husband would be more at home on the shores of Loch Ness—and held one until a memory arose, like a visit from a friend: Eli, lifting a water sample up to the window as if he were gazing through a telescope, shaking it so it fizzed and foamed. And then he was gone again.
She hated that she did this. Came down here and caressed his equipment like a creep. Next she’d be smelling his bathrobe, collecting hairs from his brush. It was as if she felt compelled to remind herself that Eli was doing important work and, as the months of distance piled up, that he was even real.
Back when they’d first started dating, Abigail had been the busy one, the one who said yes to her boss too much and had to skim her calendar each time Eli wanted to go to dinner or a movie. Of course her job as an administrative assistant in a title insurance office had never felt like enough, but when she mentioned this restlessness to Eli, finding her path—figure out self life—had suddenly become a centerpiece of their move to Soap Lake. But they got here and nothing had happened. It wasn’t just a switch you flipped.
Abigail slid the tall tube of lake water back into its rack. Only when she let go, the tube somehow missed its slot and plunged to the floor like a bomb.
Kapow!
On the tile between her feet, a blossom of cloudy water and shattered glass.
She stood over the mess, clicking her fingernails against her teeth and imagining microbes squealing on the floor, flopping in the air like miniscule goldfish. She told herself, without conviction, it had been an accident.
And then she stepped over the spill, put the rack back in the fridge and, surprised at the immediacy of her shame, went for a walk in this scorching desert.
It stunned her, how harsh and gorgeous it was.
Loneliness: it felt sometimes like it possessed you.
She hadn’t spoken to anyone in over a month, outside of a few people in the Soap Lake service industry. There was the guy who made her a watery latte at the gas station the other morning, then penised the back of her hand with his finger when he passed it over. And the newspaper carrier, an old woman with white braids and a pink cowgirl hat, who raced through town in a windowless minivan. She told Abigail she was one DUI away from unemployment, but the weekly paper was never late. And the cute pizza delivery dude who was so high he sat in her driveway on his phone for half an hour before coming to the door with her cold cheese pizza, saying, Yes, ma’am. Thanks, ma’am, which was sweet but totally freaked her out. And the lady with the painted boomerang eyebrows in the tampon aisle at the grocery store who gave her unwanted advice on the best lube around for spicing up menopause, to which Abigail guffawed and responded too loudly, “Thanks, but I’m not even goddamned forty!”
At least she’d discovered these maintenance roads: miles and miles of gravel and dirt, no vehicles allowed, running alongside the massive irrigation canals that brought Canadian snowmelt from the Columbia River through the Grand Coulee Dam to the farms spread all over this desert. The water gushed through the main canals, thirty feet wide and twenty feet deep, and soon branched off to other, smaller canals that branched off to orchards and fields and ranches and dairies and soil and seeds and sprouts and leaves and, eventually, yummy vital food: grocery store shelves brimming with apples and milk and pizza-flavored Pringles.
Good soil. Blazing sun. Just add water and food was born.
Almost a trillion gallons a year moved through these canals. T: trillion.
All that water way out here, pouring through land so dry it crackled underfoot.
She halted on the road. Pressed her lank, brown hair behind her ear. Definitely heard something, a faint yip or caw.
She scanned the horizon for the source of the sound and there it was again, a smudge of movement in the wavering heat. Something running away.
A few times out here she’d seen coyote. Lots of quail, the occasional pheasant. Once, in a fallow field close to town, a buck with a missing antler that looked from a distance like a unicorn.
Not running away, the smudge out there. Running toward. She was nowhere near a signal yet her instinct was to touch her phone. She craned around to glimpse the vanishing point of the road behind, gauging how far she’d walked and, if things got bad, how far she’d have to run.
Three miles, minimum. Six miles, tops.
Definitely approaching.
Not something. Someone.
A human. Alone.
Running. A boy.
A little boy. Sprinting.
Abigail froze as their eyes met, and suddenly the boy exploded out of the desert, slamming into her thighs with an oof! He wore yellow pajamas and Cookie Monster slippers covered in prickly burrs.
He clung to her legs so tightly that she almost tipped over. When she registered the crusty blood on his chin and cheeks and encasing his hands like gloves, she felt herself begin to cry, scared-to-sobbing in one second flat.
Deep breath. Shirt wipe.
“Hey! Are you hurt? Look at me. Are you hurt?”
The boy wasn’t crying, but his skin was damp and he was panting hot and wouldn’t let go of her legs. She felt a hummingbird inside of his chest.
She knelt in the gravel and unfolded his arms, turning them over at the wrist. She lifted his shirt and spun him around as best she could. He had some welts and scratches from running through the brush, and the knees of his pj’s were badly scuffed, but he wasn’t cut, not anywhere serious, which meant— The blood belonged to someone else.
reecaspieces 