We’re coming up on that time of the year again. Yes. HALLOWEEN. Even though it means winter is around the corner, it’s also my birth month. I also just love the smell of leaves on the ground. Emmm. And scaring people. 😂🤣 That means this month’s free books will be Halloween books. BOOO!!
With the Presidential election a little over a month away, I feel like the rhetoric, hyperbole, and mudslinging has gone through the roof. Can we give it a break? Me included. 😂🤣
But this whole election cycle got me thinking about when I was a kid as I sat in front of the TV watching political ads or an occasional debate. Sure, by the end of the election, everyone was SICK TO DEATH of all the ads. Ugh.
However, I remember the ads as spouting how good the candidates were compared to their opponents. All the promises they made, but never fulfilled. You know? The usual crapola.
So, when did mudslinging start in our political system and who threw the first mud pie?
Well, according to my research, it turns out the trash talking started back in 1796 between Alexander Hamilton vs Thomas Jefferson. Of course, they didn’t have TV or radio back them. The accusations and recriminations were all done via print either through handbills or newspapers.
Then it heated up in 1828 between Andrew Jackson vs. John Quincy Adams. And so on and so on.
You get the point. Mudslinging isn’t anything new in politics. What has changed, and makes it so much worse, is the media, the amount of ads, and the money behind them.
Some of the techniques the political parties use are attack ads, contrast ads, or push polls. I my opinion, I think the push polls are the worst. Though, studies do show that most of the polls are done with democratic voters. Which means, most of the national polls will always be skewed to Democrat vs. Republican. That’s why you can’t trust polls as stated in our mainstream media. Of course, they use those inflated Democratic numbers to dissuade the conservatives from voting.
Some of the pitfalls of using negative campaigning is they can cause discrimination and polarization within their voter base. Sound familiar? Seems that’s where they actually want us to go. The whole “United We Stand, Divided We Fall’ thingy.
And the best way to control the nation is by all the horrible attack ads. They use them to exploit our fears and to manipulate us.
In other words, don’t become a sheeple. Think for yourselves and ask yourself, what is that ad supposed to make you think or do? It’s the same thing retailers do to get you to buy their products. A politician is, after all, nothing but a product to the political parties.
THE MARK OF THE SALAMANDER is the first in The Island of Angels series: a two-book saga that tells the epic story and secret history of England’s coming of age during the Elizabethan era.
The Mark of the Salamander
The Island of Angels Book One
by Justin Newland
Genre: Historical Fiction
1575: Nelan Michaels is a young Flemish man fleeing religious persecution in the Spanish Netherlands. Settling in Mortlake outside London, he studies under Queen Elizabeth’s court astrologer, conjuring a bright future – until he’s wrongly accused of murder. Forced into the life of a fugitive, Nelan is dramatically pressed into the crew of the Golden Hind.
Thrust into a strange new world on board Francis Drake’s vessel, Nelan sails the seas on a voyage to discover discovery itself. Encountering mutiny, ancient tribes and hordes of treasure, Nelan must explore and master his own mystical powers – including the Mark of the Salamander, the mysterious spirit of fire.
The Mark of the Salamander is the first in The Island of Angels series: a two-book saga that tells the epic story and secret history of England’s coming of age during the Elizabethan era.
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JUSTIN NEWLAND’s novels represent an innovative blend of genres from historical adventure to supernatural thriller and magical realism.
Undeterred by the award of a Doctorate in Mathematics from Imperial College, London, he conceived his debut novel, The Genes of Isis (ISBN 9781789014860, Matador, 2018), an epic fantasy set under Ancient Egyptian skies.
His second book is a historical thriller, The Old Dragon’s Head (ISBN 9781789015829, Matador, 2018), and is set in Ming Dynasty China in the shadows of the Great Wall.
The Coronation (ISBN 9781838591885, Matador, 2019) is an historical adventure and speculates on the genesis of the most important event in the modern world – the Industrial Revolution.
The Abdication (ISBN 9781800463950, Matador, 2021) is a mystery thriller in which a young woman confronts her faith in a higher purpose and what it means to abdicate that faith.
His latest is The Mark of the Salamander (ISBN 9781915853271, Book Guild, 2023) and is the first in a two-book series, The Island of Angels. Set in the Elizabethan era, it tells the epic tale of England’s coming of age.
The second in the series, The Midnight of Eights (ISBN 9781835740 330, Book Guild, 2024), charts of the uncanny coincidences that culminated in the repulse of the Spanish Armada and is due for publication in October.
Author, speaker and broadcaster, Justin gives talks to historical associations and libraries, appears on LitFest panels, and enjoys giving radio interviews.
He lives with his partner in plain sight of the Mendip Hills in Somerset, England.
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Deep beneath the desert town of Peridot, something evil lurks.
The Man Who Dealt in Death
The Colton Fen Series Book 1
by Marlena Frank
Genre: Paranormal Weird Western
Deep beneath the desert town of Peridot, something evil lurks.
Werewolf detective Colton Fen is used to strange mysteries, but when he arrives in Peridot on his latest assignment, he’s less than pleased to be assigned a partner. Rennick Dalton is a blood-drinking, illusion-wielding card shark who doesn’t have the best reputation. The two unlikely partners will have to put aside their differences if they hope to stop the horrible acts taking place beneath the streets of Peridot.
Together with the help of sharp-shooting actress Mary Silva, they’ll track the demonic creature that slithers beneath the desert. But the demon is waiting for them. It wants to turn them into one of its many disturbing minions — or add them to its grotesque collection.
Step into a dangerous and fantastic world set in the old west of 1893, where supernatural creatures and unexplainables live alongside cowboys and gunslingers. THE MAN WHO DEALT IN DEATH is Book One of the COLTON FEN series.
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Marlena Frank is the author of young adult fantasy and horror novels, short stories, novellas, and book series. Many of her books have hit the bestseller charts, including her debut novel, Stolen. Readers’ Favorite has praised several of her books with 5-star reviews. Reader’s House awarded her book, The Seeking, with the Editor’s Choice Award of Literary Excellence in May 2024. De Mode of Literature Magazine featured her in November 2021. Her stories have appeared in anthologies such as The Darkest Lullaby, Emporium of Superstition, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Georgia Gothic, and The Librarian Reshelved.
Although born in Tennessee, Marlena has spent most of her life in Georgia. She has various professional memberships, including the Atlanta chapter of the Horror Writers Association and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. She enjoys cosplaying, gaming, and spoiling her adopted cats. Her drink of choice is a dairy-free chai latte. As a wildlife enthusiast, she can share a plethora of weird animal facts and talk about her favorite cryptids.
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Conley just wanted revenge. The price could be the end of the Holy Empire.
Mindfall Inception
Empire of the Mind Book 1
by Bruce W. Paulik
Genre: Science Fiction, Epic Space Opera
Conley just wanted revenge.
The price could be the end of the Holy Empire.
Across a thousand-world empire, a new force emerges that threatens to shake the foundations of Emperor Cyraxian’s reign. Telepathy, once a whisper, now resounds across the empire, and is branded heretical, inciting a deadly pogrom led by the relentless Blackshirts, the Emperor’s armed clergy.
Amidst upheaval in this dystopian empire, Conley Duin, an outstanding young Knight of the Empire, grapples with his newfound telepathic powers, a relationship deepened by mutual telepathy, and a lifetime of shattering personal losses. When his quest for retribution unveils treachery that reaches to the heart of the empire, loyalty, love, and power become entwined.
Mindfall Inception is an interstellar space opera of rebellion and revenge. As Conley and his telepathic friends battle tyranny, their journey through darkness and telepathic connections across the galaxy challenges them to envision a new empire—one where understanding minds is key to the future.
Dive into a saga of intrigue, rebellion, space battles, and awakening in a galaxy where the echoes of the mind cannot be silenced. Join Conley and the rising telepaths as they raise a space fleet, challenge an empire and irrevocably alter humanity’s destiny.
**Get it FREE 9/25 – 9/29!**
Bruce has read science fiction since he was old enough to read––and imagined his own versions of stories in these worlds. During his career as a health professional, his habit of reading science fiction every day led to a desire to create his own worlds and stories. After a long apprenticeship as a fiction writer, Bruce has finally embarked on the process of sharing his worlds and stories with you, starting with Mindfall Inception, Book 1 of the Empire of the Mind series.
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Six stories about humans, vampires, werewolves, and goblins, and the troubles they get into.
Sink your teeth into six short stories about vampires, werewolves, goblins, and humans as they live and work together to keep the peace in Texas.
A woman follows a handsome man out of a nightclub, and her world changes forever.
The past gets in the way of a vampire who just wants to party with friends.
Galveston’s newest police detective meets residents who’ve lived on the island far too long.
A conversation not meant for humans changes a woman’s life. If only she could remember it.
Sometimes everybody’s bad day really is your fault.
A woman’s stuck in a house with a handsome man who ignores her and something else paying too much attention to her.
The Three Investigators series are a wonderful and wholesome mix of adventure, mystery, comedy, and critical thinking/detection. They enthralled several generations of readers worldwide – and in these new 60th-anniversary editions, they are again ready to take on the world!
The Secret of Terror Castle
The Three Investigators Book 1
by Robert Arthur
Genre: Middle Grade Mysteries with a Supernatural hook
In the first adventure of Robert Arthur’s classic mystery series, it’s 1964 in the town of Rocky Beach, California. Working out of their newly established Headquarters – an old trailer hidden behind carefully arranged junk in the Jones Salvage Yard – and driven around southern California in a gold-plated vintage Rolls Royce they’ve won the use of in a contest, Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews decide to get publicity for their fledgling detective firm by finding a real haunted house for the renowned film director Reginald Clarke.
But although the highly rational Jupiter starts with the belief that there is no such thing as a ghost, a spook, a phantom, or a spirit, Terror Castle – the old mansion supposedly troubled by the ghost of the late Stephen Terrill, the silent horror film star called the Man with a Million Faces – may prove him wrong!
By turns exciting, spine-tingling, and humorous, The Secret of Terror Castle promises to please not only the existing fan base of The Three Investigators series but a whole new generation of readers who will find in its pages three very different boys whose imagination, courage, and intelligence can remind us that curiosity, perseverance, and rational inquiry are just as vital as friendship and cooperation.
At the end of each Three Investigators book published by Hollow Tree Press are notes written by Robert Arthur’s daughter and son-in-law, exploring three subjects connected to the story – in this case, Silent Movies, Salvage Yards, and Rolls Royces – and young readers may want to use the notes as guidelines for further investigation. After all, the motto of The Three Investigators is “We Investigate Anything,” and their trademark is “???” – three question marks, taken together.
On the 60th anniversary of the creation of The Three Investigators series, the first-ever English-language e-book editions of Robert Arthur’s novels, as well as the first new English-language print editions in over twenty-five years, stand ready to delight a whole new audience. Be sure to seek out all ten titles!
The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot
The Three Investigators Book 2
In the second adventure of Robert Arthur’s classic mystery series, Jupiter, Pete and Bob are in search of a missing parrot. The case soon gets complicated as they discover that not one but six talking parrots and a mynah bird have disappeared.
With the help of their new friend Carlos, the Three Investigators figure out that each of the birds has been taught to recite part of a complex puzzle, that, when taken together, could lead the boys to a great painting. But as their search takes them to a spooky graveyard, they’re not the only ones hot on the trail!
By turns puzzling, compelling, and absorbing, The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot promises to please not only the existing fan base of The Three Investigators series but a whole new generation of readers who will find in its pages three very different boys whose imagination, courage, and intelligence can remind us that curiosity, perseverance, and rational inquiry are just as vital as friendship and cooperation.
At the end of each Three Investigators book published by Hollow Tree Press are notes written by Robert Arthur’s daughter and son-in-law, exploring three subjects connected to the story – in this case, Puzzles and Word Games, Parrots, and Sherlock Holmes – and young readers may want to use these notes as guidelines for further investigation. After all, the motto of The Three Investigators is “We Investigate Anything,” and their trademark is “???” – three question marks, taken together.
On the 60th anniversary of the creation of The Three Investigators series, the first-ever English-language e-book editions of Robert Arthur’s novels, as well as the first new English-language print editions in over twenty-five years, stand ready to delight a whole new audience. Be sure to seek out all ten titles!
**Don’t miss the rest of the series!**
ROBERT ARTHUR is best known as the creator of THE THREE INVESTIGATORS, the classic mystery series for young readers, for which he wrote the first ten books before his untimely death in 1969. By the time the last English-language-original book was published in the late 1980s, there were forty-three titles, some of which had been translated into over twenty languages.
Young readers in the U.S., Canada, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, Denmark, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, and Slovakia, as well as in France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and throughout the Spanish-speaking world grew up on the books, and many credit their lifetime love of reading to having discovered the story of three young American boys who form a detective agency.
Robert Arthur got the idea for the series while working in Hollywood as a story editor, showrunner, and scriptwriter for Alfred Hitchcock’s TV show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In 1963, he left Hollywood and moved to Cape May, New Jersey, where, in a brown-shingled house two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean, he created The Three Investigators. The Secret of Terror Castle and The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot were published in 1964 by Random House. The series’ original title was ALFRED HITCHCOCK AND THE THREE INVESTIGATORS.
The books have supernatural hooks — haunted houses, whispering mummies, gnomes, ghosts riding carousels, screaming clocks, talking skulls — that turn out, after closer examination, to have rational explanations.
From his memories of his years in southern California, Arthur created the small fictional town of Rocky Beach, not far from Hollywood. His disbelief and dismay at the way old houses were being torn down and their contents junked resulted in his placing The Three Investigators Headquarters in a salvage yard, where all sorts of goods have been reclaimed and are for sale. He based his head investigator, Jupiter Jones, on his idea of a young American Sherlock Holmes, and the boy who keeps records and does research — Bob Andrews — he based on himself (they have the same initials!)
The books are a wonderful and wholesome mix of adventure, mystery, comedy, and critical thinking/detection. They enthralled several generations of readers worldwide – and in this new 60th-anniversary edition, they are again ready to take on the world.
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Kat suspects a sinister plot that might involve her dead sister when Silas threatens Kat’s reputation and her career prospects. But a twist of fate sends Kat and her friends outside the safety of the domes. And straight into the plans of her enemy.
Following her sister’s final footsteps, Kat searches for clues to the past to unlock their future. Too bad not everybody wants her to succeed. With time running out from their sabotaged air supply, Kat wields her sword to save her friends.
Who would have guessed fate would help when all else seemed doomed?
Dark memories are carried on the scent of roses.
Mary wants a better life for her family and hopes the house she inherited from her aunt in Alabama will be a sanctuary for them all, but Mary and the house share a terrible secret.
Roots run deep in the south, but secrets run even deeper.
Join the Anderson family in a tale of Southern Gothic Horror in four voices.
Our Fearful Roots
In this first-ever full- length Heroes in Hell novel by Janet and Chris Morris, Homer, the famous poet of ancient Greece who wrote The Iliad, receives a travel pass to tour Hell on special assignment from Satan.
The Little Helliad
A Heroes in Hell Novel
by Janet & Chris Morris
Genre: Dark Fantasy
In the ninth installment of the acclaimed Heroes in Hell series, The Little Helliad takes readers on a journey through the underworld like never before. Homer, the legendary ancient Greek poet, finds himself in Hell, tasked by the Devil himself to chronicle the epic tales of the damned. Drawing inspiration from the lesser-known vignettes of the Iliad, this novel weaves a tapestry of myth, history, and fantasy.
As Homer navigates the treacherous landscapes of Hell, he encounters a host of unforgettable characters, each with their own stories of heroism, betrayal, and redemption. With the unique perspective of the Morris duo, this book offers a fresh and compelling take on the classic tales of the Iliad, reimagined in the fiery depths of the afterlife.
The Little Helliad is a must-read for fans of epic fantasy and mythological retellings, blending rich storytelling with the dark allure of the underworld. Join Homer on his odyssey through Hell and discover the timeless tales that continue to captivate readers across the ages.
**On Sale for Only $2.99 this month!**
Best selling author Janet Morris began writing in 1976 and has since published more than 30 novels, many co-authored with her husband Chris Morris or others. Most of her fiction work has been in the fantasy and science fiction genres, although she has also written historical and other novels. Morris has written, contributed to, or edited several book-length works of non-fiction, as well as papers and articles on nonlethal weapons, developmental military technology and other defense and national security topics.
Christopher Crosby Morris (born 1946) is an American author of fiction and non-fiction, as well as a lyricist, musical composer, and singer-songwriter. He is married to author Janet Morris. He is a defense policy and strategy analyst and a principal in M2 Technologies, Inc. He writes primarily as Chris Morris, but occasionally uses pseudonyms.
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Choice of print or ebook copy of The Little Helliad,
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