Enchanted Autumn

Theater director and high school drama teacher Tessa Flowers is still carrying a torch for her old college roommate, Roxy Bright, despite not having seen her in years. When they end up in Provincetown over the winter, Tessa convinces Roxy to help her put on a Shakespeare production. What better way to fan the long-held spark of attraction into the roaring fire of passion? Cue the instant attraction they long to explore. But when Roxy unwittingly saves a stranded mermaid named Mo, things go off script.

Mo is tall, curvy, and stunning, with long green hair and absolutely no clue about life on land. Lured into Cape Cod Bay by an evil spell, she cannot return to her true form. In gratitude to Roxy for having saved her, she vows to help Roxy find her true love. This would all be great, except that Mo doesn’t actually know anything about human courtship, and her help creates more problems than it solves. Throw in Tessa’s icy ex, who has the lead role in the play, and the stage is set for a comedy of errors that even the Bard could appreciate.

As a doctor, Mick McVey knows what a mental health crisis looks like. Her own still takes her by surprise. When she inherits a house from the grandfather she’s never met, she puts herself on sabbatical and travels to the small hometown of the mother who abandoned her. It’s a temporary solution.

Mick might not be grieving her grandfather, but to her new neighbor Katy, his death is one blow too many. Mick’s arrival feels like Katy’s chance to forget her ex and her struggling cinema and reinvent herself. She’ll finally get her hot rebound and make this year her year.

When the COVID-19 lockdown traps both women in situations they’d convinced themselves were temporary, they’re forced to face what they really want from their lives, and who they want to share them with.

To the community, Aradia Burke is the premier dog trainer and breeder of Anatolian shepherds in the region. Whether it is training the family pet or a top-tier working K9, Aradia is the go-to person. The truth is buried beneath centuries of closely held secrets. Aradia’s birthright and duty is to train the Guardians, those special dogs that keep the world safe from demons. When pre-cognitive Mercy Burroughs has a vision and Aradia arrives on her doorstep, her careful life unravels. Demons are close to breaching one of the portals and will threaten the Western Washington Guardian team and K9, Clemons. It’s up to Aradia, Mercy, and the K9s to stop them before darkness falls over the world.

Suri Daniels, a beautiful and troubled woman, is the descendant of a family of supernaturally gifted women, known as the Blessed, and literally holds keys to gateways between the earthly plane and seven powerful gods. A series of tragic losses and a stipulation in her grandmother’s will has her returning to the family’s home in New Orleans, unaware that she will need to step into the role of Orisha priestess and escape the attention of a powerful demon. To top it all off, she must accept the help of a Cambion—Lyla Jefferies, a dark supernatural being she has spent her life avoiding. What’s worse? She can’t help being drawn to Layla in ways she doesn’t understand.

Being the child of a top-tier demon and a human isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. For the past two hundred years, Layla Jefferies has lived a life of quietude. When an unknown force draws her out of seclusion, the pull is too strong to ignore. Layla is tasked to assist with protecting the gateways and saving Suri from becoming a vengeful demon’s avatar. Falling in love with her is definitely not part of the plan.

Layla and Suri are brought together by fate to defeat the darkness threatening to tear their world apart. What they don’t expect to discover is a love that might set them free.

Content advisory: Opening chapter includes a depiction of sexual violence and rape.

Dear Reader,

I wrote The Blessed to honor the resilience, strength, and faith of my community’s ancestors. To tell a story, in my own way, of their survival in a world that treated them as less than the lowest of creatures. A world that continues to methodically strip away our sense of selves as humans and our culture as a people. Layla is the embodiment of all People of Color, particularly Women of Color, in this country and the suffering they have endured, which was violent, painful, and has lasted for generations. I choose to honor all those women like Layla, her mother, and grandmother who survived and rather than turn to violence themselves, chose to stand tall and lift their community up.

The Blessed begins with an act of physical violence to represent how some People of Color were brought into the world. Just as we survived our violent past, so does Layla. Just as we did not allow what was wrought upon us to break us, to take away our capacity to love and cherish others the way we were not, Layla also does not let her circumstances break her. She turns that violence into the resolve to help her community. In the process, she finds a love that strengthens her even more.

You may feel discomfort when reading Layla’s beginnings as it mirrors the pain of the past. Atrocity and its generational impacts should not feel comfortable or easy. But her story is ultimately an uplifting one of family, faith, culture, and love that I believe you will enjoy. I hope you see The Blessed as honoring the struggles of my ancestors and accepting the blessing of life, faith, and love that they have bestowed upon me as a result of their survival.

Forever thankful, always grateful, abundantly blessed,

Anne Shade

It’s Christmastime and everyone is in the holiday spirit at no-kill animal shelter Junebug Farms.

When Junebug sponsors the annual Christmas parade to raise money and awareness for their shelter, the staff have a plan: the king and queen of the parade will spend the holidays filming adorable Christmas vignettes to bring in donations and find forever homes for lovable pups before Santa comes.

What they don’t know is that Mia Sorenson, volunteer dog walker and superior matchmaker, is about to rig the voting so that her granddaughter, Samantha, and Sam’s friend Keegan, win queen and queen of the parade. Sam and Keegan have been dancing around each other for years, and if Mia doesn’t do something, they might never realize they’re meant to be together. But can Sam and Keegan ever forget the Big Embarrassing Thing that makes romance a nope?

It’ll be all paws on deck to bring them a miracle and make this Christmas one to remember.