Weekend Reading Roundup: 5/21/21

Magical musician Murder LaVoe is tired of running.

She’s been running for almost 500 years.

When you don’t age, people take it personally.

She has returned 40 years later to her favorite borough in New York City.

Her hope: to finally settle down and hide her secret by taking the identities of falsified heirs.

A public attempt on the life of her Rock-N-Roll alter ego, Lady Dreamscapes, and a chance meeting of immortals in need, threaten to take away the life she holds so dear.

Can NYPD detective Grant Noble III solve her mysteries in time to save her, or is it him that needs saving?

Levi Esmund is a Protector of the Ageless sculpted from Clay by Murder’s mother to be her companion. No one knows how tied the fates of the Protectors are to their charges. Levi wants a good book, and a hot guy. He might like to be a real boy.

Tress is also a Protector. A Trans-woman, and white-out Victorian goth who has learned to excel at glamours and wards. The Curse Of the Ageless prevents her from transitioning physically to a woman permanently. She’s devoted her life to helping trans-girls in need, but she has a problem. She has yet to figure out how to save herself.

A quiet coffee shop gives two men who have lost too much a chance at love.

Joe Calloway has been on the run since he was sixteen, homeless and alone. He never lets anyone close. Between his traumatic past and his autism, he isn’t used to people taking the time to understand him.

Even so, when a stranger offers him a way to build a better life for himself, Joe finds the strength to go for it.

Madden Fields is fully devoted to his older sister, her autistic son, and his job as a nurse, but when he meets Joe, his carefully ordered life begins to pick up speed.

As their connection deepens, Madden realizes he’s going to have to hold on tight if he wants to be an anchor strong enough for Joe to stay.

“Stay” is a 88,000 words gay hurt/comfort romance novel.

Sensitivity Warning: There are some scenes where violence is depicted or remembered, some adult language, and consensual male/male sex scenes.

Forty years in the future America finally is the diverse and transparent society it always had the potential to be. The election of the first female president in 2016 changed the direction of the country irrevocably, now racism and intolerance have all but been eliminated from the country and its citizens no longer challenge the authority of the government as they have no longer have any reason to. Or any ability to.

Albert Woods is a programmer for a government department ensuring that all traces of information that would be considered offensive to the government’s position is permanently removed from the historic records. Excelling at his job and content with his life, a chance encounter with his ex-wife sends him down a dangerous path to find out exactly what the government and the Party that runs it, is hiding. From that moment on there is no turning back as he loses everything in his search for the truth covered behind an incredible machinery of lies. His faith in the institutions of the Party and the society it created, once stronger than a religious conviction, is now shattered.

As Albert frantically searches the country for proof of the government’s corruption he has to rely on his wits, the people he meets, and a little luck just to stay alive. Everyone now carries a tracking device capable of recording all conversations at all times and the Party is always listening. They’re trying to find Albert before it’s too late and he exposes the truth they will stop at nothing to hide. Will he find out the dark secrets of an authoritarian deep state hellbent on protecting them?

Or will he die trying?

A young woman on a trip to visit Grandma. A wolf. A Huntsman. Just the start of this grindhouse, blood-spattered battle of life and death.

You’ve heard the fairy tales, but this tale has no Prince Charming. Just a girl in the woods driven to the edge of sanity as the magic of the forest awakens and reveals its dirty, rotten underbelly.

An alien scientist has a half-human “inter-terrestrial” son on the primitive planet of Earth. Aliens from neighboring planets (Mars and Venus) think they own the Earth and are adamant that it not be used by higher species without their consent. For twenty years, this alien father has been trying to figure out a way to get back to this forbidden planet to see his son, desperately looking for an opportunity to present itself.

But how did this “inter-terrestrial” come to be? How has his human mother protected him on a planet where many people hate and fear what is different? And what role would this hybrid play in proving that humans are not inferior to our alien brethren?