Today we feature the spotlight on more than one author - Raven Corbin, Suzanne Gilchrist, Kelly Ethan, Amanda Ashby, and Rachel Armstrong.
~Eleni
"PrologueFinn fell to his knees as the knife plunged into his back, his muscles spasming as hot blood spread through his fur. He rolled to his side, kicking his legs in attempt to run. To fight.
He would do neither.
Pain lanced up his spine and wrapped around his racing heart as he dropped his head onto the grass. The knife withdrew from his flesh, and he released a spine-chilling howl that sent birds fleeing the trees.
"Shit!" Ava dropped beside him to press her hands over the wound. "Is it bad? Heal,
dammit!"
- Island Moon (Book 3, Wolf Shifters of Magnetic Island) by Rachel Armstrong
NEW RELEASES
Raven Corbin
Murder at Millmerran House
Book 1, Bitterport Mysteries
Released:
24 June
A crumbling mansion. A ghost seeking justice. A mystery that someone will kill to keep buried.
In the abandoned gothic town of Bitterport, Tasmania, Millmerran House has been waiting. When London hotelier Aiden Bellingan inherits the neglected Victorian estate, he discovers the renovation comes with a resident ghost — Elvira Brown silenced in 1945, and furious about it.
Interior designer Marielle McGregor knows she shouldn’t take the job. The mansion already claimed her father, who vanished while uncovering its wartime secrets. But Elvira is surprisingly helpful for a dead woman, and Aiden is surprisingly hard to resist.
As hidden passages reveal decades of betrayal, conspiracy, and stolen justice, Marielle and Aiden race to uncover the truth before the killer still protecting those secrets claims their next victims.
In Millmerran House, the past isn’t dead. It’s just waiting to be restored.
Suzanne Gilchrist
The Body in the Bath House
Book 2, Bitterport Mysteries
Released:
29 June
A fresh start. A gruesome discovery. And a killer with a dangerous obsession.
Mercy Galanis needs a new beginning. Inheriting a crumbling historic bathhouse in the remote Tasmanian ghost town of Bitterport seems like the universe delivering. Until she gets there.
The weather is brutal. The town is barely breathing. The bathhouse is in ruins. And Mercy can’t shake the feeling that something — or someone — is watching her every move.
Then her dog unearths a mummified body, and Bitterport’s silence takes on a darker meaning.
Determined to uncover the dead man’s identity — and her own unsettling connection to him — Mercy reluctantly teams up with Zac Alexander, the infuriatingly capable single-dad plumber with renovation plans of his own and zero interest in complications. Mercy, apparently, is nothing but.
As they dig deeper into Bitterport’s buried past, someone determined to protect their secret at all cost decides they have come too close.
In Bitterport, the ground always gives up its dead. The question is whether you survive the discovery.
Kelly Ethan
Curses and Cold Cases
Book 2, The Ghost Vein Cozy Mysteries
Released:
31 August
Welcome to Ghost Vein, Nevada. Where the mine runs deep and so do the lies. The gold's cursed, the ghosts are chatty, and murder never stays buried for long.
When Rue Maddox inherited a haunted saloon-turned-bookstore café from her great aunt Ruth, a curse-breaking witch, she didn’t expect to have to solve a murder in her alley way. But life since then had settled into a peaceful routine for the cursed Wild West reenactment mining town.
But Ghost Vein’s peace is upset with the arrival of an heir claiming ownership of the cursed mine—and half the town. His timing couldn’t be worse. Tourist season is just kicking off, the town’s ghosts are getting louder, and now someone’s been murdered again. And she just happens to be the assistant to the new heir…
To make things weirder (yes, weirder), a ghost connected to the mine keeps showing up clearly trying to tell Rue something important. There’s just one problem: someone—or something—has bound his spirit from speaking the truth.
With a real estate scam underway, a cursed vault humming under her feet, and her aunt Ruth’s ghost unable to help, Rue must uncover who really killed the assistant…before the silent dead finds a new voice in Rue’s bones.
Add in flirty tension with the town’s grumpy (and way-too-attractive) Sheriff Colt Dawson, sabotage in the shadows, and a town full of suspects, Rue’s second murder case is shaping up to be even messier than her latte making skills.
Good thing she’s getting the hang of this curse-breaking witchy thing.
Sort of.
Small town life just got weirder. And Rue? She might be the only thing standing between Ghost Vein and something far worse than bad tourist reviews.
Perfect for fans of paranormal cozy mysteries, haunted Western towns, and amateur sleuths.
Unlock the light-hearted magic and mayhem in Curses and Cold Cases. Book two in The Ghost Vein Mine Cozy Paranormal Mysteries by Kelly Ethan.
Tropes:
Quirky Characters
Amateur Sleuth
Twisty Mystery
Nosy Animal sidekick
Magical Mayhem
Found Family
Slow Burn Romance
Ghosts
Curses
Witches
Old Western Mining Town
Rachel Armstrong
Island Moon
Book 3, Wolf Shifters of Magnetic IslandReleased:
1 August
The Magnetic Island Pack are gaining strength. They’ve defeated the rogue wolves, killed the vampires, and only one enemy remains. Tyrone Thorne. The Dark Alpha of the Pallarenda Pack. And with his malicious right-hand man, he is ready to seize the island.
Sly Blackwood has lived as a wolf since the death of his mate, broken and savage in his hunger for revenge. Embracing the wolf is the only way he knows how to survive and destroy the Pallarenda Pack as to kill an animal, one has to become an animal. Or better yet, a monster. With the final battle brewing, Sly is ready to end this war and live out his days as a lone wolf. Until Fate intervenes with an unwelcome mating bond.
Isla came to perform at the Full Moon Party, but the popstar is more than she seems. She is everything Sly never wanted, the second chance he feared, and the only person with the power to pull Sly out of his self-imposed darkness and into the light. In an unexpected twist no one's ready for, Isla finds herself thrust into the paranormal world from her nightmares with a man too broken to resist. But can she face her demons to help Sly become the man he once was? Can Sly let go of his anger and open his heart again? Or will Sly’s determination to save his second chance at love be the pack’s ultimate undoing?
Book 3 and the epic conclusion of the Wolf Shifters of Magnetic Island series by award winning romance author Rachel Armstrong!
Non-spec fic
Amanda Ashby
The Widows' Guide to Last Orders
Book 4, The Widows' Detective Club
Released:
15 April
Life in Little Shaw is as nice as pie for librarian Ginny Cole. She’s got a tentative truce with her grumpy neighbour Detective Inspector Wallace, and Sunday quiz nights at The Lost Goat with her friends (team name: The Merry Widows). Until the young quizmaster is found dead in the cellar. The police call it an accident; Ginny suspects murder. But with Wallace strangely impossible to locate and convince, she and the other widows must step – carefully, mind – into the breach.
The victim, it turns out, wasn’t just torturing locals with impossible trivia. He was hunting for his great-aunt who vanished from Little Shaw in 1963, along with what village gossips insist was a fortune in Cold War secrets. Now Ginny and her friends must decode a sixty-year-old mystery involving priest holes, spy scandals, and the competing egos of the local history society.
But when the killer strikes again, the widows need to solve this fast before someone calls last orders on them…
A brilliantly twisty cozy mystery perfect for fans of Fiona Leitch, Robert Thorogood and anyone who thinks retirement should come with a side of solving murders.
Amanda Ashby
The Widows' Guide to Foul Play
Book 5, The Widows' Detective Club
Released:
10 August
Amanda Ashby
The Widows' Guide to Last Orders
Book 4, The Widows' Detective Club
Released:
15 April
Life in Little Shaw is as nice as pie for librarian Ginny Cole. She’s got a tentative truce with her grumpy neighbour Detective Inspector Wallace, and Sunday quiz nights at The Lost Goat with her friends (team name: The Merry Widows). Until the young quizmaster is found dead in the cellar. The police call it an accident; Ginny suspects murder. But with Wallace strangely impossible to locate and convince, she and the other widows must step – carefully, mind – into the breach.
The victim, it turns out, wasn’t just torturing locals with impossible trivia. He was hunting for his great-aunt who vanished from Little Shaw in 1963, along with what village gossips insist was a fortune in Cold War secrets. Now Ginny and her friends must decode a sixty-year-old mystery involving priest holes, spy scandals, and the competing egos of the local history society.
But when the killer strikes again, the widows need to solve this fast before someone calls last orders on them…
A brilliantly twisty cozy mystery perfect for fans of Fiona Leitch, Robert Thorogood and anyone who thinks retirement should come with a side of solving murders.
PRE-ORDERS
Raven Corbin
Murder at Millmerran House
Book 1, Bitterport Mysteries
Expected Release:
7 December
A reluctant inheritance. A murdered caretaker. And forty-three dead women demanding justice.
Graphic designer Nina Drake has spent her entire adult life pretending she cannot see the dead. When a mysterious benefactor leaves her Moorstone Manor—a crumbling sandstone estate in the abandoned town of Bitterport—her plan is simple: sell the ruin and escape back to Melbourne.
Instead, she arrives to find the manor’s caretaker murdered in the conservatory, surrounded by spirits she can no longer ignore.
Paranormal investigator Kason Eady has spent months researching the estate’s dark lineage. Once a notorious Female Factory full of convict women, Moorstone hides secrets that someone has spent generations protecting.
Guided by the ghost of a young convict girl from 1845, Nina and Kason uncover a sinister trail leading directly to one of Tasmania’s most powerful families—and a blood-soaked history they will do anything to protect.
Some inheritances cannot be sold. Some debts cannot be avoided. And the dead are done being quiet.
Kelly Ethan
The Wicked Witch and the Ghastly Galleon
Point Muse Halloween Cozy
Expected Release:
31 October
Pirates, ghastly curses, and a librarian turned sleuth… Let the mayhem begin.
A Halloween cruise aboard the Ghastly Galleon Cruise Ship was supposed to be harmless fun. Fake ghosts, pirate legends and a wicked witch, Elspeth Harrow, complaining loudly about everything…
Not what Alexandra Meyers-Braun, a.k.a. Xandie, guardian to the Supernatural Great Library of Alexandria, expected. But a free trip is a free trip, even if one has to travel with their loose cannon witchy grandmother.
Until a massive prop drops during rehearsal of a pirate play and the ship’s social director and Elspeth’s longtime frenemy is crushed to death.
Now the ship is in lockdown, a pirate curse is back in circulation, and everyone thinks the wicked witch, Elspeth Harrow, is suspect number one.
With suspicion swirling, Xandie must unravel cursed pirate legends, buried grudges, blackmail, and a ship full of secrets to find the killer before the curse of the Ghastly Galleon claims another victim…
If you love snarky dialogue, witchy chaos, and piratical cozy paranormal magic and mayhem, you’ll love The Wicked Witch and the Ghastly Galleon, a Halloween novella in Kelly Ethan’s Point Muse Cozy Paranormal Mystery series.
Kelly Ethan
The Wicked Witch and the Fatal Festivities
Point Muse Christmas Cozy
Expected Release:
20 December
A cursed Christmas committee, a murderous tree-lighting, and a nosy librarian turned sleuth. Let the mayhem begin...
Christmas in Point Muse isn’t all carols and candy canes. It’s more curses and corpses. This year, Xandie Meyers-Braun is looking forward to a quiet Christmas with her husband, Zach, while adjusting to the exciting and scary news they’re expecting their first baby.
Hoping for a festive season filled with family cheer instead of murder, her plans are shattered when her grandmother, Elspeth Harrow, the wicked witch of Point Muse, is elected Santa for the Point Muse Christmas Festival.
But after the committee’s unpleasant treasurer is electrocuted, suspicion falls on Elspeth’s wicked witch ways. With whispers of a Christmas curse spreading through town, as one festive disaster follows another, the entire committee and the rest of Point Muse believe a Christmas curse is stalking them.
With Christmas on the brink of cancellation, and a killer searching for a dangerous secret, Xandie has no choice but to untangle a web of blackmail, lies, and Christmas mayhem before the murderer strikes again.
Can Xandie uncover the truth behind Point Muse’s cursed Christmas? Or will this year’s festive season end in another fatal celebration?
If you like snarky dialogue, laugh-out-loud humor, quirky witches, murder and mayhem, then you’ll love this festive installment in Kelly Ethan’s Point Muse Cozy Paranormal Mystery series.
Unlock the mayhem of The Wicked Witch and the Fatal Festivities by Kelly Ethan.
Non spec-fic
Rachel Armstrong
Falling for the Heart Doc
Expected Release:
30 December
 |
| temporary cover |
Cassandra Rose has a second chance at life.
Starting over in her hometown, she volunteers on the children’s ward, sharing her love of Greek mythology to give sick children hope and courage. She’s beaten cancer but struggles to recognise the woman in the mirror. Her body is frail, her confidence is shattered, and she no longer feels feminine or desirable.
So she has no interest in her sexy new neighbour who puts all the Greek gods to shame.
Dr Alex Charles has a second chance at love.
After a loss that broke him, the successful cardiologist is ready to start dating again. He’s returning to triathlon and pushing himself harder than ever to become the man he once was.
So when a pretty woman moves downstairs, he finds himself intrigued.
As lonely neighbours, Alex and Cassandra form an easy friendship. But when Alex discovers Cassandra has already decided she isn’t worthy of love, he’s determined to prove her wrong.
Because sometimes the hardest heart to heal is your own.
A standalone contemporary romance about healing and finding yourself again from Award Winning Romance Author Rachel Amstrong!
A friends first, neighbour, slow burn romance.
Pre-OrderGENERAL NEWS
Raven Corbin
Check out Raven's Murder and Mayhem blog.
S.E. Gilchrist
Island Bite (Book 2, Wolf Shifters of Magnetic Island) won the Speculative Fiction RubyAward
from the Romance Writers of Australia.
Island Wolf was a finalist in the Paranormal category
EVENTS
Rachel Armstrong
is expected to be at the following events:
Once Upon a Fairytale
NSW
10 October
Readers Unleashed
Cairns, QLD
12-13 March 2027
Congratulations to our DarkSiders!
Happy reading everyone. Be safe & well.
