Kathy McIntosh is the author of ​Murder, Truth or Consequences Style

Mystery/Cozy

In a town called Truth or Consequences, somebody's hiding both.

Madrone Hunter can't catch a break - not even on vacation. A relaxing stay in New Mexico's hot springs town turns chilling the moment her host's neighbor is found dead, right after the two had fought bitterly over a property line.

Police call it suicide. The victim's son calls it murder. When Madrone starts digging, she not only finds motives but a decade of rivalries, betrayals, and a blackmail scheme that someone would kill to keep buried. As the suspect list grows, so does the danger. In a town built on secrets, will the truth cost Madrone everything? 

Kathy McIntosh - The Independent Author Network 

Erik D. Larson is the author of The Kikiloa Chronicles

The Kikiloa Chronicles

Literary Science Fiction (Time Travel)

“An engaging time-travel romp that mashes up Jung and Doctor Who to masterful effect.” OUR VERDICT: ✓ GET IT — Kirkus Reviews

“Moving, surprising time-travel story of the fight against entropy. Rewards patient attention.”  Editor’s Pick — BookLife Reviews by Publishers Weekly

Kikiloa, the puckish and imperfect time-surfing Mother of humanity, takes us on an award-winning kaleidoscopic adventure of hope, loneliness, and self-discovery. Reviewers agree: it's a "wildly original" novel "unlike anything else" they've read — philosophical literary storytelling that "offers a rich and rewarding experience."

Kiki is both the 200,000-year-old Mitochondrial Eve and a freckled fourteen-year-old trickster bounding across a San Francisco park to meet her ordinary friend Hazel, who Kiki believes can make death itself pass people by. Probably.

As she flickers across a trillion universes, Kiki is determined to discover an antidote to entropy before everything meaningful is lost. And she hopes Hazel is the key.

When a cliff collapses beneath them and Kiki vanishes mid-fall, Hazel is left facing the man who attacked them, while Kiki’s braided hopes unravel backward through self-delusion, all the way to her bleak first life as an outcast enslaved in a dystopian prehistoric world.

But Kiki never lets up. She laments a Hawaiian tsunami, alchemizes sniper attacks, tells quantum stories, weaves through highway pileups, goes Jungian, and bakes perfectly average cookies. And through it all, she spars with her infuriating, enigmatic mentor Paha, who believes surfing is elegy: all waves break, and fighting the end only creates suffering.

The Kikiloa Chronicles is Erik D. Larson’s emotionally vast, funny, and wild literary debut carried by Kiki’s unmistakable voice — from the devastating loneliness of her first life to the hard-won wisdom of friendship. Charming and self-deceiving, she wrestles with love, a force like gravity, alive at the core of a universe destined for darkness.

Circe meets Douglas Adams in the spirit of Ursula K. Le Guin. Foreword Clarion 5 out of 5, Literary Titan Gold Book Award, 2× American Fiction Awards Winner.

Read Book One of Kikiloa's trilogy with your eyes, mind, and heart wide-open. 

Erik D. Larson - The Independent Author Network

Mark Grenside is the author of the Marcus Riley Thriller Series

 Sunset Circus

Thriller

Producer Marcus Riley believes dangerous stories belong on screen. That changes when Charlie Foster, a former Hollywood prop buyer now scraping by on Venice Beach, presses a riddle into his hand. Hours later, Charlie is found dead outside Sunset Circus, a pawn shop in Los Angeles.

When the police start asking questions, Marcus realises Charlie's puzzle points to the Miksas, a Nevada crime family who rule on two buried secrets: a fortune in Romanov treasure smuggled out of Russia by Olga Miksa's father, and an act of Cold War betrayal that bought the family's immunity from East and West alike.

With his partner, designer Melinda 'Mako' de Turris, Marcus follows the trail into the Nevada desert, uncovering an assault on Charlie's daughter at The Mighty Bison casino and the theft of an artefact the Miksas must recover, one that ties back to the lost Tobolsk urns and the Eremin Letters, and forward to Stalin's darkest secret. Olga and her daughter Lexi Miksa will do whatever it takes to hold on to power, and the deeper Marcus and Mako dig, the higher the body count climbs. Riley digs into the past, but he could end up digging a grave for himself.

Mark Grenside - The Independent Author Network

Linda Soules is the author of the So You Want To Be A... series

The So You Want To Be A... series, a growing collection of career-exploration books for readers ages 10–14. Now with 50 books!

So You Want To Be A Shark Researcher: A Kids' Guide to Sharks, Marine Science, Ocean Conservation, and the Bold Scientists Who Study the Sea's Top Predators

Children's Nonfiction (Middle Grade)

​​Sharks have been in the ocean for more than 400 million years. We are only now beginning to learn where they go, and the answers are coming from people who spend far more time on data than in the water.

In So You Want To Be A Shark Researcher, readers ages 10–14 learn what studying sharks actually involves: satellite and acoustic tagging, tracking migrations, taking tissue samples, analyzing diet and reproduction, surveying populations, and building the statistical models that turn scattered detections into a picture of a species' life.

Young readers get the real path in — biology, chemistry, statistics, and coding coursework, dive certification, boat handling, volunteer and internship work, undergraduate degrees, and the graduate research where most shark science happens. The book also covers the conservation side, where science meets fishing policy and international agreements.

It profiles working shark scientists and researchers who changed how the animals are understood, and it is candid about the trade-offs: fierce competition for funding, seasonal fieldwork, long stretches at a computer, seasickness, and the difficulty of protecting species that many people still fear.

Linda Soules - The Independent Author Network

Prince Adam's Quest by Terrence W. Walsh is On Sale

 

Prince Adam's Quest by Terrence W. Walsh is now ON SALE for $.99 on Amazon Kindle.

Get your copy by Sunday, August 16.

 

One dragon. One prince. One witness. A Quest that will change them all.

Prince Adam always wins. When destruction and a dragon are reported in the kingdom of Leftovria, Prince Adam sets forth on a Quest to slay the dragon, accompanied by the apprentice bard, Minnow. Their journey takes them over bridges managed by trolls. Trolls love tolls, which Adam struggles to pay. Minnow composes songs as they travel, charming everyone including the king of trolls.

The Quest may have three endings: history, comedy, or tragedy. Adam, by his actions, will get to choose his fate.  

Kindle https://www.amazon.com/dp/b0h4nm2thy

What the Mirrors Knew by Linda Annas Ferguson

Every human journey is one of transition, but Anna Grace O’Neill’s is anything but conventional. Living alone in a bungalow on the riverbank of Charleston, South Carolina, and disenchanted by a less-than-satisfying life, she discovers once-buried revelations in a journal left by her deceased and beloved grandmother, Aine.

The mystery of why her grandfather, Angus, died before he could accompany Aine to America from Ireland after their teenage marriage years ago is one that she is driven to resolve. On her quest, she is called, as if by their spirits themselves, to embark on nothing less than a pilgrimage to the home of their youth. Their native land is part of the equally ethereal and earthborn Irish “Wild West” coast, where myths are a national heritage. Encountering surreal experiences, she is often unsure if she has been “taken astray” to another dimension by the invisible forces maintained in Celtic folklore, where alchemy and the ephemeral aren’t foreign concepts.

She is drawn off course when her path crosses that of an unexpected admirer, Kevin, a quantum physicist turned roving magician, yielding life-shifting events. Her formidable odyssey, as much within as external, creates a conflict in how she maneuvers the rearrangement of her once-mundane world.

Enriched with literary style and sensibilities, the story is interwoven with philosophy, magical realism, spirituality, romance, and alternate realities. Anna Grace’s struggles are the core incentive that keeps us rooting for her and leaves the reader’s hand resting on the back cover, deliberating well past the last line.

https://www.independentauthornetwork.com/linda-annas-ferguson.html

Bling's on the Trail of a Fluffy Puffy Tail by Dawn Secord

 Children's Picture Books

A glance outside the window gives our main canine heroine, Bling, a perplexing question.  Did she see a tail?  A squirrel's she thinks.  Fluffy and puffy, then gone in a wink.   Set out to request the assistance of a unique blend of flying, slimy, digging and hooved friends, Bling, is relentless in achieving her goal of finding that tail.  What she finds is not at all what she expected. Now, what does she do with the homeless critter with the fluffy puffy tail? No child will be disappointed as Bling guides them in curiosity, discovery, and an introduction to empathy through colorful realistic illustrations and rhyme.

#childrens #picturebook

https://www.independentauthornetwork.com/dawn-secord.html

The Kyrrah Incident: All Guns to Starboard by Michael Bush

Military Sci-Fi

A century after its disappearance, the lost colony of Kyrrah has been found.

The United Solar Colonies arrive to reclaim the fertile world and restore imperial rule. But Kyrrah is not a forgotten outpost. Rival factions born from generations of settlers are ready to fight for their independence—and for the planet itself.

As tensions erupt into war, Alexei Petrovski and Lieutenant Christine Rogers find themselves on opposite sides of a conflict that will decide the fate of Kyrrah. Beneath the planet’s surface, ancient secrets long buried awaken, threatening everyone who calls the world home.

What began as an attempt at reunification may become a battle for survival.

'A stunning, unforgettable masterpiece that grabs you from page one and doesn’t let go.' Amazon Review

https://www.independentauthornetwork.com/michael-bush.html

#amreading #scifi #military #goodreads #iartg

The Spider and the Sword by A. W. Di Marzio

Fantasy, Cross Genre Fiction, Science Fiction

An antique shop. A golden spider. A sword yet to be forged. World order to be upended—a journey to begin.

Two worlds of magic clash when intersecting spells set catastrophic events in motion. One Molecular Scientist, one interdimensional hop too many, captured on a world of magic—what to do with a muggle?

Marcus and friends are asked one simple favor: get a gold spider out of a glass globe—for the money. They discover that the spider is not what it seems and is a key to a world of magic and simplicity.

A sword entwined with magic and witchcraft must be forged—its true purpose is unknown. Enter these worlds of strange beings, deceit among mages, the wisdom of elders, and societal norms questioned.

A story of science, magic, witchcraft and muggles as they discover the worlds that entwine them.

https://www.independentauthornetwork.com/a-w-di-marzio.html

#amreading #goodreads #iartg #ian1 #fantasy #scifi

The 2026 IAN Book of the Year Awards is NOW open

 The 2026 IAN Book of the Year Awards is NOW open to ALL #authors.

The Independent Author Network presents the 12th Annual IAN Book of the Year Awards, an international contest open to all authors with 75 fiction and non-fiction categories.

Featuring cash prizes of $5,000 USD.

Recommended by ALLi the Alliance of Independent Authors.

The truth about indie publishing....

More than 50 million Books are available on Amazon. 📚

100,000 new titles are added to the Kindle Store every month.

Q. How will you ensure your book stands out to readers in a market with millions of choices?

A. The best way to move your book ahead of others in your genre(s) is to win an award contest.🏆

Enter Today. 
https://www.independentauthornetwork.com/book-of-the-year.html

#bookawards #bookawards2026 #cashprizes #goodreads #amwriting #writingcommunity #writerscommunity #writersofinstagram #indieauthor #writersoffacebook #publishing #authorscommunity