HTP Winter Reads Blog Tour Promo Post: The Book of Thorns by Hester Fox

An enchanting tale of secrets, betrayal, and magic…

Penniless and stranded in France after a bid to escape her cruel uncle goes awry, Cornelia Shaw is far from the Parisian life of leisure she imagined. Desperate and lacking options, she allows herself to be recruited to Napoleon’s Grande Armée. As a naturalist, her near-magical ability to heal any wound with herbal mixtures invites awe amongst the soldiers…and suspicion. For behind Cornelia’s vast knowledge of the natural world is a secret she keeps hidden—the flowers speak to her through a mysterious connection she has felt since childhood. One that her mother taught her to heed, before she disappeared.

Then, as Napoleon’s army descends on Waterloo, the flowers sing to her of a startling revelation: a girl who bears a striking resemblance to Cornelia. A girl she almost remembers—her sister, lost long ago, who seems to share the same gifts. Determined to reunite with Lijsbeth despite being on opposite sides of the war, Cornelia is drawn into a whirlwind of betrayal, secrets, and lies. Brought together by fate and magic at the peak of the war, the sisters try to uncover the key to the source of the power that connects them as accusations of witchcraft swirl and threaten to destroy the very lives they’ve fought for.

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CORNELIA

BEGONIA: a favor repaid, a warning foretold, a promise delivered in darkness.

Sussex, England, February 1815

I can feel Betsy watching me from the doorway.

She hovers like a bee, rehearsing some small speech in whispers. I pretend not to notice her fidgeting and instead focus on the vase of narcissi before me, the weight of my pencil in my hand. Betsy clears her throat, twice, but I am already arcing out the path of the dainty stems and unfurling petals. There is something calming about reducing the flowers to splashes of grays and blacks, finding beauty in the absence of light.

Betsy lets out a throaty cough. “You might as well come in and be done with it,” I tell her without looking up.

“Yes, miss.” She drops a curtsy, her gray ringlets bouncing under her cap. “It’s just that there’s a man in the drawing room with your uncle, miss, and your uncle asks that you join them.”

I continue sketching, watching the frilly petals take shape on my paper. “Please make my excuses,” I tell her. Uncle likes to bring me out when he has business meetings, the same way he sets out the good claret and crystal goblets with the old family crest. With no wife and no children of his own, I make a pretty addition and bring a touch of softness to his otherwise hard demeanor. “There’s a cake in the kitchen and cold ham as well that you might bring them,” I add as an afterthought.

But Betsy doesn’t leave. She wrings her hands and tuts about like a fussing hen. “No, miss. He’s for you.”

I carefully set aside my pencil. This is what I was afraid of. Closing my eyes, I rub my temples, wishing that it was anything else besides this. My time is not even my own, and I hate being pulled out of my work just to oblige Uncle.

“Very well.” I dismiss Betsy and take a moment in front of the mirror in the hall. Uncle’s friends and associates are mostly stodgy old men, but there is always the possibility that it could be someone young, someone exciting. I pinch roses into my cheeks and tease out a few of my yellow curls. If have control of nothing else in this house, I at least can take pride in my appearance.

I take a deep breath and let myself into the drawing room. “Betsy said you wanted me, sir?”

Uncle stands and tugs at his waistcoat. “Cornelia, come in.”

Though not more than fifty years in age, his poor temper and taste for rich food and drink has left my uncle with a ruddy complexion and portly figure. He is not a healthy man, and his jowls are loose, his complexion jaundiced. What he lacks in polished comportment, though, he makes up in his wardrobe, opting for elaborate cravats and showy brocaded waistcoats that never quite fit him but speak of money and an account in good standing at the tailor. Uncle waves me over, impatient. “Come meet Mr. Reeves.”

Obedient, I come and position myself near the window where I know the soft gray light is especially flattering to my fair complexion. The man unfolds himself from his chair. He is tall and spare, his black frockcoat well-cut and his boots shined. He looks familiar, perhaps from church or one of Uncle’s interminable business dinners. I suppose some might consider him handsome, but there is an intensity in his dark eyes that is more predatory than charming. “Miss Cornelia,” he says, taking my hand and bowing over it, “a pleasure.”

“Mr. Reeves.” I withdraw my hand. “I hope my uncle is not boring you with land yields and livestock accounts.”

He shares a confidential look with my uncle. “On the contrary. Our conversation has been on the most enjoyable of topics.”

“He’s here to see you,” Uncle says, plowing straight into the heart of the matter as he always does. “Mr. Reeves comes as a suitor.”

Uncle makes the outcome of this meeting perfectly clear in the sharp downturn of his lips. His patience with the matter of my marital status is wearing thin.

Well, that makes two of us.

I don’t fancy marriage, but I certainly don’t fancy spending one more day than I have to under my uncle’s roof, either. My dreams of publishing a book remain foggy and out of reach, and the money from my illustrations published in a French newspaper under a nom de plume pays only a pittance. It is not enough to live on, and certainly not enough for a young woman who enjoys fine things and an easy life. A husband would solve at least two of my problems, but it would create a host more.

“I’ll leave you two alone to talk,” Uncle says, cutting me with a look that says there will be hell to pay if I emerge from this room without securing an engagement.

The air usually lightens, the room sighing a breath of relief, when Uncle leaves, but Mr. Reeves’s presence prickles me under my stays, makes me fidgety.

Betsy is posted outside the door, her needles softly clacking as she knits some horrid bonnet or muffler. Outside, a fine mist has rolled over the gentle Sussex hills. A smile spreads over Mr. Reeves’s sharp features. “Your uncle says you’re a spirited filly. That you need a strong hand to break you.”

Ah, so it is to go like that, then. I pour a cup of tea, ignoring my guest’s outstretched hand, instead lifting the cup to my lips. “That does sound like the sort of nonsense my uncle would say.”

Mr. Reeves regards me, his dark eyes calculating. “Your uncle was right, but I think he also underestimated you. I can see you possess some wits, so I’ll not mince words.” He crosses his long legs. “I am looking for a wife, and your uncle is looking to expand his landholdings to the south of the county.”

If the man who has sat down across from me was meek, pliable, then perhaps I would have more patience in hearing his suit; I don’t need someone who will get underfoot or try to handle me. Even some doddering old lord who might die quickly and leave me a widow would be acceptable. But Mr. Reeves is irritatingly young and looks to be in good health.

“My uncle was mistaken. I am not in need of a husband.” I offer him a cold smile, my mind already back on my flowers, my fingers itching to hold my pencil. The light has shifted with the gathering clouds, and I will have to rework my shading.

He pours himself a cup of tea. “Come, wouldn’t you like to have a fine house? Be mistress of a whole host of servants? I can see that you enjoy some degree of freedom, and I can give you that. You will have a mare and a generous allowance.”

“I should think it would be terribly lowering to have to lure a wife into one’s home with promises of horses and gowns. Shouldn’t you rather wish her to come of her own volition because she holds you in some esteem?”

“You are naive if you think that marriage is anything other than a business transaction. You are a young woman of beauty and some small means but a drain on your guardian. I am an enterprising man, with successful business dealings and a good bloodline looking for a wife who will elevate his status and ornament his home. I hold a commission in the army and anticipate traveling to the Continent shortly. It is a good deal for you, and you would be hard-pressed to find a better one, especially with your lack of polish and manners.”

“It’s a little late to be going over to the Continent, isn’t it? I believe we quite vanquished Napoleon.”

Irritation animates his dark eyes before he glances away, taking what I suspect is an intentionally long sip of his tea.

I study him over the rim of my cup, imagining the way I would draw the sharp angle of his chin, the aquiline nose, before finally placing where I’ve seen him. “You were married before, were you not?”

There is an almost imperceptible stiffening of his body. “Yes, I make no secret of the fact that I am a widower,” he says shortly.

“And how, exactly, did your first wife die?” The roses in the vase on the table beside me are vibrating, warning me. I pretend not to notice, pretend that I am a normal young woman who does not receive messages from flowers.

His lips thin. “An unfortunate fall.”

“Mm. She did not bear you any children, did she?”

“Barren.” He tugs at his cravat, irritated. “You would do well not to let your ear wander to every housemaid that has a piece of gossip to peddle,” he says coldly.

“In any case, I am not interested.” I move to put my cup down, but a hand closes around my wrist, hard. I look up to find that he has leaned in close, his breath hot on my neck.

“Perhaps you’ve also heard that I have certain…proclivities.”

The roses in the vase strain toward me, singing, setting my teeth on edge. My fingers begin to tremble, but I do not let him see it. “Why would you tell me that?”

“Because I think, dear girl, that you are under the impression that I would use you poorly.” He leans back, but only slightly, the air around him still charged and menacing. “I can be a very hard man when I’m tested, but I can take my pleasures elsewhere, so long as my wife is obedient.”

His gaze is sharp, his grip painful, and I realize that here is a dangerous man, one who is not just a brute but also clever. He cannot be fobbed off with witty barbs or batting eyelashes.

“This conversation bores me,” I tell him, standing. “I will not be your wife. I’m sorry that you wasted your time in coming here.”

But he makes no move to stand, his cool gaze sliding over me in a way that leaves me feeling horribly exposed. “I’ve seen you often, Cornelia. In church, sitting so demurely with your hands folded in your lap. You may think to have everyone else fooled, but I see the spirit in your eyes. A woman like you can never be satisfied with the life of a spinster, put on a shelf here in Sussex. I can offer you fine things, take you to exciting places abroad with me.”

And I’ve seen you, I think. I’ve seen how cruelly you used your first wife, the bruises on her pretty face. The way she faded little by little every week in church, until she was just a ghost in a dress, her final service that of her funeral. That will not be me.

“Surely there are other young ladies that would be flattered by your attentions,” I tell him.

“None so beautiful, none that I would take so much pleasure in breaking. The more you deny me, the more determined I am. Ask your uncle. I am a man who gets what he wants, one way or another.”

All the promise of gold or Continental trips would not be enough to tempt any marriage-minded mama to let her daughter enter into an arrangement with a man like Mr. Reeves. But of course, I have no mama to arrange such matters for me, to keep me safe.

“Then, perhaps it was time you lose for a change. Do you not find it dull to always get what you expect?”

He stands, drawing close and jabbing a finger into my bodice. It takes some great force of will to stand my ground and not let him see my fear. “You may think yourself clever, but this visit was just a courtesy. Your uncle and I have all but drawn up the contract already.”

He storms out, and the room grows quiet in the wake of the front door slamming. Betsy startles from her seat where she had fallen to dozing. I close my eyes, take a breath, wait until my heartbeat grows even again. Then I return to my waiting drawing in the parlor.

If I work quickly, I can still finish it and have it ready for tomorrow’s post. But for now, there is no waiting publisher, no silly French pseudonym; it is just the light and the shadows and me, a silent dance as I commit them to paper. Mr. Reeves and his odious proposal quickly fade away from my mind.

But then a raised voice shatters the silence, breaking my concentration, and there is the thundering velocity of Uncle coming down the hall.


Excerpted from THE BOOK OF THORNS by Hester Fox. Copyright © 2024 by Hester Fox. Published by Graydon House, an imprint of HarperCollins.

About the Author

Photo Credit: Stephanie Patalano Photography

Hester Fox is a full-time writer and mother, with a background in museum work and historical archaeology. She is the author of such novels as The Witch of Willow Hall, A Lullaby for Witches, and The Last Heir to Blackwood Library. When not writing, Hester can be found exploring old cemeteries, enjoying a pastry and seasonal latte at a café, or scouring antique shops for old photographs to add to her collection. She lives in a small mill town in Massachusetts with her husband and their two children.

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HTP Winter Reads Blog Tour Promo Post: The Day Tripper by James Goodhand

What if you lived your days out of order?

It’s 1995, and twenty-year-old Alex Dean has it all: a spot at Cambridge University next year, the love of an amazing woman named Holly and all the time in the world ahead of him. That is until a brutal encounter with a ghost from his past sees him beaten, battered and almost drowning in the Thames.

He wakes the next day to find he’s in a messy, derelict room he’s never seen before, in grimy clothes he doesn’t recognize, with no idea of how he got there. A glimpse in the mirror tells him he’s older—much older—and has been living a hard life, his features ravaged by time and poor decisions. He snatches a newspaper and finds it’s 2010—fifteen years since the fight.

After finally drifting off to sleep, Alex wakes the following morning to find it’s now 2019, another nine years later. But the next day, it’s 1999. Never knowing which day is coming, he begins to piece together what happens in his life after that fateful night by the river.

Why does his life look nothing like he thought it would? What about Cambridge, and Holly? In this page-turning adventure, Alex must navigate his way through the years to learn that small actions have untold impact, even in a life lived out of order. And that might be all he needs to save the people he loves and, equally importantly, himself.

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SEPTEMBER 6, 1995 | AGE 20

It’s three-deep at the bar, and I get my order in seconds before they ring for time. I double up: a JD and Coke each and two beers to take with us. The lights are up and the music’s gone quiet as I weave the tray through the punters. Standing in the doorway out to the terrace, I am disorientated. There must be fifty tables outside between here and the river and it’s still packed out, darker and smokier than ever. I search the crowd but can’t see Holly.

I negotiate my way down to the water’s edge. She’s maybe ten tables away, oblivious, a ciggie poised skyward in her fingers like she’s posing for Vettriano. I smirk, enjoy my good fortune again.

“Excuse me, good gentlemen,” I say to a group of four in my path, voice cocky with booze and lust. They shuffle over, not breaking from their conversation. The resulting gap between their circle and the edge of the path isn’t wide enough—a careless elbow would send the tray of drinks into the river, possibly me with them.

“If you don’t mind, guys?” I lay a palm on the forearm of the bloke with his back to me. Their circle opens out and he turns side-on, ushering me past. “Nice one,” I say, glancing at him as I pass.

I look back at the ground. There’s a delay in my brain processing who it is I’m walking past. There’s a moment in which it seems that we’ll just carry on, pretend like we don’t know each other.

The air thickens. Time slows. I stop, a step past him. Look again. Razor-sharp short back and sides, hooded eyes, lopsided mouth. Preppy. It’s a face I catch myself imagining sometimes, never for long. A waking nightmare. Not that my imagination does it justice. Not even close, I now realize.

His recognition of me unfolds in slow motion. Perhaps like me, alcohol has dulled his synapses, delayed the inevitable shift of mode.

Blake Benfield. There have been times in the past when just hearing that name in my head has stopped me dead, left me incapable.

How long since we last ran into each other? I was sixteen—best part of four years, then. Feels so recent. Our paths crossing has always been inevitable; we grew up barely a mile apart. He spat at me that last time, called me faggot cunt. The many times before that I’d just legged it, hidden from his fury and his hatred. But you get too old to do that.

This crowded place seems so quiet now. Like there’s cotton wool stuffed in my ears. The two bottles tip over on my trembling tray, foam splattering to the ground. One rolls over the edge and shatters on the concrete. People turn.

How long have we stood here, him glaring at me, me unable to hold his stare? Saying nothing. A few seconds? Feels longer.

There’s the smell of burned-out house in my nose. The sound of his whisper in my ears that I try to drown out.

Don’t think about it. Do not think about that day.

Why do I shake? I’m a fucking grown man. Why am I shaking?

He takes a half step closer to me.

I once told him I was sorry. It was years ago—when I was still a kid. I was sorry. Does he remember?

I spin around. Where’s Holly? She must be watching this.

There’s no more delay. There is, of course, nothing for me and this bloke to say to each other. We have ventured into each other’s space, and that brings with it a remembering. And, as we always have, we must deal with that in our own way.

His knuckles graze my chin. I stumble backward and the tray falls to the ground. His swing is off, though; there is no pain. Not even surprise. We definitely have an audience now.

My response is pure instinct: palms raised, lean away. Easy now.

I don’t want to fight this man. I want to go back thirty seconds, walk a different route, have this night back for myself.

Blake closes the gap, my weakness an invitation. His second punch crashes into my ear like a swinging girder. My brain slaps side to side in my skull. Vision sways. My head boils, a cool trickle from my eardrum.

Where is Holly? Panic grips. I can’t just stand here and take this.

My eyes flit to our audience. He swings again, this time with his left. But I see it coming, dodge. He stumbles.

I drive my weight, shoulder first, into his ribs. He goes over, sprawled among the spilled drinks and shattered glass.

On all fours, he stares up at me. I’m perfectly positioned. I could kick him square in the face. End this right now. Why don’t I do it? Why can’t I bring myself to do it? I’d rather turn my back and cry than kick his head in.

He glares up at me. Why do I pity him? Why am I so uncomfortable towering over him like this? It’s like the positions we’ve always held have been reversed. The power is mine.

I let him find his feet.

He’s up and level with me again. He glares like a bloodthirsty dog, wipes his nose on the sleeve of his polo shirt. If we were alone, maybe I’d run. But with people watching, with Holly watching, that’s no option.

My punch lands perfectly. His jaws scissor against each other. For a second his head floats, eyes rolling.

I realize my error too late. I should’ve followed up when I had the chance. One punch is only enough in the movies, everyone knows that. His hands are on the collar of my shirt, cloth tearing as he holds firm. His forehead slams into the bridge of my nose like a sledgehammer. My face is suddenly and totally numb. I drop to the ground. A ruby-red stain spreads fast through the jewels of broken glass around me.

He shouts above me. Every filthy word I’ve long come to expect. Something soft disperses against my head. Spit.

The neck of the Stella bottle I dropped lies on the ground. Inches away. Blood gurgles in my mouth as I take a deep breath. I launch like a sprinter. Leading with the dagger of green glass, I’m aiming straight at his face and closing fast.

Blake backs into a table, stumbles, hands slow to cover his face. His eyes widen, abject fear. But this is no time to be derailed.

I see it too late. No time to react. One of Blake’s friends windmilling a table ashtray. The side of my skull cracks like thunder.

The ground feels like a cushion, drawing me in and bouncing me back. My vision finds enough order in time to see the sole of boot accelerating toward me, like a cartoon piano from the sky.

There is no pain. Just a sense of floating in space.

Time passes. More blows land.

The surface of the Thames billows like a black satin sheet as it rises toward me. There’s no fear. Is that Holly I can hear calling my name? It’s so distant, so hard to tell.

The river gathers me in like it’s here to take care of me.

Cool water spears my lungs like sharpened icicles. I sink forever.

A low hum builds in my ears. Lights fades to nothing.

And I sleep.

NOVEMBER 30, 2010 | AGE 35

My head throbs. It doesn’t matter if I open or close my eyes, the pain worsens either way. My mouth is like dust. Joints and muscles lie seized.

Last night is a blank. I hate that. I look above me. Focusing is excruciating. The ceiling is browny cream, textured in spikes like a Christmas cake. An unshaded bulb swings in the draft, the filament shivering. It’s really cold in here.

Where the fucking hell am I?


Excerpted from THE DAY TRIPPER by James Goodhand. Copyright © 2024 by James Goodhand. Published by MIRA Books, an imprint of HarperCollins.

About the Author

Photo Credit: HarperCollins

James Goodhand has written two YA novels. His YA debut, Last Lesson, was called "a powerfully charged study in empathy," by the Financial Times. THE DAY TRIPPER is his adult debut. He lives in England with his wife and young son.

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HTP Winter Reads Blog Tour Promo Post: A Step Past Darkness by Vera Kurian

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER meets Stephen King in this character-driven thriller about a study group of six teenagers who witness something tragic in an abandoned mine, which comes back to haunt them 20 years later.

SIX CLASSMATES.

ONE TERRIFYING NIGHT.

A MURDER TWENTY YEARS IN THE MAKING…

There’s more to Wesley Falls than meets the eye, but for six high school students, it’s home.

Kelly, the new girl and rule-follower.

Maddy, the beauty and the church favorite.

Padma, the brains and all-A student.

Casey, the jock and football star.

James, the burnout and just trying to make it to graduation.

And Jia, the psychic, who can see the future.


When these six are assigned to work on a summer group project, their lives are forever changed. At an end of the year party in the abandoned mine, they witness a preventable tragedy, but no one will take them seriously. As things escalate, they realize the church, the police, and the town’s founders are all conspiring to cover up what happened. When James is targeted as the scapegoat, to avoid suspicion, they vow their silence and to never contact each other again. Their plan works – almost.

Twenty years later, Maddy is found murdered is Wesley Falls, and the remaining five are forced to confront their past and work together to finally put right what happened all those years ago. If they can survive…

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1

August 17, 2015

The mountain had existed long before there had been anyone around to name it, pushed up by the inevitable forces that made the Appalachian Range millions of years ago. Hulking, it stood with a peculiar formation at its apex, two peaks like a pair of horns, giving the mountain its eventual name of Devil’s Peak. The coal mine inside was abandoned long ago.

On the southern side of Devil’s Peak was the town of Wesley Falls, where there were no remnants of the mine except for the overgrown paths crisscrossing up to two entrances, ineffectually boarded up, partially hidden but available to anyone looking hard enough. Down the western side were the steeper paths, far more overgrown with vegetation, leading down to the abandoned town of Evansville. That side of the mountain and beyond grew strange because of the coal fire that had been burning underground for almost a century. The Bureau of Mines had managed to contain the fire to the western side of the mountain so that only Evansville suffered. Only Evansville had bouts of noxious gases, open cracks of brimstone in the roads, residents complaining of hot basements and well water. Over time they left town, leaving behind a ghost.

Unlike its unfortunate neighbor, Wesley Falls had avoided the mine fire and transitioned from a coal-mining town to something not unlike Pennsylvania suburbia. It was the sort of town where one of the billboards outside the Golden Praise megachurch proclaimed, “Wesley Falls: the BEST place to raise a family!” and most adults agreed with that assessment. The sort of place where the city council had voted against a bid to allow a McDonalds to open, arguing that it would “lead to the deterioration of the character of Wesley Falls.” This had less to do with concerns about childhood obesity or dense traffic than it did a desire to keep the town trapped in amber. The sort of town where the sheriff was the son of the previous sheriff.

Jia Kwon, stepping off a train at the station some miles away from Wesley Falls, looked around the crowded station for that son—the sheriff—now in his thirties, though she had trouble picturing this. Sheriff Zachary Springsteen had an air of formality that she couldn’t match up with the image of the boy she knew from high school, whom everyone called Blub. He was an inoffensive, nondescript kid who delivered papers via his clackety bike, who then grew to be the generic teen who stood in the back row of yearbook pictures. She had always been friendly with him, but never quite friends, starting from when she had transferred from St. Francis to the Wesley Falls public school system and Blub sat next to her in homeroom.

Was the fact that she had chosen to keep in contact with this not-quite-friend after she moved away from Wesley Falls an accident? No—she knew that now. Blub had been the perfect person to report back town news over the years because he never suspected her interest was anything more than curiosity. Their exchanges over the years had been just enough for him to feel comfortable, or compelled enough, to make the phone call that had brought her here.

Jia paused to put her phone in her purse, pretending she did not notice any stares. No one looked twice at her in Philly, but here she stood out as the only Asian, drawing even more attention to herself because she had dyed her hair a shade of silvery gray with hints of lavender in it. It would only be worse when she got into town, but even as a kid she had been so used to being stared at that she just exaggerated her strangeness, opting for bright clothes rather than trying to blend in.

“Jia?” said an uncertain voice.

She turned her head and instantly recognized Blub, who stood with the gawky awkwardness of someone uncomfortable with his own height. “Blub!” she exclaimed, coming closer. She embraced him, her head only coming up to his midchest. “You’ve grown two feet!”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, smiling. “Want to ask me if I play basketball?” Their smiles felt hollow, she realized, because of the strangeness of the situation and everything they weren’t saying. “I appreciate you taking the time to come out here. I know you’re probably busy but…” He led her to his patrol car. “Sorry, you’ll have to ride in the back.”

“It’s no problem,” she murmured, surprised to see that he had brought someone along for the ride.

“This is Deputy Sheriff Henry,” Blub said, turning the car on. A smaller man whom she did not recognize half turned and nodded at her curtly, though Jia could see him looking at her in the rearview mirror as they pulled away from the station. What on earth had Blub told him?

That once, in one of their email exchanges, when he complained about having to repair his roof, she made a joke about which team to bet on for the Super Bowl, and he did, and she had been right? That she had one too many stock tips that turned out to be good? That she inexplicably sent him a “You okay?” email at 8:16 a.m. on September eleventh, thirty minutes before American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center? There had been enough incidents as strange as these that when he called her last year asking for help, it felt like something clicking into place. Something that was supposed to happen. Over the years, she had started to feel comfortable with that clicking feeling, rather than being afraid of it. Last winter he had called her saying that Jane Merrick was missing from the old-folks home—she was prone to running— and she was outside in the freezing weather in only a nightgown, and they were worried about her. He did not say why he was asking her, a person who hadn’t lived in Wesley Falls for two decades, a person who neither knew nor liked Jane Merrick. She told him to look in the barn on the Dandriges’ property without providing an explanation of how she knew. She knew because she saw it. She knew because sometimes she could call up things when she wanted to, though not all the time, but this was still significantly better than when she was a kid and she couldn’t control when the visions hit her, or stop them, or even understand them.

And now, in the peak of summer heat, he had called again, saying that there was a missing person, could she help, friends were worried. She did not ask who because she felt something like the deepest note on a double bass vibrating, reverberating through her body. She saw herself walking, her white maxi dress—the one she was wearing right now—catching on brambles as she maneuvered her way down the overgrown path to the ghost town.

She had to go back to Wesley Falls. It was time.

“You all went to school together?” Deputy Sheriff Henry said when they pulled onto the highway.

“Yeah,” she said. “We didn’t overlap with you, did we?” Henry shook his head. “Blub and I go way back,” she said, meeting Blub’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“I’ll never get over the fact that people call you Blub,” Henry remarked. “How’d you get that name anyway? Were you chubby or something?”

“I don’t think there’s an origin story,” Blub said, looking like he wanted the subject to change.

“I remember!” Jia exclaimed. “It’s when you threw up in fourth grade.” She leaned forward, pressing against the grate that divided the car, addressing Henry directly. “It was during homeroom. He threw up on his pile of books. I remember because it was clear and ran down the sides like pancake syrup.”

Henry laughed and Blub flushed. “Jia, you can’t remember that because you weren’t there. You were at St. Francis in grade school!”

She stopped laughing abruptly. “I could have sworn I remember that happening!”

“Sometimes when enough people tell you a story, you start to remember it like you were there,” Henry mused.

Sometimes, Jia thought. But there were other people who could see things that had happened or would happen, even if they weren’t there.

As they drove down the highway and drew closer to Wesley Falls, the mood shifted to an anxious silence. Jia checked her phone for anything work related. She ran a small solar panel company called Green Solutions with her two best friends, both hyper-competent, both probably picking up on Jia’s strange tone when she said she had to go back home for a short trip. They probably thought that it had to do with the settling of her mother’s estate, and Jia, even though she was uncomfortable with lying, allowed them to believe this. When her mother had died, Jia had come to Wesley Falls to liquidate everything in The Gem Shop and sell the store itself to the least annoying bidder: a fifty-something-year-old former teacher who wanted to open a bakery. A significant part of the decision had been not that her baked items were good—they were—but something about her aggressive combinations of spices had seemed witchy, and, most importantly, she did not attend Golden Praise. Jia’s mother, Su-Jin, would have approved.

And now, with Blub turning off the highway, her heart felt torn in different directions. Wesley Falls wasn’t home, but it was, because it was where most of her memories of Su-Jin lived. As the car moved it felt as if they traveled through an invisible veil, something that felt uncomfortable in a way she could not put into words anyone else would understand, but was familiar and, she knew, strange. Strange like how she was strange.

But then it came: the feeling that arose every time she had gone home to visit her mother—the feeling that she shouldn’t be here. Except this time, it was worse. They had just arrived in Wesley Falls, passing Wiley’s Bar, which was on the outskirts of town. It was frequented by truckers stopping for a cheap burger and beer.

“That place is still here?” she murmured.

“They got karaoke now,” Blub offered.

“Please kill me,” Jia responded, trying to sound light. Blub laughed, then turned onto Throckmartin Lane. The street hadn’t changed in twenty years: it still housed Greenbriar Park, which everyone called “The Good Park,” and the larger homes where the wealthier families lived. Built before McMansions had hit this part of Pennsylvania, the houses differed in their architecture—some colonial, some farmhouse—but were all similar with their immaculate lawns, American flags, and WESLEY FALLS FOOTBALL signs.

Blub slowed to a stop, making eye contact with her in the rearview mirror. He was waiting for directions.

She gestured for him to turn onto Main Street, that old, curved road with the bottom half of the C drawn out like a jaw that had dropped wide open—it was impossible to drive anywhere in Wesley Falls without driving on Main Street at some point. They passed the police station, then the row of shops. Some of the mom-and-pop stores that lined Main Street had changed, but Wesley Falls still didn’t have a Target, a chain grocery store, or a reasonable place to buy clothes. Indeed, the best place to raise a family was apparently a place where you had to drive ten miles to the mall to get many of the things people wanted. She gazed at the bakery that used to be The Gem Shop. Spade’s Hardware was still there—her mother had had a grudging friendship with the owners. The candy shop had changed ownership but it was still a candy shop. They drove along the north side of town, by the lake and the Neskaseet River—called Chicken River by locals because of its proximity to and usage by the chicken processing plant at the north edge of town.

Wesley Falls and Evansville had both popped up in the 1800s, their economies at first built entirely around the Wesley coal mine, which resided inside Devil’s Peak. No matter how many times well-meaning adults attempted to close off the entrance of the mine, which had been abandoned in the 1930s when the coal ran out, high school kids always found their way in. Drawn to the allure of ghost stories, rumors that if you found the right path you could find the mine fire in Evansville, and the inevitable urban legends about the Heart.

Jia pointed and Blub turned onto the unpaved road that crossed the Neskaseet and wound up the side of Devil’s Peak to Evansville. From this elevation, she could see the entire tiny, abandoned town. The simple, squared-off eight shape of the town’s few roads, the dilapidated strip of larger buildings at the center, then the rectangles of homes, all identical because they had been provided by the mining company.

The road came to an end, trees and shrubbery blocking their passage. Blub put the car in Park, turning to face Jia. “Can’t drive farther.”

“Then we walk,” she said. She led the way, ignoring the looks from both men as she freed herself from prickly branches that caught onto her dress. Blub used his nightstick to whack away a tangle of vegetation, then Jia found a path that led down to the town.

It smelled like sulfur with a hint of cigar. Jia picked her way gingerly down the main road, which was buckled and cracked in places, then turned a corner behind the old church and stopped. There was someone in the road wearing a bright fuchsia shirt. She could only see the top half of the figure’s body. The lower part, from the stomach down, was trapped inside the road in what looked like a fresh sinkhole.

Jia knew without looking. Some part of her had known from the moment Blub called her. He needed help finding a missing person, but he hadn’t said who. This was the thing that had pulled her back, made her feel an insistent anxiety for the past few months.

Blub and Henry were running to the body, the latter yelling. When Jia finally approached, Blub was trying to get a pulse. She watched the two men huddle over the body, Henry almost making an attempt to pull her from the chasm before Blub stopped him. This could be a crime scene.

Blub sat back on his haunches. The fuchsia T-shirt was soaked with last night’s rain. Her blond hair was pulled into a ponytail, tendrils stuck to the sides of her face. That face. Familiar but different. She’s still so pretty, Jia thought. Her mouth was open and a scratch stood out livid on her pale cheek. Her eyes were closed.

“It’s her,” Blub stated.

“Maddy Wesley,” Henry said, disturbed and awed.

“You knew that Maddy was the missing person? You didn’t tell me,” Jia said, trying to keep her voice stable.

Blub remained crouched, his elbows on his knees with his hands dangling down. “Didn’t think I needed to,” he stated, his voice devoid of the warmth it had had while in the car. He didn’t look at her as he examined the scene, and it occurred to Jia that he was actually the sheriff. Not Blub, the kid who threw up on his pile of books, but an actual agent of the law.

Jia edged backward, fearful that the road could break under her.

“You know her?” Henry asked.

His gaze made her self-conscious. Jia had never been a good liar. Much of the lying she had done that summer so many years ago had been by omission. She was working on a project. She was hanging out with Padma. These things had been true, but misleading.

“She was in our year,” Jia managed. “We all went to high school together.”

Blub’s eyes went from the body to Jia. “You weren’t friends, though, were you?” Maddy ran with the popular crowd, the Golden Praise crowd. Jia had been the opposite of that.

“No,” she said finally. “We weren’t friends.”




Excerpted from A Step Past Darkness by Vera Kurian, Copyright © 2024 by Albi Literary Inc. Published by Park Row Books.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Photo Credit: Fredo Vasquez Photography

Vera Kurian is a writer and scientist based in Washington DC. Her debut novel, NEVER SAW ME COMING (Park Row Books, 2021 was an Edgar Award nominee and was named one of the New York Times’ Best Thrillers of 2021. Her short fiction has been published in magazines such as Glimmer Train, Day One, and The Pinch. She has a PhD in Social Psychology, where she studied intergroup relations, ideology, and quantitative methods. She blogs irregularly about writing, horror movies and pop culture/terrible TV.

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HTP Winter Reads Blog Tour Promo Post: The Framed Women of Ardemore House by Brandy Schillace

An abandoned English manor. A peculiar missing portrait. A cozy, deviously clever murder mystery, perfect for fans of Richard Osman and Anthony Horowitz.

Jo Jones has always had a little trouble fitting in. As a neurodivergent, hyperlexic book editor and divorced New Yorker transplanted into the English countryside, Jo doesn’t know what stands out more: her Americanisms or her autism.

After losing her job, her mother, and her marriage all in one year, she couldn’t be happier to take possession of a possibly haunted (and clearly unwanted) family estate in North Yorkshire. But when the body of the moody town groundskeeper turns up on her rug with three bullets in his back, Jo finds herself in potential danger—and she’s also a potential suspect. At the same time, a peculiar family portrait vanishes from a secret room in the manor, bearing a strange connection to both the dead body and Jo’s mysterious family history.

With the aid of a Welsh antiques dealer, the morose local detective, and the Irish innkeeper’s wife, Jo embarks on a mission to clear herself of blame and find the missing painting, unearthing a slew of secrets about the town—and herself—along the way. And she’ll have to do it all before the killer strikes again…

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CHAPTER ONE

The house was enormous. Jo didn’t know enough about local architecture to date it, but the walls stretched up in the damp air, big and dark and lichen flecked. Windows had been boarded up; they wept black mildew creases over sandstone sills. Staring through the car window, Jo dropped her eyes down to the stairs, flanked by columns where Jo imagined regal statues might have stood. Or ought to have stood.

“It’s…a castle,” she whispered.

“It is most certainly not a castle,” said Rupert Selkirk, solicitor of Selkirk and Associates, in the driver’s seat beside her. “Not even the largest house in Abington.”

Solicitor. Jo rolled the word around in her mouth. She’d pocket it for later rumination; it was nice to have a word for chewing on. It suggested antique leather chairs and brass lampstands, felt safer than divorce lawyer, and didn’t trigger the same sort of gut gripe. Rupert looked exactly as a solicitor ought to, with a high forehead, disappearing hairline, and two very bushy eyebrows. He also drove a puddle-green sedan with the steering wheel on the wrong side of Jo’s expectations. She wondered if the sense of dislocation would fade with the jet lag. It hadn’t exactly improved her first impressions. She forgot to introduce herself, forgot the handshake, stared in absolute stunned silence at the landscape as they drove.

Online pictures had suggested something endlessly green, but the reality was wet and ragged, browned out from the end of winter and laced at the edges with naked tree branches. Jo squinted into the distance, taking in the brackish heath, then trees, then fog. A cluster of trees appeared, lanky pin oaks and a few copper beeches. A crumbling dry-stone wall snaked away from decayed posts; no fence, but the remnants of one. She let her eyes wander its length to a dark smudge of woodland and black bark dotted with lichen. The rest of the hill loomed treeless, stark, and scarred by eruptions of additional stone. Moors, she thought. Endless and rolling with dry heather and wet peat.

Jo had pressed herself to the glass, ignoring the steam prints she made. She hadn’t brought much with her—certainly not her books. But Wuthering Heights might have been a good choice. Relaxation breathing had never been much use to her; whenever she consciously thought about autonomic responses, they went all wrong. So she mentally recited the opening lines of the novel as the car grumbled to a halt in the shadow of Ardemore House. As for Rupert, he was repeating himself.

“—Not a castle. The house is wider than it is deep, mostly to take advantage of the south-facing aspect.” Seeing the blank look on Jo’s face, he tried again. “In England, south-facing gardens get the most sun. That’s where you’ll find the Ardemore Gardens. They were the highlight of the property, once. Overgrown now, I’m afraid.” Rupert swept his hand across the horizon as if bisecting it. “Everything east of here is rented for grazing livestock. There is also, as you know, the cottage. It helps defray the tax burden.”

Tax burden. She might want to hold on to those words, too.

“Emery Lane, my assistant, will be drawing up papers while we walk the property,” he said. Jo was starting to run out of processing space, internally. She felt a hiccup of emotion and press-ganged it into a smile.

“Papers?”

“For you to sign. To take over the property as your inheritance.”

The smile failed. Better say something like yes, good. Quite. Exactly the thing. But Rupert got there first, offering her a hand out of the passenger seat.

“Your mother always spoke very warmly of you, by the way. I was very sorry to hear of her passing.”

At these words, Jo quietly abandoned her pursuit of professionalism.

“Y-yeah. I got the card. Thanks.”

Rupert was still looking at her. She could tell, but wasn’t about to look back. She took in the house, instead, this not-castle that rose straight out of bracken and into a cloud bank.

“I want to go inside,” she said. Rupert joined her across the weedy lawn.

“I thought we would see the cottage first. It’s at least habitable.”

He didn’t seem to understand; Jo was standing in front of Wuthering Heights, and no, she did not want to go poke around a cottage. Not yet.

“Inside,” she said. “Please.” Rupert sighed.

“All right. But have proper expectations. This property has been vacant for a century, at least since at least 1908.”

Now in front of the door, Jo furrowed her brow as Rupert hunted for the right key. That was a surprise, actually. And it didn’t make sense.

“But you said my uncle Aiden had the property? In your email—”

“Ah, but he did not live on-site. Had a flat in York, and—” Rupert stopped abruptly and stumbled back. Jo followed his gaze to see a pair of bright eyes peering back at them through the glass.

“Jesus!”

“Tut, now.” Rupert waved his hand airily. “That’s only Sid Randles, caretaker.”

A moment later, and the man himself opened the door. Lean, lanky, all arms, legs, and a shock of red hair. Attractive in the way of highwaymen and pirates, he was either a very well-kept forty-something, or thirty gone to seed. He was also blocking the way.

“Here’s a surprise,” he said. “This the American, then?”

“Yes. Sid Randles, meet Josephine Black,” Rupert offered.

“Jones,” Jo corrected. “It’s Jo Jones now. I mean, again.” Jo faltered slightly, then dutifully stuck her hand out. Sid tucked an industrial-grade flashlight under his arm and gave her a shake, then squeezed her palm.

“Sounds like an alias,” he said.

“Jo Jones was an American Jazz drummer of the Count Basie Orchestra rhythm section from 1934 to 1948,” Jo said, then puckered her lips as if that would bring the words back. Sid eyed her a minute, then let out a yelp of laughter, and not very kindly.

“Ms. Jones would like a tour. Sid, will you do the honors, please?” Rupert checked his wristwatch. “I need to take this call and there’s no signal inside.” He turned away, and Sid grinned at Jo, one crooked canine slipping over his lip like a storybook fox.

“There’s no electricity,” he said.

“I figured that’s why you have the flashlight,” Jo said, pointing. Imagining him as Reynard from the French fables had done wonders for her confidence. She could almost imagine the swish of his irritated tail.

“Fine, fine. Come on in.” He backed into the hall. “Hope you don’t mind the smell.”

It would be hard to miss it. A puff of musty air assaulted Jo’s nostrils on entering—a wet, rotten odor. The windows were boarded, and in the slanted peek-a-boo light she could just make out the ghost of a table, a phantom of chairs in the foyer. Sid swept the light across the hall from a dust-webbed staircase to a grand room that opened off their left.

“You’ll want to pay respects to the Lord and Lady,” he said, then marched her through the pocket doors. The smell was stronger in here, sharper and more tangible. Then, her heart leapt; she’d caught a glimpse of distant book spines.

“It’s a library?” she asked.

“Yeah. A rotten one.” Sid played the flashlight beam along the mantel of a marble fireplace. “But up there, see ’em? That would be Lord William Ardemore. And his wife, Gwen, of course.”

The portraits were too large, and the beam of the light too small, but she could make out a frowning man with deep set eyes and a woman with a rosebud mouth, who might have suitably graced a Victorian cookie tin. Family members she had never known.

“Damned odd, those two.” Sid flicked the light between them. “Just up and vanished from the place.”

Jo sucked a breath. Did everyone know more about them than she did?

“What do you mean? Vanished how?”

“I mean just that.” He played the light against his own face, campfire style. “Just up sticks and gone. Fired everybody, too, didn’t they? Oh, they’d been toast of the town, like.” He did an awful falsetto: “Jobs for the big garden and big bloody house. Then poof. Like they were running from something.”

Jo was watching carefully for signs of a joke. There didn’t appear to be any, so then she waited for him to carry on. Except he didn’t. She studied him for a few silent seconds, until he gave another bark of laughter.

“Nothin’ to say about that, eh? Well, the old Lord and Lady are the least of your worries, anyhow. There’s a hole in the roof upstairs, an honest to God hole. Between you and me? Be cheaper to pull the house down than to fix it up.”

Jo pursed her lips so hard she felt teeth.

“I just got it! I can’t tear it down!”

Sid only shrugged at her outburst.

“Fair, I guess. But what do you plan to do with it, then? Look around.”

Jo did not, in fact, have an answer to that. Sid apparently meant it rhetorically, anyway, since he was now herding her toward the door.

“To the cottage,” he said. “Come on.”




Excerpted from The Framed Women of Ardemore House by Brandy Schillace. Copyright © 2024 by Brandy Schillace. Published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A., a division of HarperCollins

About the Author

Brandy Schillace, PhD, is a historian of medicine and the critically acclaimed author of Death's Summer Coat: What Death and Dying Teach Us About Life and Living and Clockwork Futures: The Science of Steampunk. The editor-in-chief of the journal Medical Humanities, she previously worked as a professor of literature and in research and public engagement at the Dittrick Medical History Center and Museum. Brandy also hosts the Peculiar Book Club Podcast, a twice-monthly show. The Framed Women of Ardemore House, featuring an autistic protagonist caught at the center of a murder mystery, is her fiction debut. Brandy is also autistic, though has not (to her knowledge) been a suspect in a murder investigation. Find her at https://brandyschillace.com/.

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Blog Tour Promo Post: A Quantum Love Story by Mike Chen

Mike Chen brings us an epic love story—in a time loop. When strangers Mariana Pineda and Carter Cho get stuck together repeating the same four days, finally reaching Friday might mean having to give up the connection growing between them.

On Thursday at 12:42pm, Carter Cho is working as a technician at a particle accelerator when it explodes, striking him with a green energy—and sending him back in time to Monday morning. And this happens over and over again. Which at first is interesting, but quickly becomes lonely as the world moves through the same motions and only he changes. If he ever wants to get out of the time loop, he needs help.

On one of the loops, he finally manages to bring Mariana Pineda in with him by getting her struck by the same energy at the same moment. Now they have to find out how to get the accelerator to finish its current test so that they can finally reach Friday.

Along the way, Carter and Mariana help each other through grief, decisions about unfulfilling jobs, and confronting difficult pasts—all the while eating lots of great food since their bank accounts and cholesterol reset with every loop. But the longer they stay in the loop, the more they realize that getting out of it, might mean they’ll have to give up the connection growing between them that’s slowly leading to love.

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1

Carter Cho wasn’t really into science experiments.

Otherwise, he might have completed his degree in quantum mechanics. Cooking experiments, though? Totally different, because there was a real joy to that process. But setting a hypothesis, identifying controls, and looking for…stuff?

Seriously, that seemed like such a slog.

Except for this particular Thursday morning, on the corner of a crosswalk and standing across from the world’s biggest, most advanced particle accelerator, a science experiment felt necessary.

He didn’t really have a choice. It seemed to be the only way to possibly understand or even escape his very strange predicament.

Carter checked the time on his phone, waiting for it to tick specifically to twenty-three seconds past 8:22 a.m.

At that moment, the crosswalk light would switch, signaling for pedestrians to go.

Then everything would cascade, a waterfall of specific actions by the world around him:

The person on Carter’s right would step out first.

The person behind him would wait an extra four seconds, eyes stuck on his phone.

Annoyed, the woman next to that person would let out an exaggerated sigh, move around, then rush forward six steps into the street before catching her shoe.

Then she would stumble forward, her coffee spilling. The first time he went through this, he’d noticed the spill just in time to sidestep it before continuing on.

All of these actions sat line by line on the old-fashioned paper notebook in his hands, a checklist of what was to come with the precision delivered by his photographic memory.

Science experiments all led to a result. As for this, he wasn’t quite sure what the result, or even the purpose, might be. He already knew he was in a loop of some sort, something that started the instant he woke up on Monday mornings.

And it always ended up with the huge facility across the street exploding.

The Hawke Accelerator, both a modern marvel of technology circa 2094 and also some sort of weird top-secret project that no one really understood—now also the place that would simply go boom.

Carter should know. The first time he experienced this, he was in the accelerator chamber’s observation room, right in the heart of where the go boom happened at precisely 12:42 p.m. on Thursday. Which was today, again. Just a few hours from now.

He’d been through this six times before, each time expanding his acute understanding of the details surrounding him. Usually he wrote things down at the end of the day, a memory trick he’d learned about himself very early on that helped cement the details into place, so even when he started the loop over without any scribbled notes to organize his thoughts, his photographic memory recalled it.

But this morning, he went in reverse, writing out the exact steps as they were meant to be.

And then he’d make sure it played out that way, bit by bit.

After that, he wasn’t sure. Carter thought of his parents, their usual voices chastising him for his lack of planning and forethought, how his teenage foray into coding and hacking was more about fun than applying himself, and now look at him, simply a technician running tests and tightening screws. Even now that he’d been through this loop several times, he hadn’t bothered to call them back from their birthday messages. Part of him used the excuse that he should stay as close to the original path as possible, but he knew better.

Even if this weird loop existence meant a complete lack of consequences, calling his parents was the last thing he wanted to do.

Carter checked his phone one more time, five seconds remaining until the crosswalk kicked off the sequence. He gripped the notebook, staring at the list of things to come.

A chime came from the crosswalk. And Carter began to move.

The person on the right moved.

The man behind Carter stayed.

An exasperated sigh came from behind him. Carter kept his eyes on his notebook, counting steps in his head. “Ack,” the woman said, right when Carter sidestepped. His focus moved down to the next item on the list, then the next, then the next, not once looking up. Instead, he executed through a combination of memory and instinct, sliding sideways when a cyclist rolled by on the sidewalk and slowing down just enough to follow in a group waiting at the front entrance of Hawke.

Someone coughed, marking a time to pause and wait thirteen seconds, enough time to review the next items on the notebook still in front of him:

Front desk hands out mobile device for the David AI digital assistant.

Security guard says something about visiting group from ReLive project.

Passing scientist asks what time Dr. Beckett’s flight gets in.


He moved through the security gate designated for employees, taking him past the lobby threshold and over to the main hallway that split in three directions. He stopped, leaned against the wall and waited for the final item to come to pass. Nothing special or unique, just the sound of heels walking in a hurried cadence from his right to his left. Carter checked the notebook, waiting for the visitor’s David AI to speak exactly what he wrote.

“Your next meeting starts in two minutes,” the AI said from the small mobile unit in his familiar London accent. “Oops! Looks like you might be late. Should I give the meeting notice of that?”

Carter mouthed the words as the visitor spoke, his voice fading down the hallway. “No, thanks. I’ll just hurry.”

David’s simulated voice could still be heard as Carter put the notebook down, holding it at his side while considering what just happened. He wasn’t particularly religious, though part of him wondered if he’d been condemned to some sort of purgatory. The predictability of it all, the strange exactness of everything he saw playing out as written on the notebook in his hands.

The first few times, he’d felt disbelief. Then curiosity. Then amusement.

This time, well, he guessed that was the purpose of this experiment: to figure out how he felt knowing he could predict every exact movement of every person he encountered.

Disbelief, curiosity, amusement, and now the whole thing was just unnerving.

Nothing out of turn. Nothing different. Nothing unexpected.

He blew out a sigh, hands pushing back his wavy black hair. Something tugged at him, a wish for things to be different. A person walking from his left instead of his right. Or the plant behind him coming to life and biting his arm. Or a piano dropping out of the sky and smashing his foot.

Anything at all to end this.

Ten minutes passed with Carter lost in his own thoughts, but that in itself turned out to be a change. Normally, he’d take a walk to clear his head, but the list’s finality wound up freezing him. All the previous loops, he’d tried to follow his original path as closely as possible, always ending back in the observation room where the accelerator started to deteriorate and a massive blast of energy struck him. Perhaps that was the only real difference, as he’d changed spots in those final moments to see exactly where the bolt landed on the floor, even using his photographic memory to draw a precise grid of the floor panels.

What he could do with that information, he wasn’t sure. But it had to mean something.

This time, though, a weight paused him, an all-encompassing blanket that left him pondering far longer than he’d ever done.

And then it hit him: he’d deviated farther from his path than before, and nothing bad had happened.

Heck, if he wanted something bad to happen simply so it could, maybe it’d be best if he pushed farther. Or even went in the complete other direction.

At this point, he’d normally turn right, check in with the technician’s desk, grab his cart of tools and begin going through his assignments for the day. But a sharp, almost foreign defiance grabbed him.

He would turn left. He would not check in with his supervisor. Instead he’d go…

Carter’s eyes scanned, looking for the most opposite thing he could possibly do.

Of course.

His steps echoed as he pressed ahead, a strange jubilance to his feet. He moved around people milling about or talking about actual work things, practically skipping with joy until he turned to the entrance of the Hawke cafeteria and straight to the bakery station and its waft of morning pastries.

Ten minutes passed with Carter lost in his own thoughts, but that in itself turned out to be a change. Normally, he’d take a walk to clear his head, but the list’s finality wound up freezing him. All the previous loops, he’d tried to follow his original path as closely as possible, always ending back in the observation room where the accelerator started to deteriorate and a massive blast of energy struck him. Perhaps that was the only real difference, as he’d changed spots in those final moments to see exactly where the bolt landed on the floor, even using his photographic memory to draw a precise grid of the floor panels.

What he could do with that information, he wasn’t sure. But it had to mean something.

This time, though, a weight paused him, an all-encompassing blanket that left him pondering far longer than he’d ever done.

And then it hit him: he’d deviated farther from his path than before, and nothing bad had happened.

Heck, if he wanted something bad to happen simply so it could, maybe it’d be best if he pushed farther. Or even went in the complete other direction.

At this point, he’d normally turn right, check in with the technician’s desk, grab his cart of tools and begin going through his assignments for the day. But a sharp, almost foreign defiance grabbed him.

He would turn left. He would not check in with his supervisor. Instead he’d go…

Carter’s eyes scanned, looking for the most opposite thing he could possibly do.

Of course.

His steps echoed as he pressed ahead, a strange jubilance to his feet. He moved around people milling about or talking about actual work things, practically skipping with joy until he turned to the entrance of the Hawke cafeteria and straight to the bakery station and its waft of morning pastries.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s totally fine. I, uh,” he said. She bit down on her lip, brow scrunched, though eventually they locked gazes. “I should have watched where I was going.” He gestured at the growing coffee stain on his outfit.

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. It’s work clothes. It gets dirty. No big deal.”

The woman’s expression broke, relief lifting her cheeks into a toothy grin, one of those unexpected sights that made everything a little bit better. She looked back at the group, then the coffee cup in her hands. “Damn it, I spilled a bunch. Is there a place to get a refill?”

“You’re going to the main conference room?”

“Yeah. Spent all week there.”

All week. All the times Carter had been through the loop before, even seen the names of various guest groups on schedules, and yet they’d never crossed paths—not until he did the exact opposite of his routine.

Funny how that worked.

“We finally get to see the observation room, though. In a little bit.” She held up her coffee cup. “Just need a refill somewhere along the way.”

“Café is back there,” he said, thumb pointing behind him. “Way back there.”

“Ah,” she said with furrowed brow, a conflicted look that seemed about much more than a coffee refill. “Probably should meet with the team. Not enough time.”

Not enough time. The concept almost made Carter laugh. “Well,” he said, pulling out a bag, “a donut for making you late?”

She took the bag and peaked inside, cheeks rising with a sudden smile. “I don’t usually like donuts. But these glazed ones. Simple, you know?” She shuffled the bottom of the bag to nudge the donut out the opening. “Are you sure? I spilled coffee on you.”

“Yeah. I’m, uh,” he started, pausing as their gazes lingered. “My fault for running into you.”

The wrapper crinkled as she examined it up close before taking a small bite. “I should get back to my team. Maybe they’ll hand out free coffee by the time we get to the observation room. Thanks for this.”

Carter dipped his chin, a quick farewell as he considered the inevitability of the next few hours, a march toward a chaotic and violent reset. He matched her smile, though as she turned, he pondered saying something.

Normally, he wouldn’t. But with the world exploding soon? He went with the opposite of normal.

“My name’s Carter, by the way,” he said. “Carter, the guy who gives people donuts.”

Her gaze shifted, first looking at the floor, then up at the ceiling, even at the bag on her shoulder before finally locking eyes again. “Mariana,” she said, holding up the donut bag, “the woman always looking for coffee.” She bit down on her lip before glancing around. “I’m going to tell you something completely random.”

“Okay?” Carter said slowly. “About donuts?”

She laughed, an easy, bright laugh, though her eyes carried something far heavier. “No. The group I’m with. We’re touring the facility. But I’m quitting. They don’t know yet. Today’ll be my last day. Science is great until it’s not.” Her shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Probably because we’ll never see each other again.” She spun on her heel, an abrupt move followed by determined steps forward.

“Not unless you need another glazed donut.”

She turned, slowing as she walked away backward, this mystery scientist who spilled coffee on him and then caught his attention. Because the idea that someone didn’t like most donuts, well, that was as opposite as anything he’d ever encountered in his life. “Maybe that,” she said with a small grin.

“I’ll remember your name in case we do,” he said. “Mariana.”

Her fingers fluttered in a quick wave, then she turned, and Carter leaned against the wall, ignoring the people who came and went.

Mariana. Maybe he should write that down, just in case she became important. He pulled the notebook out from under his arm, only to find the pages soaked with coffee.

A pen would rip through those pages. He’d have to trust his memory to recall her name, her voice, her face. On the off chance that they ever met again.

None of it mattered anyway, but as experiments went, this morning did at least prove helpful.

Now Carter knew that he could do anything, even the opposite of normal. And that might just lead to him escaping this thing. Or, at the very least, a lot more pastries.

Mariana disappeared into the sea of people, and as she did, her words echoed in his mind. First her group went to the conference room, then the observation room above the accelerator core. He knew that space well; after all, he’d been in that same room when everything began to explode and—

Wait.

That was it. A possible connection that he’d somehow missed before. He’d been there, of all places, summoned to check some of the power conduits lining the walls as the whole thing fell apart. Could that exact space be important?

Carter’s head tilted up. Maybe the observation room held the key to everything.

And if it did, what would happen if others were caught in it too?



Excerpted from A Quantum Love Story by Mike Chen. Copyright © 2024 by Mike Chen. Published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Photo Credit: Amanda Chen

Mike Chen is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Brotherhood, Here and Now and Then, Light Years from Home and other novels. He has covered geek culture for sites such as Nerdist, Tor.com and StarTrek.com, and in a different life, he’s covered the NHL. A member of SFWA, Mike lives in the Bay Area with his wife, daughter and many rescue animals. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @mikechenwriter.

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