May 29, 2026

New Fiction

Caller Unknown by Gillian McAllister – There is nothing Simone won’t do for her daughter, Lucy.  The two have always been close, and with Lucy about to leave home for college, they depart the UK for a vacation to Texas to spend some quality time together.  But when Simone awakens on their first morning in the desert, Lucy is gone, missing from their rental cabin.  In her place is a cell phone, and a voice on the other end issues a shocking ransom demand.  Don’t tell the police.  Come to this location.  And be prepared to do a deal…  Though Simone’s husband urges her to bring in the authorities for help, she knows she can’t take any chances.  Because another message arrives, saying the kidnappers will kill Lucy if she tells anyone.  No mother would take that risk.  Instead, that night, she drives to the isolated meet-up.  What she finds there changes everything.  The mysterious kidnapper doesn’t want money.  They want Simone to do something.  The unthinkable.  A catastrophic chain of events is set in motion with chilling consequences that extend beyond Simone and her family.  What follows is a heart-pounding journey through the small towns and punishing deserts of remote Texas, in which Simone’s courage-and morality-is pushed to the brink as she discovers what it truly means to be a mother.

The Forgotten Midwife by Laura Anthony – New Jersey, Present day. Riley Carmichael is getting married and finally joining a huge, loving family.  For most of her life, it’s been just her and her grandmother, Betty, but as late-stage dementia overtakes her grandmother’s mind, Riley knows she’s losing her, too.  On a visit to Betty’s nursing home, Betty desperately shares with Riley a tatty birth certificate for an unknown baby born in Ireland in the 1950s.  Full of questions about her heritage, Riley embarks on a trip to Ireland to find that elusive sense of home.  Tipperary, Ireland, 1954.  Margaret Lannigan’s life is made up of weekly dances and time spent with the love of her life, Joseph.  But when Margaret’s older sister dies suddenly, it falls to Margaret to fulfill the family’s commitment to the Church: the eldest daughter of the Lannigan family has, for generations, joined a local convent.  Forced to take the veil, Margaret is sent to Ballyvale Home for Fallen Girls to care for expectant mothers who fell pregnant outside of marriage.  With no training or midwifery skills, she must fight to provide the compassionate care she feels these women deserve in a system built to ensure they disappear.

Murder at the Hotel Orient by Alessandra Ranelli – In Modern Vienna, American-born Sterling Lockwood is the loyal Concierge at the infamous Hotel Orient, where cameras are banned, aliases are required, and every guest has something to hide.  After the double murder of two guests, including a tech mogul building an Austrian surveillance state, Sterling must turn detective.  But finding the truth will require breaking the Orient’s sacred code of secrecy, while keeping a few secrets of her own.  The police struggle when modern investigative technology proves useless at the old-fashioned hotel.  Because clients use aliases, pay cash, and stay mere hours, all suspects have vanished.  Sterling agrees to assist alongside her best friend and colleague, Fernando, if only to avoid arrest and the suspicion regarding her own movements that night.  As enemies close in from all around, she risks everything to solve a case haunted by the past, in a city with a fetish for nostalgia.