Mark Wallace Maguire — Alexandria Rising

About Alexandria Rising:

Rand O\'Neal, an ambition-less newspaper reporter, is given a single task upon the death of his grandfather: Destroy a mysterious map. What should be a simple errand thrusts Rand into a journey across three countries chased by unknown pursuers where he discovers humanity\'s biggest secret.
The book is labelled an action adventure, but contains elements of conspiracy fiction, science fiction and suspense. It is also linked to a multi-media website which allows readers to engage with the experience in video, images and interactive appendices.

About the Author:

As a preacher’s son, Mark Wallace Maguire spent his childhood crisscrossing the South soaking in the lilting dialects, oral traditions and cultural idiosyncrasies. After a brief career in music, he settled behind the desk as a reporter at the Marietta Daily Journal and has spent the last 20 years as fixture in the metro Atlanta media scene as a columnist, editor and director. In 2017, he was nominated for Georgia Author of The Year for his first novel, “Alexandria Rising” which was published in October 2016. The sequel, “Alexandria Reborn” was published in August 2017. “Letters from Red Clay Country: Selected Columns” was published in 2015 and features the best of his award-winning newspaper and magazine columns. Maguire currently serves as director of Cobb Life magazine and Cobb Business Journal. His writing has been published in many regional and national publications including Snake Nation ReviewReach of SongCobb Life magazine, Neighbor Newspapers and The Blood and Fire Review. He has been honored for his writing by several organizations including The Associated Press, The Society of Professional Journalists and The Georgia Poetry Society. In 2005, he was named the Berry College Outstanding Young Alumni of The Year. When he’s not writing, Maguire produces musical projects inspired by his favorite authors and books as well as painting, gardening and making Star Wars puns with his sons.

Maaja Wentz — Feeding Frenzy

About Feeding Frenzy:

The three-hundred-year-old town of Loon Lake looks as calm as a pond, but below the surface, clans of magic users clash like hungry sharks.

Shy first-year student Tonya isn’t privy to her family’s darkest secrets, but when her college campus is overrun by a deadly eating epidemic, only she can resist the hidden, mind-controlling entity behind it.

Meanwhile, Tonya’s new friends, Priya, an installation artist, and Digital Ninjas Drake and Zain, want to create the creepiest art installation Loon Lake Cemetery will ever know. Too bad what’s lurking in the graveyard is a lot scarier than Priya’s giant spiders.

Untrained and overmatched by powerful conspirators, Tonya will need to develop magical abilities she never knew she had. Can she uncover the mystery behind the epidemic and save her town?

Winner of the coveted Watty Award, supernatural thriller Feeding Frenzy is a witch’s brew of intrigue with a dollop of comedy, a teaspoon of romance, and a pinch of horror.

About Maaja Wentz:

Maaja Wentz is an award-winning writer of chilling thrillers about dark family secrets, and quirky speculative fiction.

Maaja’s short mystery, “Inside of a Dog,” is upcoming in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

“You,” won a short story prize in the national Norma Epstein Foundation competition for Creative Writing, University of Toronto

Maaja’s first novel, Feeding Frenzy, received over 141 000 reads on Wattpad. It was chosen as a “Featured Story,” and went on to win the coveted HQ Love Watty award.

Rebecca Kightlinger – Megge of Bury Down

About the Book:

Set in thirteenth-century Cornwall, on a sheep farm in the shadow of Bury Down – known for a thousand years as the land of the second sight – a healer has vowed to face flames rather than fail in her one task in this life: to bring her young daughter to vow to protect The Book of Seasons, an ancient grimoire whose power sustains the spirits of all their ancestors.

On the night of her vow-taking, wanting only to become a woman of Bury Down like her mother and aunts, and drawn by an inexplicable yearning to possess her mother’s book, Megge reaches for it. But when she touches its cover, it burns her fingers and she hears it whisper, “Murderer.”

Fearing that the book will make her harm those she loves, she rejects it and renounces her birthright. To what lengths will Megge’s mother go to help the child find the courage to take that vow? And how far will Megge go to elude a terrifying destiny?

This newly released title, Megge of Bury Down, addresses family issues prevalent in today’s world in a tender yet cryptic setting, creating a storyworld readers of all ages will want to visit again and again.

Author Bio:

Rebecca Kightlinger is a novelist, a book critic for Historical Novels Review, a fiction- submissions reader for New England Review and Stonecoast Review, and a copy editor for Stonecoast Review. Born in Erie, PA, Kightlinger practiced medicine for nineteen years. For six of those years, she served on a Remote Area Medical volunteer team diagnosing and treating cervical cancer in Amerindian women living in the rainforests and savannas of rural Guyana.

In 2010, Kightlinger suffered an injury that permanently damaged her wrist, forcing her to leave medical practice and pursue a new direction in life. Earning an MFA from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program and a copyediting certificate from UCSD, she turned her Masters thesis into her debut novel. Kightlinger and her husband reside in northwestern Pennsylvania.

Megge of Bury Down: Book One of the Bury Down Chronicles is available for purchase in paperback and e-book via Amazon and all major booksellers.

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