A Hush at Midnight by Marlene M. Bell Spotlight! @Bookgal @therealbookgal

A manipulator.

A fatal plan for revenge.

Award-winning author of the Annalisse series, Marlene M. Bell, brings distant friends together in the rural South only to have one of them become the victim of a brutal crime of passion.

Once celebrated for her show-stopping pastries and irresistible desserts, former celebrity chef Laura Harris is now making headlines for a far darker reason.

Laura has been accused of murder.

How could this petite chef have brutally smothered the beloved small-town matriarch, World War II ferry pilot veteran, Hattie Stenburg? Hattie wasn't just a pillar of the community; she was Laura's confidant and mentor. The shocking twist? Hattie’s will contained recent changes, bypassing next-of kin and leaving her entire fortune and historic estate to Laura.

As Laura scrambles to clear her name, she uncovers sinister secrets lurking beneath the town’s idyllic surface. The real murderer is always one step ahead, leaving taunting clues and threatening Laura to leave Texas—or face deadly consequences. With time not a luxury, Laura must untangle the web of deceit before the killer makes her the next victim.

In A Hush at Midnight, Marlene M. Bell twists an amateur sleuth crime mystery into a race against the clock to solve her mentor's murder.

Marlene M. Bell has never met a sheep she didn’t like. As a personal touch for her readers, they often find these wooly creatures visiting her international romantic mysteries and children’s books as characters or subject matter. Marlene is an accomplished artist and photographer who takes pride in entertaining fans on multiple levels of her creativity. 

Her award-winning Annalisse series boasts Best Mystery honors for all installments including these: IP Best Regional Australia/New Zealand, Global Award Best Mystery, and Chanticleer’s International Mystery and Mayhem shortlist for Copper Waters, the fourth mystery in the series.

Marlene also writes children's books. Her picture book, Mia and Nattie: One Great Team is based on true events with a bottle lamb. It's a touching story of compassion and love between a little girl and her lamb, suitable for ages three through seven years.

She shares her life with her husband and a few dreadfully spoiled horned Dorset sheep: a large Maremma guard dog named Tia, and cats, Hollywood, Leo, and Squeaks. The animals and nature are the cornerstone for Marlene's books. 

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https://www.marlenembell.com/

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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/217568383-a-hush-at-midnight

The Witches of Claw and Fang by Zach Stivers Book Tour! #TheWitchesOfClawAndFang @zstivers @zachstivers @thewildrosepress

A hard-edged werewolf crashes into the life of an isolated witch who has temporarily given up her magic. They must overcome their differences and learn to harness their dangerous powers to stop a supernatural evil from corrupting their small town nestled in the Appalachian Mountains.

The Witches of Claw and Fang

by Zach Stivers

Genre

Paranormal Romance, Thriller

Welcome to the cozy mountain town of Pineville, Virginia. It’s autumn, the leaves are gold and orange, the apples are crisp and sweet, town residents are going missing, and a bloodthirsty monster with ten-inch claws is loose in the forest.

Morgan Reaves tries her damndest NOT to use magic. That’s why she hid in Pineville, after all. But now, Morgan needs to dust off her spell-casting skills, ASAP. Problem is, she may have lost her touch.

She has another problem, too, and it smells like wet dog.

Max: AKA the naked man with rip-cord tight muscles that stumbled out of the woods near Morgan’s house, ranting about curses and conspiracies and a coven of witches.

Is he a werewolf? Well, yes. But he’s also the only one who can help her defeat whatever evil is threatening her adopted hometown. That is, if they manage to not kill each other first...

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She leaned into the car and reloaded the veggies one at a time back into the bag, her head pressed against the seat as she rooted around on the floor mats.

Joey started barking.

“I said he’s not there!”

She felt the final onion just on her fingertips, but she couldn’t quite reach it. She adjusted and stretched out her hand… Joey’s barking got louder, closer, and more frantic. 

What the hell was the matter with the dog?

The car jolted sideways, slamming Morgan in the shins, knocking her legs out behind her, wrenching the breath out of her lungs. A massive vice-like hand gripped her ankle, yanked her upward and tossed her haphazardly into the air. She crashed down into the lawn some twenty yards away, her skull bouncing hard off the ground. She blinked, trying to clear her head. She was in the middle of the lawn. 

How was she in the middle of the lawn?

Joey yelped. She looked over as a massive furry brown thing slapped Joey halfway across the yard. Bear, she thought, in a detached, concussed sort-of-way, but it was clearly not a bear. 

It was taller and thinner than a bear and it looked more wolf than bear and it looked more demonic than either wolf or bear and it glared at her with ferocious golden eyes. It took a step toward her, and she could see it had a thick scar running up its ribs onto its neck, could see sinewy muscles under brown fur, could see absurdly large white teeth inside a snarling lupine mouth. Could see a torn piece of her mail haphazardly dangling from its sickeningly large, clawed hands. 

A scream got stuck in her throat. 

Fear flooded her mind, pushing out the fog of the concussion. She knew she needed to act, before the monster turned her and Joey into dinner. But she felt pressed frozen into the ground. 

Joey found his courage before she did. The dog barked and lunged at the monster. The beast leapt toward Joey. 

“No!”

She pushed out her hands, fingers dancing, wrists snapping with an instinctual twist. The wind gusted behind her, and she heard a musical sizzling zap and the demon-wolf-thing, mere moments from striking Joey, yelped and leapt back, fleeing for the woods. Joey barked at it and chased it to the edge of the property but did not follow it past the tree line. Morgan ran for the front door, pulling the keys from her sweater pocket. 

“Joey, come!” 

She fumbled at the deadbolt. She tried the wrong key at first in her panic, flipped and flipped the key chain around, almost dropped the key chain completely, found the right key, jammed it at the door and it bounced off the hole and then it bounced off the hole again and she knew the beast-monster must be emerging from the woods by now, surely it was coming for her, blood-red slobber dripping off its fangs, and she realized she still was using the wrong key and she groaned and then she found it, the correct key, finally—thank god—but her hands trembled and the key wouldn’t slide in the hole, and then the keys slipped out from her sweaty fingers and they dropped onto the deck, and then, as if in slow motion, gravity pulled them through a crack between the wood planks and the blackness under the deck consumed them.

She wanted to scream and yell and pound on the door.

Focus.

She heard rustling in the woods.

Joey began barking again at her side.

It’s coming.

In through the nose, out through the mouth.

She pressed two fingers against the keyhole, extended her other hand out into the air, flicked her fingers, and visualized the lock turning.

Remember.

Remember the old ways.

Remember what your father forbid. 

The door unlocked.

Zach Stivers lives with his wife in Virginia, at the foot of the Shenandoah National Park. He loves to tell people they do lots of hiking in their free time, but usually they just go for a short stroll in the woods with their dogs and then stop off for a drink or two at the local brewery. That still counts as hiking, right? He has a degree in English Literature from Florida State University, runs really slow half-marathons, and leads an overly competitive book club that reads a book a week … or else.

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A Thousand Flying Things by @kathyramsperger Book Blitz! #XpressoTours @XpressoTours⁣ #KathrynBrownRamsperger #AThousandFlyingThings

A Thousand Flying Things by

Kathryn Brown Ramsperger

(A Bridge Between Shores, #1)

Publication date

 September 20th 2024

Genres

 Adult, Historical

A Pulpwood Queen’s International Book of the Year
A Foreword Indies Winner
A Sarton Fiction Award Finalist
A Chanticleer’s Hemingway Award Finalist
A Royal Dragonfly First Place in Fiction Award

A love lost. A soul restored. A decade of secrets and separation.

It takes a child to lead them home.

American Dianna Calloway is committed to educating children in the thick of war-ravaged 1990s Southern Sudan. Hampered by disease, a corrupt government and a fierce tribal leader who is harboring a mysterious young boy, Dianna’s passionate calling to help others in a dangerous country is only complicated by the chance meeting of a long-lost love, Qasim. Faced with the choice to protect a child or reconnect with the man she still holds dear, Dianna must make the most difficult decision of her life. Or must she?

Dianna and Qasim can’t be more different. He’s a worldly Lebanese Muslim in his 40s, from a political family, and she’s a 30-something white Christian American. They’ve been challenged by geography, culture, trust, career, and the passing of time. Now there’s a young boy who’s stolen Dianna’s heart. She’ll do anything to get him a visa out of S. Sudan. But when her mother becomes ill, she leaves Africa physically, but her heart remains there, as if it alone can protect the man who loves her and the boy who needs her. What choice does she have now?

Dianna’s alone in Africa, and nothing is as it seems … 

It may be that no one needs love more than Dianna  

But a young boy is about to show her the way back home …

Sweeping across continents and cultures, this captivating novel showcases Ramsperger’s work as a humanitarian journalist and will draw readers in with a gripping storyline, gritty details, and profound sensitivity. The novel is both timeless and timely, as war and climate change attack Sudan and S. Sudan once again. A Faulkner Wisdom Literary finalist and a Pulpwood Queen’s International Book of the Year, A Thousand Flying Things is a riveting, poignant read that will work to heal global misunderstandings and encourage conversations about perspectives and assumptions around race, country, and culture while also showing readers that love, not war, conquers all.

A Thousand Flying Things is the stirring, standalone second book in the A Bridge Between Shores women’s fiction series. If you like passionate characters, lyrical prose, and well-researched settings, then you’ll adore award-winning author Kathryn Brown Ramsperger’s international tale.

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—

EXCERPT:

February 14, 1991

Piecewood Displaced Persons Camp Near Bor, Southern Sudan

Dianna peeks through the smooth, worn canvas flap of her thatched hut. It’s only 30 days since she arrived. It might as well be 300. She pulls on a T-shirt and shorts for her daily run before the heat sets in. She runs no matter where she is. Here, the children, already awake, follow her. It’s a game to them. They’d never imagine her reason for it.

She began running to maintain weight. Then, she ran to forget her past. Now, she runs to avoid thinking about her future. The endorphin rush is better than food, much better than romance. It’s a multi-purpose tool for boredom, anxiety, strategizing, or blotting out thought.

These children mean everything to her because her presence in Africa is what she has left. She has a year to reach them. A year from now, most will join the fighting, or the dead. Reaching even one would be enough reward for the time spent in this restless, ragged heat. Reaching a few would be a miracle. Books are her only tool.

Her eye catches a motion in her peripheral vision. At first, she jumps. It’s a crouching animal, a hyena, or worse. But no, it’s a tiny boy, no more than five. She’s about to stop and ask him why he’s here, but he disappears into the predawn shadows. She keeps running, but she asks another boy who he is.

“Khalil,” the boy answers with a shrug.
“Why is Khalil here?”
“He is with Commander Biel.” She doesn’t like the sound of that. What warring tribal leader would bring a family member? He must have kidnapped him, or worse, bought him. She’ll have to tell her colleagues, especially the social worker, Mirembe, when they visit next month. But she’s not sure who she can trust. Most of her colleagues are five or more kilometers away, not that she minds. The U.N. has a new policy to enlist regional staff for its programs. “Teach a man to fish,” and all that. She can’t trust any of them—or anyone in the bush—white or Black, Muslim or Tribal, Arab or Dinka, aid worker or resident—until they prove their trustworthiness. That usually means divulging their allegiance in this layered war. It’s useless hoping to make friends here.

She’s certain now that her teaching is a diversion, that less than a kilometer away, these boys are being prepared to shoot rifles, even missiles. Biel is training them for his war and pretending to teach them to read. Yet perhaps she can save one or two lives.

She must be careful how she presents it to the woman called Mirembe at the delegation. Without Biel’s approval of her mission here at camp, Dianna will be sent home. The government wants her here, but Biel, he’s forced to let her teach to receive U.N. aid. She suspects he’s using her as a ruse for more international fund- ing. A shiver courses down her back with drops of sweat.

That afternoon, the boys straggle into the schoolroom, their mouths curving up when they see her, their dark eyes bright, their fingertips reaching into her pockets, searching for Life Savers or cigarettes she brought to make friends. They speak to her with their eyes instead of their mouths. Her suitcase full of bribes—piles of unboxed Marlboros—is almost empty. Her supposed students turn up their noses at anything, like a pencil, that they cannot inhale with their lungs or bellies.

They are still a bit young to be sticking needles in their arms, but that too will come, once they see some action. She’s observed the dull eyes of teenaged soldiers-in-training too many times to imagine these bright-eyed boys’ futures would turn out otherwise. Young combatants are a tradition and necessity here. Sudan has had conflict, usually civil war, since the late 1950s, when the country claimed independence from Britain and Egypt. They’ve been fighting here as long as she’s been alive. The boy soldiers, only slightly older than the students, are starving for food but laden with pharmaceu- ticals. They march through wasted grassland covering oceans of untapped petroleum. All their fighting will never yield a drop for them.

As she waits to begin, Dianna takes out an emery board, a vestige of home. Her nails are crooked and cracked from the heat, drawing water, and chopping weeds from around the doorway to her hut.

Funny how its rough, sandy surface, which echoes this world but also reminds her of home, comforts her. Right, left, right, left, she files down the nails until she reaches the skin where the nail ends and the finger begins.

She is filing when more children skip in, brandishing a knife, a rusty fishing hook, or a spent grenade.

“What?” an almost-adolescent boy asks, peering at the strange stick in her hands. It’s the first time she’s seen him.

Time and again, Dianna has explained. Time and again, the chil- dren fail to understand. “It’s a tool for my fingernails,” she tells him.

“Need?” he asks, shaking his head, either mystified or judgmental. The children may learn to read before they learn the use of a mani- cure utensil. Yet still, she files. It is her statement of faith.

Some boys don’t ever show. Dianna watches them performing their chores, eating their stewy, beany fu, preparing for nightfall, marching in formation. Still, these rations are infinitely better than the boiled leaves and grass they had before. They never meet her eye, and she knows not to push. They come to her only if their curiosity to learn overtakes their fear of their tribal leader Daniel Biel’s disapproval. These children owe everything, including their survival, to him.

She’s been on the receiving end of Biel’s judgment and wouldn’t want to be in the path of his anger. It arrives without warning like a snake coiled under the brush. He’s not happy she’s here. The government forced this relationship, probably to meet some sort of educational quota. Countries with abuses of human rights and low literacy rates don’t receive much international aid. He wants money to fund the military he’s building that’s full of children, and he’s getting it by calling his training ground a language school. She’s little more than a babysitter.

Biel’s a funny one. She can’t figure him out entirely. She’s seen him take time with each boy, ensuring they have enough to eat, that they are groomed, that they have moments of play in addition to work. He calls them his “little men.” They worship him, and so they fear getting close to her.

She stretches, rolling her head to get out the kinks, rubs off the cold sweat, flicks away a minute, insistent insect. She wanders outside to see if anyone else is showing up and notices a flowering bush she can’t remember being there yesterday. She strolls over to smell its perfume. Bending over the plant, she expects a jasmine blossom’s gentle, white scent. Instead, thousands of swarming in- sects fly every which way. She backs up, shocked, trying to avoid them, batting them away from her face. What she thought were white petals are flapping wings that have eaten any bud that tried to appear. Things in the bush are never as simple as they appear. Impressions of people are even more deceptive. Like Biel. Maybe like Mirembe at the delegation, too. Even though she likes her, she can’t trust her.

Today she’s reading from The Jungle Book, but none of them are listening. The few boys in front of her are exhausted before the day begins from yesterday’s hard work and training. They probably have little time in their day for fantasy stories with talking tigers and snakes. Nothing like their lives. Mowgli is Indian, and the story is implausible and sometimes racist. A colonialist wrote it over one hundred years ago.

She sees Thon sneer each time she reads the label “Man Cub.” She should have thought to call him Mowgli throughout. Twenty years ago, when she was about Thon’s age, Dianna fell in love with this novel because of its foreignness, its animals, and its message, but it’s not what she should be reading aloud here.

“This book was written a very long time ago, and it’s about a jungle, not Sudan,” she explains, her gaze fixed upon Thon.

“Men are not animals,” the boy answers, picking at his front tooth with a blade of grain.

She nods in agreement and puts down the book, but Alier protests. “I want to hear what happens to the boy!”

“Shhhhh!” The entire room shushes him and shames him. His head hangs down.

She looks around the room. “We call this story a fable. It’s meant to have a message. It’s not meant to be reality but to reflect reality. Shall I continue?” she asks no one in particular, least of all Alier, though he gives her a pleading glance.

Chol rests his chin on his hands, almost asleep. Jok’s eyes wander around the room. Mabior comes up to her “desk,” made of two crates, and tries to dig into her pocket a second time. She hears the first threads rip from cloth. There, he’s ruined her jeans.

“Stop it!” Dianna hisses at him and almost slaps his hand but catches herself. He’s just a child, and she can’t afford to make enemies here. She catches his eye. He’s laughing at her. She feels new sweat trickling down from her forehead to the wrinkled crow’s foot that’s getting deeper beside her left eye, to the nape of her neck to the bare part of her blistered shoulder. Abe, almost a teen, sucks on an unlit cigarette. She doesn’t allow them to smoke in her presence, even though she’s their dealer. At least she’s kept that much under her control.

School is over for her as much as for them. They’ve been here almost an hour. She slams the book shut and drops it with a thud on her crates.

After class, the boys play football with an ancient, deflated soccer ball. They use tent poles as goal posts and the younger boys as goalies. She brings her old Polaroid camera out. The boys drop their football and race toward this contraption, a camera from
her past, but an object these boys have never seen. The resulting yellow, blurred images create quite a stir in this little camp. The children love to see themselves. They delight in making faces for the camera. They even primp sometimes, hoping she will choose to snap one of them. It is more than a conversation starter; it is a showstopper, marketing her words with their pictures.

She lets the boys roam around the pile of dusty photos and moves back to the shade of the canopied “schoolroom.” Its stale air reminds her of her days in her North Carolina frame house, pre-air conditioning. As a girl, she lay in her four-poster, the air settling above her bed like a bubble too thick to prick. Moist but unyielding, it hovered as she lay in wait to leave that bedroom, that house, just as she is standing by to leave this place. She lets her thoughts unravel, barely noticing the boys at play.

She is hard pressed to determine which makes her feel emptier. This “schoolroom” is not much more than a tent. On rainy days, they must retreat to the tiny cinderblock closet of books,which is even more stifling. At least in North Carolina, she could visit the library. Books could make her forget the heavy air, the heat electrifying her spine, her mother lying down in the next room, in her own sort of limbo. Books could even rid her of the pain of her monthly cycle or empty stomach when she was sent to her room without dinner. Reading’s more important than running. Reading is more import- ant than food. It fills the emptiness of this place when she longs for love and attention. Yet would words ever mean as much to these boys as they did to Dianna? Would they lay down their rifles to turn the pages of the books she provided? Her mind pushes against the languid heat that presses her into the earth, and her lungs try to take in more air. The smell of overused cooking oil, reminiscent of the many meals fried in it, cuts the air like a scythe. She longs for just one ice cube. That is when she sees a young child’s hand.

The hand waves at her from behind a large nearby rock. Flat on top, nature’s idea of a throne, the stone hides the rest of the child’s body. The hand itself, though, is a work of art. It is a hand a hyena could tear off with one swift chomp. Tiny, ragged fingernails, dirt caked over hidden fingerprints, flies buzzing this way and that. Yet the wrist is another thing altogether. Smooth and shiny and strong. She takes up her Polaroid and begins snapping. The shutter clicks, and the photos whirl out until the film is gone. They fall at her feet, creating a small dust storm. The specks float suspended in the air, then rest one by one on the photos.

She wants to wash his hands to see what lies beneath this grime, so she walks around the rock obscuring the body that owns this miniature man’s hand. It’s the boy from this morning.

“Hello?” She wonders if he will understand even that simple greeting.

“Hey,” he answers.

Her eyes go wide. How does he know that word? Most boys know “hi” or “hello,” but seldom use it because she greets them in their own language. And this boy looks barely old enough to speak many words at all.

“I teach myself book.” The boy smiles. “You help?”

“Do you speak English?” Dianna fumbles in a mixture of English, Arabic, and Dinka.

“Engoish.” The little boy smiles again, attempting to mimic her sounds. Then, he slaps her hand with his, reaches in her pocket, finds an English tea biscuit, and pops it whole into his mouth. “Tank.”

Dianna laughs at the mispronunciation, wondering how long it took him to learn the sentence he greeted her with. Her heart is in her ears. She may have found her student.

“Name?” she asks.
“Annee,” he answers.
She laughs again, this time a broad, imp-like Dianna laugh, a laugh she barely recollects.
“No, that’s my name. I’m Dianna.” Her fingers point to her chest, correcting him, showing him that this is how to pronounce her name. His beautiful, muddy palm slips around them. “You?” She points at his chest.

“Ka. Leel,” he answers, sounding it out just as she did for him. She does not know if both words form his name, whether it is a varia- tion of some Nuer pronoun, or whether he has made it up himself.

“You mean this name?” She writes it out for him in the sand, and he nods. “How do you know my name?” she asks.

He doesn’t understand the question. He simply stares at her with a certain fascination. Biel must have mentioned her to some of the boys. That was a good sign.

Khalil giggles, and his broad smile, still with its baby teeth, makes her want to hug him, but she doesn’t. It is possible he was plucked from his village before he even answered to the name his mother called him. Many of these boys were orphans, and still, others were sent away, pawning, they called it. They were lent to others so that they—and the rest of the family—would not starve. The official word was that they were child laborers. Yet turning over this practice to reveal its dirty underside showed a far grimmer picture: slaves, sex slaves, child soldiers. Sacrifices, yet sacrifices with the hope of a fuller belly, and fuller for the conscripts than for their parents.

They walk hand in hand toward the canopy. They plop onto the ground, and he curls his elbow into her lap. Polaroid pictures look up at them through the earth like a faded carpet. Khalil picks up his image and squints. “Khalil?” he asks.

“Khalil.” Dianna puts away her camera while smiling at his realization that he is the subject of the photograph. She chooses a book from a nearby stack, opens it to page one, and begins to read. As she mouths each word, he repeats it after her. He points at the detailed illustrations of leafy branches and curvy women in full skirts and stays. He points at the letters. Beatrix Potter’s bunnies and hedgehogs dance in a land of cobras and hippos. He’s interested in books! She wants to get to know him, help him succeed.

She has just broken a professional and personal credo—never get close to anyone again, especially not a client or student. She smiles in dazed but sated wonder. She always thought it would be a tall, dark man walking through camp who posed the most risk to her heart. And here, this little boy has grabbed it with one sentence and a few fingers. She will give him a good washing, make sure he is free from parasites, give him a T-shirt and a book all his own. Tomorrow, she will speak to Biel. This boy could not possibly be old enough for military training.

Khalil seems in awe of her classroom, the only one of its kind in the camp. He runs his hands over the wall and floor, and his deep-set, round eyes rove up and down again. People here at camp reside in thatched mud huts or sleep under flimsy tents. Many boys sleep in the open air. This “schoolhouse” has one cinderblock wall, though the other sides are open to the air. His delicate hands glide over each brick’s cold, rough surface, one by one, as though it were a sculpture. If he even knows what a sculpture is. She fills a vat with all the cold water they can haul, pours soap into it, and orders him in. Khalil is having none of it. He is not getting his uniform wet. He crouches in the corner, still all smiles, but head wagging from side to side, “No.” She hauls him in his strange uniform, which resembles ragged shorts and surgical scrubs more than fatigues, and dumps him into the vat. He couldn’t weigh more than forty pounds, but he is arms and legs and sharp nails, flailing, no other sound. Then he is still as she pours the soapy water over him—and scrubs, scrubs his work-torn fingernails. He relaxes and blows bubbles. And gradually, the smooth, burnished skin shines through.

Kathryn Brown Ramsperger began her writing career with newspapers, then investigative reporting. As a researcher and writer for National Geographic and Kiplinger, and later, as a humanitarian journalist working throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, she met countless courageous people facing disaster, famine, and war. Their stories inspired both of Kathryn's novels. Kathryn now lives in Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC with her husband. They have two adult children, bound for their own creative adventures.

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The Winner Takes It All by Ivy L. James New Release Blitz!

Title:  The Winner Takes It All

Series: Virginia Is for All Lovers, Book Two

Author: Ivy L. James

Cover Art: Neimy Kao

Cover Design: Jaycee DeLorenzo

Publisher:  NineStar Press

Release Date: 10/29/2024

Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex

Pairing: Female/Female

Length: 64900

Genre

 Contemporary, contemporary, romance, rivals to lovers, bisexual, lesbian, interracial/intercultural, humorous, competition/competitive leads, athletics, gym, tennis, family issues, grieving, anxiety attacks

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"After surviving the car accident that killed her parents, Yelena keeps a tight control over her life. She holds success close and any possible relationships at arm’s length; she certainly can’t let any potential partners close enough to lose them too. 

Her competitive spirit sends her to the top of her gym’s leaderboard, or rather, to a tie for first place. Tied with her least favorite person at the gym. With a 1,000-dollar prize and her pride at stake, Yelena will do whatever it takes to beat out her rival, Embry. If only Embry weren’t so damn pretty.

Embry needs to be the best. Despite her wall of diplomas and awards, it’s the gym leaderboard she has her eye on lately, but her number-one place has somehow become tied for first. Unacceptable. Worse, when her tennis partner gets hurt, the only person who can step in for the upcoming pairs competition is the last person she wants on her team.

Yelena and Embry begrudgingly team up for the tennis competition. As they spend time together, though, they find they’re more similar than different, and deeper feelings blossom. But will their fears—and the leaderboard—get in the way of what they both truly want?

The Winner Takes It All is a rivals-to-lovers sapphic romance."

The Winner Takes It All Excerpt

Ivy L. James © 2024

All Rights Reserved

In Which Their Paths Cross Without Them Knowing It

Yelena Montalban glared at the dark clouds overhead before slipping into her white Subaru hatchback. “Do not storm on me,” she told the skies as she started her car. “Don’t you dare.” She could’ve skipped the gym and headed straight home, but a good workout would give her some endorphins. Besides, the weather channel app on her phone promised the storm would pass right over her little Virginia town.

Still, her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel didn’t let up as she eased out of the high school teachers’ parking lot and onto the main road. “Don’t storm, don’t storm, don’t storm,” she chanted under her breath. Her nails dug into the leather. But the clouds remained benign, even as they followed her to the local gym. Maybe the weather channel was right after all. She tossed her workout bag over her shoulder and trotted inside.

The lobby held the welcome station and a smoothie bar. The main floor of the gym opened to a wide-open room, with a long free-weight section along the wall and three parallel rows of ellipticals, bikes, and treadmills. A thirty-minute circuit area had been blocked off in the far back, and glass-walled workout classrooms took up the other side. With tennis and basketball courts and the track upstairs, and the pool downstairs, it was a massive gym, especially for such a rural area, and she was grateful for it every day.

“Welcome to Riverside Fitness—oh, hey, Yelena!” The greeter beamed and waved at her. “How’s it going?”

Yelena forced a carefree brightness into her voice and smile as she scanned her membership tag. “Doing awesome. How ’bout you?”

“Hangin’ in there.” He inclined his head toward the row of classrooms. “Have fun, and don’t forget to log your visit!”

Yelena gave him a thumbs-up and strode past the welcome station toward the locker rooms. On her way, she stopped to look up at the screen on the wall that showed the participation leaderboard. It updated once a day, at eight in the morning, so it wasn’t fully current, but close enough. The gym awarded points for everything—customer referrals, classes attended, even social media interaction. And the prize at the end of the competition? One thousand dollars in cold, hard cash.

She checked her position in the ranking.

EMBRY 185

YELENA 185

KYLE 135

JESS 130

DYLAN 125

Yelena scowled.

Sure, Embry was cute, but she was also a pain in Yelena’s ass. How were they still tied for first? Well, maybe today’s spin class would push Yelena up to number one.

In her favorite changing stall, she donned a sports bra, tank top, and biker shorts. She pulled her strawberry-blonde hair into a high ponytail, removed her necklace with her parents’ wedding rings, tucked her purse and gym bag into a locker, and headed for Classroom Two. The wood floor gleamed under the fluorescent lights. No windows meant no visuals of the impending storm, allowing Yelena to breathe again. The familiar spin instructor, Hanna, was already at the front of the room; because the too-loud music discouraged conversation, Yelena only waved her fingers at her and picked the bike at her preferred spot. First row, front and center.

As the music blared from the speakers, Hanna turned on her mic and encouraged everyone to find their places so class could start. Yelena stretched but kept an eye on the door. She and Embry often attended the same classes; would she show up at this one?

Hanna announced the beginning of class with no sign of Embry. Somehow both pleased and disappointed, Yelena climbed onto her bike.

The bass thudded in her chest. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. As her legs pumped, she leaned into the exercise, letting it wash her thoughts away. She closed her eyes and simply felt. The power. The freedom. The endorphins swept over her, enveloping her in a high. Sweat slicked her face and body. Her muscles ached, but she pressed on, pushing herself, knowing she had more to give. Her lungs and legs burned beautifully.

Too soon, though: “And now it’s time for cooldown!” Hanna called out. “Good job, everyone—you made it through the workout!”

Yelena slowed to a more reasonable pace. A sense of accomplishment tingled under her skin. Panting, she followed Hanna’s instructions for the cooldown period. After wiping down her bike, she stopped to say bye to Hanna on the way out. “Good class today!”

Hanna beamed. “You did great! Really pushed yourself. Good job!” She high-fived Yelena, who soaked up the praise. “Too bad Embry couldn’t join us today though. Where is she?”

Yelena crinkled her nose. “I have no idea. I’ve never talked to her outside the gym.”

“Oh. My bad. Y’all are always in the same classes, so I figured it was intentional.”

“Nope.”

They chatted for a few more minutes, and then Yelena left the classroom. Her phone was in the locker room, and she needed to log her class time in the online leaderboard tracker.

Yelena froze at the loud crack of thunder. In the windows, lightning flashed outside. Her blood running cold, Yelena gritted her teeth and stalked away.

The thunder shook the building, and Yelena burst into the locker room, almost knocking into another woman. “Sorry,” she muttered, but she didn’t stop. She rushed to her changing stall and locked herself inside. Pressing her back against the wall, Yelena interlocked her fingers around the nape of her neck and ducked her head between her knees. Her breaths came too fast even as she tried to slow them, time them. The high from spin class was long gone.

I’m safe in here. I’m safe.

Yelena had had a therapist once, many years ago now. The therapist had been more concerned with being right than with helping her, so she’d pretty much let him talk his way through the mandated sessions. Then, when she’d finally been free of him, she heaved a sigh of relief and gone right back to her tried-and-true methods such as “hiding in closets” and “never talking about her feelings.”

Yelena hated that she still, at twenty-eight years old, had these anxiety attacks over storms. It was stupid. It was childish. But whenever a storm threatened, she reverted to that twelve-year-old girl, trapped in an overturned car with two dead parents in the front seats. She couldn’t go home either. Couldn’t drive in the lashing rain, cracking thunder, startling lightning. Couldn’t put herself in that danger.

But her roommate, Alexandria Hudson, knew the basics of her storm anxiety, and maybe she could—

The phone buzzed in Yelena’s pocket.

She fumbled for it with trembling hands and eventually managed to bring up the incoming text.

Alex: Are you still at the gym?

Yelena: Yes. In the locker room

Alex: Do you want me to come sit with you?

Yelena: You don’t have to if you’re busy

Alex: On my way.

So, Yelena huddled, sweaty in a way that had nothing to do with the exercise class she’d just finished, and tried desperately to drown out the sounds of the storm thrashing the building as she waited for her roommate to show up so she wouldn’t be alone.

NineStar Press | Books2Read

Ivy L. James wrote her first story on Post-it notes as a child. Since then, she has graduated to regular paper and enjoys writing inclusive, heartwarming romance as a way to counterbalance the negativity in the world. She lives in Maryland with her wife and their corgi, cat, and two snakes.

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