Title: Second Chance
Series: Hudson Valley Murder Mysteries, Book Two
Author: S.B. Barnes
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 02/04/2025
Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 94800
Genre: Contemporary, contemporary, gay, demiromantic, Hudson Valley, mystery, murder, campus, town/gown, professors, auto mechanic, closeted, coming out, family drama, student/teacher relation, mental health
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Description
Almost a year after the murder that shook Lobell College to its core, the start of a new academic year brings familiar faces back to the scene of the crime. Daniel Rosenbaum starts his first year as dean of the English department and takes a hands-on role in advising students. Lily Peterson and Gianna d’Angelo return to continue their undergrad studies after the death of the professor they were both in love with.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Hudson, Tony d’Angelo is working hard. With his sister back in college, it’s all hands on deck to keep his dad’s auto shop running and take care of his infant niece. He still finds time to spend most nights with his boyfriend, Daniel, although he can’t seem to find the words to talk to his family about his relationship. Tony’s life is exactly what he’s always wanted it to be—so why does he feel like he’s struggling to be himself?
When a Lobell professor is once again found murdered, the idyll of the last months is turned on its head. Can Tony and Daniel stay out of harm’s way this time? Or will the fragile new peace they’ve found together be shattered?
With a groan, Amelia Lawrence pushes away from her desk. The sun is setting outside, and since it’s late August, that means it’s about eight. The semester hasn’t even started yet.
It serves her right for taking this long to finish the syllabus; she should have gotten the jump on planning last weekend or maybe sometime in July. It just didn’t work out. For some reason, trying to make herself work on classes in the summers feels like stuffing a square peg in a round hole, with her brain being the square peg.
That’s the burnout talking, Amy, the analytical goblin living in the back of her mind tells her.
She ignores it.
She’s getting really good at that.
Amelia vaguely recalls a phase when she was better at this. She got more things done in the same amount of time. She planned her lessons, wrote her syllabi, and there was somehow still time left over to do her own research.
The sun sets over the trees at Wordstone Mansion, down by the river. Amelia can barely see it from the science building, but she can feel in an unsettled way how beautiful it would be to be there. There and not in her office, slaving away at things she should have been done with ages ago.
Her husband sent a text. It’s a video of their daughter, Francie, waving goodnight.
Guilt swamps Amelia. Her husband didn’t mean to make her feel this way, she’s sure. He gets it. He got a doctorate, too, before leaving academia for the calmer and more lucrative waters of IT consultancy. She still feels guilty.
They talk about it in oblique references sometimes, she and her husband. The burnout. The thing looming on the edges of her psyche she can barely put a name to because it means failure. The reason she’s already exhausted at the thought of teaching on Monday.
It’s not fair.
Amelia has always loved teaching.
She was one of the few PhD students in her cohort who did.
But here she is, thirty-five years old and not even a tenure-track position to show for it. Instead, she has to hope every year she’ll be somehow, magically, gifted something more permanent than a “good work this year, let’s talk about contract renewal.” Amelia barely dares to ask for a raise in those talks, only an inflation adjustment, because what does she have to offer? Her own research is stagnating, like so many zebrafish she has her students perform experiments on.
Psychology is so glamorous.
Amelia needs to learn to draw proper boundaries. Say no and mean no. Go to class with last year’s slides and no other preparation. Not be available to everyone and anyone. Take time for her own stupid zebrafish experiments. Do some writing, catch up on journals, stop living day to day.
Take her daughter to the Catskills when autumn hits the hillsides in the Hudson Valley and turns it into a glorious riot of color.
Amelia takes a deep breath.
“Just finish up tonight, Amy,” she tells herself. “Get it done and then be happier.”
She sits down at her computer again, willing herself to work through the end of the syllabus.
Immediately, an email notification distracts her. An unread message from Lily Peterson. A vague memory surfaces in Amelia’s brain, something to do with the mess last year after Professor Lombardi died so tragically. Lily was involved. Amy has a dim memory of an all-faculty email about it. She’d been seeing him, and when he died, she vanished from class suddenly and completely. Lily was on the roster of one of Amelia’s classes, a two hundred–level lecture course about…something. Neuroscience, probably. That’s the one everyone drops out of.
Amelia clicks on the email.
Apparently, Lily returned to Lobell, and she wants to know if she can still get credit for the class by retaking the final.
For a heartbeat, Amelia thinks about it. She’d have to dig into the mess of the file structure on her computer and figure out where she left the final exam. Then she’d have to schedule a time, remember how she graded the neuroscience final last fall, oversee one student taking the exam, figure out how to get the extremely late grade through the Registrar’s office, and—
No, her burnout gremlin tells her very firmly. Boundaries. Amelia’s setting boundaries this year. She won’t let it stay this bad.
Dear Lily, she writes. I’m sorry.
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Meet the Author
S. B. Barnes attended college in the Hudson Valley, studying English Language and Literature and Anthropology (although unlike her characters, her time there was not interrupted by crime-solving). She grew up split between the USA and Germany, attending university in both countries before eventually settling in Germany. Today, she works as a teacher and lives with her husband and two cats in an apartment with too little shelf space. Fiction has always been one of her greatest loves, as a reader, as a teacher, and as a writer. While S.B. has been writing for most of her life, this is her first foray into publishing her work.Twitter | Instagram
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