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Operation Black Horse
Operation Black Horse, by N.J. Gervasi, is a dark, ambitious adult dystopian romance that blends dystopian science fiction, military action, medical suspense, and geopolitical thriller elements into a story about survival in a world already pushed frighteningly close to extinction. The novel begins with the Great World Famine, showing Caitlyn Svendsen and Kaleb Volkov as children on opposite sides of the globe before jumping ahead to 2041. Caitlyn is now a gifted American surgeon who has uncovered a devastating secret: the agricultural formula credited with saving humanity is also poisoning it, contributing to aggressive cancers and infertility. Kaleb, meanwhile, has become an elite Russian Spetsnaz commander tasked with finding her after a multinational invasion of the United States. The setup gives the book a huge canvas, but its emotional stakes stay grounded in two people whose lives were permanently shaped by the same catastrophe.
What makes this dystopian romance especially absorbing is how much personality Gervasi gives Caitlyn and Kaleb. Caitlyn is intelligent, sarcastic, stubborn, ethically complicated, and understandably furious when Kaleb’s carefully constructed American identity falls apart. Kaleb is equally layered. He’s a soldier and former killer who can be ruthless without losing the protective instincts that define him. Their relationship grows out of mistrust, manipulation, forced proximity, grief, and an attraction neither of them finds particularly convenient. Their banter brings some welcome humor into an otherwise brutal story, while quieter moments, especially those involving Caitlyn’s parents, Kaleb’s mother, and his Spetsnaz team, reveal how badly these characters want some ordinary human connection. The romance feels inseparable from the survival story because trust isn’t just an emotional issue here. Trust can literally determine who lives.
The worldbuilding is equally committed. This is a post-apocalyptic novel fascinated with what happens when famine reshapes governments, medicine, agriculture, warfare, religion, technology, and even the value placed on individual human beings. Gervasi spends real time inside the military and political machinery of her future, from Russian special operations and America’s FALA program to neural implants, propaganda, black markets, religious persecution, and the consequences of countries fighting over the last reliable food supply. That detail makes the world feel much larger than Caitlyn and Kaleb’s romance. It also gives the story a dense, information-rich style, particularly when characters discuss military strategy, history, politics, or science. For readers who enjoy military science fiction and dystopian thrillers that dig into the systems behind a collapsing society, there’s a lot here to sink into. The violence and darker material are graphic at times, but they’re woven into a world where starvation and institutional brutality have been shaping people for years.
By the end, Operation Black Horse has expanded from a story about a doctor fleeing an invasion into a much bigger struggle over who gets to control knowledge capable of changing humanity’s future. Caitlyn and Kaleb’s growing connection gives that conflict its heart, especially as both begin making choices that put personal loyalty at odds with country, duty, and survival. Since this is Book One of the Spetsnaz Operators Series, the ending deliberately carries the conflict forward, with Caitlyn arriving in Moscow and entering a Kremlin she already understands may be another kind of prison. That leaves Operation Black Horse feeling like the opening part of a larger dystopian romance series, with plenty of political danger, moral ambiguity, and unresolved emotional fallout waiting on the other side. If you like character-driven science fiction, morally gray soldiers, high-stakes medical mysteries, and sprawling speculative worlds where love develops in the middle of geopolitical chaos, this one gives you plenty to chew on.
Pages: 480 | ASIN : B0GZ14S995
Passion’s Duty
Lizzie Jenks’s Passion’s Duty is a lively historical romance set in New York’s Mohawk Valley as the French and Indian War begins to gather force in 1755. James Carroll, an ambitious Irish immigrant working for William Johnson, hopes military service will earn him the status and security he’s never had. Faith Richmond arrives with her irresponsible officer father, expecting to manage his affairs and accept a practical marriage arranged around land, debt, and family obligation. When she’s injured and placed in James’s care, their attraction develops alongside escalating danger from French scouts, disputed territory, and an approaching military campaign.
The romance works because James and Faith admire each other’s abilities before either one fully understands their feelings. James is a skilled woodsman and natural leader, but he carries deep insecurity about his poverty, limited education, and Irish identity. Faith is intelligent, commercially minded, stubborn, and accustomed to doing work that the men around her barely notice. Their relationship gains momentum through action. He learns that she can think under pressure, gather intelligence, tend wounds, and keep moving through fear. She sees the loyalty and tenderness beneath his rough humor and ambition. Their conversations are often funny, and the supporting cast gives the story the comfortable energy of a close, argumentative family.
Jenks also gives the historical setting real weight. The wilderness is beautiful, inconvenient, and dangerous, while the political situation is complicated by competing British, French, colonial, and Indigenous interests. Mohawk characters such as David and Okwaho have their own knowledge, loyalties, and opinions, and they regularly challenge the assumptions of the British characters. The story moves between domestic concerns and military peril with surprising ease. Faith can be discussing mills and land use in one chapter, then escaping captivity or treating a gunshot wound in another. Some scenes linger on practical details, but those details create a convincing sense of how people traveled, communicated, fought, and survived.
Readers who enjoy Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander may recognize a similar blend of romance, danger, cultural conflict, and carefully researched eighteenth-century life. Jenks’s approach feels more compact and direct, with a stronger focus on frontier military networks and a hero whose central struggle is his hunger for belonging. Passion’s Duty is ultimately a warm, adventurous love story about two capable people realizing that duty doesn’t have to mean surrendering their own futures. James and Faith’s marriage feels earned because it grows from shared danger, mutual respect, and the discovery that each offers the other something deeper than protection or social advantage: a genuine home.
Pages: 289 | ASIN : B0F3W51LPM
Starting Over
Untie My Heart follows a grieving mother and her traumatized five-year-old daughter as they begin rebuilding their lives and find comfort in the quiet patience and tenderness of a local contractor. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This is a continuation of the Family Ties series that focuses on Noble, who was introduced in book two (Broken Ties). He had an interest in pursuing the heroine in that book, but opted to discontinue his pursuit when he discovered that his best friend was also interested. I wanted to give Noble his HEA, so I created this story for that purpose.
Mesa carries both love and anger toward her late husband. Why was it important to portray grief as something so emotionally conflicted rather than straightforward?
There are several “stages” of grief, as any good therapist will tell you. Most people experience all of them at some point after losing someone they love. I wanted to give readers permission to explore those stages instead of trying to rush through them. Grief looks different to everyone. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. That’s what I was hoping to get across in this book. Mesa tries to rush the process by moving away and starting over, hoping everything will be better. But what she finds is that she can’t just change locations to avoid the true cycle of loss. She has to work through the different stages and emotions as they surface.
The purple jellybeans become a surprisingly powerful symbol of trust and comfort. How did that small detail find its way into the story?
That’s funny, actually. I had no intention of using them as symbols of anything. My husband is a huge jellybean fan. It’s his favorite candy. I really just wanted to work that love of jellybeans into a character somehow, and it seems Noble fit the bill. It was not an intentional choice to use candy as a bridge between Noble and Merrick. He first offered the candy as a way to connect with Merrick and try to calm her fear, and that just grew into something bigger. I didn’t even see the jellybeans as being symbolic until I read the reviews.
What can we expect to see in the next installment of the Family Ties series?
This is the last book in this series. At least for now. My brain is plotting another series down the road using the next generation of all the characters introduced in all three books in this series. So…there may be a book about Merrick, as an adult, at some point. We’ll see. Right now, I’m working on a different series: a romantic mystery series set in the fictitious town of Revelation, West Virginia.
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After the sudden and violent death of her husband, Mesa Adler buys a cabin in the wilds of Jackson Hole, Wyoming hoping to escape her grief. But the fresh start she hoped for turns out to be more than a fixer-upper in a new town—it’s an isolated property, a challenging environment, and full of unexpected surprises. Not the least of which is Noble Jabeaux, a carpenter with quiet, irresistible charm.
Military Veteran, Noble Jabeaux, traded his nomadic career for the less rigid life of a carpenter in Jackson Hole. While running an errand for a friend, he encounters Mesa and little Merrick alone at a rundown cabin in the woods. Curiosity about the aloof pair engages a sense of protectiveness. And undeniable attraction. Offering to help her remodel the cabin seems a simple solution. But life is about to get a lot more complicated when sparks fly, emotions deepen, and unhealed wounds reopen.
When Merrick is wrongfully taken by her grieving grandmother, Mesa faces the fight of her life to regain custody. With time running out, Noble may be the only man who can help. As the fight for her daughter intensifies, Mesa must face her deepest fears, confront her grief, and learn how to untie her heart from the love she lost to embrace the one she never expected.
In the mountains, some hearts are hard to let go of…others are worth risking everything for.
Untie My Heart – Book 3 in the Family Ties Series
Untie My Heart, by Jansen Schmidt, follows Mesa Adler as she flees the wreckage of her old life with her traumatized five-year-old daughter, Merrick, and tries to begin again in a remote fixer-upper near Jackson Hole. Still haunted by the death of her husband, Erik, and by the damage his military trauma left behind, Mesa is determined to build something safe, quiet, and wholly her own. What she doesn’t expect is Noble Jabeaux, a patient contractor with jellybeans in his pocket, tenderness in his hands, and secrets of his own. As Mesa and Merrick slowly let him into their lives, the story widens from home renovation and fragile attraction into a tense custody fight with Erik’s mother, Sylvia, forcing everyone to confront grief, fear, loyalty, and the complicated work of choosing life after loss.
What moved me most about this book is how carefully it treats healing as something ordinary and physical, not just emotional. Mesa doesn’t magically recover because a good man arrives. She scrubs floors, pulls up filthy carpet, worries over paint colors, comforts a child who clings to a pink blanket, and tries to breathe through memories that still ambush her. Those domestic details give the novel its heartbeat. I loved how Merrick’s recovery comes in tiny, believable increments: a laugh in the backseat, a pinky promise, a ride on Sienna, the fierce comfort she finds in Noble’s presence. The purple jellybeans could’ve felt too cute in a lesser book, but here they become a small language of trust. I also appreciated that Mesa’s feelings for Noble are tangled with guilt rather than swept clean. Her attraction to him doesn’t erase Erik, and her anger at Erik doesn’t erase love. That emotional contradiction felt honest to me.
The writing has a warm, sensory fullness that suits the story’s western setting and wounded characters. I could feel the stale carpet dust, the cold bite of spring snow, the hush of the aspens, the awkward tenderness of a man trying not to move too fast around a frightened child. At times, the prose leans hard into internal explanation, and a few emotional beats are stated more than they need to be, especially when the characters circle the same fears. Noble can also feel almost impossibly attuned, a little too ready with the right word, the right gesture, the right protective instinct. Still, I found myself forgiving much of that because the book’s emotional architecture is so sincere. Its best ideas are quietly powerful: that grief can become a locked room, that love after death isn’t betrayal, that children notice safety before adults can explain it, and that community sometimes arrives in the form of diners, bikers, horses, lawyers, and people who simply refuse to let you suffer alone.
By the end, I felt that Untie My Heart had earned its title. It’s a romance, certainly, but I read it more as a story about loosening the knots trauma leaves in a family’s body and spirit. The book takes its time showing that tenderness doesn’t come easily, but must be fought for and chosen again and again. I’d recommend this to readers who enjoy contemporary western romance with serious emotional stakes, especially those drawn to stories about second chances, found family, military trauma, small-town support systems, and love that feels less like rescue than a steady hand held out in the dark.
Pages: 449 | ASIN : B0H4RVKQ7K
Adrenaline Rush: Operation Homefront
Bevin Goldsmith delivers a hard-hitting tactical narrative in Operation Homefront, focusing on a tight-knit Special Forces unit known as the Black Devils. The story kicks off with the wedding of team members Alex Fischer and Katie Molsin, a moment that should signify peace but instead serves as the gateway to a relentless storm of violence. These operators are trying to transition into normal civilian lives and careers within the Joint Criminal Investigation Agency, but their past actions in Iraq refuse to stay buried. Goldsmith doesn’t waste any time establishing a high-stakes atmosphere, pulling the characters out of their brief domestic bliss and throwing them directly into a gauntlet where their survival skills are tested to the absolute limit.
For anyone who appreciates technical accuracy and gritty realism in military fiction, the combat sequences in this book are exceptionally well-crafted. From a sudden hotel room ambush in Seoul to a brutal close-quarters home invasion, the action is defined by fluid choreography and realistic weapon mechanics. The characters rely on authentic tactical movements, close-quarters knife defense, and the devastating support of a trained military working dog named Bear. Katie’s lethal relationship with her Desert Eagle, Layla, and Alex’s clinical precision during firefights showcase the author’s understanding of operational environments. It’s a story grounded in raw muscle memory and tactical conditioning, ensuring that every engagement carries a genuine sense of danger.
What elevates this narrative above standard military fiction is its unvarnished exploration of the psychological aftermath of combat. Goldsmith provides an authentic look at post-traumatic stress and substance abuse through the team’s former combat medic, Tristin Daniels. Tristin’s internal battle with survivor’s guilt and opioid withdrawal is portrayed with immense gravity, showing that the hardest fights often take place long after the deployment ends. The fierce loyalty of the brotherhood shines when team leader Jaxson Prince steps in to force a raw, agonizing detox process at an isolated cabin, highlighting a foundational truth of the veteran experience.
The adversarial force in the novel is layered and sophisticated, escalating the stakes beyond a simple revenge plot. The team faces an organized network of Albanian operatives tied directly to an old blood feud originating in the Iraqi desert. This convergence of domestic terrorism, international contract killers, and deep-seated family vendettas creates a complex threat matrix that keeps the characters constantly on the defensive. The dialogue reflects the intense, protective nature of these combat veterans when their families are threatened. During a fierce interrogation of a captured intruder, Alex delivers a chillingly direct warning: “Understand this: there are only two things in this world I will unquestionably kill for. God and my wife”. It’s this unapologetic, lethal dedication to one another that drives the narrative forward through every ambush and tactical response.
Adrenaline Rush: Operation Homefront is a modern military thriller that successfully balances heavy tactical action with interpersonal drama. It’s a gritty and realistic examination of brotherhood, legacy, and the enduring scars of warfare. Goldsmith weaves together high-velocity chase scenes, intense interrogation sequences, and deep emotional vulnerability before building to an unexpected cliffhanger that sets up a future confrontation. For readers who look for operational authenticity, well-drawn veteran characters, and a plot driven by fierce protectiveness, this book delivers exactly what a tactical thriller should be.
The Psychology Behind the “Hero”
Adrenaline Rush follows a former Army Military Police officer turned government investigator who battles violent crimes while confronting the trauma, grief, and rage that have made adrenaline feel safer than peace. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This question has a layered answer. I actually started writing the blueprint for Adrenaline Rush when I was in middle school. Armed with an old clickity-clack keyboard and a box computer running Windows 97, I was unknowingly building the foundation for what would eventually become an entire series.
As a young girl who loved Sin City and Nancy Drew books, I noticed there were countless stories about male veterans saving the world. And while I loved those stories, I kept wondering what one of those scenarios would look like with a female lead. That’s where Adrenaline Rush was born.
After joining the military at 18, I started molding the story into what it is today—a series that explores the perspectives of both male and female veterans, while placing a stronger focus on how women process combat, trauma, and PTSD. We don’t always process those experiences the same way. I wanted to write something that could both educate and entertain while still feeling raw, human, and real.
Kate is brave and cruel in the same scene, insightful one moment and reckless the next. How do you write a protagonist who is genuinely hard to be with while keeping readers invested in her?
Kate is a real person—and what I mean by that is that’s what I strive to write: characters who feel real. I’m always thinking about how someone would honestly react. Not just anyone, either—but how a veteran who’s been through what Kate has been through would react.
Once again, there are a lot of layers to a person like that. A lot of switches she controls. That’s what she’s been trained to do. Kate has the ability to change her tone immediately based on what she’s assessing. It’s not a gradual emotional shift where she slowly works her way from one mindset to another. She just does it.
That’s what military members are trained to do: assess the situation and adjust fire accordingly. You don’t sit there overthinking it. You react, adapt, and move. For someone like Kate, that instinct never really turns off.
The investigations matter, but the emotional core feels deeply personal. Did you always see the novel more as a survival story than a procedural thriller?
No, I initially saw the series as a thriller, not a survival story. After enlisting in the military and going on my own adventures and deployments, though, my mindset shifted. At first, I was interested in the action—the gunfights, the chaos, the cool explosions. But what interested me even more was what the character was thinking in those moments. How were they making decisions? What was happening underneath all of that?
To most readers, the military side of things already looks awesome on the surface. But I kept asking myself: what if we looked beneath that? What made this person become who they are? What did they lose, suppress, or survive to function the way they do?
That’s where the story became more interesting to me. When you start exploring the psychology behind the “hero,” you create a very different experience for the reader. The action still matters, but now every decision, reaction, and relationship carries weight behind it.
Adrenaline Rush handles heavy subject matter — abuse, violence, grief, PTSD — without softening it. What is your responsibility to the reader in a book this dark, and how do you think about that while writing?
I think about all the women and men I served with who never got the chance to tell their stories. These things happen, and I don’t think people always realize that military members had lives before the military, just like they have lives after it. Service changes people, but it doesn’t erase who they were before they put on the uniform.
Part of my responsibility to the reader is writing these issues in a way that doesn’t sugarcoat them while still remaining respectful. I don’t write trauma for shock value, and I don’t glamorize the darker parts of military or veteran life. I write about real issues that happen every single day within the veteran community—PTSD, addiction, survivor’s guilt, broken relationships, identity struggles, and the mental shift that comes with living in survival mode for too long.
Whenever someone asks about my books, I’m honest with them. If they’re looking for a clean-cut military thriller that avoids those realities, then the series probably isn’t for them.
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Adrenaline Rush
Adrenaline Rush by Bevin Goldsmith is a gritty crime thriller with strong elements of psychological drama, military fiction, and trauma fiction. The book follows Detective Kate Molsin, a former Army Military Police officer whose work with the JCIA pulls her into violent cases while her own past keeps clawing its way into the present. At its center, this is not just a detective story about murder, abuse, and justice. It is a story about survival, grief, faith, anger, and the dangerous ways a person can learn to live on adrenaline when peace feels impossible.
Kate narrates with a blunt, bruised honesty that does not try to sound polished or pretty, and that choice gives the book its raw power. She’s sharp, sarcastic, wounded, sometimes funny in a dark way, and often hard to sit with. I appreciated that Goldsmith does not soften her into an easy heroine. Kate can be brave and cruel in the same scene. She can be insightful one moment and reckless the next. That made her feel less like a symbol and more like someone still fighting with herself while trying to fight for other people. The writing has a pulse to it. Fast. Angry. Restless. It fits the title.
The book blends crime scenes, flashbacks, therapy sessions, military memories, romance, and faith in a way that can feel messy, but I think that messiness is partly the point. Kate’s mind doesn’t move in neat lines, so the story doesn’t either. The intensity rarely lets up. Still, the emotional core stayed with me. The scenes with grief, especially around Alex, give the book a softer ache beneath all the gunfire and bravado. Goldsmith seems most interested in the question of what happens when pain becomes a person’s normal weather.
I would recommend Adrenaline Rush to readers who like dark, character-driven crime thrillers and do not mind heavy subject matter. This is not a cozy mystery or a clean procedural. It’s rough and personal. Readers who appreciate damaged protagonists, military backstories, faith woven into trauma recovery, and stories that lean more on emotional force than quiet subtlety will probably connect with it most.
Pages: 199 | ASIN : B0CSN3MQ1H
This Time
This Time is a story that weaves together love, loss, and redemption in the small town of Tartan Springs, West Virginia. At its heart, it follows Ty Harrell, a Marine pilot, and Siena “Seeney” Tyson, a woman rebuilding her life after a messy divorce and betrayal. The story opens with their ten-year high school reunion, where old sparks rekindle and dormant feelings stir. Around them, the novel paints a vivid picture of small-town America, filled with complex relationships, community politics, and quiet battles for dignity and forgiveness. Beneath the romance lies a thread of corruption, environmental tension, and moral choice, giving the book more depth than a typical love story.
Coe’s writing is full of detail, almost cinematic, and that made it easy to slip into the world he built. I could smell the rain in the hills, hear the small-town chatter, and feel the awkward warmth between Ty and Siena as they stumbled through old emotions. Sometimes the dialogue felt a little too polished, but the emotional truth beneath it rang clear. I liked that the characters were flawed, real people who made mistakes and carried scars. Siena, especially, stood out, resilient, sharp, and unwilling to let the past define her. Ty’s decency and quiet loyalty balanced her strength perfectly.
What really got to me, though, was how the story handled forgiveness. It wasn’t wrapped in a neat bow. The pain from betrayal lingered, and love didn’t erase it. Coe didn’t shy away from showing the ugliness of pride, or the way people cling to control when their lives are falling apart. Yet, somehow, through the grit and sorrow, the book stayed hopeful. The scenes about military service, small-town politics, and even environmental issues added layers that gave it substance without slowing the pace too much.
I’d recommend This Time to readers who enjoy heartfelt fiction with real emotional weight. It’s perfect for anyone who loves stories about second chances, especially those set against the backdrop of small-town life where everyone knows your secrets. It’s not just a romance, it’s about rebuilding, forgiving, and learning when to fight and when to let go. This book pulled me in, and when I turned the last page, I just sat there for a minute, thinking about how some things are worth risking again.
Pages: 348 | ASIN : B0FST7LVL2
