Blog Archives
Drenched in Midnight: Three Days of Night
Drenched in Midnight is a haunting, dreamlike novella that drifts between love story, myth, and psychological unraveling. The book follows James and Laura, a couple who accept an invitation to a mysterious island resort called Embra. Their stay begins as an idyllic digital detox but quickly turns into a surreal exploration of memory, identity, and transformation. Guided or maybe manipulated by their enigmatic host, Byron, they find themselves entwined with an island that seems alive, pulsing with strange bioluminescent flowers and whispers of their own family histories.
The writing has that cinematic quality where you can almost smell the salt air and feel the humid stillness of the jungle. When the seaplane lands and the couple is greeted by linen-clad hosts whispering, “Welcome to the Isle of Embra,” I felt the tension coil right there. The author doesn’t rush. Every description of the glimmering tide pools, the glowing flowers, the hushed castle, is deliberate, seductive. It’s a slow burn that rewards patience. My favorite early moment was when James and Laura touch the glowing sand on the beach and realize it’s alive somehow.
What I loved most about this book is how it blurs reality. The alternating chapters between Byron, James, and Laura make you question who’s really telling the truth or if truth even matters here. Byron’s chapters, especially “The Host” and “The Keeper’s Secret,” have this eerie calm, like a cult leader convincing himself he’s benevolent. There is a quiet but unsettling intensity in the way he speaks of “guiding” his guests toward transcendence, and his fixation on the bloom, a luminous, sentient flower that draws life from human emotion, evokes both fascination and dread. But the emotional anchor is really Laura. Her realization that her family’s history is entwined with the island carries profound emotional weight. It’s that classic gothic moment, bloodlines tangled with curses, but reimagined with a sci-fi shimmer.
There are scenes that stuck with me long after I closed the book. When James and Laura find the Night Garden, for instance, the glowing petals, their bodies literally lighting up as they make love under the bioluminescent canopy, it’s both erotic and terrifying. The writing there is electric, unapologetically sensual without being gratuitous. You can feel the island consuming them, memory and identity merging until you’re not sure if they’re still themselves or just vessels for something ancient. Then there’s Byron watching them from the shadows, whispering, “The flower remembers.” That line still echoes in my head. It’s creepy, beautiful, and sad all at once.
Drenched in Midnight lingers long after its final page, not because of shock or spectacle, but because of the quiet reverence it builds for mystery itself. Hilbert crafts a world where memory, desire, and the natural world intertwine in unsettling harmony, leaving the reader both captivated and unsettled.
Pages: 136 | ASIN : B0FP9L8K3G
Pegasus Road
Pegasus Road is a haunting and beautifully written wartime novella that weaves love, loss, and resilience into a deeply human story. It follows Barbara, a young Englishwoman who refuses to accept that her fiancé, Andrew, a British lieutenant missing in action, is gone. Her journey from a quiet Dorset farm to the battered fields of Normandy becomes both a literal and emotional odyssey, one that explores devotion, courage, and the price of hope in a world torn apart by war. The book moves between Barbara’s desperate search and Andrew’s fight for survival, drawing the reader into both the intimacy of their bond and the vast chaos surrounding them.
The writing is cinematic and raw, full of moments that feel suspended between heartbreak and grace. Harry Black doesn’t rush anything; he lets silence do the talking, and that patience gives every scene its weight. What struck me most was how grounded the emotions were. There’s no melodrama, just quiet honesty. The war isn’t romanticized, nor is love painted as invincible; instead, both are messy, uncertain, and painfully real. The pacing slows at times, but I didn’t mind. The pauses felt like breaths between heartbreaks.
What really stayed with me was Barbara herself. She’s not a hero in the conventional sense, yet she embodies courage in its truest form, the kind that comes from stubborn love and relentless faith. Her defiance feels believable, even when it borders on reckless. And Andrew’s perspective balances hers with stoic tenderness, revealing the weariness of a soldier clinging to humanity in inhuman circumstances. The dialogue feels organic. It’s not the kind of book that shouts; it whispers, and somehow that makes it hit harder.
Pegasus Road left me reflective and strangely comforted. It’s a story about finding light in ruins, about ordinary people doing extraordinary things for love. I’d recommend it to anyone who loves historical fiction with heart, especially readers drawn to stories like Atonement or The Nightingale. It’s not just about war or romance; it’s about endurance, about how hope keeps flickering even when everything else burns out.
Pages: 129 | ASIN : B0FNXS83MX
Compelling Mystery
The Magician’s Wife follows a small-town journalist who gets pulled into the mysterious disappearance of a magician’s glamorous assistant who vanishes during a live TV performance, only to reappear a week later, dead. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
First and foremost, I wanted to write a novel with a compelling ‘impossible’ mystery at its heart, and give the book the kind of hook that would instantly make a reader want to know exactly how such an impossible event could have occurred. My starting point for this particular mystery was the teleportation illusion, a classic of stage magic. A magician’s assistant gets into Box A on a live TV talent show and is supposed to reappear in Box B, but vanishes for an entire week. She then does reappear in Box B on the show’s next round… but she’s dead. My journalist, Clare, is as shocked by this as everyone else. As the books are told from her perspective, she is echoing what a reader is perhaps thinking as the narrative unfolds. It also appealed to me to have a character drawing the reader in who cared deeply about a missing person case, which is the reason Clare became a journalist in the first place, something we learn more about as the story progresses. A broader inspiration for this book (and the upcoming books in the series!) has been my husband, who is a professional stage and TV magician and with whom I worked backstage for a time. It’s been very useful having a magic advisor on hand while writing this book, especially when devising some of the methods and effects!
When creating Clare, did you have a plan for her development and character traits, or did they grow organically as you were writing the story?
I think it was a bit of both! The two main characters in this story are Clare Deyes and Mara Knight. They’re unlikely allies as they’re such different people from different backgrounds. Originally, I conceived The Magician’s Wife in third-person, to centre more around Mara. But compared to Clare, Mara can be cynical and brittle, a little dismissive and subversive. Certainly in commercial fiction, I find that a character with these traits usually has to be offset by a foil, more of an ‘everyman’ that a greater percentage of readers are able to identify with straightaway. It was true of the Sherlock Holmes stories (a big inspiration for me), and I think it still holds today. In contrast to Mara, Clare sees the good in everyone, is optimistic, and friendly. So Clare and Mara have a real Watson/Holmes dynamic. Clare’s the heart and Mara the brain; you can’t have one without the other. And it’s the contrast between these characters’ personalities that drives much of the novel’s pathos and tension. Saying that, some of Clare’s background and core motivations did grow organically as I was writing the book. As much planning as you might do, as a writer you always tend to make some discoveries about your characters as you go along – and these can often be the most exciting parts of the story!
What was the most challenging part about writing a mystery story, where you constantly have to give just enough to keep the mystery alive until the big reveal?
The Magician’s Wife is my first novel in the crime/mystery genre, and I’ve often heard other writers say that it’s possibly the most difficult genre to write in. Not only do you have to create a compelling mystery in the first instance, but you must ensure that you’re feeding clues to your reader in an ‘honest’ way, so that none of the ultimate reveals come out of nowhere. However, one of the most challenging things I found when writing this book – particularly as the story is told from the first-person perspective of Clare – was keeping in my head what a reader/Clare was thinking about the mystery at any given time (the story’s ‘logical progression’), versus what I knew was actually happening. It certainly kept me on my toes throughout the various drafts! I found having a detailed chapter-by-chapter breakdown written out before I started work on the book was invaluable, and I’ll definitely tackle future novels in the series in the same way.
When will Book Two be available? Can you give us an idea of where that book will take readers?
I’m currently working on the next book in The Magician’s Wife series, and it should be widely available to readers in early 2026! It’s called Second Sight and tells the story of a young boy who claims to be having unsettling visions of the future, visions that appear to be coming true. Even stranger, these visions only started happening after a cornea transplant the boy had to save his sight. When the child makes his most disturbing prediction – that his own life is in danger – it’s up to Clare and Mara to get to the bottom of what lies behind it all in order to save the boy’s life. The setting is a bit of a contrast to the world of TV studios and stage magic in the first book, as Second Sight is largely set in an inner-city London housing estate. I’m hugely enjoying writing this series so far and have lots more impossible mysteries up my sleeve for future books. My biggest hope is that readers will enjoy them as much as I do, as entertaining someone who has parted with their money to read my work is – and has always been – extremely important to me.
Author Links: GoodReads | Instagram | Facebook | Website | Amazon
When Angel, the wife of magician Dex Devereaux, mysteriously vanishes on a live TV talent show, journalist and wannabe investigator Clare Deyes cannot resist trying to work out what happened. But a week later, when Angel reappears dead during the show’s next round, Clare is certain she is out of her depth.
Clare soon realises only one person can help: the brilliant, brittle Mara Knight – magic consultant, psychologist and wife of the world famous illusionist Travers – whose husband’s disappearance is still unexplained.
Can Clare and Mara together solve the puzzle of Angel’s death before the talent show’s live final, when they are sure someone close to Angel has something even more extreme planned?
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The Sherlock Holmes stories meet Jonathan Creek in this fast-paced, twisty mystery with a generous peppering of pathos and humour. Perfect for fans of Richard Osman and Elly Griffiths, The Magician’s Wife is the first in a brand new series from internationally published author (and real-life magician’s wife) Lora Jones.
A Dark Night In Oregon: A Short Story
This short story grips you from the first flash of lightning. It begins in a lonely Oregon diner, rain pounding outside, and ends with the revelation that the frightened waitress, Linda, isn’t who she seems. She’s Jo Jordan, a wanted criminal tangled in a past of violence, betrayal, and survival. The tension builds fast. What starts as a quiet night at a retro café turns into a deadly standoff, where trust collapses and hidden truths crawl into the light. It’s short, sharp, and intense. Every page hums with unease.
Reading this, I felt caught in Jo’s turmoil. She’s dangerous but relatable. The writing doesn’t beg for sympathy, but it gives her enough raw honesty that I couldn’t help but feel torn. I liked how Ana Cortes layered Jo’s history through quick flashes of memory rather than long explanations. It kept the story moving and my nerves tight. The dialogue felt real, too. Short, clipped, sometimes almost choking on itself, just like real fear does. The violence hit hard but wasn’t overdone. The only thing that tripped me up was how fast it all happened.
What stuck with me most was the quiet sadness under the action. This isn’t just a story about crime. It’s about running, from others, from guilt, from yourself. I felt the rain, the loneliness, the weight of being hunted. The author writes with a movie-like rhythm, but she sneaks in emotion between the bullets. It made me think about how far someone might go just to start over, and how the past has a way of finding you, no matter where you hide.
I’d recommend A Dark Night in Oregon to readers who love fast-paced thrillers with a human edge. It’s perfect for anyone who likes stories that twist crime and emotion together. It’s dark but not hopeless. If you want something that makes your pulse race and your chest ache a little too, this one’s worth your time.
Pages: 10 | ASIN : B0FBW4292Y
Ghost Writer
Arjay Lewis’s Ghost Writer is a haunting, twisting tale that begins with a bitter divorce and spirals into the supernatural. The story follows Joe Riley, a washed-up novelist who inherits his late uncle’s cabin deep in the Poconos. What starts as a man’s desperate retreat to escape his failures turns into a psychological unraveling filled with eerie noises, mysterious pages that write themselves, and the blurred line between inspiration and possession. At its heart, it’s about creativity, grief, and the price one pays when the muse turns monstrous.
This book gripped me right away. Lewis writes with an easy rhythm that feels like an old friend telling you a story over a drink. The voice is sharp, cynical, and soaked in the kind of regret that only comes from living hard and losing often. Joe’s bitterness feels real. His loneliness cuts deep. There’s humor too, dark and dry, that makes the pain go down easier. What I liked most is how the writing itself mirrors Joe’s mental decline. Sentences start crisp and clear, then grow jagged and strange as his sanity unravels. It’s the sort of book that keeps you awake at night, not because you’re scared of ghosts, but because you recognize the ghosts inside yourself.
The supernatural element creeps in slowly. At first, I wasn’t sure if what Joe was seeing was real or just his hangover talking. That’s what makes it so effective. Lewis never rushes the reveal. Every scene in the cabin feels heavy with memory and regret, every creak in the floorboard feels like a heartbeat. The book plays with the idea that creation and madness might be neighbors. I loved that. It’s not flashy horror; it’s quiet, psychological, and deeply human.
I’d recommend Ghost Writer to anyone who loves stories that blend the eerie with the emotional. Fans of Stephen King’s Bag of Bones or Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House will feel right at home here. It’s for readers who enjoy slow burns, flawed characters, and the unsettling feeling that maybe the scariest thing in the room is your own mind.
Pages: 322 | ASIN : B0CWYCWPVS
A Female Perspective
Pain Games follows the member of a Female Engagement Team on her journey from enlistment through boot camp to deployment in Iraq, capturing the brutality, absurdity, and dark humor of military life. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Kate Molsin, the main character, is a Military Police Officer who’s hand-selected to lead a Female Engagement Team (FET). The original idea for what became Adrenaline Rush actually started when I was in middle school. Back then, I was sketching out the blueprints for a story about service, sacrifice, and adrenaline—but I set it aside when I enlisted in the Air National Guard. The concept stayed in the back of my mind for years, though, simmering until I found the inspiration I needed to bring it to life.
That spark came after I transferred to active-duty Army three years later. I was stationed in South Korea as a Military Police Officer, and being in that environment—serving with so many incredible men and women who became like family—gave me clarity on what I wanted the story to become. That’s when Adrenaline Rush evolved from a single story into what’s now a full series.
During my time in service, I realized how few military stories are told from a female perspective. We go into combat alongside our brothers-in-arms, shoulder-to-shoulder as equals, but we process war, trauma, and resilience differently. That contrast stuck with me, and I wanted to explore it honestly. In many ways, this series is my version of a Tom Clancy or Jack Reacher story—told through a woman’s lens. Because the truth is, men aren’t the only ones who like to blow stuff up, tote guns, and fight for their team.
Ultimately, I hope Adrenaline Rush serves as both a platform and a conversation starter—to educate, entertain, and shed light on what all soldiers and veterans experience, especially women whose stories too often go untold.
Your characters are wonderfully emotive and relatable. Were you able to use anything from your own life to inform their character development?
Yes, absolutely. Kate Molsin is a blend of all the incredible women I’ve served with—myself included. She embodies our strength, humor, resilience, and the emotional depth that comes from serving in uniform. Many of the other characters are inspired by the remarkable men I’ve had the privilege to work alongside. Their personalities, quirks, and unspoken camaraderie helped shape the realism behind each scene. In many ways, these characters are tributes to the people who’ve stood beside me through chaos and calm—the brothers and sisters who became family through shared hardship and service.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Oh man, there are so many. The main themes I wanted to highlight in the lives of soldiers are honor, courage, commitment, and resilience.
Honor—for us, it means living by the core values instilled in you from day one of boot camp: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, integrity. It’s about making a vow to use those values as your moral compass, both in and out of uniform. We don’t always get it right—we’re human—but honor is a cornerstone of what it means to be a soldier.
Courage—it’s doing what’s right, whether you’re on the battlefield or navigating your personal life. It’s having the courage to walk into the darkness, sometimes alone, because you made a vow and you stand by it.
Commitment—as a soldier, you’re committed. Bottom line. To the mission, to your team, to your values. It’s that unbreakable drive to show up, even when everything in you wants to quit.
Resilience—the military will test you in every possible way: emotionally, psychologically, and physically. You have to take care of yourself so you can keep completing the mission. You have to learn to get back up after being knocked down, again and again. This life isn’t for the faint of heart—war doesn’t care about your feelings—but resilience is what separates those who endure from those who fade.
Can you tell us more about what’s in store for Katie and the direction of the second book?
Actually, the third book—Adrenaline Rush: Operation Homefront—will be coming out soon, and I’m really excited about it. Like the rest of the series, it’s packed with non-stop action, but it also dives deeper into the emotional and psychological battles soldiers face once they return home. It explores what it’s like to transition back into what we call the “civilian division,” or civ div—that uneasy process of trying to fit back into a world that feels both familiar and foreign.
This book highlights the reality that the fight doesn’t always end when the deployment does. Sometimes, the toughest battles are the ones you face after the war—when you’re trying to rebuild, reconnect, and rediscover who you are outside the uniform.
Author Links: Facebook | Website | Instagram
When a terrorist organization threatens American lives in Iraq, the Black Devils are tasked with finding the leaders and eliminating the threat. Working alongside her love interest Alex and confronted with the loss of a team member to an IED, Kate embraces her iron-clad resilience. She’s given three days to capture three enemy combatants by the Ops Commander. Her singular thought: “When messing with the Black Devils, the cost of penance is high.”
Adrenaline Rush: Pain Games
Pain Games follows Katelyn Ann Molsin, a soldier whose journey from enlistment through boot camp to deployment in Iraq captures the brutality, the absurdity, and the dark humor of military life. It starts with her raw initiation at Fort Leonard Wood, then dives deep into the reality of operating with a Female Engagement Team, where she works alongside Special Forces to gather intel in war zones. Through high-stakes missions, cultural clashes, and moments of biting wit, the story paints a picture of someone forged in chaos and driven by grit, yet haunted by personal demons and complicated relationships.
I found myself pulled into the writing almost immediately. The voice is sharp, irreverent, and brutally honest. Author Bevin Goldsmith doesn’t sugarcoat the military experience, nor does she drown it in jargon that would bore a civilian reader. The details are vivid, sometimes uncomfortably so, but they give a real sense of what it means to “embrace the suck.” I loved the rhythm of the narration. It swings from gut-punch descriptions of combat to sarcastic banter that made me laugh out loud. At times, the humor felt like a survival tool, a way of cutting through the suffocating tension, and I appreciated that balance.
On the flip side, the book made me feel uneasy, which I think is part of its point. The moral gray areas, the way trauma shapes behavior, and the constant clash between personal vulnerability and professional toughness left me unsettled, but in a thought-provoking way. I didn’t always like Katelyn. She can be harsh, even reckless. But I believed her, and I cared what happened to her. The relationships, especially with her comrades and with Alex, are messy and real. There were times I wanted to shake her for her choices, but then I’d catch myself realizing that was exactly the kind of complexity that made her human.
This book left me both drained and energized. Drained because of the heavy truths about war and the toll it takes, energized because of the sheer drive and fire in the protagonist’s voice. I’d recommend Adrenaline Rush: Pain Games to anyone who enjoys gritty military fiction, especially readers who appreciate flawed but fierce characters. It’s for people who want to feel the weight of combat, the sting of loss, and the rush of adrenaline right alongside the people who live it.
Pages: 141 | ASIN : B0CTHTDBQ7
Born in Space: Unlocking Destiny (Sci-Fi Galaxy series)
Born in Space: Unlocking Destiny is a bold and relatable story that stretches across the void of the cosmos yet keeps its heart firmly tied to Earth. The book imagines a future where humanity’s survival depends on children born beyond our home planet. It explores what happens when the boundaries of science, morality, and love are tested among the stars. At its center is an experiment gone both right and wrong, seven infants conceived in space, raised in isolation, and destined to define the next stage of our evolution. The result is a gripping blend of science fiction and emotional depth, filled with danger, beauty, and philosophical wonder.
Reading this book felt like floating between awe and unease. Author Jeremy Clift’s writing is vivid and cinematic, painting vast orbital colonies and lunar cities that feel eerily plausible. I could almost hear the hum of artificial gravity and the echo of distant comms through vacuum corridors. But what struck me most wasn’t the technology; it was the tenderness hidden in the machinery. The human element never gets lost in the spectacle. The dialogue feels raw and alive, and the moral conflicts cut deep. The pacing sometimes rushes, especially in the middle chapters, but it never loses tension. I found myself caring less about the next twist and more about the fragile connections holding these characters together in a cold, infinite world.
There’s something haunting about how the author treats destiny. He doesn’t glorify space colonization; he questions it. The book forces you to think about what kind of future we’re really building. The story doesn’t preach, it just stares straight at the cost of ambition and asks if the trade is worth it. I caught myself pausing to reread certain passages because they hit close to home. The mix of science and spirituality felt strange at first but soon made perfect sense. It reminded me that progress isn’t just about rockets and algorithms, it’s about heart, memory, and the things we choose to keep sacred, even in the void.
Born in Space: Unlocking Destiny is a gripping and thought-provoking read. It’s not just another sci-fi adventure. It’s a meditation on who we are and where we might be going if we dare to leave everything behind. I’d recommend this book to anyone who loves stories that balance thought and thrill, especially readers of authors like Andy Weir or Kim Stanley Robinson.
Pages: 443 | ASIN : B0D1PWPRBJ
LITERARY TITAN 