Category: Author’s Alley
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The Translator
He couldn’t read her moods from her face — a quirk of his own neurology he’d explained to her early on, matter-of-fact, no apology in it. Years of practice had taught him to compensate in other ways, mostly by listening more carefully than most people bothered to. “I won’t always catch it if you’re upset…
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The Late Bloomer
He’d been married before, briefly, decades ago, to someone wrong for him in ways that had taken years to fully understand. By the time he met Annika he was fifty-three, settled into a life he’d assumed was its final shape, no longer expecting anything to rearrange itself. It rearranged itself anyway. “I wasn’t looking,” he…
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Books That Feel Like Autumn: Cozy, Witchy, Romantic and Just a Little Unhinged
Because apparently the temperature drops three degrees and suddenly we require witches, yearning and a suspicious amount of cinnamon. Hey bestie, let me tell you what I discovered while building my autumn reading pile: I don’t actually want books that are set in autumn. I want books that feel like autumn. There’s a difference. Give…
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The Understudy’s Understudy
She knew his coffee order before she knew his last name. It was a small, accidental intimacy — she worked the counter at the café he stopped at every morning, and for three months he’d been “oat milk flat white, extra hot” before he was anything else. He’d asked her out the day she got…
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The Practice Fight
They’d had exactly one real fight in nine years, early on, about something neither of them could fully reconstruct afterward. It had frightened them both — not the disagreement itself, but the unfamiliar heat of it, the realization that they were capable of hurting each other if they weren’t careful. So they’d done something unusual.…
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No Time to Reread ACOTAR? Here’s What You Actually Need to Remember
Because five books, several courts and approximately nine thousand years of fae emotional baggage are a lot to keep in one human brain. Hey bestie, grab your coffee because I have been back down the ACOTAR rabbit hole, and I have news: you do not need to reread the entire series every time you realise…
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Chapter ii. Threads of Silver, Threads of Blood
You voted for Nesta to test the magic at Valkyrie training and see whether the voice followed her. She did. It did. Naturally, it could not behave itself. Valkyrie training started at sunrise. Or, rather, it started when Emerie decided she had finished drinking her first mug of bitter tea, which generally coincided with sunrise,…
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The Inheritance
Her grandmother’s ring didn’t fit her. It never had — too small, an old style, delicate in a way that didn’t suit the work she did with her hands. She’d kept it in a drawer for years, sentimental but impractical, unsure what to do with an heirloom that didn’t actually function as jewelry. Pavel had…
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The Practical Magic
She didn’t believe in soulmates, not really, not in the way the word got used in films. She believed in compatibility, timing, deliberate effort. She’d said as much to Costas early on, half-expecting him to argue, to make a case for fate or destiny or whatever romantic framework most people seemed to want. He hadn’t…
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Your September TBR Has Entered Its Autumn Era: What to Read When Summer Is Officially Over
There is a very specific moment every year when my reading brain decides summer is finished. Please understand that this moment has absolutely nothing to do with the actual weather. It could be 31°C outside. I could be sitting directly in front of an air conditioner questioning every life choice that led me to live…
Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc 