“Terminal Degree” is up for preorder!

Hi All!

Well, after a couple of busy months, I’m excited to announce that Terminal Degree is finally available for preorder! Yes, at last, it’s (almost) here! The official release date is December 31st.

Funnily enough, it starts on December 31, 2016, at a time when the US was in a state of doubt and confusion during the interregnum period between the election of Donald Trump and the start of his administration. And where do we find ourselves now? That wasn’t what I was consciously expecting when I was actually writing the book, but art is often smarter than logic that way. The book is about a lot of things, but one of them is what it’s like to be living in modern-day America, and, well, I guess we still have a lot of the same problems.

Anyway, the cover and blurb are below, and the link to preorder it is here. And if you’re not on my ARC team but you’d like to be, reply to this email and I’ll add you. I’m planning to send out the ARCs in a couple of weeks, so a month before the release. Hopefully I’ll be finished at least with the recording of the audiobook by then–I’ve had some annoying technical difficulties that have delayed me. I now have a new, more expensive microphone, and have been hard at work recording as much as time and my throat permits (doing John and Dima’s voices tends to frack up my vocal cords, and they both feature heavily in this book).

Cover and blurb below! 

Rowena Halley has hit a dead end. Will it leave her dead?

Russian professor Rowena Halley is at the end of her money, the end of her job contract, the end of her romantic hopes…the end of her tether. And just when she thinks she can’t take any more, she gets dragged into not one, but two sticky situations by her nearest and dearest. Her friend Mel needs her help dealing with a scammer, and her long-lost paternal grandparents want her back in their lives—with cultish strings attached.

But Rowena has even bigger problems. Her ex-fiancé, opposition Russian journalist Dima Kuznetsov, comes to America, bringing old history and new danger with him. Rowena wants to believe they have a future as a couple. The mercenaries and hitmen Dima has been tangling with over the years could mean they don’t have a future, period. And revelations about Dima’s most recent deal with the Devil cause Rowena to doubt their chances to make a life together, even if they do survive.

Rowena wants a happy ending for everyone. But with this many bad guys mad at her, the ending she’s most likely to get is the terminal kind.

Content warning: This book contains an Air Force veteran, an officer in the Marines, and an ex-member of the Russian OMON. The language is accordingly salty.

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There you have it! This book has been a long time in the making (and is, fair warning, accordingly long), but I’m glad it’s finally almost ready to go out into the world. Here‘s the preorder link again, and please let me know if you’d like to join the ARC team!

Happy reading,

Sid Stark

“Bloody Creek Murder” by Susan Clayton-Goldner #Mystery #NewRelease #BookReview

Bloody Creek Murder

Bloody Creek Murder

I’ve been following along the Winston Radhauser series since the beginning, and have been enjoying it more and more. In this, its sixth installment, the author does a particularly excellent job of combining mystery with family drama. The mixture both brings out the pathos of the interpersonal situation the characters find themselves in, and raising the tension surrounding the mystery.

In “Bloody Creek Murder,” Detective Radhauser is called in to investigate the death of prominent local actress Blair Bradshaw. The investigation seems to be going nowhere–except into a cold case that Radhauser has been trying to solve for the past ten years. I don’t want to say more in case of spoilers, but there are multiple crimes and tragedies in the story, all of which come together, one way or another, in the figure of Blair.

As in the previous books in the series, “Bloody Creek Murder” is a murder mystery, but one with a lot of heart. It will appeal to many fans of detective stories, although it is neither gritty nor cozy, so readers who demand a strict adherence to those genre tropes may not enjoy it. Because it’s also a family story, it will likely appeal to many fans of family dramas, as well as contemporary literary fiction. Recommended for readers who are looking for a well-written mystery story with a bit of a difference.

My thanks to the author for providing a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Pick up a copy on Amazon here.