TJ

Nothing exciting happens at Peterson Cremation Services–exactly how Gideon prefers it. All his life, he has seen things–scary and bizarre visions that weren’t really there. Working the night shift at the crematorium and days at Sheryl's Shell Shack lets him keep his head down and ignore the strange world around him. The last time Gideon reacted to one of his hallucinations, he ended up in a psychiatric hold. He can’t let anything like that happen again–it would break his mother’s heart.

Petra Grady has known since adolescence that she has no talent for magic—and that’s never going to change. But as a sweeper first-class, she’s parlayed her rare ability to handle dross—the damaging, magical waste generated by her more talented kin’s spellwork—into a decent life working at the mages’ university. Except Grady’s relatively predictable life is about to be upended.

Sophie has come back home to try and come to grips with her new reality: She’s a Fae, not human, and her memories have been stolen. Oh, and she’s a shard–a fractured piece of...someone. All Sophie knows is that the "someone" she used to be angered the Fae queen, who then split her into five separate beings and scattered them on earth. But why? And why take their memories?

When my husband of 25 years leaves me to expedite his political agenda, and his new girlfriend ensures I have no place within the shadow council, I am starting over with a new business and no financial security.

To Raegan Keyes, she's the only one of her kind, but has no idea what she is. Until, one night, she finds out her unexplainable abilities aren't the only thing she needs to worry about. Suddenly, her world becomes much bigger than she ever could have dreamed. When a mysterious man named Enzo arrives, too striking to be human, Raegan learns she's not as alone as she believed. As more secrets are revealed, she's swept off to an academy for others like her, thousands of miles away from home, by a complete stranger whom she'd rather stab than travel with.

"Happily Ever After" wasn't supposed to come with a do-over option. But when my husband of 20 years packs up and heads for greener pastures, and my son heads away to college, that's exactly what my midlife becomes. A do-over. This time, though, I plan to do things differently. Age is just a number, after all, and at 40 I'm ready to carve my own path. Eager for a fresh start, I make a somewhat unorthodox decision and move to a tiny town in the Sierra foothills.