Tour Stop & Giveaway: What Remains After by Pauline J. Grabia

 

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Pauline J. Grabia will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

SOME STORIES DO NOT END WHEN THE DANGER PASSES.

Beth Clark has not returned to her hometown in decades, since the childhood she survived there nearly destroyed her.

When her estranged mother dies, Beth comes back to rural Alberta for a funeral that feels carefully rewritten. The eulogies are tidy. The past is sanitized. But inside the abandoned bungalow where she and her brother once lived, Beth finds objects that shatter the illusion—and awaken memories of abuse, neglect, and the systems that failed to protect her.

When Beth's younger brother is critically injured in a sudden accident, the present collides with the past. Keeping vigil at his hospital bedside, Beth is drawn back into the summer that changed everything: the violence in their home, the silence of those who should have intervened, and the foster family whose quiet faith offered the first real safety either child had known.

Told across dual timelines, What Remains After is a literary psychological suspense novel about trauma and memory, belief and betrayal, and the long, unfinished work of survival. It asks what it truly means to forgive—and what remains when the truth is finally spoken.

Read an Excerpt:

Coverville Baptist Church smelled musty and old, like the memories trying to escape the recesses of Beth’s mind. That’s all that remained now of her mother. Like her life, nothing at the church had changed in over forty years. It had simply aged, with splintered oak pews and grubby carpets that had been there when she was growing up.

It was unnaturally quiet in the church, which she remembered used to almost roar after a service with the lively voices of congregants discussing the sermon or what was coming up in their week. Children used to run around, shrieking and squealing in both joy and frustration. Now, it was still. Eerily so.

Beth ignored the stares from the other mourners who had arrived early for the service. When she tried to meet their gazes to say hello, they looked briefly, with pity, before looking away. She stopped looking at people. She had only arrived when she had to so she could find Otto and talk to him before it started. He wasn’t in the lobby. Maybe he was in the sanctuary.

She waited in line at the guest registry, attended to by one of the funeral directors. When it was Beth’s turn, her hand trembled as she picked up the ridiculous feathered pen and hesitated before writing down her name. Should she use her married name or her maiden name? Her ex would have a conniption if she wrote down his, and she was changing her name back anyway, so she entered “Elizabeth Clark.”

When Beth had seen her mother’s obituary on Facebook, she’d realized that, despite her hesitation, she would go to the funeral. The only other attendees were townsfolk—mostly members of Virgie’s church—and family. She suspected that most came out of curiosity rather than grief. Beth’s reasons were less clear. Her hatred for her mother had lessened over the years, but had never completely gone; still, she felt an odd urge, almost a duty, to attend. She told herself it was just an excuse to see her brother, Otto, not the urn.

About the Author

Pauline J. Grabia is a Canadian novelist whose work explores trauma, memory, faith, and the moral consequences of silence. Writing under the Stories of Consequence banner, she is drawn to stories that face difficult truths without spectacle and seek light without sentimentality. What Remains After is a literary psychological suspense novel rooted in rural Alberta and shaped by questions of survival, forgiveness, and what endures.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulinejgrabia/
Website: https://paulinejgrabia.com/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/70032333.Pauline_J_Grabia

Amazon: https://amazon.com/dp/1834384516

Tour Stop/Giveaway: Padlocked by p.m. Terrell

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. p.m. terrell will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Talking with p.m. Terrell

What is your latest book about?

In the afterlife, the past isn’t over. It’s waiting for you.

Padlocked begins when ordinary people are swept into an extraordinary storm of life-altering circumstances as Nazi Germany invades Poland in 1939. Each decision they make seals a fate, binding strangers in an unbreakable chain of consequence. In this tense, visionary tale, every action echoes into the afterlife.

Taking the story from a concept to a published book is a long and involved process. How does that usually work for you?

I was writing a cozy mystery set in North Carolina when I dreamed Padlocked in one night from beginning to end. I felt as though I had time-traveled when I awakened the next morning. As I pondered the thousands of details that I’d dreamed about, I knew it was a story I had to write. I asked God how I could ever remember everything. It was as if I heard His voice answering, “You won’t remember. But I will.”

This was the first time I had ever started a book in this manner, but as I worked on it, it felt as if the story was being dictated to me. I recall Barry Gibb once saying that the Bee Gees’ songwriting often felt like they reached into the ether and brought it down, and I know exactly what he meant.

Which of your books would you recommend for readers to choose first if they’re new to you and your books?

It really depends on what they like to read. If it’s romance, I’d start with Exit 22. That launched a six-book series, including Vicki’s Key, Secrets of a Dangerous Woman, Dylan’s Song, The Pendulum Files, and Cloak and Mirrors.

For soulmates, I recommend The Tempest Murders followed by the sequel, The White Devil of Dublin.

My most popular books are historical. Songbirds are Free is based on the true story of my ancestor, Mary Neely, who was captured by Shawnee warriors in 1780. River Passage is the companion book about the Neely family’s involvement in the Donelson Journey to Fort Nashborough during the Chickamauga Indian War. A third historical book is Checkmate: Clans and Castles, based on the true story of my ancestor, William Neely, and his involvement in O’Doherty’s Rebellion of 1608.

I have also written several books set in magical, mystical Ireland with various historical backdrops, including April in the Back of Beyond, A Thin Slice of Heaven, and A Struggle for Independence, all of which feature romance.

Padlocked is an epic historical and visionary novel that follows the lives of a group of ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary, life-altering circumstances as Nazi Germany invades Poland in 1939.

Two foreign photojournalists, an American and a Spaniard, are trapped between armies at Festungsfront Oder-Warthe-Bogen, along Poland’s western border with Germany. It is Hank’s last overseas assignment, and he’s been counting the days until he can go home to North Carolina to be with his family. Rafe fled Spain after the dictator, Francisco Franco, targeted his family. The experience changed him, and he now sees the rise of fascism in Europe as a battle between good and evil. They will find themselves embedded with the Polish, Nazi, and Soviet forces at varying times, forcing them to face moral and ethical decisions in their struggles to survive.

A young woman is separated from her sister in Warsaw as the Nazis encircle it. Agata made a vow that she would return to take Elsa to safety, but soldiers and barbed wire prevent her from entering the newly established Jewish sector. She is consumed with guilt over their separation, and when she discovers her sister was taken by train to a work camp near Krakow, she navigates her dangerous, war-torn country in search of her. Her quest will force her to confront a Hell on Earth to find her.

A young man joins the Jungdeutsche Partei, or the Young German Party. Once bullied as a child, Max’s new affiliations promote him to a position where he can dictate life or death and settle scores. In order to thrive under Nazi occupation, he makes daily choices that legitimize brutality and erode humanitarian principles and scruples.

While they don’t know one another at the start of their journeys, each will make decisions that have the power to transform them and place them on paths that ultimately converge on January 27, 1945, as the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front opened the gates to Auschwitz-Birkenau for all the world to witness.

This is ultimately a story about the strength of love, courage, faith, and resilience in the face of unimaginable hatred and obsession with power, and how every decision we make places us further along specific paths.

Read an Excerpt

Max was unprepared for the pandemonium as he stepped outside the building. He supposed it made sense as he could hear the voices from his office even if he hadn’t been able to make out the words. Still, it was jarring to see people who would normally walk with controlled purpose now rushing this way and that, as though the sky were falling. It made him hasten his steps, his heartbeat quickening as he joined the throngs. Many stopped along the way to cheer on the passing army vehicles, but he dodged around them, eager to get his book and get back to work. He didn’t want the soldiers to give his office to anyone else in his absence.

“Max! Max!”

At the sound of his name, he almost hid, thinking his ruse was discovered, but he quickly realized the voice was female. His eyes darted around the crowded faces. After a moment, the horde parted, and Stella rushed through to him.

“They’re on our doorstep!” she shouted excitedly. Her face was aglow, and he wanted nothing more than to scoop her into his arms and kiss her.

But, as others glanced their way, he grabbed her hand and led her to a quieter area. “Stop smiling,” he directed, swinging her around to face him.

“Why?” she demanded.

“They are not here yet. Do you want the Polish Army to pick you up?”

“Why would they? I have done nothing wrong.”

“Oh? Now that they are here and we are locked in a battle with them, you and I are collaborators.”

“Huh! That is not true.”

“Isn’t it?”

“It is not. We knew nothing of their plans to invade. We only know that we like their system of government.”

“And you don’t think they are here to change our system of government to their own?”

“Isn’t it exciting?”

“Stop it, I say. Stop it!” Max wiped his forehead. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“The shop where I worked closed.”

“Closed? Why?”

Stella shrugged. “Excitement. Fear. Maybe a little of both.” She peered at him, her eyes narrowing. “Why are you here and not in the mayor’s office? I would have thought you’d be very busy there.”

“I am very busy.” He pulled at his suit jacket as if straightening it. “I have been promoted.”

“Promoted! To what?”

“I am now a liaison to the military.”

“The Polish military?”

“Do you see another here?” He waved his hand toward the tanks passing by them.

“What are you doing for them?” she breathed, her brow furrowing.

“English translation.”

“You don’t speak English!”

“How do you know that? I do, actually. And I am on a mission, and you are delaying me.”

“Be that way, then.” She pouted briefly before adding, “What will you do when the Nazis arrive in Będzin?”

“How do you know that they will?”

She shrugged. “I am hedging my bets.”

“For right this moment, today, I am a military liaison. That is all I know for now.” He waved as though pushing her away. “Now, go.”

As she started to leave him, he pulled her back into an embrace and kissed her. Startled, he thought she might pull away, but she didn’t. She leaned into him, her tongue flicking inside his mouth and her body pressing against him. She smelled of flowers and musk, and he held her more tightly as he inhaled her essence. Then she abruptly stepped back. “Call on me later,” she said, “when you are no longer working your military liaison shift.”

Then she was gone, as if she had never been there; her petite figure disappeared among the taller men and women crowding the sidewalk. He stared in the direction she’d gone, but when he didn’t spot her among the cluster of people, he turned back in the direction of home.

About the Author:

My full name is Patricia McClelland Terrell, and I have been writing under the pen name p.m.terrell ever since a publisher presented me with my first fiction book cover. The graphic designer had also entered my name in lower-case letters; my editor hated it, and I loved it. It’s been p.m.terrell ever since.

I began writing when I was nine years old, inspired by a schoolteacher and elementary school principal. Scott-Foresman published my first book, a computer instructional for universities, in 1984. Scott-Foresman, Dow-Jones (Richard D. Irwin branch), Palari Publishing, Paralee Press, and Drake Valley Press have published 27 books to date.

Before embarking on a full-time writing career, I founded McClelland Enterprises, Inc., in the Washington, D.C., area in 1984, specializing in workplace computer instruction. I opened another business, Continental Software Development Corporation, in 1994, which focused on custom application development, programming, website design and development, and cybersecurity.

I was honored to be the first female President of the Chesterfield County/Colonial Heights Crime Solvers. Since moving to North Carolina, I served on the boards of the Robeson County Friends of the Library and the Robeson County Arts Council.

I launched The Book ‘Em Foundation with Waynesboro, Virginia, Police Officer Mark Kearney, and assisted in Virginia, New Hampshire, and South Carolina events before establishing the Annual Book ‘Em North Carolina Writers Conference and Book Fair, chairing it for several years before turning it over to Robeson Community College in Lumberton, NC.

Padlocked is available in all eBook formats, trade paperback, hardcover, and large print editions.

Website: https://pmterrell.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pmterrell.author/
Apple: https://books.apple.com/us/book/padlocked/id6759671735
Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/padlocked-pm-terrell/1149563468
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GPWWNBFN
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/padlocked-2
In France: https://shop.vivlio.com/product/9781935970569_9781935970569_10020/padlocked
In Germany: https://www.thalia.de/shop/home/artikeldetails/A1078388459
All other eBook formats: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1977075

Book Tour/Giveaway: Stranger Still by George Ochoa

Stranger Still
George Ochoa
Publication date: August 19th 2025
Genres: Adult, Literary Fiction, Thriller

Paul Inster, a brilliant, insane Columbia college student majoring in English with an undisclosed minor in knives, is in love with graduate student, Tracy Iridio. Seeing her in the library every day, he mistakenly believes she is in love with him and that she is a goddess, Teresa. In fact, the two have never met, and she does not know who he is. When, for the first time, he sees her with her boyfriend, classical history professor Larry Post, Paul sets out to destroy Larry via a campaign of terror. As the campaign mounts, Larry, mystified, tries to figure out who is attacking him and why. Through a series of surprises and confusions, the campaign escalates to murder.

Stranger Still is both a thriller and a literary novel, combining suspense and violence with rich language, webs of cultural allusions, and themes of love and madness.

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / iBooks / Kobo

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EXCERPT:

Teresa and I often made love, though never in the flesh. To this day the psychiatrists will scrutinize such a statement as if it meant something other than what it plainly says, as if it were the telltale boil of some rare mental pox that might explain the blood spills photographed by the police. But these doctors do not understand love, optics, metaphysics, error, or even good taste. As far as flesh went, I never touched or even talked to Teresa, not until our moral decline had already begun. Before then, seeing the chaste tables that divided us in the Columbia library less than a decade ago, in the middle years of the 1990s, you might have thought Teresa and I were strangers, that she didn’t know I was alive.

I first saw her early in my junior year, a new female sitting several tables away in the Burgess-Carpenter reading room on the fourth floor of Butler Library. She seemed at first like any other of the pretty women on campus whom I liked to ogle and who regarded me as if I were invisible. But the more I stared at her, the more she particularly interested me. A pile of books rested near her elbow on the blond pine table, her head bent with rapt attention over her open book. Hazy September sunlight from the tall windows bathed her small breasts in her magenta top, made the white skin of her forearms glow. Her dark-brown hair was long and luxuriant, her neck long, her face shaped like that of a Raphael Madonna. But what captured me most were her eyes—large, sad eyes, ringed with mauve circles as if she hadn’t slept well. Why was she sad? Was there something I could do to make her happier?

We sat like that for a long time, she near the east end of a table in the back, never noticing me, while I shot frequent glances at her from near the west end of the second table from the door. About twenty feet diagonally divided us, too far for me to discern her eye color, though I tried. Finally, she got up, gathering her books into a white canvas tote bag and walking toward the door. As her gangly frame passed me, I gave her eyes a good look and saw they were hazel, flickering elusively under their long lashes from green to brown to gold.

The thought of her big, sad, long-lashed hazel eyes kept me happy for the rest of my day at Columbia. Even when I boarded the downtown Number One train, the first of the three trains that every evening buried me back in Jamaica, Queens, I was still thinking of those eyes. But an hour and fifteen minutes in the subways will discourage anyone. By the time I left the second leg, the D train, for the final and longest leg, the F, my thoughts were turning dark. The train was crowded with smelly, loam-colored laborers imported from faraway continents, and me just one of the horde.

Most students at Columbia boarded, but because my family was poorer than that of the standard Ivy Leaguer, I was a commuter. Combined with my natural tendency toward solitude, this meant I had no friends either on campus or anywhere else. I longed to make contact with someone, anyone, but did not know how. Sometimes I just wanted to pet them—the young secretary sitting before me on the subway in vinyl jacket and glittery eyeliner—to touch her shoulder, her pulsing throat, and say, “I am here. I am lonely. Help me.” Sometimes I wanted to hit them—the goon in the Yankees cap. When I felt particularly desperate, I wanted to stab them. I had knives that would have fit that purpose, but I never took them out of the house.

Author Bio:

George Ochoa’s first novel is the thriller Stranger Still. In addition, he has written or cowritten thirty-five nonfiction books, including The Book of Answers, The Writer’s Guide to Creating a Science Fiction Universe, The American Film Institute Desk Reference, and Deformed and Destructive Beings: The Purpose of Horror Films. His short fiction has been published in North American Review, Eureka Literary Magazine, Eunoia Review, Bangalore Review, and elsewhere. He is also the author of published poems and essays.

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Book Tour Stop/Giveaway: Father of One by Jani Anttola

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. The author will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Maka, a young Bosnian soldier, has survived three years under siege. When the enemy forces launch their final attack on his hometown, he must escape to the hills. But traversing the vast woods is a task against all odds: to stay alive, and to find his infant son and his wife, he is soon forced to make a desperate move.

Set against the harrowing background of raging guerrilla warfare and the genocide in Srebrenica, Father of One is, at heart, a story of deep humanity, compassion and love. It is the account of one man’s desire to reunite his family, separated by war, and of bonds unbroken by trauma, sustained by loyalty and tenacity. Writing in a voice that rings with clarity and authenticity, Jani Anttola lays open a dark moment in Europe’s recent history.

Enjoy an excerpt:

The old man they called Dedo died in September after a two-day storm. The wind blew from the south, bringing sea clouds, grey and ragged like used steel wool, that poured down on the valley and the gusts drove rain against the window planks, making them wet and dripping, with pooling water on the floor of the cell. Outside the camp the trees bent in the heavy wind and the hayfields were flat in the rain. It was a summer storm but it wasn’t warm: the police stayed holed up in their house and grey smoke puffed from the stovepipe and was ripped away flatly in the wind. The cops had reduced their perimeter to a few that huddled in the far corners. In their olive-green ponchos the guards looked like some strange, dark-glistening mushrooms behind the rain. Then, after the storm broke, the drizzle continued for a day and the hills were deep green and misty, and the rusty old silos of the batching factory stood out brightly in their crumbling yellow paint. There were pools of water on the paths between the barracks and tree branches blown across the yard and everything was washed out, fresh and silent.

That afternoon they were corralled into the third barrack. The hundreds of inmates stood waiting, packed in the hall now, happily surprised by the announcement of an additional tea portion. The previous police crew had repurposed the building as a prison canteen. On the low counter the inmates had built, a gas stove was alight. On its grate sat a fifty-litre, boiling aluminium kettle. Maka stood behind the cauldron with another inmate, a ladle in hand, feeling the heat from the little blue flames that flickered underneath.

Jani Anttola is a Finnish novelist and a medical doctor. In the 1990s he served in Rwanda with the French military and fought in Bosnia as a soldier of the Bosnian army. His works have been published in the UK and Finland. He has spent most of his adult life abroad, working in Africa, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific.

Author website: https://www.jani-anttola.com

Buy links

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Father-One-Jani-Anttola/dp/1915603986

https://www.amazon.com/Father-of-One/dp/1915603986

https://bookguild.co.uk/bookshop/historical/father-of-one/

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Excerpt Tour Stop/Giveaway: Exiles by L.J. Ambrosio

 

Check out the tour stop for Exiles by L.J. Ambrosio today and make sure to enter the tour wide giveaway for a chance to win from the author a  $20 Amazon/BN GC to one randomly drawn winner, a dragonfly necklace to another randomly drawn winner, and a dragonfly necklace to a third randomly drawn winner (3 Winners). The excerpt tour is sponsored by Goddess Fish Promotions and you can find all the tour stops HERE.

EXILES

L.J. Ambrosio

GENRE:  Literary Fiction/Coming of Age

In this final chapter, Ron's story concludes from Reflections on the Boulevard (2023). Michael's wish was for Ron to exile himself in the heart of Paris with its beautiful culture and citizens as they protest and fight for the soul of the city. Ron's journey is met with life-affirming friendships and lessons along the way. The final book in the Reflections of Michael Trilogy, which started with A Reservoir Man (2022).

 

EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT

 

Ron walked Louie into the children’s room. Light almost seemed to radiate from this room. It was the aura of the books on the shelves. It was magical.

 

Louie found a copy of The Little Prince and opened to the page he wanted to read.

 

"Eyes are blind. You must look with your heart,” read Louie. He looked at Ron and said, “Saint-Exupéry was extraordinary.” Ron nodded.

 

Louie continued to read aloud from the book. Two children, who were reading from their own books, stopped, and stared at him until he arrived at the end. When he did

 

Ron started a small clap with the children, and they all smiled and laughed together.

 

“My parents never gave it a break; they must have read this book to me 50 times. I’m so happy they did!”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Buy Links:

Palace Marketplace: https://market.thepalaceproject.org/item/5900746

Hoopla: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/16927020

Barnes and Noble; https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/exiles-lj-ambrosio/1145295484;jsessionid=6BEBDF0D8FDBD00DC37A1EAACF96C083.prodny_store01-atgap12

Apple: https://books.apple.com/us/book/exiles/id6482298566

Everand: https://www.everand.com/book/720323806/Exiles-Reflections-of-Michael-Trilogy

Thalia: https://www.thalia.de/shop/home/artikeldetails/A1071509419

Vivlio: https://shop.vivlio.com/product/9798990212138_9798990212138_10020/exiles

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1546995

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/exiles-65

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Exiles-Reflections-Michael-Trilogy-Ambrosio/dp/B0CZHY93GQ/ref=sr_1_1

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links: 

Louis J. Ambrosio ran one of the most nurturing bi-coastal talent agencies in Los Angeles and New York. He started his career as a theatrical producer, running two major regional theaters for eight seasons. Ambrosio taught at 7 Universities. Ambrosio also distinguished himself as an award-winning film producer and novelist over the course of his impressive career.

 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ljambrosioauthor/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/authorlambrosio

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/louis.ambrosio

Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/ljambrosio

Blog: https://ljambrosio.blogspot.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI2XkCETDOj_VUtCFcB74ig