Keep your eyes peeled for pulse-pounding mysteries, fantastic adventures, and true history coming your way spring and early summer 2025!
Koda and the Whales
Children’s Picture Books, STEM, Marine Biology
This educational book teaches children facts about gray whales and their ocean home from the perspective of Carrie Newell, the author’s dog, Koda, as the narrator. It is based on true stories and experiences she has had with whales and all three of her dogs for decades. Many of the drawings are from photographs or a compilation of photographs with an artistic flair to describe Koda’s story. The book is illustrated by Jack Wiens, who accurately represents marine life and the dogs’ personalities.
The book is fully illustrated in color and includes a glossary and classroom questions and activities at the back of the book. Topics of discussion are:
- Different types of whales
- Whale behaviors
- How whales feed and what they eat
- Identifying the individual whales who live in Depoe Bay, Oregon
- How Carrie trained her dogs to spot and interact with the whales
- Whale encounters
Releasing March 25, 2025
The Conductor
Historical Mystery
Strikes, blackmail, and murder plague Beatrix amid growing unrest following the supremacist ideologies of World War II.
Beatrix Patterson has faced monsters before, but in a world teetering on the edge of social change, she comes up against her most complicated case yet. In one chaotic morning, her friend has been arrested following a fight during a strike at the railroad, the railroad owner was found murdered, and another close friend admits to being blackmailed.
Amid growing tensions between the Union Pacific Railroad and workers’ strikes, Beatrix must go undercover before more people are killed or injured. But as she dives into this investigation, she finds one consistent group at the center.
In order to bring down the racial supremacist group digging its claws into Santa Barbara, California, she must put her intense loathing aside to stop the threat before it can reach Thomas, their baby girl Birdy, and the life they’re building. With deadly secrets everywhere she turns, Beatrix has to keep her cards close to her chest if she hopes to escape this case unscathed.
Releasing April 8, 2025
Hot Tango in Argentina
Danger has a way of dancing into Blanche Murninghan’s life.
Part-time sleuth Blanche Murninghan and her love, Emilio Del Sierra, are enjoying a reunion on Santa Maria Island when Emilio gets news that his long-lost aunt and cousin need his help—in Argentina. Posing as tourists, Emilio and Blanche head out to the luxurious pink estancia, La Palma, on the pampa to unravel the plot endangering Emilio’s family.
Escapees from World War II are managing La Palma, and they have a lot to hide. Blanche is intent on exposing them. She has help: from Emilio and Tomás with his divina tango partner, Anna de Gamoure, the mysterious and handsome Guillermo de Losada Iglesias, and Lusita, the elusive kitchen maid who knows more than she’s letting on.
Blanche maintains her touristy cover to snare the schemers, but around every corner a new twist threatens to put a stranglehold on her efforts. Blanche must right the wrongs before time can tango away.
Hot Tango in Argentina is the fifth installment in the Blanche Murninghan Mysteries. Known for a lively cast of characters and atmospheric settings, each mystery can be enjoyed as a stand-alone story or read in publication order, starting with Saving Tuna Street.
Releasing April 22, 2025
Out of Fire
Being Heard is Only the Beginning
Korvo, Merin, Bryce, and Tiernan have permission to open a school for Magics in Kaybrum, but the work is only beginning. The right to learn didn’t come with books or teachers or funding, and putting a school where a correctional facility used to be brings its own challenges and trauma.
The more they learn about the Refuge, the more atrocities they discover. When Bryce finds a grave on the property, Korvo is pushed to his limits. Aer is gone, and the man behind it all, the General, is still out there. Craving justice and revenge, Korvo leaves to hunt down the General. Without Korvo to lead the school, Bryce and Merin must step up and care for all the students still grappling with their newly tolerated magic.
As their found family spreads across the continent, they’ll have to learn to be as strong individually as they are together before the progress they’ve made slips away. But the continent has been fighting for years, and all-out-war is one misstep away.
Releasing April 29, 2025
The Best of Enemies
History, World War II, French Military History
After the Allied D-Day landings in June 1944, Paris was liberated in late August, and the rest of France was freed in the following weeks. However, two pockets of German occupation in Royan and La Rochelle, both cities along the Atlantic coast, remained occupied for several months more.
Blocking access to Bordeaux, the city of Royan would end in martyrdom under a carpet of Allied bombs on January 5, 1945. But the fortress of La Rochelle, with its port, submarine base, and German garrison of 14,000 soldiers guarding the historic city and its 30,000 civilians, would later be delivered intact to Allied forces by its occupier.
By what perilous negotiations were two enemy officers able to avoid disaster in the besieged city? Two men of honor, French Commander Hubert Meyer and German Admiral Ernst Schirlitz, strove to see beyond the war toward reconciliation and the reconstruction of Europe.
Releasing May 6, 2025
Part of the Solution
Mystery, Historical Fiction, Amateur Sleuth
“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” –Eldridge Cleaver
Jennifer Morgan, a sassy New Yorker in flight from graduate school, has found herself a refuge in the counterculture village of Flanders, Massachusetts in 1978. When a dead body interrupts her life of poetry readings, craft shops, and boysenberry muffins, Jennifer fears that her idyll will end quicker than the Bob Dylan album on her stereo. Egged on by her Tarot-card-reading housemate and in defiance of the hippy-hating chief of police, Jennifer sets out to find the murderer before any more of her friends are killed.
Releasing May 20, 2025
Whispers on the Mountain
Crime Fiction, Thriller, Suspense
A woman vanishes and a reporter will stop at nothing to bring her home alive.
When Celia Patrick arrives at the Bingham Reserve in the North Carolina mountains, something is very wrong. Celia is supposed to be on a much-needed family vacation, but when she hears whispers about a missing woman in the beautiful but treacherous landscape, she can’t ignore the pull of the mystery.
Did Pamela Stevens get lost? Was she lying injured on the trail? Or did something more sinister happen? Soon, Celia is mired in the middle of a potential murder investigation, and everyone has something to hide:
The Type-A Resort Manager
The Devastated Husband
The Rest-on-his-Laurels Deputy
The Grizzled Local Water-Sports Guide
With each passing day, the road to unraveling the mystery grows colder and the odds of finding the lost hiker alive diminish. Despite the risk to her family, her sanity, and her safety, Celia refuses to give up the search. She’s been down this dark path of obsession in a case before, and this time she is determined to find the missing woman alive.
Releasing June 3, 2025
Introducing Torchflame Books Large Print!
We are excited to announce that these books and more will be available in large print editions! Shop wherever books are sold. To learn more, please visit Torchflame Books Large Print.
