Introducing… 2024 Long List
Introducing our long-listed titles of the 2024 Shelf Unbound Competition for Best Independently Published Book.
1. A Trial of Fate
One night can change your life. One decision can change…everything.
Our world is dying. Every century, the High Fae venture past the magical veil in search of a shifter to compete as the champion in the trials of their Inner Kingdom. Only a shifter who completes the trials can unlock the healing powers of the Heart of Valdor, a magical stone that has the power to save our world. For five hundred years, no shifter has been victorious or returned alive. The dark magic of the wilt is steadily growing, devouring our world piece by piece with each passing day. The fate of all fae, shifters, and humans is at stake.
And somehow…this task has fallen to me.
Skylar Cathal is a twenty-two-year-old half-human, half-shifter with a curious mind and knack for bending the rules. Gilen Warrick, Skylar’s childhood friend and the next Alpha of the Solace pack, wants more than just her friendship– but fate has a will of its own.
When Skylar is marked as the shifter champion, she must overcome her darkest fears to leave her home and those she loves behind. Daxton Aegaeon, High Fae Prince of Silver Meadows, has sworn to protect Skylar as his ward, but only she can protect her heart.
About the Author
J.E. Larson
“Alaska Grown,” with a passion for creating my own worlds, which comes in handy when I live in a uniquely beautiful place such as my home state. I started writing in middle school with a good old-fashioned pencil and paper. Jotting down ideas of characters, adventures, and different worlds. In my thirties, with the encouragement of my husband, I began writing… and writing… until I finally created my first trilogy(yet to be released). After the birth of our two daughters and work, I had to find the quiet 5 am mornings and the secluded nights after bedtime to finally give voice to my ideas. My greatest wish was to write my stories and to have others read and enjoy them with me. So please enjoy what I have created. And thank you for taking a leap of faith into my world.
2. Like Sapphire Blue
Emma Landry is tough, independent, beautiful, and smart. Being an outcast unable to identify with her classmates, she was willing to do whatever it takes to climb her way out of poverty.Having never known a mother’s love, her father “Bear”, raised her on the wrong side of the tracks in a wealthy town. When success beckons, the woman she’s been in love with is, finally, within her grasp. Life is now worth living and loving. That is, until a dark family secret tied into the very fabric of who she is, and what she spent a lifetime working to overcome is revealed. Emma finds herself at the crossroads. Can she overcome a destiny stronger than death and destitution, to prove she is more than her father’s daughter?
About the Author
Marisa Billions
Marisa Billions is a high school English teacher in Southern California. She holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Criminology. She is the author of the fiction novels, This Too Shall Pass and Like Sapphire Blue, Into the Blue Again, and Till Death Do You Part. She is working on her upcoming fifth novel. Like Sapphire Blue and Into the Blue Again both were awarded 5 Star Editorial Review Awards with Reader Views. Like Sapphire Blue also won grand prize for best literary fiction in the 2023 Reader Views contest and Book Fest Awards. She lives in Southern California with her wife, Stephanie and son Alexander and three dogs, Max, Bonnie, and Tinsley.
3. The Culture of Burnout
Burnout is as American as apple pie, baseball, and the 4th of July. Its foundations go all the way back to the first White folks who permanently settled in North America: the Puritans. Culture is made through the decisions and actions of everyone who lives in that culture. So if we all want to be less burned out and more balanced, we can be. It’s difficult, but not impossible -— and most importantly, it’s doable. Inside this book is a breakdown of why your exhaustion and your burnout are not your fault. Finally, pragmatic to its core, it also starts every reader on their own path to dismantle the culture of burnout and start working toward a culture of balance.
About the Author
Kristen Donnelly, PhD & Erin Hinson, PhD
Kristen Donnelly (MSW, M.Div, PhD) is an award winning, four time TEDx speaker, international empathy educator, and researcher with two decades of experience in helping people understand the beauty in difference, and the power in inclusivity.
Erin Hinson (MA, PhD) is a researcher, international educator, and tea enthusiast with over a decade of experience in cultivating curiosity in herself and others. As one of The Good Doctors of Abbey Research, Erin advocates for inclusion, equity, and understanding through conversation.
4. The Tender Silver Stars
In 1972, change is sweeping the world, but it isn’t coming fast enough to South Carolina. Not for Triss, anyway. She has always wanted to become an attorney, but her influential grandfather who raised her won’t hear of it. She attempts to go it on her own-until she commits an impetuous act that threatens to derail her life. Everlove, the daughter of a working-class family, is not looking for change, but it finds her anyway. She has always followed the rules-until one day she doesn’t and blows up the life she has always known. The women meet, become friends, and help each other find new paths forward. Can the two women build new lives from the ones they shattered?
About the Author
Pamela Stockwell
Pamela Stockwell lives with her husband in Central New Jersey. She has three children in various stages of young adulthood and too many cats. She is a living kidney donor, as well as the author of A Boundless Place, which debuted in 2021 and has garnered several awards. Her second novel, The Tender Silver Stars, will be published in April 2024. Her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in several online literary journals and anthologies.
5. Whiskey Tango from Misery Towers
Missouri Towers, once the swankiest address in St. Louis, but now tagged “Misery Towers,” is a shabby apartment building blessed with breathtaking views of the iconic Gateway Arch. Amongst its eccentric dwellers is a trapeze artist whose love life is dangling from a wire, a struggling realtor who can never close a deal, a Bosnian immigrant who is infused with the spirit of Winston Churchill, an aging stripper who refuses to relinquish her grip on the pole, an undertaker on a mission of vengeance, a broken-hearted soul searching for his own pretty woman — one hooker at a time, a beat cop tired of dodging bullets, and a dogged collector of lucky pennies who picks up a cursed coin. On a hot and dangerous August night, against the backdrop of a city on edge, the interwoven lives of these characters will collide with devastating consequences.
About the Author
James Aylott
James Aylott is a former Hollywood paparazzo and supermarket tabloid photo editor. His award-winning debut novel, Tales from The Beach House, was both critically acclaimed and a hit. His follow-up work of fiction, Tales of Whiskey Tango from Misery Towers is set in St. Louis, Missouri, one of America’s most dangerous cities. The author took inspiration not only from the colorful characters he met while embedding himself in the real estate business but also from the mayhem of everyday life on the wild streets of downtown St. Louis. James Aylott is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and King’s College, London. He is happy to call a leafy suburb of St. Louis, Missouri his home.
6. Shitamachi Scam
In Tokyo, there isn’t always respect for older people. Sometimes, it’s the opposite. After the suspicious deaths of a seventy-something woman and a student recluse, Detective Hiroshi tracks down a gang of scammers who target retirees, robbing them of their pensions, life savings, and even the deeds to their homes. Hiroshi teams up with Detective Ishii, who’s been running a women’s crime task force. Together, they find out who has been ripping off the pensions, life savings, and deeds to homes in shitamachi, the older, eastern side of the city. With his personal life on hold (almost), Hiroshi finds out how complex the traditional life of Tokyo still is. With old-school Detective Takamatsu and ex-sumo wrestler Chief Sakaguchi watching his back, he finds out who’s behind the scams, and who’s behind the scammers.
About the Author
Michael Pronko
Michael Pronko is a Tokyo-based writer of murder, memoir, and music. His writing about Tokyo life and his character-driven mysteries have won awards and five-star reviews. Kirkus Reviews selected his second novel, The Moving Blade for their Best Books of 2018. The Last Train won the Shelf Unbound Competition for Best Independently Published Book.
7. Blindspot
Rachel Matthews is used to stress—from the cutthroat world of the district attorney’s office to her escalating clashes with her teenage daughter. So when a stranger sends a lavish bouquet with a macabre message and leaves a disturbing video on her doorstep, she’s quick to act. Teaming up with an old classmate turned private investigator, she wades through old case files, searching for someone harboring a grudge against her.
But before she has time to pinpoint a suspect, her stalker issues a demand—he wants money, lots of it, or he’ll hurt her daughter. In a dangerous gamble, Rachel agrees to meet her stalker on an isolated beach, only to find herself fleeing from a shocking crime scene. Can she solve the puzzle of who wants to destroy her before she loses her family, her career, and her freedom?
About the Authors
Maggie Smith
In a career that’s included work as a journalist, a psychologist, and the founder of a national art consulting company, Maggie Smith added novelist to her resume with the publication of her debut, Truth and Other Lies. A women’s fiction novel set in Chicago, it won NIEA’s Juror Grand Prize, the Star Award for Debut Fiction from Women’s Fiction Writers Association, a Foreword INDIES General Fiction Book of the Year, and was selected for the Women’s Book Association Great Group Reads. Blindspot, a psychological suspense, was the First Place Winner in the Mystery/Suspense category by Pencraft Book Awards, and is a finalist for CWA’s Book of the Year award for Indie Fiction.
8. Anna’s Shadow
Traumatized by her fiancé’s murder, Italian-Canadian orthopedic surgeon Sofia Rossi is on leave from Doctors Without Borders, spending time with family in Verona and volunteering at Verona’s Juliet Club to respond to letters from hapless lovers from around the world. A request to find Veronese Anna Bissoli, missing since the end of WWII, plunges Sofia into the destructiveness of that war, profoundly altering her life.
About the Author
Ingrid McCarthy
After a 33-year career in the theatre as a producer, director, and actress, Ingrid McCarthy now writes dramatic novels and novellas that are famous for their many twists and turns. She is the author of the children’s fantasy trilogy, The Black Pearl of Osis, and the Sex and the Seasons series, an erotic romp offstage and onstage in the world of theatre, written under her pen name Rose D. Franklyn. She lives in Ottawa, Canada, and when not writing paints decorative watercolours while drinking her favourite brew: Earl Grey.
9. An Impossible Life
An Impossible Life tells the powerful true account of one woman’s descent into depressive and manic episodes—and how she found life-saving therapy and medication to overcome and triumph.
When thirty-five-year-old Sonja Wasden is involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital by her husband and father, she is certain it must be a mistake. Wife of a CEO, mother of three, and living in a beautiful suburb, Sonja’s life appears ideal. How did she get here?
In this gripping and deeply personal narrative, Sonja reveals her delusions and battles with mental illness, making the reader feel as though they are listening in on a private conversation. When all hope seems lost, her true story of perseverance becomes both inspiring and unforgettable. Readers will walk away with a greater understanding of the challenges faced by those who struggle with mental health conditions.
About the Author
Rachael Siddoway & Sonja Wasden
Sonja and Rachael are authors, speakers, and passionate mental health advocates. They are a mother/daughter duo who have been interviewed across all 50 states on local and national news about their families struggle with mental illness. CBS This Morning Correspondent, Dr. Tara Narula, said that Sonja’s story was “one of my most sacred and special I’ve ever done.” They also have a TEDx talk!
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Article originally Published in the December / January 2024 Issue: 2024 Indie Best Award Winners.