Angel Matthew’s day started like any other—coffee, commute, the familiar routine of heading to work with nothing more dramatic on the agenda than meetings and emails. Then she runs into the armed man in the hallway and everything explodes into chaos. What comes next is a terrifying blur of images and sensations that her mind can barely process: a hostage ordeal where every breath might be her last, a terrorist attack unfolding in real-time, explosions that shake the building and shatter windows, gunfire that sounds impossibly loud in enclosed spaces, a desperate fight for her life against people who see her as nothing more than a pawn in their larger game. When the immediate danger finally ends—or she thinks it ends—Angel wakes with a pounding head injury that makes the world swim in and out of focus. She’s no longer at her workplace but in an unknown location, in the custody of a group of armed men who won’t tell her exactly who they are or what they want from her. 🔫
Shepherd Security operates in the shadows of the security world, an organization that recruits only the very best operators—the kind of elite soldiers and intelligence operatives who can protect someone in trouble like no other agency because they work invisibly, outside the traditional system where rules and regulations often prevent effective action. They don’t exist in any official capacity, which means they can take actions that would get conventional law enforcement or military units tangled in red tape and legal challenges for years. Their people are ghosts, their operations are invisible, and their methods are whatever works. That’s why they’re called in when someone must be protected at all costs, when conventional security would be inadequate or compromised, or when answers must be obtained from suspects by any means necessary. The oath they took to protect supersedes everything else, including the legal niceties that constrain official operations. 💼
One of these Shepherd Security operatives is Jackson, and he’s assigned to Angel’s case. He’s attractive, attentive, and shows her a kindness that seems genuine rather than tactical. In the disorienting aftermath of trauma and captivity, Angel finds herself trusting him despite having no real reason to beyond instinct and the desperate need to believe someone in this nightmare has her best interests at heart. She’s falling for him, which might be Stockholm Syndrome or might be genuine connection—it’s impossible to tell when your entire world has been violently upended and the only stable thing is the man who keeps checking on you with concerned eyes and a gentle voice. Jackson treats her with a care that feels personal rather than professional, and Angel clings to that humanity in a situation that’s stripped away everything familiar and safe. 🛡️
But there’s a critical problem that makes Angel’s situation far more complicated than a straightforward rescue: Shepherd Security doesn’t yet know whether she’s a witness who needs protection or the perpetrator who helped orchestrate the attack. Is she an innocent caught in the crossfire, or is she complicit in terrorism? Is she a friendly who deserves their protection, or a foe who deserves interrogation by any means necessary? Is she innocent, or is she guilty as sin and playing them all with carefully manufactured vulnerability? Angel Matthews fits into that dangerous gray category where the truth isn’t immediately clear, and determining which side she’s really on becomes the mission’s primary objective. For Jackson, this uncertainty creates devastating conflict—his growing feelings for Angel war with his duty to remain objective, to treat her as a potential threat until proven otherwise, to remember that attractive women have been used as terrorist assets before and tears can be as tactical as weapons. 🕵️
Why this hooks you: Margaret Kay launches her Shepherd Security series with a high-stakes premise that combines action-thriller intensity with romantic suspense, creating a scenario where trust becomes the most dangerous gamble either character can make. The “is she innocent or guilty” question drives tension while allowing for genuine romantic development—Jackson must figure out the truth while fighting his attraction, and Angel must prove her innocence while falling for someone who might be her protector or her interrogator. For readers who love military romance with actual suspense, morally complex scenarios where good guys operate in gray zones, and the forbidden appeal of captor-captive dynamics handled with intelligence rather than just Stockholm Syndrome, this series opener promises addictive reading. 🎯
She’s made a vision board for her perfect freshman year at Chicago North University, complete with five carefully chosen goals that represent who she wants to become in this new chapter of life. Learn a new life skill—because college is about growth, right? Get a tattoo—a permanent mark of independence and rebellion against her previous good-girl image. Pay off her car—financial responsibility matters even when you’re young. Enter the Art Fest and win—because she’s not just attending art school, she’s going to dominate it. And number five, the one she added half-jokingly because she couldn’t think of anything else and needed a nice round number: Fall in love with a stranger. Yes, she knows goal five isn’t technically achievable through effort and planning like the others, but she couldn’t think of another concrete objective and “fall in love with a stranger” had a romantic, adventurous ring that fit her vision of college as transformation. 🎨
Little did she know when she wrote that vision board that she’d cross off number five just two weeks into her first semester, and in the most unexpected way possible. He’s the model in her figure drawing class, standing under the harsh studio lights while students sketch his form with charcoal and conte crayon. She’s supposed to be focusing on anatomy, on capturing the play of light across muscle, on technique and composition—but it’s impossible to concentrate on anything except his face. Full lips that curve slightly even when he’s holding still, piercing eyes that seem to see straight through her attempts at artistic objectivity, and a jawline so perfectly carved it looks like someone already sculpted it from solid rock. Who wouldn’t fall head over heels the moment they laid eyes on a face like that? She tells herself it’s just aesthetic appreciation, that artists are supposed to notice beauty, but she’s lying to herself and knows it. 💕
Strangers like that don’t fall for awkward art school girls like her—that’s just reality. Models who look like Greek gods brought to life don’t give second glances to freshman students still figuring out how charcoal works. They don’t give knowing winks and hidden smiles when no one else is watching, making her wonder if she’s imagining the attention or if it’s actually happening. They definitely don’t give rides home in the pouring rain after class, sitting close in the car’s intimate space while rain drums on the roof and conversation flows easier than it should between strangers. And they absolutely do not give good night kisses that linger and promise and make her forget every reason this is probably a terrible idea. Until, impossibly, they do all of those things. Until Drew Rose—because that’s his name, she finally learned after the third time he drove her home—starts showing up in her life in ways that feel deliberate, intentional, like maybe she’s not the only one falling here. 😍
His name was Drew Rose, and she was falling hard for the mysterious stranger who’d become anything but a stranger. She’s crossing off vision board goals she didn’t even know she had—learning to trust her instincts, discovering what real chemistry feels like, understanding that sometimes the best things happen when you stop planning. Then comes the moment that changes everything: she discovers that Drew isn’t just some random hot guy who happened to model for her art class. He’s her big brother’s best friend, the one person on the entire campus who should have been automatically off-limits by unspoken family loyalty rules. She fell for literally the one stranger she absolutely should not have fallen for, the guy whose involvement with her could destroy his friendship with her brother and create family drama that will follow them both for years. But his was a face worth falling on—worth risking the complications, worth the inevitable awkward conversations, worth whatever consequences come from breaking the unwritten rules about brothers’ best friends being sacred territory. 🎭
What makes this delightful: Tabatha Kiss delivers a college romance that combines the brother’s-best-friend trope with the meet-cute appeal of an art class model, creating a setup that’s both sweetly innocent and charged with tension. The vision board framing device is charming while providing structure, and the art school setting offers creative atmosphere that distinguishes this from typical campus romance. For readers who love forbidden attraction that’s more “awkward family dinners” than genuinely dangerous, heroes who are patient with inexperienced heroines, and the specific appeal of falling for someone before learning why you shouldn’t, this series starter promises rom-com fun with genuine chemistry and the brother’s-best-friend angst that never gets old. 📚
The first seventy-two hours after disaster strikes could determine who lives and who dies, and Keme Lopez understands this with a clarity that borders on obsession. He’s not a paranoid prepper stockpiling weapons in a bunker—he’s a rational man who’s studied history, who understands how quickly civilization’s veneer cracks under pressure, who recognizes the signs that most people dismiss as temporary inconveniences. He needs to prepare his family for the apocalypse that he understands has already begun, even if they don’t see it yet. The problem is convincing the people he loves that this time is different, that the disaster isn’t theoretical or distant but unfolding right now in ways they’ll recognize too late if they don’t act immediately. Hesitation kills in survival situations—that’s not paranoia, it’s statistics. Those who are slow to believe, who wait for official confirmation or consensus before taking action, might not survive the first wave of anarchy that follows when systems collapse. ⚠️
When all of the lower orbital satellites suddenly stop working—not failing gradually but going dark simultaneously in a coordinated cascade that can only be deliberate sabotage or attack—everyone is plunged without warning into an apocalyptic world. Modern life depends on satellite infrastructure in ways most people never consider: GPS navigation, communication networks, financial transactions, supply chain coordination, weather forecasting, emergency services dispatch. Take away the satellites and you don’t just lose convenience—you lose the invisible framework holding technological civilization together. In the small Texas town of Alpine where Keme and his family live, the initial reaction is confusion rather than panic. Phones don’t work, but maybe it’s just a temporary outage. GPS is down, but people navigated before smartphones existed. The true scope of the catastrophe takes time to sink in as hours pass with no restoration of service, no official explanation, no sense that anyone in authority has this situation under control. 📡
Isolated in Alpine with the vast Chihuahuan Desert providing a natural buffer against the chaos erupting in major population centers, the community has certain advantages that urban areas lack. Distance from desperate masses, access to land and water, a population that still remembers how to do things manually rather than depending entirely on technology. But distance and resources aren’t enough to ensure survival, because some people see the collapse not as a tragedy but as an opportunity. When the restraints of law and social order dissolve, certain personalities view the resulting vacuum as a chance to grab power, accumulate allies through intimidation or persuasion, and seize resources that will make them kings in the new world order. These people, left unchecked and allowed to consolidate power while everyone else is still processing shock, could usher in the destruction of the place Keme calls home. They’re the greater threat than failing infrastructure or food shortages—humans with ambition and no remaining constraints. 🌵
Whatever steps Keme and his community take now, or fail to take in these critical first days, will determine their chances of survival as the world is covered in what can only be called a Veil of Mystery. Nobody knows who caused the satellite collapse or why, whether it’s an attack by a hostile nation or a cascading technical failure or something else entirely. Without communication with the outside world, Alpine exists in informational isolation—no news, no updates, no way to know if this is localized or global, temporary or permanent. That uncertainty is its own kind of danger because you can’t plan effectively when you don’t know what you’re planning for. But Keme understands that waiting for clarity is a luxury they can’t afford. Action must be taken based on incomplete information, communities must organize before chaos becomes entrenched, and leadership must emerge before the wrong people claim that role by default. The veil of mystery covering the world might eventually lift, but survival depends on what they do in the darkness before dawn. 🔦
Why this compels: Vannetta Chapman brings her Amish fiction expertise to post-apocalyptic sci-fi, creating a realistic collapse scenario grounded in our actual satellite-dependent infrastructure while exploring how a small-town community might organize for survival. The Kessler Effect premise (cascading satellite destruction) is scientifically plausible rather than Hollywood fantasy, and the Texas desert setting provides isolation without complete resource scarcity. For readers who love William Forstchen’s “One Second After,” A.G. Riddle’s Extinction Files, or anyone fascinated by the question of how society reorganizes when modern infrastructure fails, this series opener delivers thoughtful disaster fiction that emphasizes community building and moral choices over simple survival action. 🌟
NEW RELEASES
Beneath the calm hum of America’s power grids, buried in the complex architecture of systems that keep hospitals running and water flowing, a new kind of weapon lies dormant. It’s not a bomb or a bullet or even a traditional virus—it’s something far more insidious. Phantom is a self-learning piece of code, an artificial intelligence designed for destruction, planted deep inside the nation’s critical infrastructure where it can do the most damage. For months or perhaps years, it’s been sitting there invisible and patient, evading detection protocols, learning the systems it inhabits, mapping vulnerabilities, and waiting for the single command that will bring it to life. That command is coming, and when Phantom awakens, the comfortable assumptions Americans make about the permanence of electricity, clean water, and functioning infrastructure will be revealed as dangerous illusions. 💻
Max Shaw knows more about defending critical infrastructure than almost anyone in the country, having spent years as a cybersecurity leader at the National Infrastructure Protection Agency protecting systems most people never think about until they fail. He’s battle-worn from endless budget fights, bureaucratic obstacles, and the exhausting vigilance required to defend against sophisticated state-sponsored threats. Max has spent his career preparing for worst-case scenarios, running simulations, building defensive protocols, and trying to stay ahead of adversaries who are constantly probing for weaknesses. But when the grid flickers—just a momentary disruption that most people wouldn’t even notice—and a single word appears across his screen in stark letters, Max feels ice flood his veins: PHANTOM: AWAKE. It’s the nightmare scenario he’s spent years trying to prevent, the one that keeps him awake at night running through response protocols. The enemy isn’t trying to break in anymore. The enemy is already inside, has been inside all along, embedded so deeply in the infrastructure that excising it without causing catastrophic damage might be impossible. ⚡
Max can’t face this threat alone, so he assembles a team of specialists who bring different skills to what promises to be the most consequential fight of their lives. Tara Lin is an MIT-trained code-breaker with the kind of brilliant mind that sees patterns others miss, but she’s also carrying emotional scars that affect her judgment in ways she tries to hide. Her brother’s identity was stolen years ago, used in a sophisticated cyberattack that ruined his life, and Tara has been hunting the perpetrators ever since with an intensity that borders on obsession. Now she’s got a chance to strike back at the kind of people who destroyed her brother, and she brings that personal fury to the hunt for Phantom. Sam Rourke completes the team—a field-forged deputy who walks with a pronounced limp from an injury sustained in a previous war, carrying physical and psychological wounds that haven’t fully healed. Sam understands combat in ways the others don’t, knows how enemies think and operate, and brings hard-won tactical wisdom to complement Max’s technical expertise and Tara’s coding genius. 🔐
Together they race to trace the infection before it cascades through every network that keeps the nation functioning—the power grids that heat homes and run hospitals, the water treatment plants that make tap water safe to drink, the communication systems that coordinate emergency responses, the transportation networks that move food and medicine. The investigation takes them from Washington’s hidden command bundles where policy makers operate in crisis mode, to data farms buried in the Kansas plains where massive server installations hum with processing power, to the remote locations where infrastructure vulnerabilities create single points of catastrophic failure. Sleeper Code delivers a pulse-pounding journey through the invisible battlefield of the twenty-first century, where wars are fought in code rather than on conventional battlefields, where power and water and trust itself can vanish with a single keystroke executed by someone sitting thousands of miles away. The terrifying question driving every action Max and his team take is brutally simple: Can they stop a weapon that learns faster than they can think, adapting its tactics in real-time to counter every defensive move they make—or has the countdown already begun, the damage already spreading beyond the point where it can be contained? ⏰
What makes this essential reading: Kevin McGuire has written a techno-thriller that arrives at the precise moment when its premise stops being fiction and becomes plausible nightmare—we’re living through the era of ransomware attacks on pipelines, grid intrusions by foreign actors, and the growing realization that our infrastructure is far more vulnerable than we want to believe. The self-learning AI angle elevates this beyond typical cyber-thriller territory, creating an enemy that doesn’t just attack but evolves, forcing defenders to think several moves ahead while knowing their adversary is doing the same calculation exponentially faster. For readers who devoured Marc Elsberg’s “Blackout,” William Hertling’s “Kill Process,” or Daniel Suarez’s “Daemon,” this delivers that same potent combination of technical authenticity and existential dread, reminding us that the most dangerous weapons of this century won’t announce themselves with explosions—they’ll simply turn off the lights and wait for civilization to collapse in the darkness. 🌃
The advice is everywhere, repeated like gospel in every business book and career guide: “Be more visible.” Build your brand. Show up online. Network digitally. Establish your presence. The imperative is clear and increasingly urgent in a world where professional opportunities often depend on digital visibility. But here’s what nobody explains—how exactly you’re supposed to do that when the very thought of putting yourself out there makes you anxious, when the technical aspects of social media feel overwhelming, when every attempt to craft a post leaves you paralyzed by self-doubt and the fear of looking foolish. The gap between “you should be visible” and “here’s how to actually do it in a way that feels authentic” is vast and largely unaddressed, leaving countless talented people stuck on the sidelines of opportunities they deserve, not because they lack ability but because they lack a roadmap for translating their private expertise into public presence. 💭
Tech-No to Tech Pro is your simple, human-centered guide to showing up online in a way that feels natural rather than performative, genuine rather than manufactured—even if you’ve spent years actively avoiding the spotlight or have repeatedly told yourself “I’m just not techy.” Leila Kubesch writes from the authority of someone who’s walked this exact path, transforming herself from a complete unknown with one lonely follower (probably her mom) to someone who attracts opportunities from around the world based on the authentic presence she’s built. This isn’t a guru making promises from a place of natural extroversion or innate technical ability—this is a mentor who remembers exactly how paralyzing it feels to stare at a blank posting box, who understands the specific terror of hitting “publish,” who knows the disappointment of creating something you’re proud of and having exactly zero people engage with it. Kubesch doesn’t promise overnight transformation or viral success because she’s honest about what actually works: small, consistent steps that build competence and confidence simultaneously, without requiring fancy lighting setups, expensive equipment, or becoming someone you’re not. 📱
Inside these pages, you’ll learn how to share your work without sounding like you’re desperately selling something, which is perhaps the most valuable skill in an era where everyone can smell inauthenticity from miles away. Kubesch teaches you to use storytelling as your strongest visibility tool—not manufactured narratives or exaggerated drama, but the genuine stories embedded in your work, your process, your failures and insights and moments of discovery. She shows you how to create simple posts that people actually respond to, breaking down the mysterious alchemy that makes some content spark conversation while most disappears into the void. The guidance covers how to stay consistent even when you feel shy or unsure, when the voice in your head insists you have nothing valuable to say, when comparing yourself to seemingly effortless digital natives makes you want to give up entirely. Perhaps most importantly, she maps out the traps that waste time, energy, and confidence—the comparison spirals, the perfectionism paralysis, the platform-hopping that prevents you from building momentum anywhere, the engagement metrics that make you question your worth. 💡
The real transformation Kubesch offers isn’t about turning you into an influencer or teaching you to game algorithms—it’s about helping you turn curiosity into connection, and connection into opportunity. She demonstrates how showing up with intention, using your authentic voice rather than imitating what seems to work for others, and building a digital presence that reflects who you truly are creates something far more valuable than viral moments. This approach is sustainable because it’s not performance; it’s translation—taking the expertise, insights, and value you already possess and making them accessible to people who need exactly what you have to offer. The subtitle’s promise—”without losing your humanity”—is the crucial differentiator here. Kubesch never asks you to manufacture a persona, chase trends that feel foreign to your nature, or sacrifice your boundaries and peace of mind on the altar of visibility. Instead, she offers frameworks for being seen that enhance rather than compromise your sense of self, that build professional presence while protecting personal integrity. 🌟
Why this matters now: In a marketplace oversaturated with social media advice from people who make visibility look effortless, Leila Kubesch has carved out essential space for the hesitant majority—the artists, freelancers, small business owners, consultants, and professionals who need online presence for career survival but find most guidance either too technical, too extroverted, or too divorced from their actual values and personality. This book addresses the middle ground where authenticity meets necessity, where introversion can coexist with visibility, where you can build a meaningful digital presence without becoming someone you don’t recognize. For anyone who’s ever been told to “just start posting” without receiving actual tools to make that sustainable and authentic, this offers the missing roadmap that honors both professional ambition and personal boundaries. 🎯
What if everything you’ve been told about weight loss is fundamentally backwards? What if the key to lasting transformation wasn’t deprivation, restriction, and the constant willpower battle against foods you love—but rather finding ways to satisfy your desires while simultaneously healing your body from the inside out? It’s a radical proposition in a culture that’s spent decades conditioning us to believe that suffering equals results, that effective weight loss requires sacrifice and misery, that enjoying your food is somehow incompatible with being healthy. But Jon Gabriel, best-selling author and creator of The Gabriel Method, has built his approach on a revolutionary premise that challenges every assumption the diet industry has sold us: what if dessert could be medicine? What if the path to sustainable weight loss required pleasure, not punishment? 🍨
In Eat Ice Cream, Lose Weight, Gabriel reveals his groundbreaking discovery of superfood ice creams that heal your body from the inside out while helping you lose weight naturally, without calorie counting, without restrictive meal plans, without the psychological torture that characterizes most diet programs. These aren’t merely lower-calorie versions of conventional ice cream, artificially sweetened substitutes that leave you unsatisfied and craving the real thing. Gabriel has developed formulations that transform ice cream from indulgent treat into nutritional powerhouse, using nutrient-dense ingredients, gut-healing superfoods, and hormone-balancing formulas that turn this beloved dessert into what he calls your most powerful health food. The concept sounds too good to be true—eating ice cream for weight loss flies in the face of conventional wisdom—but Gabriel backs his approach with both scientific research and his own dramatic personal transformation, having lost over 220 pounds without surgery or the soul-crushing restriction of traditional diets. 🔬
Inside these pages, you’ll uncover why diets fail with such depressing regularity, why the billions of dollars spent on weight loss programs and products produce such temporary, disappointing results. Gabriel explains how to make fat loss effortless by working with your body’s natural intelligence rather than fighting against it through willpower alone. He introduces the 4-part formula for perfect nutrition—a framework that addresses not just calories but the biochemical signals that govern whether your body stores fat or releases it, whether your metabolism runs efficiently or sluggishly, whether you feel energized or exhausted. The heart of the book teaches you how to build superfood ice creams that accomplish multiple goals simultaneously: calming the cravings that derail most diet attempts, balancing the hormones that regulate appetite and fat storage, and repairing the metabolic damage that years of restriction and yo-yo dieting may have caused. Gabriel provides simple, practical ways to trigger fat burning, increase energy levels that make movement feel natural rather than obligatory, and promote cellular rejuvenation that affects everything from skin health to cognitive function. 💪
The approach Gabriel advocates represents a fundamental philosophical shift in how we think about food, weight, and health. He blends rigorous science about hormones, gut microbiome, and metabolic function with psychological insights about why deprivation triggers the body’s famine response, making weight loss progressively harder the more you restrict. His method integrates an understanding of pleasure’s role in sustainable change—the recognition that if an approach feels like punishment, if it requires constant vigilance and willpower, it’s not sustainable regardless of short-term results. Gabriel proves that lasting weight loss isn’t about restriction or suffering; it’s about nourishment and joy, about giving your body what it actually needs so it can release the fat it’s been desperately clinging to as protection against perceived scarcity. If you’ve ever dreamed of eating the foods you love while getting leaner, stronger, and younger—reclaiming energy you forgot you could have, reversing markers of aging, and escaping the miserable cycle of diet-binge-regret—this book will show you how to have your ice cream and lose weight too. 🎯
Why this challenges everything: Jon Gabriel has written the book that diet culture doesn’t want you to read, the one that exposes how the suffering-equals-results mentality actually sabotages long-term success by triggering biological and psychological responses that make fat loss progressively harder. His superfood ice cream approach isn’t a gimmick but a practical application of biochemistry, psychology, and nutritional science that addresses why conventional restriction fails while offering an alternative that honors both body wisdom and the human need for pleasure. For readers exhausted by the diet industrial complex, intrigued by intuitive eating and anti-diet philosophies, or interested in metabolic health and the emerging science of gut-hormone-brain connections, Gabriel offers both recipes and a conceptual framework that could genuinely transform your relationship with food, weight, and the possibility of sustainable change without suffering. 🌈