M.C.V. EGAN ❧Defining Ways❧

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Historical Fiction / Mythology

Date Published: ‎April 7, 2026

Publisher: ‎ Manhattan Book Group

Mallory recruits Dr. George Avery, the world’s leading field zoologist to help her identify what she has found. At first, he is reluctant, unaware of the magnitude of what she has brought to him. As the puzzle begins to take shape, he is confronted by what the answers they find, reveal.

Exploring deeper, their growing affection ignites a sense of purpose, even as they face the shadows of the past and the dangers of their pursuit. In the haunting wilds of the Pacific Northwest, nature’s grandeur and brutality are ever-present. Tangled forests and untamed rivers, bears, wolves, and the ancient reverence of Indigenous traditions surround them, blurring the lines between myth and reality. Their quest becomes a journey not only to solve a mystery, but to reconcile love, loneliness, and the immortal question of our place in a world still ruled by secrets.

His debut novel, SASQ’ET will be released on April 7, 2026.

Max holds an honorary doctorate from Connecticut College and a degree in Anthropology. He is a member of The Writer’s Guild and past participant at the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference. His editorial and creative writing has been published by The New York Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, Gannett, Wildlife Conservation Magazine, PBS, Disney, and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Max produced the multi-media Making of Sgt. Pepper with Sir George Martin, featuring Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and Phil Collins.

He wrote and produced the most complete filmed history of the Beatles through the eyes of Sir George who signed them, produced their work, and played on many of their recordings. A part Max’s film became the award-winning PBS series Soundbreaking.

Many of the greatest pop culture icons of the 20th century have collaborated with Max on projects he has created, written, and produced including Herbie Hancock, Brian Wilson, Elton John, Joni Mitchell, B.B. King, Tony Bennett, Vince Gill, Burt Bacharach, Bonnie Raitt, Mark Knopfler, Michael Tilson Thomas, Gordon Lightfoot, Smokey Robinson, Jack White, Dave Grohl, Run-DMC, and Willie Nelson. A more complete listing of artists he has worked with can be found at: http://www.maximlangstaff.com

Known for his work with John Denver, Max created and produced the acclaimed television event, the Wildlife Concert, spawning the highest rated music program in cable TV history upon broadcast, two multi-platinum CD sets, and one of the best-selling music video programs ever released by SONY.

Working with the Wildlife Conservation Society, Max helped lead the largest fundraising effort ($100mm) ever undertaken for wildlife conservation, seeding the first integrated global conservation initiative to save endangered tigers.

On any given day you will likely find him on a wilderness river or mountain trail. A three-time Boston Marathoner, he lives in North Carolina. SASQ’ET is his first novel.

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by Deborah J. Lightfoot

Genre: Dystopian Paranormal Suspense

When your mind makes you the enemy, either your mind must die, or you will. 

Unless yours is the mind they can’t break.

Adverse Reactions

by Deborah J. Lightfoot

Genre: Dystopian Paranormal Suspense

Purity demands a bullet. Devin brings a reckoning.

Since she was six years old, Devin Perridin has been locked behind the walls of the family home to keep her hidden from those who would kill her. But at sixteen, she is exposed as a “Syke,” one of an outlawed minority who possess extraordinary powers of mind over matter. Snatched from hiding, she escapes the firing squad, but only to be imprisoned in a house of horrors: the Peaceful Hills Sanatorium and Rehabilitation Center for the Treatment of Persistent Mental Disorders. After an unknown time of torture and “behavior modification,” brutally designed to destroy her psychokinetic reflexes, she emerges from the asylum severely damaged in mind and spirit. Her salvation may lie in the series of crimes triggered by her release: first kidnapping, then attempted murder, and then a mustering of forbidden forces to assault the remote pseudo-psychiatric facility where she had been tortured into near-mindlessness.

Drawing upon a strength she had always known was hers but had never before been able to consciously control, Devin defies the authoritarian society with its unjust laws that demand her death. She pushes through pain, isolation, and moral quandaries to seek justice for not only herself, but all members of a maligned and cruelly persecuted minority. A post-apocalyptic, paranormal allegory for the times in which we live.

When your mind makes you the enemy, either your mind must die, or you will. Unless yours is the mind they can’t break.

 

“This novel is immediately immersive, with an opening scene that sucks readers in with vivid sensory detail and a great sense of suspense.” —The Black List

“What a story! I was picked up from the first page and you never let me go thereafter. The premise is original … compelling … convincing.” —ARC Reader

“A very enjoyable read. Excellent pacing. Immersive language. Polished, effortless writing. I’d love to see a prequel (or three)!” —ARC Reader

“Relevant to the current situation in the world. Ostracizing others who are different out of fear and ignorance. Cruelty and inhumanity.” —ARC Reader

“Believable and relatable.” —The Black List

“Thematically rich, as Devin faces constant self-doubt but eventually comes to find empowerment in the unique abilities that have made her an outcast.” —The Black List

 

**Get it #OnSale for only $1.99 4/21 – 4/24!**

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Chapter 1

 

VAPORS BILLOWED INTO the chamber in thick masses of orange. Devin choked on the sickly sweet odor.

“Don’t fight it, child,” came the voice—equally cloying—from the darkness beyond the floodlit, glass-walled chamber. “Give yourself up to it.”

The gas surged into Devin’s face, blinding, gagging her. She made it go away. By force of will, a moment’s mental reflex, she flung it back.

Fresh air flooded her nostrils and drove out the syrupy stink. She sucked in a cool, clean breath.

“No!” snapped the voice, crackling with amplified static. “You must not.”

The therapist dropped her with two thousand volts. Devin collapsed to the chamber’s floor, her body jerking, her nerves on fire. The pain was beyond enduring. A pain this intense must be lethal. But she did not die. As she convulsed, her muscles knotted in spasms, she could not scream. No part of her, not even her voice, was under her voluntary control.

“Try it again, child.” Smooth and saccharine once more, her unseen therapist spoke from the concealing shadows as the shock ended and Devin’s pain faded. “Stand up,” the torturer ordered. “And this time, do not fight it. Or your punishment will be the same: swift, sure, and severe.”

Devin struggled upright. She had to brace against the curved glass wall of the gas chamber to keep on her feet. Her muscles had melted from knots into jelly.

An orange cloud flooded the chamber and filled her nose with the stink of rotting fruit.

“Breathe it,” her therapist instructed. “You must.”

But again, Devin reacted by instinct alone. No conscious thought interposed between stimulus and response. The cloud approached; she pushed it away. Pure reflex, action of mind: act of self-preservation. The gas held back, suspended in midair, blocked by the power of her impulse.

On the instant, thousands of volts knocked her to the floor. Pain engulfed Devin, such a pain as must be lethal but wouldn’t do her the service of killing her. She writhed, silent and barely conscious.

Her therapist withdrew the punishment. Devin remained on the floor of the isolation chamber, curled in the fetal position, her long brown hair covering her face. Her body was hers to command once more, but her muscles had no strength to obey.

“You give new meaning to the word persistent, don’t you, girl?” muttered the disembodied voice. Then, more forcefully: “The first step toward healing is to admit you are diseased, Miss Perridin. You have an illness. A mental disorder. I am offering you the cure—in a pleasant aerosol spray that you need only breathe. Once inhaled, the drug acts quickly, and its effects are lasting. But you must take the first step and acknowledge that you want to be cured.”

The voice grew soft, sugary. “Child, for as long as you hold to the notion—the mistaken notion—that your disorder is in some way a strength or a benefit to you, you will continue to fail. And you will suffer the consequences of that failure. We can’t have that, can we?”

Devin gathered the remnants of her strength and rolled onto her back. To stand was impossible; she could barely shape a word.

“No,” she whispered.

She wasn’t speaking to her tormentor.

But: “That’s the spirit!” the therapist responded, sounding genuinely enthused. “Now we try again. Take your medicine like a good girl.”

The orange stink flowed in at the top of the chamber. Devin, lying face up, watched through the curtain of her hair as the cloud descended. She had time to ward it off, to make it go away. But in the soul of her being, nothing sparked. Her reflexes, her instincts, failed to respond. What had been a spontaneous force of mind over matter could offer no resistance.

Devin’s mouth filled with the sickening taste of defeat. The orange cloud enveloped her, a sticky weight, and she choked down lungfuls.

“Wonderful!” her therapist exclaimed. “My dear, I couldn’t be more pleased. This is the tipping point. Your recovery will be much easier from now on, I promise.”

Devin breathed the sickly sweet drug and felt the core of her mind go dead.

Then came the retching. Her body contorted in gut-shredding paroxysms as the drug made her vomit—or attempt to vomit. Her keepers had starved her for so long, her stomach had nothing to bring up. The dry heaves racked her with such violence that she could not breathe. After long moments, unconsciousness brought relief.

Castles in the cornfield provided the setting for Deborah J. Lightfoot’s earliest flights of fancy. On her father’s farm in Texas, she grew up reading tales of adventure and reenacting them behind ramparts of sun-drenched grain. She left the farm to earn a degree in journalism and write award-winning books of history and biography. High on her bucket list was the desire to try her hand at the genre she most admired. The result is Waterspell, a multi-layered fantasy series about a girl and the wizard who suspects her of being so dangerous to his world, he believes he’ll have to kill her … which troubles him, since he’s fallen in love with her.

 

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A Tapestry of Tangled Lives

Date Published: April 6, 2026

Publisher: Serapis Bey Publishing, Arizona, US http://www.parulagrawal.com

A story of human connection between twins, between lovers, between comrades in war, set against the shadow of the evangelical religion and its judgments.”

Based on a childhood of shadowy secrets surrounding her parents’ marriage and the rigid judgment of the Evangelical religion, the author attempts to find her truth. A work of historical fiction and romance, it spans the era of WWII and beyond, weaving the story of her father, mother and aunt (her mother’s twin sister). The unexpected twists and turns mirror those of our own lives, and readers can empathize and identify with the characters’ humanity as they struggle with their flaws. The power of religious judgement is explored along with the strength and resilience of individuals challenged by the ethics of life. This is also a fascinating study of the complexities of being twins. With the strongest of bonds that overwhelms their very different personalities, their love for the same man creates a gulf between them that threatens their entire adult relationship. It is also a story of a man and how he navigates his own journey after love and loss. When his WWII experience takes him to countries he has never dreamed of seeing, and opens him to the excitement of new cultures, he finds new meaning. At the same time, his bonds to his comrades in arms and their shared experiences of battlefield traumas leaves him with emotional scars. A story of secrets and the power of love, the themes of self-doubt and second chances are embedded in the narrative, along with the acceptance of one’s actions following painful choices.

A story of human connection between twins, lovers, comrades during World War 11, families, and generational trauma, set across the United States and Europe and against the shadow of the Evangelical religion and its judgments. A family saga of secrets, shadows, and unspoken enduring love, and its impact across three generations, based on a true story of lived experience. A work of romantic, historical fiction, The Man in the Middle; A Tale of Tangled Lives is based on the true story of the author’s parents. It follows their youth in the early 1900s in US, through the years of WWII in Europe, and after, and their lives as friends, lovers, parents, and elderly individuals.

This is a story of love and its many forms. There are no heroes or demons, only people dealing with their humanity. Or maybe there are heroes: Luke, as he navigates his life honourably and responsibly, while harbouring feelings for more than one woman; Anna as she comes to terms with her selfish impulses and attempts to overcome them; Pierrette, who recognizes and accepts that she cannot give Luke the life he wants, and that their love is not enough. Karoline is perhaps the true heroine of the book. A victim of the religious beliefs she is trapped by, she finds it impossible to love herself. Instead, she spends her life feeling inferior to her sister and undeserving of Luke’s love. At Luke’s passing, she finally receives the confirmation of her worth and her place as the love of his life.

About the Author

“The author lives half-time in San Diego, CA, and half-time in a small village in Southern France. This is her exploration of the unexplained secrets that shadowed her childhood and the consequences that haunt all our choices.”

“I wrote this book to come to terms with my past. I wanted to understand the people who raised me, through the fictional characters of Karoline and Luke, who represent my parents and my mother’s twin sister, Anna, who represents my aunt. My childhood was full of love, but as I watched the individuals around me, I sensed a drama that excluded me. I knew my father had been in WWII and experienced Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge and much more during the four years he spent in Europe. The way he talked about the world he had discovered there intrigued me and I knew there was more to tell, which he never spoke about. My mother adored my father, but there was a tension in the room when my aunt was present. A connection between my father and my aunt was obvious despite their effort to hide it. Through the years, there were inadvertent comments that hinted of a previous relationship between them, but it wasn’t until the end of my father’s life that conversations took place that enlightened me. I didn’t ask, but they each wanted to tell their story, their truth about what happened. This book is my truth, my experience in living with them and loving them. It is my attempt to honor them by exploring their humanness and accepting that we are each a complex entity.”

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A WALTZ ACROSS TIME spans 500 years of New Mexico’s history, inspired by family ancestral records and lore; interweaving a contemporary ghost story, bibliomystery and romance with fictionalized accounts of ordinary people navigating extraordinary times.

Lucinda, a clairvoyant Santa Fe bookstore owner, promises the ghost of a one-eyed Marine she will return his family’s 500-year-old Spanish Bible to his descendant and rightful heir, using clues stashed within its pages to guide her search.

Each clue opens a window to the lives and loves of Franciscans and Indigenous peoples, Spanish-Mexican colonials, mixed-race settlers creating adobe homesteads and fighting slavery with the Union Army, forbidden lovers eloping amidst a hail of bullets, midnight fugitives being quietly fed, and WWII soldiers prevailing over devastating injuries. But Lucinda’s search for the Bible’s heir goes dark with the plight of a Marine who lost an eye at Okinawa and imagined a raven-haired angel just before his world, too, went dark. How can she trace the thread of his life to the present day and keep her promise without losing sight of her own hopes and dreams?

Praise for A Waltz Across Time

“Complete perfection word by word. Your interpersonal dialogue among the characters seems so real as to almost have been recorded on tape as it occurred. This book has great pathos, as well as hopefulness.” – Reg Olson

“… a historical novel blended with adventure, romance, mystery, suspense, and a paranormal touch … Jiron interweaves two stories: a modern-day romance and the history of New Mexico from the fifteenth to the twentieth century…Through well-researched historical exposition and cinematic depictions…The prose effortlessly shifts between historical times and the contemporary era. ” – K.Mbuya (Readers’ Favorite)

 

 

About the Author 

I am a Midwesterner from America’s corn belt, but have lived in 7 states (18 different cities) and Austria. As a travel agent and tour operator, I got my first chance to do creative writing in the form of travel brochures for places I’d never been:). Eleven years with Hughes AirWest/Republic/Northwest airlines were fun because aircraft had actual legroom back then (!) and I also worked as a recruiter. But after too many “dumb stewardess” jokes, I earned my Ph.D. in Clinical Neuropsychology and worked with neurodivergent individuals of all ages in many settings (clinical and educational) for 20 years, which involved writing detailed clinical assessment results and treatment programs. All of that culminated in my first published book, “Brainstorming: Using Neuropsychology in the Schools.” Anthony Girard at Western Psychological Services taught me the priceless value of a good editor:).

But the most fun career I ever had was running elementary school libraries for 6 years! I redesigned the physical setup to display kids’ book covers facing out at their eye level, and developed a curriculum that allowed for coaching cognitive and social skills through read-aloud. After six years, students’ scores on standardized reading tests improved significantly, and I keep a basket of Thank You cards from parents who said Library was their child’s “favorite class.”

During those years, writing time was scarce, but I enjoyed a one-month writers’ retreat at Vermont Studio Center in 2014, where I drafted a family drama/speculative fiction then titled “The Well,” which won the 2015 Chanticleer Paranormal Award, and was a Finalist for the 2015 Indie Book Award (since then updated and retitled, “Voices from the Well.”)

After retiring in 2017, I was able to garner enough concentrated time to work on the five stories that had been cavorting in my head for years. A Waltz Across Time was one of those books. I also authored a spiritually-oriented self-help book, “Living the Real Tree of Life,” and collaborated on two plant medicine books with a 2-tour Iraq war veteran turned ayahuasca healer, Drew Bankey.

On a more personal level, due to a mild spinal curvature, I started doing yoga at age 16 and have practiced several different styles, but focused on Kundalini yoga for the past 40 years. I’ve taught that practice in a variety of settings, including churches, recreation centers, and a maximum security prison. My husband and I currently reside in wondrous New Mexico, where the skies are a panorama every moment.

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Loving a Lancaster Book 4

by Stacy Eaton

Genre: Contemporary Small-Town Romance

When her world loses its color, he’s the only one who can help her find the brush again.

Lance

Loving a Lancaster Book 4

by Stacy Eaton

Genre: Contemporary Small-Town Romance

As a Forensic Accountant, Lance Lancaster lives on facts and the small details that get overlooked. When his firm takes on a new client, and Aurora Moonshadow enters the room, the facts he lived by and relied on quickly begin to vanish, leaving him in the unknown territory of protective gemstones and Navajo folklore.

Aurora Moonshadow believes in signs and living every minute to the fullest. After her father passes and she takes over the family business, she finds herself unable to understand the dire situation her father left behind. That is until Lance arrives to help her. The creativity that has been hidden by grief quickly emerges after meeting him, and Aurora is on top of the world until her protective bracelet breaks.

When Aurora goes missing, Lance returns to Sedona and will do just about anything to help find her. Learning that she started painting again after their one night together makes Lance even more determined to locate her and bring her home safe.

Will they be able to find Aurora before everything she loves is destroyed, including herself? Or will Lance be left with only her final painting?

Lance is the fourth book in the Loving a Lancaster Series. This series spin-off of the Loving a Winston Series, which spins off the Loving a Young Series.

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Leo, Book 1
Luna, Book 2
Levi, Book 3
Lance, Book 4

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Stacy Eaton is a USA Today Bestselling author and began her writing career in October of 2010. Stacy took early retirement from law enforcement after over fifteen years of service in 2016 due to a second serious concussion. Her last three years on the job were in investigations and crime scene investigation. She now writes full-time.

Stacy resides in southeastern Pennsylvania with her husband, who works in law enforcement. She has a daughter in college and a son who is currently serving in the United States Navy.

Stacy writes a variety of genres, but mostly romance. She enjoys writing real-life stories that people can relate to with real-life problems, emotions, and solutions.

Her favorites: Classic cars, photography, Disney, music, coffee, and her favorite sweatshirt that says, You are dangerously close to getting killed in my next novel.

 

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Book 1 of the Asatru Saga

With the station coming dangerously close to a fiery reentry, her old love and fellow former Navy pilot, Steve Paige, offers a radical and risky solution. The company he works for as a test pilot is developing a next-generation spacecraft, the Valkyrie. However, Steve is conflicted about his motive for volunteering for the mission. Is it duty to fellow astronauts or lingering emotions for Claire?

As NASA and the U.S. State Department scramble for a solution, Claire investigates what caused the improbable accident. She learns of a sinister plot to use the ISS as a retaliatory weapon aimed at Washington, D.C. This compels her to try to piece together who and how the station was sabotaged before it is too late.

The people behind the attack will stop at nothing to keep the identity of the culprit a secret. Even if someone can save her and the crew, Claire is the only one who knows what really happened, making her the target of an international assassin. The stakes are high as all parties understand that the incident could spark World War III.

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 Adriene Caldwell is an author and advocate from Houston, Texas. Her memoir, Unbroken: Life Outside the Lines, traces the quiet aftermath of childhood trauma and the long arc of healing. Through writing, talks, and UnbrokenCaldwell.com, she champions hope, resilience, and storytelling as tools for recovery.

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