My Virtual Tour to Celebrate the Release of My Latest Book Continues!

My blog tour celebrating the release of my latest nonfiction book The Life and Times of Sherlock Holmes continues through December 20. If you haven't yet visited the tour, you don't want to enter the giveaway for a $20 Amazon gift card who enter their name and email to a list.

Follow the tour HERE for special content and the giveaway!

This Month's Book Fairs

End-of-Year All-Genre Book Fair

To celebrate the end of the year, eBookFairs is holding an all-genre fair featuring 30 books. There is sure to be one or two that raises your interest - for you or as the perfect gift. Check them all out here.

And don't forget to scroll down to enter the gift-card giveaway!

Step into the past this holiday season. Whether it's a mystery, general fiction, or nonfiction, you'll find something great for your next historical read. Check them all out here today!

FREE eBOOK

Noir Bites

by Joan De La Haye

Dive into "Noir Bites," a collection of five thriller short stories that plunge into the gritty world of crime and survival. Meet an elderly woman defending her home, witness a woman forced to make brutal choices in an apocalyptic scenario, and experience the relentless tension in every tale.

If you enjoy suspense, unexpected twists, and the thrill of survival, "Noir Bites" invites you into a world where secrets are exposed, and survival is a deadly game. Get your copy here.

The Artist

By Carmen Amato

Final Chapter

Story Recap: Emilia Cruz, a female detective in the Acapulco police department, and her partner Rico Portillo have been assigned to investigate a threat left by an Acapulco gang at a local school. The narcomanta banner threatens to kill a teacher a week unless half their salaries are turned over to the gang. The two propose going undercover at the school to see if they can catch whoever is terrorizing the school. Rico will be working as the custodian as a way of watching out for any suspicious characters around the school. Emilia will be the art teacher. In her classes, she learns that students have already lost family to the narcos. Another narcomanta appeared the next day with greater demands and several outlooks were spotted in the area. Emilia made plans for an art show for Friday. When the school director failed to show up at the school on Friday, the police searched for her and found her car a few blocks from the school, with her apparently taken by force from the car. When Emilia notices red paint on Vice Principal Medina's sleeve, he confesses to having replaced the drug gang's narcomanta with directions for making the ransom payment with one demanding a higher payment. When the drug gang's ransom wasn't paid,, she was abducted and her fate sealed.

The line was long and the sun blazed but Emilia waited patiently along with everyone else. For the most part the crowd was silent, although now and then she heard a whispered conversation, a wail of grief, or the sound of someone crying softly. Even journalists whispered into their microphones as if reluctant to report too aggressively.

True to the prediction, at least a million people were there. Acapulco’s main artery, the broad Costera Miguel Alemán boulevard, had become a pedestrian walkway, effectively bottling up the city.

The event had started at noon. Poetry was read and speeches made. Prayers dedicated to the thousands who remained missing. Pleas made to el presidente for a solution to the violence. And then the lines formed.

When Emilia finally made it to the canopy at the front of the line, the man behind the makeshift desk gave her a form to sign. She scribbled her name and was given a ticket and piece of printer paper on which was typed in bold black letters the phrase ¿Dónde Están? Following his instructions, she wrote “Maria Ileana Toledo, Acapulco” below the letters, along with last Friday’s date, and folded the paper in half lengthwise. The man let her know where she should go next.

Emilia gathered up her items and followed another line of people at least half a mile along the boulevard before finding a sign for the section marked on her ticket. She’d driven the Costera Miguel Alemán hundreds of times, yet now―lined with people and full of questions―it was unrecognizable.

The rally organizer for that section checked her ticket. Emilia was led to an imaginary square in the road, as if the avenue overlooking the ocean had become an invisible chessboard. Emilia gazed around. Every chess player had a story, every chess piece held the same question.

Emilia put the scuffed leather pumps down on the tarmac near a pair of men’s loafers.

The woman arranging the loafers gave Emilia a weepy smile. “My Hector,” she said with a nod at the loafers. She lifted her chin at the pumps. “Your mother?”

Emilia shook her head, surprised to find herself dry-eyed. “A friend,” she answered.

She pointed the toes of the pumps toward the ocean, in the same direction as the other thousands of ownerless shoes. The folded paper with Maria Ileana Toledo’s name and the anguished cry of Where Are They? was slipped into the right shoe so that it was positioned the same as the papers in all the other pairs of shoes. The bold question could be clearly seen. Emilia wished she’d written the principal’s name in bigger letters.

The rally organizer shepherded her along as more people came into the section to set down their loved ones’ shoes on the road. Emilia lost herself in the crowd swirling toward a vantage point above the beach at Playa Hornitos. The going was slow as people continually stopped to take pictures.

The road wasn’t a chessboard, Emilia thought, so much as it was a cemetery. A cemetery of shoes, each pair transformed by grief into a headstone bearing the name of someone who was lost, and a question that had yet to be answered.

The headstones were sandals and sneakers and work boots and soccer cleats and bedroom slippers and platform heels and the shoes of school children worn from playing kickball and tag. They were all sizes and colors; some new, some old. The only thing they had in common was their missing owners.

Emilia snapped a picture with her cell phone, capturing the graveyard bordering the most beautiful bay in the world. The scuffed leather pumps were lost amid so many other pairs of shoes.

She made her way out of the crowds, poetry from the rally circling in her head, an invisible weight again crushing her chest. Dónde están, dónde están? She was a cop, she should be able to answer such a simple question.

A salty breeze from the ocean freshened the air. It smelled like tears.

There were no clouds under her feet as Emilia kept walking, only the hot tarmac.

THE END

To learn more about Carmen's works, visit her Website here.

If your email begins jetboy*******, contact me at liese@lieseherwoodfabre.com for your $5 Amazon or Apple gift card!

Those links again:

The Life and Times of Sherlock Holmes blog tour: HERE

End-of-Year All-Genre Book Fair: here

History for the Holidays: here

Noir Bites: here

Carmen Amato's Website: here

Wishing you happy holidays!

Liese