Book Extract: The Last Adam By Ron Echols
Please join me in welcoming Ron Echols to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for his book, The Last Adam.
Ron Echols’s The Last Adam tells a story where spiritual warfare unfolds alongside everyday life. What begins quietly soon gathers momentum, as hidden forces start influencing events with lasting consequences.
Mary Levitt’s pregnancy becomes the focal point of violent attacks and unexplained visions, revealing a prophecy feared by forces that have waited centuries to act. Her child represents a threat to an ancient balance.
Joseph Riesman’s involvement in a major development project exposes political manipulation and older powers operating beneath visible authority. What seems modern and rational soon gives way to something far more dangerous.
The sacrifice of the archangel Raphael exposes a war involving angels, fallen angels, and human collaborators working across time. Watched and hunted at every turn, Mary and Joseph confront betrayal and spiritual warfare while fighting to protect a life destined to change the world.
Ron has kindly shared an extract from The Last Adam with us today. We really hope you enjoy it.
*****beginning of extract*****
Prologue
Location: The Lunar Surface, Tranquility Base, southwestern corner of the Sea of Tranquility.
The moon hung motionless, like a dead thing in the void of space. Its pockmarked exterior reflecting the sun’s merciless glare and millennia of asteroids pummeling its surface. In that airless waste where humans had once taken a small step, the lunar dust lay since undisturbed, marked only by boot prints and machinery left behind.
Piercing through the silence of the void, a voice called out.
“Raphael!”
A brilliant white light erupted into existence, hovering above the moon’s surface like a tear in the fabric of space itself. The light intensified until it seemed to bend space around it, taking form. A figure of a man emerged. Behind him, the first suggestion of wings. Translucent, but appearing stronger than steel, they folded against his armor etched with ancient angelic symbols that seemed to move when viewed directly. Dark hair, wild and untamed accentuated his sapphire eyes and caressed his polished, glass-like skin.
The being that called itself Gabriel stood motionless on the lunar surface, its feet leaving no prints in the ancient dust. The face that poets had tried and failed to capture for millennia turned slowly, searching.
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Book Extract: Winter’s Season By R.J. Koreto
I am so pleased and excited to be welcoming R.J. Koreto to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for his novel, Winter’s Season.
Winter’s Season by R.J. Koreto follows a man tasked with enforcing justice before the tools to define it exist. Through Captain Winter’s perspective, the story examines how authority operates when law is informal and accountability is selective.
In a city still shaped by war, Captain Winter serves as Whitehall’s “special emissary,” confronting crimes meant to be handled quietly. When a young woman is murdered, his investigation exposes connections that reach beyond the crime itself, binding privilege and violence together.
Winter’s path is shaped by uneasy reliance on others. A nobleman tied to his past opens doors to influence, while a wise Jewish physician brings careful observation to a world driven by rumor. The case grows more volatile with the return of Barbara Lightwood, a former lover whose intelligence and social access place her near dangerous truths. Her guarded involvement unsettles Winter at a critical moment.
As pressure mounts, Winter is forced to confront not only the crime, but the moral limits of his role in pursuing justice.
R.J. Koreto has kindly shared an extract with us today. We really hope you enjoy it.
*****beginning of extract*****
The captain said goodbye to his colonel and a few other officers, and the butler saw him out. He walked to the nearest stand and engaged a hackney cab to Bow Street Court. A few heads turned as he entered the building, but no one accosted him. A clerk gave him the barest nod but said nothing as he entered a room.
A few minutes later, the captain came out. He was no longer in his regimentals, but in rather shabby outfit, almost rural, with a slouch hat. Down the hall, he entered another room, where a squad of Bow Street Runners awaited—constables, employed by the local court at Bow Street, to keep order and seize felons. Winter suppressed a grimace. They were poorly trained and poorly paid, but it was pretty much all London had for law enforcement. Many still thought the idea of a formal professional constabulary too much government interference—too un-English. So, the Runners would have to do. At least they were willing and obedient.
“We have already gone over where you should be standing,” said the captain. “You know how important it is you aren’t seen.” There was more than instruction in his voice—there was menace.
“Yes, sir,” said the most senior constable present.
“Then take your places. I’ll be along shortly.”
by Novel Kicks Book Club: The Phone Box At The Edge of the World By Laura Imai Messina (Translated By Lucy Rand)
Hello and welcome back to the Novel Kicks Book Club.
What a joy it is to be saying hello to February. We did it. We got through another January.
For this month’s book club, I have chosen a book that I know is going to wreck me. We all need a good cry every now and then, right? Then a piece of cake to make us feel better?… Right….
We will be reading The Phone Box at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina. Translated by Lucy Rand, this japanese based novel is inspired by true events. You know when you read the blurb for a novel and even that gives you all the feels. This book did that for me. Plus, this cover is so beautiful.
How To Take Part?
Are you new to our book club? Well, anyone and everyone is welcome and at any point in the month. Maybe you’ve read it and want to talk about it? You may be reading along with me? I’ve posted a question in the comments to get discussion going. I look forward to seeing you there.
About The Phone Box at the Edge of the World –
We all have something to tell those we have lost . . .
On a windy hill in Japan, in a garden overlooking the sea stands a disused phone box. For years, people have travelled to visit the phone box, to pick up the receiver and speak into the wind: to pass their messages to loved ones no longer with us.
When Yui loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami, she is plunged into despair and wonders how she will ever carry on. One day she hears of the phone box, and decides to make her own pilgrimage there, to speak once more to the people she loved the most. But when you have lost everything, the right words can be the hardest thing to find . . .
by Book Extract: Under Vixens Mere By Kit Fielding
I’m so excited to be welcoming Kit Fielding to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for his book, Under Vixens Mere.
If poor Harry Jones hadn’t lowered himself into the water one freezing winter’s night, a long-buried secret would never have come to the surface.
If …
Big Ed and Milly had been able to have children,
Karen hadn’t longed for love and romance,
Lorrie hadn’t finally ditched Petra,
Dinah hadn’t found out the truth about Barry,
Jed hadn’t dealt drugs and got Anna pregnant,
Carl Thomson hadn’t come looking for him,
and Moses hadn’t heard the commotion …
then there would be no story of Vixens Mere to tell.
There’s a chance to win some books below but first, Kit has shared an extract from Under Vixens Mere with us today. Grab that beverage and the blanket. Find that comfortable chair and enjoy.
*****beginning of extract*****
The tenuous trail that brought them to Vixens Mere begins when Big Ed and Milly the Mystic wake up together in his roughly converted Transit van at the Reading Festival in the August of 1978. They’re on a lumpy and rather grubby mattress in the back of the vehicle and it must be about ten o’clock when Big Ed rolls himself over onto his back and encounters the soft prone body of Milly the Mystic. He yawns, looks at her curiously and says, ‘You been here all night?’
She says, ‘I think so.’
Big Ed studies her a bit more. ‘What do they call you then?’
‘Milly.’
She sits up, notices that her breasts are bare, lifts the covers, peeps down further at her naked nether regions. She looks at Ed, a question knitting her brow.
‘Did we …?’ she begins.
‘Must have, I suppose.’ Big Ed looks appreciatively at her breasts. ‘But we could make sure.’
by Book Extract: The Vision Board By Siobhan Murphy
Please join me in welcoming Siobhan Murphy to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her latest book, The Vision Board.
Two best friends. Two one-way tickets. And a future that might just surprise them.
Bex and Amy are best friends and total opposites. Bex is cynical, Amy is romantic. Bex is chaotic, Amy is organised. With the prospect of turning 34 just around the corner, neither is where they expected to be at this point in their lives.
Bex is exploring her sexuality and has a string of failed relationships, while Amy is newly single and desperate to fall in love. Armed with a photographic vision board of the future, Bex and Amy put their trust in ‘The Universe’ and fly from London to Bali, then on to Australia in search of adventure, cocktails on the beach and maybe even love.
Almost immediately, Amy finds someone who is the perfect fit for her dream life. While Bex is stuck playing double dates with his best friend, the most pompous man she has ever met, but also one of the hottest. Travelling via white sand beaches, lush rainforests and road trips through idyllic scenery, the images on their vision board begin to transform into reality.
However, people are not always what they seem, and first impressions are not always accurate. Add in a queer, charismatic love interest and a vindictive ex-girlfriend, and the path of true love begins to get a little more complex.
When ‘The Universe’ has its own agenda, is it possible to manifest a happy ever after?
An Enemies to Lovers destination romance with a sprinkling of Pride and Prejudice vibes.
Siobhan has kindly shared an extract with us today. Grab that beverage, find that comfortable chair. We hope you enjoy reading.
(Warning: Mild Language.)
*****beginning of extract*****
This section is the opening to the book. I hadn’t planned to write a romantic comedy but was woken up at 3 am with the character of Bex in my head, telling me about a bingo game. I had no choice but to drag myself out of bed, head to the sofa with a blanket, a cuppa and my laptop and find out exactly what she was banging on about. That is how ‘The Vision Board’ began.
*****
Amy and I are playing ‘Airport Bingo’, and we’ve just ticked ourselves off the list. ‘Get in.’ I shout, striking a flamboyant line through the words, loud, irritating girls who are already drunk, even though it’s first thing in the morning.
The bingo game is a ‘keep Amy calm’ tactic (along with the alcohol I insisted on buying at 6 am). Only one bar was open in the Departures area at that time of the morning. Dark, generic, and utterly soulless, the staff radiated either boredom or abject misery. Anything approaching even basic customer service had left the building. A pungent-smelling lad in a stained apron took our order begrudgingly. One glance at him made me doubt the high star rating on the bar’s hygiene certificate, so I went for liquid refreshments only. Amy was too nervous to eat, and I’d learned from bitter experience that long-haul flights and questionable food standards are a risky combination. The waiter dumped the G&Ts and the bottle of Prosecco unceremoniously on the table, then returned to his position behind the bar. Elbow propped on the counter, face slumped on his hand, his expression that of a semi-comatose hospital patient.
by Book Club
