Nook – Neve Maslakovic

Hope everyone’s July is going well! It’s been very hot, rainy, and humid here in the Twin Cities.

The above picture is of the Reading Room in the British Museum in London. I took it back in May, when we visited family in the U.K. The museum, as always, was very crowded. Despite the sign, there’s no reading allowed in the Reading Room, but it’s a huge domed space with a grand ceiling and a calm, bookish vibe and I was happy to peek in.

Publishing Update

THAT MURDER FEELING, the series opener that I’ve been working on for a while now, has a publication date! The book is in the copyediting stage and the plan is for it to come out right after the New Year, on January 13, 2026.

Here’s the short pitch: To crack his first murder case and save his childhood friend, a small-town 1980s PI must trust his extraordinary ability to see emotions as living gardens. A whodunit with a cosmic twist.

More details next month. Stay tuned!

Backlist News

My near-future mystery/thriller All the Whys of Delilah’s Demise is on Barnes & Noble’s list of Hidden Gems: Unmissable Indie eBooks. The book is currently on sale on Nook for $2.99, so it you haven’t read it yet, it’s a good time to pick it up.

What I’m Reading

I have three books to recommend.

Stuart Turton’s The Last Murder at the End of the World. A standalone novel. This one is hard to describe. As promised in the title, there is a murder, but it’s more of a sci-fi novel than a traditionally structured mystery. A weird and unconventional whodunit—my favorite kind of read.

Cascadia’s Fault by Jerry Thompson. Non-fiction. The subtitle says it all: The Coming Earthquake and Tsunami that Could Devastate North America. Thompson digs into historical and geological evidence of the fault that lies 30 miles offshore on the West Coast. I learned enough about plate tectonics and wave heights to make me uneasy the next time I happen to find myself in Seattle, but the tone of the book itself is not one of panic, but a reminder that it’s best to be informed, and who can argue with that.

My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme. Memoir. I don’t even remember how I came across this one, but I’m glad I did. Julia Child arrives in 1948 Paris as a clueless 36‑year‑old who speaks no French and can’t cook. This joyful book didn’t exactly inspire me to spend more time in the kitchen, but it’s a lovely reminder that every meal should be savored—and so should the unpredictable adventure of life itself.

That’s it for now, thanks for reading!

Neve

Hope everyone is having a safe and enjoyable summer!

Can anyone help me identify a bird? It nested a while back on the light fixture right outside our front door. There were at least three baby birds, from what we could see of the beaks peeking out of the nest. When we got back from a week away visiting family in South Carolina, everyone had flown the coop! I made an attempt to identify the breed by its brownish-white chest on one of those websites listing bird species in Minnesota, but without much luck. If you’re familiar with it, do let me know!

In reading news, I’ve been trying Bookbub as a recommendation site for what to read next. (Amazon’s algorithms tend to suggest books that are popular but don’t catch my eye, or books that I’ve already glanced at but passed on for whatever reason…and, occasionally, the algorithms suggest my own books as well?) If you haven’t come across Bookbub before, it allows you to choose which categories you like to read and follow authors and be alerted when they have a new book out or when one of their books goes on sale. The site sends out daily emails with discounted books in your preferred reading categories, which is handy for discovering new authors. The only problem is that my To-Be-Read list is growing ever longer!

Speaking of Bookbub and other sites that feature discounted books, I had someone ask me whether waiting to buy a book until it’s on sale hurts authors and the answer is no. The point of the promotional pricing is to climb Amazon (and other) charts, and every purchase of a book helps push it up the charts just a little more. The reader saves money, which is always good, and the book gets a tiny boost in visibility, also good. In other words, everyone wins…which probably accounts for Bookbub’s popularity with both readers and authors.

And speaking of sales, All the Whys of Delilah’s Demise will be discounted to $0.99 the week of July 26 on Kindle and the Nook. I’m in the process of taking the book “wide” onto other retailers–the full list will be available here by the end of the month. It’s been a bit of a learning process and I’m curious if I have readers who prefer platforms outside of Amazon–my print books have always been available wide but the ebooks have been limited to Kindle thus far. So if you’re on Nook, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books or another retailer, do let me know!

Hope your summer is full of good books and good friends!