Saturday, 3 October 2026

Boomerang Street by Garrick Jones

RECENT RELEASE BOOK BLAST

Book Title: Boomerang Street

Author and Cover Artist: Garrick Jones

Publisher: GRJ Press

Release Date: September 15, 2026

Genre: LGBT Historical/Crime Thriller

Themes: Political Thriller; Action Thriller; Rags to Riches

Heat Rating: 5 flames  

Length: 135 000 words/389 pages (paperback version)

It is a standalone book and does not end on a cliffhanger.

Goodreads

Buy links

Amazon  US  |  Amazon UK  |  Amazon AU  |  Bookshop Org  |  Kobo

Blurb 

“ … it started off by finding a few floaters in the harbour, but that caused a huge amount of attention in the press. It’s only a theory that they’re linked, but we’ve found six men, almost skeletons, in the past seven months dumped in all sorts of places, all with the same ligature marks and signs of abuse on their backs.”

1932, Sydney, Australia, in the height of the Great Depression, Joe Ing, one man among the two-thirds of Australian men out of work, will do anything to put food on the table for his family.

A casual job as a waiter at a private party leads to more opportunities, some of which push his limits and lead him into dangerous waters. The disappearance of his best friend, selling his body in the darkened streets of the city, precipitates a train of events that cause a change in his circumstance; both for better and for worse.

In Depression-era Sydney, jobless Joe Ing will do anything to feed his family. A waiter’s shift at a private party opens doors to risky work, dangerous secrets and a city’s underworld. Then, when his best friend vanishes, Joe is pulled into events that may save him—or destroy him.

Excerpt 

“Over here,” the man said, moving to the end cubicle and standing inside it, holding the door open.

“Bit risky,” Joe said, even though he’d already walked across the tiled floor. His penis led him, not his head.

The man chuckled, then moved to one side to allow Joe to go into the cubicle with him. He closed the door.

“Stand on the seat if anyone comes in,” Joe whispered.

“I know what to do,” came the reply, accompanied by a look of amusement and a very cheeky smile. “What do you like?”

Joe shrugged noncommittally, smiling back.

He enjoyed it far more than usual, the man’s head resting on Joe’s shoulder and breathing into the crook of his neck while they worked each other’s cocks. It felt good to have an arm around his back, the smell of the man’s brilliantine in his nose … besides, he was one good-looking coot and he certainly knew what to do, squatting down at the last minute to encourage Joe to spurt into his opened mouth. Joe couldn’t help himself: he arched his back as he was about to spoof and ran his hand behind the man’s neck, giving him the go-ahead to swallow his spunk. He throbbed out four spurts into the man’s mouth, the man looking up into his eyes as he did so.

“Fuck, that was lovely,” the man whispered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Not half,” Joe said with a grin. “Your turn now?”

Joe pulled him to his feet and undid his top trouser button. The man’s strides fell down to his shoes. It wasn’t something Joe did often, but he liked this bloke for some unknown reason and wanted to see whether he had golden hair on his legs; he was a sucker for red-blonds. Joe pulled the man’s underwear down, crouching down as he did so, the man’s cock inches from Joe’s face. It was truly impressive, standing out stiffly from his body, the foreskin stretched back along the shaft, his penis long and sleek and fat. The pale thicket of blond pubic hair was a surprise—Joe had imagined something darker or redder, but he was very aroused by what he saw, even though he’d just let go into the man’s mouth. He felt the familiar temptation, that as-yet unfulfilled desire to run his lips over the head of the man’s cock and then take it in his mouth, wondering yet again for the umpteenth time what it might feel and taste like.

As he squatted, his cock was still hard, throbbing, bouncing on the top of the waistband of his underpants. He spat in his hand, then started off slow, twisting his hand around the man’s shaft, gradually increasing speed. It wasn’t long before Joe noticed the grip and release in the man’s thighs; things were getting close.

Before he could get to his feet, the man groaned softly and spurted onto the wall over Joe’s shoulder, grasping the back of Joe’s neck, then panting softly until his orgasm subsided.

“Thank you,” he whispered, a moment or two later, looking down at Joe.

“No—thank you.”

Joe played with the man’s cock until it softened, something he rarely did, but he really liked the shape, size and feel of this bloke’s penis: it was a knockout. It felt so good in his hand that he was reluctant to let go of it. Even flaccid it was semi-turgid, full of blood and heavy in his hand. It was the manifested form of the fantasy cock that he thought about when he squirted onto his belly in bed at night. Damn, he thought: given half the chance, he could play with it for hours.

When he eventually stood, encouraged by the man’s hand on his shoulder, it was impossible to ignore the fact that he was still hard and he was oozing a bit.

“Want more?” the man asked, smiling and then running his hand around Joe’s erection.

Joe nodded, shrugged again nervously, then watched as the red-blond settled on the toilet seat and then sucked a second load out of him.

Back at the bar, Joe scored the encounter as up there with the best he could remember, and for a moment was tempted to change his mind and accept the offer the man had made to meet up again. He’d vacillated, but hadn’t acted on his second thoughts; it would have been a first had he done so. Instead, as they’d left the gents’, he’d just patted the man on the back and shaken his hand, leaving him to return to the bar with a traditional “Catchyalaydah,” a farewell that in Aussie slang meant something like “See you again perhaps, but don’t hold your breath”.

Maybe he’d regret it, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Joe’s attitude to the blokes he liked and what he did with them was odd. He didn’t understand it himself.

About the Author 

From the outback to the opera.

After a thirty-year career as a professional opera singer, performing as a soloist in opera houses and in concert halls all over the world, I took up a position as lecturer in music in Australia in 1999, at the Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music, which is now part of CQ University.

Brought up in Australia, between the bush and the beaches of the Eastern suburbs, I retired in 2015 and now live in the tropics, writing, gardening, and finally finding time to enjoy life and to re-establish a connection with who I am after a very busy career on the stage and as an academic.

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Thursday, 1 October 2026

The Crucible by Aoibh Wood

NEW RELEASE

Book Title: The Crucible

Author and Publisher: Aoibh Wood

Cover Artist: Rebecca Frank

Release Date: September 28, 2026 (InkColors) / October 5, 2026 (Amazon, Kobo, and wide)

Tense/POV: First person, present tense, single POV (Mora), with a brief closing interlude.

Genres: FF Fantasy/Romance (adult sapphic romantasy; dark academy elements)

Tropes:  Enemies to lovers, forbidden love, hidden identity, slow burn, found family, morally gray love interest, sparring as flirtation, knife-gifting as a love language

Themes: identity and self-determination, loyalty vs. duty, surviving institutional cruelty, chosen family, queer joy (queernorm world — no homophobia)

Heat Rating: 4 out of 5 flames

Length: approx. 147 000 words

It is Book 1 of a planned series — the central romance arc resolves in this book (no romance cliffhanger); the wider series plot continues.

Goodreads

Buy Links

InkColors (early release, Sept 28)

Amazon (preorder, delivers Oct 5)

Additional wide retailers live on October 5 

What the Empire forges, the heart unmakes.

Blurb

The Crucible: the Empire’s brutal war academy, where the Aethyr-touched are forged into weapons and attachment is a crime.

Aethyrim like Mora Dray don’t enroll. They’re delivered.

Property of the Empire. Trained to kill. Culled when they break.

Mora walks through the gates with quick knives, a closed mouth, and a secret that will hang her if anyone looks too closely. So the plan is the one that’s kept her breathing this long: be nobody. Head down, scores middling, name off every list. She has invisible down to an art.

Nobody warned her about Liora Skaggs.

Violet-haired, knife-scarred, a Fourth-Year who teaches First-Years how to survive their own knives — lethal by training, worse by reputation, the most dangerous woman in the Crucible. Everything about her should read as threat. Instead, she looks across her crowded training yard and sees Mora for who she is. Not the quiet candidate. Not the middling scores. Her.

And being seen by Skaggs doesn’t feel like the death sentence it should.

It feels like the first time anyone’s ever said her name.

What Skaggs offers isn’t kindness. It’s a blade flipped into the dirt at Mora’s feet and an unspoken order to pick it up. After that, every rule bends. Keep quiet becomes stand out. Stay hidden becomes midnight matches in borrowed leather. Stay alive, stay alive goes out the window somewhere around the first sparring session that ends dangerously close to desire.

But they’re both property, and property isn’t supposed to want things. Wanting Skaggs is the first thing Mora has ever done just for herself, and she is stupid with it, reckless with it, starving with it.

Beyond the walls, the war she was built for is creeping closer, dragonfire is no longer rumor, and the Empire’s version of the truth is fraying at the edges.

Her secret could get her killed.

Skaggs almost certainly will.

She can’t get enough.

Excerpt 

Setup: Mora Dray, days into her first year at the Empire's war academy, is called into the pits for close-quarters combat assessment. The Fourth-Year running her ring is Liora Skaggs.

Skaggs is wearing a Mournborn knife on her hip, just like the one I’m carrying. Instinct has my hand dropping to hide mine, but all it does is get her attention, and her gaze dips. It lands exactly where my palm rests on the hilt and the corner of her mouth curves upward. Then she stalks over and looks down at me like I’m late for something, hands on her hips.

She has at least six inches on me.

I gulp.

She leans closer and sniffs.

“You, Northern girl,” she says, flipping her knife into the dirt at my feet. “Hand off that blade and follow me.”

“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath. I really didn’t want to go first, but I do as ordered, handing my knife to Rendi. “Hold this, please.”

She takes it, her shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.

I shoot her a rude gesture and make my way into the ring. I don’t strip this time. I’d rather she get a handful of shirt than, say, my arm. Or a tit. I like my parts where they are.

“Sir” has already engaged with someone in the other ring, and he’s not really trying very hard. He doesn’t have to. The kid’s slow as fuck and can barely remember to keep his hands up.

Ranson watches them for a minute, then turns to us. “Well?”

“Skaggs,” she says by way of introduction.

“I know,” I answer. “You have a reputation.”

She shoots a look over her shoulder as we enter the ring. “Do I? And what do they say, Northern girl?”

I look away trying to hide my flush, as my heart does that thing it does when a pretty girl looks at me like that. Kitty looked at me like that, and we ended up in bed ten minutes later.

I stuff that thought down… hard.

Head in the game, Mora. Head in the game.

In the ring, Skaggs drops into a pretty standard Mournborn fighting stance. I mirror it. I need to make this look convincing, but I need to lose. Probably not hard given the shape I’m in. Trina was outmatched by skill. This girl is on a whole different level.

She steps forward and takes a few half-hearted jabs at my face. I dodge easily.

She takes a few more. They’re a little quicker. I dodge left and right, then have to lean back as she follows with a hook.

My left hand snaps out and catches her in the mouth. Her head rocks back, but I don’t press. I swap my footing, hopping a bit.

As I circle, I catch Brask and Ranson watching us. I don’t pay attention to their conversation, not really, but I can hear them. I catch bits and pieces: “not bad,” and “scary with a knife.”

Skaggs moves in, putting in a lot more effort. Her blows come insanely quick, and the best I can do is retreat, block, or weave my head out of the way. It’s a pattern, though, and one Miriam taught me. I jump and spin-kick as her leg sweeps low. It leaves my boot print on her shirt and sends her to her ass with a loud grunt.

Everyone’s up now, watching us.

It won’t be much of a show. I’m already winded and my shoulder’s killing me. Still, give me a few months of conditioning and healing, and this will be a whole different match.

She rolls up, licking a bit of blood off her lip.

Well. I’ve got her attention.

She barrels in, and I’m down in four hits with a split lip and a vicious shot to the eye that I’m sure will swell shut.

It isn’t flashy. It isn’t even dramatic. It’s efficient and clinical. I lose the rhythm for half a second and she takes the rest of it from me.

Then she drops down on my chest, pinning my arms beneath her shins. Her weight settles like a verdict. She’s not even breathing hard, and her violet eyes lock on mine like she’s waiting to see what I do with humiliation.

Her crotch is practically in my face.

“Make her lick it!” someone calls.

I scowl, ready to spit back something filthy.

Skaggs’ hand settles at my throat. She doesn’t squeeze. She just leaves it there, long enough to let me know she could.

Heat floods me, somewhere between need and humiliation.

Her eyes bore into mine. Not offended, just… curious. Like she wants to see what I’ll do with that cat-call.

My mouth curves. “You’ll have to buy me dinner first.”

Her lips twitch with just the hint of a smile.

Not for them.

For me.

Then my hand slaps the sand.

Gods help me. My head is definitely not in the game… well, not the right one.

She stands and hauls me up like I weigh nothing, then marches me back toward my seat beside the ring. As she scoops her knife from the ground, her gaze flicks to mine. And the spark there is electric. Then she turns away and wanders off to select another victim.

“I couldn’t decide if she was gonna fight you or fuck you,” Sirenna says when I sit down.

I cough to hide my laughter, then pat my chest and whisper, “Be still, my beating heart.”

About the Author 

Aoibh Wood is the bestselling author of The Senator’s Widow — a #1 title in Amazon’s Lesbian Thriller category — and the Cait Reagan urban fantasy series. A veteran of the tech and cybersecurity world, she writes romance, intrigue, and the supernatural with queer women at the center. Her sapphic enemies-to-lovers romantasy, The Crucible, releases September 28 on InkColors and everywhere October 5. She lives with her wife and their cat, Papaya.

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Boomerang Street by Garrick Jones