Authors At The Armouries (AATA) Stuff Your Kindle Day – 19th July 2025.

Check out the books from some of the authors attending the 2025 Authors At The Armouries book fair and gothic ball.

Lots of free or 99p books – Including Sentinals Awaken (FREE)! Check them out now. There are books in a wide range of genres, so you’re sure to find something you like!

UK mainly, though mine is free on Amazon US as well. Offer on many of the books is for July 19th 2025 only, so don’t wait.

Check out the book promo today!

If you haven’t started the epic fantasy Sentinal series yet, then there is no better time because the first book, Sentinals Awaken is FREE on Amazon UK and USA. Read it on Kindle Unlimited but don’t own the book? Download it today!

Click HERE to Download Your Copy Today!

Book One of the Epic Fantasy Sentinal series

Book Description

When a long-forgotten threat starts to reemerge, one man stands as the last defense against darkness…

Jerrol Haven serves his king without question. When he finds evidence of corruption and is attacked, the loyal soldier’s mind spins after his touch of a sacred tree awakens the dormant spirit of a three-thousand-year-old protector. But he fears he has failed after the crown prince accuses him of treason and orders his execution…

Fleeing the city, Jerrol is stunned when the goddess appears to him, appoints him captain of her warriors, and charges him with a quest to find artifacts that can save the realm. And as he runs into danger and more betrayals, the steadfast hero discovers a rare gift that may be the world’s only hope…

Can Jerrol rally the forces of good to stop a rising evil?

Sentinals Awaken is the first book in the Sentinal epic fantasy series. If you like endearing characters, immersive world-building, and gritty conflict, then you’ll love Helen Garraway’s award-winning tale.

Buy Sentinals Awaken to restore the guardians today!

Complete series is on Kindle Unlimited. First four books on Audio:

Book 0.5: Sentinals Stirring (prequel novella) Ebook free if you sign up to my newsletter.
Book One: Sentinals Awaken
Book Two: Sentinals Rising
Book Three: Sentinals Justice
Book 3.5: Sentinals Recovery (Novella)
Book Four: Sentinals Across Time
Book Five: Sentinals Banished
Book Six: Sentinals Destiny
Prequel: Sentinals Origins Part One
Prequel: Sentinals Origins Part Two (Release Date TBC)

Short Stories (For Newsletter subscribers only)
Sentinals Discovery (First few chapters of Sentinals Awaken from Birlerion’s POV.)
Book 2.5: Sentinals and Guardians 2023 xmas bonus story.

If you enjoy fantasy books then you will love my epic fantasy Sentinal series or the Romantic Fantasy SoulMist series. Sign up to my newsletter and download a free novella called Sentinals Stirring and also Sentinals Discovery, the first few chapters of Sentinals Awaken from Birlerion’s POV and get notified when my next books are published.

By clicking the sign up button above, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and the newsletter platform provider to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

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Book Review Alert: Sunflowers in the Snow by Dawn Bonanno

Reviewed: June 2nd, 2025
Released: August 26th, 2024
Genre: Fantasy Short Stories


Do you believe in magic?

Can you imagine how it might exist all around us in everyday life? Perhaps hidden in trees and sunflowers, slipping into view when needed, and leaving gifts when all hope has abandoned us. Why does a young woman caring for her elderly grandfather find a secret sunflower patch in the snowy hills of Wisconsin? What happens when a demon woken from sleep happens upon a grieving cat dad? How will a sentient house end its long loneliness? Can the smallest water fairy find her missing sister? What does a bride even do with an enchanted wedding veil? Who will save a city cat from a haunted country bridge?

A collection of fourteen fantasy stories about magic in the real world, Sunflowers in the Snow explores friendship and family bonds through sentient houses, magical taverns, secret gardens, and people from other realms who are more like us than we could ever dream. Featured stories include: Sunflowers in the Snow, Cara’s Heartsong, Voices Heard Within Heartbreak House, Never Say Never, The Legacy of Kalila Arquette, Sarah’s Little Monster Hunter, and more. Read My Thoughts…

Author Interview – Patrick Weill

Author of the Park and Walker Action Thriller series.

I am very pleased to welcome Patrick Weill to my blog to talk about his book Double Threat.

Helen: Welcome Patrick. I’m excited to talk to you about Double Threat

Patrick: My latest book is entitled Double Threat. It is the third book in what will either be a completed trilogy or an expanded action thriller series. Set in sunny San Diego, California, and also on the Pacific Ocean, this novel features police detectives Tony Park and Jeff Walker, who split up for the first time as they star in alternating chapters until their stories intertwine in a twist that readers won’t see coming.

Park drives up to Los Angeles, where he joins forces with the FBI, working undercover on a cruise ship in pursuit of an unidentified serial killer. Walker becomes a member of MARTAC, the Harbor Police’s SWAT team, and in this capacity tackles a case of his own involving political assassination, white supremacy, and narcotics trafficking, facing powerful enemies both old and new.

Helen: Sounds like quite the adventure. How did you choose the cover design?

Patrick: The cover is from a scene that takes place late in the book, when a bomb surgically placed inside a bad guy’s abdominal cavity explodes aboard a crooked politician’s superyacht. But the image is also intended to evoke a general sense of danger aboard a massive ship on the ocean because much of the action is set on a cruise ship, giving new meaning to the term ‘rough seas’!

Helen: It is a powerful image. Why did you call your book Double Threat? Is there a special meaning or back story about the title?

Patrick: Yes, there IS a special meaning to Double Threat. Who will be the real double threat? Detectives Park and Walker, who are up against long odds as usual? Or the twin forces of evil they are facing, which turn out to be connected. ‘Double’ also refers to the book being two stories in one.

Helen: I love the insights behind your title. Who inspired you to start writing?  

Patrick: Lee Child and my grandmother. Child because he found himself out of work/in need of money and, having been a reader all his life, picked up a pencil and a legal pad and set to work. Just like me. My grandmother because when I was twelve years old, she encouraged me to write a book review in a local newspaper and helped me publish it.

Helen: With the third book of your series complete, what are you working on next?

Patrick: I am currently writing a different kind of novel, a legal thriller featuring both male and female protagonists. It’s a major challenge, but I am doing heaps of research, and, with three action thrillers under my belt, I feel ready for it.

Helen: It’s always exciting to venture into a different area for your next book. Wishing you plenty of writing inspiration. Let’s talk a little about your writing process. When writing, do you listen to music or do you prefer silence?

Patrick: I used to, but now I find that I focus better with earplugs instead. I am able to devote all of my attention to writing instead of splitting it between cognitive tasks.

Helen: Are you a pantser or a planner? Do you write free form, or do you have a framework you stick to?

Patrick: Both. Writing is an art as well as a science; a hospital can’t be built without a blueprint, yet inspiration only comes through the imagination, which must be allowed to freely flow.

Helen: That is so true! Earlier you mentioned you’ve been doing research for your new book. How much research do you do for each book?

Patrick: Plenty. For example, in the case of the legal thriller, I will have read at least seven books, two of which were non-fiction and quite dry (but informative). And I’ll have spent hours and hours reading on the internet. Possibly contacting legal and/or law enforcement professionals, etc.

Helen: Thank you for joining me today. Just to finish, what is the most useful piece of writing advice you’ve received, and by whom?

Patrick: ‘Truckers don’t get trucker’s block, nor nurses nurse’s block.’

-Lee Child

About the Author

Patrick Weill

Patrick Weill is an award-winning translator and author who resides in central Mexico with his family along with four dogs and an aquarium full of fish. You can visit his website to download a FREE Park and Walker short story!

Purchase Patrick’s book, Double Threat

Link to book on Amazon UK: eBook | Paperback

Link to book on Amazon US: eBook | Paperback

As an Amazon Associate I may benefit from purchases made using these links.

If you enjoy epic fantasy then check out my award winning Sentinal series, which is now complete. If you like fantasy books with a touch of romance then you will love my SoulMist series, start with SoulBreather. Prefer Dystopian Science Fantasy? Then try Harmony. Start the adventure and stay for the journey.

Sign up to my newsletter and download a free novella called Sentinals Stirring and get notified when my next books are published.

By clicking the sign up button above, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and the newsletter platform provider to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

By signing up to my newsletter, you agree to receive commercial information from Helen Garraway, located at 61 Bridge St, Kingston, Hertfordshire, UK (Data Administrator). You can withdraw your consent at any time. The data will be processed until the consent is withdrawn.

Book Review Alert: Quicksilver by Callie Hart

Reviewed: October 10th, 2024
Released: September 10th, 2024
Genre: Fantasy Romance


Do not touch the sword. Do not turn the key. Do not open the gate.

In the land of the unforgiving desert, there isn’t much a girl wouldn’t do for a glass of water.

Twenty-four-year-old Saeris Fane is good at keeping secrets. No one knows about the strange powers she possesses, or the fact that she has been picking pockets and stealing from the Undying Queen’s reservoirs for as long as she can remember.

But a secret is like a knot. Sooner or later, it is bound to come undone.

When Saeris comes face-to-face with Death himself, she inadvertently re-opens a gateway between realms and is transported to a land of ice and snow. The Fae have always been the stuff of myth, of legend, of nightmares… but it turns out they’re real, and Saeris has landed herself in the middle of a centuries-long conflict that might just get her killed.

The first of her kind to tread the frozen mountains of Yvelia in over a thousand years, Saeris mistakenly binds herself to Kingfisher, a handsome Fae warrior, who has secrets and nefarious agendas of his own. He will use her Alchemist’s magic to protect his people, no matter what it costs him . . . or her.

Death has a name. It is Kingfisher of the Ajun Gate. His past is murky. His attitude stinks. And he’s the only way Saeris is going to make it home. Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: May Day by Josie Jaffrey

Reviewed: September 23rd, 2024
Released: July 9th, 2020
Genre: Paranormal Fantasy


If the murderer you’re tracking is a vampire, then you want a vampire detective. Just maybe not this one. It’s not that Jack Valentine is bad at her job. The youngest member of Oxford’s Seekers has an impressive track record, but she also has an impressive grudge against the local baron, Killian Drake.

When a human turns up dead on May Morning, she’s determined to pin the murder on Drake. The problem is that none of the evidence points to him. Instead, it leads Jack into a web of conspiracy involving the most powerful people in the country, people to whom Jack has no access. But she knows someone who does.

To get to the truth, Jack will have to partner up with her worst enemy. As long as she can keep her cool, Drake will point her to the ringleaders, she’ll find the murderer and no one else will have to die.
Body bags on standby.

May Day is the first book in Josie Jaffrey’s Seekers series, an urban fantasy series set in Oxford, England. Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: Shards of Hope by BL Jones

Reviewed: September 22nd, 2024
Released: January 19th, 2023
Genre: Superhero Fantasy


Hope can be a prism of scars from which light shines.

Twenty years ago, an infamous scientist created Liquid Onyx, a world-changing chemical which led to the rise of superheroes and supervillains.

Jack Roth is not a superhero. He’s an assassin, a killer, a lethal weapon forged and controlled by the evil organisation Obsidian Inc.

Leo Snow isn’t a superhero either. He’s a British secret agent who spends his life protecting the world and saving everyone he can.

When these two men’s lives collide on the streets of Danger City just as Obsidian Inc is gearing up for another cataclysmic scientific discovery, they’ll both need to reckon with their dark past, messy present and potentially hopeful future. Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: The Haunted Hotel by Vawn Cassidy

Reviewed: September 10th, 2024
Released: August 24th, 2024
Genre: Contemporary Paranormal Fantasy


Have a frightfully good stay…Morgan Ashton-Drake hasn’t given his ancestral home in Yorkshire a second thought in decades. He has a great life in the States, running his stepfathers hotel empire with his brother. So what if he’s all work and no play. He’s not missing out on anything important.

But when a suspicious death and rather public scandal at his childhood home forces Morgan to return to England for the first time in years, he’s not keen to confront his past. What he didn’t count on was the seriously cute little blonde disaster who seems to be single-handedly running his eccentric grandfather’s hotel.

Ellis Sparks has worked at the Ashton-Drake Manor House Hotel since he was sixteen and he loves it from the bottom of his soul. Always the eternal optimist, he’s never met a frown he can’t turn upside down; that is, until he meets Morgan Ashton-Drake, the grumpy grandson of his employer.

With the hotel in danger of closing, and convinced Morgan is the only one who can help to save it, the resident ghosts decide to try their ghostly hand at a little matchmaking as an incentive to get him to stay. After all, how hard can it be to get a grumpy workaholic to fall in love with a twinky ray of sunshine? Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: The First Ethereal by E.L. Williams

Reviewed: September 7th, 2024
Released: October 29th, 2020
Genre: Contemporaray Fantasy


Lost magic, buried secrets, love, and found family. Can Lilly and Storm find the First Ethereal before all is lost?

Super empath Lilly is almost relieved to be living her last human life. With only her spirit guide, Jack, for company and the world unravelling around them, she longs for the peace of the Eternal Forest.
When catastrophic floods force Lilly from her home, fate intervenes, and she finds refuge with Storm, a widowed ex-witch who has mysteriously lost her magic.

As Lilly falls in love with life and finally finds the family and community she has always dreamed of, the two become entwined in a desperate mission to find the First Ethereal – the one being prophesied to save the world from imminent destruction.

But they’re not the only ones seeking this mythical being. Dark forces, driven by fear and greed, are closing in, determined to seize the Ethereal’s power at any cost – and they’ll destroy anyone who stands in their way.

As the clock ticks down, Storm must unlock the secret of her missing magic, while Lilly confronts the devastating truth about who Jack really is. Are some truths better left buried?Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Reviewed: August 15th, 2024
Released: September 3rd, 2009
Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.” These words are spoken by Iris Chase Griffen, married at eighteen to a wealthy industrialist but now poor and eighty-two. Iris recalls her far from exemplary life, and the events leading up to her sister’s death, gradually revealing the carefully guarded Chase family secrets. Among these is “The Blind Assassin,” a novel that earned the dead Laura Chase not only notoriety but also a devoted cult following. Sexually explicit for its time, it was a pulp fantasy improvised by two unnamed lovers who meet secretly in rented rooms and seedy cafés. As this novel-within-a-novel twists and turns through love and jealousy, self-sacrifice and betrayal, so does the real narrative, as both move closer to war and catastrophe. Margaret Atwood’s Booker Prize-winning sensation combines elements of gothic drama, romantic suspense, and science fiction fantasy in a spellbinding tale. Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: Solomon’s Compass by Carol Kilgore

Reviewed: July 23rd, 2024
Released: March 23rd, 2013
Genre: Contemporary fiction

One USCG Commander + One Veteran Navy SEAL = Fireworks from Stem to Stern

When Coast Guard Commander Taylor Campbell returns to Rock Harbor, Texas, to tend to her uncle’s estate, she meets a veteran Navy SEAL, Jake Solomon, and learns her uncle didn’t drown accidentally. His murder was one in a string of murders of a group of Vietnam veterans who called themselves the Compass Points.

Before her uncle died, he sent Taylor a message with the location of his buried treasure. Unearthing it will place her squarely in the killer’s crosshairs, but she’s determined to fulfill her uncle’s last wish.

Jake, sent to protect her and find the killer, has other plans. Despite the fact she’s a feisty dynamo in a pint-sized package, his mission would be much easier to accomplish if he could forget how good she’d tasted when he kissed her. Read My Thoughts…