Monday, 26 May 2025

✧ Book Excerpt ✧ Boy with Wings by Mark Mustian #LiteraryFiction #HistoricalFiction #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub @markmustian @cathiedunn


Boy with Wings
By Mark Mustian


Publication Date: March 21st, 2025
Publisher: Koehler Books
Pages: 380
Genre: Literary Fiction / Historical Fiction


*Next Generation Indie Book Awards 2025 First Place Winner*


What does it mean to be different?


When Johnny Cruel is born with strange appendages on his back in the 1930s South, the locals think he's a devil. Determined to protect him, his mother fakes his death, and they flee. Thus begins Johnny's yearslong struggle to find a place he belongs.


From a turpentine camp of former slaves to a freak show run by a dwarf who calls herself Tiny Tot and on to the Florida capitol building, Johnny finds himself working alongside other outcasts, struggling to answer the question of his existence. Is he a horror, a wonder, or an angel? Should he hide himself to live his life? 


Following Johnny's journey through love, betrayal, heartbreak, and several murders, Boy With Wings is a story of the sacrifices and freedom inherent in making one's own special way-and of love and the miracles that give our lives meaning.


✧ Praise for Boy with Wings 


'A brilliant fever dream of a novel, a haunting coming of age story reminiscent of both Franz Kafka and Charles Dickens.'

Chris Bohjalian, #1 New York Times bestselling author
of The Jackal's Mistress


✧ Excerpt ✧


(from Ch. 11, when Johnny first appears on the show)


“Ready?”


His heart lurches. Is it time? He struggles up, a man led to his hanging, clad in this silly costume, an oddness and spectacle shown now to the crowd. A shocking freak. Sheila leads him back behind the tents, where the air is cooler and a grass smell clings, into another tent not unlike her own, in which a platform has been erected with a rail placed in front. Across from this sits a single chair. One side of the tent is open, perhaps to admit more light and air, though the tent remains shadowed and gloomy. A string of bulbs across its top shine like distant, tiny stars.


“Hear her?”


And he does—Tot’s voice is beyond them, sailing and prodding and pitching and selling, calling him the greatest and oddest, the most splendid and the truly strange. He stares down at his shoes, his nose dripping, his tongue grown extra large. His heart thumps like a hammer’s heavy fall. Sheila nudges him once, her face and arms even brighter than before, a tattoo behind her ear of a dog howling made clearer. She gives him a slow, hopeful wink.


“You got it, boy. All you do is walk in, stare at the men for a minute, sit down in the chair, and when Tot tells you, turn around and take the cape off. You stand there for a minute or two, walk up and down so that everyone can get a good view, and then it’s done! Walk on off and we eat some candy. How’s that sound?”


He shrugs and tries smiling. The sick feeling from before has found its way to his belly, and he’s left with the idea of crapping now in his cape, of showing that to the audience, and the thought makes him laugh and shriek. Sheila frowns and claws his arm, attempting to put a stop to this.


“Hush now! They’ll hear you! You don’t want to spoil the show.”


Her grip digs and hurts him, his giggling brought up short, and he spins himself to her in a twist that makes her slump and fall. She lands on her back surprised, her own rage quick and dulled in her face, her eyes sharp. Her teeth look like rocks. Tot is suddenly behind her.


“You ready? What are you doing?”


His breath is short, his fists balled and sweat running, and he’s thinking of the time the men beat him so badly that he couldn’t walk, after he’d snapped at a paying guest. Tot raps on his knee for attention.


“Get behind the curtain—they’re coming in!”


And so they are, a shuffling line of rumpled men, three or six or ten of them before he is pulled back from their view. Again he is warm-faced, whirling once more when Tot’s voice breaks and launches, amplified somehow like a god’s: “And here he is, gentlemen, that oddity from another land, that one of a kind, one in ten million, born to an unknown mother, a gift straight from the clouds. Please welcome the one and only Johnny C—the boy with wings!”


Muttering and a few handclaps, and he finds himself suddenly inside the tent, the cape on his shoulders and falling down his back. Maybe Sheila had pushed him, or Tot has simply willed it, but he walks out as they told him, sitting and then striding from one end of the rail to the other, at first not looking but then looking at each of them, one after one after one. He flourishes his cape, then turns his back to them and sits again in the chair. A murmur rises, different in tone from only minutes before this, a few words breaking: “. . . where is . . .?” “. . . some fraud . . .” “. . . back in Toledo . . .”


Again, Tot’s voice squeaks. She’s standing next to him somehow, peering and holding a small oil lamp. “Now, the moment you’ve waited for. Be prepared, as even grown men have been known to faint.” She pauses. “Don’t tell your wives about this. Don’t tell your children. Don’t tell anyone.” Another pause. “He’s a living, breathing monstrosity. Here he is—Johnny Cruel!”


He rises and, keeping his back to them, slowly drops the cape. Off his shoulders, exposing his side, over the hump on his back and with a rush the cape falls, lying then twisted and shapeless on the ground just below. A hiss sounds behind him, new grunts and shifts. A few cries: “What the . . .?” “. . . can’t be . . .” “. . . just putty, right?” “…sticking it on that boy . . .”


He stands there for a minute or two, tears dripping down his face, walks to one side and then the other before wrapping the cape back over his shoulders, turning and striding past them and out. Sheila is behind the tent’s wall, her eyes alive with excitement, their near fight forgotten, and he sees others watching: Zorat, Kenneth, Alfred, a few others unknown. One blonde-haired girl, a look of surprise or maybe confusion on her face, as if none of this makes even the slightest sense. He wipes at his eyes and walks on past them all.


“How’d it go?” Sheila asks him. She’s almost jumping up and down.


His breath is calm. He squints up at the sky, the dried salt on his face cracking and his neck bent beneath this, fighting an impulse to laugh or to hug her. The stars form different shapes like white ink. He pulls the cape tight, feeling it catch on his wings—for isn’t that what they are? Looking out at her now, he gestures outward and shrugs. Turns his palms up. Smiles. “It was fine, I think.”



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Mark Mustian


Mark Mustian is the author of the novels "The Return" and "The Gendarme", the latter a finalist for the Dayton International Literary Peace Prize and shortlisted for the Saroyan International Award for Writing. It won the Florida Gold Book Award for Fiction and has been published in ten languages.

The founder of the Word of South Festival of Literature and Music in Tallahassee, Florida, his new novel, "Boy With Wings", is out in 2025.


Connect with Mark:




Sunday, 25 May 2025

✧ Book in the Spotlight ✧ Last Train to Freedom by Deborah Swift

 

Last Train to Freedom
By Deborah Swift


Publication Date: May 8th, 2025
Publisher: HQ Digital
Pages: 361
Genre: Historical Fiction / WWII Fiction


1940. 


As Soviet forces storm Lithuania, Zofia and her brother Jacek must flee to survive.


A lifeline appears when Japanese consul Sugihara offers them visas on one condition: they must deliver a parcel to Tokyo. Inside lies intelligence on Nazi atrocities, evidence so explosive that Nazi and Soviet agents will stop at nothing to possess it.


Pursued across Siberia on the Trans-Siberian Express, Zofia faces danger at every turn, racing to expose the truth as Japan edges closer to allying with the Nazis. With the fate of countless lives hanging in the balance, can she complete her mission before time runs out?


Praise


'Taut, compelling and beautifully written – I loved it!'

~ Daisy Wood


'A fast-paced, exciting read … kept me reading late on several nights. Will appeal to all lovers of both romance and wartime novels.'

~ Kathleen McGurl


'Tense and thought-provoking'

~ Catherine Law


'Such an interesting and original book…
Informative, full of suspense and thrills.'

~ NetGalley review


Excerpt


Masha walked impatiently up and down the deserted street several times before the shiny Russian sedan drew up alongside her. The car was kerb-crawling and she slowed as the door was pushed open from the inside. Vladimir Illeyvich moved over so she could swing herself in. She got into the back, where he was leaning against the leather upholstery, the faint smell of cigar smoke and hair oil still hanging on his suit. His cigar smouldered in the ash tray, giving off a noxious smell, and she wished he’d put it out.


He said nothing. Illeyvich was born in Siberia and others in the NKVD joked that he was frozen from the inside out. Stiff in bearing and with a face that hardly moved, he was chief of the Russian Secret Service in Kaunas and never wasted words.


‘Kowalski’s in hiding with his sister.’ Masha answered the unasked question. ‘She came to tell him about the round-ups.’


He glanced sideways at her. ‘You couldn’t go with him?’


‘Not without blowing cover or making trouble with my father. It would look odd to go on the run with him.’


‘Your father doesn’t suspect?’


A shake of her head.


‘Sure about Kowalski?’


‘Kowalski thinks he’s attractive and intelligent and that a girl like me should be grateful. He pretends not to care about what he thinks is my lack of education, while simultaneously trying to educate me. He insults me without having the slightest inkling that’s what he does.’


Illeyvich gave a small suggestion of a frown. ‘Don’t get too angry Masha. It might cause you to slip up. You have the names and addresses?’


‘Yes. All Kowalski’s contacts from the press office are in here.’ She patted her bag. The smoke from the cigar was making her eyes water, but she dared not touch it; it would be presumptuous.


‘Good. Most were taken in the first swoop. But if they run, we’ll track them down before they can print anything. It’s vital to close down all media outlets in the first days. Gag anyone involved in the press or the news. Then, the more confusion the better.’


‘Got it.’


‘We rounded up everyone from the Kaunas Star, except your man Kowalski,’ he said. ‘Keep tailing him and get details of any other contacts he has, especially in the Jewish press. Kovno must be picked clean of anti-Soviet risks.’


So quick. Her excitement mounted. It was already Kovno and not Kaunas. ‘Your men know who I am?’ She needed reassurance she wouldn’t be taken with them.


‘You’re not exactly easy to miss. And they’ve been briefed.’


‘Kowalski’s sister is a problem. She doesn’t like me flirting with her precious brother and is looking for any excuse for him to ditch me.’


‘Then don’t give him any. By the way, sorry about your job.’ The hairdresser’s was closed now and under Soviet control.


She shrugged. It had been a useful listening post to feed information back to Illeyvich and the NKVD, but the loss of it meant she’d be short of cash, and this she resented.


‘You’ll be deployed in a better role from now on,’ he said, as if reading her mind. ‘Intelligence. More pay. It’s all gone quicker than we hoped. We expected more resistance. But then the Lithuanian men are weaklings who’d rather bleat than fight.’


The car was moving slowly down the main street with its red flags. The sight of them gave her a thrill, the feeling that at last things were changing. She hadn’t thought the revolution, when it came, would be so bloody or so final. It had given her immense pleasure to see the people who had previously controlled the power and the money in the town, all the old tsarists, strung up by their necks.


In the end it had been easy, the liberation of the proletariat; the many versus the few. It was either the dictatorship of the landowners or the dictatorship of the common people, and she knew whose side she was on. It still riled her how her father and her mother had nothing and expected even less. Thirty years of night shifts, of heavy, dirty engineering for her father, and what had he to show for it? Injured hands and an empty bank balance. Her mother – toiling all hours, sweating in the stink of sheepskin at the glove factory. From now on, under Stalin’s guiding hand, it would be different. She was working for a world where everyone would have an equal chance, where no one would have to escape the grind of their work through vodka and using a woman as a punchbag.


At last, Illeyvich opened the window to flick out his cigar butt. ‘You’ll alert us if Kowalski decides to leave?’


She nodded.


‘The usual number.’


He wound up the window and tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder. She sat back as the car did another slow circle of the block before she unclipped her handbag and passed over the handwritten list of Jacek’s contacts.


Moments later, Illeyvich opened the door again to let Masha out, and the car eased away in a stench of petrol fumes. The rain was pelting down now, splatting in the dust in dark splodges. She watched the car go before holding her bag above her head and running for home.


A few streets from her front door, she slowed, putting on her sulky persona, the one she used at home, the one guaranteed to make her parents leave her alone and not ask questions. Jacek Kowalski would come to her, she knew, because he couldn’t help himself. She had him in a snare, convinced he was ‘in love’ with her. The love was all in his pants.


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Deborah Swift



Deborah Swift is the English author of twenty historical novels, including Millennium Award winner Past Encounters, and The Poison Keeper the novel based around the life of the legendary poisoner Giulia Tofana. The Poison Keeper won the Wishing Shelf Readers Award for Book of the Decade. Recently she has completed a secret agent series set in WW2, the first in the series being The Silk Code.

Deborah used to work as a set and costume designer for theatre and TV and enjoys the research aspect of creating historical fiction, something she loved doing as a scenographer. She likes to write about extraordinary characters set against a background of real historical events. Deborah lives in England on the edge of the Lake District, an area made famous by the Romantic Poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge.


Connect with Deborah:

Website  ✧ Twitter  ✧ Facebook  ✧ Bluesky  ✧  Amazon Author Page  ✧ BookBub  ✧ Pinterest


✧ Book in the Spotlight ✧ Death and The Poet (The Publius Ovidius Mysteries by Fiona Forsyth

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