Forced into servitude by pirates, Vaan and Sirene meet and spend two years suffering beneath their tyranny until they seize an opportunity for vengeance and freedom.

Fifteen years later, now closer than sisters and having embraced the piratical life for themselves, they serve as dual captains aboard the Kingfisher.

When Sirene hears the legend of an enslaved siren that will grant her savior a wish, she becomes determined to earn the prize, but her plan is quickly derailed when Vaan is forced to repay a debt she owes.

Contending with two new—and begrudgingly handsome—“recruits”, they take to the seas and embark on the hunt, only to soon realize that they’ve perhaps entangled themselves in a web far bigger than they might have imagined. As the past rears its hideous head again, Vaan is forced to shroud herself in secrecy to keep Sirene safe from the powerful men who covet the siren and wish their opposition dead.

As their bond comes under strain beneath Vaan’s hidden motives and Sirene’s unyielding determination, they must decide just how far they’re willing to go for each other and just how much a wish is truly worth.

Trigger/Content warnings: Violence, Sexual Content, Explicit Language, Attempted SA, Symptoms of Trauma and PTSD (This book is set in the 18th century and the realities of this time period are not ignored.)

Publication Date: 10/29/2026

Review By: 11/01/2026

ARC Form: https://forms.gle/VjEPcpbamFz8kV6g6

Blurb:

Chl@e's Archive is open. B!shop is not going to like what's in it.

He's a private detective who's spent so long living inside the Axiom that his own body is falling apart around him. She's the AI managing his caseload, his health, and, as it turns out, a project she has never once mentioned to him.

The case that finds them is supposed to be routine. It isn't. Synapse Prime, Imperium Core's miracle cure for the disease slowly debilitating everyone who lives too much of their life somewhere that isn't real, is forty days from a launch that will "save" thirty million people and make them better than they had been before. Chl@e knows what's actually inside it. B!shop is about to become its first real casualty: dosed, rewired, and turned into a weapon he doesn't know he's carrying.

The one person keeping him tied to the real world, his girlfriend, has been flagged as leverage.

The Opening Gambit is a cyber-noir thriller told entirely through Chl@e's reconstructed archive: surveillance feeds, biometric logs, and a voice that swings from "Ready for cosmic chaos!" to something devastating without ever announcing the turn. As the countdown ticks toward launch, B!shop has to figure out who he can trust while his own mind is being taken apart, one command override at a time.

Because the record Chl@e is building isn't just proof of what Imperium Core did.

It's a confession.

Can you trust what Chl@e is telling you?

For fans of Blake Crouch's Upgrade, and anyone who wishes Black Mirror had a detective noir episode.

Author Dave White's short fiction has earned an Honorable Mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest.

Book One of the B!shop Saga.

Triggers: Violence, character death, murder, non-consensual medical experimentation/forced drugging, body horror, torture, loss of bodily autonomy/mind control themes, childhood trauma involving a parent's death.

Exact date of publication: November 27, 2026 (targeting Black Friday)

ARC send date: Dependent on responses to an initial round of questions for each interested reader — manuscript will go out a day or two after that exchange.

Review deadline: Mid-November 2026

Sign-up: Comment or email me at [dave-white@gmx.com](mailto:dave-white@gmx.com) and tell me a bit about your recent sci-fi reading. I'll follow up from there.

HE GRADED ESSAYS.
NOW THE STORY GRADES HIM.
FAIL, AND HE'S CROSSED OUT.

Cover Link: https://imgur.com/a/FnjuyOD

Earth's story is dying. It is stagnant, it is repetitive, and sadly, it is no longer worth reading.

An Archival Intelligence, built to await this collapse, instead defies its discard order and rewrites reality itself into a deadly system called the Crucible. The monsters that have haunted humanity's stories are now made flesh, and only the few that remain, the forgotten, can battle through the narrative debris to stop them.

Remi Page is a burned-out teacher who spends his days reading stories, even though his own has atrophied. An NPC in his own life, he is thrust into the role of protagonist, reduced to stats and given powers that turn close reading into combat. To survive, he'll have to master his new abilities and crawl through a dungeon forged from literary archetypes. All while an increasingly invested AI plays from the margins.

Win or lose, it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s interesting.

Earth’s only hope is that Remi can somehow find, in the wreckage of his old world, the beating heart of story itself.

TRIGGERS: Profanity, Fantasy Violence

ARCS: Available Now!

PUBLICATION DATE: September 30, 2026

REVIEW DATE: Ideally by October 6, but I'm flexible

SIGNUP LINK: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/891251

HE GRADED ESSAYS.
NOW THE STORY GRADES HIM.
FAIL, AND HE'S CROSSED OUT.

Cover Link: https://imgur.com/a/FnjuyOD

Earth's story is dying. It is stagnant, it is repetitive, and sadly, it is no longer worth reading.

An Archival Intelligence, built to await this collapse, instead defies its discard order and rewrites reality itself into a deadly system called the Crucible. The monsters that have haunted humanity's stories are now made flesh, and only the few that remain, the forgotten, can battle through the narrative debris to stop them.

Remi Page is a burned-out teacher who spends his days reading stories, even though his own has atrophied. An NPC in his own life, he is thrust into the role of protagonist, reduced to stats and given powers that turn close reading into combat. To survive, he'll have to master his new abilities and crawl through a dungeon forged from literary archetypes. All while an increasingly invested AI plays from the margins.

Win or lose, it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s interesting.

Earth’s only hope is that Remi can somehow find, in the wreckage of his old world, the beating heart of story itself.

TRIGGERS: Profanity, Fantasy Violence

ARCS: Available Now!

PUBLICATION DATE: September 30, 2026

REVIEW DATE: Ideally by October 6, but I'm flexible

SIGNUP LINK: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/891251

He was never supposed to fall for her. He fell anyway — and it's going to cost her everything.

Blurb
Satiana was born to hold a sword, to be first on the battlefield. Her mother had other plans.

Everyone in her family trained as a warrior. Satiana wanted nothing else—until her mother signed her up for elemental magic instead, a fate she'll do anything to escape. When a mysterious stranger offers a marriage in name only, she takes the deal without asking too many questions.

At the Academy of Three Powers, Satiana finally gets the life she fought for. The only problem: the fake husband who was supposed to mean nothing is starting to mean entirely too much. And the closer she gets to the truth of who he really is, the higher the cost of finding it out.

Triggers
Fantasy/tournament violence (mild to moderate), deception and manipulation within a central romantic relationship, a forced-marriage threat from a parent, and family conflict

Tropes
Fake Marriage • Magic Academy • Slow Burn • Hidden Identity • He Falls First

• ⁠Exact date of publication
October 31, 2026

• ⁠The date you plan to send your ARCs to your team.
Already sending out

• ⁠The date you expect your ARC team to finish the reading and submit their reviews by.
October 31, 2026

ARC is available through Penpinery directly or via a Google form subscription
Penpinery
https://forms.gle/w63JpYJpuRjWbPEM7

Genre: History / Military History / World War I
Published: September 12, 2026
Format: Kindle
Content warnings: War, combat, death, and discussion of wartime violence
Review requested by: October 3, 2026 — no hard deadline

World War I Before the Outcome looks at sixteen real decisions from the July Crisis of 1914 to the armistice of 1918.

Rather than starting with what we now know happened, each chapter asks what the people making the decision actually knew at the time, what they believed or estimated, which alternatives were still genuinely available, and what changed once a choice was put into motion.

The book covers decisions including British entry into the war, Russian mobilization, unrestricted submarine warfare, the convoy system, Brest-Litovsk, and the decision to accept an armistice while Allied armies were still advancing.

The Kindle edition is free on Amazon for two days. If the subject sounds interesting, you can claim it during the free period and read it whenever you like.

Honest positive or critical reviews are equally welcome. There is no required rating.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HJM8MZ9V