The Canary Club
by Sherry D. Ficklin
Published by: Clean Teen Publishing
Publication date: October 16th 2017
Genres: Historical, Romance, Young Adult
BLURB
“Bad Luck” Benny is a boy from
the wrong side of the tracks. Recently released from jail, he has vowed to keep
his head down and stay out of trouble. But he also needs to care for his ailing
sister and the rest of his struggling family, and he’ll do anything to make
that happen—even if it means taking a position with a notorious crime boss. He
soon finds himself in over his head—and worse still—falling for the one dame on
earth he should be staying away from.
Masie is the daughter of a
wealthy gangster with the voice of an angel and gun smoke in her veins.
Strong-willed but trapped in a life she never wanted, she dreams of flying free
from the politics and manipulation of her father. A pawn in her family’s fight
for control of the city, and with a killer hot on her heels, she turns to the
one person who just might be able to spring her from her gilded cage. But Masie
is no angel, and her own dark secrets may come back to burn them both.
Two worlds collide in this
compelling story of star-crossed lovers in gritty prohibition-era New York.
Perfect for fans of Beatriz
Williams’ A CERTAIN AGE or Libba Bray’s THE DIVINERS, THE CANARY CLUB by Sherry
D. Ficklin will entice Historical Romance fans of all ages. This Gatsby-era
tale filled with dazzling speakeasies, vicious shoot-outs, gritty gangsters,
and iridescent ingenues has also been compared to the television series Z: THE
BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING and BOARDWALK EMPIRE.
Buy Links:
Amazon / Barnes & Noble / iBooks / Kobo
—
EXCERPT:
Lepke.
I roll the name around in my head like a curse.
Glancing back over my shoulder toward my room, toward June, I know
what I have to do.
For the most part, it suits me just fine to let people think I’m
just some silly girl, some empty-headed dame. Because what it means is that
they never see me coming, never suspect me of being capable of doing terrible
things.
But I am my father’s daughter.
I was born to violence like a fish is born to water. It’s part of
me, part of who I am. All my life I’ve watched the people around me suffer—the
women most of all. It’s a fact of this life that more often than not, shots are
fired, grievances aired, and warnings sent through the women around the
powerful men. They are soft targets. Disposable, but cared for enough to make a
point.
In this business, women are nothing more than weaknesses to be
guarded and fodder to be thrown when needed. Pawns in a game we aren’t even
allowed to play. It’s one of the reasons I was so glad when Mother had sent me
off to private school upstate. For a few months, I’d felt normal. Safe.
Being called back to the life after losing her was like suddenly
having an axe hanging over my head again. For one dark, dark moment I’d
considered running away—and I might have too. But soon enough I realized that
this is where I belong, even if I might wish otherwise. I have to do what I can
to protect my family, what family I have left. I know my part and I can play it
as well as any Hollywood starlet. I know I should be appalled, bereaved that
things like this come so easily to me now. But I let that grief, and the dreams
of being anything other than what I am, go a long time ago. And so I stay.
Cursed to walk the fine line between hero and villain, between vengeance and
redemption.
But Lepke isn’t going to get away with this. Not this time.
I drag my hand through the water, mixing in the salts, cementing
my plan in my head.
As soon as I deposit June in the tub I steal away to the den to
make a call.
“Hello?” Vincent Coll’s groggy answer reverberates through the
receiver.
My heart stutters at the sound of his voice. “It’s Masie. I need a
favor.”
“What’s up, doll?”
I hesitate, biting my bottom lip. It’s then that I notice the
smear of blood on my dress.
“I have blood on me, Vinny,” I say, more to myself than him, but
his tone heightens.
“Are you alright?” He’s awake now, alert and sharp.
“It’s not my blood,” I clarify. “It’s the blood of someone I care
about, though.”
He calms again, “What do you need?”
“Lepke Brewer,” I spit the name, unable to quite put into words
how I want him to suffer. How much I want him to hurt.
On the other end of the line there’s a deep sigh, followed by the
sound of a lighter flicking and Vinny taking a long drag. Despite being someone
I once cared about greatly, Vinny is a dangerously unstable man on a good day.
I know he’ll do what I’m about to ask without breathing a word of it to
anyone—not out of loyalty to me or sympathy for June and what had happened to
her, but for the sheer opportunity to level some brutality on a rival. Most
people call him Mad Dog, thanks to his reputation for being about as well
tempered as a rabid animal. But to me, he’s just Vinny, the young boy who’d
come to stay with us after being expelled from the Catholic Reform School his
mother had abandoned him to. We’d spent our formative years together, thick as
thieves and practically family, until he took up the roll as Daddy’s enforcer
and hit man. He’d changed after that.
Hell, we’d both changed. And neither of us for the better.
I roll the memory of him around in my head, biting the inside of
my cheek as I decide what to say next. We haven’t been close in a very long
time, and that’s the way it has to be. It might have been something more once,
or maybe I just wanted there to be something there that never was. He’d kissed
me exactly once, and it had been enough to sear itself into my memory, only to
be buried beneath piles of disappointment and choices neither of us can take
back. He has to be hard to do what he does, with no weaknesses for our enemies
to exploit. And if I’m being honest, it’s the darkness in him that terrifies
me. Not because I don’t understand it, but because I do. I know exactly how
easy it would be to allow myself to be consumed by the violence of this
life—and how good I would be at it.
But that’s not the person I want to be.
Even so, here I am, about to ask him to do the dirty work for me,
just so I can keep my hands just a little bit clean.
“You want him taken care of?” he asks finally.
I suck in a breath before answering. Yes, I want him dead. I want
him wiped from the face of the earth so he can’t ever hurt anyone ever again. I
imagine myself saying yes. I imagine myself throwing a fistful of dirt onto
Lepke’s coffin as it’s lowered into the ground. And then I imagine trying to
look myself in the mirror every day after that.
“I want him to hurt,” I say after a moment. “I want him to be
broken to the core of him. But leave him breathing.”
Leave it to Vinny to echo my own fears back to me. “You sure about
this, Mas?” he asks, taking another drag and exhaling it slowly. “It’s not
going to keep you up at night?”
It’s a barb from an accusation I’d leveled at him the last time we
spoke, when I’d asked how he slept at night, after all he’d done. His answer
had been crude and aimed to hurt me. Mine would be much kinder.
“I suppose I will have to find a way to live with myself,” I
answer, keeping my tone indifferent.
He hangs up without even saying goodbye.
I hold the receiver in my hand for a few heartbeats before
returning it to its cradle. JD is being groomed to take over the family
business and –despite daddy’s constant berating that he’s too soft-hearted or
slow-witted or whatever insult he feels like hurling in the moment for the
job—I’ve never stepped in and asked for a place in the business. I’m just the
girl, after all, to be coddled and protected and mollified. I’d been surprised
that he let me worm my way into the club as it’s headline singer rather than
being shipped off to wherever. Now, I can’t help but wonder, if Daddy had seen
me tonight, if he might rethink the line of ascension.
And I can’t help but wonder what life would be like for me if he
did
Buy Links:
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Author Info
Sherry
is the author of over a dozen novels for teens and young adults including the
best selling Stolen Empire series. She can often be found browsing her local
bookstore with a large white hot chocolate in one hand and a towering stack of
books in the other. That is, unless she's on deadline at which time she, like
the Loch Ness monster, is only seen in blurry photographs.
Sherry also writes contemporary romance under the pen name SJ Noble. You can find her at her official website, www.sherryficklin.com, or stalk her on her Facebook page www.facebook.com/sherry.ficklin.
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