Killer body or body killer? When fat shaming backfires…
Most people are dying to lose a few pounds. Not so in Slashing Mona Lisa, where it’s the weight-loss advocates who are losing their lives.
Whenever Terry Mangel’s body acceptance revival meeting rolls into town, local diet execs and “fat shamers” turn up dead, often in grotesque, ironic ways. All single murders in small suburbs, no one’s noticed the pattern…until now.
Rookie journalist Camarin Torres is a crusader against discrimination, partially to assuage the guilt she feels over the suicide of her obese, bullied twin sister. She reluctantly accepts a job offered by handsome publisher Lyle Fletcher, a widower with a vendetta, who sees Torres as salvation for Trend, his fledgling fashion magazine. Torres, however, detests everything the publication stands for, and joins solely to transform its judgmental, objectifying content.
As an unexpected romance blossoms, the overconfident, justice-hungry reporter defies orders and infiltrates Mangel’s world—only to find herself in the crosshairs of a vigilante group targeting the sixty-billion-dollar diet industry. Unmasking the killer may save her life but shatter her heart: every clue seems to implicate Fletcher, her mercurial mentor and lover, as the group’s mastermind.
With a sassy, snarky voice and multi-cultural overtones, Slashing Mona Lisa explores body shaming and its victims: the disenfranchised who don’t conform to society’s arbitrary norms, and the lengths they will go to for love and acceptance.
Content Warning: contains some strong language, violence, and explicit sexual scenes
After Alliance bombings, Planet Swooning Moon is in ruins—only the megalopolis Capitol survived under its blue dome. A harsh world awaits in the wilderness. Among thousands of broken-down amusement parks, dragon poachers raid the air and gangs of youth, ‘wing walkers’, pace the marshlands looking for magical items to sell for a few coins.
Eighteen-year-old Cassie just joined the scavengers.
She’s heartbroken after losing her best friend in a tragic accident. But on Swooning Moon, everybody knows dragons can alter reality. All she needs is a sage dragon’s magic…Right?
More used to dragon-singing at her parents’ opera house, she doesn’t exactly know how to fit in, but she finds an ally in Jay Tachebana, rascal son of the most affluent mobster, who flies around in samurai attire in his father’s ‘ludicrously smooth’ billion-dollar racer craft hunting dragons.
When Cassie and Jay venture deep into uncharted grounds, they discover there’s a good reason why Swooning Moon is encased in guarding spells…and underneath, something dark is awakening.
Fast-paced YA fantasy/Sci fantasy that will draw you right in
A damaged former child star
“Thank God, it hasn’t affected my looks,” she said as she lined her eyes. Bette Poole, once the biggest child star in the world, is struggling at twenty five. She’s got the talent for adult roles, but none of the drive. She can’t function without cocaine, booze, and opiates and it’s affecting her performance on set.
Layers of secrets and psychological damage
Jerry, her agent, makes one last attempt to help her by getting her on a reality TV show. Bette’s studio executive father doesn’t want to help, but pulls the plug on the first day of shooting. Jerry inserts himself into her life, moving into her apartment to get her sober and working. It’s worse than Jerry thought. Bette has secrets upon secrets. Secrets that could bring down half of Hollywood and involve Jerry directly. He just needs her to trust him and talk, unscripted, so he can bring down everyone who has hurt her
Author Kayla Krantz