The Guest in Room 120

One hotel, three smart women--living 100 years apart--come together to finally give voice and testify to the truth.

The past and present overlap in The Guest in Room 120, another captivating, richly woven novel of historical fiction by Sara Ackerman.

 

Stories of strong women and the unsolved mysteries that surround them have become hallmarks of Ackerman’s work. In The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West, she explored the story of an ambitious, young female pilot from the 1920s who faced many obstacles in trying to compete in the male-dominated world of aviation. In The Guest in Room 120, Ackerman sets her sights on Jane Stanford, the co-founder of esteemed Stanford University who, in 1905, fled life-threatening dangers in California and took residence in the ritzy Moana Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii, only to be murdered there by strychnine poisoning. The circumstances of her death were covered up and contested.

 

In 2005, the door to Stanford’s real-life story from the Gilded Age is reopened when blocked bestselling author, Zoe Finch, in search of literary inspiration, attends a writing conference at the historic Moana Hotel. While there, chilling supernatural dreams urge her to more closely examine details of Stanford’s death. Zoe’s research ultimately ties to an enigmatic woman who worked at the hotel--and kept a journal--during Stanford’s ill-fated stay.

 

Along the way, Zoe partners with Dylan Winters, a fellow mystery writer at the conference. The two are put in peril as they dig deep and uncover startling, long-buried truths.

 

Tightly wound dual timelines, burgeoning romance, and smart plotting--past and present--infuse Ackerman’s ambitious, engrossing novel riddled with nail-biting suspense.

 

The Guest in Room 120 by Sara Ackerman

Mira Books (Harlequin/HarperCollins), $18.99 paperback, 9780778387220, 326 pages

Publishing date: September 23, 2025

To order this book on Indiebound/Bookshop.org, link HERE

 

 

Learn more about author Sara Ackerman HERE

 

The Book of I

A dark, serio-comic novel about how an ancient bloodbath at a monastery on a tiny Scottish island ultimately provokes redemption for three unlikely survivors.

A jarring, bloody opening scene launches The Book of I, a dark, compact, first novel rife with astonishing comical twists by Scottish playwright David Greig.

The setting is the year 825 at a monastery on the tiny isle of Iona off the west coast of Scotland. Viking Norsemen raid the island in search of a silver reliquary said to house the bones of Saint Columba, an Irish Catholic Priest (and later canonized saint) who established the remote religious enclave. The 70 devout monks who live in humble isolation on the island seem to rejoice at this invasion, willing and eager to be martyred for Christ in order glorify God—all except for one monk: Brother Martin resists the pull of glorified eternity and salvation. Amidst his cowardice, he hides deep in an outhouse—yes, a punishment as fetid as imagined!

In the aftermath of a particularly gruesome and graphically depicted battle (readers will shiver at Greig’s detailed literary descriptions of beheadings and slayings), Brother Martin survives along with, Una, a “handsome woman,” a beekeeper and medicinal mead maker, who is secretly happy to be liberated of her ogre, now dead husband. One of the aging, elder Viking leaders, Grimur, a bombastic brute with a sensitive side, also survives—this after he is mistakenly taken for dead and buried alive. His “resurrection” certainly doesn’t make for congeniality among this unlikely trio. However, there lies the great dramatic irony in Greig’s clever, inventive story that delivers a host of humorous twists about their survival and ultimate forced camaraderie while also reflecting on more sobering issues of forgiveness and trust, love and redemption.  

The Book of I by David Greig

Europa Editions, $21.25 hardcover, 9798889661276, 160 pages

Publication Date: September 9, 2025 

To order this book on Bookshop.org (formerly Indiebound) link HERE

Link HERE to learn more about dramatist/author David Greig