AnaRose and Medusa's Curse by Mary Ann Bernal - Finalist - The 2025 SEA Shorts for Short Stories, Essays, and Novellas

  

A Legendary Pendant. A Forgotten Curse. A Race Against Time.

When relic hunter Miles Bordel calls AnaRose Preston for help, she knows trouble isn’t far behind. This time, it’s personal — and deadly. A nationalist cult bent on restoring ancient Greece to its former glory is hunting the Medusa pendant, said to petrify anyone who meets its cursed gaze.

AnaRose and Miles find the pendant, but it’s stolen before they can secure it. Now the cult is after its missing ruby eyes, hidden somewhere along the Aegean coast. From sunken ruins to mountaintop shrines, AnaRose must follow the clues, dodge assassins, and stop a plan that could turn ancient superstition into modern terror.

The danger is real. The curse may be, too.

She answered a call for help. Now she’s fighting to ensure the past stays buried. Grab your copy of AnaRose and Medusa’s Curse and chase a secret some still fear to face.

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The SEA Shorts Book Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding works in the genre of Short Stories. The Shorts Awards is a genre division of Chanticleer International Book Awards and Novel Competitions (The CIBAs).

The Chanticleer International Book Awards program discovers today’s best works. The SEA Short Stories Awards discover the Best New Short Form Fiction, Narrative Non-Fiction, and Essays. These books have advanced to the next round of judging. We will put them to the test and choose the best.

For more information, kindly visit: https://www.chantireviews.com/2026/02/06/the-2025-sea-shorts-finalists-for-short-stories-essays-and-novellas

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Discover The AnaRose Chronicles, honored with multiple international awards for excellence in storytelling.  https://books2read.com/u/4jzKAY

The Briton and the Dane: Concordia - Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year Finalist - Early Medieval

Finalist 

The Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year

The Historical Fiction Book of the Year 

Early Medieval

Travel back in time to late Ninth Century Anglo-Saxon Britain where Alfred the Great rules with a benevolent hand while the Danish King rules peacefully within the boundaries of the Danelaw. Trade flourishes, and scholars from throughout the civilized world flock to Britannia’s shores to study at the King’s Court School at Winchester.

Enter Concordia, a beautiful noble woman whose family is favored by the king. Vain, willful, and admired, but ambitious and cunning, Concordia is not willing to accept her fate. She is betrothed to the valiant warrior, Brantson, but sees herself as far too young to lay in the bedchamber of an older suitor. She wants to see the wonders of the world, embracing everything in it; preferably, but dangerously, at the side of Thayer, the exotic Saracen who charms King Alfred’s court and ignites her yearning passions.

Concordia manipulates her besotted husband into taking her to Rome, but her ship is captured by bloodthirsty pirates, and the seafarers protecting her are ruthlessly slain to a man. As she awaits her fate in the Moorish captain’s bed, by sheer chance, she discovers that salvation is at hand in the gilded court of a Saracen nobleman.

While awaiting rescue, Concordia finds herself at the center of intrigue, plots, blackmail, betrayal and the vain desires of two egotistical brothers, each willing to die for her favor. Using only feminine cunning, Concordia must defend her honor while plotting her escape as she awaits deliverance, somewhere inside steamy, unconquered Muslim Hispania.

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