KAREN’S KILLER BOOK BENCH: Welcome to Karen’s Killer Book Bench, where readers can discover talented new authors and take a peek inside their wonderful books. This is not an age-filtered site, so all book peeks are PG-13 or better. Come back and visit often. Happy reading!
~~~
AGENTS OF STARR: THE ASHFALL QUINTET
Techo-Thrillers
BY BETH A. FREELY
BLURB
A five-book techno-thriller romance saga where obedience is engineered—and love is the flaw.
Some wars aren’t fought on battlefields.
They’re fought inside the mind.
Agents of STARR: The Ashfall Quintet follows elite operatives as they uncover the truth behind Ashfall, a classified neurochemical weapon designed to suppress fear, rewrite loyalty, and erase autonomy. What begins as a single failed hit spirals into a global conspiracy involving ghost divisions, resurrected intel, and a hidden architect shaping the war from the shadows.
~~~
AGENTS OF STARR: THE ASHFALL QUINTET
Techo-Thrillers
BY BETH A. FREELY
Book One: Inside the Killbox
Release: December 25, 2025
A botched assassination exposes a conspiracy far bigger than STARR ever admitted. As operatives are hunted across the Pacific Northwest and a shadow figure known as The Architect emerges, a new black-ops unit—Ghost Division—is born.
The war has begun. And Ashfall was only the first phase.
Book Two: Shadows Know Blood
Release: January 14, 2026
Pre-order: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F926MTRK
Former Yakuza enforcer Akira Shimosawa and CIA profiler Mallory Sullivan are deployed on what should be a controlled extraction. Instead, they’re cut loose and marked expendable. As Ashfall resurfaces, they uncover a system that tests loyalty by breaking the human mind.
Emotion becomes a liability.
Love becomes a weapon.
Book Three: Breaking Deep Cover
Release: February 25, 2026
Pre-order: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F925V9HM
Ashfall evolves—editing belief instead of fear.
Burned-out operative Strait McCardle and missing neurochemist Mariam Carteras are forced off-book when they discover the next phase of the program. The enemy is no longer just a network—it’s a system that learns.
And it refuses to let its failures die.
Book Four: Unwritten, Unbroken, Undone
Release: April 22, 2026
Pre-order: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F925YVVT
Michaela Matthews was written off as dead after fatal Ashfall exposure. Instead, she wakes altered—her memories fractured and obedience wired into her nervous system.
As trauma psychologist Joshua Brinkman fights to help her heal, they uncover the truth: Michaela wasn’t just a victim.
She was part of the design.
Book Five: Killing the Echo
Release: August 4, 2026
Pre-order link: Coming Soon
Jameson “Coop” Cooper vanished by design. Now he’s back with proof that Ashfall never ended—it adapted.
As Project Requiem comes into focus, the final evolution of neural control threatens to preserve obedience long after freedom feels real. To stop it, Coop must return to the system that erased him—and finish the war for good.
Ashfall isn’t just a weapon.
It’s a philosophy.
And the agents of STARR are done being part of the design.
About Author Beth A. Freely…
Award-winning author Beth A. Freely was born and raised in upstate New York, with a brief and very influential stint living in Great Britain that can be seen in her writing. Today she calls New Mexico home. When asked how long she has been writing, she’ll tell you, “All my life.”
In 2003, she published some of her fanfiction online and won awards for her stories. Two years later, she was the 1st Place winner of the 2005 Arche Books Publishing Novel Writing Contest in Women’s Fiction with her novel Behind the Eyes of Dorian Gray. In 2022, she took home 1st Place in Romance/Science-Fiction and 2nd Place in Science-Fiction/Aliens & Alien Invasion in the Spring Bookfest Awards with her novel Beyond The Steps of Stone.
Beth holds a masters in English and Creative Writing and enjoys horseback riding, swimming, reading, cuddling her cats, and helping other authors hone their craft.
~~~
Don’t miss the chance to read these books!
Welcome to Karen’s Killer Book Bench, Beth. These books all sound like exciting reads! Thanks for sharing this series and the release dates with us today. Thanks, too, for the pre-order links.
Hello, your book series sound like great reads, Thank you for sharing about them with us. Have a great day and a great rest of the week.
Book series fantastic looking forward to reading
Well, Beth, this is quite the premise you have created!
Thanks for sharing!