Tethered

One boy, his mother, and a captain with secrets from her crew. Amongst the stars, all things lost are found.

Marlowe Rose has been fighting her ex, Dominik, for a decade. When he kidnaps their son, she sneaks onto his starship, planning to give him hell. Instead, she ends up caught, sequestered and questioned by the captain. But Tanisira Sekmith isn’t what Marlowe thought she was, and when it becomes clear that they’re all just puppets in Dominik’s eyes, Marlowe convinces the stoic captain to help rescue her son.

Tanisira promised herself she’d make no waves, catch no one’s attention, and cruise under the radar. Misplacing her trust once changed the trajectory of her whole life. After the fallout from her last job, flying a pleasure yacht is supposed to be boring and easy-exactly what she wants. But finding Marlowe on the ship changes everything. Marlowe sees her, shadows and all, and it forces Tanisira to face things she tried to leave behind.

Marlowe doesn’t expect to find, on this journey that she dreaded, something she’d given up. And Tanisira doesn’t know if she deserves happiness, but she doesn’t want to lose this: a kid with big, green eyes and his fierce, captivating mother.

Described as Becky Chambers meets Delilah Green Doesn’t Care, Tethered is a Sapphic, soft science-fiction romance. There are content warnings in the front matter and at www.tjwilliams.uk