Spotlight & Giveaway: Magic and Mischief at the Wayside Hotel by Elizabeth Everett

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Elizabeth Everett’s new release: Magic and Mischief at the Wayside Hotel

When a magical hotel appears smack-dab in the middle of the most unmagical of worlds, the last thing the residents expect is to fall in love.

Manager of the Number Five Wayside Inn and World Travel Hub, Pax Nomen has one of the easiest jobs in all the known universes, unless you count the occasional plumbing disaster. When Number Five Wayside gets stranded on a non-magical world, even Pax’s trusty Wayside Handbook can’t help him. How is he going to “reboot” the hotel and keep it on its magical journey?

Josie LaChusia is a single mom experiencing debt, having parenting doubts, and tipping dangerously toward depression when an ad pops up on her phone that an apartment is available in a building she’s never seen before.

Pax needs a new guest to restart his hotel, and Josie needs a nudge to restart her life. In a building occupied by faeries, gargoyles, and a gnome with a bad attitude, two souls from very different places come together to create a home like no other.

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from Magic and Mischief at the Wayside Hotel 

Josie’s skin tightened over her bones and her stomach flipped like it did at the slow climb of a roller coaster.
Something was very right about this place, on this day.
Pushing inward on the dulled brass door handles revealed a high-ceilinged lobby with black and white tiled floors. A bank of stairs at her left had wrought iron bannisters twisted in the shape of birds, roses, and fleur de lis. It stopped at a landing where a tall, thin table held a vase of dried flowers before it continued out of sight.
A wall of mailboxes stood to the right and the elevator was directly in front of her, flanked on either side by two niches holding truly hideous gargoyles.
“How . . . whimsical,” she said aloud; her voice bounced briskly off the walls and ceiling in a satisfying echo.
The lobby had an air of faded grandeur. Beneath her feet, the tiled mosaics were dulled by blackened grout and the walls needed a good scrubbing.
The floor lights above the elevator lit and Josie checked her watch. A gift to her great-grandfather during the war from a family he’d rescued from a camp, Josie had never seen it anywhere other than her grandfather’s wrist until the day he died. That day, he’d taken the watch off and handed it over to her, unable to speak, but making his wishes known by gently curling her fingers over the watch and wrapping her fist in his hand one last time.
God.
Where had that memory come from?
Before Josie could decide if it was a good or a bad sign, the elevator doors opened with a melancholy shushing sound.
“ . . . don’t care what you say. I heard what I heard. You can’t tell me the noise was anything other than—” A pasty, nervous looking man stepping off the elevators and tripped, nearly landing face down in front of Josie.
“This place is a death trap,” he complained as he straightened. When he noticed Josie he paused, a greasy leer spread across his face like an oil spill.
“Do you live here?” he asked.
Before Josie could answer, the elevator doors closed, and a shadow fell over them both.
“You are here for the tour?” the shadow caster asked.
Josie looked up to meet the eyes of a tall man who’d exited the elevator after Pasty-face.
Impossible to say exactly how dark a brown they were in the low light of the lobby, but his eyes were bracketed by starbursts of tiny wrinkles in his deeply tanned skin. His eyelashes were long, as long as a child’s, and the dip beneath his cheekbones slightly shadowed.
A sense of safety so strong her bones hummed with it washed over her in that moment – could have been two moments, ten minutes an hour, Josie had no idea.
However long it was, it was too long. The tall man cleared his throat, one thick eyebrow rising into a triangular question mark.
“The tour?” he asked again.
Those eyes were set in a ruggedly handsome face. He looked a hero from an old black and white movie, broad shouldered with a strong, squared chin. Two scars ran parallel to his right eyebrow toward his temple ending at a streak of white hair.
“I’ll take your tour again,” said Pasty-face. He sent Josie a tight, hungry smile.
Before Josie could speak, a high tinkling sound echoed through the lobby.
Pasty-face spun around.
“Did you hear that?” he hollered. “This place is haunted. Haunted, I tell you!”
The tall man ran his fingers through the thick black hair long enough to reach his chin and grimaced at Pasty-face’s voice. His brows rose and he looked at Josie as if asking for help. She shrugged and the tall man’s head dropped to his chest for a moment in exaggerated defeat.
“I hear them laughing at me.” Pasty-face pointed at the staircase. “Girls. Teenaged girls. I can’t see them, but I know it’s me they’re laughing at.” His voice thinned to a whimper. “Haunted by teenagers.”
Again, the tall man glanced at her, tilting his head to the right as if asking for a favor. Josie wanted to smile but this unspoken conversation made her nervous.
Was he flirting?
No. Why would he?
“Yes,” Josie said, the word barely making it past her thick tongue and dry lips. She pulled her scarf to her chest and cleared her throat. “Yes, I am here for the tour.”
The tall man nodded, his eyes crinkling. “This is the lobby. Everyone’s mailboxes and packages are left on that ledge.”
Josie took a step toward him, but Pasty-face set himself between Josie and the man, and gripped her upper arm tightly.
“Don’t go with — I can take you, I mean, can I take you for coffee?” the man asked. “You wouldn’t want to rent an apartment here anyway; it’s creepy and you can’t get cell phone reception in the lobby.”
Josie’s mouth opened in astonishment, but nothing came out. Twenty-eight years old and still conditioned to react quietly and politely no matter what the circumstances.
What she wanted to do was tell Pasty-face where to put his hand and what to do with it but her inbred instinct to avoid unpleasantness kicked in. Josie smiled instead.
“Thank you for your invitation, but I’ll take the tour,” she said, stepping back so it wouldn’t be obvious she was pulling her arm away.
Why? Why couldn’t she be more like Barbara and call the guy on his rudeness?
With a meaty thud, the tall man’s hand landed on Pasty-face’s shoulder. “Your tour is over.”
There was no hint of menace in the tall man’s voice but still his dismissal was final, Pasty-face turned a sickly grey color and sidled out of the front doors without another word leaving Josie alone with this man. A stranger. A tall stranger with kind eyes.
“Who are you?” she blurted out.
The giant cocked his head and Josie blushed.
“I meant, um, do you work for the management agency or for the building? Not that you don’t appear trustworthy, but . . .”
But she’d listened to Barbara and Jenna’s horror stories for too many years to trust her instincts.
Monsters come in all shapes and sizes.
“My name is Pax,” the man said. “I am the Building Superintendent.”
Josie waited a beat, but he said nothing else.
“Just Pax?” she asked.
He gestured at the gargoyle to the left. On the wall, next to the gargoyle’s head, were two frames below which were small brass tags. The first tag was engraved “President, Tenants Association” above it the picture of a beautiful Black woman in a white and gold headwrap. Above the brass tag reading “Building Superintendent” was a picture of the man standing next to Josie, his sympathetic eyes seemingly fixed on the woman in the picture next to him.
“If you feel comfortable following me, we will take the stairs,” he said quietly.
Outside, the clouds lifted, and the tepid sunlight warmed the lobby’s dingy walls to the color of a candle flame. A sound like the shushing of wings came from somewhere and it smelled like violet gum.
As Josie followed the man up the stairs a scraping noise came from behind her, and she whipped her head around.
Huh.
She would have sworn one of the gargoyles moved.

Excerpted from Magic and Mischief at the Wayside Hotel by Elizabeth Everett Copyright © 2026 by Elizabeth Everett. Excerpted by permission of Ace. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Excerpt. ©Elizabeth Everett. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 
 

Giveaway: 1 giveaway copy of MAGIC AND MISCHIEF AT THE WAYSIDE HOTEL by Elizabeth Everett, US only

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and post a comment to this Q: What did you think of the excerpt spotlighted here? Leave a comment with your thoughts on the book…

Meet the Author:

USA Today bestselling author Elizabeth Everett lives in upstate New York with her family. She likes going for long walks or (very) short runs to nearby sites that figure prominently in the history of civil rights and women’s suffrage. Her writing is inspired by her admiration for rule breakers and her belief in the power of love to change the world.
 
Buy: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/788252/magic-and-mischief-at-the-wayside-hotel-by-elizabeth-everett/