Green Ferns Publishing House is proud to announce Barb Bergwerf as the first author signed to the newly launched independent press. Her debut novel, Fatal Exposure, will be released on June 2, 2026, the first in a planned trilogy entitled The Capitol to Lowcountry Series.

A smart, atmospheric romantic thriller set in 1969, Fatal Exposure introduces readers to twenty-one-year-old photojournalist Kate Miller, who lands her dream internship at the Washington Post expecting to chase headlines, not become one. When Kate photographs the assassination of an oil minister in Tehran, her images ignite an international firestorm and earn the paper a Pulitzer Prize. For her own safety, Kate must remain anonymous.

Back in Washington, Kate’s instincts pull her into another story, one wrapped in charm and danger. She falls for Jim Rayford, a charismatic South Carolina congressman with secrets of his own. Their romance carries her from the marble halls of D.C. to the windswept beaches of the Lowcountry, where power and passion collide. When a rising political star ascends to the Vice Presidency and a shocking assassination rocks the White House, Kate’s camera may hold the only truth capable of unraveling a deadly conspiracy.

Blending Washington intrigue with Southern heart, Fatal Exposure will appeal to readers of Mary Alice Monroe, Sandra Brown, and Karen White.

“Bergwerf brings insider knowledge to a story where power, attraction, and timing collide!” said Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author of Where the Rivers Merge.

Bergwerf brings a lifetime of visual storytelling to her fiction. Raised in the Midwest, she studied International Affairs at George Washington University before working in government service and later building a career in photojournalism, including time with the Chicago Tribune. Now based in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, she works as a photographer with conservation and wildlife organizations, experiences that inform the novel’s vivid sense of place and perspective.