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Fantasy – Warrior Tithe

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Fantasy, Romantic Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, Fairy Tales, Faerie Tales

Release Date: March 1, 2021

Sparks fly between an unlikely pair with a spurned sorcerer hot on their trail.

Aoife, a kelpie, flees a marriage trap laid by her father, Mannan mac Lir and the sorcerer king Cu Roi mac Daire, only to fall prey to an iron snare in the mortal realm.

Fagan, a poor cottar, with nothing left to lose takes pity upon the kelpie he finds in his snare, setting her free. When the kelpie transforms into a beautiful fae maiden and offers to take him to the queen of Sidhe to repay him for his kindness, he joins her on her journey.

However, Aoife is keeping secrets.

Her betrothed Cu Roi mac Daire will not let his betrothed go so easily. His life and his kingdom depends on it.

About The Author

T.J. Deschamps lives in the Pacific Northwest with her three precocious teens and her husband. There she builds worlds with words, reads, lifts weights, attends cons, and kayaks.

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Apocalyptic Romance – My Tether

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“Those Who Survived” series, Book 3

Apocalyptic Romance, Erotica Romance

Date Published: 2/19/2021

Publisher: Evernight Publishing

A virus has ravaged the human population.

Neriah Warren lives within the Amish community but not even her faith can protect the people she loves. When her mother shows signs of the fatal sickness, there is nothing left for Neriah, and she heads north to find the family she’s never met, not knowing if there is anyone left to find.

Jesse Krider was incarcerated for killing one of the men who raped his sister. He was supposed to rot in prison but now that the end of the world is upon them, he’s free. His plan involved vengeance, but when he’s wounded, fate steps in and leads him to Neriah’s healing touch.

Stuck in a blizzard, they learn to trust one another through the long Canadian winter. Neriah may be too good for him, but as each day passes, Jesse discovers she just might be the tether that saves his soul.

Excerpt

I’ve seen many people die. Friends, family. My husband. Tried to help them, but … it was painful not being able to ease their suffering. And when you’re hungry, well, scavenging isn’t just for rodents.”

“Good point,” he grunted as he stood up. “I have to take a leak if you want to point me to the bathroom.”

“Oh, um, sure,” she mumbled, embarrassed.

She helped him off the bed, keenly aware that he stood naked. He glanced down at himself.

“Got something for me to put on?”

“Oh, yes,” she squeaked, then cleared her throat. “In the bedroom is a closet full of men’s clothes.”

He nodded and, holding his bandaged side, headed off to the bathroom. She couldn’t help but watch as he slowly walked away. Much to her shock, he didn’t close the door and a moment later, she heard him urinating. Her inner voice told her to stop looking, but she couldn’t seem to take her gaze off his muscular behind, as well as the tattoos on his back. So many colors and designs, and she had to admit, he fascinated her in a very improper way.

Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes to break her fascination. She had to keep reminding herself who she was and who he was, and that he wasn’t going to be around for very long.

“You okay?”

His question jolted her and she opened her eyes to have his muscular chest up close and personal. Her heartrate skyrocketed. As her gaze traveled upward, tracing over every inch of tattooed skin, she determined there was something very interesting about Jesse Krider. Something that made her skin prickle with awareness and her tummy do a funny little flip-flop.

“I found some sweatpants to wear,” he said.

She swallowed thickly, not daring to look down, even though she very much wanted to do that. A shred of propriety still lingered in her conscience.

“That’s, um, fine.”

He took a step closer. On one hand that relieved her of the pressure urging her to look down. However, it now brought him close enough that she could reach out and touch his skin if she was so inclined. And she was fast learning that she felt so inclined to do this that she had to curl her fingers into a fist to prevent them from having a mind of their own.

About the Author

I began reading my mom’s Harlequin Presents in the fifth grade, and from the first story I knew I wanted to write romance novels. I like writing about the very ordinary girl thrust into extraordinary circumstances, so my heroines will probably never be lawyers, doctors or corporate highrollers. I try to write characters who aren’t cookie cutters and push myself to write complicated situations that I have no idea how to resolve, forcing me to think outside the box. I love writing characters who are real, complex and full of flaws, heroes and heroines who find redemption through love.

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The Last Tourist by Nowick Gray – Excerpt

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Travel, Memoir

Date Published December 2020

Publisher: Cougar WebWorks

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Midlife crisis, his life’s dreams at an early end, it was time to bust out
and see the world.

Nowick Gray sets out with backpack and drum to find out what he’s been
missing. Tropical warmth, better health, inner peace… He scours Asia and the
Pacific, Europe and Latin America for that perfect beach, a new tribe, a
winter home. Will ayahuasca heal his woes, or an ayurvedic cleanse? Beset by
desperate touts on an abandoned Bali shore, he knows he’s a dying breed: the
last tourist.

With this fourth book in the My Country series, Nowick’s travels extend
across the globe, caught in fresh prose reminiscent of Chatwin, Grant, Iyer,
Matthiessen, Gilbert, Theroux. His creative nonfiction “shows the reader all
the ways in which one can perceive, digest, and make sense of the world.”
With “language that is superb: detailed yet economical; vivid and
appealing,” The Last Tourist invites you to join an intrepid traveler “in
the midst of the action as if walking alongside.”

About the Author

Nowick Gray makes his home on Salt Spring Island, BC, where he writes
fiction and creative nonfiction. A frequent contributor to The New Agora
online magazine, Nowick also works as a freelance copyeditor. When not
engaged with words, he enjoys hiking, kayaking, and playing African drums.
In winter months, if not seeking unspoiled tropical locations, he settles
for cozy hibernation at home.

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EXCERPT

Part I – Paradise Lost and Found

Tourists don’t know where they’ve been. Travelers don’t know where they’re going.

— Paul Theroux, The Happy Isles of Oceania

Hawai’i: Gateway to the Tropics

Return to Paradise (1998)

Fourteen-year-old Nashira and I are en route to Hawaii; our first trip outside of continental North America. The most trying part of the journey is already behind us. It’s winter in the British Columbia mountains, and the Castlegar airport was socked in, so our initial flight was canceled. The airline offered to bus us instead, but by a roundabout route that would have arrived too late for our early-morning flight from Vancouver to Kauai. So we piled back into our pickup truck at four o’clock, with a twelve-hour window to complete what normally is an eight-hour trip to the coast. We would need that cushion, encountering snow in all three passes.

Nashira took it all like a trooper. We lifted our spirits with stops every hour and a half: more gas, a stretch, snacks, new music tapes to keep us rolling. But it was a grueling trip, with slippery pavement and poor visibility: faint clues of tracks on the snowy highway ahead, with only glimpses of a center or side line here or there; heavy clumps icing the windshield wipers; a pair of red lights to follow when I was lucky.

Manning Park in silence was a snowy, treacherous dream, forcing me to be calm, relaxed, attentive. I followed the lights of one car most of the way through, coasting in soft communion behind it, pacing my distance, breathing, sweating lightly, coming finally to a peaceful revelation of being home again, truly at home, on the road. In that breathing space of acceptance expanding suddenly to all of my world, wherever I now would move, my center would come with me, a home mobile and live and adaptable to any contingency. Facing death on every curve, with every passing truck a whisper away, I knew that in that calmness and steady awareness is the power to protect, to guide, to hold the life force in sacred responsibility.

Snow turned to rain as we approached the coast, but there were more challenges to come. In Abbotsford the wind buffeted the truck and it was hard to hold it steady on the road. Through the outlying areas of Vancouver, hazard lights were flashing with this or that minor disaster everywhere: a tree across the left lane of the Trans-Canada Highway that we almost hit, blinded by the warning lights; an overturned vehicle at a dead-end crossroads where I took a wrong turn to the airport near Langley; a taped-off area of several blocks in Vancouver; another tree blocking both lanes of the Trans-Canada eastbound; another blinding repair light; whole sections of the city darkened with a power outage (affecting 200,000 people, we heard later). The plane even now, two and a half hours after takeoff, is rocking through 200 km/hr winds.

Victorian Historical Romance – The Duke is Wicked

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League of Lords, Book 3

Victorian Historical Romance

Date Published: March 2, 2021

Leagues and lives apart, Delaney and Sebastian navigate a world they’re not destined for together. Can she let down her guard and learn to trust a WICKED Duke?

He’s harboring a fiery secret….

The Duke of Ashcroft is determined to keep the League of Lords under wraps. After all, the group’s supernatural gifts brought the mystical misfits together and nobody is going to tear them apart. Intelligent and wily, Sebastian knows better than to trust anyone–especially an impulsive and intrusive American woman.

She’s looking for answers…

Competitive and confident, Delaney Temple is hellbent on uncovering the truth about the League. She’ll stop at nothing to unearth the secrets they’re burying. But when Sebastian is in trouble and Delaney comes to his rescue, their contempt turns to a burning desire. Suddenly, with their passion ignited, they can no longer deny their attraction.

A forbidden love…

“A spirited and compulsively readable paranormal-romance.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Fans of the historical and the paranormal will not be able to put this excellent book down.” —Coffee Time Romance Reviews

“Seamless blend of sensual romance with sooty London ton plus a splash of the fantastic!” —Fresh Fiction

“Snappy dialogue and Austen-esque drollery.”—Kirkus Reviews

Other books in the League of Lords Series:

The Lady is Trouble

League of Lords, Book 1

Release Date: February 18, 2020

In the first in Tracy Sumner’s sizzling League of Lords historical series, mysticism in Victorian England is the setting for a captivating love affair . . .

He’s a viscount with a dark past who yearns for the one woman he can’t have. She’s rebellious, spurned by society and determined to change his mind.

What’s a defiant woman to do when the man she’s meant for doesn’t believe in love?

After three years of waiting for Julian Alexander to realize they are destined to be together, Lady Piper Scott takes matters into her own hands. Because her gift as a healer has never done anything but distance her from the most principled man in England. A meaningless diversion as a medium, all done to gain a certain wandering viscount’s attention, backfires. As most endeavors have for a woman known in the ton as Scandalous Scott.

What’s a reluctant viscount to do when the woman he can’t have becomes the woman he can’t live without?

Julian Alexander, Lord Beauchamp, battled his way from the lowliest slum to assume his title. He carries not only a turbulent past, but a mystical psychic gift that separates him from society. Honorable to his core, he is committed to protecting a community of outcasts with abilities like his own. He has no time, no place, for love. Or repeatedly rescuing the most outrageous, beguiling woman he’s ever known. Even if she needs his protection most—and he desires her above all others.

Seduction, intrigue and desire lead to an explosive passion…

Julian vowed to shield Piper from the deadly foes seeking to possess her powerful gift. Although he needs her help in controlling his own, the mix could be deadly. Soon what was once a simple agreement to work together becomes enchantingly complex as they surrender to a timeless love…

Amazon

The Rake is Taken

League of Lords, Book 2

Release Date: June 16, 2020

A gorgeous psychic. An unwanted betrothal. A tantalizing compromise.

An independent hellion, a stealer of time, and the only woman who can capture his heart…

Lady Victoria Hamilton has a supernatural gift, a fiancé, and a guardian angel. She just never expected her protector to be the most dazzling man in England, a devilish scoundrel they call the Blue Bastard. Victoria has agreed to marry for duty, not love, but her unforeseen desire for her mystical angel threatens to destroy not only her plans for the future but the armor surrounding her susceptible heart.

A confirmed scoundrel, a mind reader, and the only man she desires…

Illegitimate son of a viscount and reigning king of London’s gossip sheets, Finn Alexander has spent a lifetime hiding his ability to read minds behind charming smiles and wicked behavior. No one knows the real man, and he likes it that way. Until he meets the lone woman who sees the man beneath the disguise—a blue-blooded temptress with the power to bring him to his knees.

As they embark on a journey of passion and friendship, Victoria and Finn must decide if they’re willing to risk everything for the promise of true, magical love.

Second novel in the tantalizing Victorian paranormal League of Lords series!

Amazon

About the Author

Award-winning author Tracy Sumner’s storytelling career began when she picked up a historical romance on a college beach trip, and she fondly blames LaVyrle Spencer for her obsession with the genre. She’s a recipient of the National Reader’s Choice, and her novels have been translated into Dutch, German, Portuguese and Spanish. She lived in New York, Paris and Taipei before finding her way back to the Lowcountry of South Carolina.

When not writing sizzling love stories about feisty heroines and their temperamental-but-entirely-lovable heroes, Tracy enjoys reading, snowboarding, college football (Go Tigers!), yoga, and travel. She loves to hear from romance readers!

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Memoir – Always Yours, Bee

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Memoir

Date Published: 3/2/21

Publisher: FinnStar Publishing

“There’s a guy. He was hit by a truck.”

On a rainy November day, Mia Hayes’ husband left for work on his Vespa. Normally, she would have driven him, but Mia was waiting on a phone call with an editor and didn’t have time.

She never saw that caring, loving version of her husband again.

The fallout from his accident–Mia’s guilt and her husband’s PTSD, memory loss, and depression–consumed their lives over the next five years as her laid-back husband changed into an angry man with few memories of their past. Desperate to hold her fragile family together, Mia ignored her own unraveling and plunged into bipolar depression.

As she searched for answers to unanswerable questions, Mia moved her family from San Francisco to Paris, France before landing in a leafy Washington, D.C. suburb where she tried to find a fresh start only to become embroiled in a scandal of her own making.

Through ups and downs, mental illness and bad decisions, Mia struggled with what it means to be a good wife and mother, whether saving her marriage was worth the pain, and understanding that healing is a personal journey.

Always Yours, Bee is a heartbreaking yet triumphant and brave look at a woman, a marriage, and a family falling apart and coming out stronger. Told with clarity and introspection, it captures the terror of losing the person closest to you—yourself.

Excerpt

Prologue

November 2004

Lemonade light filtered through the fog, casting a warm, golden tone across us as we watched Ryan run down the empty beach, a kite string clenched in his tiny fist.

November usually brought rain to San Francisco, but this particular day was clear, and we wanted to take advantage of the sun—even if it was chilly and damp out. Surfers bobbed off the coast, waiting for their ride, and gulls skittered along the shoreline. Later, after we ate our picnic lunch, we planned on exploring the tide pools.

James snapped a picture of Leo and me snuggled into a fleecy blanket. I waved him over to us, and he settled into the sand, his jean-clad leg touching mine. He tossed his arm over my shoulder and hugged me close.

“This is nice,” he said. Ryan had stopped running to inspect something on the beach, and Leo crawled off my lap into the sand. “But this is more fun.” James turned and tried to tickle me through my layers of bulky clothes.

We laughed and smiled and were so very happy.

That’s how I want to remember us.

Golden.

About the Author

Mia is a notorious eavesdropper who lives in Northern Virginia, outside Washington DC, with her husband, sons, two cats, and Harlow the Cavapoo.

She drinks too much green tea, loves traveling, and has mastered the art of procrastination cleaning.

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Instagram: @miahayesauthor

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Suspense – Thieves

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The Obscurité de Floride Trilogy

Suspense

Date Published: March 1, 2021

Publisher: Épouvantail Books

From Tropea, Italy to Michigan and Florida, the thieves Molly and April Danser are on the run, trying to escape from an enraged ex-US Marshal. He is hell bent on stopping them once and for all, his twisted black heart fired up for revenge and their total destruction. Will the sisters elude his blood-soaked hunt? They have their smarts and resource but have never faced a pursuit like this.

Can they somehow put an end to his blood lust?

What will they have to do to save themselves from his powerful and deadly claws?

The hunt is on…

Excerpt

Detective Richard ‘Rick’ Ables, Jr. arrived at the Tropea apartment early the next morning, missing the Danser sisters by more than thirty-six hours. Not his fault, the incompetent and greedy airlines had once again dog-fucked his best-laid itinerary. Having flashed his revoked US Marshal badge, he had walked and examined the girls’ rooms with the Mrs. Gior-something trailing and complaining, her Italian sounding like tipsy Mexican. The rooms had been wiped and cleaned for new guests, and as he stood on the front porch looking down at the ancient and sun-stupid town, his lower throat gorged with the bile of frustration.

Descending the stairs to the street, he wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, irritated further by the heat and air that felt mottled with sand and the smell of sea rot. He set the case binder on the roof of his pop can of a budget rental, unlocked the door, and climbed in behind the wheel. Syncing his SAT phone with his laptop, he opened the binder in his lap while a connection was made to his server back in Michigan. The first tab was the detailed chronology of the pursuit, which he updated with his pocket pen, characterizing the Tropea search as an empty gator hole. The laptop pinged, and he pulled it over from the passenger seat.

His slow-witted inside source had let him in on Molly’s strange motorcycle racing life. Details from the search launched before arriving in this ass-up Italian town appeared as red flag icons on a map display. One was in coastal China in a city called Yantai. The second was near the Bristol shores in Britain. Doubting the girls had the juice to get into communist slant land, he did a search on the UK event, skimming the summary deep enough to see that the race was in two weeks.

“It smells right.” He allowed his thoughts to rewind to the last time he was in Britain. “This whole nut sack began there.”

About The Author

Greg Jolley earned a Master of Arts in Writing from the University of San Francisco and lives in the very small town of Ormond Beach, Florida. When not writing, he researches historical crime, primarily those of the 1800s. Or goes surfing.

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Twitter: @gfjolle

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Sci-fi Mystery – The Devil Whispered

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Science-Fiction/Mystery/Detective

Date Published: 3/1/2021

Retired special-forces commander Jacobi Slate is drawn into a downward-spiraling vortex of fear and doubt while investigating a brutal murder committed by an old friend. As evidence mounts that someone else might be pulling strings from the shadows, Jacobi struggles to understand a developing connection to his own past, which is quickly catching up to him.

Near-future cyberpunk collides with gritty detective noir in this fast-paced thriller that shines a light on both the vast shortcomings and the noble heroism of the human condition. To unravel the mystery, Jacobi will pull on every thread while chasing leads from the squalor of the most dangerous streets to the high-tech towers of the wealthy elite on his quest to understand a truth he might not be ready to face.

Excerpt

My consciousness snapped online with abrupt decisiveness. I had the acute feeling of being alone in a world that was wrongly serene, like the silence of the dead. I’d been dreaming of something horrifying, but the details were dancing just outside the boundary of my ability to recall. The panic I’d woken with was caught in my chest. It held me frozen to the sheets as my mind reconfigured to the safety and familiarity of my apartment. Though the context of the dream was faded and surreal, the fear was vivid and raw. It was a visceral terror, compounded by a deeply rooted aversion to vulnerability.

As I lay there, waiting for the sensation of cold dread to die away, the room was unceremoniously lit up by the glow of the wide monitor that comprised the wall opposite my bed. Shielding my eyes from the sting of the sudden light, I heard Ava, my virtual concierge, ask if I would like to receive a call.

“Who’s calling?” I asked with what little energy I’d mustered.

“A Pavel Volkov is awaiting your response.” Her voice was always the same, mildly empathetic with a touch of encouragement.

I wrapped the sheet around me and grudgingly pulled myself up to sit on the side of the bed. Looking out from the tall windows that constituted the eastern-facing wall of my bedroom, I saw that it was still deep in the night. The only radiance beyond the panes was generated by the city itself; from the broken lines of luminous code emanating from the trickling streams of traffic far below, and the windows of the high-rises that towered above them – light and dark, the ones and zeroes of a binary skyline.

“Yeah, okay.”

Then, Pavel’s finely kempt visage was smiling keenly at me from my wall. He was standing on a rocky beach, and waves were lapping at the shore behind him. He wore a white silk suit and a bemused expression that seemed inappropriately unapologetic.

“It’s late, Pavel.”

“Good morning, Jacobi. My apologies for contacting you at this hour, but I thought you’d want to know that I’ve located the target.”

“Where are you?”

“I’ll send coordinates to your CUBE.”

Pavel Volkov was a liar and a thief. He’d conned so many wealthy aristocrats that he’d become one himself, but he stayed in the game for the sake of his own twisted entertainment. He was an artist, who specialized in painting perfect illusions. Deception was his medium, but I’d worked with him for long enough that I trusted him when it came to getting the job done. Traces of malaise from my restless sleep were lingering, so the notion of lucid wakefulness was a welcome one.

“I’m on my way,” I said. “End call.”

Pavel’s smirking face faded as the monitor went dark, and I was left with only my thoughts and the reiterating cycles of light from the softly glowing city outside. In the silence, I heard the faint percussion of fiery horse hooves falling away as the nightmare visiting me surrendered the assault and retreated to the depths of wherever dark dreams were designed.

About the Author

Shawn lives in Massachusetts with his wife and the handful of childhood stuffed animals that they’ve been unable to part ways with, even despite the awkward situation it occasionally puts their house guests in. He wields a coveted Associates of Liberal Arts degree from Greenfield Community college in an overly enthusiastic, flailing manner, and puts it to work writing both fantasy and science fiction stories. Using subliminal codes and hidden messaging carefully placed throughout his books, he plans to captivate the minds of his readers and insidiously manipulate them into purchasing subsequent releases.

As a novelist, musician, graphic designer, and a purveyor of fine games, Shawn is often confused about exactly who he is when he wakes up in the morning. It’s been said (by him) that perhaps he embodies all of these things so equally that a singular definition could not comprehensively impart a satisfactory description. With your support, and a sufficient demand for more novels, he secretly hopes that he’ll have no choice but to formally acknowledge the prevailing label of ‘author’ and spend the rest of his days providing a sense of wonder and adventure to everyone who helped him solidify his nebulous identity.

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