Hotshot wilderness firefighter Jake Whitaker had been lucky to escape a massive blaze with his life. Now, with a body as scarred as his heart, the last thing he needs—much less wants—is to see his first love walk back into his life.With her abusive marriage behind her, Liane Mason brought her children home to Wolf River Lodge in a search for peace…a peace she can maintain only by keeping a cool distance from Jake. But when her children become hostages in a murderous plan, Jake is the only one she can turn to. And while love may never die, a passionate hatred can kill. In a battle of love versus vengeance, which side will win?About the AuthorColleen Thompson began writing the contemporary romantic suspense novels she loves in 2004. Since then, her work has been honored with the Texas Gold Award and nominations for the RITA, Daphne du Maurier, and multiple reviewers'choice honors, along with starred reviews from Romantic Times and Publisher's Weekly. A former teacher living with her family in the Houston area, Colleen can be found on the web at www.colleen-thompson.com. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.The dark silhouettes of pine trees swirled around Liane Mason, the evening sky behind them as red as fresh-spilled blood. Behind the wheel of her parked Jeep, she was shaking so hard she barely managed to slip her phone back inside her purse.Closing her eyes, she gulped down several deep breaths, allowing the crisp mountain air to remind her that there were a hundred different reasons, benign reasons, why her father might not be answering either his cell phone or the radio, and just as many why the kids weren't, either.More than likely eight-year-old Cody and his six-year-old sister Kenzie were outside, helping their grandfather put away the tack and camping supplies they had taken on their first overnight horseback excursion. His business might be a far cry from the carefully manicured and wildly successful Wolf River Lodge and Spa, where she spent her days managing the needs of wealthy and sometimesfamous clients, but Deke Mason had been known for decades for the personalized guided trail rides he'd offered generations of tourists of all stripes. Though his business had fallen off in recent years, he had safely and successfully taken thousands in and out of Elk Creek Canyon. Well trained in first aid, he was carrying the kit that contained Kenzie's medication—and Liane trusted him to deal with anything that came up.So there was absolutely no reason to believe that he'd had any trouble this time. No logical reason to allow her smoldering panic to ignite. But that line of thought didn't ease her worry for a moment, regardless of anything her post-traumatic-stress counselor had told her.You could always call Jake Whittaker, have him go outside and check. But the thought of asking a favor of her dad's new tenant, who had taken up residence in the rebuilt bunkhouse about six months before his accident last summer, stopped her. Though she knew Jake would insist on going out to check, she hated to think of him walking the uneven ground, maybe missing his footing in the deep drifts of rust-colored pine needles, thicker than ever thanks to what had been the driest summer in a decade.She shook her head, realizing she was lying to herself. Prosthetic leg or not, Jake was getting around fine these days, just over a year after the accident and amputation. More than fine, considering the glimpses she'd caught of him toweling sweat from his body after a run—a body even more buff and masculine than when the two of them had dated back in high school.Awkward as it had been facing the boy she'd left behind—facing the whole town of Mill Falls—since her return last fall, the truth was that she had no intention of admitting exactly how close to melting down she was right now. Now that she'd finished her busy shift, she could be home in twenty minutes, anyway.She visualized herself arriving at the big, comfortable log homestead and hugging her kids close. As they excitedly chattered about the trip they had been begging her to let them take all summer, her dad would grin and tell her how proud his family made him. And his eyes would meet hers in silent acknowledgment that he was proudest of all that she had made it through the night alone….Or as alone as a woman could be, with her father's seventy-pound shepherd mix hogging most of the bed. But since Misty could be trusted to keep a secret, Liane wouldn't mention the sleepless hours she'd spent stroking the shaggy, blue-gray head and praying for the night to pass more quickly.As she drove along the tree-lined highway that skirted Bear Mountain, she told herself she would catch up on her sleep tonight. Safe at home, they all would, nestled in their beds.Focusing on that image, she relaxed her death grip on the wheel and consciously deepened her breathing. It was enough to get her through the drive home.And enough to distract her from the teasing flicker of the gathering darkness illuminated by summer lightning in her rearview.The night cried out for flame. As Jake Whittaker stood on the porch of his mountain valley cabin, he heard it in the hiss of hot wind through the drought-scorched tree-tops, the creak of trunks so parched and resinous that the slightest spark would send them up, and the restless nickers of the horses that milled about his friend and landlord Deke's corral a short distance downhill.But most of all he felt it in the phantom ache in the lower left leg he'd lost: the warning that a storm was brewing. A dry electrical storm that would light up the backcountry near Yosemite in time to choke the dawn with thick smoke.Last year's accident, the result of a tree whose fall had knocked Jake out of his fire boots as he'd been racing to the aid of his trapped men, had nearly killed him, but there was nothing wrong with his instincts, which had his blood quickening and his pulse thrumming with the first flicker of heat lightning along the ridge to the west. Though he now spent the better part of most of his days at a computer translating scientific articles and tech support documents into the Russian he'd learned at his grandmother's knee, it was still everything he could do not to jump into his truck and join the crew of hotshot firefighters he had once led—firefighters, he reluctantly admitted, whose effectiveness and safety would be jeopardized if he were selfish and foolhardy enough to try.For now, at least, he told himself. But maybe by next summer's fire season, if he worked hard enough to convince the district supervisors.Another flicker pulsed behind Bear Mountain, and thunder rumbled a dark warning. From the corral, he heard a terrified equine squeal, followed by deep barking and a frantic female cry."Copper, stand still! Please!"Jake reached inside the front door for a flashlight and was on the move an instant later, driven by the desperation in Liane Mason's voice. Something had to be wrong for the woman he'd once known so well to be out messing with the horses after dark. He hadn't been raised around the animals as Liane had, but even he knew that both the weather and the panic in her voice would do nothing but upset them. What could have happened to make the Ice Princess forget that?As he threaded his way through the trees, Jake's prosthesis caught a branch buried in leaf litter. Cursing the hurry that had made him lose his focus on his footing, he recovered from his stumble, then gritted his teeth and hurried toward the security light just outside the stable.Beneath it, he spotted the woman it still hurt to look at, even a dozen years after she had dashed his naive schoolboy fantasies and kicked him to the curb. As slender and agile as she'd been at eighteen, she was struggling to saddle a horse, her long brown braid whipping along the back of the chambray shirt she wore hanging over her jeans. As the dog paced nervously, the muscular bay danced sideways, tossing his head to throw his weight against the lead rope that bound him to the hitching post. Even from this distance, Jake could make out the whites of the horse's rolling eyes."Put that saddle down and back off." Though it wasn't his place, he made it an order, too concerned for her safety to do any less. "He's about to break loose, and you're going to end up hurt."Liane whirled toward him, her face milk-pale and her beautiful blue eyes huge with terror. "I have to," she said, all traces of her usual coolness toward him absent. "I have to go and find them.""Find who, Liane?" he asked, but already he was putting the pieces together. How Cody, the outgoing and talkative second grader, had been jabbering nonstop for the past week about the planned adventure to anyone who would listen, including the tenant his mother so consistently avoided. How her father had taken her kids out on two of the gentler horses for a camping trip yesterday. How Deke's favorite mount, a huge black mule named Waco, remained as absent from the corral as the children's horses."Did your dad radio you?" Jake asked, knowing that cell phone coverage didn't extend into Elk Creek Canyon. "Has there been an accident?"Liane shook her head. "I haven't been able to raise him since this morning. He did have some issues with his satellite radio a few weeks back, but something has to be wrong. He knew how nervous I was about this trip, how I wasn't sure the kids were ready for—" A shaft of lightning interrupted, stabbing the darkness behind the mountain's granite dome. Moments later thunder reverberated through the valley, more ominous than ever.The noise was the last straw for the bay, who squealed and launched himself backward, snapping not the lead rope but one of the bands of his own halter. As the horse wheeled around to join the herd in the corral, Liane leaped backward, holding the saddle before her like a shield."Help me catch another one," she demanded. "I have to find my family. Dry as it's been, there'll be fires, maybe even worse than last year's."He nodded grimly, trying not to remember the blaze whose uncharacteristic behavior had engulfed thousands of acres, fifteen homes and the lives of three Wolf River Hotshots—three good men, family men—he'd ordered into what should have been a safe location. They were gone, but the flashbacks were always waiting, resurfacing to accuse him every time he closed his eyes."Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Have you called the sheriff's office yet? Or how 'bout search and rescue?" he asked.But he was talking to her back, because she had already turned to grab a rope and a bucket of oats to sweeten the deal."I just got off the phone with them." With Misty sticking close by her side, Liane jogged toward the dozen or so horses trotting a nervous circle around the corral's outer edge. Their varied hides, brown and black and white and golden, streamed past the security light in a dust-choked, multicolored river. "They&... Views: 24
Portia is on the edge. She is trapped in a marriage she cannot yet leave, but then Luke Masters, a dark part of her past, returns to her seemingly perfect life. Their relationship, when Portia was eighteen, lasted just six weeks and was obsessive and consuming. Both know they can't go back to that - they have responsibilities now, but neither can they resist.Adult only. Views: 24
A dark hyper-comedy set in London in the late 1990s during the last gasp of the newspaper wars just before the dot-com tidal wave--about two female journalists at opposite ends of their life and work who become locked in a fierce tango of wills and whose lives are forever changed by their (not-so-) brief (head-on) encounter.At the novel's center--a legendary prize-winning war correspondent (called in her day "The Newsroom Dietrich" because of her luminescent beauty) now in her eighties, at the end of her career, who, over the decades, as the intrepid golden girl of the press, has been on the front lines or in the foxholes of every major theater of war of the twentieth century (Madrid; Normandy; Buchenwald; Berlin; Algiers; Korea; Vietnam). She is recognized everywhere (she finds fame mortifying these days); lionized for her fearless, politically informed, objective reporting; and now, though fragile and in an accelerating decline, her goddess-like beauty long gone, her... Views: 24
“A stunningly sad and heroically hopeful tale. . . . This is a beautiful novel about relationships of the most makeshift kind.”—O, The Oprah MagazineArthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn’t left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty miles away, in Yonkers, seventeen-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising baseball career—if he can untangle himself from his difficult family life. The link between this unlikely pair is Kel’s mother, Charlene, a former student of Arthur’s. After nearly two decades of silence, it is Charlene’s unexpected phone call to Arthur—a plea for help—that shatters their isolation. Told with warmth and intelligence through Arthur and Kel’s own quirky and lovable voices, Heft is the story of two improbable heroes whose connection transforms both their lives. It is a memorable, heartbreaking, and ultimately redemptive novel about finding sustenance and friendship in the most surprising places.From BooklistStarred Review Moore’s endearing novel, following The Words of Every Song (2007), looks at the lives of two solitary characters learning to acknowledge and accept their troubled realities of family and providence. Fifty-eight-year-old Arthur Opp, a college professor turned morbidly obese recluse, lives in a dilapidated house in Brooklyn, where his only human connection is through correspondence with a former student, the vulnerable and lonesome Charlene. When Charlene unexpectedly contacts Arthur with the news that she is the mother of a teenage son, Kel, Arthur is compelled to reflect upon and refocus his life, tenuously striking up a friendship with his young cleaning woman. Meanwhile, Kel is a gifted high-school athlete who depends on his physical prowess to navigate his interpersonal relationships. Kel’s dream of becoming a professional athlete is well within reach, yet his ambition is confounded by his mother’s alcoholism. When Charlene attempts suicide, Kel is left to forge a life of his own. As the book shifts between the perspectives of Arthur and Kel, Charlene’s connection to the two characters reveals surprising junctures along the way. --Leah Strauss Review“In Heft, Liz Moore creates a cast of vulnerable, lonely misfits that will break your heart and then make it soar. What a terrific novel!” (Ann Hood )“Heft is a work that radiantly combines compassion and a clear eyed vision. This is a novel of rare originality and sophistication.” (Mary Gordon )“A suspenseful, restorative novel from one of our fine young voices.” (Colum McCann )“This is the real deal, Liz Moore is the real deal -- she's written a novel that will stick with you long after you've finished it.” (Russell Banks )“Arthur Opp is heartbreaking. A 58-year old former professor of literature, he weighs 550 lbs., hasn’t left his Brooklyn apartment in years and is acutely attuned to both the painful and analgesic dimensions of his self-imposed solitude. Kel Keller, a handsome and popular high school athlete whose mother drinks too much to take care of him or even herself, faces his own wrenching struggles. The pair, apparently connected only by a slender thread, at first seem unlikely as co-narrators and protagonists of this novel, but they both become genuine heroes as their separate journeys through loneliness finally intersect. Though Moore’s narrative is often deeply sad, it is never maudlin. She writes with compassion and emotional insight but resists sentimentality , briskly moving her plot forward, building suspense and empathy. Most impressive is her ability to thoroughly inhabit the minds of Arthur and Kel; these are robust, complex characters to champion, not pity. The single word of the title is obviously a reference to Arthur’s morbid obesity, but it also alludes to the weight of true feelings and the courage needed to confront them. Heft leads to hope.” (People Magazine )“A bittersweet novel, Heft is peopled by men and women so isolated by their fear or rejection, they’ve ceased to seek meaningful connections.” (Philadelphia Inquirer )“Few novelists of recent memory have put our bleak isolation into words as clearly as Liz Moore does. . . . By the end we are in love with the characters and just want to see them happy.” (San Francisco Chronicle )“This is not a novel with a happy ending, and that’s a good thing. Moore doesn’t tie her story up in a pretty package and hand it to the reader with care, but artfully acknowledges in the end that some heavy loads cannot easily be left behind.” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune ) Views: 24
Harry Perrivale's expedition into the African jungle is destined to be singularly ill-fated. Accompanied by native bearers, his wife Rita, and trader Caleb Moon, he hopes to find the legendary lost city of Akada. Moon has a treasure map that had once belonged to an earlier explorer who'd met his death twenty years before. But Moon has plans to kill Perrivale, abduct Rita, and keep the gold and ivory of Akada for himself. Then the party encounters a giant white man, Anjani, who speaks only the native dialect of the tribe with whom he has lived all his life. Who is this strange man, and how did he come to be there—and what is his connection with Akada? A thrilling jungle adventure in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, now reprinted for the first time in six decades! Views: 24
Her ProblemAs a busy single mom to her teenage daughter, Kristi Callahan doesn't have time for a man. But it sure would be nice if her mother believed that, too. She keeps setting Kristi up on disastrous blind dates, determined to find her "the one."His ProblemAfter Nate McTavish's wife died, he was faced with raising his twin little girls alone. Making it up as he goes along and sometimes questioning his daddy skills, he also has to fend off women his well-meaning family keep throwing at him.Their SolutionWhen Nate hires Kristi to stage his house before selling it, they instantly realize they've found the perfect answer to their problem: be fake dates for each other! It's a great plan--until they start to wonder if the real thing might not be even better.... Views: 24
Phelan ‘Bear’ MacMoran is a contractor and former army officer who is put in charge of a small top secret skunk-works team called Q-Kink that must think outside the box to solve a problem for building radios that can communicate with fleet submarines underwater. A quirky grad student on the team manages to design and have the team build a machine based on radical principles that is so far outside the box that it doesn't operate quite as planned. Mounting the new gadget in an aged airframe that fits their limited budget the team tests it only to find themselves in space. As they report their incredible discoveries Bear quickly realizes that inimical forces inside and outside the US are suddenly trying to destroy his team, steal the technology and stop them forever. Frantically mounting the new drive in a jury-rigged hull Bear’s team attempts to launch both a remarkable new space ship and a brand new organization called the Terran Exploratory Space Service (TESS). Views: 24
Every 15 minutes someone in Australia goes missing. Some of these people want to disappear; other times they meet with misadventure or murder.Missing You features some of Australia's most disturbing Missing Persons cases and invites you to play armchair detective. With rare, privileged access to police around the country, and in moving interviews with the families of missing people, Missing You tells the intimate stories of Australia's Missing, revealing clues that police hope will ultimately bring them home.In an insightful, mysterious, and often emotional journey, Missing You features more than 20 of this country's most baffling cases, as well as stories of unidentified remains, abductions and suspected homicides. Views: 24
All Rhiannon Blake wanted was to find her little sister, Mickey. The last thing she expected when she walked into the seedy biker bar was to be assaulted. Luckily, Dax Jamison, the tall, muscled, vice president of The Phantoms motorcycle crew rescues her. At first, the innocent college girl clashes with the dominant biker. Then, a slow fire begins to burn between them, culminating in a fiery explosion of sex, drugs, and passion. At first, Rhiannon is more than a little afraid of the sexy, tattooed biker. He’s arrogant, domineering, and dangerous. When her apartment is ransacked, Dax insists that The Phantoms provide protection for Rhiannon until he can figure out why she is being targeted by a rival crew. When an escaped drug cartel boss joins the mix, things start to get complicated. Loosely based on the hit television show, Sons of Anarchy, this work combines a strong plot with a scorching tale of danger, intrigue and romance. Jayna Vixen is a popular online erotica author. Satin and Steel is her first published work. Keep an eye out for the sequel, Leather and Sand, due out in 2013. Views: 24
The second in the series, Holding Their Own II: The Independents, continues the saga of a young couple trying to survive in the post-apocalyptic American West. Unable to maintain rule of law, the federal government now faces an opposition movement and the threat of civil war. Bishop and Terri are drawn into the struggle and have to risk everything to save both an old friend and the country they love. Views: 24
