Drive Me WildChristine Warren Tess Menzies can work a spell with a few blinks of her baby blue eyes. But this dedicated witch can’t summon up a single good reason she’s been made an envoy between her kind and Manhattan’s fiercest were-creatures. The two sides haven’t spoken in four hundred years, and she’ll need every miracle in the book to broker any kind of truce. And that means outwitting Council of Others leader Rafael De Santos whose tantalizing moves and fierce hungry kisses are magic even a formidable sorceress can’t resist . . .It doesn’t take a cat’s supernatural senses for Rafael to suspect that there’s something strange about this unexpected peace offering. And finding the truth is just as tempting as uncovering the secrets Tess is trying to conceal. Why, she’s tantalizing enough to make this wandering were-jaguar think he’s found the perfect mate—one he’s only dreamed of. But his stealth and her spells can’t guarantee they have a chance at survival, much less a future together… Views: 23
ALL NEW EDITION This visually magical tale takes the reader on a journey from the remote shores of Loch Hourn in the Scottish Highlands to the singular beauty of Cape Cod. When Anna MacDonald leaves Edinburgh to find peace in the Scottish Highlands, she gets a twofold surprise: a lost sailor teaches her to love again...while a mysterious stranger has plans to kill her. Passed over for promotion by her boss-and boyfriend, Anna walks off the job in anger. But being reactionary has its price. Now she can no longer afford the rent on her Edinburgh apartment. So she retreats to the only place she has ever felt happy - her grandmother's croft on the edge of a Highland loch. With no phone or neighbors, and only two border collies for company, Anna sets out to finally achieve her lifelong dream; to write-and sell-the novel that has burned within her for years. Luke Tallantyre, a renowned Cape Cod artist, has sailed across the Atlantic to escape an artistic dry spell, and come to terms with his dangerous past. When his yacht develops a problem he drops anchor in Loch Hourn. He rows ashore, and knocking on the door of the croft, asks to use the telephone, but the reception he receives is less than welcoming - in fact it's downright frosty. Anna resents the cranky American's intrusion to her seemingly idyllic life. Luke thinks she's an ill-mannered hermit. But an unseen assassin is after one of them. So they unwillingly join forces and embark on an adventure neither ever imagined, including a chance at true love.About the AuthorVictoria Howard is the author of three romantic suspense novels, The House on the Shore, which was a contender for the 2009 Joan Hessayon Award, Three Weeks Last Spring, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and Ring of Lies. Born in Liverpool, Victoria trained as a medical secretary, and subsequently worked for the National Health Service. She spent twenty years living on a croft in the Highlands of Scotland, and while there managed a company involved in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry. When not working on a manuscript, Victoria can be found curled up with a book, gardening, designing knitwear, traveling the world or walking her Border collie, Rosie. A member of Romantic Novelists' Association since 2009, Victoria currently resides in South Yorkshire. Views: 23
Someone is stealing America's children, and the disappearances are shattering the structure of U.S. Society, leaving families in total despair. With the police and federal agencies handcuffed by laws and procedures, the situation is critical. Mack Bolan fears for these innocent lives at the hands of human predators. The Executioner searches high and low for targets in Chicago — and finds them: from a high-profile politician to a Mafia kingpin. Views: 23
A brilliant Melbourne crime novel, told in ten hardboiled stories. John Dorn is a private investigator. Just like his father used to be. It says ‘private inquiry agent’ in John’s yellow pages ad because that’s what his old man called himself, back before his business folded, his wife left him and he drank himself to death. But John’s not going to end up like his father. He doesn’t have a wife, or much business. He doesn’t really drink, either. Not yet. John Dorn solves not so much crimes as funny human puzzles; but the crimes, and the criminals, are forever lurking nearby, taunting him from the city’s cold underworld. It’s his job to unravel the mystery, or right the wrong, or just do what the client has hired him to do. Somehow, though, there is a misstep at every turn, and John takes another small stumble towards his moment of personal truth. His midnight promise.Zane Lovitt was a documentary filmmaker before turning his hand to crime fiction, and his stories have since appeared in Scribe's New Australian Stories 2 and in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. ‘Leaving the Fountainhead’ won the SD Harvey Short Story Award at the 2010 Ned Kelly Awards for Australian crime fiction. Zane lives in Melbourne and works as a judge's clerk.textpublishing.com.au'The Midnight Promise delivers. Zane Lovitt is a writer to watch.' Shane Maloney'The Midnight Promise crashes straight into Temple, Corris and Chandler territory.' Australian Bookseller & Publisher'With merrily dark observations, the gumshoe metaphors are smokin' and when things get occasionally purple (chimneys as infections anyone?), a whip-smart quip brings the focus back. In fact it's the purity, lightness and knowing humour of these cracks that lifts these stories from good to 'oh man, get me this guy's next book now!' Australian Bookseller & Publisher'Smacking of grit and realism...The Midnight Promise is flat-out one of the most enjoyable crime books out there. Australian noir with a nod to Raymond Carver—there's lots of drinking, dark streets, and wisecracks that you'll grin like mad over. Every story is its own little world, all completely satisfying but so involving you'll put the book down wishing for more.' Readings Monthly'The writing is crisp and sure. The cases are intriguing and believable.' Read Plus Review'I was totally blown away by this book. This is crime fiction at its absolute best. Zane Lovitt literally bursts on to the literary scene with this book and I can say without a doubt is destined for huge things. This is not a new writer who has potential, this is a new writer whose skill and talent just oozes out of the page. From the structure of the novel to Lovitt’s distinct style, from the black as night dark humour and cynicism to the deep recesses of human emotion and frailty this is the most original, absorbing and utterly compelling crime novel I’ve read in a long time.' Jon Page, Pages&Pages Bookstore Views: 23
Dominant Species Volume Four - Bio Diversity coming 4th quarter 2013!The adventure continues in 2013 with the shocking fourth volume in the Dominant Species Series, Bio Diversity.*Spanning a millennium, the Dominant Species Series is a panoramic story of human and alien species locked in mortal conflict. Against this backdrop of deadly biological rivalry, humankind will fight an inner battle whose outcome is as final--and as brutal--as natural selection itself.Volume Three - Acquired TraitsIt is the year 3014. A pivotal battle looms.Branded as murderers and forced into hiding in the jungle planet's deepest recesses, pilot John Soledad, biologist Rachel Sanders, and medic Donna Applegate survive on their wits, frequent field remedies applied by Donna, and late-night raids on the colony's storage warehouses for needed supplies.While the trio struggles to survive, another threat--one more virulent than the jungle's life forms--threatens the very survival of the new colony. Rachel's venom-induced visions are telling her something--revealing the terrible nature of the danger--and awakening memories of things and events ancient, dark and monstrous.ReviewThe Dominant Species Series is at once shocking, horrifying, and completely engrossing. Coy has created an exquisite nightmare; the images remain long after the story is finished. --- Gillian Pemberton, Tattooed Book ReviewTo find not only a book but a series of books that not only leaps off the page but also affects my dreams, and has me telling every bookworm I know about it is rare. David Coy has created a fantastic universe and a story you just cannot put down. --- Cassandra H., Senior Reviewer, You Gotta Read ReviewsFrom the AuthorThere is strong language in the story because humans under stress often use such language. There is no puppy love or adolescent motifs of intimacy in the story. Instead there are very many mature, psycho sexual themes that run through all three books. Some are represented symbolically, others described explicitly. There is violence. The story is not PG-13. I heard somewhere that when you set out to write a story that you should write the one you would most like to read yourself. After a lifelong diet of scary science fiction anything, and endless discussions about what could be with anybody, I think I have done just that. What I didn't plan on was that there would be so much story I'd love to read, to write. Views: 23
Appearances can be Deceiving…Vanessa Lawrence had a talent: falling for the wrong man. Case in point, her ex-husband. On the outside, the football player had looked perfect—handsome and rich. But Mr. Perfect turned out to be a lying, manipulative philanderer, and Vanessa vowed never to compromise herself for a man again.Then she met Nick DeAngelo. He was also handsome and rich. And he just happened to be a former football player. His disarming charm gave her a rush, and he sure knew how to sweep a girl off her feet. But he was so much like her ex-husband…could she trust him? Could she trust herself?Review"Miller tugs at the heartstrings as few authors can." -Publishers Weekly"Linda Lael Miller creates vibrant characters and stories I defy you to forget." -#1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber"Strong characterization and a vivid western setting make for a fine historical romance." -Publishers Weekly on McKettrick's Choice"Likable protagonists, a wealth of memorable secondary characters and a...heart-touching plot make this warm, family-centered, information-rich 1910 prequel to Miller's ‘ Montana Creeds' trilogy a good choice for series fans and new readers as well." -Library Journal on A Creed Country Christmas"Completely wonderful. Austin's interactions with Paige are fun and lively and the mystery that began in Tate's story ends with Austin's love story and adds quite a suspenseful punch." -RT Book Reviews on McKettricks of Texas: Austin"A passionate love too long denied drives the action in this multifaceted, emotionally rich reunion story that overflows with breathtaking sexual chemistry." -Library Journal on McKettricks of Texas: Tate Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.This particular strain of flu, Nick DeAngelo decided, had been brought to Earth by hostile aliens determined to wipe out the entire planet—starting, evidently, with an ex-jock who owned one of the best Italian restaurants in Seattle.Sprawled on the couch in the living room of his apartment, he plucked a handful of tissues from the box on the floor beside him and crammed them against his face just in time to absorb an explosive sneeze. He was covered in mentholated rub from his nose to his belly button, and while his forehead was hot to the touch, the rest of him was racked with chills.He wondered when Mike Wallace would burst through the door, wanting the story. It was time to alert the masses to impending doom.Did you actually see these aliens, Mr. DeAngelo?Call me Nick. Of course I didn't see them. They must have gotten me when I was sleeping.The imaginary interview was interrupted by the jangling of the telephone, which, like the box of tissues, was within reach. Hoping for sympathy, he dug the receiver out from between the cushions and rasped out a hoarse hello."Still under the weather, huh?" The voice belonged to his younger sister, Gina, and it showed a marked lack of commiseration. "Listen, if I wasn't afraid of catching whatever it is you've got and missing my exams next week, I'd definitely come over and take care of you."Nick sagged against the back of the sofa, one hand to his fevered forehead. "Your concern is touching, Gina," he coughed out."I could call Aunt Carlotta," Gina was quick to suggest. She was a bright kid, a psychology major at the University of Washington, and she knew which buttons to push. "I'm sure she'd love to move into your apartment and spend the next two weeks dragging you back from the threshold of death."Nick thought of his aunt with affectionate dread. It was in her honor that he'd slathered himself with mentholated goo. "This is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill flu, you know," he said.Gina laughed. "I'll alert the science department at school—I'm sure they'll want to send a research team directly to your place."Privately Nick considered that to be a viable idea, but he refrained from saying so, knowing it would only invite more callous mockery. "You have no heart," he accused.There was a brief pause, followed by, "Is there anything I can get you, like groceries or books or something? I could leave the stuff in the hallway outside your door—""Or you could just drop it from a hovering helicopter," Nick ventured, insulted.Gina gave a long-suffering sigh. "Why don't you call one of your girlfriends? You could have a whole harem over there, fluffing your pillows and giving you aspirin and heating up canned chicken soup.""My 'girlfriends,' as you put it, are all either working or letting their answering machines do the talking. And chicken soup is only therapeutic if it's homemade." Nick paused to emit another volcanic sneeze. When he'd recovered, he said magnanimously, "Don't worry about me, Gina, just because I'm putting you through college and paying for your car, your clothes, your apartment and every bite of food that goes into your mouth. I'll be fine without…any help at all.""Oh, God," wailed Gina. "The guilt!"Nick laughed. "Gotcha," he said, groping for the remote control that would turn on the TV. Maybe there was an old Stallone movie on—something bloody and macho.Gina said a few soothing words and then hung up. It occurred to Nick that she was really going to stay away, really going to leave her own brother to face The Great Galactic Plague alone and unassisted.There was, Nick decided, no human kindness left in the world. He flipped through the various movie channels, seeing nothing that caught his fancy, and was just about to shut the set off and try to focus his eyes on a book when he saw her for the first time.She was a redhead with golden eyes, and the sight of her practically stopped his heartbeat. She was holding an urn that was suitable enough to be someone's final resting place, and there was a toll-free number superimposed over her chest.With quick, prodding motions of his thumb, Nick used the control button on the remote to turn up the volume. "My name is Vanessa Lawrence," the vision told her viewing audience in a voice more soothing than all the chicken soup and mentholated rub in the world, "and you're watching the Midas Network." She went on to extol the virtues of the hideous vase she was peddling, but Nick didn't hear a word.He was too busy dredging up everything he knew about the Midas Network, a nationwide shopping channel based in Seattle. One of his friends—an executive with the company—had urged him to invest when the economy had gone south, claiming that the new home-shopping network would be a hit with newly spendthrift consumers.Nick shoved one hand through his hair, causing it to stand on end in ridges that reeked of eucalyptus. Undoubtedly, he thought, he was experiencing some kind of dementia related to the virus that had been visited upon him.Without taking his eyes away from the screen, he groped for the telephone and punched out the office number. His executive assistant, a middle-aged woman named Harriet, answered with a crisp, "DeAngelo's. May I help you?""I hope so," wheezed Nick, who had just finished another bout of coughing."You don't need me, you need the paramedics," remarked the assistant."At last," Nick said. "Someone who understands and sympathizes. Harriet, find Paul Harmon's number for me, will you please? I'm in no condition to hunt through the contacts on my phone."It was easy to picture Harriet, plump and efficient, searching expertly for the number. "His office number is 555-9876," she said.Nick found a pencil in the paraphernalia that had collected on the end table beside the couch and wrote the digits on the corner of the tissue box, along with the home number Harriet gave him next.The woman on the screen was now offering a set of bird figurines."Oh, lady," Nick said aloud as he waited for Paul Harmon to come on the line, "I want your body, I want your soul, I want you to have my baby."The goddess smiled. "All this can be yours for only nineteen-ninety-five," she said."Sold," replied Nick.Vanessa Lawrence inserted her cash card into the automatic teller machine in Quickee Food Mart and tapped one foot while she waited for the money to appear. A glance at her watch told her she was due at her lawyer's office in just ten minutes, and the drive downtown would take fifteen.Her foot moved faster.The machine made an alarming grinding noise, but no currency came out of the little slot, and Vanessa's card was still somewhere in the bowels of the gizmo. From the sound of things, it was being systematically digested.Somewhat wildly, she began pushing buttons. The words Your transaction is now completed, were frozen on the small screen. She glanced back over one shoulder, hoping for help from the clerk, but everyone in the neighborhood seemed to be in the convenience store that afternoon, buying bread and milk."Damn!" she breathed, slamming her fist against the face of the machine.A woman wearing pink foam rollers in her hair appeared at Vanessa's side. "You're on TV, aren't you?" she asked. "On that new shopping channel, the something-or-other station."Vanessa smiled, even though it was the last thing she felt like doing. "The Midas Network," she said, before giving the machine another despairing look. "Just give me back my card," she told the apparatus, "and I won't make any trouble, I promise.""I watch you every day," the woman announced proudly. "I bought that three-slice toaster you had on yesterday—there's just Bernie and Ray and me, now that Clyde's gone away to the army—and my sister-in-law has four of the ceiling fans."In her head, Vanessa heard the production manager, Paul Harmon, giving his standard public-relations lecture. As the viewing audience expands, you'll be recognized. No matter what, I want you all to be polite at all times."Good," she said with a faltering smile.She took another look at her watch, then lost her cool and rammed the cash machine with the palms of her hands. Miraculously two twenty-dollar bills popped out of the appropriate slot, but Vanessa's cash card was disgorged in three pieces.She dropped both the card and the money into the pocket of her blazer and dashed for the car, hoping the traffic wouldn't be bad.It was.Worse, when Vanessa reached her attorney's modest office, Parker was there with his lawyer and his current girlfriend.Vanessa prayed she didn't look as frazzled as she felt and resisted an urge to smooth her chin-length auburn hair.Parker smiled his dazzling smile and tried to kiss her cheek, but Vanessa stepped back, her golden eyes clearly telling him to keep his distance.Her ex-husband, now the most sought-after pitcher in the American League, looked hurt. "Hello, Van," he said in a low and intimate voice.Vanessa didn't speak. Although they had been divorced for a full year, Parker's presence still made her soul ache. It wasn't that she wanted him back; no, she grieved for the time and love she'd wasted on him.Vanessa's attorney, Walter, was no ball of fire, but he was astute enough to know how vulnerable she felt. He drew back a chair for her near his desk, and gratefully she sank into the seat.Parker's lawyer immediately took up the conversational ball. "I think we can settle this reasonably," he said. Vanessa felt her spine stiffen.The bottom line was that Parker had been offered a phenomenal ... Views: 23
The epic, adventure-filled 'Wild West' meets Steampunk' adventure continues. It's August 1884. The consumptive Doc Holliday is preparing to await his end in a sanitarium in Leadville, Colorado, when the medicine man Geronimo enlists him on a mission. The time the great chief has predicted has come, the one white man he's willing to treat with has crossed the Mississippi and is heading to Tombstone - a young man named Theodore Roosevelt. The various tribes know that Geronimo is willing to end the spell that has kept the United States from expanding west of the Mississippi. In response, they have created a huge, monstrous, medicine man named War Bonnet, whose function is to kill Roosevelt and Geronimo and keep the United States east of the river forever. And War Bonnet has enlisted the master shootist John Wesley Hardin. So the battle lines are drawn: Roosevelt and Geronimo against the most powerful of the medicine men, a supernatural creature that seemingly nothing can harm; and Holliday against the man with more credited kills than any gunfighter in history. It does not promise to be a tranquil summer. Views: 23
Some say your previous cat chooses their successor. If so, what in cat heaven's name was Helen Brown's beloved Cleo thinking when she sent a crazy kitten like Jonah? When Cleo died, Helen Brown swore she'd never get another kitten. But after she was diagnosed with breast cancer an unscheduled visit to a pet shop resulted in the explosive arrival of a feisty kitten called Jonah. Like Cleo, Jonah possessed great energy and charm. But unlike Cleo, he often morphed into a highly strung and capricious escape artist. Still, as Helen recovered from a mastectomy, he also proved to be a healer in his own right. While struggling to deal with her own mortality, Helen helped arrange her son Rob's wedding, completed her international best seller, Cleo, and was confronted with her eldest daughter Lydia's determination to abandon university studies to embark on a spiritual life. Lydia's desire to become a Buddhist nun in war-torn Sri Lanka was matched only by Jonah's yearning to be an outdoor cat in a decidedly indoor-cat neighbourhood... After Cleo is a warm, wise and often funny account of the highs and lows of mother-daughter relationships, the impact of a potentially life-threatening illness, and an often kooky - some might say deranged - cat called Jonah. Views: 23
A family is torn apart by fierce belief and private longing in this unprecedented journey deep inside the most insular Hasidic sect, the Satmar. Sweeping from the Central European countryside just before World War II to Paris to contemporary Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I Am Forbidden brings to life four generations of one Satmar family. Opening in 1939 Transylvania, five-year-old Josef witnesses the murder of his family by the Romanian Iron Guard and is rescued by a Gentile maid to be raised as her own son. Five years later, Josef rescues a young girl, Mila, after her parents are killed while running to meet the Rebbe they hoped would save them. Josef helps Mila reach Zalman Stern, a leader in the Satmar community, in whose home Mila is raised as a sister to Zalman's daughter, Atara. As the two girls mature, Mila's faith intensifies, while her beloved sister Atara discovers a world of books and learning that she cannot ignore. With the rise of... Views: 23
