by Ryan Jo Summers
Friday 30 June 2017
Thursday 29 June 2017
Wednesday 28 June 2017
Working With It by Cass Alexander - Release Tour + #Giveaway
The Persimmon Series, Book 3
by Cass Alexander
by Cass Alexander
Running Hot by J.L. Sheppard - Release Tour + #Giveaway
Hell Ryders MC #2
by J.L. Sheppard
by J.L. Sheppard
Tuesday 27 June 2017
DARIEN'S DESIRE by Daryl Devoré - Release Tour
Two Hearts ~ One Love series, book 2
by Daryl Devoré
by Daryl Devoré
Monday 26 June 2017
Not His Dragon by Annie Nicholas - Book Tour - Sale
Not His Dragon
Not This Series
Book One
Annie Nicholas
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Annie Nicholas
Date of Publication: 7/2016
ASIN: B01FP2XSE2
Number of pages: 224
Word Count: 75,000
Cover Artist: Janet Holmes
Tagline: Here be dragons.
Book Description:
Eoin Grant hasn’t encountered a female of his race in decades, and this crazy person’s scent declares her unmated. Fate set her in his path, and he won’t let this opportunity slip through his claws. No matter how wary she is of him. After all, how many chances does a dragon have at finding love? But fate can be a crueler mistress than his perfect mate. Of all things, she thinks she’s human.
Business is taking off for Angie Weldon. She put her freakishly sharp nails to good use when she opened her back-scratching spa in downtown New Port. The local shifter community pounced on her skills and she’s knee-deep in shed fur. By the end of the year, if lucky, she could afford to move out of her crappy apartment.
Dollar signs flash before Angie’s eyes when a dark, brooding stranger books her solid for a week but she notices the possessive fury in his glare. She’s been around enough shifters to know the look, and she won’t go down that road again. Angie is literally swept off her feet by the intense shifter and he wants more from her than she’s willing to give. She figures it’s best to avoid eye contact and back away slowly. Until he changes her life by insisting she’s a dragon.
On Sale for 99 cents until 7/1/17
Excerpt:
Only one block
separated Angie from her workplace. Her lungs burned. No matter how much air
she sucked in, there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen.
A tall, slim man
smoking a cigarette watched her from half a block away.
How did she
notice him in her state of asphyxiation? Because his pale, blue gaze cut across
the distance and met hers with such intense fury that it scorched her retinas.
She slowed her
pace, glancing over her shoulder, but saw no one. Why was she the focus of his
death glare? Maybe he was friends with the jackass in the truck who’d
cat-called her and didn’t appreciate her attempt at sign language? If so, he
could take a number and get in line with all the other things wanting to
destroy her life today.
As Angie jogged
closer, she couldn’t help but notice the brightly colored tats peeking out from
under his long-sleeved dress shirt. His business attire looked out of place
with his shaved head and a cigarette hanging from his lips. He’d never be the
poster boy for GQ Magazine, but he sure fit her bad boy fantasies.
He strode into
her path, blocking her way. “What are you doing here?”
She tried to
brake, but flip-flops weren’t made to stop on a dime. The front ends folded
under and she scraped the tips of her toes along the concrete sidewalk. “Mother
fucker, son of a bitch…” She hopped on one foot to rub her bloody toes, then
repeated the process on the other foot. “What’s wrong with you?” She planted
her hands on his chest and shoved, propelling herself backward.
Pinwheeling her
arms, she caught her balance. Great, a supernatural. She had a better chance of
pushing the Hanover Tower.
He grabbed her
upper arm and yanked her kissing-close. “Don’t do that again.”
Her blood
smeared across his white shirt where she’d laid her dirty hands. She couldn’t
help but notice a small blue symbol tattooed by his left eye. From this angle,
she couldn’t see the design completely.
Try as she
might, she couldn’t jerk her arms free. Her heart hammered. “Let go.” She
glanced around for help, but no one seemed to want to meet her desperate stare.
They crossed the street, gazes glued to the ground. The pedestrian population
thinned out quickly as many of them found stores they just had to enter. The
scent of fear filled the air and only some of it was hers.
“What are you
doing in my city?” His whispered question sent chills down her spine.
“Your city? No
one owns New Port.” Oh God, she couldn’t stop her mouth. All she had to do was
apologize profusely for whatever imagined transgressions and he’d most likely
let her go. Angie stared at the shaved dark stubble on his head, since she
couldn’t take his penetrating glare. He kept his hair cropped real close.
Almost like velvet. She caught her hand before she reached to touch him. Her
senses said he was some sort of shifter, but she couldn’t tell what. She
suspected she had a little supernatural blood in her lineage, so her skills
were limited. Definitely not werewolf. Her ties to the pack were close enough
that she knew them at least by sight.
Unfortunately,
humans didn’t hold the monopoly on criminals. Supernaturals had them too and
Ryota had shown her how to best defend herself. She slid her free hand into her
front pocket. “I said, let me go.” She gave her arm another jerk.
He gave her a
condescending smile that would have frozen the Eastern Ocean. “Or what?”
She withdrew her
hand, aimed at his face, and pulled the trigger on her pepper spray,
remembering at the last moment to close her own eyes and mouth.
He let go and
roared an inhuman sound. The noise rattled the windows. She thanked God that
she’d emptied her bladder before setting the kitchen on fire.
Shit, shit,
shit.
She geared her
ass to holy-shit-it's-going-to-eat-me speed and didn’t think the soles of her
flip-flops hit the ground until she reached the door to her own little
business.
About the Author:
Annie Nicholas writes paranormal romance with bite. She has courted vampires, hunted with shifters, and slain a dragon’s ego all with the might of her pen. Riding the wind of her imagination, she travels beyond the restraints of reality and shares them with anyone wanting to read her stories. Mother, daughter, and wife are some of the other hats she wears while hiking through the hills and dales of her adopted state of Vermont.
Website: www.annienicholas.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/annienicholas
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/annienicholas/
Friday 23 June 2017
Steel Kisses by Laura Strickland - Release Tour + #Giveaway
A Buffalo Steampunk Adventure
by Laura Strickland
by Laura Strickland
Thursday 22 June 2017
Reach For You by Pat Esden - Book Tour + #Giveaway
REACH FOR YOU
Dark Heart Series
Book Three
Pat Esden
Genre: paranormal romance
Publisher: Kensington Books
Date of Publication: June 27, 2017
ISBN: ISBN13: 978-1-4967-0009-4
ASIN: B01LZCVLU3
Number of pages: 320
Word Count: 80k
Book Description:
Her passion is her greatest weakness.
His legacy is his prison.
To reunite, both must fight the demons within.
A world of deception and danger separates Annie Freemont from her mother—and from Chase, the enigmatic half-ifrit with whom Annie’s fallen in love. But she vows to find her way back to them, before Chase succumbs to the madness that threatens his freedom. The only person who can help is the magical seductress, Lotli, a beautiful, manipulative woman . . . a woman who has disappeared.
Annie must stay strong, even as the future she imagined is slipping away. With the help of family and friends, she discovers that Lotli is being held against her will, by those who want to exploit her powers. But though weakened, Lotli remains a powerful alley and adversary. A bargain is struck. And now Annie’s only chance to rescue Chase could also tear them apart . .
Loyalties will be tested, walls will be breached, and enemies will be fought, yet Annie’s greatest battle lies within her own heart—to trust her love for Chase to overcome its greatest enemy, and to save those she holds most dear from the terrifying realm of the djinn . . .
May 28- July 2
Chapter 1
We journey. Ceaseless and hungry.
Carved into stone tablet. Tenerife, Spain
The campsite was ominously silent. Then a breeze lifted and my ear caught the faint clank and rattle of the bones and knives hanging in the pine trees behind us.
“You don’t think they’re both dead, do you?” Selena whispered.
I scanned the dilapidated camper ahead of us, a do-it-yourself RV created out of an old bread truck. Despite the midafternoon warmth, the doors were shut tight. The tent behind it, barely visible from our angle, bowed under the weight of rain that had pooled in its canopy. There was no campfire smoke. No trampled grass. In comparison to when we’d come here last week, the place looked deserted.
Goose bumps pebbled my skin. I gave the camper another once-over. “Zea was really old and sickly. He could have died—or if the kidnappers came here first looking for Lotli, they could have found him. They might have—”
Selena cut me off with a glower. “You mean, supposed kidnappers.”
My jaw clenched. Yeah, that was exactly what I meant. I understood why my cousin didn’t like that everything we’d discovered pointed to her boyfriend, Newt, being involved in Lotli’s disappearance, and perhaps Zea’s as well. But I thought we’d gotten past that, like a bunch of times already.
I swiveled toward where we’d parked our Land Rover. The Professor stood rooted next to it, a mixture of disgust and apprehension crinkling his face. From his scholarly glasses and sandy brown hair all the way down to his polished loafers, he looked anything but ready for our reconnaissance trip out here on the back roads of Down East Maine. An afternoon of research at Oxford University would have been more appropriate. “You want to check inside the tent while we look in the camper?”
His gaze flicked to the soggy tarps. He cleared his throat, then—as posh as ever—said, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally against the idea. But the thought of discovering a rotting corpse is a teensy bit abhorrent.”
“Would you rather discover one in a closed-up camper?” I snapped. It was lucky we’d driven into the campsite from the main road instead of walking like we’d done the last time. I’d assumed the Professor had an adventuresome spirit to go with his young Indiana Jones good looks. Especially since he was an archaeologist, though this summer he was tutoring Selena’s eleven-year-old brother as a favor. Still, and despite how eager he’d seemed to come with us, the Professor had freaked the second we started past the creepy stuff Zea and Lotli hung in the trees to scare people off: the knives and bones, pieces of copper pipe, broken mirrors, and doll parts. Frankly, I was surprised he’d even gotten out of the Land Rover at all.
I pasted on a smile. “Sorry. I don’t much care for the idea myself. Let’s just hope he’s napping or something.”
The Professor wiped his hands down the sides of his chinos. “I truly hope you’re right.”
As he headed for the tent, I tramped toward the camper with Selena close behind. If only Chase were here now. The creepy stuff hadn’t bothered him at all, and the fear of Zea being dead would have only driven him forward faster.
My chest tightened, my longing for Chase aching inside me, raw and unrelenting. If it weren’t for me, he would be here now. Instead, both he and my mother were trapped in the djinn realm, prisoners of his father, Malphic. If it weren’t for me, Lotli wouldn’t be missing either.
“Well?” Selena jerked her head at the camper door. “Are you going to just stand there?”
I raised my hand and knocked. One second passed. Two seconds. I rapped harder. Nothing. I tried the doorknob. It turned beneath my grip. I opened the door a crack, hesitated, and took a deep breath before pushing it open all the way.
A wave of hot, musty air rushed past me as if the camper had been closed up for days.
“Hello?” I said, sticking my head inside. I gave the air a cautious sniff. No dangerous odors, like a leaky gas stove, permeated the air. No rotting-trash smell—or decomp.
Selena nudged my shoulder. “What are you waiting for?”
I swallowed hard and stepped forward.
The place was cramped, a gypsy wagon on steroids. Tassels and prisms curtained the windows, letting only faint streaks of light inside. Miles of fuchsia and turquoise fabric draped the ceiling and walls. Animal skulls, feathers, and nubby candles clustered inside miniature altars. The fridge, table, and chairs, every surface that wasn’t fabric covered, was painted purple or black. Stars decorated the ceiling. An antique bed piled with crimson quilts and an avalanche of pillows took up the camper’s entire backend. It was cozy enough, I supposed. But I couldn’t begin to imagine what life had been like for Lotli, apprenticed to Zea as a child because of her magic abilities, essentially indentured. Not that I thought a devout shaman like Zea would have been cruel to her. It was just so different from anything I’d experienced.
“Zea, are you here?” I called out. “We need to talk to you about Lotli.”
I minced my way deeper into the cramped space, working my way toward the back of the camper. Cold sweat carved a trail down my spine. I crept past a tiny kitchen and dining nook, then the bathroom—one toothbrush in the holder, a washcloth draped over the edge of a yellowed sink.
I returned to the front of the camper and pulled aside the curtain that divided the living area from the bread truck’s cab. Seats for the driver and a passenger, seashells glued to the dash, insulated coffee cups in the holders—
Something brushed the back of my neck.
I yelped and jumped sideways, whipping around to see what it was and smacking my elbow against the wall. Pain zinged up my arm. I glared at Selena, standing barely an inch behind me.
“Shit,” I said, rubbing the sting from my arm. “You scared the hell out of me.”
She gave me a sheepish pout. “Sorry. I thought you knew I was there.”
“I didn’t think you were that close.” It wouldn’t have hurt half as bad, except I was already sore and bruised from being thrown out of the djinn realm earlier in the day.
Her pout transformed into a smug smile and she flipped her blond hair over one shoulder. “Looks to me like Zea and Lotli might have pulled a vanishing act after all. Huh?”
I stopped rubbing. “Or the Professor’s about to find something disgusting in the tent.”
“Want to bet?”
I closed my eyes, struggling to regain my composure. We couldn’t afford to waste time discussing the same thing over and over again, any more than I could have afforded the luxury of staying home to nurse my aches and pains. Chase and Mother were in danger. And I couldn’t go back to the realm and rescue them until we found Lotli. Without her and her flute-magic, it would be too risky, perhaps even impossible to enter or escape from the realm.
I shoved past Selena and strode to the tiny bathroom. “While we’re here, we should find something personal of Lotli’s that you can use to scry and see where they’re holding her.”
Glancing around, I spotted a scruffy hairbrush. You couldn’t get much more personal than that. I grabbed it and brandished it toward Selena.
She stood just inside the bathroom doorway, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed. “Cut it out, Annie, I’ve had enough of you talking like Newt kidnapped Lotli, the innuendos and little jabs. Maybe his family’s hiding something, but Newt doesn’t have anything to do with it. So quit acting like he’s evil, okay?”
I mirrored her stance. “He told you his dad was a stockbroker, that they owned their summer home. Those were lies. His brother is a registered creep. No matter what you want to think: Newt’s not innocent.”
She turned her back on me, her voice bordering on hysteria. “I don’t know why I bothered coming. You’re so, so . . . You always have to be right—” Her voice died and she slowly faced me. Angry red blotches mottled her face. But tears rimmed her eyes.
My anger drained. She didn’t look pissed. She was trembling like she was about to fall apart. Earlier today, when we’d first heard about the lies Newt and his family had been telling, I’d seen something in Selena’s eyes, something beneath her disbelief.
“What is it? Tell me,” I asked gently.
She raked her hands over her face. “Nothing. You just need to trust me. I know Newt couldn’t be involved. And he wouldn’t have let his brother do it either.”
I leveled my gaze with hers and toughened my voice. “What makes you so certain? Tell me the truth, Selena.”
Her chin quivered. “I just know.”
Tucking the hairbrush handle first into my hip pocket, I stepped closer. I pushed her hair back from her face. “You’re my cousin. Please. Tell me.”
“Nothing. He just wouldn’t do it. He loves me.”
“I get that. But—”
She shoved my hand away. “No, you don’t get it. I know he loves me. Like forever.” Her eyes pleaded for me to understand what she couldn’t bring herself to say.
A possibility seeped into my head. My hands went to my mouth, covering a horrified gasp. She couldn’t mean. She couldn’t have. “What did you do?”
“I kind of—I put a . . .” Her voice faded and she looked down at the floor.
“A spell?” A month ago, the idea of witchcraft being involved would never have occurred to me. Now it seemed more than likely.
“You can’t tell anyone. Mom, Dad, Grandfather—they’d kill me.” She curled her arms over her head, her shoulders shaking as she crumpled down against the wall.
I crouched and put my arms around her. “Whatever it is, it’ll be fine. It can’t be that bad.”
“It is,” she sobbed.
About the Author:
Pat Esden would love to say she spent her childhood in intellectual pursuits. The truth is she was fonder of exploring abandoned houses and old cemeteries. When not out on her own adventures, she can be found in her northern Vermont home writing stories about brave, smart women and the men who capture their hearts.
An antique-dealing florist by trade, she’s also a member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, and the League of Vermont Writers. Her short stories have appeared in a number of publications, including Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, the Mythopoeic Society’s Mythic Circle, and George Sciter’s Cat Tales Anthology.
The first two novels in her Dark Heart series, A HOLD ON ME and BEYOND YOUR TOUCH are available from Kensington Books. REACH FOR YOU (book #3 Dark Heart series) will be released June 27th. Her short story, Black as a Dark Moon, Scarlet as Sumac, will come out this September in the Fragments of Darkness anthology.
Website: http://patesden.com
Author Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PatEsdenAuthor/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patesden/
Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32586694-reach-for-you
Newsletter: https://goo.gl/Ib0Kqy
Newsletter: https://goo.gl/Ib0Kqy
Peaceful Slumber by Nikki Lynn Barrett - Chapter Reveal
part of the Mystic Passions boxset
by Nikki Lynn Barrett
by Nikki Lynn Barrett
Wednesday 21 June 2017
Just the Thing by Marie Harte - Pre-order Blast + #Giveaway
The Donnigans series, book 2
by Marie Harte
by Marie Harte
Tuesday 20 June 2017
Who Do You Love by J.M. Bronston - Cover Reveal
WHO DO YOU LOVE
by J.M. Bronston
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Pub. Date: 12/26/2017
Aspiring journalist Eugenia Shaw is thrilled to be doing her first story for Lady Fair magazine, covering New York’s famous Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. The last thing she expects is to fall in love—with a quirky looking Chinese Crested named Sweetie Pie. Or with the fellow dog lover she keeps accidentally-on-purpose running into in Central Park . . .
Unlike Jennie’s judgy live-in boyfriend, Paul is a man who appreciates Sweetie Pie’s unconventional beauty. And the better they get to know each other, the more it feels like he appreciates Jennie too. Soon she can’t help noticing how much happier and more confident she is when they’re together, or how Paul encourages her writing. He’s even inspired her to pitch a brand new story to Lady Fair. But will she be brave enough to rewrite her own next chapter? . . .
Amazon * GogolePlay * Kobo * Nook
Joan Myra Bronston grew up in New York City, married her college sweetheart, and went with him to Germany for a year while he was in the Army and where she worked as a telex operator and mail clerk. They then moved to Austria where Joan spent five years teaching at an international school. She is the mother of three wonderful girls and the grandmother of a super-wonderful grandson. Joan was also a secretary, social investigator, and psychiatric researcher, before entering law school and eventually becoming a corporate attorney. In addition to her years in Europe, Joan has lived in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and, for 18 years, Salt Lake City. At last, she has closed the circle and returned to her first and most beloved—New York City. Visit her website at jmbronston.com, find her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter @JMBronston.
Monday 19 June 2017
River Queen Rose by Shirley Kennedy - Cover Reveal
RIVER QUEEN ROSE
by Shirley Kennedy
Genre: Historical Romance
Pub. Date: 12/26/2017
The ramshackle River Queen Hotel is home to vagabonds, gamblers, and heathens—and now, to new widow Rose Peterson. The rundown Gold Rush establishment is the only thing her late husband, Emmet, left her. Despite its raucous saloon and ladies of the evening, Rose can see the hotel’s potential. Her late husband’s family claim that sheltered Rose isn’t capable of running the Sacramento inn herself. But she is determined to make a new life for herself and her young daughter, even if it means flying in the face of custom and propriety. She feels as if she hasn’t a friend in the world.
Except, perhaps, one. Decatur “Deke” Fleming, a tall, lanky Australian who once served as Emmet’s farmhand. Pride prevents Deke from revealing his moneyed past; conscience keeps him from confessing his feelings for the still grieving widow. But when Rose is tempted by wealthy civic leader and hotel owner Mason Talbot, Deke may be the only person who can save her—and the one man capable of reviving her bruised and battered heart . . .
Amazon * Apple * GooglePlay * Kobo * Nook
Shirley Kennedy was born and raised in Fresno, California. In her early career as an author, Shirley wrote traditional Regency romances, one for Ballantine, the rest for Signet. Later on, she branched into other genres. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her older daughter, Dianne, and Brutus and Sparky, her two editorial assistants who love to nap in the sunshine next to her computer while she works on her next book. Please visit Shirley at shirleykennedy.com, or follow her Twitter account @ladyk360, or on Facebook at facebook.com/shirley.kennedy.52.
Storm Watch by Carole Ann Moleti - Cover Reveal + #Giveaway
Unfinished Business series, book 3
by Carole Ann Moleti
by Carole Ann Moleti
Saturday 17 June 2017
Read, Write, Love at Seaside by Addison Cole - Release Tour
Sweet with Heat: Seaside Summers Book 1
by Addison Cole
Friday 16 June 2017
THE RANCHER AND THE CITY GIRL by Joya Ryan Book Tour + #Giveaway
Tempting the Rancher, book 1
by Joya Ryan
by Joya Ryan
Thursday 15 June 2017
Isle of Savages by T. Briar - Book Tour + #Giveaway
Isle of Savages
T. Briar
Genre: New Adult Action Suspense Thriller
Publisher: MuseItUp Publishing
Date of Publication: June 13, 2017
eBook ISBN: 978-1-77127-926-0
ASIN: B07195LTB8
Number of pages: 220
Word Count: 59,400 words
Cover Artist: Eerilyfair Design
Tagline: Eleven souls are shipwrecked on an island teeming with sub-human cannibals. Who will survive to tell the tale?
Book Description:
On July 20, 20— a charter school’s sponsored sail from San Diego to Hawaii hits a reef during a violent storm. Sixteen souls abandon ship. Nine students, along with the hated captain and first mate, wash up on what they believe is a deserted island.
Separated into three groups by circumstance and mutual distrust, treachery and death lurks for all. Over the course of a single day, one student betrays all the others. Another drowns. Two others get ambushed by a great white shark. And, like falling dominoes, the captain, first mate, and six students fall prey to a tribe of bloodthirsty cannibals.
In the face of almost certain death, who will escape from the isle of savages to tell the tale?
Excerpt:
Date: July 20, 20—
General Location: Pacific Ocean
Definitive Longitude and Latitude: Unknown
Through strangled, sputtering coughs, Eric Kovac’s eyelids flickered open to stark darkness. He lay face down in receding wave-wash, naked except for a pair of board shorts, drenched to the bone. A tortuous grittiness seared the tender linings of his mouth, nose, and throat; pain wracked his body, inside and out. As he struggled to make sense of his peril, the sound of crashing waves thundered. A sudden rush of warm saltwater buried him underwater.
Choking and coughing violently, he forced himself up onto his hands and knees, stomach clenching in excruciating spasms as he vomited up great bouts of saltwater. Although the purging left him weak—on the verge of blacking out—it cleared the irritating sand from his breathing passages. Survival instinct, more than cognizant reasoning, sent him crawling up the shoreline. After only a few feet, his battered body could go no further and he collapsed onto wet sand while his feet and legs still lay in the incoming tide.
The sound of crashing waves slowly returned, and with it, the recognition of something new. Wind buffeted his body from all directions…storm-washed, freshly cleansed wind. Beneath the dizziness threatening to overwhelm him, he had only one coherent thought.
What happened to me?
For the life of him, he couldn’t remember how he’d come to be on this beach, hurting and possibly grievously injured. Despite the horrendous pain, he rolled over onto his side to lift himself on an elbow and scan the darkness for clues.
In the edge of the surf, a dark silhouette resembling the shape of a human body floated, the incoming and outgoing surf pushing and pulling at it. It was a tossup as to which would win the tug of war.
Instantly, the memory of the ship’s boom careening into his forehead materialized out of nowhere. In something akin to shock, distorted memories of the chain of events leading up to the blow that had laid him low flitted through his mind…
The storm had come out of the northwest late yesterday evening, the leading edge blue-black and roiling. It’d chased after them relentlessly, finally howling down on their sixty-foot blue water cruiser in the middle of the night, crackling long streaks of lightening that were blinding in their frequency and intensity. Fierce winds and towering waves tossed the yacht to and fro as if it were a toy. Deafening claps of thunder reverberated through the vessel to drown out the terrified shrieks of the sixteen students cowering below deck. Then, without warning, when only the tiniest tendril of hope remained, the yacht ran into something, cementing their fate—
That’s right! We’d run from the storm well into the night, hoping to angle out of its path to safety. But we hit something…
Snapshots flashed through his mind, one after the other in quick succession: the sickening crunch of fiberglass shattering; the non-stop rush of water breaching the hull; the ear-splitting cries of his classmates’ despair; the captain ordering everyone from below deck to abandon ship; the screeching wind and stinging rain above deck merciless; brilliant veins of lightening illuminating the pitch blackness to reveal the shoreline of an island; so much water in the air, breathing seemed almost impossible; a boy and a girl at the very end of the line of joined hands snatched up like kites and flung out into darkness; the terrifying fear that the rest of the line would quickly follow; the glassy, shock-stricken stares of his classmates waiting their turn to be helped over the side into the life raft; the white boom breaking loose from its mooring and whipping toward him; trying to duck and almost making it; total blackness…
Eric, trembling in the aftershock of surviving the impossible and being grateful simply to be alive, remembered something else…there had been a girl he was intent upon saving…and one of her friends. He’d helped them into the raft right before his accident. But what were their names? Who were they to him?
He concentrated on summoning their faces, unable to shake the feeling they had been his close friends, or perhaps, one of them had been more than a friend.
Slowly, like gooey fluid forced through a half-clogged strainer, the image of a dark-haired girl—seventeen years old and of Asian-American descent—with a beautiful oval face, olive skin, and dark eyes took form in his mind’s eye. The face of a pretty, blue-eyed blonde with curly, shoulder-length hair quickly followed.
Mia! I was trying to save Mia Miller! And her best friend, Keri Shaw!
Peering at the floating body again, a burst of adrenaline coursed through his veins, energizing him into action. The sickening hollowness in his stomach and the aches in his body disappeared. He flipped back over onto hands and knees to scramble toward the dark silhouette in the white surf. As of yet, he couldn’t tell if the body was male or female.
Please don’t let it be Mia. Please, anyone but her.
His eyes made out what he thought looked like the muscled back and arms of a young man and his fear receded…somewhat. Grasping the corpse by the hair of its head, he lifted the face out of the water to ascertain that it wasn’t Mia—instead was Charles Darry, a Low Country kid from South Carolina. He’d been the only other Southern student on their cruise of horrors, which had given Eric and him something singularly in common, although they had never become what one would call friends. He released Charles, frantically glancing around the darkness.
“Mia!” he attempted to yell, but the name came out strangled and weak. He tried again and it came out clearer and louder this time.
“Eric!” answered a frightened, high-pitched voice. “I’m over here!”
About the Author:
Always striving for pulse-pounding action, sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat suspense, and hair-raising thrills, T. Briar’s mainstream thriller writing places courageous heroes and heroines in the fight of their lives against the elements, hostile surroundings, morally bankrupt villains, and any other obstacles T. can think of.
But be warned, once the wheels are set into motion with the first sentence, it’s a twisting, turning journey to the end to see who lives and who dies. And make no mistake, someone’s going to die. Some will even die badly. That’s just the way it is when fighting for survival under perilous conditions. The only question is: Will it be the heroes and heroines, or the villains?
T. Briar’s target audience is New Adults who boldly step up to meet life’s challenges with the confidence of youth urging them on.
Please checkout T. Briar’s page at http://thomasbriar.com to find out more about T. and his thriller writings.
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Vampire Academy: Blood Promise (book 4) by Richelle Mead
This is the fourth book in the series Paperback: 528 pages Publisher: Penguin (4 Feb. 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 0141331...
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SIRENS & SCALES Genre: Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance
