Angel Blue: Season One
Jennifer Silverwood
(Seven Deadly Sins, #1)
Publication date: August 14th 2019
Genres: Adult, Urban Fantasy

All Eanna wants is to forget the night she lost everything, but fate has other plans. A lifetime ago, the cursed burned her home and everyone she loved. Now she’s haunted by a dangerous legacy.

Her guardian, Etlu is determined to make Eanna into a queen, even if it means sacrificing his happiness. Surrounded by enemies, Eanna and Etlu have no choice but to give in to destiny.

Wil and his sister Isabol are searching for the chosen princess, but Wil finds more than he bargained for in Eanna. He doesn’t plan on falling in love with her. A love like theirs can only end in tragedy and death.

There can only be one outcome when chosen and cursed collide: a world bathed in fire and blood.

 

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EXCERPT:

In the end, it takes Eanna tapping into her accursed gift before she’s able to give the fire life. She hasn’t been here in months, maybe longer. The door was difficult to open at first, and evidence of rodents and birds is scattered across the floor of the cabin. The makeshift pillows and blankets are frozen stiff as she lays her guest down to sweat over them. The cold never bothers her, but her guest is shivering.

From shock, she dimly thinks. She plops him on her pallet and begins her impossible task. The stench of his blood and sickness is overwhelming.

You should have killed him…burned out his damned soul…

Eanna shivers and adds kindling to the blue flames dancing in the hearth. Her fire will last longer, at least. As long as she doesn’t lose control again.

“I will not lose control,” she says to the flame.

Wil moans, and Eanna reluctantly turns. Dim firelight plays over his exposed, scarlet-streaked skin.

She looks to the bucket of snow beside her and the clean rags she made from an old blanket. It’s not ideal, but it will have to do.

“They are cursed, Anu,” Etlu’s voice chants in her head.

Eanna stiffens her spine as she wills her flame to grow. She brings the bucket and rags to his side and sets to work. Her hand trembles as she hesitates just above his ruined torso.

Wil’s voice rolls against her ear as his hips lazily press against hers, insistent and yet undemanding. “What are you doing celebrating your birthday alone, in a place like this?”

She turns her head, so her lips graze his scruff. “Enjoying myself.”

“Are you?”

She mops blood off the hard planes of his chest. With each brush of her rag, the ruby stains give way to a coppery gold. His skin is so much warmer than her own, warmer than a human’s.

I should have noticed that night in the bar.

He had fooled her, in that den of human sweat and lust.

Sweat beads on his forehead as his face twists in pain. Eanna cannot look at his face without remembering their kiss. She watches the rise and fall of his chest. She dips the rag into the melting snow and brings it back to clean his bullet wounds. His legs are worse.

“They feel no pain, remorse, or compassion,” Etlu told her.

It doesn’t help assuage her guilt. This isn’t the first time she hates herself, but it is the first time she has betrayed everything her parents died for. He wears the face of a man she found comfort and connection with, nothing more.

He is cursed.

No matter how normal he looks now, all Eanna sees is the fire his people used to destroy hers. She should have killed him when she had the chance. If they are caught, no mercy will be granted to her, no matter her lineage.

This goes above and beyond sneaking outside the compound.

Her hand stills as her thumb accidentally brushes his golden torso. Heat from his skin shoots through her fingertip and up her arm. Her pulse accelerates.

“They will take off your head as soon as they look at you. They are hollow shells of nothing,” Etlu would remind her.

But Wil looks helpless now, so near to death. It is her fault. And no matter what he is, he made her feel alive for one stolen moment.

Author Bio:

Jennifer Silverwood was raised deep in the heart of Texas and has been spinning yarns a mile high since childhood. In her spare time, she reads and writes and tries to sustain her wanderlust, whether it's the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania, the highlands of Ecuador, or a road trip to the next town. Always on the lookout for her next adventure, in print or reality, she dreams of one day proving to the masses that everything really is better in Texas. She is the author of three series--Heaven's Edge, Wylder Tales and the Borderlands Saga--and the stand-alone titles Stay and She Walks in Moonlight. She released her first serialized Urban Fantasy, Angel Blue in August 2018.

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The Traveler
Shannon Nemechek
(Chimera Rebellion, #1)
Publication date: December 5th 2019
Genres: Adult, Romance, Time-Travel

As a self-professed book nerd, Army Major Katie Butler has hunted many rare books in her lifetime.

While on leave in Savannah Katie visits with a voodoo priestess who tells the story of Eleanor MacAllister and a long-lost book, claimed to be cursed. With her curiosity piqued,

Katie is determined to find the lost book and reveal the secrets it holds.

What she finds could change everything.

Swept back in time, Katie suddenly finds herself immersed in a country at war with itself. Determined to find her way back home, her plans begin to change when she meets the dashing Confederate officer, Captain Colm O’Donnell.

Captain O’Donnell despises slavery and when his father leaves him the family plantation, Colm immediately sets out to make changes. Having devoted his life to military service and his family’s plantation, Colm has very little time for anything else. With his country embroiled in war, he has even less free time.

Until he meets Katie Butler.

Convinced the pretty young woman with sable hair and big blue eyes, is a spy, Colm is determined to find out the truth.

Will their secrets destroy the love they have found? Or, will they find a future together?

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Author Bio:

Shannon is a USA Today Bestselling Author of over 18 novels and novellas.

Shannon started her writing career while still serving in the US Army.

Shannon grew up in Macomb, IL where she graduated from High School in 1987 and soon after joined the US Army. Shannon served from 1987 to 2015 during Operation Desert Storm and during Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In April 2015 Shannon retired from the US Army with 23 years of service as a Unit Supply Sergeant. She is a mother of 4 children and a grandma to 2 beautiful Granddaughters. She has been married 26 years to her husband, Ken. They reside in Staunton, IL a small town along Old Route 66.

Shannon is an award-winning author of multiple novels and short stories. She is best known for her Military Romance series A Warranted Series.

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Princes of the Lower East Side
Meredith Allison
(A Scalisi Family Novel, #2)
Publication date: October 28th 2019
Genres: Adult, Historical, Thriller

Mia Scalisi returns in this highly anticipated follow-up to Blood & Whiskey!

Sicily is a paradise on earth Mia Angela Scalisi doesn’t want to leave, but after over a year of peace, obligations—like being Hyman Goldberg’s It Girl at his new nightclub—call her back to New York City.

But everything she’s known in New York has changed…and that might even include the men she once thought were her friends.

When a new, ambitious gangster threatens to take over the old neighborhood, bringing devastation to the poor families who live there, Mia can’t ignore the bonds that tie her to the underworld way of life that killed her brother and set her upon a merciless, bloody path of revenge.

With her brother’s widow, her niece, and a mysterious, devoted bodyguard at her side, Mia must reclaim her position as head of her dead brother’s business, establish herself as the reigning queen among the princes of the Lower East Side, and make the ultimate decision: who lives, and who must die.

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EXCERPT:

Gloria said, hands on her hips. “You promised my husband to watch out for me and Em, but he would want me to watch over you, too. You need someone to look after you, Mia. To care for you. Even if you don’t think you need anyone.”

“I have Paolo.” Mia had asked him once if he’d known what she’d done in America. He understood English, so she spoke both Sicilian and English to him. Paolo had responded with a single, firm nod. And that had been the only time they had discussed it—as much of a discussion as could be had with a mute man.

When she’d announced to her family two weeks ago that she was returning to New York, there seemed an unspoken understanding Paolo would also make that trip. Nevertheless, Don Catalano, who had made the arrangements for her, had told her in no uncertain terms the fierce Sicilian man would be accompanying her as her bodyguard and remaining by her side in New York.

She had come to appreciate his silent presence, his protective hovering. It was hard to understand why he had chosen her to devote himself to, but it wasn’t a gift she was interested in questioning.

“I don’t trust Paolo,” Gloria said. “How do you trust a man who can’t talk?”

“I find him the most trustworthy of men for that reason alone.”

“You can’t travel and live on your own with a man you’re not married to,” she insisted. “You’re still just a young girl, after all.”

“I’ll be twenty-three in September.”

“You are a child,” Gloria repeated softly.

Mia smiled, a little bitterly, down at her small case of cosmetics, dropping the envelope on top. When she was a child, she’d lost both of her parents—her father to a heart attack when she was just a toddler. Her mother had died in a terrible fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, leaping from the top of the building in order to avoid being burned by the flames. Mia and Nick had been forced to hustle the streets, begging for handouts, learning poker to swindle the gangsters, stealing food, freezing nearly to death in their filthy tenement. She’d become a vaudeville performer, because young girls telling raunchy jokes to older men made money. When Nick had been drafted to the war, she’d worked a dozen hours a day for an abusive woman in a dress factory, just to keep a little food in her stomach. She’d known more about being an adult at twelve than most women her age knew now. Once she might have been proud of that, but now, it only made her sad.

Finally, she looked at Gloria. “I haven’t been a child for a very long time.”

Author Bio:

Meredith Allison has embraced her nerdiness from youth, with minor jaunts of attempting to be "cool" during high school and college. Spoiler alert: she was unsuccessful at fooling anyone. After this dark period, she returned to the light, embracing her bookish nature and penchant for action and horror films, bloody survivalist video games (she's looking at you, Resident Evil and Call of Duty) interspersed with the occasional sweeping fantasy adventure RPG (Final Fantasy, anyone?). Along the way, she developed her knack for storytelling, which began when she was a mere child-person many moons ago.

Meredith is a writer (and reader) of many kinds of fiction, but in particular spy thrillers, military-esque suspense, and historical crime. A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, she is by proxy a Huskers fan (GO BIG RED!), as UNL is her undergraduate alma mater, and moonlights as an obligatory Blue Jays fan due to completing her graduate MFA studies at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.

When she emerges from her writing cave, blinking in dismay at having to be exposed to the cruel light of day yet again, she can be found romping with her two Pomeranians, serving her overlord cat, hanging with her husband, battling it out with the undead or practicing a new kind of magery on her PlayStation, or simply huddled in a dark corner somewhere with just enough light to read a favorite book. Other interests include baking, cooking, and blogging about new restaurants.

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Dorothy In the Land of Monsters
Garten Gevedon
(Oz ReVamped, #1)
Publication date: October 11th 2019
Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Young Adult

Shifters, Zombies, and Vampires? Oh my!

My name is Dorothy Gale, and I think I might be dead.

When my dog Toto and I got swept up in a twister, we landed in hell. A very colorful hell. Like a rainbow dripping in blood. Now it looks as though this dreadful underworld plagued with vampires, zombies, and shifters will be the site of my eternal damnation.

They say this terrifying land called Oz isn’t hell or purgatory and escape is possible, but first I must survive the journey down the blood-soaked yellow brick road to the only place in Oz where vampires dare not tread—The City of Emeralds.

With enchanted footwear and the help of my three new friends—a friendly zombie, a massive shifter lion, and a heartless axe murderer of evil night creatures (who also happens to be the hottest guy I’ve ever seen)—Toto and I have a chance to make it to the Vampire Free Zone. When we get there, I must convince the most powerful wizard in this magical land of monsters to send us out of this radiant nightmare and back to the world of the living. They say he’s just as frightening as this monstrous land, that he detests visitors, and even the most horrifying creatures cower in his presence. But I must seek him out. And when I find him, I’ll do whatever it takes to make him send me home.

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EXCERPT:

Gray everywhere. As I stand on the porch of my aunt and uncle’s home, all I can see is the great gray expanse of prairie on every side. No trees, houses, buildings, people, nothing at all breaks the broad sweep of flat gray country that reaches to the edge of the gray sky in every direction. The sun scorched the plowed fields into a dusty, gray mass that expands to the horizon line, the endless gloom broken only by the little black shadows of the fissures running through it like the marbling of a corpse.

Even the grass is dead and gray—the hot sun singed the blades until they were the same lifeless gray color that blankets everything. Years ago, the house was a pristine white, but the torrid summer sun burned and blistered the paint and the heavy winter rains battered it away, and now the house is as weathered and gray as everything else here. It’s fitting for what it’s like to live here in Middle of Nowhere, Kansas. It looks like what it is—bleak, leached of any color, any excitement, anything interesting at all—drained of life. Gray is gray is gray is my life. It surrounds me from all sides, all the time. And it sucks. Thanks a lot, climate change.

I came to live with my Uncle Henry and Aunt Emily on a crappy little farm when my parents died in a car accident. I was thirteen. Because Emily was the only family I had left, she got stuck with me. She could have refused me and left me as a ward of the state, but she was kind enough to take me in. Even though I don’t share the same connection with Emily and Henry that I did with my parents, they’re still family—the only family I have—so, I may complain about this being the middle of nowhere, but it’s better than being in an orphanage or foster care or some group home. Yeah, their place is tiny, and old, but at least it has four walls, a floor, and a roof.

The two-bedroom farmhouse I live in is as weathered and brittle as the farm it’s set on. One story with no attic and no basement, the only feature it has is a cyclone cellar which we’ve had yet to use since I’ve lived here. It may lack color and any of the luxuries most people in America have these days—cable, wifi, consistent hot water to shower with—but I am grateful I have somewhere to live, even if life here is so gray that the grayness proliferates, turning everything in it to a gray as dry as dust.

When Aunt Emily came here to live with Uncle Henry, she was a young, pretty, vivacious woman with golden hair and bright emerald green eyes—or I thought I remembered her that way. Even she’s gray now. Just like it changed this once green land, the sun and wind have changed her, and her once sparkling green eyes are now dim and muted, tinged with a melancholy gray. Living here in this sweltering, exanimate world has stolen her radiance and left her ashen. It’s exhausted the red from her cheeks and lips, and now they’re pallid and gray too. Once she was curvy and a little plump. Now she’s gaunt and never smiles. Can’t blame her for never smiling, living in this dull, gray crap hole.

When I first came to her, Aunt Emily would startle when I laughed. She’d scream and look at me like I was nuts, shocked I could find anything to laugh at in this gray place. Uncomfortable and bored out of my skull, I’d laugh trying to entertain myself, trying not to let the depression get the best of me, but after being here for four years, I get it now—what is there to laugh about when all that’s here is gray?

Uncle Henry never laughs either. Morning to night, all he does is work hard. If he knows what joy is, he doesn’t let on. From his gray beard to his rough boots, Henry is also gray, stern, and solemn. With a permanent stone face, he almost never speaks. It’s like he’s made of hard, gray stone. If he didn’t work so much trying to make this gray land yield something, I’d think he was stone—a gray statue of a man.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s me that’s gray, or the lens I see the world through. Before my parents died, my life was a bright white, like a pristine sheet of paper wishing for a colorful story to grace its surface. Then the black smear of tragedy struck, and it’s as though the thousands of tears I shed diffused the black that blemished my bright whiteness, spreading it over the unsullied parts like watercolor, leaving my world gray. But I don’t think I’m gray. Not yet. I don’t think it has spread to me yet.

—“Dorothy in the Land of Monsters” Oz ReVamped #1
Chapter 1 – The Cyclone, pgs. 1-2

Author Bio:

Garten Gevedon lives in New York City with her family. She's a sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal author who loves taking fairy tales and turning them inside out. You can visit her online at www.gartengevedon.com.

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Panic
Dawn Brazil
(Mass Hysteria #1)
Publication date: October 29th 2019
Genres: Romance, Science Fiction, Young Adult

Mass Hysteria is a trilogy of young adult romantic/science-fiction serial novels that tell a continuous story. The books must be read in order, to fully understand the unfolding story.

High school can be hard, especially when your favorite horror movie becomes your reality…

High-School senior, Elizabeth calculates the likelihood of finding love to the probability of starring in a slasher film with her best friend, until she meets Brian Thompson. Love isn’t the only thing that eludes Elizabeth, however. Several threatening notes that promise her demise make a long life also questionable.

When Elizabeth’s best friend shares an article about the death of a girl in Italy, she dismisses it. As more girls are murdered, and cryptic messages are tucked in her locker, she realizes something sinister might be at play. Why? Each of the slain girls look like her.

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EXCERPT:

The single slip of manila paper says only two words: “your next.”

Right away, a few things are apparent: this person’s command of the English language is severely lacking; the scrawl is most likely that of a teenage boy or a toddler of any gender; and thirdly, this note is different from the others. I glance around the brick pillar at the front of our house. The street is silent; not one person is outside from where I stand.

I ball the paper up and toss it in my purse.

I slide into the car beside Stacey and we head to the restaurant—in absolute silence. Silence has many forms. The form we exhibit is awkward—at least for best friends.

We both know why we’re going today. Stacey doesn’t agree with my sentiment for the day, though. I’ve read that if you toss a being outside their natural habitat, one of two things will happen—they will rise to the occasion, or die.

I’m a fighter. I should be able to master the social landscape of female teenagerdom, but it seems I can’t. I flounder—a lot. I cannot explain my high intellect and my innate ability to elicit cringes or gasps of shock when I speak.

Today, that changes.

Once we’re at the restaurant, Stacey says only four words: “This is ridiculous, hon.”

I disagree and we head inside to meet the other girls.

We arrive mid-joke. So, I time my laugh to spill from my lips at the perfect moment.

Except, the sensation rises from my abdomen like gravel tumbling through my mouth. Stacey turns, her lips pursed tight. The other girls stop giggling. Their purrs of laughter are in deep contrast to my piercing cackle.

They frown in unison—everyone but Stacey. She has an ‘I’m sorry I got you into this mess, hon’ look on her face. Though lacking in most social skills, I’m able to read their expressions: ‘What the hell was Stacey thinking, bringing the schizoid?’

I’m painfully aware something is off with me. On a scale of weirdness, I’m not Pinhead. I’m more Carrie, without the powers. I’d change this perception of oddness I convey, but I don’t know where to begin to work on myself. That’s why I’m here today.

Glancing around the table, I attempt a quick recovery. Dogs. Girls like dogs. “I have a dog. He’s the cutest little Pomeranian.”

My words are met with oohs and awws, but Stacey shakes her head once, slightly. I don’t know why she does it. I’ve hit a chord with these girls. I block her shaking head and the bombardment of senseless information streaming through my mind, and continue talking. “He’s a handsome little fur ball.”

“I love dogs,” one of Stacey’s friends says. “My Jax is too freaking cute.”

“My FeFe is too adorbs. What’s your dog’s name, Elizabeth?” Melissa, the closest girl to me asks.

“Norman Bates. He’s a—”

“You named your dog Norman Bates?” Melissa asks.

“Yes. He—”

“Like, isn’t that the crazy dude from that movie? The one who cross-dressed like his mom and like killed everyone?” someone else asks.

“Yes, it’s—”

“It’s kinda weird… well, a lot weird that you named your dog after a homicidal maniac,” Melissa says. No one speaks after her comment. They all stare in opposite directions.

I almost laugh at their reaction, but stop myself. A rush of thoughts hurry through my head: Melissa’s eyes are the color of her heart—black. She’s a modern Cruella DeVille. She’ll trample over her own mother to get what she wants, which is always materialistic and selfish. She’s also beautiful, and she hates me but loves my best friend Stacey.

I shake my head discreetly. They act like I told them I’m naming my firstborn Freddie Krueger. Which I would do, if I could have kids.

I strum my fingers over my jean shorts and count in my head. Counting reminds me not to speak and further add to the awkwardness of the moment.

“Norman Bates is the best dog name, ever,” Stacey says. She gives me a wink. “More importantly, has anyone seen that new movie? You know… the new romance?” Stacey snaps her fingers like she can’t remember. “Oh, I forget the name. But I heard it’s hot—full of steamy love scenes…” Everyone starts talking, each girl stumbling over the other to get a word in. Like if they don’t articulate what they have to say straightaway, their lives might be in peril.

I don’t understand girls, even though I’ve been part of the gender my entire life.

Author Bio:

Dawn wants to live in a world fully inhabited by fictional characters. She thinks fictional characters are cooler than real people. Except herself, of course. But since the world is not comprised of dreamy book boyfriends, she creates them for everyone to fawn over. Her debut novel, Finding Me, book 1 in the Finding Me series, released on March 3rd 2016.

When she is not writing, she can be found with her nose in a book - swooning over another book boyfriend, drying up tears from a recent heartbreak, or shouldering a wound she received in battle. She also loves to create magic in the kitchen with an array of inspiring dishes she pulls from Pinterest. Dawn lives in South Texas with her sports obsessed husband, three technology infatuated teenagers, and her great, big, colossal imagination.

She is a master juggler and is working on two other Young Adult standalone novels - a high fantasy tearjerker and a science fiction story with a romance that will make your heart ache.

And she is passionate about superheroes - especially Wonder Woman!

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