Spotlight: The Misfortune of Lady Lucianna by Christina McKnight

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Quick-witted hellion Lucianna Constantine has no doubt who was responsible for the death of her dear friend. And she will stop at nothing to expose his transgressions—and those of every despicable man in London. Lucianna has witnessed the cruelty of London’s beau monde her entire life…starting with her own father. So she is more than willing to singlehandedly take down every vile man that crosses her path.

Roderick Crofton, the Duke of Montrose, had his entire family fortune stolen when his father trusted the wrong men. After a scandalous article surfaces in the London Daily Gazette, written by the notorious Mayfair Confidential columnist, Roderick finds himself financially destitute, without a betrothed, and lacking the means to find the lords responsible for duping his sire. With little option left, Roderick has only one choice: find another wealthy heiress to wed. His quest brings him to Lady Lucianna Constantine, and soon, he can’t deny that he wants her for more than just her dowry. 

However, Luci has secrets that could change everything. And when Roderick uncovers what those confidences entail, it could mean misfortune for all involved. 

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About the Author

Christina McKnight is a book lover turned writer. From a young age, her mother encouraged her to tell her own stories. She’s been writing ever since.

 Christina enjoys a quiet life in Northern California with her family, her wine, and lots of coffee. Oh, and her books…don’t forget her books! Most days she can be found writing, reading, or traveling the great state of California.

 You can visit her online at the following places: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Spotlight: The Color of a Silver Lining by Julianne MacLean

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It’s been five years since Emma Cochran endured the worst possible tragedy—the sudden, unexpected death of her four-year-old son. The emotional trauma tore her marriage apart, but now her divorce is final and she wants to begin again. She’s found happiness at last with her fiancé, Luke, who is eager to start a family with her.
 
On the other side of the country, single mother Bev Hutchinson watches helplessly as her five-year-old daughter Louise drowns in a high-profile boating accident. Miraculously, Louise is brought back to life and claims she went to heaven. The news causes a media frenzy surrounding the little girl, and Bev does everything she can to shield herself and her daughter from the relentless swarming of the press.
 
Lives collide when Emma becomes obsessed with the story of the child, thousands of miles away, who drowned and went to heaven. She wants to connect with the mother, but Emma’s fiancé is against the idea because he wants her to let go of her grief and move on.

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About the Author

Julianne MacLean is a USA Today bestselling author who has sold more than 1.3 million books in North America, and her novels have also been translated into many foreign languages. She has written twenty historical romance novels, including the bestselling Highlander Trilogy with St. Martin's Press and her popular Pembroke Palace Series with Avon/Harper Collins. She also writes contemporary mainstream fiction, and her 2011 release The Color of Heaven was a USA Today bestseller. Please visit her website for more information. http://www.juliannemaclean.com.
 
Connect: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | BookBub

Spotlight: The Fortune Teller by Gwendolyn Womack

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FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE MEMORY PAINTER COMES A SWEEPING AND SUSPENSEFUL TALE OF ROMANCE, FATE, AND FORTUNE.

Semele Cavnow appraises antiquities for an exclusive Manhattan auction house, deciphering ancient texts—and when she discovers a manuscript written in the time of Cleopatra, she knows it will be the find of her career. Its author tells the story of a priceless tarot deck, now lost to history, but as Semele delves further, she realizes the manuscript is more than it seems. Both a memoir and a prophecy, it appears to be the work of a powerful seer, describing devastating wars and natural disasters in detail thousands of years before they occurred.

The more she reads, the more the manuscript begins to affect Semele’s life. But what happened to the tarot deck? As the mystery of her connection to its story deepens, Semele can’t shake the feeling that she’s being followed. Only one person can help her make sense of it all: her client, Theo Bossard. Yet Theo is arrogant and elusive, concealing secrets of his own, and there’s more to Semele’s desire to speak with him than she would like to admit. Can Semele even trust him?

The auction date is swiftly approaching, and someone wants to interfere—someone who knows the cards exist, and that the Bossard manuscript is tied to her. Semele realizes it’s up to her to stop them: the manuscript holds the key to a two-thousand-year-old secret, a secret someone will do anything to possess.

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About the Author

Originally from Houston, Texas, Gwendolyn Womack studied theater at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. She holds an MFA in Directing Theatre, Video, and Cinema from California Institute of the Arts. Her first novel, The Memory Painter, was an RWA PRISM award winner in the Time Travel/Steampunk category and a finalist for Best First Novel. She now resides in Los Angeles with her husband and her son.

For more information please visit Gwendolyn Womack’s website. You can also connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Goodreads.

Spotlight: Royal Treatment by Parker Swift

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All this duke needs is his duchess…
 
For five blissful months I've been engaged to Dylan Hale, the most handsome, commanding, and wickedly sexy duke in England. For five months I've woken up next to the man I love, indulged in secret trysts, and submitted to every delicious desire. Even better? We've managed to keep it hidden from everyone. That means no paparazzi scandals, no snide comments from Dylan's mother, and no harsh public scrutiny. It's been heaven, but with Dylan's royal responsibilities looming, our time alone is running out. And while I can't wait to be Dylan's wife, I'm terrified that becoming Dylan's duchess might mean losing myself.

Excerpt

For the past five months, I’d taken my mission to heart: Put yourself first. Enjoy the freedom of life out of the spotlight. Get your career off the ground before it competes with running an ancient estate and being on your husband’s arm.

For five months, I’d said yes to all things. Late nights dancing with Fiona and Josh. Girlie nights with Emily. Paris for Fashion Week. Long runs in the park by myself without paparazzi trailing me. Late nights working on the launch of Fiona’s online store. Dylan and I had kept our relationship low profile so that I could do all those things, so I wouldn’t get sucked into the aristocratic machine, so I could move freely and make choices without fear of how it would look or who would be watching. And it had been great. It did feel freeing, like I’d been slipping into a version of adulthood I’d always been waiting for, figuring out who I wanted to be in the world, taking a deep breath while I thought about the reality of being a duchess. But no matter what I did, I was always happy to go home to Dylan, to find him there, to let him find me there. Nothing had changed in that regard—I wanted to be with him.

I had figured I’d wake up one day and just know, now’s the time. And on that day I’d replace soon with yes. We’d make a big announcement, open the door, I’d officially be Dylan’s fiancée and soon after his wife, with everything that came with it. But that aha moment hadn’t happened yet, and now there was this. This decision, going to New York for six months, would change everything. If I said no to Hannah’s offer and stayed in London, I knew that, in some plates-shifting kind of way, it meant that I was ready to say yes to Dylan, to all of this, to everything he was asking for. But if I said yes to Hannah, to effectively leaving behind everything I’d built in London for a half a year in New York, my long engagement would be longer than I’d ever really wanted it to be.

With each block I passed through, my mind changed, I swayed back and forth. Yes, I’d go to New York for six months. No, I’d stay in London with Dylan. Yes. No. Yes. No. It felt like everything was pitted against one another. London versus New York. My career versus my relationship. My present versus my future.

I was swimming so feverishly in my own mind, my heels clacking on the pavement, my bag swinging against my hip, that didn’t realize I was standing in front of our house.

Our house.

I hadn’t walked to the store. I’d walked home.

As I looked in the window, I could see Dylan in the library on the ground floor. It looked like he was searching for a book, his arm stretched up to one of the higher shelves. He’d been working on a restoration recently and had been researching like a madman. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that fitted his muscular frame perfectly. His hair was tousled, uneven from running his fingers through it. He looked at the book in his hands and then stared into the room, thinking. I knew that in a moment he would begin absent-mindedly spinning the pencil in his hand, tapping it against his shoulder, deep in thought. I knew, without looking, that his feet would be bare. I knew there was probably a half-consumed cup of tea on a stool by his drafting table. I knew him.

The beauty I saw when I looked through that window made my chest tighten. I was looking into a home that had become mine, ours. I was looking at my future.

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About the Author

Parker Swift grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and then grew up again in New York, London, and Minneapolis and currently lives in Connecticut. She has spent most of her adult life examining romantic relationships in an academic lab as a professor of social psychology. Now, she's exploring the romantic lives of her fictional characters in the pages of her books. When she's not writing, she spends her time with her bearded nautical husband and being told not to sing along to pop music in the car by her two sons.
 
Connect: Twitter | Instagram

Giveaway

Enter to win 1 of 15 free ebook downloads of Royal Treatment! http://bit.ly/2rmcXdt

Spotlight: The Story of Us by Tara Sivec

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How much can a man take before he breaks?
 
1,843 days. That's how long I survived in that hellhole. They tried to break me, but I resisted. And I owe it all to the memory of warm summer nights, the scent of peaches, and the one woman who loved me more than I ever deserved to be loved. Now, I'll do anything to get back to her.
 
Only Shelby Eubanks isn't the girl I left behind all those years ago. She's someone else, a stranger. My Shelby-my little green-eyed firecracker-would never give up her dreams, would never disappear into her mother's ambitions. But I won't give up on her. On us. I may be broken, and scarred, and not the man I used to be, but I will do whatever it takes to remind her of the story of us.

Excerpt

I just need a moment alone, to remember how to breathe and to remember how to push the hurt away so I can go back out there and do my job. Hold my head high with a smile on my face and pretend like dancing with Eli, being close to Eli, and letting him rain insults down on me, didn’t cut me in half.

As soon as I turn the handle and push open the office door, I feel something solid slam into me from behind, moving me faster into the dark room. I trip over my feet and an arm slides around my waist to steady me before whirling me around. I smell his soap and recognize his firm hold on me before the moonlight shining in the floor-to-ceiling windows behind me illuminates the shadow of his face, but that doesn’t stop the rapid thumping of my heart as the door is kicked shut with a slam and my body is turned and pushed roughly against the wall next to it. With the first touch of his hands, the first feel of the heat from his skin against me, I’m lost. I’m drowning in a pool of desire I’ve only ever felt with him, and I never want to come up for air. Every inch of my body is on fire, begging for more, needing everything I’ve been missing, but knowing everything about this moment is wrong. This can’t happen. I can’t want this and I certainly can’t act on what I’m feeling.

Before I can shove him away, shout at him, and tell him to let me go, his mouth is on mine. His chest pins my arms between us and I clutch a fistful of his dress shirt in my hands when my lips automatically part for him. His tongue quickly pushes into my mouth and I feel tears prickling behind my eyelids when I taste him, so familiar and so beautiful it breaks off yet another piece of my heart. One of his hands moves from around my waist and I feel the heat from his palm as it slides against the side of my neck to the back, his fingers gripping tightly to the hair at the base of my skull to hold my head in place. His kiss is punishing and hard and I can do nothing but hold tightly to the front of his shirt as our tongues battle together and I try to remember how to breathe.

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About the Author

Tara Sivec is a USA Today best-selling author, wife, mother, chauffeur, maid, short-order cook, baby-sitter, and sarcasm expert. She lives in Ohio with her husband and two children and looks forward to the day when they all three of them become adults and move out.
 
After working in the brokerage business for fourteen years, Tara decided to pick up a pen and write instead of shoving it in her eye out of boredom. Her novel Seduction and Snacks won first place in the Indie Romance Convention Reader's Choice Awards 2013 for Best Indie First Book and she was voted as Best Author in the Indie Romance Convention Reader's Choice Awards for 2014.
 
In her spare time, Tara loves to dream about all of the baking she'll do and naps she'll take when she ever gets spare time.

Connect: Website | Facebook | Twitter

Giveaway

Enter to win 1 of 15 free ebook downloads of The Story of Us! http://bit.ly/2qoDIcz

Spotlight: Stolen Time by Chloe Duval

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In a rural French village, a letter is delivered decades late, inspiring a young woman to try to reunite two star-crossed lovers . . .

Middle school teacher by day, romance writer by night, and group knitter on Tuesday evenings, Flavie Richalet leads a fairly uneventful life—until she receives a long delayed letter meant for a total stranger. Postmarked 1971, the yellowed envelope, addressed to an Amélie Lacombe, holds a fervent message of love and a marriage proposal, signed only with the initial E. Given her own fractured family history, Flavie is dreamily determined to learn what became of the couple . . .

Flavie’s inquiries lead her to a French seaside inn—and to E. himself, a true romantic who never forgot the girl who got away so many years ago. But his protective nephew, B&B owner Romaric, isn’t sure that trying to find Amélie after all these years is good for his uncle. At odds with the tall, dark, and impossibly passionate Romaric, Flavie must show him, and perhaps herself, that true love is timeless—and always worth waiting for . . .

Excerpt

Prologue

Karouac, Brittany

September 4, 1975

It was the most important day of her life.

She’d been waiting and preparing for this day for weeks, and she should have been deliriously happy. She should have been lighthearted and smiling.

But instead, she felt strange and uncomfortable. As though she was forgetting something important. As though she was about to make a mistake.

It’s just apprehension, she told herself. The usual jitters all women feel before they commit for life.

But did all women think of their first love on their wedding day? Amélie closed her eyes, and Erwan’s beautiful face appeared in her mind. She pictured his irresistible smile, his gray-blue gaze, his unruly hair, always too wild to lie flat. She felt his rough hands on her skin, his lips on hers, as though it were only yesterday that they had lain together on the beach.

She shook her head, willing herself to dismiss the memory. It was foolish to think of him, especially right before her wedding. It had been so long ago . . . four years, almost to the day. He’d obviously forgotten her, moved on with his life. He’d never written to her, never phoned her, never gotten in touch with her. She’d waited weeks, months even, for him to reach out to her, before she’d accepted the truth. It had only been a summer fling. So she’d grieved, but then looked to the future. She’d thrown herself into her studies in fashion-design school to forget. Forget all about him.

And now she was finally happy. She’d finished school and gotten the job of her dreams with a small fashion company that appreciated her style and her slightly extravagant ideas. It was almost more than she’d ever expected. Moreover, she was about to marry a wonderful man, one who loved her more than anyone and whom she loved very much. She knew they’d have a great life together. So why? Why was she thinking of the past, of a painful, bestforgotten period of her life, on the day she was going to marry Paul, for better or for worse?

She took a deep breath, trying to calm her heart, her nerves, her mind. She patted her veil, smoothed a few nonexistent creases in her satin and lace wedding dress. She’d designed it herself, and it was stunning, even if she said so herself. It was the dress of her dreams. Again, Erwan appeared in her mind’s eye.

“For God’s sake!” she swore, cutting herself off immediately. Someone knocked on the door and her mother peered in.

“Are you ready, sweetheart?” Viviane Lacombe asked, beaming.

Amélie cast a last glance into the mirror, took a deep breath, and nodded. “I am.”

It was no longer time to wonder about the past. So, she left her home, the home where she grew up, and, lifting the hem of her dress in one hand, her father at her side, her mother in front of her, beaming much more than her daughter was, Amélie slowly walked the short distance to the beautiful church of Karouac, where her parents had been married. Paul was waiting for her there.

Her family was waiting for her. The minister, and all their friends, were gathered here today to celebrate her wedding to the love of her life. She couldn’t wait to go in and marry Paul, the man who had always been there for her. Who loved her more than anything else. She couldn’t wait to start her life. The life she had chosen for herself. Yet before she walked into the church, she couldn’t help stopping to gaze around, searching for a face, a smile. She shook her head and cursed the damn memories trying to spoil the happiest day of her life. She turned back and smiled at her father, took hold of his proffered arm, and waited for her cue.

Hidden in the shade of a porch, unseen, Erwan watched as the love of his life walked into the church on her father’s arm to marry another man. He’d been too late, and he’d lost her once again—forever.

2 • Chloé Duval

He tamped down the urge to enter the church and beg Amélie, on his knees if need be, to come with him, repeating what he’d written in that unanswered letter four years ago, and walked away, his heart breaking, leaving Karouac behind him. Once again, and forever.

Stolen Time •

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About the Author

As a little girl, Chloé Duval dreamed of knights slaying terrifying dragons and damsels in distress. Today, she’s still seeking, in her stories, to find again the sweetness and the enchantment of the fairy tales she absorbed as a child. A Frenchwoman by birth, Canadian by adoption, and Québecoise in her heart, Chloé lives in Montreal with her prince charming and dozens of characters jostling around inside her head.