Spotlight: Italian Billionaire’s Stubborn Lover by Leslie North

Italian Billionaire’s Stubborn Lover
Leslie North
(Romano Brothers, #1)
Publication date: February 1st 2018
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Luxury real estate agent Adeline Peluso came to Italy in search of adventure. Inheriting an apartment with a view of the coast in Sicily sounded like something out of a movie, but after two years watching a resort she’d always loved fall to pieces she’s ready to throw in the proverbial towel…that is until one of the owners finally walked into her office. Tall, dark, and devastatingly handsome, the man would drive her crazy with his arguments if he didn’t set her aflame with his kisses.

Billionaire Nicolo Romano is a global citizen. He’s the kind of guy who skis in the Alps, snorkels in the caribbean, and enjoys the lights of the Vegas strip on a whim. He has no desire to be tied down anytime soon. So when he and his brothers inherit the family resort, Nicolo has one goal: Sell it and sell it fast. But coming back to the place he loved as a child to find a woman who feels just as passionately about the crumbling hotel throws him. Instead of using his business savvy to sell fast, Nicolo is wooing this woman with his island, slowly falling back in love with the place himself.

When whip smart arguments turn into stolen kisses and stolen kisses turn into steamy nights, Adeline and Nicolo will realize that they’re fighting for more than the fate of a historic hotel. They’re fighting for the chance of life’s greatest adventure: True Love.

Goodreads / Amazon

—

EXCERPT:

Adeline Peluso tapped her stiletto heel nervously on the rust colored terracotta tile floor as she traced her perfectly manicured fingernail over her plump bottom lip. Blinking, she contemplated the choice before her. She could stay in Sicily or let go of her dreams and move on.

“Poo,” she said, frowning at her laptop where it lay open atop an ancient walnut desk that was large enough and heavy enough to double as a raft on choppy seas. Between her eyes was a small, pinched crease of consternation that had plagued her with compliments of “adorable” and “sweet” ever since she’d been a young girl. Now at twenty-nine it was no less cute, but in truth, she was actually quite frustrated.

The beauty of her surroundings, which normally worked wonders to lighten her mood, did nothing for her today. From outside the tall, open windows of her real estate office, the calming sound of waves lapping against the Sicilian shore reached her ears. But instead of making her thankful for the life she lived as it usually did, it made her wistful for the adventures she was missing by remaining on the island of Sicily.

Moving to Sicily had been a dream come true for Adeline. Its history and heritage were more diverse than even the home she’d left behind in America. It was in Sicily that she had learned how to live with gusto and verve, and she had treasured the summers she’d spent there with her grandparents. Though they were gone now, it was through their happy marriage in this beautiful place that she’d learned what life-long love looked like.

She had thought that she could capture some of the magic of their lives by moving to Sicily. It had been her childhood dream. She’d thought that she would find love and adventure. Instead, she had an empty apartment to go home to at night and her life was filled with the same bored routine that she’d left behind in America.

She needed adventure. She needed more from life. It was too amazing to sleepwalk through.

“I could find love in Spain,” she said. Crossing her legs, she tapped her toe silently in the air as she contemplated her choices.

Author Bio:

Leslie North is the pen name for a critically-acclaimed author of women's contemporary romance and fiction. The anonymity gives her the perfect opportunity to paint with her full artistic palette, especially in the romance and erotic fantasy genres.

The truth of the matter is she loves her fictional persona, Leslie North, more than her normal, day-to-day persona! Her bestselling books focus on strong characters and particularly women who aren't afraid to challenge an alpha male. Inspired after years of travel, her stories are set all over the world, from the tough streets of Russia to the beautiful beaches of the middle east.

Leslie fell in love with romance when she first picked up a scrappy, dog-eared romance book from her local library. She began writing soon after and the rest, as they say, was history. She now lives in a cozy cottage on the British coast and enjoys taking long walks with her two Dalmatians, George and Fergie.

She LOVES reader feedback, and if you have any comments, don't hesitate to contact her via e-mail: leslie@leslienorthbooks.com.

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

GIVEAWAY!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Read an excerpt from Free Fall by Emily Goodwin

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Nora Fisher. The way my heart sped up in my chest and blood rushed through every part of me. I was drawn to her the moment our eyes met.

She was beautiful. 

Guarded. 
Damaged.
Just like me.

I never meant to hurt the only woman I’ve ever loved. She was light, and I was dark, casting shadows on everything around me. Letting her go meant spiraling back into the darkness only Nora could pull me from. But I’d sacrifice myself a thousand times for her.

Four years later, she’s back, and the passion she ignites makes the fight for her stronger. But the more I try to make things right, the more I realize how complicated things have become.

And now I'm starting to see that maybe her light was never meant to be mine.

Free Fall is a standalone, contemporary romance.

Excerpt

They call me a hero.

But to me, I’ll always be the guy who shot his best friend. Some nights, when the air is still and the house is quiet, I can hear it. The whisper of metal on metal as the hammer is pulled back on the gun. Everything comes rushing back. The way the gun felt heavy in my hand. The pungent smell of blood filling my lungs. My finger slipping as I pulled the trigger, slick from my own blood. And most of all, the way Jason’s blood splattered my face as the bullet hit him.

I tell people I blacked out after that, but I remember it all. The screams. The feeling of panic and remorse and terror all at the same time, ripping my heart into a million bloody pieces. When they ask, I tell them the pain from my own bullet wound intensified and I collapsed. Sometimes, I feel bad for lying. But the truth won’t change anything.

“And how are you feeling today, Jack?” Mr. Levine asks, not looking up from his computer.

“Fine,” I reply in a huff, already eyeballing the clock. It hasn’t even been a minute yet.

“Are you still having nightmares?”

That’s the only kind of dream I have, well, if I sleep at all. “Nope.”

“Good, good.” Mr. Levine stares at his computer during most of our meetings. I assume he’s looking at porn. If he is, it makes these meetings a lot less serious. “And what about school?”

“What about it?”

“How are you doing in your classes? What kind of grades are you getting?”

“Can’t you look that stuff up?”

“Oh, I can,” he says, and I want to roll my eyes and call him out for being lazy. But that puts me at risk for getting another counselor, and I like Mr. Levine for exactly that: he’s lazy and doesn’t probe. Nearly a year of these godforsaken meetings is bad enough. I’d lose my shit if I had to sit in with anyone else. “But I want to hear it from you.”

“I get Bs and Cs. Nothing special but nothing terrible.”

“What about football? You still enjoy that?”

“Yes,” I say honestly. It’s probably the only thing I enjoy. It’s the one place I feel the most free. I can’t run away from my life, but I can run on the field. I can’t push, shove, or block my problems in real life, but I make one hell of a defense, even though I’m the quarterback.

“You’ve gotten quite a few marks for unsportsmanlike conduct already,” Mr. Levine says and lifts his gaze from his computer to me. “And it’s the beginning of the school year.”

I shrug. “Just making up for lost time and feeling extra competitive. Don’t want to break our winning streak. Go Bulldogs.”

“Sounds good.” His eyes are back on his glowing computer screen. “You know I’m here if you need to talk. See you Friday.”

I grab my shit and leave his corner office, emerging into a hall that empties into the main office building of Dale Hollow High School. There are three rooms back here: Mr. Levine’s office, the other counselor, Mrs. Freeman’s office, and the conference room they sit you down in when bad shit happens.

I’ve been in all three more times than I can count.

Between the doors to the two counselors’ offices is an ugly armchair that smells like mothballs. I’ve clocked serious hours parked there, waiting to be seen, or waiting while my parents talked with the principal behind closed doors. Today it has a different occupant, and I slow without meaning to.

Her head is turned down to the book in her lap, and raven hair is covering half her face. Noticing me, she looks up, and I’m taken aback by her beauty. Eyes as green as emeralds stare back at me, and her full lips part. She’s gorgeous.

There’s something familiar in her eyes that I can’t place. She looks to be the same age as my sister, who’s two years younger than me. Yet something about this girl makes me think she has experience, and I don’t mean with sex.

With life.

She knows life is full of bullshit.

There was a time when I’d flash a smile, lean in, and introduce myself. But those days are gone. Her long lashes come together in a blink, making my heart skip a beat and a rush of blood go to my dick. I quickly walk away before she has the chance to say anything.

Buy on Amazon

About the Author

Emily Goodwin is the New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author of over a dozen of romantic titles. Emily writes the kind of books she likes to read, and is a sucker for a swoon-worthy bad boy and happily ever afters. 

She lives in the midwest with her husband and two daughters. When she's not writing, you can find her riding her horses, hiking, reading, or drinking wine with friends. 

Emily is represented by Julie Gwinn of the Seymour Agency. 

Connect: Website 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Read an excerpt from Found by Claudia Burgoa

All I’ve ever wanted was for someone to choose me. My mother didn’t. My father didn’t. The beautiful boy next door, who grew up to marry me, didn’t. Neither did the next man with whom I thought my heart was safe.

Back in the Bay area, three thousand miles from New York City, I can start fresh. Become one with the sea again, rise or fall on the tide of my own choices. But on the first day of my bright new life, the darkest shadows of my past follow me through my office door. The two men whose names are definitely not on my five-year plan.

If I let it consume me—my need for one man, my love for the other—the darkness will swallow me whole. I can’t let that happen. Not again. This time, the waves of emotion crashing against my heart won’t drown me. This time, I get to choose my happy ending.

Excerpt

It’s time to get back to the hotel. Fitz and I have been helping Hazel set up her apartment. Installing the sound system was the last thing on her list, and I’m almost done. But I don’t want this day to end. Not yet.

I don’t want to leave her.

I want to bask in the light of the infectiously cute smile she wears everywhere she goes.

I want to stay with her for the rest of the night.

Forever—if she allows it.

Hazel Beesley has been warming my cold soul since the moment I met her. She isn’t like any women I’ve come across. I met her the summer she came to live with her grandfather.

Everything about Hazel captured my heart from the beginning. Her big eyes, long braids, wicked smile and a smart mouth. Her luscious, full lips. The eagerness to learn and help people. Behind the professional hard shell she shows to the world, there’s a smart, sensitive, caring woman. She adores her family and helps everyone around her.

My relationship with her has been by stages. The big crush happened when I met her. Slowly, I fell in love with her, and one day, we kissed. In that instant, her air became mine, and my soul was branded with her name. Her presence calms the demons inside my head. She knows most of my secrets and my fears. Hazel held my hand while we face my most significant challenges.

My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Harrison, my oldest brother.

Harrison: Where are you?

Scott: San Francisco.

Harrison: Why am I not surprised? Are you and Hazel getting back together?

I snort. That’s the plan, but there’s a complication.

Scott: I’m working on it.

Harrison: If I could, I’d talk some reason into her, but … you fucked up, and I can’t help you.  

No one can help me. I let out a long, frustrated breath. Harrison is her best friend. They are so similar. According to him, I have a hefty price to pay before she forgives me. Then, I must grovel, and maybe we will salvage something. At least, that’s what he said after Christmas.

Scott: It’s back to square one. I have to remind her how great we are together.

Harrison: That puzzles me. That the two of you fit just right. You are so different. And yet, you stayed together for a long time.

He’s right. On the surface, we don’t look compatible. However, deep down we fit perfectly. Like a key in its lock, I belong to her. It’s in the way she makes me feel. The yearning when she’s away. The joy I experience when she’s steps away from me. She holds the power in our relationship, not me.

Scott: I regret being a coward, and letting her slip out of my hands knowing that this day would come. The day she’d move back to San Francisco and see the boy she fell in love with since they were kids.

Harrison: Well, you better apply yourself before she sees him.

Jesus, I rub the back of my neck. What am I doing here?

Scott: This might be a lost battle. She already saw him.

Buy on Amazon

About the Author

Claudia is an award-winning, international bestselling author. She lives in Colorado working for a small IT company, managing her household filled with three confused dogs, two daughters wrought with fandoms and a son who thinks he’s the boss of the house. And a wonderful husband who shares her love for all things geek. To survive she works continually to find purpose for the voices flitting through her head, plus she consumes high quantities of chocolate to keep the last threads of sanity intact.

Connect: Bookbub | Book+Main | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram | Goodreads | Newsletter

Spotlight: Angel of Shadow by D.H. Nevins

Angel of Shadow
D.H. Nevins
(Wormwood #2)
Publication date: January 13th 2018
Genres: Dystopian, Fantasy, New Adult

D.H. Nevins hurtles you into a world of half-angels, demons and tormented love in this driving, dystopian sequel to Wormwood.

Half-angels, known as Nephilim, have all but destroyed the surface of the Earth. Yet for Kali Michaels, her life is now much more complicated than simply surviving. Grappling with her own powerful identity, she worries her connection to the world of Shadows could destroy those around her.
And what if she hurts Tiamat Wormwood, the Nephilim outcast who has given everything to save her? Tiamat and Kali know they have no future—not when outside forces and Kali’s own power push both the humans and the Nephilim to the brink of extinction.

As she fights to stop the inevitable, she is led to question who her real enemies are, and whether the ultimate threat may actually be herself.

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / iBooks / Kobo

—

EXCERPT:

“Do we have to go back?”

“No way. We’re not going to be stopped by a few branches,” I said. Keeping one hand on his back, I reached over him and broke off a few more of the limbs that were directly in our way. I grabbed a thicker branch for balance and stepped around Bram, positioning myself in front of him. “I’m going to sit down here. Just put your arms around my neck and your legs around my middle, okay?”

I lowered myself onto the log and he obeyed silently. I could feel his small frame quivering as he latched onto my back. “Stop looking down,” I told him. “It’ll be easier.”

“How’d you know?”

“That you were looking down?” I felt him nod his head against my back and I laughed quietly. “You know you’ve been staring down there almost constantly. It wasn’t hard to guess.”

“Well,” he said in a soft voice, “it’s scary down there.”

“I know, kiddo.”

“And,” he continued, his voice even quieter, as though he hoped it would fade into nothingness, “your Shadow is down there.”

I stilled. “You don’t ever have to worry about my Shadow. I control it … and I wouldn’t hurt you with it, Bram.”

“Yeah. Alright,” he said softly.

I couldn’t see the expression on his face, but he sounded like he believed me—a tentative belief, perhaps, but it would do.

Author Bio:

D.H. Nevins was born in Toronto and currently lives in a quiet area of Ontario, surrounded by forests and lakes. By day, she is a personable, friendly school teacher. By night, she silently chuckles as she writes about destroying the world. When she isn't writing, she enjoys world travel, hiking, camping, flying around on her motorcycle or dabbling in live theatre.

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

GIVEAWAY!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Spotlight: In With the Tide by Charlee James

Lindsey Hunter never imagined she’d be returning to her Cape Cod home pregnant and divorced, but she’s determined to build a new life for her and her unborn baby. When car trouble leaves her stranded on the side of the road, ex-Marine Damien Trent rides to the rescue on his motorbike. Once upon a time, they’d been friends and briefly, they’d been something more…until he enlisted and left her behind. As Lindsey and Damien reconnect, the attraction is still as strong as ever. But Lindsey’s knows Damien’s not the staying kind.

Damien would rather do anything than come home to deal with his father’s estate. After years of abuse, he was more than ready to leave town the moment he graduated. With Lindsey back in his life, everything is complicated. He’s used to being a lone wolf – until Lindsey and her newborn baby give him a glimpse of the kind of family and future he’s always dreamed of. Can he be brave enough to reach out and grab it?

Buy on Amazon | Barnes and Noble

About the Author

Contemporary Romance Author Charlee James was introduced to a life-long love of reading listening to her parents recite nightly stories to her and her older sister. Inspired by the incredible imaginations of authors like Bill Peet, Charlee could often be found crafting her own tales. As a teenager, she got her hands on a romance novel and was instantly hooked by the genre.

After graduating from Johnson & Wales University, her early career as a wedding planner gave her first-hand experience with couples who had gone the distance for love. Always fascinated by family dynamics, Charlee began writing heartwarming novels with happily-ever-afters.

Charlee is a New England native who lives with her husband, daughter, two rambunctious dogs, a cat, and numerous reptiles. When she’s not spending time with her tight-knit family, she enjoys curling up with a book, practicing yoga, and collecting Boston Terrier knick-knacks.

Spotlight: The Astonishing Color Of After by Emily X.R. Pan

A stunning, heartbreaking debut novel about grief, love, and family, perfect for fans of Jandy Nelson and Celeste Ng.

Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird.

Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. And as she grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life.

Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a stunning and heartbreaking novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love.

Buy on Amazon | Barnes and Noble

About the Author

Emily X.R. Pan currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, but was originally born in the Midwestern United States to immigrant parents from Taiwan. She received her MFA in fiction from the NYU Creative Writing Program, where she was a Goldwater Fellow. She is the founding editor-in-chief of Bodega Magazine, and a 2017 Artist-in-Residence at Djerassi. The Astonishing Color of After is her first novel. Visit Emily online at exrpan.com, and find her on Twitter and Instagram:@exrpan.