Read an excerpt from Melt For You by J.T. Geissinger

A wallflower gets seduction tips from a playboy athlete—until love changes the rules.

Socially awkward Joellen Bixby has a date every Saturday—with her cat, a pint of ice cream, and fantasies of the way-too-handsome Michael Maddox. She’d give anything to win over the unattainable CEO of her firm, but how can she when she blends in so well with her cubicle? The answer may be closer than she thinks.

Cameron McGregor is a cocky, tattooed Scottish rugby captain who just moved in next door. He’s not Jo’s type—at all—but the notorious playboy is offering to teach the wallflower everything he knows about inspiring desire. Though a lot of women have rumpled Cam’s kilt, Jo is special. Far from the ugly duckling she thinks she is, in Cam’s eyes she’s sharp, funny, and effortlessly sexy. Now, thanks to him, Jo is blooming with confidence and has the man of her dreams within reach.

Unfortunately for Cam, he’s just helped to push the woman of his dreams into the arms of another man—and now he’s in the fight of his life to keep this beauty from getting away.

Excerpt

I jump at the sound of a woman’s scream.

“What the hell?” I rush to the front door. My heart galloping, I flatten myself against the door and peer through the peephole. The hallway is empty. Warily, I ease open the door and poke my head out. Then I hear another scream, this one accompanied by the sound of female laughter and a chorus of male hoots.

The noise is coming from the apartment across the hall.

Relieved I’m not dealing with murder, only a house party spiraling out of control, I start to fume. I picture an inflatable kiddie pool filled with Jell-O in the middle of Kellen’s living room, a pair of naked girls squirming around in it while a bunch of frat boys gleefully spray them with champagne and dollar bills.

Before I can talk myself out of it, I’m marching across the hall and applying my knuckles with vigor to Kellen’s door.

The music doesn’t lower, but after a moment, heavy footsteps approach. Then the door opens and I’m rendered speechless.

A man I’ve never seen before stands in the doorway. He’s tall, broad, solid as a mountain and about as large. He has shaggy brown hair, hazel eyes, lots of tattoos, and a devastating smile, which my brain notes at the same time it’s trying to process that the man is wearing unlaced combat boots, a kilt, and nothing else.

You could get lost in the canyons between his abs. If he has any body fat at all, it must be hidden beneath the kilt, because his muscles are so defined it’s like looking at an anatomical drawing.

Staring open-mouthed at his stomach, I say, “Uh...”

The Mountain says, “Can I help you, lass?”

Cannae help ye, lass?

Dear God, he’s a Scotsman. A huge, half-naked Scotsman in a kilt. Smiling at me like he knows all my secrets, what color my panties are, and that I’m curious what it would be like to have a man pull my hair during sex.

Buy on Amazon | Barnes and Noble

About J.T. Geissinger

A former headhunter, J.T. Geissinger is the author of more than a dozen novels in contemporary romance, paranormal romance, and romantic suspense.

She is the recipient of the Prism Award for Best First Book, the Golden Quill Award for Best Paranormal/Urban Fantasy, and is a two-time finalist for the RITA® Award from the Romance Writers of America®. Her work has also finaled in the Booksellers’ Best, National Readers’ Choice, and Daphne du Maurier Awards.

Join her Facebook reader’s group, Geissinger’s Gang, to take part in weekly Wine Wednesday live chats and giveaways, find out more information about works in progress, have access to exclusive excerpts and contests, and get advance reader copies of her upcoming releases.

Connect with J.T. Geissinger: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Instagram | Pinterest

Cover Reveal: A Taker of Morrows by Stephen Paul Sayers

A Taker of Morrows
Stephen Paul Sayers
(Caretakers, #1)
Publication date: June 15th 2018
Genres: Adult, Horror, Supernatural, Thriller

RG Granville has his whole life in front of him…but only twenty-four hours to live it.

Beyond life’s boundaries, an enduring battle between good and evil determines the fate of earthly souls. Here, ‘caretakers’ guard and protect against the evil and vengeful ‘jumpers’ who slip back and forth between worlds to prey upon the living.

For one man, news of his impending demise sets off a deadly chain of events fueled by a jumper’s burning vengeance. Now he’s in a race against time to stop an unrelenting evil unleashed upon the earth. And if he’s to protect his family, and the world, he must breach the tenuous boundary between life and death to confront a killer—and a shocking secret from his long-buried past.

Book One in the Caretaker series, A TAKER OF MORROWS is a roller coaster ride that will leave readers contemplating the nature of life and death and the eternal price we pay for what we carry in our souls.

Add to Goodreads


Author Bio:

Stephen Paul Sayers grew up on the sands of Cape Cod, Massachusetts and spent his first thirty-five years in New England before joining the University of Missouri as a research professor. When he’s not in his laboratory, he spends his time writing and devouring his favorite forms of genre fiction—horror, suspense, and thrillers. His short fiction has appeared in Unfading Daydream. A TAKER OF MORROWS is his debut novel and the first in the planned Caretakers series. He divides his time between Columbia, Missouri and Cape Cod writing and teaching. For more about the author, visit stephenpaulsayers.com.

Website / Facebook / Twitter


XBTBanner1

Cover Reveal & Trailer Reveal: Cold Blooded by Toni Anderson

Available June 12th

Searching for the truth… 

Disgraced investigative journalist Pip West is devastated when she discovers her best friend’s body face-down in a tranquil lake. When cops and federal agents determine that her friend overdosed then drowned, Pip knows they’re mistaken and intends to prove it. 

Special Agent Hunt Kincaid doesn’t trust journalists and has no patience for Pip’s delusions, especially since her meddling could reveal why the FBI is interested in her friend’s last days. The dead scientist worked at the cutting edge of vaccine research and might have a connection to a new, weaponized, vaccine-resistant anthrax strain that just hit the black market.

…just turned deadly.

Pip is thrown off her game by grief and her unexpected attraction to the handsome federal agent. Hunt battles the same unwelcome pull, determined to resist the heat that threatens to consume them both. But the more Pip digs, the closer she gets to both the sexy FBI agent, and to a bioweapons terrorist who’s more than capable of cold-bloodedly sacrificing anyone who gets in his way.

Buy on Amazon | Barnes and Noble

About Toni Anderson

New York Times and USA Today international bestselling author, Toni Anderson, writes dark, gritty Romantic Suspense novels that have hit #1 in Barnes & Noble's Nook store, the Top 10 in Amazon and Kobo stores, and the Top 50 in iBooks. Her novels have won many awards. A former Marine Biologist from Britain, she inexplicably ended up in the geographical center of North America, about as far from the ocean as it is possible to get. She now lives in the Canadian prairies with her Irish husband and two children and spends most of her time complaining about the weather.

Toni has no explanation for her oft-times dark imagination, and only hopes the romance makes up for it. She's addicted to reading, dogs, tea, and chocolate.

If you want to know when Toni's next book will be out, visit her website (http://www.toniandersonauthor.com) and sign up for her newsletter. If you want to read other fascinating stories about life in a city that, during winter, is sometimes colder than Mars, friend her on Facebook: (https://www.facebook.com/toniannanderson).

Connect with Toni Anderson: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest | Instagram

Spotlight: Charleston Harbor Romances by Debbie White


Sweet Indulgence
A Charleston Harbor Novel Book 1
by Debbie White
Genre: Sweet Romance

Real Men Eat Cupcakes

Annie McPherson has had it with all the blind dates her grandmother and auntie set her up with. She just wants to be left alone to run the Sweet Indulgence cupcake bakery – even if it means she’ll remain single forever.
Jack’s just been through a gut-wrenching break-up, and women are the last thing on his mind. Now he’s on a mission to pick up cupcakes for his niece’s birthday party—not a mission to fall in love. Pulled in by Annie’s good looks and witty charm, though, temptation proves too sweet.
But will Annie’s pesky grandmother and auntie welcome Jack as Annie’s choice or will they have him jumping through hoops to prove he’s the one?
Fans of Debbie Macomber, Sherryl Woods, and Susan Wiggs are sure to love Sweet Indulgence, the first sweet romance novel in the Charleston Harbor series.
This book is too sweet to pass up!


**Only .99 cents!!**


Sweet Magnolia
A Charleston Harbor Novel Book 2

What doesn't divide us makes us stronger. 

While on their honeymoon, Annie and Jack are called back to Charleston, cutting their trip short. But no matter what the disaster, nothing can deter this dynamic duo from moving forward with their plans to build their dream home, Sweet Magnolia on Kiawah Island.



This is book two of the Charleston Harbor Novels set in historic Charleston, South Carolina where sweet tea and love for family prevail and is the balm that soothes the heart. Follow along in the series as the Powells and McPhersons live life to the fullest while overcoming many hardships, making them stronger, and bringing them closer than ever.




Sweet Carolina
A Charleston Harbor Novel Book 3

When a hurricane threatens to wreak havoc on the South Carolina coast, Annie prepares Sweet Magnolia for what she thinks will be a day or two without electricity while Jack checks on Lady Powell down at the dock. But when Jack doesn’t return promptly, Annie becomes concerned.
Mary makes an announcement that makes her the center of attention, but Annie has a bit of news causing them to share the limelight. 
Annie is having second thoughts about running the Sweet Indulgence. Is she just feeling the pressure of motherhood or could this be the end of the cupcakery she started from the ground up?
Sweet Carolina, the final installment of the Charleston Harbor Novels promises to be an uplifting clean and sweet contemporary women’s fiction laced with a romantic thread, where honor, family, love, and hope always prevail.




Debbie is a USA Today Bestselling Author. She currently lives in northern California where the hills are dotted with vineyards and the jagged coastline is nearby. Many of her books describe the beautiful area she calls home. She avidly supports animal rescue by donating a percentage of all book sales to rescue groups nationwide! Now here are a few more interesting tidbits of information about her!

1. Her spouse served in the U.S. Air Force for over 20 years. She uses some of her experiences as a military wife in some of her stories.

2. She has two granddaughters and a grandson.

3. She received her degree in Sociology in 2011 and graduated Magna Cum Laude.

4. She hasn't always dreamed of writing, but she's always loved reading and decided she'd give it a try. Her fans love her so much, she's still putting out books three years later.

5. Her very first book, The Salty Dog was an Amazon Best-seller. 

6. You can follow all the latest news about releases, book signings and more on her website http://www.authordebbiewhite.com





Follow the tour HERE for exclusive excerpts and a giveaway!





Spotlight: Getaway by Maureen Brady

After stabbing her abusive husband and leaving him dying on the kitchen floor, Cookie Wagner flees to remote Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. For a moment, she seems to have gotten away with murder. But, consigned to a secretive life with a new name and the need to be on constant alert, she faces all she has not gotten away with. She is helped by the recently widowed Mrs. Biddle, who offers her a place to stay, and the lobster fisherman Butch, who gives her a job and later falls in love with her. Walking the cliffs and beaches, taking in the scruffy windblown plants that survive the buffeting wind by growing at an angle, she begins to heal.

Yet, there is no leaving behind the notion that Warren is dead as the result of her action.

Or is he? And if not, will he one day come to find her?

Sexual harassment and abuse are all over the news these days, often involving celebrites and other well-known figures, but Cookie, the protagonist of Getaway, is no celebrity. She’s an ordinary woman married to a working class guy who drinks too much and resorts to violence. Their story reveals how endemic the phenomenon of abuse is, and the quandary Cookie lands in when she fights back.

Book Excerpt

Cookie dove between the tall grasses, jarred with adrenalin. In the gloom, she could barely make out the blue cottage on the other side of the lake, but her eyes clung to it desperately. It was up for sale and she thought, unoccupied. Maybe if she bushwhacked around the lake and found her way there without being seen, she’d be able to hide behind it.

The air sparkled. Everything around her seemed to vibrate with too much life. When a bullfrog glugged in the reeds, she jumped, stood still, then made herself get moving again. This was no time to try to understand what she had done.

She inched along the shoreline, her feet sinking into the mud.

Her foot slipped off a root and twisted painfully. Damn weak ankle, she muttered, working it before she pushed on.

A three-quarter moon came up to light the way a bit, but it was getting cold. She stopped to put on her windbreaker, the one thing she’d managed to grab from the hook by the door. A good thing she had, even though it was a bright aqua, too colorful for someone who wanted not to be seen.

Squatting, she buried her face in her hands. Her stomach roiled and she thought she might throw up. My God, Warren, why did you have to come after me like that?

She was struck by the sound of twigs breaking underfoot. A bear or a coyote? Someone coming after her? That got her moving again, making low, humming noises to keep whatever it was at bay.

When she finally came out to the clearing, she scooted through tall tufts of grass in front of the blue cottage and crept around back.

The building blocked the moonlight as she huddled against the cinderblock cellar wall, her arms wrapped around her legs, her feet wet and freezing. She stared into the night as the fireflies spit tiny patches of light before flickering out.

As she adjusted to the dark, she noticed a hump a few feet away, a rounded Bilco cellar door. She stood and lifted the handle.

Detecting a little give, she lifted again, hard, and one side came up. Three steps down, there was a wooden door. It, too, had been left unlocked, so the knob turned and she was in.

She sunk to the cellar floor and wrapped her windbreaker around her wet pant legs but couldn’t stop her teeth from chattering. Trying to still her jaw only made her whole arm shake. She remembered once as a child when her teeth had rattled on this way. It had been fear, not cold that time her father had raised his large square hand but stopped just short of slapping her across the face.

When she finally found the remains of a matchbook in her pocket, the first match she struck crumbled. She stood up and struck another. The light flared up shockingly fast and extinguished itself before she’d seen a thing. She caught a glimpse of a stairway, which she shuffled toward, hands out ahead of her, searching for a light switch.

In the flare of the last match, she spotted a worktable under the stairs. Patting along its surface, she touched something soft and squishy, almost like human skin. She jumped back, horrified.

Gathering her courage, she reached out again but she must have turned when she jumped back because, where the squishy thing had been, there was nothing, not even the bench. She made a quarter turn and reached out again. Still nothing! At least it wasn’t the squishy thing, but where the hell was she and what was that anyway?

Buy on Amazon | Barnes and Noble

About the Author

Though Maureen Brady wrote the humor column of her junior high school newspaper, she didn't actually comprehend that she was a writer until after she had moved to New York City in her twenties, where she began taking writing workshops at The New School and then fell headlong into the consciousness raising groups of the early 1970's.

She published her first novel, Give Me Your Good Ear, in 1979, and it was published by The Women's Press in England in 1981. Her novel, Folly, was excerpted in Southern Exposure, received wide critical acclaim, was nominated by Adrienne Rich for an ALA Gay Book Award and was reprinted as a classic by The Feminist Press. She published a collection of short stories, The Question She Put to Herself, in 1987, then turned to writing nonfiction in the '90's, publishing Daybreak: Meditations for Women Survivors of Sexual Abuse and Midlife: Meditations for Women. She returned to fiction with the novel, Ginger's Fire, and her most recent novel, Getaway.

Her recent work has appeared in Sinister Wisdom, Bellevue Literary Review; Just Like A Girl; Cabbage and Bones: Irish American Women's Fiction, Mom, In the Family, and Intersections: An Anthology of Banff Writers. Brady's essays and stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and were finalists for the Katherine Anne Porter Fiction Prize and the Nelsen Algren Short Story contest.

An Adjunct Assistant Professor, she teaches creative writing at New York University and New York Writers Workshop @ the Jewish Community Center, and works as a free-lance editor and tutor, helping writers across the spectrum take their writing to the next stage.

A co-founder of Spinsters Ink, Brady edited such books as The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde and The Woman Who Breathes Fire by Kitty Tsui. She also served as a panelist for The New York State Council on the Arts Literature Program and as a fiction judge for Oregon Literary Arts. She is a founding member of The New York Writers Workshop and has long served as Board President of Money for Women Barbara Deming Memorial Fund.

She has received grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation; New York State Council on the Arts Writer-in-Residence; New York State Council on the Arts CAPS grant; Holding Our Own; Briarcombe Foundation; and The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship to The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Ireland. She was the winner of the Saints and Sinners short story contest for 2015 and is also a Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame winner.

She lives in New York City and Woodstock with her long term partner, Martha, and their joy dog, Bessie.

Visit Maureen’s website at www.maureenbradyny.com.

Spotlight: No Cowboy Required by JoAnn Sky

Grace Harper is a pro at handling the unexpected—which comes in handy when she inherits the ranch she ran away from years ago…along with a young, autistic stepbrother she’s never met. And because nothing ever goes easy for her, Grace finds her frustrating, sexy ex-flame, Noah, taking care of JJ. But if she’s getting out of this nowhere town, she’ll have to find a way to keep from throttling Noah—without kissing him first.

Noah Taylor may be enemy number one to Grace, but she needs his help. He knows the girl he used to love is still there, beneath the heels and fancy clothes, so he’ll help her—and keep his distance like she says she wants. Only the more time they spend together, the closer he wants to get. Graci has no intention of staying, but she belongs in his arms—he just has to prove it to her.

Excerpt

She looked around at the bareness, her gaze eventually shifting up to the loft, still filled with hay. And memories. Memories she wanted to forget but couldn’t, like the bittersweet memories of Noah. Her friend, her knight, her once-upon-a-time everything. Goose bumps ran up her spine. This loft had been their kingdom, where they’d dreamed big when they were small. Later, it became a refuge, where they experimented with alcohol. And each other. A place where they planned their escape, where they—

“Hello, Gracie.”

She whirled around at the sound of his voice, as familiar as if she’d heard it hours—not years—ago. But the man standing in front of her wasn’t the boy she’d left behind. Dark stubble had replaced peach fuzz. The lanky, thin frame she remembered had morphed into broad shoulders and hard muscle. Hard-work-earned muscle, not gym-sculpted. His stance was confident, proud. Imposing.

He stared up to the loft and then shifted his focus to her. “Remembering old times?” The mischievous glint in his eyes hadn’t changed, nor had other things. His hair was still thick and black, one random curl hanging over his forehead. His dark blue eyes were still as deep as Lake Tahoe. His lips? Firm, full… Were they still totally kissable? Her mouth dried at the thought, and heat sprawled through her stomach, then lower.

What was wrong with her? She wasn’t a teenager anymore. This was the guy who’d broken her heart, pulverized it. And it wasn’t like she was Celibate Celia in New York, pining over him. Noah Taylor shouldn’t affect her body, shouldn’t affect her anymore.

And he shouldn’t be here.

This trip was supposed to be in and out, nice and easy. Sell the ranch, scoop up JJ, and skedaddle.

Noah’s gaze rolled down her body, lingered on her too-high heels, then climbed back up. “The City’s treated you well,” he said.

Bronzed abs peeked through the rip in his dirty T-shirt. Reno had treated him well. Very well. Not that she’d ever admit it, especially to him.  

Buy on Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Entangled Publishing

About JoAnn Sky

JoAnn Sky writes adult contemporary romance and young adult romance with a magical twist. As J.A. Sky, she writes children's books. For more information about her children's stories, go to: www.dogsandbooks.com.

JoAnn is a member of Romance Writers of America and its YARWA and Golden Network chapters. Her manuscripts have seen success in various RWA-sponsored contests, including as a Golden Heart® finalist in 2014 (YA category) and 2017 (Contemporary Short category). Originally from the Midwest, JoAnn currently lives in northern Nevada with her husband a.k.a. love of her life, three teenage children, and three crazy rescue dogs.

JoAnn is represented by the fabulous Nicole Resciniti of The Seymour Agency.

Connect with JoAnn:  Website  | Facebook  | Twitter  | Goodreads