Spotlight: The Geek and the Goddess by Allie Everhart

The Geek and the Goddess
Allie Everhart
Publication date: August 7th 2018
Genres: Romance, Young Adult

People always say they wish they could predict the future. But not me. I already know my future. I’m going to lose my sight. I don’t know exactly when, but it’s going to happen. And it’s the reason I’ll never fall in love.

At least that’s what I thought. Until one day a guy walks into my chem class and changes all that.

I thought for sure he’d avoid me after he saw how people at school treat me. The teasing. The nicknames. Just being seen with me is enough to ruin his reputation, yet this guy still wanted to date me. And he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

That’s how it began. How it ended is not at all what I expected. Ours is an unlikely love story.

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EXCERPT:

A guy appears at the door. He looks back at it, like he’s double-checking the room number, then says something to a girl up front. She nods and he closes the door.

Everyone looks up and stares at him. He’s tall and thin, wearing jeans and a button-up white shirt with a blue blazer over it. And he has on a tie that’s blue and green plaid.

Who dresses like that for class? A blazer and a tie? Maybe he transferred here from a prep school.

“Greetings, earthlings,” he says in a deep voice. He smiles and a few people chuckle.

“Wesley,” Mr. Henderson says. “Welcome.”

“Thank you,” he says in a cheery tone, not seeming to care that people are staring at him.

“We have a seat for you back here,” Henderson says.

He sees me and smiles. “Guess it’s my lucky day.”

Lucky day? What is he talking about?

Everyone watches as he makes his way to the back. As he approaches my table, I notice he’s carrying a briefcase. Like one of those hard covered briefcases men used to carry to work. He sets it down and opens the metal hinges. The briefcase pops open and inside is his laptop, a notebook, and some pens. He takes out the laptop, then closes the briefcase.

“Everyone, this is Wesley Deckle,” Mr. Henderson says. “He moved here last summer from Sacramento, California. Please welcome him to Wisconsin by introducing yourselves after class.” He walks over to his desk. “I want phones put away and books out. We’ll begin shortly.”

Wesley holds out his hand to me and smiles. “Hi. I’m Wesley. And you are?”

“Luna,” I say as I get a better look at his face. He’s kind of cute. His eyes are a swirly mix of blue that reminds me of those pictures of Earth taken from space. He has dark brown hair that’s a little long with curly waves that make it look messy but in a good way. And he has good skin. Not a single zit, which is rare for people our age.

“Luna,” he repeats, and I wait for him to follow that with whatever rude comment he’s going to make about my unusual name. But instead he says, “That’s the coolest name ever.”

I stare at him, skeptical of his words. It’s quite possible he’s being sarcastic. He looks like someone who uses sarcasm.

“Are you being serious?” I ask.

“Luna. Roman goddess of the moon,” he says, smiling. “You were named after a goddess. That’s cool, don’t you think?”

“Not really.” I look away from him. “I’ve never liked my name.”

“Why don’t you like it?”

“Let’s start by reviewing the syllabus,” Mr. Henderson says.

I open my laptop, not answering Wesley’s question. Because answering it means telling him the history of my name and how it’s been used to tease me, ridicule me, make me an outcast. There’s no need to explain all that. He’ll find that out soon enough.

Author Bio:

Allie Everhart writes romance and romantic suspense and is the author of the popular Jade Series, Kensington Series, Wheeler Brothers, and several standalone titles. She’s also a freelance health writer and has worked on several New York Times bestselling books. Allie's always been a romantic, as evidenced by her early years as a wedding singer, her obsession with dating shows, and the fact that she still watches reruns of The Love Boat. When she’s not writing, she’s outside running, which is when she gets her best book ideas.

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Spotlight: Courting Carlyn by Melissa Chambers

Publication Date: August 6, 2018
Publisher: Entangled Teen

Vaughn Yarborough is ready to trade the fame and glory of the international junior pro tennis circuit for college and a more settled life. First stop: spearhead a summer camp for underprivileged kids. The girl who’s agreed to run it with him has Vaughn more intrigued by the minute, but with the strict no-fraternizing rules, he’s got to figure out how not to fall for her.

When the boy Carlyn Sadowski has crushed on for years asks her to work with him for the summer, she has to pinch herself. When his world-famed coach offers her training for free, she can’t believe her luck. He could actually help her follow in her mother’s footsteps by playing college tennis. But when she finds out the catch is she’s got to convince Vaughn to go pro, Carlyn will have to decide between her dreams and the boy currently stealing her heart.

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About the Author

Melissa Chambers writes contemporary novels for young, new, and actual adults. A Nashville native, she spends her days working in the music industry and her nights tapping away at her keyboard. While she’s slightly obsessed with alt rock, she leaves the guitar playing to her husband and kid. She never misses a chance to play a tennis match, listen to an audiobook, or eat a bowl of ice cream. (Rocky road, please!) She serves as president for the Music City Romance Writers and is the author of the Love Along Hwy 30A series and the Before Forever series (YA).

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Spotlight: See You Soon, Afton by Brent Jones

See You Soon, Afton
Brent Jones
(The Afton Morrison Series #2)
Publication date: August 7th 2018
Genres: Adult, Thriller

Somebody is watching. Somebody isalways watching.

A teenage girl in Wakefield has been abducted, and tracking her down not only tests Afton’s moral limits, but threatens her freedom and her life.

Suspected of murder by local police, and under the watch of a menacing figure in the shadows, Afton’s search and rescue effort unravels dark secrets from her own past. Familial secrets her mother took to the grave, more than a decade ago.

See You Soon, Afton is the second of four parts in a new serial thriller by author Brent Jones. Packed with grit and action,The Afton Morrison Series delves into a world of moral ambiguity, delivering audiences an unlikely heroine in the form of a disturbed vigilante murderess.

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EXCERPT:

Sleep was elusive, if not impossible, in an apartment upended and torn to shreds. My refuge no longer, but a foreign wasteland of fucking chaos. Rest had to wait, in favor of order and cleanliness. Sweeping up what remained of broken dishes. Returning books to shelves. Disposing of sopping electronics, ruined in the tub. Straightening furniture tossed askew. Returning area rugs, bedding, and garments, to their rightful homes. Dusting, mopping, scrubbing, until my hands were sore, my back ached, and my fingers turned red and raw. Whispering countless cries of apology to Twinkie, who, no doubt, had felt violated by the upset to his extended environment, beyond the four glass walls he called home.

And then, just as the night was shattered by the first traces of dawn, I crawled into bed, praying to a God I didn’t believe in for meaningful slumber. And yet I tossed and turned, my mind addled with an inescapable truth, that I was at the mercy of a man I couldn’t pick from a lineup, with a name I couldn’t verify. And that, having been foiled in my attempt to locate him, I’d been responsible for another night Kim would spend away from home. She was sick, I imagined. Hungry, cold, and uncomfortable. Filthy, bruised, and terrified that each moment might be her last. And that was the least of her tribulations, knowing the proclivities of her captor. All-out brutalization was probable by this point, leaving her bleeding and violated. Dead, even.

I took a certain undeniable pleasure in death and gore, but not when it came to Kim. She didn’t deserve it. I craved violence, so long as I could detach myself from the recipient. When it happened to them, or they, or someone else. People who, when alive, had caused others to suffer, or whom, at the very least, I hadn’t come to hold in a high regard. I considered that internal conflict with disdain, that degree of hypocrisy, while staring up at the ceiling.

The key to my survival, I had always known, was to choose targets with care, and to take every available precaution to avoid detection. To be meticulous. If I were to approach a murder without cold calculation, I’d be as vulnerable as those we see on the evening news, prone to the errors associated with erratic human behavior, most often motivated by passion or opportunity.

The problem with crimes of passion and opportunity is that they’re predictable and boring. Yes, boring. A trait that, until his menacing phone call, I’d never associated with myself. And behaving in a fashion both predictable and boring results in mistakes being made. Perhaps that’s just what Ray wanted. Not to harm me in a direct sense, but much like Animus, to bait me into recklessness. To overwhelm my better judgment with temptation and impulsiveness.

Close to ninety years ago, there’d been a convict by the name of Kürten, who was about to be beheaded by guillotine. Legend has it, right before meeting his demise, he’d asked an important question. He wondered if, even for a second, he might be able to hear the sound of blood spurting from his own neck once his head was removed. He claimed that it would be the pleasure to end all pleasures.

It was a sentiment I could appreciate at that moment. Self-preservation was a powerful force, but nowhere near as commanding as the thirst for blood and violence. Two impulses, forever in competition, at least for those of us with the desire to kill. And, feeling helpless in my futile pursuit of both Kim and Ray, that competition had me hurtling downward toward despair and madness. I was sweating through the sheets, twitching for no obvious reason, tweaking like a junkie desperate for her next fix. I was alternating between fevers and chills, scratching at my scalp until it burned, ripping the sheets off the bed, wishing that it had been me who’d twisted those shards of glass into Kenneth’s throat.

I was, after all, a self-proclaimed vigilante murderess, even if without deeds to match her intent. I suppose, if I were to be sentenced to death one day for the heinous slaughter of Kenneth Pritchard, I’d be wishing for the very same thing as Kürten in my last moments. The pleasure of being able to see it all come to an end.

It was with that image—me, with my head secured in a guillotine, taking my last breath—that my mind faded to restless sleep …

Author Bio:

From bad checks to bathroom graffiti, Brent Jones has always been drawn to writing. He won a national creative writing competition at the age of fourteen, although he can’t recall what the story was about. Seventeen years later, he gave up his career to pursue creative writing full-time.

Jones writes from his home in Fort Erie, Canada. He’s happily married, a bearded cyclist, a mediocre guitarist, and the proud owner of two dogs with a God complex.

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Spotlight: In Too Deep by Dani Collins

In Too Deep
Dani Collins
(Blue Spruce Lodge #3)
Publication date: August 7th 2018
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

The family he didn’t know he needed…

At her wit’s end with her twelve-year-old niece, Wren Snow takes the manager’s job at Blue Spruce Lodge so Sky can get to know her father, Trigg Johanssen—a tycoon snowboarder with a playboy reputation.

Gold-medalist Trigg Johanssen is furious she kept Sky a secret, but quits competition to focus on his newly discovered daughter only to have his chemistry with Wren complicate their attempts to co-parent.

When outside forces threaten the ski resort he’s rebuilding, a marriage of convenience seems like the answer. It would give his daughter the life she deserves, but is it too much for a heartbroken woman still nursing past hurts?

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EXCERPT:

SETUP: Wren has just arrived at Blue Spruce Lodge with her niece, Skylar. Sky wanted to meet her father, Trigg—a man who had NO IDEA he was a father until Wren showed up a month ago and revealed her sister had kept his baby.

~ * ~

Wren drew a deep breath of the clean mountain air, closing her eyes and letting the sunshine bathe her face. Construction noises sounded in the distance. Birdsong overlaid it with the pulse of rap music and a sudden, sharp whistle.

She opened her eyes and Oh. She started to flush with self-conscious heat even before she fully registered that Trigg Johansson was coming out of the lane and walking toward her. Her brain said, Hot man alert, then she recognized him and a fresher, more startling rush of sexual awareness went through her.

Déjà vu all over again. Damn it.

When she had arrived here in May, he had been sitting in a small, open-topped ATV kind of vehicle right here where she was standing. He’d been talking to another man who’d given her a friendly nod.

She might have said, “Hi.” She honestly couldn’t remember because her brain had been exploding.

Trigg had given her a wolfish look that she had felt in the pit of her belly. She had recognized him, having stalked him online, but even as she had met his gaze with hysterical disbelief, her girl-parts had scanned the mouth-watering selection and ordered the full buffet.

That’s why she had chickened out on speaking to him directly. She had gone inside, ears ringing with her pounding heart. He’d been gone when she walked outside again.

By then, she had secured a tentative job offer and the knowledge that her life would never be the same.

She had dreaded seeing him after that. Not just because she’d seen firsthand that he was a player. Of course he was a player. He had knocked up her sister when he was seventeen. He probably had a whole flock of Skylars out there.

But who could blame Mandy or any of the women he’d conquered? He was built like a god and moved like a cat, as though he knew how to use each of his muscles exactly as intended. He wore jeans and a T-shirt today and had light stubble the same color as his dark brows. His hair had been in a man-bun the last time she saw him. Today it was shaved into business on the sides, rumpled bedhead on top. His eyes were a sharp, mountain-lake blue, his smile flat and tense. Forced.

That vaguely hostile, hard expression made her heart slip and judder while her limbs felt loose and lubricated.

The way he had smiled at her the first time had been very inviting and approving.

The second time, when they’d all met in a lawyer’s office for twenty minutes, he’d worn a suit and hadn’t smiled at all.

She wasn’t able to find a smile right now. She was standing here like a virgin on her wedding night, throat dry, waiting for him to come to her.
Something nudged her in the crotch, scaring the shit out of her.

“Oh my God!” She jerked back and clipped her hip on the driver’s side mirror. Pain streaked through her hip bone while she scrabbled for balance by grasping at the warm roof of the car.

“Murphy. Sit.” Trigg stopped behind her taillight and snapped his fingers by his thigh.

The dog let his haunches drop, but stayed in front of her, tail swirling like an electric beater, sweeping through bits of gravel on the concrete. His pink tongue lolled out of his black-lipped mouth and he cocked his head at her. His ears and face were black, but he had a white stripe that came down between his eyes. The stripe ended in speckles above his black nose. There were more speckles on his white chest and legs. Border collie and heeler maybe, with Labrador eyes that offered instant and eternal love.

“Quite the welcoming committee.” She smoothed her hand down the short, silky fur on his hard head.

“We usually charge extra for that, but since you’re a VIP…” Trigg shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. She could tell they were curled into fists. The mask of tension across his face bore an eerie resemblance to the one stonewalling in the passenger seat of her car.

Author Bio:

USA Today Bestselling author, winner of 2013 Reviewer’s Choice Award from Romantic Times Book Reviews

Before making my first sale to Harlequin Mills & Boon in 2012, I spent two decades writing and submitting to every publisher with a transom while holding down a day job and raising a family with my high school sweet heart. Since then, I’ve gone to contract on over thirty books.

While Harlequin Presents remains my first love, I also write romantic comedy, medieval fantasy romance, erotic romance, and small town contemporary romance for Tule Publishing’s Montana Born. In fact, I write just about anything, so long as it’s romance. P.S. I’m also Canadian.

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Spotlight: Mr. Popular by Nicole London

Rule #1: Do not vote for Mr. Popular. 
Rule #2: Do not talk to Mr. Popular. 
Rule #3: (Most importantly, and above all) Do not fall for Mr. Popular... 

Liam 'Mr. Popular' Carter will always be the closest thing to the "walking plague" in my eyes. His cockiness seeps through his every move, and no matter how many state championships he wins with the basketball team, he will forever be a "loss" to me. 

Because he's my older brother's best friend, I'm forced to tolerate him, and he's forced to tolerate me. In fact, unless my brother is around, we happily ignore each other every chance we get. 

It wasn't always this way, though...

Several summers ago, we both attended the same summer camp. A place we returned to year after year. We became friends--close friends, but right when I thought he could possibly turn into my everything, he made it clear that what we had was nothing. 

Now that's he's a senior, and I only have to deal with him for one more year, I've vowed to keep repeating the same set of rules to myself. Especially since he seems so hell-bent on wanting to talk to me for some reason, and especially since he seems to be staring at me every time we're in the same room together... 

Rule #4: Always follow rules #1-3...
Rule #5: (OMG what the hell are you doing?) Do not KISS Mr. Popular...

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About the Author

Nicole London is a hopeless dreamer, author of romance novels, and the co-founder of The Indie Tea--an inspirational blog for indie romance authors.  . 

She lives with her husband and their Siberian Husky in Tennessee. When she's not chatting books with her best friend, she's sipping lattes at Starbucks, binge-watching her favorite shows, or planning her next travel adventure. 

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Read an excerpt from Shattered Silence by Marta Perry

A woman on the run seeks sanctuary in a peaceful Pennsylvania Dutch community—and finds a protector in the most unlikely of men…

One moment Rachel Hartline is secure in her career and community. The next, she’s in the wrong place at the wrong time—watching her ex-husband commit a crime that puts her in unfathomable danger. Fear and hurt send her home to an Amish farm and the family she’s always trusted. But a private investigator is close behind—and he may be a threat to her in more ways than one…

Cold, calculating Clint Mordan isn’t convinced Rachel is as innocent in her ex-husband’s schemes as she claims, but when her ex’s enemies target Rachel, Clint is driven to keep her safe. Maybe the terror in her beautiful eyes and the target on her back aren’t an act. But as his feelings toward her deepen, Clint realizes he’s the only one who can keep Rachel alive in a game where only the killer knows the stakes.

Excerpt

Rachel shook his hand off, her green eyes stormy. “You—you probably did this yourself.”

“I didn’t.” He hung on to whatever patience he possessed. “If I had, would I be telling you to call the police?”

The logic seemed to get through to her. A little of the anger left her face, leaving it strained. “No, I suppose not.” She paused, and he could almost see her weighing the options. “I’d better see if anything is missing. There have been a couple of recent break-ins in the area.”

She turned away from him, obviously intending to do this on her own.

“The police—” he began again, and he could almost hear his partner’s voice in his mind. People use our agency because they don’t want to call in the police.

“I said I want to see if anything’s missing first. There’s no point in filing a report until I know that.”

“Not by yourself,” he said, stepping past her into the living room. “It’s not safe. And if this has anything to do with the current situation…”

He didn’t believe in coincidences. But if the search of Rachel’s house was connected with her husband’s disappearance, he’d better proceed carefully. Attwood wouldn’t be happy to have police in the middle of his problem, to say nothing of Clint's partner’s reaction.

He moved carefully across the living room, assessing the scene automatically. Who had been here? Someone from Attwood’s, impatient already with the pace of their investigation? Or someone else, like maybe the person who’d bought Paul Hartline’s loyalty?

That presented a fresh set of complications on its own. If true, that must mean that the information hadn’t been turned over to the buyer yet. There maystill be time to prevent that from happening, but only if he and Logan found the man first.

He’d have to talk it over with Logan, but he had to deal with this now. “Stay there, please. Let me make sure no one is in here before you come in.”

She hesitated, obviously reluctant, and then nodded.

“How many rooms?”

“Just the living room, kitchen, sunroom and the two bedrooms. No basement, and the attic is just an attic.”

Nodding, he moved into the kitchen. Small, sunny, cheerful. An expression of Rachel’s personality? Someone had obviously had a thorough look around. He opened the closet door carefully, to find only a broom, a mop and cleaning supplies.

Moving on, he went through each of the other rooms. The house was small and compact, and there weren’t many places for an intruder to hide. He—whoever he was—had probably struck while Rachel was at school.

Returning to the living room, he nodded at her. “It’s all clear. You can come in now.” He studied her face as she did, watching for anything out of the ordinary. But all he saw was stunned bewilderment.

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About the Author

Marta Perry realized she wanted to be a writer at age eight, when she read her first Nancy Drew novel. A lifetime spent in rural Pennsylvania and her own Pennsylvania Dutch roots led Marta to the books she writes now about the Amish. When she’s not writing, Marta is active in the life of her church and enjoys traveling and spending time with her three children and six beautiful grandchildren.

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