Spotlight: Frat House Confessions: Ridge by Bethany Lopez

She has a broken heart and revenge on her mind...

Last year Karrie was riding high. She had a boyfriend she loved, a softball scholarship, and the best roommate a girl could have. 
When it turned out her man was a lying, cheating ballsack, she may have gone off the rails a bit. 
Now, it's a new year and Karrie's ready to build herself back up and move on to bigger and better things. 
Still, a little revenge would go a long way in helping the healing process.

He's got a plan for revenge that will suit them both...

Ridge is used to being the BMOC. Sergeant of Arms of his frat and the ability to land any chick within snapping distance has made life pretty easy for him. 
His home life is another story. He and his brothers are in the middle of a battle between his socialite mother and asshole father.
Ridge is looking for a stand-in to placate his mother and her matchmaking ways, and he has a feeling he's just met the girl he can perfectly mold.

This makeover has nothing to do with love and everything to do with Karrie and Ridge using each other to get what they want. What starts as a ruse soon becomes an attraction they cannot deny. When it's all said and done, they'll both have more to confess than a need for revenge.

Excerpt

Ridge:

I was sitting there, chuckling and shaking my head, when I felt someone come up next to me and pat me on the arm. 

I looked up and to my right to see Caitlyn, one of the Delta groupies, standing there with an armful of clothes and a smile. 

“Hey, Ridge, how’s it going?” she asked.

My eyes flitted to the closed dressing room door, before coming back to rest on Caitlyn. We’d hooked up a couple times, but when she’d tried to move us toward a relationship, I’d quickly put a stop to it. 

Not only did I not do relationships, but Caitlyn was almost as entitled as I was, and I needed someone who was a little more grounded. Who’d put me in my place and not let me walk all over them. Someone who’d call me on my shit and not get offended when I called them on theirs. 

A mental picture of Karrie popped in my head, but I ignored it. Karrie and I would never work. First of all, she was hung up on her asshole ex, and second of all, she was simply a means to an end. 

Not at all girlfriend material.

Guilt slammed through me at that stray thought, but I ignored it and answered the girl hovering over me. 

“Can’t complain,” I answered, intentionally not continuing the conversation in hopes that she’d get the hint and leave me alone. 

I looked back down at my phone.

“I heard Delta’s planning a rager for after Homecoming … something about making over girls into the perfect Delta groupies. Crush should have asked me to come be an example, not Bella. I’ve been hanging with Deltas for the last four years,” she continued with a pout.

I sighed and brought my gaze back up to her face. 

“It was Crush’s deal, Caitlyn, I’m not involved in his shit.”

She smirked and replied, “That’s not what I heard. Word on the street is you picked a girl for a makeover, too. Drake’s girl.”

“Word on the street?” I scoffed, standing up and stretching, and shooting her a bored expression. “Your source is wrong. Karrie is more to me than a game Crush is playing with the rushes. And, she’s not Drake’s girl … She’s mine.”

Just then, the changing room door swung open, and Karrie walked out wearing a tight-fitting tube dress that showed off her curves, leaving little to the imagination. By the sweet grin on her face, and the way she crossed to me and put her arm around my waist, tucking into my side, I knew she’d heard everything Caitlyn and I had said. 

“Hey, babe,” she cooed, pulling me tight. “I hope I’m not taking too long.”

I looked down at her upturned face and felt my heart accelerate. 

“You’re worth the wait,” I said softly, my eyes falling to her lips as I remembered our kiss. 

“Aww, you’re so sweet,” Karrie said, turning her attention to Caitlyn and repeating, “Isn’t he so sweet?”

“The sweetest,” Caitlyn replied, her tone implying I was anything but. 

“And you are?” Karrie asked, one hand resting on my abs, causing me to flex. 

“Caitlyn.”

“Hi, Caitlyn, I’m Karrie, Ridge’s girlfriend.”

I would have laughed at the shocked look on Caitlyn’s face, but I was too busy enjoying the feel of Karrie’s hand on me. I found myself wishing there was no barrier between that hand and my bare skin. 

Caitlyn recovered and let out a disbelieving laugh. 

“Ridge doesn’t date,” she said, like she knew the first fucking thing about me. 

“Well, that’s obviously not true.”

Caitlyn looked to me, as if expecting me to prove her right and call Karrie a liar. 

Instead I wrapped my arms around her and kissed the top of her head. 

“I never saw a reason to date, then I met Karrie.”

Caitlyn’s eyes narrowed, and I knew she was pissed, like I’d just said she wasn’t good enough for me.

Which, honestly, was true.

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About the Author

Bethany Lopez is a USA Today Bestselling author of more than thirty books and has been published since 2011. She's a lover of all things romance, which she incorporates into the books she writes, no matter the genre. When she isn't reading or writing, she loves spending time with family and traveling whenever possible. Bethany can usually be found with a cup of coffee or glass of wine at hand, and will never turn down a cupcake!

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Website: http://bethanylopez.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bethany-Lopez/214630865247702

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Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5021061.Bethany_Lopez

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Spotlight: Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

A finely observed, timely exploration of marriage, divorce, and the bewildering dynamics of ambition from one of the most exciting writers working today

Toby Fleishman thought he knew what to expect when he and his wife of almost fifteen years separated: weekends and every other holiday with the kids, some residual bitterness, the occasional moment of tension in their co-parenting negotiations. He could not have predicted that one day, in the middle of his summer of sexual emancipation, Rachel would just drop their two children off at his place and simply not return. He had been working so hard to find equilibrium in his single life. The winds of his optimism, long dormant, had finally begun to pick up. Now this.

As Toby tries to figure out where Rachel went, all while juggling his patients at the hospital, his never-ending parental duties, and his new app-assisted sexual popularity, his tidy narrative of the spurned husband with the too-ambitious wife is his sole consolation. But if Toby ever wants to truly understand what happened to Rachel and what happened to his marriage, he is going to have to consider that he might not have seen things all that clearly in the first place.

A searing, utterly unvarnished debut, Fleishman Is in Trouble is an insightful, unsettling, often hilarious exploration of a culture trying to navigate the fault lines of an institution that has proven to be worthy of our great wariness and our great hope.

Excerpt

Toby Fleishman awoke one morning inside the city he’d lived in all his adult life and which was suddenly somehow now crawling with women who wanted him. Not just any women, but women who were self-actualized and independent and knew what they wanted. Women who weren’t needy or insecure or self-doubting, like the long-ago prospects of his long-gone youth—meaning the women he had thought of as prospects but who had never given him even a first glance. No, these were women who were motivated and available and interesting and interested and exciting and excited. These were women who would not so much wait for you to call them one or two or three socially acceptable days after you met them as much as send you pictures of their genitals the day before. Women who were open-minded and up for anything and vocal about their desires and needs and who used phrases like “put my cards on the table” and “no strings attached” and “I need to be done in ten because I have to pick up Bella from ballet.” Women who would fuck you like they owed you money, was how our friend Seth put it.

Yes, who could have predicted that Toby Fleishman, at the age of forty-one, would find that his phone was aglow from sunup to sundown (in the night the glow was extra bright) with texts that contained G-string and ass cleavage and underboob and sideboob and just straight-up boob and all the parts of a woman he never dared dream he would encounter in a person who was three- dimensional—meaning literally three-dimensional, as in a person who wasn’t on a page or a computer screen. All this, after a youth full of romantic rejection! All this, after putting a lifetime bet on one woman! Who could have predicted this? Who could have predicted that there was such life in him yet?

Still, he told me, it was jarring. Rachel was gone now, and her goneness was so incongruous to what had been his plan. It wasn’t that he still wanted her—he absolutely did not want her. He absolutely did not wish she were still with him. It was that he had spent so long waiting out the fumes of the marriage and busying himself with the paperwork necessary to extricate himself from it—telling the kids, moving out, telling his colleagues—that he had not considered what life might be like on the other side of it. He understood divorce in a macro way, of course. But he had not yet adjusted to it in a micro way, in the other-side-of-the-bed-being-empty way, in the nobody-to-tell-you-were-running-late way, in the you-belong-to-no-one way. How long was it before he could look at the pictures of women on his phone—pictures the women had sent him eagerly and of their own volition—straight on, instead of out of the corner of his eye? Okay, sooner than he thought but not immediately. Certainly not immediately.

He hadn’t looked at another woman once during his marriage, so in love with Rachel was he—so in love was he with any kind of institution or system. He made solemn, dutiful work of trying to save the relationship even after it would have been clear to any reasonable person that their misery was not a phase. There was nobility in the work, he believed. There was nobility in the suffering. And even after he realized that it was over, he still had to spend years, plural, trying to convince her that this wasn’t right, that they were too unhappy, that they were still young and could have good lives without each other—even then he didn’t let one millimeter of his eye wander. Mostly, he said, because he was too busy being sad. Mostly because he felt like garbage all the time, and a person shouldn’t feel like garbage all the time. More than that, a person shouldn’t be made horny when he felt like garbage. The intersection of horniness and low self-esteem seemed reserved squarely for porn consumption.

But now there was no one to be faithful to. Rachel wasn’t there.

She was not in his bed. She was not in the bathroom, applying liquid eyeliner to the area where her eyelid met her eyelashes with the precision of an arthroscopy robot. She was not at the gym, or coming back from the gym in a less black mood than usual, not by much but a little. She was not up in the middle of the night, complaining about the infinite abyss of her endless insomnia. She was not at Curriculum Night at the kids’ extremely private and yet somehow progressive school on the West Side, sitting in a small chair and listening to the new and greater demands that were being placed on their poor children compared to the prior year. (Though, then again she rarely was. Those nights, like the other nights, she was at work, or at dinner with a client, what she called “pulling her weight” when she was being kind, and what she called “being your cash cow” when she wasn’t.) So no, she was not there. She was in a completely other home, the one that used to be his, too. Every single morning this thought overwhelmed him momentarily; it panicked him, so that the rst thing he thought when he awoke was this: Something is wrong. There is trouble. I am in trouble. It had been he who asked for the divorce, and still: Something is wrong. There is trouble. I am in trouble. Each morning, he shook this off. He reminded himself that this was what was healthy and appropriate and the natural order. She wasn’t supposed to be next to him anymore. She was supposed to be in her separate, nicer home.

But she wasn’t there, either, not on this particular morning. He learned this when he leaned over to his new IKEA nightstand and picked up his phone, whose beating presence he felt even in those few minutes before his eyes officially opened. He had maybe seven or eight texts there, most of them from women who had reached out during the night via his dating app, but his eyes went straight to Rachel’s text, somewhere in the middle. It seemed to give off a different light than the ones that contained body parts and lacy bands of panty; it somehow drew his eyes in a way the others didn’t. At five a.m. she’d written, I’m headed to Kripalu for the weekend; the kids are at your place FYI.

It took two readings to realize what that meant, and Toby, ignoring the erection he’d allowed to flourish knowing that his phone was rife with new masturbation material, jumped out of bed. He ran into the hallway, and he saw that their two children were in their bedrooms, asleep. FYI the kids were there? FYI? FYI was an afterthought; FYI was supplementary. It wasn’t essential. This information, that his children had been deposited into his home under the cover of darkness during an unscheduled time with the use of a key that had been supplied to Rachel in case of a true and dire emergency, seemed essential.

Excerpted from Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Copyright © 2019 by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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About the Author

Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. She has also written for GQ, ESPN the Magazine, and many other publications. Fleishman Is in Trouble is her first novel.

Spotlight: All Boy by Mia Kerik

Publication Date:  June 25, 2019

Publisher:  Lakewater Press

Seventeen-year-old Callie Canter knows all about screwing up—and being screwed over. After her so-called boyfriend publicly humiliated her senior year, taking a fifth year of high school at Beaufort Hills Academy is her second chance to leave behind a painful past. But her need for social acceptance follows, and going along with the in-crowd is the difference between survival and becoming a target. Staying off the radar is top priority. So, falling for an outsider is the last thing on Callie’s “to-do” list. Too bad her heart didn’t get the memo.

With his strict, religious upbringing and former identity far away in Florida, Jayden Morrissey can finally be true to himself at Beaufort Hills Academy. But life as a trans man means keeping secrets, and keeping secrets means not getting too close to anyone. If he can just get through his fifth year unnoticed, maybe a future living as the person he was born to be is possible. Yet love is love, and when you fall hard enough, intentions crumble, plans detour, and secrets are revealed.

From multi-award-winning author Mia Kerick, comes a powerful, timely, and life-changing novel, which follows two teenagers nursing broken hearts and seeking acceptance, and who together realize running away isn’t always the answer.

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About the Author

Mia Kerick is the mother of four exceptional children—one in law school, another at a dance conservatory, a third studying at Mia’s alma mater, Boston College, and her lone son still in high school. She has published more than twenty books of LGBTQ romance when not editing National Honor Society essays, offering opinions on college and law school applications, helping to create dance bios, and reviewing English papers.

Her husband of twenty-five years has been told by many that he has the patience of Job, but don’t ask Mia about this, as it is a sensitive subject.
Mia focuses her stories on the emotional growth of troubled young people and their relationships. She has a great affinity for the tortured hero in literature, and as a teen, Mia filled spiral-bound notebooks with tales of tortured heroes and stuffed them under her mattress for safekeeping. She is thankful to her wonderful publishing houses for providing her with an alternate place to stash her stories.

Her books have been featured in Kirkus Reviews magazine, and have won Rainbow Awards for Best Transgender Contemporary Romance and Best YA Lesbian Fiction, a Reader Views’ Book by Book Publicity Literary Award, the Jack Eadon Award for Best Book in Contemporary Drama, an Indie Fab Award, and a Royal Dragonfly Award for Cultural Diversity, among other awards.

Mia Kerick is a social liberal and cheers for each and every victory made in the name of human rights. Her only major regret: never having taken typing or computer class in school, destining her to a life consumed with two-fingered pecking and constant prayer to the Gods of Technology. Contact Mia at miakerick@gmail.com or visit at www.miakerickya.com to see what is going on in Mia’s world.

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Spotlight: Tabloid by Jackie Paxsonby

Romance with a splash of humor

Dirty Laundry #1

Date Published: 5/25/19

1 gossip writer + 1 A-list movie star = 1 fake relationship…or does it?

After breaking a story that rocks Hollywood, Talia is the top gossip writer around. One night will put all of that into question. The writer becomes the story when she gets caught doing the walk of shame from A-lister Zee Jaxon’s home.

To save both of their reputations he suggests a fake relationship. Pretending should be easy. It shouldn’t mean the fake feelings become real. Accepting the real feelings means the lies they’ve told are even harder to hide.

When the truth comes out can their love survive or will everything just fade to black?

Excerpt

“I forgot to tell you something.”  Zeke said as they walked hand and hand to baggage claim.

“What?”

“Please don’t hate me.”  He kissed their linked hands.

“What did you do?”

As Zeke and Talia turned the corner to pick up their bags Talia saw a giant poster being held by a tall muscular guy wearing a too tight t-shirt and dirty jeans.  Scrawled on the poster were the words she was going to have etched on her brother’s grave.

WELCOME HOME, TALLY!

SORRY PORN DIDN’T WORK OUT FOR YOU!

GLAD YOU GOT THE HELP YOU NEEDED IN REHAB FOR THE FIFTH TIME!

“You asked Rex to pick us up?”

Zeke bit his lip trying not to laugh at the poster.  When Rex saw the poster had gotten their attention, and many others around them, he flipped it over.

WELCOME HOME, ZEKE!

I GOT THAT MEDICATION FOR YOUR STD!

HOPEFULLY THE SORES ARE NO LONGER LEAKING!

“I’m seeing my mistake now.”  Zeke said.

“I bet you are.”

Rex strode over to Zeke and Talia.  He dropped the poster and opened his arms wide.  Talia walked up to give him a hug, but landed a swift punch to his nuts.  Air whooshed out of his lungs.  Rex collapsed on the ground.  Fellow passengers walked around him.  The granny from the plane caught my eye and gave me a thumbs up.

“Hello, Rex.”  Talia stood with her hands on her hips watching her brother struggle.

“I’m….telling…mama.”

“Go ahead.  Then I’m going to show her the poster you made.”

“Fine.”  Rex managed to get off the ground.

“Thanks for picking us up, ass wipe.”  Zeke said.

“No problem.  How could I strand my best friend and sister at the airport?  Especially when they are now seeing each other.”  Rex looked at them skeptically.

“What car did you bring?”  Talia changed the subject before questions could be asked.

“The pick-up.”

“What?  Why didn’t you bring mama’s SUV?”

“Why would I?  My pick-up is fine.”

“It’s a bench seat. “

Rex smirked at her.  “Yep.  We will be getting real close for the next hour.”

“Hour?  It takes close to an hour and a half to get to Grandin.  How fast do you plan on going?”  Talia stopped and looked to her brother.

“You didn’t tell her?”  Rex asked.

“I didn’t have a chance.  We had a bit of an issue on the plane.”

“What happened?”

“Never mind that tell me what is going on.”  Talia stared at Zeke.

“We are going to go to my farm. It’s a half hour outside of Grandin.”

Talia glared at both of the men in front of her.  Turning on her heel she grabbed her bag and marched off toward the short term parking.   She easily found his beat up truck.  Slinging her bag into the bed she stood next to the passenger door.

“In a hurry to get to your love nest, Tally?”  Rex asked.

Talia ground her jaw as she stared at her skeptical twin.  When Zeke’s arm wound around her waist, pulled her close and kissed her temple Rex groaned and wrenched the door open.

About the Author:

Jackie is a single mom of a rambunctious boy and his dog, Cady.  She is an avid reader with a blog under the name of The Book Maven.  Reading has been a passion of hers from the time she could pick up a Sweet Valley High book.  Writing is a new adventure where she gets to curse, be clumsy and fall in love with every page.

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Audio Spotlight: Painting of Sorrow by Virginia Winters

Narrator: Virginia Ferguson

Length: 7 hours 36 minutes

Publisher: Virginia Winters⎮2019

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Release date: Apr. 18, 2019

Synopsis: The painting and the woman, both hiding in plain sight. And a killer who targets both.

Sarah Downing, an art conservator hiding in witness protection, identifies a lost masterpiece by Caravaggio. History says it burned in WWII Berlin, but here it is, on her easel.

Someone betrays Sarah - an agent, a friend? Soon she is fighting to save the painting and herself.  

What Sarah does next sends her from Kingston to Italy to rural Ontario in her desperate attempt to survive, save the Caravaggio and rebuild her life.

By the author of the exciting suspense series, Dangerous Journeys.

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About the Author: Virginia Winters

Virginia Winters is a writer and retired paediatrician who lives in Lindsay, Ontario. She was born in Arnprior, Ontario and educated at Queen's University.

Her first novel, Murderous Roots, was published by Cambridge Books, an imprint of Write Words Inc, of Cambridge, Maryland, USA.in 2008.

Four more novels in the Dangerous Journeys series followed:

The Facepainter Murders, 2009

No Motive for Murder, 2012

The Child on the Terrace, 2015

The Jewelled Egg Murders, 2017

The Ice Storm Murders is planned for summer 2019

Painting of Sorrow, the first book in a new series, A Deadly Art Mystery, appeared in 2018.

A Superior Crime and other stories, was published in 2018 as well.

She also writes short stories which have been published by various on-line and print publications. The latest, Rain, was published in Tales of the Mysterious, an anthology from Red Tuque Books, 2015. A short story, The Accounting, was published in Criminoil, Dark Stories from the Wood Buffalo from Carrick Publishing.

She is a member of the Canadian Author's Association, The Writer's Community of Durham Region, Writers Union of Canada

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About the Narrator: Virginia Ferguson

I work mostly on stage, soap operas, commercials, audio books, teaching English, English as a Second Language, Drama to high school students. For two decades, I lived in Sydney, working as a professional actor and teacher and since 2001 have mainly taught high school and attended Terence McGovern’s Actor’s Studio Workshop in San Francisco where I began recording audio books with acx.com using an American and English accent.

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Spotlight: Forever Wild by Allyson Charles

Forever Wild

Forever Friends Book 3

by Allyson Charles

Genre: Contemporary Romance 

Dax Cannon never says no to a challenge. But when he discovers a sexy stowaway in the back of his truck, he realizes Annelise Ansel might be more than he bargained for.

An artist, Lissa claims she’s leaving New Orleans for a fresh start in Michigan--which just happens to be where he’s headed with the pack of rescue dogs he’s delivering to the sanctuary he works for. But when three thugs threaten to take lovely Lissa off his hands, he realizes she’s in need of a sanctuary, too.

Once Lissa is riding shotgun with her long, lean protector, she’s wondering if fate might have something better in store for her than a life in hiding. But when her hijinks threaten to take down the best man she’s ever had the pleasure to run away with, Lissa realizes it’s time to face her demons. Now it’s up to the two of them to fight through the danger to discover the life—and love—waiting on the other side.

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Forever Found

Forever Friends #2

Head vet at the Forever Friends animal rescue shelter, Gabriel Moretti is known as the Dog Whisperer because of his gift for soothing rambunctious patients. But it’s the two-legged species that has him, and his libido, working overtime. Marla Popov single-handedly saved the shelter from financial ruin. But the bossy trust funder is even more irritating than her snooty Standard Poodle. You’d think keeping his attraction on a short leash would be a no-brainer for Gabe. Unfortunately, Marla is also smart, beautiful, and intriguing . . .

Most of her life, people have been eager to tell Marla just what she wants to hear. So now that she’s nearing forty, she doesn’t expect to be refused—especially by a sexy younger man like Gabe. She also doesn’t expect it to sting so much. But when she discovers a scheme involving illegal dog fights, she gets a chance to show what she’s truly made of. And as she and Gabe team up to fight it, they discover a surprising respect for each other—and passion that might just grow into love. . .

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Forever Home

Forever Friends #1

LOVE UNLEASHED
 
Isabelle Lopez has never been a dog person. Raising her daughter alone and building a real estate career leaves no time for four-legged furballs. When she finds an abandoned mutt and litter of pups in a foreclosed apartment, Izzy intends to drop them off at a shelter and walk briskly away. Instead, her “heroic” deed makes her a local celebrity. Her boss is thrilled. Commissions are up. And thanks to gorgeous shelter owner Bradley Cohen, Izzy’s disciplined life is suddenly much, much more complicated.
 
He’s got a sexy smile, a wicked sense of humor, and a big, noble heart. Even as Izzy tries to get her libido to heel, boy, Bradley sets out to convince her there’s more to life than padding her bank account. But Izzy knows a trade secret that puts Brad’s beloved shelter at risk, and she can’t warn him.
 
Their relationship was barely getting started; suddenly it’s in the dog house. Now Izzy and Brad need to figure out what matters most, and whether this could be much more than animal attraction…

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Allyson Charles lives in Northern California. A former attorney, she happily ditched those suits and now works in her pajamas writing about men’s briefs instead of legal briefs. When she’s not writing, she’s probably engaged in one of her favorite hobbies: napping, eating, or martial arts (That last one almost makes up for the first two, right?). One of Allyson’s greatest disappointments is living in a state that doesn’t have any Cracker Barrels in it. To find out what she’s up to next, visit her website at allysoncharles.com.

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