Spotlight: The Promise Kept by Maggie Mae Gallagher

Publication date: August 19th 2020
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Synopsis:

Cybil Roe gave her heart away thirteen years ago only to have it wind up shattered. With painstaking determination, she has rebuilt her life into something to be proud of today. Yet all her future plans are upended when the only man she has ever loved returns to Echo Springs. Nor does it help that he seems bound and determined to draw her back into his life. Cybil vows to stay away from him, no matter what seeing him all the time does to her resolve.
 
Miles Keaton wiped the dust of his hometown off his shoes years ago, never expecting that life would lead him back to the place where he had begun. Coming home to Echo Springs, to Cybil, to start a new law practice and a new life is a risk he never thought he'd take. She hates him – with good reason. Years ago, he walked away when she needed him the most. But now is he back, and intends to argue the case of his life, one more important than any he has debated in a courtroom, because she is the one woman he cannot live without.
 
Can Miles convince Cybil to take a second chance on him, or will a secret she has kept all these years destroy any future they might have?

Excerpt

“Oh, yes. Right there,” she murmured.

Cybil sighed at the strong hands kneading her tense shoulders. Golden sunshine warmed her skin. Azure waves lapped against the pristine, ivory sand not fifteen feet from where she lounged on a luxurious padded chaise. Her tanned skin glistened in the sun. The coconut scent from her suntan lotion wafted on the gentle breeze and mingled with the salt from the ocean waves. The simmering heat of the tropics caused perspiration to bead on her forehead and evaporate with the light wind. The sunglasses perched on her nose shaded her gray eyes from the radiant sunlight.

It was without a doubt a perfect day.

The light breeze played with the loose tendrils of her inky hair while the sexy-as-sin Pablo—he of the broad, tanned shoulders, gorgeously thick black hair, and soulful eyes—massaged her shoulders with his long, talented fingers. The man had the most wonderful, gifted hands and knew precisely where to exert the most pressure. And those thumbs of his were singularly skilled at ferreting out every ache and pain.

God, she had needed this getaway—away from the cold, the snow, the dreaded holidays, and nonstop work. 

She muffled a moan.

Cybil couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this relaxed. She could still taste the lime and salt from her frozen margarita. And she was a breath away from suggesting to Pablo that they take the massage indoors to her beachside bungalow. The thought of those hands massaging other regions of her body left her achy and needy. It had been so long since she had been with a man. Since this was a vacation, she didn’t have to worry about getting attached. Cybil moaned as he dug into a knot on her left shoulder.

Pablo lowered his face. Cybil shivered, heady anticipation humming along her skin. Was he going to nibble on her ear? Suggest naughty, decadent delights to be had if they retreated indoors? She was ready and willing for anything the guy had in mind.

“Purrr.” A cold, wet nose pressed against the side of her cheek where it met her ear, amplifying the sound. The purr increased in tenor. Something tickled her nose. 

Cybil cracked an eye open. A pair of golden eyes stared at her with expectation and determination, with a side of feline disdain that she had yet to acknowledge him.

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About the Author

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Maggie grew up listening to Cardinals baseball and reading anything she could get her hands on. She remembers her mother saying if only she would read the right type of books instead binging her way through the romance aisles at the bookstore, she’d have been a doctor. While Maggie never did get that doctorate, she graduated cum laude from the University of Missouri-St. Louis with an M.A. in History.

Maggie is a bestselling and award-winning author published in multiple fiction genres. She also writes erotic romance under the name Anya Summers. A total geek at her core, when she is not writing, she adores attending the latest comic con or spending time with her family. She currently lives in the United States Midwest with her two furry felines.

Connect:

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https://www.maggiemaegallagher.com/newsletter/

Spotlight: Blood and Sand: The Collected Stories of Ramsbolt by Jennifer M. Lane

General Fiction (cozy small town fiction)

Date Published: August, 2019

Publisher: Pen & Key Publishing

 

A tiny town. A broken tavern. And one woman searching for a place to belong.

Logan Cole is used to getting her way and what she wants more than anything is for her father to get out of jail and restore her old life in New York. All she has to do is wait for his scandals to fade and the online rancor against her family to subside. Low on cash and out of options, she takes a bus north looking for anonymity and stops in the smallest town she can find: Ramsbolt, Maine.

When she stumbles into Helen’s Tavern, she finds a place in need of a make-over and a grandmotherly woman who could use some help. Soon, she finds herself growing fond of the bar, Helen, and the town. She’s even found a friend in Grey, the local plumber. The tiny town puts her at a crossroads: keep hiding her identity to preserve her new reputation or let down her guard and reveal her true self to the people she’s grown to love. But the choice is ripped from her hands when tragedy strikes the bar and saving it requires every tool at her disposal.

Can Logan find a true home among the people of Ramsbolt Maine?

The Collected Stories of Ramsbolt is a series by Jennifer M. Lane, award-winning author Of Metal and Earth and Stick Figures from Ramsbolt. Fresh and heart-warming, the series tells the stories of a small town looking for belonging.

Excerpt

Chapter One

Logan Cole had never been on a bus in her life. As she stretched her legs and stumbled onto the sidewalk at the tip of Maine, she cursed the eight hour learning experience and swore never to do it again.

The last stop before the border was less like a terminal and more like a dead end. No benches, no depot, no ticketing window. And no taxis. Just a little yellow house with leaning porch surrounded by scruffy blueberry shrubs. At least it wasn’t sweltering out.

She yanked her black Rimowa suitcase, one of the few things the FBI let her keep, from the bottom of the bus. She gave the driver a wry smile and thanked him for the trip. It wasn’t his fault a woman coughed and crinkled candy wrappers the whole way, and that guy with his earbuds in behind her never learned to sing.

“Six hundred miles better be far enough.” She mumbled to herself as she dragged the suitcase down the sidewalk, fumbling for her phone in her purse. It was a habit she still hadn’t broken, opening apps to fill a void, but she’d deleted Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of them when the threats started pouring in. Eight months, four court cases, a thousand stories in the news, and she still hadn’t gotten used to being without social media. Being disconnected was better than scrolling through contempt, though.

“Battery’s almost dead. Map won’t load. Damn it.” She walked back the way she’d come, past quaint little houses and blueberry bushes, back to the bar she’d seen a mile or so before. It was across from a cheap motel with moldy siding and mildewed plastic chairs. The bar itself was windowless and brick. Definitely not the kind of place where someone would look for one of the wealthiest people in the country. Or someone who used to be.

She paused at an intersection and started a text to her mom, a quick note to say she was far from the gossip and rumors, safe from tabloid headlines squawking about a Cole Curse, and nowhere near the internet trolls who flooded her notifications with threats, saying they knew where to find her and what they would do to her when they did. All because of her father.

She waited among the cigarette butts and rusted beer caps while her text bounced its way to France.

Delivered. Three dots appeared. Her mother’s reply came slow.

Good luck. Lay low. I'll send money if I can. Try to blend in.

Logan sent back a smiley face and a greeting for her aunt and uncle.

Letting her phone fall back in her purse, she swallowed hard and tugged hem of her T-shirt down over her jeans. Her heart pounded so loud she wouldn’t be able to hear traffic if there’d been any. But the intersection was dead. The only other animate object in that town was the little orange hand blinking on the stop light, telling her not to walk.

The light changed and a little white man blinked, urging her to cross the street before it was too late. By the look of the town nothing was urgent. The only signs of life were two cars in the bar’s parking lot. They could be abandoned for all she knew.

A countdown timer marked off the seconds. Eleven. Ten.

Left to the motel. Straight to the bar. Neither option looked all that inviting.

For the first time since she left New York, rage, hot as the surface of the sun, boiled within her. She was supposed to be in an air conditioned office somewhere, running a foundation. Sipping a latte that came from cart. Logan kicked a beer cap into the street, and it skittered into a pothole.

Five. Four.

The little man on the pedestrian signal had his whole life together. He had purpose and goals and a job. He had an identity, and everyone knew who he was. Logan had all of that until her father screwed up, and the government charged him with money laundering and took it all away. All she had left were some comfy pants shoved in a suitcase and a cell phone plan she couldn’t afford. She squeezed the handle of her suitcase so tight her knuckles turned white.

Two. One.

The Do Not Walk signal blinked, and she crossed the street defiant.

The sidewalk rippled. Uneven slabs of concrete were mere islands, broken by the freeze and thaw of ice, lost in a sea of weeds and road dirt. She faced the bar.

When she opened that door, she would find herself in a whole new world. There would be questions. What was her name? Where did she come from? Maybe they would recognize her right away from the newspapers, the tabloids, Twitter. She wasn’t prepared for any of it, and she never would be. She didn’t even know how to fill out a job application. What was she supposed to say? I’m a Yale graduate with a degree in Art History, the daughter of a felon, and I’ve come to scrub your bathroom?

The sun would set in a few hours, and that motel did not look hospitable. The keys to a job and a cheap apartment were somewhere in that bar.

Taking in a shaky breath of Maine air, she held it in until her lungs soaked it up, then let out a steady stream of all she had left.

“Get in there and prove your mother wrong. You are still a Cole and Coles do not give up. We don’t stand on the sidewalk and talk to ourselves, either.”

Her whole future lay ahead of her. She just had to get by until her dad set it right. Shoulders back, head up, she opened

About the Author

A Maryland native and Pennsylvanian at heart, Jennifer M. Lane holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Barton College and a master's in liberal arts with a focus on museum studies from the University of Delaware, where she wrote her thesis on the material culture of roadside memorials. She is the author of the award-winning novel Of Metal and Earth, of Stick Figures from Rockport, and the series of stand-alone novels from The Collected Stories of Ramsbolt, including Blood and Sand. Visit her website at https: //www.jennifermlanewrites.com/

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Cover Reveal: Snowed In by Lindy Miller

Publication date: December 8th 2020
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Synopsis:

CHRISTMAS ISN’T ROXANNE HUDSON’S STYLE…UNTIL SHE FINDS HERSELF SNOWED IN WITH HIM.

Roxanne Hudson does not like Christmas. It comes with too many family obligations that take her away from work as a rising fashion editor in New York City. But this year might be Grandma Myrtle’s last Christmas, and Roxanne’s parents want her to spend the holiday at the family cabin in the Green Mountains. With her boyfriend Hunter away at a photo shoot, Roxanne decides to brave the long commute—and the wilderness—to spend Christmas in Vermont.

But when an uncomfortable phone call from Hunter starts her trip off badly, Roxanne is blindsided by a blizzard on the snowy mountain road. When she’s rescued by a handsome park ranger who’s the exact opposite of everything she always thought she wanted, Roxanne might discover she has time for a little Christmas magic after all.

About the Author

Lindy Miller is an author of feel-good love stories that are full of sweet moments and happy endings. She believes the best time to fall in love is during the holidays, preferably over a cup of warm tea or a delicious vegan pastry - two things she can't get enough of.

A free spirit, Lindy loves to travel and has a soft spot for Bar Harbor, Maine though she grew up at home in the South. She is married to her childhood sweetheart and bakes as often as she can for her husband, son, and pets - especially her golden retriever, Finn, who has a tendency to show up in her stories (and her Instagram!)

Lindy is represented by Gandolfo Helin & Fountain Literary Management and supported by Smith Publicity.

Member Romantic Novelist Association (RNA).

Connect:

https://twitter.com/lindywriteslove

https://www.lindymillerromance.com/

https://www.instagram.com/lindywriteslove/

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Spotlight: The Six Month Lease by Melanie Munton

The Six Month Lease
Melanie Munton
Publication date: August 18th 2020
Genres: Adult, Comedy, Contemporary, Romance

Never have I ever…moved in with a guy after dating him for only three weeks.

Just kidding. That’s exactly what I did.

And like most of you are probably thinking, it inevitably blew up in my face when we broke up two days after signing our lease.

Now, I’m stuck living with my ex. The same man who turned my life completely upside down in record time.

For. Six. Whole. Months.

It doesn’t matter how many times he flashes those abs at me after a shower, or how close his bedroom is to mine. I will resist him because he’s simply not the right guy for me.

But if I thought he’d done a number on me before, that’s nothing compared to what happens after I finally learn the secret he’s been keeping from me this entire time.

Amazon

—

EXCERPT:

We touch down on the helipad near Patriot’s Point where we left from. The slab of concrete is on the edge of the now mostly empty parking lot, the park having closed over an hour ago. The sun has lowered in the sky, painting it a pink hue with notes of orange and gold.

West does some more talking into his radio headset while going through the process of shutting the aircraft down, flipping switches and pushing buttons. After I’ve had time to take stock of everything, I realize that I’m coming down from a small adrenaline rush. My chest is heaving, my heart still racing.

Now I really get West’s love for flying. It gives you a high like no other.

Helicopter heroin.

The blades slowly stop rotating until the whooping sound of their spinning eventually ceases. West removes his headphones and unstraps himself. Then he leans over and repeats the same process with me.

But once he has my straps unbuckled, he falls back into his own seat.

Slowly removes his aviators—

And spreads his legs.

It’s only then that I notice the tent between his legs.

“Does that happen every time you fly?” I ask, my gaze lasered in on his lap. “Or is that special for me?”

“It’s always for you,” he answers roughly. “That’s the fucking problem. Nothing does it for me anymore but you. The other night when you went out for drinks with the girls, my hand could barely get the job done, even though it was your naked body I pictured in my head the entire time. It’s like nothing will satisfy except the real you.”

I tsk my tongue. “Poor baby. What do you recommend for the pain?”

He unbuckles his belt, lowers his zipper. “I just gave you a ride.” He reaches inside his briefs, palming his erection. “Now, it’s your turn to give me a nice…long…ride.”

I lick my lips unconsciously, feeling my nipples pucker underneath my breezy, linen dress. “These windows aren’t exactly tinted.”

“No one’s around,” he growls, his face reddening with burning lust. “Plus, the cockpit is facing those trees. No one can see us at this angle.”

My pulse jumps at the word cock.

Wriggling his hips, he shoves his shorts and briefs down past his manhood, freeing his rod until it’s rising straight up in the air. When he wraps his fist around the base, I flashback to how he looked handling the control stick. Gripping it so tight, his fingers absently stroking it when he was letting the aircraft coast.

My God, I never thought helicopters could be so sexual.

I’ll never be able to look at any kind of control stick the same way again.

His eyes lower to my chest. “Come sit on your throne, princess.”

Author Bio:

Traveler. Reader. Beach-goer. St. Louis Cardinals fan. Pasta-obsessed. North Carolina resident. Sarcastic. Bit of a nerd.
Author of the Cruz Brothers, Possession and Politics, and Timid Souls series, Melanie loves all things romance, comedies and suspense in particular because it’s boring to only stick to one sub-genre! From light-hearted comedies to sexy thrillers, she likes to mix it up, but loves her some strong alpha males and sassy heroines.
Go visit Melanie’s website and sign up for her newsletter to stay updated on release dates, teasers, and other details for all of her projects!

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Spotlight: The Dazzling Truth by Helen Cullen

Poised to celebrate Christmas Eve on a beautifully scenic island off the coast of Ireland, the Moone family’s holiday is instead marred by tragedy. So begins Helen Cullen’s stirring family saga, THE DAZZLING TRUTH (Graydon House; August 18, 2020; $17.99 USD). Maeve and Murtagh Moone’s love story began in 1978, at Trinity College. As an aspiring actress and potter respectively, the two creative spirits were drawn to each other in an intense and lasting way, able to withstand almost anything, even Maeve’s bouts of crippling depression and anxiety. For a short time, anyway.

Marriage and children are the next chapters in the Moone family story, but Maeve struggles to reconcile her old life with that of the wife and mother she is supposed to be. Until one heartbreaking Christmas Eve in 2005 changes everything. Now each member of the Moone family must learn to confront the past on their own, until one dazzling truth brings them back together towards a future that none of them could have predicted. Except perhaps Maeve herself.

Excerpt

Inis Óg: 2005

Murtagh had woken that morning, once again, to an empty bed; the sheets were cool and unruffled on Maeve’s side. He had expected to find her sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped in her hound’s-tooth shawl, pale and thin in the darkness before dawn, a tangle of blue-black hair swept across her high forehead like a crow’s wet wing, her long, matted curls secured in a knot at the nape of her neck with one of her red pencils. He had anticipated how she would start when he appeared in the doorway. How he would ignore, as he always did, the few moments it would take for her dove-grey eyes to turn their focus outward. For the ghosts to leave her in his presence. The kettle would hiss and spit on the stove as he stood behind her wicker chair and rubbed warmth back into her arms, his voice jolly as he gently scolded her for lack of sleep and feigned nonchalance as to its cause.

But Maeve wasn’t sitting at the kitchen table.

Nor was she meditating on the stone step of the back door drinking milk straight from the glass bottle it was delivered in.

She wasn’t dozing on the living-room sofa, the television on but silent, an empty crystal tumbler tucked inside the pocket of her peacock-blue silk dressing gown, the one on which she had painstakingly embroidered a murmuration of starlings in the finest silver thread.

Instead, there was an empty space on the bannister where her coat should have been hanging.

Murtagh opened the front door and flinched at a swarm of spitting raindrops. The blistering wind mocked the threadbare cotton of his pyjamas. He bent his head into the onslaught and pushed forward, dragging the heavy scarlet door behind him. The brass knocker clanged against the wood; he flinched, hoping it had not woken the children. Shivering, he picked a route in his slippers around the muddy puddles spreading across the cobblestoned pathway. Leaning over the wrought-iron gate that separated their own familial island from the winding lane of the island proper, he scanned the dark horizon for a glimpse of Maeve in the faraway glow of a streetlamp.

In the distance, the sea and sky had melted into one anthracite mist, each indiscernible from the other. Sheep huddled together for comfort in Peadar Óg’s field, the waterlogged green that bordered the Moones’ land to the right; the plaintive baying of the animals sounded mournful. Murtagh nodded at them.

There was no sight of Maeve.

As he turned back towards the house he noticed Nollaig watching him from her bedroom window. The eldest daughter, she always seemed to witness the moments her parents had believed—hoped—were cloaked in invisibility, and then remained haunted by what she had seen. Ever since she was a toddler, Murtagh had monitored how her understanding grew, filling her up, and knew it would soon flood her eyes, always so questioning, permanently.

He waved at her as he blew back up the pathway. Later, he would feel the acute pain of finally recognising the prescience his daughter seemed to have absorbed from the womb.

‘How long is she gone?’

Nollaig was now standing before the hallway mirror, her face contorted as she vigorously tried to brush her frizzy mouse-brown hair into shape. She scraped it together into a tight ponytail that thrust from the back of her head as if it were a fox’s brush.

‘Ach, you should leave your gorgeous curls be, Noll,’ her father cajoled, ‘instead of fighting them.’

She smiled at him but slammed the mother-of-pearl hairbrush down on the sideboard.

‘I don’t have curls, I have Brillo pads,’ she sighed. ‘Did she say where she was going?’

Murtagh squeezed his daughter’s arm as he continued into the kitchen. ‘I’m sure your mother is just out for a walk. Happy birthday, love. Lá breithla shona duit.’

He placed a small copper saucepan of water on the range to boil and waved the invitation of an egg at his daughter. She nodded begrudgingly and curled into the green-and-gold striped armchair that sat in front of the stove.

‘With your white nightdress, you could almost pass for the Irish flag,’ he joked, and was gratified with her snort of glee.

He watched the clock hand count three minutes in silence. Expected any moment to hear his soaked wife splash through the door. He was poised, ready to run towards her with a towel and hushed reprimands for her careless wandering, but the boiling, cooling, cupping, cracking and spooning of each egg passed uninterrupted. Nollaig yawned, stretching her arms and legs before her in a stiff salute.

‘Why don’t you go back to bed for an hour?’ Murtagh asked. ‘We’ll all have proper breakfast together later.’

She eyed him with suspicion but acquiesced. ‘If Mam’s not back soon,’ she said, sidling away, ‘come and wake me. Promise? We’ll go out and find her. Remind her what day it is, for God’s sake.’

Murtagh nodded, ushered his daughter out of the kitchen and watched her climb the stairs.

Born on Christmas Eve, twenty years before, she was the only one of their children who came into the world via Galway maternity hospital and not into the impatient arms of Máire O’Dulaigh, the midwife of the island. She resented it; how it made her feel less of a true islander. What was more, the specialness of her own day for individual attention, her birth day, was irrevocably lost in the shared excitement of Christmas. In retrospect, it had been a mistake, perhaps, naming her Nollaig, the Irish for Christmas, and further compounding the association. No nickname had ever stuck, however. She wasn’t the sort of child who inspired others to claim her for their own with the intimacy of a given name.

‘Born ancient,’ her little sister, Sive, always said of her, with bored disdain.

And Murtagh sympathised. Nollaig carried the weight of being the eldest with pained perseverance, heavy responsibilities that were self-imposed. Her mother harboured a not always silent resentment of it, and it seemed only natural, if unfair, that Maeve and Sive gravitated more towards each other; the baby of the family shared her mother’s wit and wildness and often expressed the irritation her mother tried to hide at Nollaig’s sense of duty.

Excerpted from The Dazzling Truth by Helen Cullen, Copyright © 2020 by Helen Cullen. 

Published by Graydon House Books

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About the Author

HELEN CULLEN wrote her debut novel, The Lost Letters of William Woolf, while completing the Guardian/UEA novel writing program. She holds an MA in Theatre Studies from University College Dublin and is currently studying further at Brunel. Prior to writing full-time, Helen worked in journalism, broadcasting and most recently as a creative events and engagement specialist. Helen is Irish and currently lives in London.

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Spotlight: Wicked is the Duke (Mayfair, #4) by J R Salisbury

Wicked is the Duke 

Mayfair Book 4 

by J R Salisbury 

Genre: Historical Romance 

Henry Blackmont, duke of Blackmont has a reputation as a rakehell and all around scoundrel. Invitations to his notorious house parties are highly sought after.

A few years after the untimely death of both his parents, and left with a parcel of siblings, Blackmont swears to change his wicked ways. He needs a wife, a woman who will be his duchess. Someone he hasn't found among the usual fare of young ladies. Until he meets Miss Anna Grover...

Anna Grover is a quiet, well educated young woman, someone Blackmont might have overlooked. Born and raised on the continent, she serves as hostess to her older brother, Robert. Her facade may show her to be demure, but Blackmont soon finds her to be far more stimulating.

The duke finds himself head over heels in love, but will it all be thwarted by another young lady determined to be the next duchess of Blackmont. 

Amazon

I've always been a creative individual. Writing is just a facet of that creativity...

My careers in public relations in and around the entertainment industry, photography, editing, artist management, modeling and special event planning all elevated my passion for writing, not to mention gave me a treasure trove for story lines. 

I write women's fiction; contemporary romance (as Jamie Salisbury) and historical romance (as JR Salisbury) which is ever evolving. I am fortunate enough that writing (and marketing of said product(s)) is my full-time job, although I always have one or two other projects going at the same time.

I now live in a suburb of Atlanta. Some of my other interests include photography, equestrianism, reading, and of course, travel.

I sincerely hope my writing will entertain, enlighten, and inspire others to pick up the pen and pursue their own dreams. I love to be contacted by readers, writers, and history buffs. 

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