Spotlight: Nursing Her Amish Neighbor by Marta Perry

NURSING HER AMISH NEIGHBOR by Marta Perry (on-sale Dec.28, Love Inspired): Healing his physical wounds is just the beginning… Seeking a break from her nursing duties, Miriam Stoltzfus returns home to Lost Creek—and encounters her most difficult patient yet. Her childhood neighbor, Matthew King, is suffering after an accident left him injured and his younger brother dead. But he doesn’t want anyone’s help. Can Miriam guide him through his grief to prove he’s still the strong, confident man she remembers?

Excerpt

“It takes time to come back from lying in bed,” Miriam said, as if she knew his thoughts. “I’ve heard a therapist say a week of exercise for every day in bed.” She’d moved closer, and as he tried again, she put her hand on the middle of his back, pressing.

He could feel how much easier that made it to pull up. And he could also feel the shape of her palm and the warmth of her skin through the thin cotton of his nightshirt. He looked at her, feeling that awareness move between them.

“Here, let me help.” Betsy charged in, inserting herself between him and Miriam.

Jealous? He couldn’t be sure.

“That’s right.” Miriam, unruffled, moved Betsy’s hand slightly. “Good. Now don’t push. Just use your hand for a little extra support. We want his muscles to work but not strain.”

“Yah, I see. I can feel it.” Betsy sounded pleased, her antagonism slipping away.

With the two of them behind him, he couldn’t see either of their faces. But he didn’t like the idea of them ganging up on him.

“Betsy, do we have any lemonade?”

“I don’t think so. Do you want some? I can make it.” All her eagerness to please him rushed back.

“We could all use some after we finish here, ain’t so? Why don’t you make a pitcher?”

“Right away.” She hurried off.

“Don’t worry about it.” Miriam seemed amused. “She’s still your willing servant.”

“That wasn’t the idea,” he said stiffly, his temper flaring that she could read him so easily. “In case you haven’t noticed, it makes her happy to do things for me.”

“I noticed.” She looped the handles back up over the bar and pulled down a pair of stretchy bands. “As long as she’s helping you to get stronger, I don’t object.”

“Stronger.” He almost spat out the word. “Stronger for what? None of this is going to do any good. It’s useless. I can’t be the person I was.”

She seemed unaffected by his anger. “We’ll never know that if you don’t try, will we?”

He glared at her for a long moment as

He glared at her for a long moment as a thought formed in his mind. He turned it over, looking at it from all angles. Would it work?

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I’ll make a deal with you.”

“What kind of a deal?” Miriam’s expression was cautious.

“I promise to do everything you say…to try my hardest…for a month. If I’m not much better by then, you agree to quit.”

Miriam stood very still, considering before she spoke. “I can’t speak for Tim. Just for myself.”

“Yah. Just for yourself.”

“Who’s going to decide whether or not you’re much better?” she said. “You?”

His jaw hardened. She wasn’t going to make this easy.

“No,” he said abruptly. “How about… Betsy?”

Her lips twitched. “Don’t you think Betsy has her own reasons for wanting to be rid of me?”

He raised one eyebrow, a gesture that used to attract the girls. “If you’re really making progress, you’ll have won her over by then. What’s wrong? Don’t you have any confidence in your work?”

She seemed to wince at that. After a long moment, she nodded. “All right. It’s a deal.”

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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. Visit her online at www.martaperry.com.

Spotlight: Little Girl Gone by Amanda Stevens

LITTLE GIRL GONE by Amanda Stevens (on-sale Dec.28, Harlequin Intrigue): Nothing matters more to her when a child's life is at stake. Special agent Thea Lamb returns to her hometown to search for a child whose disappearance echoes a twenty-eight-year-old cold case—her twin sister's abduction. Working with her former partner, Jake Stillwell, Thea must overcome the pain, doubt and guilt that have tormented her for years and denied her a meaningful relationship. For both Thea and Jake, the job always came first…until now.  

Excerpt

“While I was trying to fish the doll out of the pool, someone came from behind and hit me over the head hard enough to daze me. Next thing I know, I’m caught in a whirlpool several feet below the surface. I lost my flashlight, so I was spun around underwater in complete darkness. No up, no down.” He paused. “For a while there, I wasn’t sure how I’d get out.”

Thea watched his expression as he spoke. He still seemed shaken from the experience. She’d never seen him like that. “I knew something bad must have happened.”

He summoned a brief smile. “I know what you’re thinking. I even thought so myself at the time. So much for my keen instincts. Someone came up behind me and I never sensed a thing.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking.”

“No?”

“I’m thinking you could have died down there and I would never have known what happened to you.”

“Thea.” He said her name so softly she might have thought the tender missive was nothing more than a breeze sighing through the treetops.

The sun bearing down on them was hot and relentless, but Thea felt a little shiver go through her. It hit her anew how much she’d missed that tender glint in his eyes as their gazes locked. How much she’d missed his husky whispers in the dark. The glide of his hand along her bare skin, the tease of his lips and tongue against her mouth. The way he had held her afterward, as if he never wanted to let her go. But he had let her go and she’d done nothing to stop him.

She drew a shaky breath. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”

“Get caught in a whirlpool? I’ll do my best.”

She scowled at him. “Don’t make light. You know what I mean.”

“I’m fine, Thea.” He seemed on the verge of saying something else, but he held back. Maybe he thought she wanted his restraint. She did, didn’t she? They were in a precarious situation. Adrenaline and attraction could be a dangerous combination. Throw in unresolved issues and they were asking for trouble.

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About the Author

Amanda Stevens is an award-winning author of over fifty novels. Born and raised in the rural south, she now resides in Houston, Texas.

Spotlight: Lineage by Steven Kent Mirassou

A unique blend of memoir and historical narrative, Lineage gives the reader a behind-the-scenes view of what is means to be a wine maker: how it looks and feels to be in a vineyard heavy with grapes, awaiting the dawn and the throbbing pulse of a harvest about to begin. But it’s also a tale of challenges: rough growing seasons, business mistakes, the loss of cherished vineyards, and more.

Lineage shares Mirassou’s connection to the six generations that his family has been growing grapes and crafting wines in California, the last thirty years in the Livermore Valley. It’s a region that struggles, image-wise, in the shadow of the Napa Valley but holds fast to its belief in the virtues of its hills and valleys and fertile soils, and to its unshakable faith that crafting beautiful wines and sharing them with others is, at its core, good for the heart and pure tonic for the soul.

Beautifully packaged with photos throughout, Lineage is ultimately a lover letter to wine making, by someone who feels a deep connection to the craft.

Excerpt

Bone and Sinew

My family has been making wine in the U.S. longer than any other, seven generations—165 years, now that my son, Aidan has become our Assistant Winemaker. Every time I walk into my tasting room, I see the stolid countenances of the early generations of the family posed and stiff and formal. And these pictures have traveled, like treasured keepsakes, from our first tasting rooms at Mirassou, then to the re-invented brand under Gallo ownership where they were just curios in a marketing campaign, and then onto my walls, the rightful heir. As often as I had seen those sepia-ed photos when I was a kid running around the fermenters and disgorging champagne, the family legacy was never truly a part of my bone and sinew until I made my first vintage of wine nearly 20 years later. And 25 years after that, with the next generation working alongside me, I know now that I will be on that wall at some point too, and that my issue—more generations of our singular lineage—will view that old man and wonder, why the sly smile? 

With each passing harvest, each fermenter dragged clean, vintage after vintage; each wine resting in barrel, growing in roundness, growing in excellence; each season tasting the wines of my team’s labor, I realize, many years into my journey, that I had met a vocation commensurate to my capacity for idealism. More than simply the pursuit of personal excellence, I have come to understand that my time in my work, however long it should last, will be but one circle nested inside larger concentric rings. There is the circle of my family, and its role in California wine. My great-great-great grandfather is reputed to have been the first to bring Pinot Noir and Mourvèdre to California in 1854. He was certainly the first to bring the French prune, its shriveled fruit laying the cornerstone for a huge industry in Santa Clara County over the next century-and-a-half. The fortunes of the family waxed for a short time until they didn’t anymore, and it falls to me and my son to redeem what had not been fully realized. 

California is also a ring. The state conjures up for many a sun-soaked vinous Utopia, home to voluble, ebullient wines. Its earliest efforts are known only to a few, being too young and too far removed from the European centers of wine to drop much of a pebble in the larger pond. The origin story of California presaged many of the booms and busts the state would experience after the gold rush in 1848 created it; its wines were only curiosities at the margins of an old empire until the Paris Tasting in 1976 proved to be a rush of its own, rolling out at nearly the same pace. 

The greatest concentricity is the story of wine itself. Wine is the story of wars, the story of and by the poets; it is the harbinger of culture, the loosener of tongues; it celebrates births and memorializes those gone; wine is a multi-billion-dollar business, undertaken mostly by tens of thousands of us who can barely pay our bills. Wine ultimately connects all of us who drink, and binds us all, through its vineyards, to the very beating heart of the green world. 

My son, Aidan, is one of the more wonderful people I know. Strong and sensitive, open to the possibilities of the world, if not always eager to search for them. He started out in our tasting room when he was a teenager, polishing glasses, emptying dump-buckets, throwing out the garbage, the same mundane but needed tasks that I did at his age, though mine took the form of warehouse and bottling-line work. My strategy for sharing generational progress was to show him as much of my world as possible, to put the best wines possible in front of him, to share my enthusiasm with him, to take him into the cellar to see what went on out of view of the customer. I hoped he would catch on, would be as awed as I was at the thought and act of making something beautiful. 

His first couple of years in the cellar were a continuation of the scut work he did in the tasting room before he began to be looked upon as a potential heir there, not the boss’s kid, but one who would create the paths forward. Winemaking seems like high living but only to those who haven’t really seen it. It’s mostly about being clean. There are a lot of bugs in a winery. Some are benevolent and bring about the fundamental and magical transformation of juice to wine, and some seek only to loose the microscopic dogs of war upon our otherwise civilized endeavor. It is the winemaker’s job (really, the cellar rat’s) to make sure as few havoc-wreakers as possible make contact with the stuff we’ll eventually drink. So, Aidan washed a lot of fermentation bins, washed a lot of pumps, washed a lot of buckets and beakers and tanks and presses. One of the points you’re trying to slam home is the tenuousness of this thing that we do, the fragility of the wine, its susceptibility, left unwatched, to run to vinegar. One of the best ways to illustrate this is, I think, to believe in the theory of germs as one would believe in the Old Testament holy father...to take it on faith that one moment of un-virtue leads to death. The kid survived his baptism quite nicely. His room may be a fucking mess, but you can eat off his fermenters. 

Within our cabal, the woebegone life of the cellar rat is really one of great dignity. The person who knows the value of order-following and clean-making is held in high esteem. Aidan was this person then and is to a much greater degree that self-same person now. Beth Refsnider, another Assistant Winemaker, hired in 2018 as a production assistant, has assumed this role presently, and she has the makings of greatness. 

Attuned to nuances, aggressively searching out the work and the tasting opportunities, she will have control of her destiny in this business. 

As each season rolled on, Aidan was given more responsibility, introduced more and more to the esthetic side of the craft, and given more and more a window into the whys of what we do. In 2017, my assistant winemaker, at the time, left to take a similar position with another winery in town, and Aidan stepped up to take over that set of responsibilities, that he wanted the job and was ready to become one of the initiates into our glorious and bedraggled order. He has embarked on his path, learning from his father, discarding those things that do not ring true to him, learning and doing, aspiring and fulfilling, perhaps in some Freudian way killing the father to lay with the dame, wine. Around the circumference of his ring or along the next knot on his line, over the years, from one harvest to another, he will draw out his own chord of the family lineage. 

Reprinted from Lineage: Life and Love and Six Generations in California Wine with the permission of Val de Grace Books. Copyright © 2021 by Steven Kent Mirassou.

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About the Author

Steven Kent Mirassou is an acclaimed winemaker and a descendant of one of the oldest and most respected wine families in California. Passionate about writing too, he received his BA in American Literature from the George Washington University and his MA in Literature from NYU. Steven was born in the Salinas Valley and grew up in San Jose and Los Gatos before going east to college. He started his wine career in sales but found his true passion after moving into the production side of the business in 1996. Steven has made the highest rated wines from the Livermore Valley, and he is a co-founder of the Mount Diablo Highlands Wine Quality Alliance and the President of the Livermore Valley Wine Growers Association. Lineage: Life and Love and Six Generations in California Wine is his first book. Steven has four adult children and he lives in Pleasanton, California, with his fiancée, Nancy Castro, and their three dogs.

Spotlight: His to Defend by Sharon C. Cooper

HIS TO DEFEND by Sharon C. Cooper (on-sale Dec.28, Harlequin Romantic Suspense): A romantic reunion…threatened by their past. Amina Kelly broke Sergeant Maxwell Layton's heart when she married his best friend. But the detective never forgot her…or the sizzling attraction they never acted on. Years later, while Maxwell and Amina work together to find her ex's killer, Maxwell finds his desire for the nurse stronger than ever. As he puts his life on the line to keep Amina safe, Maxwell realizes that the greatest risk of all might be to his heart. 

Excerpt

“Do you think the break-in is connected to the mugging?” Amina asked.

Maxwell’s eyebrows shot up. If he didn’t know better, he would’ve thought she was a mind reader. Earlier, when he considered the two incidences might’ve been connected, he hadn’t planned to say anything to her just yet. But in case they were, he needed to do some digging. What he didn’t want to do was scare her, but he also wanted her to be on alert.

“Yes,” he said honestly. “It’s too much of a coincidence. I’m even wondering if that botched mugging wasn’t an attempted kidnapping.”

Her hand went to her chest. “If you’re trying to scare me, it’s working.”

“Sweetheart, the last thing I want to do is scare you, but something is going on. Until we figure out what, I think you should stay here. In the meantime, can you think of anything you have that someone might want? A family heirloom? Gold? Bonds? A limited-edition book? Anything?”

“No, nothing like that. I have a pair of diamond earrings that my parents gave me when I graduated from high school.”

“I might be way off with this next question, but I have to ask. Do you have anything of Jeremy’s?”

She frowned. “Not that I can think of—why?”

“I don’t know. I might be way off, but I wonder if any of this has to do with his murder?” Maxwell wiped his hands and grabbed his cell phone off the counter. About a half an hour ago, Danny had texted him a still shot of the suspect.

Maxwell held up his phone to her. “Do you recognize this guy?”

Amina stared at the photo for a few minutes. The quality wasn’t great, and much of the man’s face was hard to make out, but she might know him.

She eventually shook her head. “He doesn’t look familiar. Should I know him? Who is he?”

“The suspected killer.”

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About the Author

Award-winning and bestselling author, Sharon C. Cooper loves anything that involves romance with a happily-ever-after, whether in books, movies, or real life. Sharon writes contemporary romance, as well as romantic suspense and enjoys rainy days, carpet picnics, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She’s been nominated for numerous awards and is the recipient of an Emma Award for Romantic Suspense of the Year 2015 (Truth or Consequences), Emma Award - Interracial Romance of the Year 2015 (All You’ll Ever Need), and BRAB (book club) Award -Breakout Author of the Year 2014. When Sharon is not writing or working, she’s hanging out with her amazing husband, doing volunteer work or reading a good book (a romance of course). To read more about Sharon and her novels, visit www.sharoncooper.net

Spotlight: The Journey by Kelsey Ketch

(Death Island, #1)
Publication date: November 25th 2020
Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, New Adult

Synopsis:

With her family name tainted by her great-grandfather’s crimes, Meriden Cummings could only dream of fleeing her oppressive life. Then she unearthed a piece of tanned skin, and her blood revealed an ancient map adorned with Mayan glyphs, launching her on the journey of a lifetime. However, she finds herself bound to the map, and there is a cost to her newfound freedom. One that will torment her mind as well as her soul.

After being shanghaied by pirates, Gregory Wilson escapes to a small English village where he runs into an obnoxious auburn-haired beauty. When he learns she is about to set sail on dangerous waters, he signs up to join her crew, hoping to defend her from the pirates seeking her great-grandfather’s treasure. But, will he be able to protect her from the ghost that haunts her or the curse running through her veins?

Excerpt

[Meriden]

Tucker barked at something that had recently washed up onto the shore. Curious, I walked toward the obvious tangled mess. “What do you have there?”

I pushed him aside and grabbed the green and grey mass. I peeled off the debris and seaweed and rinsed the mud and sand off in the Mouth of the Severn. From the mess appeared an object, which I could only describe as an elaborate golden coin, about four inches in diameter. Yet, the slightest touch caused three outer rings of glyphs—similar to the ones painted on the map—to rotate around a sitting man with a long headdress, bowl, and club. His face profiled, and his legs crossed. The most outer ring consisted of nineteen complicated glyphs, including an eagle’s head, a goat-like face, and a demon face; the middle ring held twenty square glyphs with three curls underneath, some depicting things like hands, skulls, and faces; and the innermost ring had a series of dots and lines—much like Roman numerals—that counted up to thirteen. On the other side of the coin, the same skeletal figure from the map sat in the center while nine teetered glyphs were spaced out along the outer rings—five on the outer ring and four in the middle. Among the glyphs of the middle ring were four arrows pointing in what I would call the cardinal directions. Overlapping the middle and inner rings were three large arrows. Much like a compass pointing north, east, and west. And to the south, two skulls faced each other, leaving a microscopic gap.

My mind spun with disbelief. This had to be related to Death Island. I was sure of it. But how? And where did it come from? How did it get here?

The breeze carried my hair off my shoulder, a shiver ran down my spine, and goose bumps unraveled across my arms when I sensed a presence nearby. I turned to spy a man as pale as ash with a beard as white as snow watching me. Black veins stretched throughout his exposed flesh. His eyes nothing but two black pieces of coal. The mere sight of him made me jump in my own skin, nearly causing me to drop the Mayan coin as I gasped in fright. In an attempt to regain my composure, I took my eyes off the man for a second to steady myself, only for them to fall back on the gardener, or ghost, I met at the Railings’ home.

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About the Author

Kelsey Ketch is a young-adult/new-adult author, who works as a Wildlife Biologist and Data Analyst. During her free time, she can often be found working on her latest work in progress. She also enjoys history, mythology, traveling, and reading.

Connect:

https://kelseyketch.com/

https://www.instagram.com/kelseyketch/

https://www.facebook.com/KelseyKetch/

https://twitter.com/kelseyketch

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7104482.Kelsey_Ketch

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Spotlight: Undercover K-9 Cowboy by Addison Fox

UNDERCOVER K-9 COWBOY by Addison Fox (on-sale Jan.25, Harlequin Romantic Suspense): A by-the-book Fed goes rogue for justice. To stop the drug epidemic ravaging Midnight Pass, FBI agent Ryder Durant reluctantly takes matters into his own hands. Poised to set a trap at Reynolds Station, he has to contend with Arden Reynolds—who prefers Ryder's K-9 to the Fed protecting her family. As Ryder and Arden spar, embers spring into flame. And those flames are as dangerous as the crime ring lurking too close to home…

Excerpt

“You want answers?”

“I do.” Arden said.

“Then I want a few of my own first.”

Although she didn’t say anything, anticipation lit her blue eyes. It surprised him how that struck somewhere low in his gut. Like he was enjoying getting a reaction—any reaction—from her.

“You don’t like me very much, and I’d like to know why.”

That small light winked out, fading away as if it had never been. “I have nothing against you.”

“I’d say you do. You have since the first time we met.” Ryder tilted his head toward the wide-open window beside them. “Right out there on Main Street.”

He remembered the moment well. It had been a pretty fall day and he’d tied Murphy up outside the coffee shop to bask in the sun for a few minutes while he ran in to snag a quick cup. The night before, he’d run his first op since coming to Midnight Pass and was pretty much subsisting on fumes. He’d come back out to find Arden, expectantly waiting for him, full of barely veiled insult and clear irritation that he’d left his dog outside.

“I wasn’t aware that Murphy was a working dog that day. I may have been a bit terse.”

“And the other night? At your place?”

“I—” She stopped, clearly considering her words. He was surprised to find that he had the patience to wait for whatever it was she had to say. “I don’t appreciate cocky arrogance.”

“You live on a ranch full of testosterone-fueled cowboys. And in a town full of the same. Surely you come up against a bit of cocky banter now and again?”

“That’s an excuse for it?”

“It’s a fact. I’d have thought you’d be used to it by now.”

“It doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Her tone was prim and her already strong, fit posture stiffened a few more degrees north.

Ryder was good at his job because he knew how to read people. It was also what made him a good K-9 handler. He paid attention and he read situations before reacting. And every instinct he possessed read this one as arising from something that had specifically happened to her.

With someone who had hurt her.

Someone, Ryder suspected, who had been cocky and arrogant and likely unkind to her.

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About the Author

Addison Fox is a lifelong romance reader, addicted to happy-ever-afters. She loves writing about romance as much as reading it. Addison lives in New York with an apartment full of books, a laptop that’s rarely out of sight and a wily beagle who keeps her running. You can find her at www.addisonfox.com, facebook.com/addisonfoxauthor or on Twitter (@addisonfox).