Spotlight: Committed by Sharon C. Cooper

(Atlanta’s Finest Series)
Publication date: July 8th 2022
Genres: Adult, Romance, Suspense

Synopsis:

Even when he does good, he’s still bad…

Lazarus “Laz” Dimas made plenty of enemies as an Atlanta police detective. Now that he is a security specialist and married with a family, he does everything by the book…mostly. It’s not until someone threatens his family that he falls back into his old, lethal behavior and resurrects his former mantra: By Any Means Necessary.

Journey has it all—an amazing husband, a rewarding career as an assistant district attorney and the most adorable baby girl. Yet, she wants more. She wants to be elected Atlanta’s next district attorney.

Laz is always supportive and makes sure she wants for nothing, but not this time. He insists she choose—their marriage or the job she desires. It should be an easy decision, but it takes almost losing everything she holds dear before Journey checks her priorities.

And when tragedy threatens to rip her and Laz’s relationship apart, they must fight to keep it together…but is it too late?

Excerpt

She paced the length of their bedroom twice to calm herself. It wasn’t working. Not even the soft lighting emitting from the bedside table lamps and the tranquil blue-gray walls could soothe her tattered nerves. By the time Laz walked in, she hoped to have quieted the angry thoughts running through her mind. 

Instead, she wanted to knock some sense into her husband.

But when she swung around to face him, some of her anger drifted out of her like air from a balloon. Her big, strong man was hunched forward slightly and clearly in pain. His long, dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, giving her a clear view of his pale face and pinched features. 

Without a word, he shuffled past her and sat in an overstuffed chair near the windows. The blinds were drawn, and he didn’t bother turning on the lamp perched on the small table between the chairs. It was semi-dark in that corner, but there was just enough light in the room for her to see him watching her.

“I hate this,” she mumbled, unsure what part she hated the most. The fact that they were fighting or the fact that he wasn’t himself tonight. 

She wanted so bad to go sit in his lap and wrap her arms around him. Something she did often, but she couldn’t. Unless she wanted her ass to end up on the carpeted floor because she had a feeling that that was where he’d dump her if she tried to snuggle up to him. He might be in serious pain, but the way he was glaring at her with his beautiful hazel-green eyes told her he was ready for a fight.

“I’m sorry, all right?” Journey said. “God knows I wish I was there to…”

“No.” Laz shook his head. “I’m glad you weren’t at the scene. I have never been as afraid as I was knowing there was a chance that Arielle could’ve been hit by a bullet. I can’t even explain that type of fear, but it would’ve killed me had you been there and in danger. I wouldn’t have been able to handle it.”

Her heart flipped inside of her chest. She had no doubt that he would’ve done the same thing he did—fight to get to her and make sure she was safe. With him sharing that information with so much emotion in his tone, she knew their love for each other was stronger than any disagreement they could ever have. 

Yet, the tension between them was proof that it took more than love to keep a marriage together.

“Laz—”

“I just wanted you to be there when I needed you the most—after everything went down. Arielle was inconsolable and hearing the fear in her cries…” His words trailed off, and Journey thought he was done talking, but then he said, “I needed you.” 

Copyright © 2022 Sharon C. Cooper

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Meet the Author

USA Today bestselling author Sharon C. Cooper loves anything involving romance with a happily-ever-after, whether in books, movies, or real life. She writes contemporary romance, as well as romantic suspense and enjoys rainy days, carpet picnics, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Her stories have won numerous awards over the years, and when Sharon isn’t writing, she’s hanging out with her amazing husband, doing volunteer work, or reading a good book (a romance of course).

Connect:

https://www.sharoncooper.net/

https://www.facebook.com/AuthorSharonCCooper21

https://www.pinterest.ca/sharonccooper/

https://www.instagram.com/authorsharonccooper/

https://twitter.com/Sharon_cooper1

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5823574.Sharon_C_Cooper

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Spotlight: The Edge of Summer by Viola Shipman

Paperback Original

Publication Date: July 12, 2022

Publisher: Graydon House

Bestselling author Viola Shipman delights with this captivating summertime escape set along the sparkling shores of Lake Michigan, where a woman searches for clues to her secretive mother's past

Devastated by the sudden death of her mother—a quiet, loving and intensely private Southern seamstress called Miss Mabel, who overflowed with pearls of Ozarks wisdom but never spoke of her own family—Sutton Douglas makes the impulsive decision to pack up and head north to the Michigan resort town where she believes she’ll find answers to the lifelong questions she’s had about not only her mother’s past but also her own place in the world.

Recalling Miss Mabel’s sewing notions that were her childhood toys, Sutton buys a collection of buttons at an estate sale from Bonnie Lyons, the imposing matriarch of the lakeside community. Propelled by a handful of trinkets left behind by her mother and glimpses into the history of the magical lakeshore town, Sutton becomes tantalized by the possibility that Bonnie is the grandmother she never knew. But is she? As Sutton cautiously befriends Bonnie and is taken into her confidence, she begins to uncover the secrets about her family that Miss Mabel so carefully hid, and about the role that Sutton herself unwittingly played in it all.

Excerpt

BUTTONHOLE

A small cut in the fabric that is bound with small stitching. The hole has to be just big enough to allow a button to pass through it and remain in place.

My mom told everyone my dad died, along with my entire family—grandparents, aunts, uncles, and all—one Christmas Day long ago.

“Fire,” she’d say. “Woodstove. Took ’em all. Down to the last cousin.”

“How’d you make it out with your little girl?” everyone would always ask, eyes wide, mouths open. “That’s a holiday miracle!”

My mom would start to cry, a tear that grew to a flood, and, well, that would end that.

No one questioned someone who survived such a thing, especially a widowed mother like Miss Mabel, which is what everyone called her out of deference in the Ozarks. Folks down here had lived hard lives, and they buried their kin just like they did their heartache, underneath the rocky earth and red clay. It took too much effort to dig that deep. 

That’s why no one ever bothered to check out the story of a simple, hardworking, down-to-earth, churchgoing lady who kept to herself down here in the hollers—despite the fact me and my mom both just appeared out of thin air—in a time before social media existed. 

But I did. 

Want to know why? 

My mom never cried. 

She was the least emotional soul I’d ever known. 

“How did you make it out with me?” I asked her countless times as I grew older, when it was just the two of us sitting in her sewing room in our tiny cabin tucked amongst the bluffs outside Nevermore, Missouri. 

She would never answer immediately, no matter how many times I asked. Instead, she’d turn over one of her button jars or tins, and run her fingers through the buttons as if they were tarot cards that would provide a clue. 

I mean, there were no photos, no memories, no footsteps that even led from our fiery escape to the middle of Nevermore. No family wondered where we were? No one cared? My mother made it out with nothing but me? Not a penny to her name? Just some buttons? 

We were rich in buttons. 

Oh, I had button necklaces in every color growing up— red, green, blue, yellow, white, pink—and I matched them to every outfit I had. We didn’t have money for trendy jewelry or clothes—tennis bracelets, Gloria Vanderbilt jeans—so my mom made nearly everything I wore. 

Kids made fun of me at school for that.

“Sutton, the button girl!” they’d taunt me. “Hand-me-downs!” 

Wasn’t funny. Ozarks kids weren’t clever. Just annoyingly direct, like the skeeters that constantly buzzed my head. 

I loved my necklaces, though. They were like Wonder Woman’s bracelets. For some reason, I always felt protected. 

I’d finger and count every button on my necklace waiting for my mom to answer the question I’d asked long ago. She’d just keep searching those buttons, turning them round and round, feeling them, whispering to them, as if they were alive and breathing. The quiet would nearly undo me. A girl should have music and friends’ laughter be the soundtrack of her life, not the clink of buttons and rush of the creek. Most times, I’d spin my button necklace a few times, counting upward of sixty before my mom would answer. 

“Alive!” she’d finally say, voice firm, without looking up. “That’s how we made it out…alive. And you should feel darn lucky about that, young lady.” 

Then, as if by magic, my mom would always somehow manage to find a matching button to replace a missing one on a hand-me-down blouse of hers, or pluck the “purtiest” ones from the countless buttons in her jar—iridescent abalone or crochet over wound silk f loss—to make the entire blouse seem new again. 

Still, she would never smile. In fact, it was as if she had been born old. I had no idea how old she might be: Thirty-five? Fifty? Seventy? 

But when she’d find a beautiful button, she would hold it up to study, her gold eyes sparkling in the light from the little lamp over Ol’ Betsy, her Singer sewing machine. 

If I watched her long enough, her face would relax just enough to let the deep creases sigh, and the edges of her mouth would curl ever so slightly, as if she had just found the secret to life in her button jar. 

“Look at this beautiful button, Sutton,” she’d say. “So many buttons in this jar: fabric, shell, glass, metal, ceramic. All forgotten. All with a story. All from someone and somewhere. People don’t give a whit about buttons anymore, but I do. They hold value, these things that just get tossed aside. Buttons are still the one thing that not only hold a garment together but also make it truly unique.” 

Finally, finally, she’d look at me. Right in the eye. 

“Lots of beauty and secrets in buttons if you just look long and hard enough.” 

The way she said that would make my body explode in goose pimples. 

Every night of my childhood, I’d go to bed and stare at my necklace in the moonlight, or I’d play with the buttons in my mom’s jar searching for an answer my mother never provided. 

Even today when I design a beautiful dress with pretty, old-fashioned buttons, I think of my mom and how the littlest of things can hold us together. 

Or tear us apart.

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Audible | Hardcover | Paperback | Bookshop.org

Meet the Author

VIOLA SHIPMAN is the pen name for internationally bestselling author Wade Rouse. Wade is the author of fourteen books, which have been translated into 21 languages and sold over a million copies around the world. Wade chose his grandmother’s name, Viola Shipman as a pen name to honor the woman whose heirlooms and family stories inspire his fiction. The last Viola Shipman novel, The Secret of Snow (October 2021), was named a Best Book of Fall by Country Living Magazine and a Best Holiday Book by Good Housekeeping. 

Wade hosts the popular Facebook Live literary happy hour, “Wine & Words with Wade,” every Thursday at 6:30 p.m. EST on the Viola Shipman author page where he talks writing, inspiration and welcomes bestselling authors and publishing insiders.

Connect:

Author Website 

Twitter: @Viola_Shipman

Facebook: Author Viola Shipman

Instagram: @Viola_Shipman

Goodreads

Spotlight: Out of Her Depth by Lizzy Barber

Publication Date: July 12, 2022

Publisher: MiRA

Rachel lands her dream summer job at a luxurious Tuscan villa. She’s quickly drawn into a new group of rich and beautiful sophisticates and their world of partying, toxic relationships, and even more toxic substances. They’ve never faced consequences, are used to getting everything. But then someone goes too far. Someone dies. And nothing will ever be the same.

Lizzy Barber’s debut A Girl Named Anna won the Daily Mail First Novel Competition. In her newest and even more unputdownable work, she weaves a clever and deadly web of manipulation and desire. A summer thriller rife with back-stabbing, bed-hopping, and murder, Out of Her Depth is a perfect escapist read for fans of Euphoria, J.T. Ellison’s Her Dark Lies, or Rachel Hawkins’s Reckless Girls.

Excerpt

Before you judge me, remember this: a girl died, but it wasn’t my fault.

I know that seems like a pathetic confessional. Even more pathetic because the confession itself has, until this point, never been uttered.

I’ve wanted to. Believe me, I’ve wanted to.

The words have formed themselves on the precipice of my tongue, palpitating with their ugly need to be heard, to make me part of the narrative. To declare to the A-level students when I see it coming up on their news feeds, languorously debating it, now, once more, as it has risen into public consciousness twenty-one years after the fact: I was there.

When they stumble in late to my lesson, less eager to talk of the trapassato prossimo than about who fucked whom at last night’s social, and whether crimped hair really is making a comeback.

I was there.

When they blink at me from faces still etched with yesterday’s makeup, reeking of the top-shelf vodka and menthol cigarettes that their house mistresses will studiously ignore.

I was there.

When they declare they “really struggled with this week’s essay” so they only have notes, and they say, “About that C on the mock exam… Did you know my parents funded the library?” and they don’t even bother to wait for the response as they pull out their laptops and glance at their watches, and they think to themselves, Boring bitch has never lived.

I was there.

I imagine each letter incubating in the saliva that pools in the side of my gums. I picture myself standing, drawing the blinds. An illicit eyebrow raise that will make them pause, look up at me anew, place their laptops on the floor as I edge toward them.

Screw Dante. Let me tell you a real story about Florence.

Now

I am just leaving for dinner when I hear.

People talk of remembering exactly where they were when great events happened: Princess Di, the Twin Towers, Trump. I know this isn’t quite on the same scale, but I’ll remember exactly where I was, all the same.

I’ve had back-to-back lessons all day, but now, at last, I have an hour to myself, the only person left in the languages office. I spend it working on my paper “Pirandello and the Search for Truth” for the Modern Language Review, barely coming up for air. This is the part of academia I enjoy the most: the research, the pulling together of an idea, the rearranging of words and thoughts on the page until they start to take on a life of their own, form arguments, cohesion. I’m hoping that this will be the one they’ll finally agree to publish.

I am the only French and Italian teacher at Graybridge Hall, 

have been for the last ten years. When they decided to introduce Italian for the younger years, as well as the older students, I did suggest that perhaps now it would be time to look at hiring someone else. But Ms. Graybridge, the eponymous head—and third of that name to have held the position—reminded me that the school’s ethos was “personal and continuous care for every girl.” Which didn’t really make sense as a rebuttal, but which I knew was shorthand for no, and which she knew—because of certain circumstances under which I assumed my position in the first place—I wouldn’t argue with.

Not that I don’t enjoy teaching. Sometimes. “shaping young minds” and all that seems like it should be a worthy cause. When I was younger, much younger, I imagined maybe I would do a PhD, become a professor. I also thought about diplomatic service, traveling the world as a translator, journalism, maybe, why not? Instead I sit through mock orals on topics as ground-breaking as Food and Eating Out, Cinema and TV, and My Family.

My rumbling stomach is the first signal I have that evening is approaching, and when I tear myself away from my laptop screen to look at the darkening sky, I decide to ditch my planned root around in the fridge, and be sociable instead. Wednesday is quiz night at the pub near school. A group of teachers go every week, the little thrill they get as their cerebral cortexes light up with a correct answer just about making up for a day spent asking the girls to kindly not look at their Apple Watches until break, and maybe not take their makeup out of their Marc Jacobs backpacks until class is over just this once.

I close down my laptop and do a brisk tidy of the room before slipping on my coat and scarf, and am just about to slide my phone into my rucksack when an alert catches my eye—specifically, a name, bouncing out of the BBC News push notification, one I have avoided all thought of for a long while, as much out of circumstance as necessity.

Sebastian Hale.

I freeze in the doorway—phone clutched in my hand as preciously as though it were the Rosetta stone—and look again, not quite believing I saw it right, presuming perhaps it was just wishful thinking, a long hour of screen-staring playing tricks on my eyes, that could have conjured his name before me.

But there it is. That name. Those five syllables. The six vowels and seven consonants that have held more significance for me than any word or sentence written in my entire attempted academic career.

And next to them, three words that throw my whole world off kilter, that see me reaching for the door handle and wrenching it shut, all thoughts of dinner gone from my mind:

Sebastian Hale Appeal Proceeds Tonight.

I sit at my desk, lights off, face illuminated by the white glow of my phone screen, and read someone else’s report of the story I know so well. The story I have lived. I place the phone facedown on the desk, snuffing out its light, and press my palms into the woodwork. The feel of my flesh rubbing against the desk’s smooth surface grounds me, helps me process the report—think.

I knew there had been requests for appeals over the years, all denied by the Corte d’Assise d’Appello. A change of lawyer, probably hoping that new eyes on the case could find something that was missed. But they’ve all come to nothing. How did I miss this?

If he is retried, if there is any possibility that he might be released…everything would change.

After the initial trial, after my part was done and I could finally go home and resume the life I had worked so hard to live. I tried—I really, truly tried—to put it behind me.

That was what she did, after all, and I wanted to follow her lead. I have always wanted to follow her lead. But that time has never truly left me. Sometimes, it will take the smallest thing—the light filtering through a window just so, a particular kind of humid heat, walking past a patisserie and being hit with a waft of baked vanilla sweetness—and it all comes back to me with cut-glass clarity. The sound of our laughter ricocheting off ocher-colored walls. The clink of glasses and the taste of hot weather, raw red wine. The touch of sweat-dewed skin. The scent of pine. The giddy, delightful feeling of being young and happy and having the rest of our lives spooling out in front of us.

These are the good things—the things I want to remember.

The bad things…those I have no choice but to remember.

And now, at the sight of his name alone, I am instantly transported: flying on the wings of a deep déjà vu, away from the cold late-autumn day and the dusty corners of my tired office and back, back, back to that time—that summer.

To those gold-tinged days and months that crescendoed so spectacularly into those final, onyx hours.

To the start.

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Audible | Hardcover | Paperback | Bookshop.org

Meet Lizzy Barber

Lizzy Barber studied English at Cambridge University. Having previously dabbled in acting and film development, she has spent the last ten years as head of marketing for a restaurant group. Her first novel, A Girl Named Anna, won the Daily Mail and Random House First Novel Prize. She lives in London with her family.

Connect:

Author Website

Twitter: @ByLizzyBarber

Facebook

Instagram: @ByLizzyBarber

Goodreads

Audio Spotlight & Excerpt: Emmie and the Tudor King by Natalie Murray and narrated by Shakira Shute

Publisher: Natalie Murray⎮2021

Genre: Young Adult Romance

Series: Hearts and Crowns, Book 1

Release date: Oct. 27, 2021

Synopsis: One moment, Emmie is writing her high school history paper; the next, she is lost in 16th century England, where she meets a dreamy but dangerous Tudor king who is destined for a dreadful fate.

Able to travel back to her own time but intensely drawn to King Nick and the mysterious death of his sister, Emmie finds herself solving the murder of a young princess and unravelling court secrets while trying to keep her head on her shoulders, literally. 

With everything to lose, Emmie will come to face her biggest battle of all: how to cheat the path of history and keep her irresistible king, or lose him - and her heart - forever.

Buy on Amazon | Audible | Hardcover | Paperback | Bookshop.org

About the Author: Natalie Murray

Natalie Murray is the award-winning author of Emmie and the Tudor King (2021), Emmie and the Tudor Queen (2021), and Emmie and the Tudor Throne (2022) from Midnight Tide Publishing.

A cross between Outlander and The Other Boleyn Girl, the romance trilogy follows a high school girl to a reimagined Tudor England, where she meets a doomed – but dreamy – Tudor king destined for a dreadful fate.

Emmie and the Tudor King was an award-winning finalist in the 14th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards in the New Adult Fiction category and has received acclaim from Foreword Reviews, YA Books Central, and popular authors Brigid Kemmerer (A Curse So Dark and Lonely) and CJ Flood (Infinite Sky), among others.

Website

About the Narrator: Shakira Shute

Shakira Shute is a full time audiobook narrator and voice actor and is an alumni of the internationally acclaimed National Youth Theatre of Great Britain.

In a previous life (before relocating with her family to Canada 7 years ago), Shakira was a commercial litigation lawyer in London, England. 

Shakira has had the privilege of narrating projects for Penguin Random House, Tantor Audio, Dreamscape Media, Findaway Voices, Orange Sky Audio, Audio Sorceress and East House Productions. She has also narrated books in collaboration with Oxford University Press and MIT.

She is able to perform character voices, multiple UK regional accents, as well as a general American accent.

Website

Spotlight: Circle to Paris by Linda F. Barrett

Romance / Erotic Romance

Date Published: July 5, 2022

Publisher: Elite Online Publishing

Honora Blanche Favre had it all: Beauty, Brains, Friends, Family and Riches. Until one day Life slaps her down. Hard. She becomes a pariah, a loser overnight; even her parents are ashamed of her. Napoleon Bonaparte’s revolutionary system of education created more than 100 years before Honora was born, makes her into a failure at the tender age of 18. She is powerless to change it. The belle femme is exiled forever from the only thing she has ever worked for – her education and going to a prestigious University, as all her friends are doing. In a panic, She bolts from her family and her life in Paris – escaping to the Normandy countryside. While traveling through Normandy’s ancient, spectacular places like le Bec-Hellouin and Mont Saint Michel, Honora is pulled into a cyclone of romance, intrigue, danger and personal achievement. Honora finds something deep inside of herself: courage, self-love and self-determination. She realizes there is a survivor living inside of her. A fighter. A tenacious girl that just won’t give up on herself and those she loves.

The Circle is complete when a shocking turn of events compels Honora to return to Paris – although no longer a failure, nor a burden, nor a victim. She returns triumphant and independent to face a future that she has never imagined – carrying the promise of a new life inside her, taking charge of her parent’s law firm administration and becoming the stalwart of her family, as they face accusations that could destroy everything that the Favres have worked for all their lives.

Buy on Amazon

About the Author

Linda Barrett is an international lawyer and a Texas native, with degrees in philosophy, logic, and law from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas Law School. She has practiced law for more than 40 years. Her legal work has taken her all over the globe. Linda founded the Houston BARC Foundation to initiate large scale private funding for improving the quality of care and adoption rate of abandoned animals in the city’s municipal animal shelter. She has a love for French culture and served on the American Hospital of Paris Foundation board for many years organizing the Ambassadors of the Houston American Hospital. She also co-founded the American Friends of the Marmottan Monet Museum Foundation and launched outreach programs for increasing private American funding to support the arts in France. Linda and her husband regularly spend time at their summer home, Château d’Aptot in Normandy, France, with their rescue pets, donkeys; Zebby and Presidente, and dogs; Kaiser and Kristy.

Conenct:

Website: www.lindafbarrett.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LindaFBarrett

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lindafbarrettauthor/

Spotlight: Accidentally Working Class by Karly Lane

Publication date: July 1st 2022
Genres: Adult, Chick-lit, Women’s Fiction

Synopsis:

Socialite Quinn Appleton knows how to live life—at full speed and with no limits. She has the perfect life, an amazing boyfriend, friends by the bucketload and an eye for fashion. Life is good.

The Appletons are a household name, their eponymous biscuit empire having been in the family for over one hundred and fifty years, making them one of the country’s richest families. They are no strangers to controversy either, constantly gracing the covers of gossip magazines, caught in compromising positions at outrageous parties.

But CEO and matriarch Lady Elizabeth Appleton has had enough. Tired of her children and grandchildren not pulling their weight and dragging the once respectable Appleton name through the mud, she decides to cut them all off financially.

With her life in ruins, Quinn is just one Jimmy Choo heel away from living in a cardboard box when Gran gives her an ultimatum: take a job at the company for six months and her trust fund will be reinstated. The catch? She must do it under a false identity and work her way up—no one can know she’s an Appleton.

Surely it can’t be that hard to hold down a lousy job? After all, millions of other people seem to do it. But Quinn is about to learn just how different the world is when you find yourself suddenly working class.

Excerpt

‘The company has always been the heart of this family—for generations. The Appletons were synonymous with the products we made, that’s what made it special—we had wholesome, family values. But now the only way anyone hears anything about the Appletons is in the gossip magazines.’ Gran nodded at ever-faithful Lionel, who stepped forward on cue, turning to gather a stack of magazines from the sideboard to spread out on the table.

Her brother was on some of them; his arm draped across the shoulders of a topless woman on a beach somewhere exotic on one, and standing naked in the doorway of a luxury villa on another, a huge yellow star hiding his groin (which, personally, Quinn thought was probably twice the size of whatever it was supposed to be covering).

On the other covers, Greta was captured at various parties, kissing multiple men and women on different occasions; on another, she was holding up a bottle of Scotch with one hand and flipping the bird to a photographer with the other.

Then there were the ones which featured her. Quinn grimaced slightly at the cover closest to her, having been taken after a heavy night of drinking. Of all the photos Gran could have used. She was sitting in the gutter out the front of a prominent nightclub, her top sliding off one shoulder, her skirt hitched up to an indecent level and her makeup smudged and hideous. It was unfair that even in drunken debauchery, Greta had never been caught on camera looking that horrific. Cow.

Quinn had been featured in way more magazines than that, and had actually looked fricking amazing. Typical that it would be that cover they used to highlight her wayward behaviour.

‘This is what a once respectable family name has become,’ Gran said as her gaze moved around the table.

‘Mother, I hardly—’ her father started before he was cut off by a glacial glare.

‘I blame all of you for raising such delinquent children.’

‘Just pointing out that I have no children,’ Tobias said, with a doleful glance towards his mother, ‘and can honestly say, looking at this, that I’m bitterly disappointed in my siblings and their offspring.’ He shook his head sadly at the offending magazines.

‘Oh, shut up, Tobias,’ Gran snapped, and without even needing to look at Lionel, the man dropped another three magazines on the pile, featuring her uncle in varying displays of undress at some questionable-looking parties.

‘Oh. Yes,’ Tobias murmured with a devilish grin, reaching over to snag the top one. ‘I remember that night.’ The self-satisfied smile vanished from his face when Gran reached over and snatched the magazine from his hands.

‘I will not have this family’s name dragged through any more mud. All of this nonsense stops right now. Until I’m confident that we’ve rebuilt our reputation back up to a standard we can be proud of, none of you will be getting a single cent out of this company.’

‘Mother, I think you’re blowing this all out of proportion,’ her father tried once more, but bit back a frustrated sigh when she waved off his protest.

‘You’ll be noticing several changes that will start immediately,’ she continued, just as a rumble sounded outside.

‘What on earth is that?’ Quinn’s mother asked, frowning, or what would be frowning if her recently administered Botox had allowed her forehead to crease.

Tobias dropped his linen serviette onto the table as he rose from his seat and went to the window, curiosity getting too much for him. ‘Mother, you wouldn’t,’ Tobias gasped, turning a disbelieving stare on Gran.

‘Yes, son. I would and I have.’

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Meet the Author

Karly Lane lives on the beautiful Mid North Coast of NSW in Australia. A certified small town girl, she is most happy in a little town where everyone knows who your grand parents were. She writes women’s fiction – everything from romantic suspense to family sagas and life in rural Australia. She has romantic suspense titles published under Karlene Blakemore-Mowle and her latest release, Third Time Lucky is available now.

Connect:

https://twitter.com/karlylane

https://karlylane.com.au/

https://www.instagram.com/karly_lane_author/

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100060830391410

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4736514.Karly_Lane