Spotlight: Exceptionally Unconventional by Victoria Clarke

Publication date: February 27th 2023
Genres: Adult, Historical, Historical Romance, Romance

Synopsis:

The Honorable Miss Lucilla Iverson is an exceptionally unconventional young heiress trying her best to be unexceptionally conventional despite her love of horses and racing curricles. When she attracts the attention of a hardened older bachelor, a duke, no less, it sets the ton afire with anticipation.

Many young bucks seek her approval, including a notorious (and now penniless) gamester who intends to marry Miss Iverson and her money whether or not she agrees. On an inside track for Lucilla’s attention is Oliver, Lord Hartwell, despite a near miss at running her over while driving his phaeton in the company of his cousin, the handsome and mysterious duke. Which of the three will win her heart and hand, to live happily ever after? That is the question!

Excerpt

“Miss Iverson has been quite amicable to every young man that we have presented to her all evening. Is something amiss, Lady Edevane?”

“Sharp as ever, Clementina. The boy has been toadying her for weeks and does not seem to take a hint.”

“I see!” Mrs. Drummond-Burrell replied, her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed. She did not appreciate being used as means to force a young lady’s hand and made mental note to mention this episode to her fellow patronesses at their next meeting.

In the ballroom, Miss Iverson allowed herself to be led to the floor and begrudgingly took her place. As the music began, Mr. Moore’s arm came about her waist. Her eyes glanced up at his and she fixed a withering glare upon him. He was undaunted, and indeed barely managed to conceal a smirk.

“Why do you look at me so, Lucilla?” he asked mockingly.

“I do not recall giving you leave to use my name, Mr. Moore.”

“Perhaps you did not, but we are such old friends, what is the harm in it?”

“It may not be harmful, but as it is not pleasing to my ear, I will request you not use it, if you please,” she replied witheringly as they whirled about the room.

“Whatever have I done to make you so upset, Miss Iverson?”

“Other than your underhanded effort to force me to accept a waltz with you, Mr. Moore?”

“I should think the effort was rather successful,” was his cheerful reply.

Miss Iverson’s jaw clenched. People were watching, she knew, so for quite some time she performed her steps in silence while he spoke on mundane topics and considered himself to have won the round. No one could overhear them, but anyone could surely guess she was angry at her dancing partner, and so she forced herself to fix a smile on her face as she looked up at him again.

“It is clear to me that in spite of my mother’s efforts to convince me otherwise, you are quite aware that I do not seek to encourage your familiarity.” Her words were deliberately blunt in an attempt to knock him off his perch, and it appeared to succeed, for his brow darkened momentarily. But as suddenly as it appeared, the frown vanished and he plastered a false smile on his face.

“You wound me, Miss Iverson! What have I done to draw such ire? I have surely not offended you.”

“You are well aware that your attentions offend me.”

“I am at a loss to understand why, for I am your humble servant.”

This drew her eyes up in a flash, and she said scornfully, “Indeed!”

“Have I not loved you since childhood?”

“I vividly recall your penchant for tossing spiders at me.”

“Only in my childish efforts to gain your notice, I assure you.”

“Then I suppose you were also in love with my brothers?” she replied with sarcasm ebbing in her voice.

As he paused to consider the right thing to say in reply, she suddenly pulled away from him and he realized the music had ended. She bobbed a quick and shallow curtsy before spinning on her heel and marching away. He felt irritation wash over him at her defiance. Yes, a less troublesome wife would be best. But he might enjoy breaking Miss Iverson of her spirit.

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About the Author

I am an Australian writer, traveller, and horse rider. I am a lover of all things England and history - with a healthy side of sci-fi and fantasy.

My debut novel 'Exceptionally Unconventional' was written during 2020-21 while my late mother was fighting her final battle with breast cancer. I wrote it in a largely light-hearted way in an effort to keep her spirits up during that time - several of the characters were parodied versions of her acquaintances, so I was very happy to have succeeded in that particular endeavour!

She never got to see it published, but just a few weeks after she passed away, I was offered a contract on it from one of the first publishers I submitted it to. You'll notice the dedication I chose when it finally came time to write one. 

I am currently working on my second manuscript.

Connect:

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Spotlight: Burning for the Truth by A.B. Medley

(Finding the Truth Series, #3)
Publication date: February 28th 2023
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Suspense

Synopsis:

Once the fire starts, no one is safe until the smoke clears.

He’s the one who broke her heart first, the one she can’t let go, and still always saves her when it seems all hope is lost.

He’s also her brother’s best friend and way off limits.

***

She’s the one he dreams about, the one he’s always drawn to, but the one he keeps at arm’s length..

She was meant to walk away—he made sure of it—but he can’t stop holding onto her.

Even though she’s the one woman he can never have.

***

Dean and Briella think their feelings are under control—all they’ll ever be is friends—until tragedy strikes, followed by a string of mysterious fires targeting the hearts of Greendale Valley’s police and firefighters. The aftermath pushes them apart completely, only to drive them back together as they risk burning everything down in search of justice.

Will the flame between them continue to burn, or will uncovering the truth leave nothing but ashes?

Excerpt

After telling me like it is, my big brother leaves me alone with my thoughts. I sit on the bed and stare at the familiar walls of my childhood bedroom. I thought I knew what heartbreak was once upon a time when I still resided in this room. And damn it, I thought I was stronger than this too. But it would seem this arsonist, this murderer, took away everything…including knowing who the hell I am. 

I stand and push my shoulders back, new determination in my spine. As I head toward the patio again, I mumble to myself, “Make this right with Dean, Briella Brigg, or you won’t be able to look yourself in the eye.”

“Are you Dean’s girlfriend?” A voice startles me as I’m reaching for the doorknob. I turn quickly and find the same blonde I saw with him earlier staring at me.

“Um, who are you?” I ask quickly. I’m annoyed someone snuck up on me and irritated a perfect stranger has the audacity to ask me such a personal question. 

“I’m sorry, I’m Chelsea. I was one of Dean’s nurses in the hospital. We’ve kept in touch, and I’ve really started to care about him. But he seems…unavailable. I sort of thought he might have feelings for someone else even though he said he didn’t have a girlfriend, and I thought that someone might be you. Maybe you’re his ex, and he still has feelings for you?” she tries again, seemingly intent on pursuing him if she can get the all clear from me.

“Why would you think that? You don’t even know me,” I return sharply.

“No, but I saw the way he looked at you when you got here,” she adds with a raised brow.

“And how exactly was that?” I ask, because I saw panic in his eyes—or maybe guilt that I saw him able to be happy while I’m clearly doomed never to be.

She smiles sadly before answering. “Like you were the only person in the world.”

It takes me aback. “No, you’ve got it all wrong. Dean and I are friends. I’ve known him almost my entire life. He’s my brother’s best friend. We’re going through some complicated…stuff.” It’s all I can bring myself to say.

She blinks at me. “I see. Well, forgive me. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t stepping on anyone’s toes if I asked him out.”

Oh, it’s like that. “Nope, no toes to step on here.” I smile through clenched teeth. This girl seems nice, so I don’t know why this is irritating me so badly. And if Dean can find some way to be happy after what we’re all dealing with, more power to him.

She smiles again. “Good to know.” 

She walks out the door leaving me standing there alone and speechless. She seems nice enough, harmless even, so why did it feel like some sort of challenge?  

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About the Author

A.B. Medley lives in Tennessee with the love of her life and two sons. Her husband stole her heart when she was sixteen and their relationship is one of those meant to be love stories you find in magazines and novels.

She is a dental hygienist who loves to read and has always dabbled in writing. When she's not making people's smiles shine, she enjoys belting out songs with her boys, dancing, raspberries, baseball, and anything vintage. Like any proper Tennessean, Sundrop is her drink of choice.

She loves her family and friends fiercely and believes in always chasing your dreams.

Deception in the Truth is her debut novel—but now she's hooked, and there's more to come!

Connect:

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Spotlight: More Than Pizza by Christine DePetrillo

Genre: Small Town Romance 

About More Than Pizza: 

Pumpkin pie and cinnamon had always been Dax’s favorite autumn smells. Not death and regret.

Detective Daxton Wilder only wants one thing—to see Boston mob boss Richard DiNoble behind bars. After spending time undercover in DiNoble’s organization, Dax is close to reaching his goal. Only DiNoble is a step ahead. When Dax wakes up, he has two bullet holes in him from the mob boss, and his twin brother, Harris, has dumped him at Liberty Hill Nursing Home. Pissed at the bucket of suck his life has become, Dax vows to get out of Liberty Hill as fast as he can.

Until his physical therapist walks in.

Shaylee Keene, Liberty Hill’s top physical therapist, can only charm men eighty and older. That much is clear. Her last boyfriend delivered the painful news that he wasn’t attracted to her anymore. Out of the blue. As if it had just occurred to him one morning that she no longer satisfied him. What if she couldn’t satisfy any man? What if she was destined to be alone forever? What if no one ever wanted her?

Now she has a new patient.

As Shaylee works with Dax and the pair tries to avoid DiNoble’s revenge, they find that nothing mends a broken body—and lonely hearts—like falling in love.

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About the Author

Christine DePetrillo can often be found hugging trees, conversing with dragonflies, and walking barefoot through sun-warmed soil. She finds joy in listening to the wind, bathing in moonlight, and breathing in the fragrances of things that bloom. If she had her way, the sky would be the only roof over her head.

Her love of nature seeps into every story she tells. As does her obsession with bearded mountain men who build, often smell like sawdust, and know how to cherish the women they love. Today she writes tales meant to make you laugh, maybe make you sweat, and definitely make you believe in the power of love.

She lives in Vermont with her husband and many woodland creatures who defend her fiercely from all evils.

Connect with the Author: Website | Newsletter | Bookbub | Goodreads | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Tiktok

Spotlight: Trafalgar: The Fog of War by Seth Hunter

“All I need is three days of fog,” Napoleon told his admirals, and they would have his greatest enemy at their mercy and the world at his feet.

Based on the writer’s factual research for the Channel Four epic ‘Nelson’s Trafalgar’, this is the story not only of the battle itself but of the extraordinary events that preceded it.   

The story begins with the involvement of a British sloop of war, crewed largely by Liverpool seafarers, to land royalist agents on the coast of Normandy, charged with the kidnap, or assassination, of Napoleon Bonaparte – a black op directed by the former Prime Minister William Pitt which was a prime cause of what we now call the Napoleonic Wars.

Excerpt

TRAFALGAR

A Nathan Peake story

Prologue: Step by step

It was his recurring nightmare when he was in the prison in Paris. Being on the wrong side in a battle. The wrong flags, the wrong songs, the wrong uniforms.

He saw them through an arc of fire as he sharpened the blades on the spinning stone. The blue-coated soldiers of the French Army marching up and down the decks, to the sound of fife and drum.   Rantan-a-tan-rantan. Rantan-a-tan-rantan… The French call to arms – La Génèrale.

He could hear I repeated across the water on the other ships, the long, rambling forest of oak and pine stretching over several miles of ocean, and the rumble and squeak of iron on wood as they rolled out the guns. He looked across at Mr Banjo on the neighbouring grindstone and shook his head. ‘How did we get here?’

Allons enfants de la Patrie, 

Le jour de gloire est arrivé!

He remembered the first time he heard it, in Paris during the Terror, just before they had tried to string him up from a lamppost. Death as close then as it was now, perhaps even closer.  He’d had his flute with him, and when they took the rope from around his neck, they gave it back to him and he played them a tune - Yankee Doodle, because they thought he was an American then, too.  As they did now.

Yankee Doodle keep it up, Yankee Doodle dandy,

Mind the music and the step, and with the girls be handy.

He supposed that was where it had begun. Paris at the time of the Terror. The danger and the deceit, the seductive lure of living with both, and the fear. But it could have been earlier, keeping watch for the smugglers on the hills above the Cuckmere.   

‘You should be ashamed of yourself, boy, and your father a magistrate.’

Another memory. Of his mother and father having one of their furious rows when he was a child – about him, their lives together, their incompatible politics… or all three? His father with his head in his hands plaintively asking: ‘How did we get here?’ And his mother’s grim reply: ‘Step by step’.

They say your whole life flashes before you when you are drowning.

‘To dangerous liaisons, sir. Where would we be without them?’

That would be Sir Sidney Smith in the Ship Inn at Falmouth.  Mephistopheles to his bemused Faust, flushed and jolly over a bowl of punch, with the snow on the hills and the wind from the north-east filled with chips of ice, like the splintered bones of dead armies.  

‘Oh, we are going to kidnap Bonaparte, did I not tell you?’

Well, we know how that ended. For some, at least. And now here he was, sharpening blades for the emperor’s soldiers so they could conquer Britain.

‘Three days of fog, that is all we need, and England will be ours.’

That would be the emperor himself, in the rose garden at Malmaison. Three days of fog. Not a lot to ask for in the English Channel in October.

No fog here, though. Clear blue skies, perfect weather for a battle – if only there was a bit more wind. He looked out across the deck, out to sea through the sparks of the spinning wheel and saw the English ships in the distance bearing down on them. More creeping than bearing, perhaps, so painfully slow, even under a full press of sail. There would be singing there, too.

Heart of Oak are our ships,
Jolly Tars are our men,
We always are ready: 

Steady, boys, Steady!

He should be singing with them.  Not here, sharpening swords for the enemy.

‘Merci, monsieur.’

‘Mon Plaisir, monsieur.’

Now they were lining up to climb into the rigging.  The grenadiers and the sharpshooters, the voltigeurs and tirailleurs.  All those weeks of training in Cadiz, throwing their grenadoes and firepots, shooting at the cutouts of the officers at the taffrail.

And there was the sergeant from Naples, waiting his turn. Antonio Scillato.  The man they called Lo Spettro, the ghost, the revenant.  The man who was already dead.

Nathan watched him climbing the ratlines into the fighting tops with his musket slung by a strap at his shoulder. Hand over hand.   Step by step.

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About the Author

Seth Hunter is the pen name of British writer Paul Bryers, the author of the Nathan Peake series of naval adventures set against the canvas of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars.  Bryers was born in Liverpool and attended Quarry Bank school before taking a degree in modern history, politics and economics at Southampton University and then embarking on a career as a journalist for the Daily Mirror, a television reporter and then a writer, producer and director of many television dramas and documentaries.  He has won an English Arts Council award for Best First Novel, an outstanding achievement award at the New York Film Festival for his PBS series ‘Queen Victoria’s Empire’ and has been nominated for Bafta and Grierson awards for docudramas such as The Line in the BBC2 series ‘Seven Wonders of the Industrial World’ and Channel Four’s Nelson’s Trafalgar.

Spotlight: Breaking All the Rules by Amy Andrews

Sometimes you gotta toss your whole life into a burning dumpster to find what’s most important...

Beatrice Archer has always done everything she’s supposed to ―worked her ass off, ignored her non-existent personal life, and kept her mouth shut. Now she’s over it. The rat race, respectability…the underwire bras. She’s taking her life back. Starting with moving to Nowhere, Colorado to live life on her own terms.

Now Bea gives exactly zero forks. Beer for breakfast. Sugar for everything else. Baggy sweats and soft cotton undies FTW. Then a much younger and delightfully attractive cop is called to deal with her flagrant disregard for appropriate clothing outside the local diner (some folks just don’t appreciate bunny slippers) and Bea realizes there’s something missing from her little decathlon of decadence…and he might be the guy to help her out.

When it comes to breaking rules, Officer Austin Cooper is surprisingly eager to assist. He’s charming, a little bit cowboy, and a whole lot sexy. But Bea’s about to discover that breaking the rules has consequences. And all of the cherry pies in Colorado can’t save her from what’s coming…

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About the Author

Amy Andrews is an award-winning, USA Today bestselling, triple RITA®–nominated Aussie author who has written eighty-plus contemporary romances in both the traditional and digital markets. She lives in a sleepy seaside town with her husband of thirty-one years. Visit her online at amyandrews.com.au

Cover Reveal: How To Rope A Ruthless Cowboy by Anya Summers

Publication date: March 28th 2023
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Synopsis:

Retired Navy Seal Medic and notorious womanizer Matt indulges his savior complex by moonlighting with Search and Rescue. This winter is shaping up to be a doozy, with weathermen warning of the upcoming snowstorm of the century, and sending Matt’s team into high alert.

When a call comes in, Matt’s the only one available to rescue the foolish woman who got her ass stuck on a mountain in the middle of an epic storm. He’s ready to tear a strip off her for heading into the back country unprepared.

But nothing could have prepared him for Kristy. She’s achingly beautiful, with fire in her eyes – and a death wish. Matt can’t deny his attraction to the sexy spitfire, but he vowed never to get involved with anyone this helpless ever again.

Trapped together in a remote cabin until the storm clears, and against his better judgment, Matt caves to the magnetic desire between them, never expecting that, instead of slaking his lust, their encounter will only leave him wanting more.

And when Kristy winds up needing once again to be rescued, can Matt save her, or will history repeat itself, ripping her violently out of his life forever?

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About the Author

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Anya 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 Anya never did get that doctorate, she graduated cum laude from the University of Missouri-St. Louis with an M.A. in History.

Anya is a bestselling and award-winning author published in multiple fiction genres. She also writes urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and contemporary romance under the name Maggie Mae Gallagher. 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 Midwest with her two furry felines.

Connect:

Website: www.anyasummers.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AnyaSummersAuthor

Twitter: @AnyaBSummers https://twitter.com/anyabsummers?lang=en

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