Spotlight: The Lost Man by A.S. Kelly

(From Connemara With Love, #6)
Publication date: May 3rd 2023
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Synopsis:

I left at dawn on a rainy day.
I left as he slept, believing that he’d still find me in his arms when he woke up. I left, taking everything I’d promised him. I took it all, and neither of us would ever have it again.
I left, turning my back on everything I knew, believing I could never be part of it.
I left the man who loved me, the family who raised me. I left my home, my roots, my dreams. I left my whole life behind in search of a past that was never mine. I hurt everyone who loved me, and broke him into so many pieces that I know I’ll never deserve his forgiveness.
But I’m here, now, trying to rebuild everything I’ve destroyed. I’m trying to find what I thought I’d lost. And although he says that he’ll never be the same, though he says that there’s nothing left of him, I can’t abandon him again. I can’t say goodbye to us.
They say that you always find your way back to happiness, but I’ve found my way back to the only place I’ve ever felt at home.
I’ve found my way back to him.

Excerpt

“What are you watching?”
Noel turns his head slowly. I’m glad I thought to bring a set of keys out with me – he wouldn’t have heard me knocking, didn’t even hear me come into the room.
“You’re back.”
I walk over to him and sit beside him. “Of course I came back. Did you think I wouldn’t?”
He shakes his head a little, his eyes roaming back to the TV.
“Have you eaten?”
“I can’t remember… I think so…”
I force myself to smile, stroking his beard.
“Do you want me to make you something?”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“How about tea and biscuits? I’m going to make some for myself.”
He looks at me and flashes me a weak smile, which feels a little like hope; like the sun peeking through thick cloud.
“There are still some shortbread biscuits in the tin on the counter. I made them this morning.”
“You sure know how to make a woman happy,” I say, pressing my lips lightly against his before heading through to the kitchen to make us both some tea.
When I come back into the living room, I place the tray of tea and biscuits down on the coffee table and sink onto the sofa beside Noel. I drape the blanket over us both and squeeze him, my hand on his arm and my head on his shoulder.
You can’t abandon someone you love just because they’re not the same person you met a long time ago.
You can’t abandon someone you love just because they can’t find the way back home.
You can’t abandon someone you love just because they no longer love themselves.
“You have no idea how glad I am that you’re here,” he whispers, his voice uncertain, emotion caught up in his words, his breath.
“I’m home, Noel. With you.”
He lifts his arm and wraps it around me; I snuggle against his body and inhale his familiar scent. It reminds me that, in spite of everything, he’s still here, with me.

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About the Author

A. S. Kelly writes Rom-Com, Romantic Fiction and Family Saga.
Avid reader, hopeless romantic, lover of yoga, knitting and home baking.
She was born in Italy but lives in Ireland with her husband, two children and a cat named Oscar.

Connect:
https://www.authoraskelly.com/
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https://twitter.com/askelly_writes
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21195166.A_S_Kelly
Newsletter: authoraskelly.com

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Cover Reveal: A Guise of the Sea by Jenna Mandarino

Publication date: August 1st 2023
Genres: Adult, Historical, Women’s Fiction

Synopsis:

Embark on a High-Stakes Adventure in "A Guise of the Sea" - A Swashbuckling Tale of Love, Betrayal, and Redemption

In a world of deception and danger, Emme Clark must unravel the mysteries of her past and navigate the treacherous waters of love, all while facing a deadly adversary with secrets of his own.

A Desperate Quest for the Truth

When Emme Clark's husband mysteriously vanishes, she must obtain proof of his death to secure her future. But with no record of his demise, she has no choice but to follow him across the ocean by joining the crew of the privateering ship, the Bluebell. Under the command of the enigmatic Highlander-turned-privateer Captain Xander Lock, Emme must disguise herself as a man to avoid attracting attention from the British Crown.

A Dangerous Alliance

As Emme bears witness to a brutal murder committed by the ruthless Commodore Cobbe, she learns that Captain Lock has been hunted by Cobbe ever since the Battle of Culloden. In a daring gamble, Emme and Lock form an uneasy alliance, posing as betrothed lovers to get close to their common enemy. But their plans take an unexpected turn when Cobbe forces them into a marriage, leaving Emme with her proof of death but a new husband in tow.

A Love Unforeseen

As Emme and Lock navigate their unexpected union, they find themselves drawn to each other in ways they never imagined. But their newfound love is tested when they uncover a sinister plot involving missing soldiers from Emme's late husband's ship and the enigmatic Oak Island. As dark secrets come to light, Emme must solve the mystery of Oak Island or risk losing the love of her life forever.

Set sail with "A Guise of the Sea" and join Emme and Lock on a thrilling journey filled with danger, intrigue, and the power of unexpected love.

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About the Author

Jenna Mandarino (JM) is a historical and fantasy women's fiction writer usually incorporating romance and your favorite tropes. She is a freelance content editor having formerly worked at small publishing houses. By day, she is a Teacher on Assignment and specializes in behavior interventions and is attending school for her Doctorate in Education. She lives in Southern California where she can often be found drinking champagne, cooking, speaking French, trying a new TikTok organization method, and with her husband chasing after her two sons.

Connect:

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Spotlight: Over the Fence by Debbie Schrack

Publication date: May 2nd 2023
Genres: Suspense, Young Adult

Synopsis:

Kidnapped from her front yard in Oklahoma eleven years ago, seventeen-year old Eve Anderson lives a wretched existence in Bell Meade, Minnesota with her abductor, “Papa,” his common-law wife “Mama,” and Honey, Eve’s four-year-old daughter with Papa. Papa keeps the family hidden behind locked doors, boarded-up windows, and an eight-foot tall fence that surrounds their backyard.

Emma Love, also seventeen, recently moved to Bell Meade with her Aunt Vi to take care of her big sister Noelle, who’s in a vegetative state after being savagely beaten by her boyfriend, Jack Armstrong. He is charged with grievous bodily harm, but Emma worries that the popularity and influence of the Armstrong family will keep Noelle from getting the justice she deserves.

When Eve and Emma start talking through the fence that adjoins their backyards, they soon form a connection. Emma finds it comforting to talk to Eve about Noelle, and Eve sees parallels between Noelle’s situation and her own. She acts as Emma’s confidant, but does not reveal her own secrets, for fear of Papa’s wrath if he finds out.

But when Papa decides to marry Eve and move the family to an isolated farmhouse, Eve must risk everything to save herself and Honey. Will she have the courage to escape from Papa before it’s too late? And will Emma have the strength to help her new friend, even as she struggles to save her own sister? 

Excerpt

Emma

Noelle is on the fifth floor, in the Traumatic Brain Injury Unit. Before we enter her room, I close my eyes and say a little prayer. Please, God, bring Noelle back to me today…But it takes less than a second for the hope in my heart to sputter out like the air in a deflating balloon. Because today is no different than yesterday or the day before. Noelle’s lying on her back in bed, propped up by pillows, in exactly the same position she was when we left last night. Her eyes are open and fixed on the ceiling.

Aunt Vi goes to her first, murmuring in her ear and fussing with the blankets on the bed. She picks up Noelle’s chart. Her eyes skim over the top page, like maybe she’s an MD and not an archeologist. 

“I’ll just find a vase for these flowers,” she says, setting down the chart and brushing past me, tears in her eyes.

I take a deep breath and approach the bed.

“Hi, Sis,” I say. I do my best to make my voice cheery and bright, but the bile in my throat adds a sharpness to it. I take Noelle’s hands and squeeze them, wishing with all my heart that she would squeeze back. But her hands, the ones that used to fly across piano keys like they were possessed by Mozart’s spirit, are lifeless.

I sit down in a chair close to the bed and start strumming my guitar. If anything can wake Noelle, it’s music. I watch her face as I play, searching for awakening in her eyes, a hint of something besides blankness. She’s still so beautiful. The bruises have faded away. On the outside, she’s herself again, just less alive, like someone put her in a copy machine. The blonde highlights in her hair are almost grown out now. Her sun-freckled skin has gone pale. She has the same brown eyes with the same thick lashes. I’ve always envied those lashes. Now I just wish those eyes would look at me again, that she would smile or laugh…

“How can I ever say goodbye to you…”

Aunt Vi comes back in the room, followed by Dr. Massey. I stop playing.

“They did another MRI this morning,” she says.

My eyes raise to Dr. Massey’s. He’s an older man with sharp but kind eyes, cropped white hair and a beard that goes halfway down his chest. He reminds me of a skinny Santa Claus, except he brings devastating news instead of presents. He shakes his head. Disappointment punches me in the gut, but I ignore it. Noelle needs me to be strong for her. For us.

I stand up and face Dr. Massey, hands on hips. “Okay,” I say. “What now?”

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About the Author

Debbie Schrack is the author of SAVING SOPHIE, a young adult contemporary romance, which won the 2022 Paris Book Award for young adult fiction. She is also the winner of the SCBWI Haunted States of America contest for the state of Virginia. A former teacher, she lives in Fairfax, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. When she’s not conjuring dark and twisty plots or hanging out with her family, you can find her riding her horse or poring over travel brochures, ready to check off another box on her bucket list of travel adventures. You can follow Debbie on Facebook or Twitter @debbie_schrack or contact her through her website debbieschrackbooks.com.

Connect:

https://www.debbieschrackbooks.com/

https://www.facebook.com/debbie.schrack.7

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Spotlight: Hacker In Love by Lauren Rowe

Release Date: May 5

Secrets. Everybody’s got ‘em, including me. Especially me.

The difference is mine will never be revealed, whereas I can easily get yours, assuming the price offered by your enemy is right and the scales of justice appeal to my personal standards of ethics. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. The thing that’s not so easy for a shy guy like me? Finding Ms. Right and locking her down.

Speaking of Ms. Right, the very night I was set up with Hannah Milliken by our mutual friend, I knew I’d one day kneel before her with a ring in hand. Hannah’s the kind of girl who’ll gleefully dance like a gorilla with me in the coolest nightclub or belt out a karaoke duet from Grease like her very life depends on it. She’s gorgeous, too. Funny and smart. And she even wears librarian glasses. See? Perfect.

I don’t doubt Hannah’s the one for me. Indubitably, she is. I only wonder how a dork like me could possibly land a goddess like her.

Unfortunately, when catastrophe strikes, all my questions are rendered moot. Now that Hannah knows the truth about me not actually working in cybersecurity—as well as the questionable things I’ve done to win her over—will I lose my dream girl forever, or is there still a chance for us to chase our happily ever after?

Hacker in Love is a steamy, funny, heart-pounding, standalone contemporary romance with a whole lot of feels, laughs, spice, and swoons by USA Today and internationally bestselling romance author Lauren Rowe.

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About the Author

Lauren Rowe is the USA Today and international #1 best-selling author of bestselling Standalone Smitten, The Reed Rivers Trilogy, as well as The Club Trilogy, The Josh & Kat Trilogy, The Morgan Brothers Series, Countdown to Killing Kurtis, and select standalone Misadventures. 

Lauren's books are full of feels, humor, heat, and heart. Besides writing novels, Lauren is the singer in a party/wedding band in her hometown of San Diego, an audio book narrator, and award-winning songwriter. She is thrilled to connect with readers all over the world. 

To find out about Lauren’s upcoming releases and giveaways, sign up for Lauren’s emails here!

To learn more about Lauren Rowe & her books, visit here!

Connect with Lauren Rowe: lrowebooks@gmail.com

Spotlight: No Life for a Lady by Hannah Dolby

Read the most uplifting historical debut of 2023! Perfect for fans of Dear Mrs Bird, The Maid and Lessons in Chemistry.

Violet Hamilton is a woman who knows her own mind. Which, in 1896, can make things a little complicated...

At 28, Violet's father is beginning to worry she will never find a husband. But every suitor he presents, Violet finds a new and inventive means of rebuffing.

Because Violet doesnotwant to marry. She wants to work, and make her own way in the world. But more than anything, she wants to find her mother Lily, who disappeared from Hastings Pier 10 years earlier.

Finding the missing isnojob for alady, but when Violet hires a seaside detective to help, she sets off a chain of events that will put more than just her reputation at risk.

Can Violet solve the mystery of Lily Hamilton's vanishing before it's too late?" 

Excerpt

We lived in a detached red-brick house in St Matthew’s Gardens, one of the many new houses that had sprung up in the town over the last half-century. The bricks were bright red-orange, untrammelled by the blackness of city smog, and it had a dark green front door with stained-glass panels on each side. We had moved here when I was ten, and I had loved it, in the early years. My mother had liked to cover any available surface with ornaments, vases, coloured lamps, family photographs, candlesticks; she had draped our furniture and our mantlepiece with bright fabrics that brought cheer to the rooms. A year or so after she disappeared, my father had arranged for many of these reminders to be packed away in the attic. He had replaced some of them with keepsakes from relatives I had never known: footstools and faded antimacassars woven by longdead great-aunts; his grandmother’s Staffordshire pottery dogs; photographs of his grandfather, who by all accounts had been a terror. But some of the shelves and surfaces stayed bare, and the atmosphere of cluttered cosiness was gone. 

At breakfast the next day I faced a wall of newspaper, as I had for approximately the past ten years. Today it felt more than usually annoying. 

I was a lady. I would be ladylike and rise above it. I straightened in my chair, taking a deep breath. I was an elderly spinster, patient with my lot and with the foibles of others. I was a woman, nurturing, caring. Accepting. My only goal was to foster a happy, contented home. 

I hit the edge of the teaspoon I was toying with too hard with the edge of my thumb, and it flew across the table and collided with the back of my father’s newspaper with a sharp thwack. 

He jumped and lowered the paper. 

‘Stop it, Violet,’ he said.

‘I thought perhaps we could have a conversation,’ I said. ‘It has become a habit, your reading, but perhaps it might be pleasant to talk today?’

He raised the paper again. ‘I need to know what is happening in the world. Am I not to be allowed a moment of peace? You will get your chance when I am done.’ 

The Hastings Observer would give him a narrow view. ‘You did not read when Mother was here,’ I said. She had not let him, but it did not seem wise to raise that. He must have found it joyous and freeing to take up reading the paper after my mother had disappeared. But now we were chained deep within the dullness of his habit, and I hated habits. If I had a choice, people would be forced to do new and different things every single day.

He lowered the paper briefly and looked at me with a weary patience, as if I was a sack of rocks he was dragging around. 

‘I have told you, I do not want that woman mentioned in this house,’ he said. He folded up the paper so that he could hold it one-handed, and then forked his breakfast into his mouth. My mother would have said it was very rude and American. 

Breakfast was eggs and kippers. I also disliked kippers, at every time of day, but especially at breakfast. It was a miserable end for a herring. I thought they should all live out a long and happy life at sea, unsmoked. 

Eventually he finished eating, folded up his paper and dropped it beside his plate. 

‘What will you do today?’ he asked, rising. ‘My kippers were a little dry, by the way. Best raise it with…’ He made a slight vague circular gesture with his hand. ‘I have a busy day, and I may be back late. But in time for dinner.’ And he was gone, out of the door, off to his manly, worldly business at the bank. 

‘Today, I will mostly be…’ I said to the air. ‘Today, I will mostly be…’ I stopped and rested the heels of my hands against my eyes for a second. I was not crying. I just needed to rest my eyes.

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Hannah Dolby's first job was in the circus and she has aimed to keep life as interesting since. She trained as a journalist in Hastings and has worked in PR for many years, promoting museums, galleries, palaces, gardens and even Dolly the sheep. She completed the Curtis Brown selective three-month novel writing course, and she won runner-up in the Comedy Women in Print Awards for this novel with the prize of a place on an MA in Comedy Writing at the University of Falmouth. She currently lives in London. You can follow Hannah on Twitter @LadyDolby

Spotlight: Stay For Me by Tam DeRudder Jackson

(The Balefire Series, #5)
Publication date: April 27th 2023
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Synopsis:

Garrett

I’ve made a few mistakes over the last decade, but the one I regret most was letting Olivia Carter go. When I see her again, the past crashes over me, reminding of everything I ever wanted and gave up when I let our dreams separate us.

Managing Balefire into the world’s biggest rock band came at a personal cost—walking away from my only love. When fate brings her back into my life, I’m determined not to screw up again. After Balefire hires her studio to produce their next music video, I have a second chance to rewrite our song—if I can convince her I’m a changed man.

Olivia

Ten years ago, Garrett Phillips chose to go with “his boys” and leave me in the dust of a ratty old tour bus. Now I’m working my ass off to make a name for myself as a Hollywood music video director. Unfortunately, my fledgling studio is bleeding money, and my only hope of saving it is to make a video with the biggest rock band on the planet. Too bad that means working with the man who tore my heart out of my chest when he chose his rock ’n’ roll dream over me.

He says he’s grown up. He says we can make things work. But can I truly trust that this time he will stay for me?

Excerpt

Garrett’s nostrils flared, and he shifted on his stool. His eyes remained locked on mine as he slid his headphones from his head and set them aside. Cursing the tiny tremor in my hands, I removed my headphones and set them somewhere on the control board beside me.

“Olivia.”

My name on his lips rasped over me like calloused hands over my skin. Involuntary shivers rippled through me, and I clamped my thighs even tighter together.

I stopped whatever he wanted to say next with my finger pressed to his full lips. For a long moment, neither of us moved. Then he reached up and smoothed his fingers up my palm and higher along the length of my fingers. His eyes dipped to our hands. Though we barely touched, sensations like electric currents sparked every nerve, beginning in my hand and arcing up my arm to trip my heart nearly into arrhythmia. My breath caught as he slid his fingers through mine, up and down, up and down, before he twined our hands together with a gentle squeeze. I closed my eyes and worked to find some air.

Buy on Amazon | Bookshop.org

About the Author

Tam DeRudder Jackson's love of all things Celtic led her to write the Talisman Series. Steeped in Celtic mythology, these steamy, fated mates, paranormal romance adventures are set in the mountains of Tam’s native Montana and the Highlands of Scotland. Rogue, the most recent book in the series, was named a best romance of 2022 by the Independent Book Review.

An avid fan of rock music, Tam never misses a chance to see a live show, especially if it’s Shinedown, one of her favorite bands. Her love of rock music inspired her contemporary rock star Balefire Series, a sexy fun ride following the lives and loves of the members of a fictional mega-band. Readers of this series consistently give the books five-star reviews.

Tam earned her BA in English from Montana State University and her M.Ed. in literacy from Lesley University. After a short teaching stint in Bath, England, she settled in the wilds of Wyoming where she taught adolescents all about the Celts and a bit about writing before she stepped out of the classroom to pursue her writing career full time. 

When she’s not writing, you can find her working her way through her mountainous TBR piles, alpine skiing, or traveling to some new place on her ever-expanding bucket list. To stay up to date on her adventures, connect with Tam on her website www.tamderudderjackson where you can subscribe to her newsletter.

Connect:

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https://www.instagram.com/tamstales32/

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