Spotlight: Andy and the Extroverts by Jessica K. Foster

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Genre: YA Contemporary Sweet Romance

Seventeen-year-old bookish Andy has no friends. When her over-involved mother has the audacity to ship her off to summer leadership camp, she's thrust into an introvert's nightmare. Everyone is a Communicator with a capital C, icebreaker activities are scheduled into every waking moment, and horror of all horrors: there's no coffee. Even the girls who take her under their wing are the kind of self-assured people Andy could never dream of becoming.

Then she meets Lucas—hot, attentive, and everything Andy reads about in her books. Though the girls in her cottage try to warn her about him, she's swept into the first romance of her life. But when she discovers her friends may be right, she'll have to find her inner confidence to save her summer and become the leader she was always meant to be.

Excerpt

“Okay, campers!” Suzie screeched the second we got back to the cottage.

It was like doomsday every time she used that phrase because right after it, she’d announce the next stupid activity and expect everyone to be excited about it.

“It’s time for the next awesome leadership activity! I know you’ve been enjoying them so far, but you’re really going to like this one.” She gave an exaggerated wink. Wait. That meant…

“We’re going to do this with our male counterparts, Beavers, so pair on up so we can get started.”

Pair? I looked to Paige helplessly, but she was already out the door. I sighed and followed her to where the Hippo cottage stood outside waiting for us. How did they get here so fast? Even more alarming was how fast everyone broke off into pairs. My hands tingled as Marshall sidled up next to Paige. I craned my neck and looked for Emma.

“Good thing I’ve forgiven you,” Lucas said as he walked toward me. “Or this might be awkward.”

I rolled my eyes. Like it was so hard to get pushed off a dock when you had the skills of a gold medal swimmer. I raised my eyebrows, but he didn’t say any more. Unlike me, he focused his attention on the instructions Tyler gave the group.

“…so choose who the person with the blindfold will be and who will give directions. We’ll start once you’ve got it sorted out.”

I peeked between Lucas and Paige and held back a groan when the course came into view. A grove of trees spanned the area in front of us, and pieces of red tape were strung between their wide trunks like trip wires. Stumps littered the ground. I’d seen this before on reality television. Minefield. One of us would have to be all yelly and tell the other one to go right or left or whatever to get through an obstacle course.

“What do you want to be?” Lucas asked like I had a choice. I couldn’t yell for crap, so it looked like I’d have to trust him not to kill me.

“Blindfolded.”

He frowned. “What?”

I snatched the red bandana from his hand with a scowl. I wasn’t talking that quietly.

“Oh, okay.” He smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

No, he wouldn’t. He’d be yelling at me every step of the way.

“Now, remember,” Suzie chirped as I struggled to tie the bandana around my eyes. “You can be next to your partner, but don’t touch the unless they look like their about to fall. This is a trust exercise. It’s also an exercise in giving clear, concise directions. Learn how to be the kind of leader who knows how to follow. Don’t peek!” She giggled.

Lucas brushed my hands away when the bandana came undone an tied it snugly around my eyes. He pushed the folds into layers until it blacked out everything.

“Good?” he asked.

If good meant helpless, then yes. I should’ve chosen to be his voice if partners could walk with each other the whole way—too late now.

I nodded.

“Okay, partners,” Tyler shouted, “the goal is to get them around—that—and back to your starting positions. It isn’t a race. It’s about finishing. Good luck! And go!”

“Okay, walk ten steps forward and then stop.” Lucas’s hot breath on my neck made my heartbeat triple. This was such a bad idea. A very sexy, very bad idea.

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About the Author

Jessica K. Foster writes funny, heartfelt Young Adult Contemporary fiction with a dash of romance. She is a middle school Language Arts teacher with a penchant for hot tea and romantic beach reads. Jessica lives in West Michigan with her husband, two boys, and their ragtag crew of rescue animals.

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Spotlight: A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams

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In this enchanting love story from the New York Times bestselling author of Seven Days in June, a free-spirited florist and an enigmatic musician are irreversibly linked through the history, art, and magic of Harlem.

Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing.

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn’t one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she’s the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they’re long-stemmed roses, she’s a dandelion: an adorable bloom that’s actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her.

When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her family, wealth, and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. And just beneath the surface of her new neighborhood, the music, stories and dazzling drama of the Harlem Renaissance still simmers.

One evening in February as the heady, curiously off-season scent of night-blooming jasmine fills the air, Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.

Set against the backdrop of modern Harlem and Renaissance glamour, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde is a swoon-worthy love story of two passionate artists drawn to the magic, romance, and opportunity of New York, and whose lives are uniquely and irreversibly linked.

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Endless Encore Audiobook by Kaylene Winter

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"I’ve made promises I’m struggling to keep."
Because my past is too dark and painful.
Zoey is everything to me, my beautiful soulmate.
I can’t bear for her to think I’m broken.
But pressure’s building and I’m losing control .

"My life with Ty is idyllic."
This past year has been everything I dreamed about and more.
It’s just—I can’t shake this feeling.
Something’s going on with my fiancé.
I can’t help but wonder, is he hiding something from me?
Will his past demons prevent our perfect future?

Happily ever after can mean so many things.
Life happens.
Faith is tested.
Will Ty & Zoey survive the biggest challenge of their lives?
Is the deepest love ENDLESS?

ENDLESS: ENCORE is Book 5 in the Less Than Zero Rockstar Romance Series, and is the sequel to ENDLESS.

It is strongly recommended you read Books 1-4 before reading any of the “ENCORE” sequels, otherwise you will be spoiled!

Grab Your Copy! https://getbook.at/EndlessEncore

About the Author

Kaylene Winter is an Amazon best-selling author of steamy, contemporary romance.

Each character-driven novel is filled with snappy dialogue, pop-culture references and enough steam to make you fan yourself. Kaylene weaves authenticity, emotion and angst into a turbulent rollercoaster ride of love, passion and soul-searing romance always ending with a delicious HEA.

Kaylene lives in Seattle with her amazing Irish husband and gorgeous Siberian Husky. She loves creating art of all kinds.

Keep up with Kaylene and subscribe to her newsletter: https://kaylenewinter.com/newsletter/

To learn more about Kaylene Winter & her books, visit here!

Connect with Kaylene Winter: https://kaylenewinter.com/contact/

Spotlight: Sex Romp Gone Wrong by Julia Ridley Smith

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In her debut story collection, Julia Ridley Smith navigates the currents and eddies of desire, sex, love, and relationships.

These twelve highly accomplished stories are witty and accessible, intelligent and thought-provoking. A girls' week at the beach prompts hot tub drinking, awkward confessions, and a poignant reconsideration of friendship. A caregiver extracts a small repayment from her elderly patient for his long-forgotten role in the demise of her family. A young woman, new to New York City, finds herself in a complex but tacky love affair and reckons with the unfolding plot of her life. In the title story, a woman plots to conceive a second child while at a convention hotel with her husband and teenage daughter, both of whom have other plans. Smith’s stories will beguile and delight readers while at the same time exploring the deep and often difficult ties of family, marriage, and romantic love in modern life.

Excerpt

At the Arrowhead

Sharla has been taking money from Mr. Nichols in Room 423. While he’s in the bathroom, she slips a five or ten out of his cracked leather wallet and stuffs it in her pocket. She looks through the window at the geyser in the middle of the green manmade lake and waits for him to call out, Hey girl. The woman who used to have this room called her honey. The one before that, sugar. Mr. Nichols doesn’t want her in the bathroom with him the whole time, like some residents do, but he needs help transferring from toilet to wheelchair, wheelchair to bed. In January, he could still do it by himself. Now it’s July.

“Hey! Hey, girl!”

After cleaning up Mr. Nichols, she gets him back into his wheelchair. She might be closing in on fifty, or maybe it’s closing in on her, but she’s strong. Ten years she’s been doing this job, and before that she did other hard work, on her feet all day, moving and lifting and smiling, in restaurants, stores, a nursery school. She’s always told potential employers that she doesn’t mind working hard because she’s the kind of person who likes to keep busy. It’s what she tells Nurse Jill, who tries to load her up with work beyond what she thinks Sharla can handle. What Nurse Jill doesn’t know is, she is only one of many who have tried to break Sharla.

Parked before the playing television with his soft drink, Mr. Nichols says, as he always does, Thank you. She says, You’re welcome. Good manners are something nobody can take away from you, her grandmother used to say. It doesn’t hurt anybody to be civil. Sharla taught her children the same.

Not all the residents are civil to Sharla. They have groped her. They have called her ugly things because they look at her hair and think she is mixed. Maybe she is—how would she know—but her mother had the same hair, and she was white. Some residents talk to Sharla like she’s stupid, others like she’s a person they knew long ago, a person they loved, or didn’t. A few don’t talk at all. She doesn’t hold any of this against them. They can’t help what they do. They are old, lonely, sick people: confused, many of them, and all of them tired.

Together, Sharla and Mr. Nichols watch history unspooling on the television, the day’s new horrors and absurdities recalling moments from other decades, as far back as the 1940s for Mr. Nichols, for Sharla mostly the seventies and eighties. Everything’s happening again, he says, and she asks if he thinks it’s worse this time, the way people are saying. He’s not sure, but they agree it’s a shame—the world, the way people do today.

In a minute, she’ll leave his room to go help somebody else. She won’t take anything from that resident, nor the next one, nor the next: each of them sitting in their separate rooms—close, but apart, like eggs in a carton. She only takes from Mr. Nichols. What he did was a long time ago, but she can’t forget it.

At home she changes the sheets and cleans the bathroom. Her stepdaughter Crystal is coming from Winston-Salem to stay the weekend. Sharla doesn’t like living alone. When her Donnie left, her last child to go off to college, she woke at 2:00 a.m. every night for weeks, convinced she was having a heart attack. Her children are everything to her. She ended it with her first two husbands because they just could not be decent to the children. If Rusty wasn’t ignoring them, he was scaring them to death, and Al just picked, picked, picked: nobody could do a damn thing right.

Her third husband, Chase, was sweet with the kids, but you couldn’t really count on him for anything but trouble. “Ha, ha, you should’ve known he was a cheater from his name,” said a girl she used to work with, thinking it was okay to make fun because Sharla must be hardened to her marriages breaking up. “You know, because he chases tail,” the girl said, assuming after Sharla didn’t laugh that she didn’t get the joke.

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About the Author

Sex Romp Gone Wrong is Julia Ridley Smith’s first story collection. Her first book, The Sum of Trifles, is a memoir published by the University of Georgia Press (2021) as a title in their Crux literary nonfiction series. Julia’s short stories and essays have appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, American Literary Review, Arts and Letters, the Carolina Quarterly, Chelsea, Ecotone, Electric Literature, the Greensboro Review, the New England Review, Southern Cultures, and The Southern Review, among other places. Julia teaches creative writing at UNC Chapel Hill.

Spotlight & Giveaway: How to Marry a Major by Tina Holland

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Genre: Historical Regency Romance

Following her Ne’er do well husband’s scandalous demise, Charlotte Wold is forced to become a governess. Never intending to marry again, this arrangement suits Charlotte just fine.

The bastard son of a powerful nobleman, Major Myles Ashton’s military service left him injured. When he returns home to stay with his brother, he’s shocked to find Charlotte again, a woman he never thought he’d see again after sharing a night together.

When desperation leads to a pretend attachment, scandal ensures the marriage is anything but pretend. Can Charlotte learn to love Myles? Or will she be doomed to another dreary marriage?

Excerpt

As he closed the door, he heard a simultaneous click behind him. Years of war and instinct forced him to pivot and face this new challenge. His leg objected and he released a moan.

“Are you all right?”

Standing before him was the woman who had been ever-present in his mind this past year. If possible, she was perhaps more lovely. He scanned her and couldn't distinguish the curves he recalled the night he held her. She wore a drab gown. Was she a servant in his brother’s house? And how had she arrived here?

“Major Ashton?” she tested her voice. She gripped the door handle behind her. Her entire stance indicated she was ready to flee.

Curiosity overrode his manners. “Who are you?”

She released the handle and fisted her hands at her sides before taking a step toward him. “I am Charlotte Wold. Widow of the late Reverend Wold.”

Her light red hair was pulled back from her face and her wide gray eyes were a smokescreen. “Oh, I remember you, Mrs. Wold. A man doesn’t forget a woman he held in his arms.”

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About the Author

Tina studied journalism at University and then went to work for a Fortune 500 company in Logistics for over 20 years.  She now writes full-time and helps her husband run his Crop Dusting business in the summer months.  When she’s not writing she likes to travel, read, and spend time with her farm critters.  

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Spotlight & Giveaway: My University of the World: Adventures of an International Film & Media Maker by Neill McKee

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Neill McKee takes us on an entertaining journey through the developing world from 1970 to 2012. The story starts when he becomes a “one-man film crew,” documenting the lives of Canadian CUSO volunteers working in Asia and Africa as teachers, medical doctors, nurses, engineers, agriculturalists, foresters, and a biologist. He learns the craft of filmmaking and meets and marries Elizabeth “on the hoof.” The story is enlivened throughout by their challenges and adventures together, and Elizabeth’s growing artistic talent and creations.

Beginning in 1975, the young couple settles in Ottawa and starts a family, while Neill roams the world for Canada’s International Development Research Centre. His award-winning films depict the agency’s philosophy and search for solutions to problems in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, aquaculture, education, health, water and sanitation, and more. Then in 1990, McKee joins UNICEF in Bangladesh, and later in Africa, where he initiates long-lasting multimedia programs for child health, with a focus on empowering girls. In 2001, he moves to Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA, and then to Moscow, Russia, where he oversees similar initiatives. That experience leads him to a memorable last post in Washington, D.C. as director of a large global communication project.

Throughout the short chapters and in a brief epilogue, McKee reflects on the long-term impact of the projects he documented and of his media creations. His memoir is filled with compelling dialog, humorous and poignant incidents, thoughts on world development, vivid descriptions of people and places he visited, and many images, all of which bring readers into his “University of the World.”

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About the Author

Neill McKee is a creative nonfiction writer based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My University of the World: Memoir of an International Film & Media Maker is a stand-alone sequel to his first travel memoir, Finding Myself in Borneo: Sojourns in Sabah, which has won three awards. McKee holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Calgary and a master’s degree in Communication from Florida State University. He worked internationally for 45 years, becoming an expert in the field of communication for behavior and social change. He directed and produced a number of award-winning documentary films/videos, popular multimedia initiatives, and has written numerous articles and three books in the field of development communication. During his international career, McKee was employed by Canadian University Service Overseas (now CUSO International); the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada; UNICEF in Asia and Africa; Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland; the Academy for Educational Development and FHI 360, Washington, D.C. He worked and lived in Malaysia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, and Russia for a total of 18 years and traveled to over 80 countries on short-term assignments. In 2015, he settled in New Mexico, where he uses his varied experiences, memories, and imagination in creative writing.

Find Neill online:

Author’s website: https://www.neillmckeeauthor.com/my-university-of-the-world

Author's digital library: https://www.neillmckeevideos.com/ (These are most of the film and media projects covered in the memoir – produced by the author from 1970 to 2012.)

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/neill-mckee-b9971b65/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/McKeeNeill/