Tuesday 28 June 2016

A SEAL's Vow by Cora Seton #contemporary #romance


 
Cora Seton will be awarding a $50 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

 

After fifteen long, dangerous years in the service, Navy SEAL Clay Pickett is ready for his new mission: build a model sustainable community and show the world an exciting alternative to a consumption-based life. If that means he’s got a deadline to find a wife in order to win the reality TV show that’s filming his sustainable adventure, so be it. He’s got just the woman for the job in mind: beautiful, dedicated Nora Ridgeway.

When Nora left her job as a school teacher in Baltimore to live a simpler, Jane Austen style life in Montana with her friends, she was relieved to escape the escalating threats of violence from an unknown student stalker, but she can’t help feeling she’s abandoned the other high schoolers who put their faith in her. She’s torn about Clay’s advances, too. On the one hand she’s never met anyone like the strong, sexy SEAL. On the other hand, life’s taught her to take relationships slow—and Clay’s on a deadline.

When arson strikes and Nora disappears, Clay knows he’ll need every trick he learned in his time with the SEALs to track her down and save her life.

Can two people caught by their pasts have a chance at a future?

Excerpt
Clay wrapped an arm around her waist, pulled her to him and explored her mouth with his, deepening the kiss until she clung to him, dizzy with the sensations swirling inside of her.

“We’ve got to take this slow,” Nora gasped.

“Slow?” Clay said. He searched her face. “What does that mean, exactly?” His breathing was uneven. Nora knew he wanted her and knew she was close to giving in to him. She wanted it too. But how would she feel tomorrow?

“Just kissing.”

Clay visibly struggled get himself under control. “That’s a tall order,” he confessed with a lopsided grin.

“I know.” She hoped he had the self-control to pull it off. She wasn’t sure she did.

“Just kissing,” he agreed after a moment. “But a whole hell of a lot of it.”

“That’s perfect.” As he bent toward her, she met him halfway.
An hour later, when Clay walked her to the manor, Nora was practically panting with the need to be made love to. She ached for Clay’s touch—wanted so badly to be with him.

“I’m never getting to sleep,” Clay murmured in her ear when they paused outside the manor’s front door. “Can I at least think of you while I… you know?”

“Only if I can think of you,” she said honestly. She couldn’t even pretend she wouldn’t do the same as soon as she was upstairs alone. No way could she sleep in this state.

“We could help each other,” Clay suggested.

“No, we can’t,” she said sadly.

“Why not?” He pressed another kiss to the base of her neck and Nora felt herself slipping, wanting to give in.

“Because if you touch me much longer, I’m going to beg you to take me,” she confessed.

“I want to.”

“I want you to, too.”

“Nora…”

She knew all that Clay wanted to say. This was crazy. It was agony. It wasn’t fair.

But it was the way it had to be. In the morning light they’d still be at Westfield. Clay would still have to marry within two months. That still wouldn’t be long enough for them to really get to know each other.

Would it?

AUTHOR Bio and Links:
NYT and USA Today bestselling author Cora Seton loves cowboys, country life, gardening, bike-riding, and lazing around with a good book. Mother of four, wife to a computer programmer/environmentalist, she ditched her California lifestyle and moved north to laid-back Vancouver Island. Like the characters in her Chance Creek series, Cora enjoys old-fashioned pursuits and modern technology, and is never happier than when planting flowers or creating her next Chance Creek novel. Visit www.coraseton.com to read about new releases, contests and other cool events!




 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tuesday 21 June 2016

THE ROYAL NANNY by Karen Harper #historical #fiction

A randomly drawn commenter will receive a digital copy of the book.
 

In 1897, a young cockney nursemaid takes her first train ride, leaving London for the lush and sprawling Sandringham Estate, private home to Britain’s royal family. Hired by the Duke and Duchess of York to help rear their royal children, Charlotte Bill is about to become privy to all the secrets families hide, and caught between the upstairs and downstairs worlds.

Excerpt
Of course I’d been out on the for-hire steam launch on the Thames my father captained, but in the railway carriage, I felt I was flying.  It was noisy too, here in third class with the huge engine just ahead, huffing and blowing smoky steam which dashed past the windows.  .  Where I sat was quite plain with the leather seats a bit worn and cracked, but I felt I was in a magic cart to the moon anyway.  My father had said the tracks would be well-kept since this was the route the royals themselves used to get to their Norfolk estate where I was headed.  But when he’d put me on the train, he’d been disappointed that none of the royal carriages were on this run. 

As I was sent for to become undernurse to the royals at York Cottage on the Sandringham Estate, it was the first time I’d been in a railway carriage and the first time so far from home.  I was going one-hundred-and-twenty miles from London, and didn’t have to pay for the passage ticket either!  Maybe that would be one of the grand things being in service to the royals, because Mama said they were all rich, rich, rich.  Honestly, I didn’t care a whit about that, just that I could better my station and send some money home in these tough times, but how I missed my former and now grown toddlekins from Dr. Lockwood’s family in London.  They didn’t need a nurse anymore, all grown up to only need their new stepmother.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:
NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY bestselling author Karen Harper is a former university (Ohio State) and high school English teacher. Published since 1982, she writes contemporary suspense and historical novels about real British women. Two of her recent Tudor era books were bestsellers in the UK and Russia. A rabid Anglophile, she likes nothing more than to research her novels on site in the British Isles. Harper won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for DARK ANGEL, and her novel SHATTERED SECRETS was judged one of the Best Books of 2014 by Suspense Magazine. The author and her husband divide their time between Ohio and Florida.  For more information please visit: www.karenharperauthor.com



Remember to follow the rest of the tour! Dates can be found via:  http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2016/06/book-blast-royal-nanny-by-karen-harper.html
 


Monday 20 June 2016

A Bodyguard of Lies by Donna Del Oro #Romantic #Suspense



Donna Del Oro will be awarding a copy of A Bodyguard of Lies (a print copy for a US winner or an ebook for an international winner) to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

The past and present collide as FBI analyst Jake Bernstein is recruited to go undercover and investigate an elderly American grandmother, currently on a tour of England and Ireland with her granddaughter, who is suspected of WWII war crimes. Jake joins them and runs into complications when his growing attraction to the granddaughter challenges his obligation to remain emotionally detached. As the investigation intensifies, a neo-Nazi group tries to prevent him from learning the truth and achieve justice for all concerned. Danger mounts, and Jake struggles to stay alive long enough to either prove the old woman’s guilt or exonerate her.

Despite Meg Larsen’s mounting passion for the stranger who has joined their tour, she suspects he’s not who he claims to be. When she realizes her grandmother is the target of the man’s investigation, her first instinct is to protect the woman who raised her. Eventually, however, Meg must face the possibility of her grandmother’s lifetime of lies while forced to trust a man who has become both their nemesis and bodyguard.

Note from the Author:

My new FBI series, INTERNATIONAL RELEASE-JUNE 8th, is the Jake Bernstein FBI series--A BODYGUARD OF LIES, Book One. If you love a genre that's chock full of danger, suspense, crime drama and a heavy dose of sizzling romance, you'll LOVE THIS SERIES! FBI agent Jake Bernstein is my epitome of a hardy, justice-seeking federal officer who combines good looks, a sense of humor and unyielding courage. He knows how to investigate as one of the Bureau's best undercover agents, but he also knows how and when to bend the rules for the sake of true human justice.

The idea for this book, A BODYGUARD OF LIES, struck me when I was tipping a pint with fellow tourists at an Irish pub. There on the wall was an old, WW II photo of Irish dockworkers sharing their pub with German U-boat sailors. That started me wondering about the role that Ireland played during the war, its uneasy relationship with Nazi Germany and the German spies who infiltrated Ireland and England. Lots of research followed, which led me to a contemporary story about an FBI undercover agent who investigates an elderly, naturalized American grandmother, wanted by MI6 for war crimes. Little ol' Mary McCoy Snider, a dangerous WW II Nazi spy who caused the deaths of thousands? Even Agent Jake Bernstein finds that an unbelievable stretch. The granddaughter whom Jake finds himself falling in love with also disbelieves MI6's allegations.

Until his investigation draws him into the middle of a dangerous, secret neo-Nazi group that'll stop at nothing to protect one of their own. And then Jake must choose, the old woman and her lovely granddaughter. Or justice!
 

Excerpt:

Twenty minutes to go and they’d be boarding the motor coach. The fog was even soupier now it had been an hour ago. The coach passengers were finishing lunch and some were already stirring in their seats. God help him, he’d never sat in one place so long in his life as during this tour. Even at his desk at work, he was up and about once every hour. This sedentary coach tour was making his butt itch.

Of course, having Meg close by and unable to touch her made another part of him itch. His previous undercover assignments, when one of his duties was to schmooze a woman in order to get intel, were a kind of playacting. Playing the role of womanizing seducer. A ladies’ man, or player.

It was a job. If you had a certain look and background that fit the job, you were expected to do your duty. Typecasting, maybe, but he’d been rewarded with promotions as a result. Grandpa Nate had said once, right after Jake had joined the FBI, “You haf gifts, Yakov, you use dem. Yust like anybody else.”

This time, however, he wasn’t acting. His mind was crowded with thoughts of her, yearnings to hold her, talk to her, even just to sit next to her and feel her thigh rubbing against his. Thoughts of her crowded his mind, filled his every waking moment. Juggling his emotions and loyalty to Meg with his duty and loyalty to the FBI was—well, he hated to admit it but it was driving him to distraction.

The FBI might fire him for insubordination if MI5 got wind he’d alerted Meg to MI5’s arrest warrant. Major Temple and his team would throw him to the dogs.

And rightly so.
 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Donna is a retired high school English teacher and is finally able to fulfill her dream of writing fiction. She lives in Northern California with her husband and three cats. When she’s not writing novels, she’s singing with the Sacramento Valley Chorus or traveling with her husband. Life is good and she feels very blessed.

Visit her on Facebook or at www.donnadeloro.com
Contact her: donna@donnadeloro.com