Release Day Blitz: Shattered by Cynthia Eden

Shattered

 (LOST Series, #3)

by Cynthia Eden 

Blurb: 

In New York Times bestselling author Cynthia Eden's latest novel featuring the Last Option Search Team (LOST), one agent is forced to face her past as she uncovers secrets about the man who may be the key to her future.

Criminal psychologist Dr. Sarah Jacobs is all too familiar with the kind of bad boys who belong behind bars. But the dark, dangerous man she meets in the New Orleans underworld is a new kind of ruthless, and all too irresistible.

Jax Fontaine doesn't claim to be a good guy, but he's loyal to his own code and brutally honest about what he wants. He and Sarah may be worlds apart, but when they're skin to skin, nothing matters but the heat between them.

And when a deranged killer targets Sarah, Jax will do whatever it takes to keep her safe.

Available for purchase at 

                  

  Excerpts

“Hello, pretty Sarah,” he said. New Orleans drawled in his voice, just a hint of Creole rising and falling there. Jax smiled at her. Right. Dangerous. Definitely dangerous.

The elevator doors slid closed behind him.

Jax was tall, several inches over six feet, with broad shoulders and the kind of build that told her when he wasn’t up to no good in the French Quarter, he had to spend some serious time working out.

The guy looked like a fallen angel—if fallen angels spent a whole lot of time scaring the hell out of people. His hair was blond, thick, and a little too long. His face—that face of his was eerily perfect. Almost too handsome. A strong, hard jaw, a long blade of a nose. He had sharp cheekbones and blue eyes that seemed to see right into her soul.

And the elevator isn’t moving.

Probably because he’d leaned forward and pressed the stop button. What. The. Hell?

“I hear you’re leaving town.”

Her heartbeat spiked. When she was near him, that tended to happen. Her heart raced, her breathing came a little faster, and her stomach knotted.

Jax shook his head. “Leaving … and you weren’t even going to come and tell me good-bye?”

Laughter came from her. Not real laughter. She couldn’t remember what real laughter felt like. Tight and mocking, the laughter pushed out from her. “It’s not like we’re friends, Jax.” They’d been uneasy allies on the last case. Jax had known intel that she’d needed about the killer.

“Why just be friends? That’s boring.” His gaze slid over her. That light blue gaze seemed to heat as it lingered on Sarah’s body. “We’d be much better lovers than we’d ever be friends.”

Her hands were pressed to the wall behind her—only it wasn’t a wall. A mirror. Mirrors lined that elevator. To be very clear, Sarah told him, “I don’t date dangerous men.”

Jax stepped toward her. He didn’t move like other men. He stalked. He glided. Kind of like some big jungle cat—a beast hunting his prey. His hand lifted and his tattooed knuckles slid over her cheek.

His touch made her tense. Mostly because it seemed like an electric shock flowed straight through her body when his skin touched hers.

“Who said anything about dating?” Jax asked her. His smile flashed at her, showing his even, white teeth. “I thought we’d just spend the next seven hours fucking.”

Her chin lifted. “Start the elevator.” Because she knew exactly what sort of huge mistake she’d be making if she got involved with a man like Jax. Sarah preferred to spend her time with men who were safe. Law-abiding. Men who didn’t thrive on danger and adrenaline. Men who had no idea about all the darkness that existed in the world.

Safe men.

Jax wasn’t safe. And if she wasn’t careful, he’d see right through the mask she wore.

His blue gaze sharpened on her. “Are you afraid of me?”

“Aren’t most people?” she dodged. Most smart people?

“Yes, but they have a reason to fear me.” His knuckles fell away from her. “You don’t. I wouldn’t ever hurt you.”

Right. Like she was just supposed to take him at his word. Once Jax had been drawn into LOST’s investigation, Sarah had made it a top priority to learn as much about him as she could. Only it turned out that there wasn’t a whole lot to discover. Most of his past was cloaked, little more than rumors and smoke. Sure, she’d seen his criminal record, but that had been all juvie stuff. The guy had been good at covering his tracks once he’d become legal.

He’d been on the streets since he was a teenager. Somehow, he’d clawed his way—quite literally—out of the gutter and become a force to be reckoned with in the area. He owned several businesses and had connections that stretched across the county. And the local police were sure that he was a criminal. They just hadn’t been able to pin any serious crimes on him.

It’s hard because he has money and power. And he’s smart. She could see the intelligence in his eyes. The cunning. He won’t make mistakes easily.

“I love it when your mind starts spinning,” he murmured, his voice a deep rumble. “Tell me, Dr. Jacobs, are you profiling me right now?”

Her hands lifted and she shoved against his chest. He backed up, not because she’d been uber strong and knocked him back, but because … dammit, she suspected he moved for her.

To make her feel in control.

But he likes power.

And, hell, she was profiling him. “I don’t understand the point of this little meeting. Stopping a woman in the elevator is hardly an appropriate pick-up routine—”

He laughed. His laughter actually sounded real. Warm and rough, and it rolled right over her.

“How is anything about us appropriate?” Jax asked. That man’s voice—so deep and rumbly—it was like pure sex. She was pretty sure, like one hundred percent so, that he normally had women tossing their panties at him on sight.

She wasn’t one of those women. Or, rather, she was trying not to be one of those women.

The Lost Series Now Available

 (Book #1)

Available for purchase at

               

(Book #2)

Available for purchase at

               

About the Author

USA Today Best-selling author Cynthia Eden has written over twenty-five novels and novellas. She was named as a 2013 RITA^® finalist for her paranormal romance, ANGEL IN CHAINS, and, in 2011, Cynthia Eden was a RITA finalist for her romantic suspense, DEADLY FEAR.

Cynthia is a southern girl who loves horror movies, chocolate, and happy endings.  She has always wanted to write (don’t most authors say that?), and particularly enjoys creating stories about monsters–vampires, werewolves, and even the real-life monsters that populate her romantic suspense stories.

Cynthia’s foreign sales for her books include translations to Japan, Germany, Thailand, Greece, and Brazil.

(Back in the day…) Cynthia graduated summa cum laude from the University of South Alabama where she studied Sociology (because people interest her) and Communication (because she likes to write about said people).  Cynthia has worked as a college admissions counselor, a teacher, and as an editor. But now, Cynthia is thrilled to be spending her days making up stories.

You can find Cynthia at 

          

 Presented by

Spotlight Blitz: Haunt My Heart by Lisa Medley

Haunt My Heart 

by Lisa Medley

Blurb:

A Civil War soldier is hexed and dies to save his men. Can he find true love to live again?

Sarah Knight has a job she’s good at, a quirky BFF, and a boyfriend who’s bad for her. When Sarah unearths a Civil War artifact on a ghost hunt at Chatham Manor in Fredericksburg, VA, she brings home more than a souvenir.

Lieutenant James “Tanner” Dawson fought for the Union, working as a supernatural liaison for his Major General in a secret Masonic offset called the Brothers of Peril. When he’s hexed by a witch, he learns the only way to save his men is to die himself. But death is not the end. Awakening 150 years later, he knows if he wants to be corporeal again, he has to find true love to break the hex: a task no easier in 21st century than it was in the 19th. 

Available for purchase at 

Excerpts

It all starts when Sarah finds a ring on the grounds of Chatham Manor after a night of ghost-hunting. She takes home much more than a souvenir.

Ellie opened the driver’s side door, and Sarah waited for her to crawl across the seat of the old Mustang and pop the passenger-side lock. The broken power locks were one of many deficiencies in the classic car. Sarah retrieved her betraying phone from her pocket and powered it up as Ellie shuffled about inside the car.

As she checked her phone display, a glint of light on the ground to her right caught her eye. Aiming her screen at the ground like a flashlight, she bent low and searched for the source of the flash. Just as she began investigating, though, she heard the lock pop, and Ellie pushed the door open. The door hit Sarah in the head, knocking her to the cold, hard ground.

“Sorry,” Ellie said, scrambling to catch the door before it slammed closed again.

Sarah mumbled a few choice obscenities and rubbed her head. She reached down and ran her finger over something half-buried in the ground.

“What is that?” Ellie was hanging out the car, her body stretched across the seats.

“I don’t know.” Sarah turned the flashlight of her phone up to full beam and picked at the object in the frozen turf. “Do you have a pen or something?”

Ellie scuffled around inside the dark, rolling landfill that was her car—the interior lights long burned out—and produced a screwdriver instead. “Will this work?”

Sarah took the offered screwdriver and dug at the buried treasure. After breaking it free from its cold grave, she examined it by the light of her cell phone. “It’s a ring.”

“Let me see.”

Ellie scrambled back into the driver’s seat. Sarah joined her in the car, then shut the door against the cold.

“Hold the light,” Sarah said, digging a Kleenex from her coat pocket to clear as much of the mud from the ring as possible.

The ring remained caked with mud, which filled the engraved edges, but the stone cleaned off easily enough. The set, a square cut black onyx, glinted. The cold metal of the band warmed in her hand.

“You know what that is, right?” Ellie asked.

“A ring?” Sarah couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice, not after the night she’d had.

“An artifact.”

“No. Someone just lost a class ring. Like one of the sorority girls.”

“Does that look like a woman’s ring? No. No is the answer. That is a man’s ring. An officer’s ring or something. That could be a real-life, true-blue Civil War artifact.”

“I doubt it. And if it is, we’ll return it. This is a national park. There are rules.”

“I say finders keepers. Let me see it better.”

Chapter One

“Hurry up, Sarah. We’re going to miss the ghost!”

Sarah Knight rolled her eyes in the cold December darkness, but trotted after Ellie’s bouncing flashlight beam. Sarah’s heels crunched through the frozen topsoil as she crossed the lawn, and she worried about the damage being done to her only pair of sensible work shoes. Ellie had failed to mention this would be on an outdoor excursion.

Ellie had been dragging her out on girls’ nights against her better judgment since they graduated from college. Last month, they’d gone to a mixed martial arts fight, complete with blood, screaming and more than one missing tooth. And that had been the spectators.

It was only in the car on the way over that Sarah had learned tonight’s adventure would be a ghost hunt. Ellie had a strange idea of fun.

Sarah and Ellie caught up to the tour group as the leader, a tall dark-haired man in his mid-forties, wrapped up his ghost-hunting protocol explanation. She’d missed the rules. Ellie wouldn’t care about missing that part. She hated following the rules, but Sarah was a little miffed. If she was going ghost hunting, she wanted to know exactly what the boundaries were.

“Great,” Sarah whispered. “We missed the rules.”

“At least we didn’t miss the ghost,” Ellie pointed out. “And they haven’t doled out the equipment yet.” Ellie’s mouth split into a mischievous smile, and she angled up closer to the group leader.

“Again, my name is Allen, if you have any questions during the tour. Since we have such a large group tonight, we’ll split into two teams. Carla will take this half.” Allen sliced an imaginary line through the group of twenty or so ghost-hunters. “And the rest of you will go with me.”

Relieved she and Ellie were on the same side of the line, Sarah snuggled up closer to her friend and surveyed the rest of their team. A middle-aged couple, a grandmotherly woman, and a group of ten sorority girls—exactly the type of girls she’d avoided in college—made up Team Allen. The girls sported matching Greek-lettered sweatshirts, scarves and mittens and tittered incessantly. Sarah was fairly sure their chance of seeing a ghost with this group was nil. Fine with her. Ellie was the one who went for the paranormal stuff.

“We’ll walk the path where the Lady in White has typically been spotted. Carla’s team will cover the grounds around the house,” Allen said. He nodded to Carla, and she gave him a little salute, then led her team around to the side of the building. Allen’s group stayed put in the doorway.

“First, I’ll need a couple of volunteers,” Allen announced.

Ellie’s hand shot up before Sarah could register what was happening. “We’ll do it.”

Classic Ellie, leaping before she looked. She didn’t even know what she was volunteering for. It could be anything. If Allen wanted virgins to sacrifice, however, he was out of luck.

Allen pulled two little handheld meter devices out of his messenger bag. His brows lowered a bit as he studied Ellie, cast his eyes around the group, then settled back to her. Ellie’s enthusiasm won out and Allen handed one device to her and the other to Sarah.

“This is the Anomaly Detector,” Allen said with all the reverence of presenting the sword Excalibur. “It measures EMP and temperature. If these lights change, it’s your job to let us know. I’ll be taking photos and interacting with the ghost, trying to draw her out. I can’t keep my eyes on all of the devices at once. Can you manage this?”

“Absolutely,” Ellie squealed.

Sarah resisted rolling her eyes again. She accepted the detector and did her best to reduce her scowl.

“It’s okay to be skeptical,” Allen said. “It makes it all the more exciting when we convert you to a believer.” His smile warmed and Sarah realized he was actually handsome. Old, but handsome. What an otherwise normal and attractive man—who was way old enough to know better—was doing leading a bunch of ghost hunters, she had no idea. People were strange. She supposed she’d have to include herself in that judgment, considering she now held a ghost detector.

About The Author

Lisa has always enjoyed reading about monsters, and now she writes about them, because monsters need love too.

She adores beasties of all sorts, fictional as well as real, and has a farm full of them in her southwest Missouri home, including: one child, one husband, two dogs, two cats, a dozen hens, thousands of Italian bees and a guinea pig.

She may or may not keep a complete zombie apocalypse bug-out bag in her trunk at all times, including a machete. Just. In. Case.

You can find Lisa at

               

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Cover Reveal Blitz: Driven Snow by Tara Lain

Driven Snow

(The Pennymaker Tales, #2)

by Tara Lain

Blurb: 

Young Snowden “Snow” Reynaldi is brilliant, beautiful, and alone. Though he’s shy, weird, and tolerated by the NorCal University students because he’s a renowned whiz at chess and helps put the school on the map, that doesn’t keep him from dreaming of the object of his desires, Riley Prince, championship quarterback.

 When Riley needs a physics’ tutor, Snow jumps at the chance, and their relationship heats up—but Riley has to come out of the jock closet to get anywhere. Meanwhile, Snow’s one true friend and mentor, Professor Kingsley, marries a woman who secretly wants the chess tournament glory and money for herself. Soon after, the professor collapses and Snow finds himself underwater—literally. In a car!

Seven frat brothers from Grimm College rescue Snow just in time for his life to get even worse, and Snow discovers the one relationship he always wanted slipping away. With evil looming at every turn, Snow must survive if only to prove he’s the fairest of them all and regain the trust of his handsome prince.

Release Date: 

November 25, 2015

Available for pre-order at 

Paperback pre-order

Excerpt

Snow nodded. “Now, this is pretty basic, but we can get a lot more sophisticated.” He scratched out a slightly more complex set of calculations, and Riley seemed absorbed.

“Man, this is so dope.”

“Glad you like it.”

“Wish Jenkins could make physics so interesting.”

“You have to create the excitement for yourself. See the potential.”

Riley looked up. “You make it exciting.” He smiled slowly. “You make everything exciting.”

“M-me?” Snow’s brain froze.

“Yeah. Why do you think I come see you play all the time? It’s like plugging into the solar system and catching the stars in my hand.”

“S-stars are gas.”

“The planets, then. I’ve wanted to tell you this for a while. I think you’re—”

The sound of a key in the lock brought both their heads up.

Nooooooo.

Like some cosmic joke, the apartment door opened and beautiful, perky, perfect Courtney Taylor walked in. “Oh, hi. Are you two still studying? Oh my gosh, Snow, you must be magic or something. No one could ever get him to study physics before. I told him, ‘You have to do it, baby. The team can’t do without you. Find a way to learn this shit.’ And what do you know? He found you. Amazing.” She walked over, pushed Riley’s head back, kissed him on the lips, and plopped down in his lap. “Did you learn a lot, baby?”

Her knee bumped Snow’s thigh, and he leaped up like he’d been shot. “Oh gosh, look at the time. Better get back to work myself. Have to study for the tournament and all.” Sweet God, he had to get out of there.

Riley stood Courtney on her feet and stepped over beside Snow. “When can you help me again? I’ve only got two weeks. I made so much progress today. I know you’re busy, and I hate to ask, but could you please—”

“Yes, of course. Just text me, okay?” He ripped out the pages they’d been working on, shoved the notebooks into his backpack, and headed for the door. He seemed to be running from everyone these days. “Bye. Bye, uh, Courtney.”

Outside the door, he clambered down the steep staircase and stopped at the bottom just to breathe.

What were you thinking, you idiot? That somehow his girlfriend had magically transformed into a teapot?

He started to tell me something. He said he’s wanted to tell me for a long time.

What are you dreaming? That he suddenly quit being straight and is attracted to a wimpy little queen like you? Spare me.

Okay. Okay.

The door to Eudora’s apartment flew open, and a hand emerged, holding a glass. “Hey, cutie. Have some water.”

Like it was perfectly normal to accept water while standing in hallways, he grasped the glass and drank the liquid down. Amazing how much better he felt.

She took the empty glass. “Lessons for the day. Don’t sell yourself short. And don’t believe everything you see. Got it?”

“I… I guess so.”

“Good.” She patted his cheek, and then the door closed behind her. If a caterpillar suddenly appeared saying “Who are you?”, he wouldn’t be even slightly surprised.

About the Author

Tara Lain writes the Beautiful Boys of Romance in LGBT erotic romance novels that star her unique, charismatic heroes. Her first novel was published in January of 2011 and she’s now somewhere around book 23. Her best­selling novels have garnered awards for Best Series, Best Contemporary Romance, Best Ménage, Best LGBT Romance, Best Gay Characters, and Tara has been named Best Writer of the Year in the LRC Awards. In her other job, Tara owns an advertising and public relations firm. She often does workshops on both author promotion and writing craft. 

She lives with her soul­mate husband and her soul­mate dog in Laguna Beach, California, a pretty seaside town where she sets a lot of her books. Passionate about diversity, justice, and new experiences, Tara says on her tombstone it will say “Yes”!

You can find Tara at

               

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