Extract: Recluse Millionaire, Reluctant Bride by Sun Chara
Recluse Millionaire, Reluctant Bride by Sun Chara has been released today by HarperImpulse.
Is his reluctant bride a business risk or a personal necessity?
Stan Rogers, recluse millionaire, must negotiate a risky deal with Stella Ryan, the exotic beauty from his past, to gain custody of his son. But how can he close the deal with her, the one and only woman who flips his switches and pegs him as the enemy?
Martial artist Stella knows she should steer clear of Stan, the man who had shattered her heart and could still destroy her. Four years have passed since their hostile business deal, and now, the American financier is proposing holy matrimony…but she’s the reluctant bride wondering, what’s he up to?
To celebrate the release of her new book, Sun Chara and HarperImpulse have shared an extract. Enjoy!
Chapter 3
“Doesn’t look like snow to me, not by a long shot,” she said again. “At least not for another couple of months.”
“We like to be prepared in case it’s early this year.” He hauled himself off the sofa and reached out for the blanket and pillow.
She clutched them tighter, like a protective device. “What about trekking to the limo and driving from there?”
“Not in this darkness, unless it’s an absolute emergency,” he said, tone flat. “Dangerous, especially if you’re not familiar with the trail.”
“To me, this is an emergency.”
“Not enough to risk a broken leg in a pot hole? Be serious, Ms. Ryan.” He raised a brow. “What’s one more day going to matter? You could leave early tomorrow without risk.”
What he said made sense, but she didn’t have to like it. She certainly didn’t want to stay shacked up with him, miles from anywhere. It was time to be proactive, and get her own ticket outa this sticky mess.
“You’re invited for dinner. Minni ’ll—”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Fine.”
His indifference infuriated…then she glanced down at the bedding in
her hands. Odd, she hadn’t had them when she first lay down by the fireside.
She frowned, and an image pushed its way to the forefront of her mind. Somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, she’d felt a gentle hand lift her head and slip the pillow beneath…cover her with the blanket. She thought she’d been dreaming but—
“Did…uh…you bring the blanket?”
by 
12 Days of Clink Street Christmas: Extract From The Shield by C.J. Bentley
It’s time for the 12 Days of Clink Street Christmas and today, author C.J. Bentley joins me with her book, The Shield which is book one in the Finder Series.
People lose their belongings. That is a fact of life. It can happen by accident, but sometimes it can happen when you put them in a very safe place and forget where that safe place is. Not many people are good at finding them again.
A young, gutsy girl with a kind heart, who’s searching for her own identity growing up in the 1960s, just happens to be very good at finding things. Can she be the one to help return whatever is lost – anywhere and at any time – to its original owner?
With the help of a beautiful yet mysterious wise woman and a chivalrous knight she does just that. She finds and returns his shield, lost in battle, which unbeknown to her holds a secret that is important to his King, the safety of the Kingdom and the life of the daughter of his best friend.
The Shield is the first story in The Finder Series, taking our heroine on extraordinary journeys back in time. Her first adventure takes place in Medieval England in 1340 where she meets King Edward III, his wife Philippa and their son, who will later become the Black Prince.
C.J. Bentley has shared an extract from The Shield with us today.
“Can you lot see that dust cloud over there?” Jeanette was facing the field and had to move her head to where she meant as her hands were full. “It looks as though it’s coming this way I wonder what it could be”.
“Sometimes you get dust clouds when there hasn’t been much rain, the wind whips up and disturbs the dust, you know a bit like in the desert, mini tornados”, Richard liked his geography just as I liked my history. As we were so intent on carrying the heavy shield between us and joking as to who the first person to let go would be, we didn’t notice what was happening in the distance.
“Can you lot move around so I can see, my back is where you are looking,” Hugh turning studied the dust cloud for a while, “looks like a horse coming towards us don’t you think?”
“I think you must be eating lots of carrots if you can see a horse that far away,’ Linda moved her head round and watched the dust cloud approach, “do you know Hugh I think you are right it is a horse with somebody riding it and quite fast, looks like some sort of a flag flying too”.
“I think we should put this down and run,” Richard looked quite scared.
“Don’t be daft you lot, it’s probably one of the girls from the riding stables riding towards us trying to frighten us, if we stand our ground she will stop”. I wished I felt as confident as I sounded but something about the ‘cloud’ coming towards us reminded me of something, something, or someone, it couldn’t possibly be what I thought it was.
The way the person confidently rode the horse and looked to be encased in shiny armour which flashed as the sun hit it, the white horse moved in a colourful swathe of material in blues and reds, swirling around his legs as he galloped towards us. The shine of the rider’s metal suit of armour. The long pole from his foot to past his head, which was encased with a plumed helmet, was flying a coloured flag on the top. It all reminded me of my favourite book, ‘Ivanhoe’. What we were looking at was surely an apparition, my imagination playing tricks on me, but on the others too. Strange we could all see it, so no apparition then.
by Extract: The Perfect Victim by Corrie Jackson
A big welcome and hello to Corrie Jackson and the blog tour for her new novel, The Perfect Victim which was released by Zaffre on 16th November.
Husband, friend, colleague . . . killer?
Charlie and Emily Swift are the Instagram-perfect couple: gorgeous, successful and in love. But then Charlie is named as the prime suspect in a gruesome murder and Emily’s world falls apart. Desperate for answers, she turns to Charlie’s troubled best friend, London Herald journalist, Sophie Kent. Sophie knows police have the wrong man – she trusts Charlie with her life.
Then Charlie flees. Sophie puts her reputation on the line to clear his name. But as she’s drawn deeper into Charlie and Emily’s unravelling marriage, she realises that there is nothing perfect about the Swifts. As she begins to question Charlie’s innocence, something happens that blows the investigation – and their friendship – apart.
Now Sophie isn’t just fighting for justice, she’s fighting for her life.
Corrie and Zaffre have kindly shared an extract from The Perfect Victim today. Enjoy!
CHAPTER 38
I wiped the rain from my eyes and lurched towards the hut nearest the forest. I ran my torch over the door; it was padlocked. I pressed my ear to the door but I couldn’t hear anything over the wind. I did a circuit of the building; no windows, no other way in except through the door. My fingers tightened around the rock; I’d have to bash open the padlock.
‘Kate!’ I raked the darkness with my torch but I couldn’t see her. My gaze fell on something on the ground and I crouched down for a closer look. Was that blood? I inched forwards, following the trail with my torch beam. It ran across the gravel, in the direction of the forest. I hesitated for a split-second then turned back towards the hut. As I did, my torch landed on a man, standing ten feet away from me, his hands jammed in the pockets of his waterproof.
‘What are you doing?’ The wind carried his gravelly voice towards me.
‘I – I’m looking for someone. A woman. I think she’s inside this hut.’
He edged towards me, on the tips of his toes. ‘That’s not possible, Miss. I’ve just been in that hut. Nothing but farming equipment in there.’
I tightened my grip round the rock and shone my torch in his face. I couldn’t see much; he was wearing a woolly hat, and his chin was buried in a scarf. ‘Then you won’t mind showing me.’
He cocked his head to one side. ‘And you are?’
by Extract: In The Dark by Andreas Pflüger
A big lovely welcome to author Andreas Pflüger and the blog tour for his latest novel In The Dark which was released by Head of Zeus on 2nd November.
She lost her sight, but she can still see the truth…
Jenny Aaron was once part of an elite police unit tracking Germany’s most dangerous criminals. She was the best. Until it all went wrong. A disastrous mission saw her abandon a wounded colleague and then lose her sight forever.
Now, five years later, she has learnt to navigate a darkened world. But she’s still haunted by her betrayal. Why did she run?
Then she receives a call from the unit. They need her back. A prison psychologist has been brutally murdered. And the killer will only speak to one person…
Thanks to Andreas and Head of Zeus, we have an extract from In The Dark. Enjoy.
‘How old was Dr Breuer?’
The murder victim’s colleague has been crying a lot. Her voice is hoarse, dull, empty. ‘Thirty-three. Her birthday was in December. She invited all her colleagues to go to the cinema.’
‘How long had she been working in the correctional facility?’
‘Three years. We knew each other from university. Then I started here, for a bit of security. Melly always wanted her own practice. But it didn’t work. She waitressed part-time, it wasn’t a life. When the job here came up I was on at her until she applied.’
Tears start to come, but get stuck in her throat.
‘Did she like the job?’
by Extract: Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe by Melissa De La Cruz
Jane Austen meets Christmas in Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe which is the latest novel by Melissa de la Cruz.
Darcy Fitzwilliam simply doesn’t have time to fall in love. But this Christmas, a kiss under the mistletoe will change everything…
As partner at a major New York hedge fund, Darcy’s only serious relationship is with her work cellphone. The truth is, she’s too busy being successful and making money to have time for Christmas… let alone to allow romance into her life.
But this year Darcy is coming home to Pemberley, Ohio, for the holidays. There, she runs into her old neighbour and high-school foe Luke Bennet – the oldest of five wayward brothers. When Darcy’s enmity with Luke is re-opened, along with a hefty dollop of sexual chemistry… well, sparks are sure to fly. Can Darcy fall in love – or will her pride, and Luke’s prejudice against big-city girls, stand in their way?
Melissa and the blog tour for her new book join me today and to celebrate the release of Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe, Melissa and Hodder & Stoughton have shared an extract. Enjoy.
A Taylor Swift cover of “Last Christmas,” originally recorded by Wham! in 1986, strummed from the stereo of the sleek, black town car, where Darcy was sitting in the backseat. Over the driver’s seat she could see Edward’s head bobbing up and down as they drove over the bumpy terrain, and it was somewhat of a comfort. Edward had worked for the Fitzwilliam family since Darcy was a small girl, and though she told herself over and over that she hadn’t missed anything about her hometown in the eight years since she’d fled, the truth was she had missed Edward.
Despite being only fifteen years older than she was, he had a grandfatherly twinkle in his blue eyes and an impressively sharp memory that she had always admired. He always remembered everything she told him. And she told him plenty, as he was the only person in her family she felt she could trust.
“She’s going to be okay,” Edward said from the front seat. “So you can wipe that worried look off your face, my dear.”
“Oh, I hope you’re right,” she said, chewing her bottom lip anxiously. “But you know how my mom is. She’ll never let people know if she’s suffering.”
“That’s true.” She watched his head bob up and down. “You know, you haven’t aged one bit,” he said, looking at her reflection in the rearview mirror.
“I know.” She tried to smile through her nerves. “You always told me if I kept scowling I’d have forehead wrinkles by twenty- five.”
“Now you’re twenty-nine and wrinkle free!” He chuckled. “What’s your secret, Miss Fitzwilliam?”
He never called her that. Darcy, Darce, the Darcinator, some- times Darce-Tastic, but never Miss Fitzwilliam—that was her mother’s name. Doing so now was a playful acknowledgment of the way she’d skyrocketed to a position of unfathomable power and status, in the time since he’d last seen her, that even her own blue-blooded family had never quite held. He was proud of her, she could tell, and she appreciated it. At least somebody from her old life was.
She swallowed hard, so unsure of how she’d be received in her family home. How should she act when she saw them all again? How did she used to act around them? Suddenly she couldn’t remember; suddenly she felt seized by anxiety, like this one interaction with her parents and brothers after eight years would make or break their relationship for the entire future.
From the outside, anyone would think that Darcy Fitzwilliam was doing unusually well on her own in New York City, and in many ways she was. But in her gut she knew something was horribly off, and when she’d got that middle-of-the-night phone call, she finally knew what was missing. Her glamorous Manhattan life was missing family, people to love and to be loved by. She’d hopped on the first flight home. Now, for the sake of at least making a good impression on Edward, she used all her energy to shake off the nervousness and said, “My secret? A lady never reveals her secrets, Mister Peterson.”
She turned then to face her refection. It was true: at twenty- nine and as partner at the second most successful hedge fund in NYC, she didn’t look a day over twenty-four. She was con – dent in her good looks and considered herself to be just as gor- geous as everybody told her she was. Her slender, heart-shaped face boasted elegantly chiseled cheekbones; a lightly freckled, ski-slope nose; big, stormy gray eyes shuttered by naturally long lashes; and a perfectly pouty set of pale pink lips. Now and then she started to think they were losing their youthful luster, and in those moments she’d briefly toy with the idea of getting them plumped. But the thought was always eeting, as she had far more important things on her mind. The real question for Darcy was not to plump or not to plump. No, it was something far less simple and far more troubling.
by Book Club
