Empire By Rachel Van Dyken

   

I have lost everything. My purpose My love My soul Death knocks on my door, I want to answer, but every time I reach for the handle -- the promise I made her brings me back. So I breathe. I live. I hate. And I allow the anger to oil beneath the surface of a perfectly indifferent facade. I am broken, I don't want to be fixed. But the Empire is crumbling and it's my job to fix it. My job to mend the pieces that were scattered over thirty years ago. A trip to New York, only one chance to redeem a lost part of our mafia family. The only issue is, the only way to fix it, is to do something I swore I'd never do again. An arranged marriage. Only this time.   I won't fall. Or so help me God, I will kill her myself. My name is Sergio Abandonoto, you think you know my pain, my suffering, my anger, my hate? You have no idea. I am the mafia. I am the darkness. Blood in. No out.

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EXCERPT

Sergio looked ready to strangle me. “No. I don’t believe I asked for an annoying little sister, but if that’s what you’re offering, please don’t let me stop you. Just know, I won’t hesitate to put you over my knee if you get out of hand.”   The minute the words left his mouth. I froze. He froze. The taxi driver stared little laser like holes into the rearview mirror. And Sergio leaned toward me. I swallowed as tension swirled around us. He gripped me by the chin and turned my head to the side, his lips brushing my ear. “It’s like you have a death wish.” “You wouldn’t do it.” He pulled back as both of his eyebrows shot up, and then he looked down, like he had spotted something. I followed the direction of his gaze and let out a little gasp as a gun dug into my stomach. “It’s been directed at you for the last four minutes,” Sergio said through a practiced smile. “I meant what I said. Listen well. I keep my word. Kiss me, and blood will be spilled.” “Y-you’re a crazy person!” I hissed, shoving at his chest. “And I wasn’t going to kiss you!” “Sure you weren’t.” He put the gun away. “Good talk though, right? Oh look, the movie theater.” To say that I scrambled out of the car like a kid running away from her kidnapper would be a gross understatement, but the minute my feet hit the pavement, I paused. My body told me to run.   The guy had pulled a gun. On me. I didn’t even watch violent movies.    

Get the beginning of Sergio's story in Elude

 Twenty-Four hours before were were to be married--I offered to shoot her. Ten hours before our wedding--I made a mockery of her dying wish. Five hours before we were going to say our vows--I promised I'd never love her. One hour before I said I do--I vowed I'd never shed a tear over her death. But the minute we were pronounced man and wife--I knew. I'd only use my gun to protect her. I'd give my life for hers.   I'd cry. And I would, most definitely, lose my heart, to a dying girl--a girl who by all accounts should have never been mine in the first place. I always believed the mafia would be my end game--where I'd lose my heart, while it claimed my soul. I could have never imagined. It would be my redemption. Or the beginning of something beautiful. The beginning of her. The end of us.

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 Rachel Van Dyken is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today Bestselling author of regency and contemporary romances. When she's not writing you can find her drinking coffee at Starbucks and plotting her next book while watching The Bachelor. She keeps her home in Idaho with her Husband, adorable son, and two snoring boxers! She loves to hear from readers! You can connect with her on

Facebook www.facebook.com/rachelvandyken or join her fan group Rachel's New Rockin Readers. Her website is www.rachelvandykenauthor.com.

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The Queen's Dance By Jamie K. Schmidt

Are you ready for Champ? This dragon stud might be limited on land thanks to being a water dragon but there's no finer protector for Queen Margery. If you love dragon shifters don't miss this newest installment in the Emerging Queens series.

Despite his handicaps outside his natural habitat, water dragon Remy “Champ” Champlain fights to protect Queen Margery from those who plot to quash her damaging news reports by silencing her...forever.

He can never have her, but he'll protect her with his life.

After newly shifted sky dragon Queen Margery is rescued from smugglers by water dragon Remy Champlain, she debates whether to flesh out the story that nearly got her killed or embrace her royalty and build a court of protectors and studs. Sparks fly between Remy and her. He’d love her to give up her job and settle down…hopefully with him…but he can’t fly and she can’t swim, so their relationship can never get off the ground.

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And don't miss the rest of the Emerging Queens series:

The Queen's Wings

FBI dragon Reed’s disdain for humans can’t mask the magnetic attraction he has for Carolyn, but when she tells him she’s going to shift into a dragon he thinks she’s crazy. A female hasn’t been hatched, or shape shifted, in over a thousand years. He’s proven wrong after Carolyn shifts and is named the new Queen on the block. When the Cult of Humanity kidnaps Carolyn to sacrifice her, Reed must face his fears—and feelings, racing to save the woman he realizes he can’t live without.

The Queen's Flight

Viola Pierce has never had particularly great luck with guys. That is, until the day she shifts into a glorious, deadly, three-headed dragon. As it turns out, Viola is a dragon Queen. As a rule, Sergei hates Queens, but the Viola's beauty and humanity reach something deep within him. When she names him her protector and consort—quite by accident—a heated and unexpected attraction grows. But the dragon court is ruthless...and what doesn't kill Viola will only make her more dangerous. 

Find them at your favorite retailer!

About the author: 

Jamie Kleinkauf-Schmidt has over thirty short stories published in small press and ezines. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the State University of New York at New Paltz in Secondary Education English, which is a fancy way of saying she went to college to teach high school English. When that didn’t pan out, she worked as a call center manager, a Tupperware consultant, a paralegal, and finally a technical writer for a major conglomerate company. She is an active member in the Romance Writers of America (RWA), serving as the PRO liaison for her local chapter Connecticut Romance Writers of America (CTRWA).

When not writing, Jamie relaxes with a mug of hot tea and knits or makes beaded jewelry. She sells her handcrafted items at The Dudley Farm during the summer. A voracious reader, Jamie has a Kindle and is not afraid to use it.

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Forgotten By Rachel Madbury

Title: Forgotten

Series: Surrender Series #3

Author: Rachel Madbury

Genre: Adult Romantic Suspense

Release Date: May 26, 2016

There was a time when Graciella Snow didn’t know what she wanted from life. Growing up without her mother had left her directionless and apathetic, her anger and resentment closing her off from everyone around her.

But that was before… After following in her mother’s footsteps to the coast of Maine she’s finally getting a sense for who she is and what she wants from life, but at what cost?

Falling in love with Alexander has opened her up in ways she never dreamed of, and now that love is on the line. Even with all of Alexander’s attempts to protect her, Grace finds herself in more danger than ever before as they learn the terrifying truth about her mother’s past, and come face to face with a darkness that refuses to be forgotten.

I can’t breathe. Everything is black and I’m choking, tight bands around my lungs keeping them from pulling in enough oxygen, stars alighting at the edges of my vision, blurring with the smoke wafting by.

But they’re not bands around my chest… They’re arms. A desperate, rigid grasp that holds me back from running headlong into the roaring fire that’s consuming my home.

My life is in that fire.

My history and my future. I rail against my captor, making out faint, gentle whispers in my ear, “No, Grace, no.”

Max, a member of the security team that my boyfriend Alexander brought in to protect me while they find whoever has been terrorizing us, is following the order his boss, Pauley, gave just before running into the burning building to look for Alex. His counterpart, Freddie, is next to me sagging against the hood of the car as savage coughs rack his body. Freddie’s brother, Jake, is off in the woods somewhere, searching for whoever he saw when he and Alex arrived to check on the alarm. They’d thought it was malfunctioning, having been unreliable in all the tests this week… they were wrong.
Months ago when I’d come to this house I’d expected to hate it. My mother had lived here for 15 years…without me. My dad had raised me in New Jersey while she’d stayed up here by herself. Her life was a mystery to me right up until she died last year. When she left me this house in her will I was confused, both with what I should do with it, and why she’d left me anything at all. We’d barely spoken, and I hadn’t seen her in years. My father had never stopped loving her. I, on the other hand, had just been angry.

But as I spent more time here, supervising the renovations Alexander and his team were doing to the house so I could rent it out as a vacation home, my feelings started to shift. Being in her space, seeing what her life might have looked like, had started to take the sting out of her deserting us. When we’d found out that she had reported strange occurrences at the house, feeling like someone was watching her, I began to really worry about what had happened here, and why she’d stayed. Having come home to a houseful of broken windows a few months ago, and then waking up to two dozen murdered gulls, one in my kitchen sink, had seemed to link my mother’s time in this house with mine. But I never thought it would come to this.

While proximity to her home and her life had helped shift perceptions, what had impacted me the most was something I never saw coming… or perhaps I should say someone. Alexander was the first man I’d ever gotten close to, the first one to ever touch a part of me I didn’t know was there. He’d had to face down his own demons to be with me, and he thought I was worth the pain that caused him. No one had ever done something like that for me before...

We were only just beginning to discover each other, and ourselves. The shockingly brutal fear of losing the chance to continue on that journey with him is what seized my heart now as I watched in stunned horror as the house he’d painstakingly redone for me was reduced to nothing, and he was nowhere to be found.

“He should have come out by now,” Freddie grunts, pushing off the car and heading around the side of the house.

“Fred!” Max calls, but Freddie doesn’t turn around.

“We have to find them!” I shout at him, pulling again on his hold, slamming my hands into his chest. Max is the youngest of the crew and up until now I had underestimated his strength. Feeling the full weight of his body used against me I can’t move an inch.

“Goddamn it!” he curses, running after Freddie.

We’re running around the side of the house toward the beach and rocky shore behind it. Even from a distance I can feel the searing heat of the fire. My eyes catch a quick, devastating glimpse of flames licking up the whitewashed pine walls before I’m jerked forward.

Over the roar of the inferno I hear shouting in the darkness, and we follow it, nearly crashing into Freddie as he hauls Pauley’s limp body toward the sand. Max lets me go, taking Pauley’s other shoulder and carefully setting him down. They check his pulse and breathing, finding a deep gash on the side of his head. He’s alive.

“What happened? Where was he?” My voice comes out panicked and desperate.

“Damn porch collapsed on him,” Freddie snaps, checking the rest of him over for injuries while bending under his own hacking coughs.

“Where’s Alex!” I scream at them, both their eyes flying to mine with anguished uncertainty. Freddie shakes his head.

This can’t be happening.

Rachel Madbury is a writer of sexy romances whose alter ego rocks a classic 9-to-5 in the beautiful city of Boston. A life long New Englander who loves to travel she was slow to admit to being the romantic-at-heart that she is. Though she went to college for writing, she only recently began dabbling in the addictive world of romantic fiction…

It’s safe to say, she’s hooked.

With the help of plenty of Red Bull and late nights she explores the worlds of her characters, relishing the ride they take her on, and falling in love right

beside them.

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Release Blitz for Get Lucky by Lila Monroe

Title: Get Lucky

Author: Lila Monroe

Genre: Contemporary Romance

 Release Date: May 26, 2016

Blurb

What happens when you wake up in a hotel suite next to a gorgeous naked man with absolutely no memory of the past twelve hours?

I guess it's true what they say. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Or at least I hope it stays here. The Romantic Style convention was meant to be a weekend of raucous fun with friends, sun, and enough poolside margaritas to forget about my ex. But now, instead of meeting my fans and signing books, I'm stuck with cocky divorce lawyer Nate Wexler. He's arrogant, infuriating, and I can't keep my hands off of him. Judging by the state of our hotel room, last night was wild. I just wish I could remember it.

A pair of matching tattoos. A cheap wedding veil. Half an empty box of glow in the dark condoms.

What the hell just happened?

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Author Bio

Amazon bestselling author, queen of the short-reads, and expert at playdough, Lila Monroe loves to read and write tales of sexy Billionaires. Combining her love of writing, sex and well-fitted suits, Lila Monroe wrote her first serial, The Billionaire Bargain. Lila enjoys writing, as it gives her a flexible schedule to spend time with her kids and a wonderful excuse to avoid them. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, who strips out of his well-fitted suits nightly.

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