Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Fresh Pick | INDULGENCE IN DEATH by J. D. Robb
Fresh Pick / June 29, 2011

In Death #31 November 2010 On Sale: November 2, 2010 Featuring: Roarke; Eve Dallas ISBN: 0399156879 EAN: 9780399156878 Hardcover $26.95  Add to Wish List Thriller Police Procedural, Romance Suspense Buy at Amazon.com Best Romantic Suspense RITA, everyone agrees a MUST READ Indulgence in Death by J. D. Robb An indulgence for readers: the new Eve Dallas novel from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author. First it was a limo driver shot through the neck with a crossbow. Then it was a high-priced escort found stabbed through the heart with a bayonet. Random hits, thrill kills, murderers with a taste for the finer things in life – and death – are making NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas angry. And an angry Eve can be just as an efficient and dangerous predator as the killer. As time runs out on another innocent victim’s life, Eve’s investigation will take her into the rarefied circle that her husband, Roarke, travels in – and into the perverted heart of madness… This time, Lt. Eve Dallas is looking into a string of weird murders featuring unusual murder weapons. Previous Picks

Karin Slaughter | My Ideas Come From…
Author Guest / June 29, 2011

A common reader question is “where do you get your ideas?” I’m always at a loss to answer, because writing a book is such an organic process. I’ll see something in the news that makes me think of a tangential scene in the books, or I’ll read a news story and try to incorporate the gist of it into a paragraph or passage. For me, by the time I sit down at my computer, I’ve worked out great big chunks of the plot and have a general idea of how I want my characters will handle it. The surprises come when I realize that everything I planned won’t really work. That’s when the fun starts. So, in answer to where I get my ideas, it’s basically: I don’t know. With FALLEN, my next book, I can definitely point to one single event that gave me the idea for the opening of the story. I had the great pleasure of watching agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation train for a school shooting scenario. To practice for an eventual shooting, they took over an abandoned school building in a rural part of Georgia and set the stage with role players pretending…

Fresh Pick | ENEMY WITHIN by Marcella Burnard
Fresh Pick / June 28, 2011

November 2010 On Sale: November 2, 2010 Featuring: Alexandra Rose; Cullin 384 pages ISBN: 0425236854 EAN: 9780425236857 Paperback $15.00  Add to Wish List Romance Paranormal, Fantasy Buy at Amazon.com A very bright future, 1st book RITA Enemy Within by Marcella Burnard There are only three rules to live by: Contain. Control. Command. An intergalactic cold war-and some heated passion- from an inventive new voice in futuristic romance. After a stint in an alien prison, Captain Ari Rose wonders why she even bothered to survive. Stripped of her command and banished to her father’s scientific expedition to finish a Ph.D. she doesn’t want, Ari never planned to languish quietly behind a desk. She wasn’t built for it, either. But when pirates commandeer her father’s ship, Ari once again becomes a prisoner. As far as pirate leader Cullin is concerned, Ari’s past imprisonment puts her dead center in Cullin’s sights. If she hasn’t been brainwashed and returned as a spy, then he’s convinced she must be part of a traitorous alliance endangering billions of lives. Cullin can’t afford the desire she fires within him and he’ll stop at nothing, including destroying her, to uncover the truth.   Previous Picks

L.J. Sellers | The Fear Factor
Author Guest / June 28, 2011

In my personal life I try to be optimistic, but in my fiction I write about my fears. It’s been true since I sat down to write my first novel. At the time, Jeffrey Dahmer was in the news and my greatest fear was that a sexual predator would kidnap and kill one of my three young boys. So I wrote a story about a woman who tracks down her son’s killer. The experience was cathartic, and I continued the practice in future novels, because as it turns out, many readers share the same fears. Being kidnapped and held against my will is another dominant fear for me and millions of other women as well—because it happens!—so the theme occurs often in crime fiction novels, including two of mine (THE BABY THIEF,  SECRETS TO DIE FOR). Most of my stories though have elements of fears that are very personal to me. For example, when I wrote THE SEX CLUB, the first book in the Detective Jackson series, my son was in Iraq and I worried constantly that he would die. My sister had just succumbed to cancer and I grieved for her and worried for other members of my family….

Fresh Pick | REBEL by Zoe Archer
Fresh Pick / June 27, 2011

The Blades of the Rose #3  November 2010 On Sale: November 2, 2010 Featuring: Nathan Lesperance; Astrid Bramfield 370 pages ISBN: 1420106813 EAN: 9781420106817 Mass Market Paperback $6.99 Add to Wish List Romance Buy at Amazon.com Best of Paranormal Romance RITA pick Rebel by Zoe Archer Unleash the magic within… On the Canadian frontier in 1875, nature is a harsh mistress. But the supernatural can really do you in… A LONE WOLF Nathan Lesperance is used to being different. He’s the first Native attorney in Vancouver, and welcome neither with white society nor his sometime tribe. Not to mention the powerful wildness he’s always felt inside him, too dangerous to set free. Then he met Astrid Bramfield and saw his like within her piercing eyes. Now, unless she helps him through the harsh terrain and the harsher unknowns of his true abilities, it could very well get him killed… AND THE WOMAN WHO LEFT THE PACK Astrid has traveled this path before. Once she was a Blade of the Rose, protecting the world’s magic from unscrupulous men, with her husband by her side. But she’s loved and lost, and as a world-class frontierswoman, she knows all about survival. Nathan’s searing…

Yasmine Galenorn | Resolve: Superman or Batman? One answer for $25 Gift Card
Author Guest / June 27, 2011

A much bandied question goes: Who do you prefer, Superman, or Batman? My answer has always been Batman. Because he’s fallible, he’s gritty, and he’s flawed. I’ve never been able to empathize with Superman. He was too good, too black-and-white with his ethics, too invincible. He lived in a world of sunshine and total darkness, where my visions ran in shades of gray. I couldn’t believe his character because it seemed far too one-dimensional to me. I love playing in the dark. Shadows and mist, gloomy clouds and drizzling rain make up my environment most of the year here in the Seattle area, and it’s the environment in which my characters live. I’m at my best writing dark fantasy, with characters that face overwhelming odds but somehow make it through this battle to face the next one. There’s an old saying that once your characters are down, you kick them again. While it seems cruel, this is how compelling fiction is written. In dark fantasy, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance, if there is no conflict and if the stakes aren’t high enough, then no one will care much about your characters. If you know the characters will come out unscathed,…

Fresh Pick | CLOCKWORK ANGEL by Cassandra Clare
Fresh Pick / June 26, 2011

The Infernal Devices #1  August 2010 On Sale: August 31, 2010 Featuring: Tessa Gray 496 pages ISBN: 1416975861 EAN: 9781416975861 Hardcover $19.99 Add to Wish List Young Adult Romance, Young Adult Adventure Buy at Amazon.com Favorite YA RITA nomination Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare Magic is dangerous—but love is more dangerous still. When sixteen-year-old – crosses the ocean to find her brother, her destination is England, the time is the reign of Queen Victoria, and something terrifying is waiting for her in London’s Down-world, where vampires, warlocks and other supernatural folk stalk the gas-lit streets. Only the Shadow-hunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the world of demons, keep order amidst the chaos. Kidnapped by the mysterious Dark Sisters, members of a secret organization called The Pandemonium Club, Tessa soon learns that she herself is a Down-worlder with a rare ability: the power to transform, at will, into another person. What’s more, the Magister, the shadowy figure who runs the Club, will stop at nothing to claim Tessa’s power for his own. Friendless and hunted, Tessa takes refuge with the Shadow-hunters of the London Institute, who swear to find her brother if she will use her power to help them. She soon…

Spotlight on Marilyn Campbell
Author Spotlight / June 26, 2011

A long time ago, an agent told me I would never succeed in the publishing biz unless I picked one already-established genre and stuck with it for several years. I didn’t listen to her despite the fact that I was trying to sell something unheard of – science fiction blended with steamy romance. Today’s readers know it better as futuristic romance. I had also written a suspense thriller containing steamy romance and a comedic category which had plenty of…you guessed it, steamy romance. I received a lot of rejections but eventually I got a foot in one door, then another and another. After I sold all of those, I spread my writing even further, into time-travel, alternate universe, ghost and angel stories and had a screenplay produced. More recently, I did a few non-fiction metaphysical works. And now I’ve added erotic romance to my bibliography. So it’s perfectly normal for me to be working on a new erotic romance series that involves time-travel, ghosts, and an old luxury hotel on an island that’s actually an inter-dimensional portal controlled by supernatural beings. In ZENITH RISING, the first book in the Crystal Island series released by Ellora’s Cave, I got to do…

Deanna Raybourn | What do you know for sure about Victorians?
Author Guest / June 26, 2011

I love chatting with book groups, and one of the topics they ask about most often is how much liberty I’ve taken with Victorian society. They point out that my characters don’t always fit in with the stereotypes we have of how people in the 19th century behaved. I have married characters who enjoy working partnerships with each other; I also have characters who engage in illicit sexual relationships. I have women making their own decisions about money, and I have characters who are gay. Sound outrageously modern for Victorian times? You might think so, but the truth is that Victorians were far more like us than we often think. The 19th century was a time of tremendous change in every possible aspect of daily life. From technology to property rights, the Victorian age was marked by vast changes. A person born at the start of Victoria’s reign would have been accustomed to candlelight and ox carts; by the end of her life, electricity and motorcars were fast becoming the norm. They invented department stores and escalators; they started the practice of seaside holidays and ski vacations. Women who would have scorned cosmetics in the early 19th century were discreetly…

Fresh Pick | ONE WICKED SIN by Nicola Cornick
Fresh Pick / June 25, 2011

November 2010 On Sale: October 26, 2010 Featuring: Lottie Cummings; Ethan Ryder 368 pages ISBN: 0373774877 EAN: 9780373774876 Paperback $7.99  Add to Wish List Romance Historical Buy at Amazon.com Another great historical we think deserves a RITA One Wicked Sin by Nicola Cornick Once the toast of the ton, Lottie Cummings is now notorious for being divorced. Shunned by society, the destitute beauty is lured to become a Covent Garden courtesan. Until a dangerous rake saves her with a scandalous offer. The illegitimate son of a duke, Ethan Ryder rose to the ranks of Napoleon’s most trusted cavalry officer—until his capture landed him in England as a prisoner of war. Now on parole, Ethan is planning his most audacious coup yet. But he needs Lottie’s help to create a spectacular diversion. Yet their pact ignites a passionate bond that may scandalize even these two wicked souls…. Lottie Palliser is divorced and notorious. Excerpt A man was standing in the doorway, one shoulder resting against the jamb. He was in black and white evening dress and against the raucous colour of the brothel with its damask walls and peacock drapes he looked stark and almost too plainly attired. He was tall…