Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Fresh Pick | SPILLED BLOOD by Brian Freeman
Fresh Pick / May 4, 2012

May 2012 On Sale: May 1, 2012 Featuring: Chris Hawk; Hannah Hawk 368 pages ISBN: 1402798121 EAN: 9781402798122 Hardcover $24.95  Add to Wish List Thriller Crime Buy at Amazon.com Gripping suspense Spilled Blood by Brian Freeman A taut thriller about two rural Minnesota towns locked in a deadly feud – and a teenage girl caught in the crossfire. Linked by the Spirit River, the two towns couldn’t be more different: in affluent Barron, a powerful and secretive scientific research corporation enriches its residents, while downriver in blue-collar St. Croix, victims of that company’s carcinogenic waste struggle to survive. The bad blood between the communities escalates into open warfare when the beautiful Ashlynn, daughter of the corporation’s president, is found shot dead – and a St. Croix girl, Olivia Hawk, is accused of the crime. Reluctantly, Olivia’s mother summons her estranged husband Christopher, a Minneapolis lawyer, to come defend his daughter. As Christopher struggles to unravel the mystery of Ashlynn’s murder and save his own daughter, he uncovers some ugly truths that endanger the residents of both towns. And looming over everything are the chilling, apocalyptic threats from a murderous psychopath known only as “Aquarius.” A long-time feud between two towns…

Mary Balogh | Gwen, Lady Muir, And The Survivors’ Club
Author Guest / May 4, 2012

When I wrote ONE NIGHT FOR LOVE (1999), I meant it to be the first book in a trilogy–for Neville Wyatt, Earl of Kilbourne, his sister Gwen, the widowed Lady Muir, and their cousin, Lauren Edgeworth. However, I changed editor after the first book, and my new editor would not let me write Lauren’s story because she did not like her in the first book. I had to wait for an editor who would let me write her story–reader favorite A SUMMER TO REMEMBER (2002). That book, however, introduced the very haughty aristocratic family, the Bedwyns, and off I shot at a tangent and wrote the six SLIGHTLY BOOKS and then the related SIMPLY quartet. Poor Gwen languished as a minor character in a number of them. She was noticed, however. There was a mystery surrounding her. She limped heavily, as the result of a riding accident during her marriage–the same accident that caused her a miscarriage. And a year later her husband died after a fall in his own home. Readers wanted her story, and I wanted to write it. Finally the job is done! She finds her happily-ever-after in THE PROPOSAL, out in hardcover May 1, 2012. The…