Fresh Pick for Friday, July 14th, 2017 is THE INNKEEPER OF IVY HILL by Julie Klassen #BookClubSelection About THE INNKEEPER OF IVY HILL First Series from Bestselling Author Julie Klassen! The lifeblood of the Wiltshire village of Ivy Hill is its coaching inn, The Bell. But when the innkeeper dies suddenly, his genteel wife, Jane Bell, becomes the reluctant owner. Jane has no notion of how to run a business. However, with the town’s livelihood at stake and a large loan due, she must find a way to bring new life to the inn. Despite their strained relationship, Jane turns to her resentful mother-in-law, Thora, for help. Formerly mistress of The Bell, Thora is struggling to find her place in the world. As she and Jane work together, they form a measure of trust, and Thora’s wounded heart begins to heal. When she encounters two men from her past, she sees them–and her future–in a different light. With pressure mounting from the bank, Jane employs innovative methods to turn the inn around, and puzzles over the intentions of several men who seem to have a vested interest in the place. Will her efforts be enough to save The Bell? And…

Some books are more personal than others, drawing bits and pieces of my life and interests into the story. That’s exactly what happened with DRAKON’S PLUNDER, book 3 in my Blood of the Drakon series. What’s in a name? Well, a lot. And for me it all started with the heroine. Sometimes I know right away what my character’s name will be. Sometimes it takes a while for me to discover it. This book is set off the coast of Maine and I knew it would involve salvaging a wreck from the 1800s. Even though the ship in my book went down in bad weather, it got me thinking about pirates. I did some online research and discovered Samuel Bellamy, also known as “Black Sam” Bellamy, the “Prince of Pirates.” He was an interesting character who lived large and died young. I thought it fitting my heroine be named Sam Bellamy, since her father wanted a son and claimed they could be related to the pirate, even though that is never substantiated. Which leads me to my own history. No, I’m not related to any pirates…that I know of. But I did grow up hearing about one named Peter Easton….

Fresh Pick for Thursday, July 13th, 2017 is LUCIAN’S DELIGHT by N.J. Walters #SupernaturalThursday About LUCIAN’S DELIGHT Book Two in the sizzling Dalakis Passion vampire romance series! Fans of steamy romance will love this novel by New York Times and USA Today bestselling author N. J. Walters! For years Delight Deveraux suffered from a recurring nightmare of being savagely attacked and assaulted, until the night a mysterious stranger appears in her dream to rescue her. When the same scene plays itself out in real life just days later, with the same mesmerizing dream man coming to her rescue, Delight suddenly finds herself swirling in a haze of passion and confusion, between what’s real and what’s not. But Lucian Dalakis is real, and he intends not just to save her but to bind her to himself for all time. Lucian is a creature of the dark and must endure the same curse as all Dalakis men: they love only once in their lives, and may search for all eternity without ever finding their mate. When Delight shows up unexpectedly in Lucian’s life, he knows immediately that he has found his one true love. But her life is still in danger from…

Fresh Pick for Wednesday, July 12th, 2017 is SCANDALOUS EVER AFTER by Theresa Romain #RomanceWednesday #HistoricalReading About SCANDALOUS EVER AFTER Does love really heal all wounds? After being widowed by a steeplechase accident in Ireland, Lady Kate Whelan abandons the turf. But once her mourning is complete, her late husband’s debts drive her to seek help in Newmarket amidst the whirl of a race meet. There she encounters antiquities expert Evan Rhys, her late husband’s roguish friend-whom she hasn’t seen since the day of his lordship’s mysterious death. Now that fate has reunited them, Evan seizes the chance to win over the woman he’s always loved. But once back within the old stone walls of Whelan House, long-held secrets come to light that shake up everything Kate thought she knew about her marriage. Now she wonders who she can trust with her heart-and Evan must decide between love and a truth that will separate him from all his heart desires. Buy SCANDALOUS EVER AFTER: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | iTunes/iBooks | Kobo | Google Play | Powell’s Books | Books-A-Million | Indiebound | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR About Theresa Romain Historical romance…

Describe A NEW LEASH ON LOVE in 6 words: Second chance love and cuddly canines. Favorite thing to munch on while you write: Dark chocolate is a favorite pick-me up if words are flowing and I’m late for a meal. Mostly at my desk, I savor mugs of good tea and a scented candle or my essential oil diffuser, and save the munchies for my writing breaks. Something you won’t find out about characters from reading the book: Craig had a petless childhood. Early in the story, he isn’t sure he wants to or would be good at connecting with animals. However, when he was nine, he bottle-fed an orphaned young squirrel. After nursing it back to health and releasing it into the woods behind his parents’ house, he spent that summer drawing sketches of the squirrels that visited his mother’s birdfeeder. The first dog Megan ever rescued was long before she worked for the High Grove Animal Shelter. When she was just seven, she and her mom came across a shy little beagle that had lost its way. Megan’s hand-drawn “found” signs helped him find his way home. If you had to pick ONE line from A New Leash…

Angst, the A word. I’m not a big angsty person. I’m low-key, don’t like a lot of drama, and tend to shy from entertainment where my emotions are being tugged up and down and making me want to hurl as if on a roller coaster. I’m more the fun and sexy storygoer, the one who likes her romances to end in a happily ever after and for the main characters to be likeable. So, yeah, okay, that’s not always realistic, and not always possible. A lack of conflict, I learned early on in my writing career, is BORING. Why am I even invested in lukewarm happy people? What obstacle must they overcome to get to blissful love ever after? Because that’s where the magic is. In watching two flawed characters grow and develop throughout a story into characters you root for. In JUST THE THING, I wanted to deal with grief. The book is still uplifting and funny, but it’s got an undertone of real vulnerability in the main characters who both deal with loss in different ways. Zoe, the heroine, has lost her twin, and it’s deeply affected her. She faces her grief head-on, accepts her crying jags, and…

Once upon a time, in a high school hallway likely far, far away from where you are now, two young, vibrant, gorgeous, wonderful, amazing, clearly narcissistic (we’re kidding, by the way), women decided they could write a romance novel. One had the idea, another had the plot. We mapped it all out and were excited to get started. However, there was an obvious concern we had when we went into this: what if our writing didn’t mesh well together? What if it was clear we were two writers because we couldn’t blend the narrative cohesively? What if we tried, and we failed? The prospect of failure was terrifying, as it often is. This was something we both secretly dreamed of doing but had never had enough of a push to make it happen. Now we had the push: each other. But we still had to actually write the damn thing. The stakes felt much larger than they really were. Like if we weren’t able to finish this one project, all hope of ever finishing another would be gone. So we did the only thing we could do. We wrote. We tried. We succeeded. Kinda. That first book was a blur….

Fresh Pick for Tuesday, July 11th, 2017 is THE THING ABOUT LOVE by Julie James #RomanceTuesday About THE THING ABOUT LOVE The New York Times bestselling author of Suddenly One Summer blows the covers of two FBI agents who can’t hide who they are from each other… FBI agents Jessica Harlow and John Shepherd have a past. The former lawyer and cocky Army Ranger clashed during their training at Quantico and gladly went their separate ways after graduating from the Academy. Six years later, the last thing either of them expects is to be assigned to work as partners in a high-profile undercover sting. For both of them, being paired with an old rival couldn’t come at a worse time. Recently divorced from a Hollywood producer and looking for a fresh start, Jessica is eager to prove herself at her new field office. And John is just one case away from his dream assignment to the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team. In order to nail a corrupt Florida politician, they’ll have to find a way to work together—a task that becomes even trickier when they’re forced to hole up at a romantic beachfront resort as part of the investigation. Suddenly,…

He’s clueless about clothes and probably won’t care if you want to buy him your own and dress him how you like. And then you get to see him go from nerdy sheik to hot damn! He’s not a ladies’ man, so you probably won’t find his eyes wandering. Since he may not date as much as the big man on campus, he will likely love you for who you are and appreciate you…especially when you wear that cute miniskirt. You can geek out with him and have an excuse to go see all the Star Wars and Star Trek movies you want without your cool factor being put in question. He’ll be able to keep up with you intellectually. He’s definite marriage material, what with the super brain power and all. He’s guaranteed to land a great job (if he doesn’t already have one). So you know you’ll never have to support him. He can fix your laptop when it goes dead. He won’t care about sports, so you’ll get to pick the games you want to watch on Saturdays and Sundays. And maybe you can teach him a thing or two about football and basketball. You finally have…

Josie, the main character of my YA romantic scifi duology – ANOMALY and ENIGMA – is a nerd. She’s an unapologetic Star Wars lovin’, Trekkie to the core, bookworming, Marvel fangirling, doesn’t always fit in, quantum physics nerd. And that seemed to be the thing readers enjoyed most about Josie in ANOMALY. The duology isn’t specifically about Josie being a nerd, but it is an important aspect of Josie and Reid’s story. The nerdery is something I talk about when speaking to groups of readers, specifically teens. I point out that Josie is nerdy, but she’s also tough and feminine. Just because she’s nerdy doesn’t mean she’s not attractive or “less than” in any way. But there’s so much more to the nerdiness. Like any main character, Josie has flaws and does plenty of things wrong, but she never apologizes for being a scifi and academic nerd. That was intentional. See, we’re all nerds in our own way. I believe the word nerd is synonymous with passionate. There are music nerds, science nerds, dance nerds, sports nerd, gaming nerds, comic book nerds, writing nerds, band nerds, book nerds, theater nerds, art nerds, fashion nerds, history nerds, math nerds, and everything…