Claimed by Love
Love in Bloom: The Ryders #2

By: Melissa Foster

Releasing March 23, 2016
World Literary Press

Blurb

Family law attorney Gabriella Liakos has one true love, Elpitha Island, where she grew up and hopes someday to return. But Elpitha is in financial ruins, and Gabriella will do anything to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.

Duke Ryder is a savvy real estate investor set on making Elpitha into an exclusive resort. Unlike other investors, he’s not scared of purchasing a property where one family has roots so deep they practically reach the ocean floor…until he meets his beautiful, stubborn, and enticing tour host―the daughter of the owner of most of the island.

Gabriella sets out to dissuade Duke from purchasing Elpitha, but Duke has other ideas. He wants Gabriella and the island. Duke’s powerful seduction draws Gabriella in, but can a savvy investor who’s used to glamour and glitz, and a woman interested in preserving the culture she adores find a happily ever after together?

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Melissa Foster takes us  to Elpitha Island with the second in her Ryders series.  Duke Ryder is looking to purchase and develop on the island that has belonged to Gabriella Liakos’ family.  The attraction and chemistry between Duke and Gabriella may just get in the way of each of their goals.

I enjoyed reading Claimed by Love.  I couldn’t help but want to know what was going to happen between Duke and Gabriella.  I’m looking forward to reading more of the Ryders.

Author Info

Melissa Foster is a New York Times & USA Today bestselling and award-winning author. She writes contemporary romance, new adult, contemporary women’s fiction, suspense, and historical fiction with emotionally compelling characters that stay with you long after you turn the last page. Her books have been recommended by USA Today’s book blog, Hagerstown Magazine, The Patriot, and several other print venues. She is the founder of the World Literary Café and Fostering Success. When she’s not writing, Melissa helps authors navigate the publishing industry through her author training programs on Fostering Success. Melissa has been published in Calgary’s Child Magazine, the Huffington Post, and Women Business Owners magazine.

Melissa hosts an Aspiring Authors contest for children and has painted and donated several murals to The Hospital for Sick Children in Washington, DC. Melissa lives in Maryland with her family.

Visit Melissa on social media. Melissa enjoys discussing her books with book clubs and reader groups, and welcomes an invitation to your event.

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Books: Renovate Series
Author: Mindy Carter
Genre: Contemporary Romance

NOW AVAILABLE!

Skyscrapers & Camelot

Amazon US | Amazon UK

Restoration & Forgiveness

Amazon US | Amazon UK

BOOK 1:

Skyscrapers & Camelot

Keegan was my world since I was six years old. When he walked out of my life, I was certain I would never see him again. He broke my heart, but truthfully I only have myself to blame. Now I’m looking into his incredibly beautiful blue eyes. He came back into my life as quickly as he left. Both of us have changed over the years, but I can’t imagine living another day without him.

My name is Aimee, and this is the story of how I lost and found my best friend and love of my life. The journey may be tough but there is no denying that Keegan, and I were destined to be together. He rescued me the day we met and had always been my prince charming. One thing I’m sure of, I’m not letting my happily ever after get away this time.

BOOK 2:

Restoration & Forgiveness

When I ran back home, I wasn’t prepared for the reminders of him everywhere I turned. I certainly never expected Keegan to follow. I thought I made myself clear – we were through. I didn’t want anything to do with him. But, he inserted himself back into my life, and there was nothing I could do.

I pushed he pulled.

I ran and he chased me.

I cried and he wiped away the tears.

He just wouldn’t give up, and the battle my head and my heart are waging, is one I don’t want to be a part of. You see my head says be strong, but my heart is saying I belong to him, and always will.

What does one do when her heart can easily forgive, yet her head refuses to.

Can Keegan, and I restore our fairy tale, or will our story be closed for good?

Skyscrapers & Camelot gives us Keegan and Aimee’s story.  They grew up childhood friends that meet again after a long separation.  Carter gives us their story when friends become something more.  While Skyscrapers & Camelot makes for a sweet read, there’s enough angst to combat any possibility for cavities.  I enjoyed the read and then I got to the end, the cliffhanger.  I wanted to keep reading.

Luckily Restoration & Forgiveness picks right up where Skyscrapers & Camelot ended.  Carter has us turning the pages, eager to see how Keegan and Aimee with work their way back together.  We see how the secrets and manipulations play out.  Carter gives readers an enjoyable sweet second chance romance with her Renovate series.

About the Author:

Mindy has been in love with love, as long as she can remember. As a child, you could find Mindy engrossed in fairytale books and dreaming of her happily ever after. She was lucky enough to find her prince charming and lives in Ohio with him and her four precarious children.

Connect with the Author:

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He’s gonna need a longer rope…

Ball-busting business woman meets no-holds-barred cowboy…Visit the rodeo in COWBOY RESURRECTION, the second book in the Cowboy Cocktail series by Mia Hopkins…

About COWBOY RESURRECTION

Marketing hotshot Monica Kaur has put her big-city life on hold to help bail out her brother’s failing business. Now she’s got three months to plan and promote a rodeo, the first her tiny hometown has ever seen.

To ensure the rodeo’s success, Monica enlists a local hero, a rancher’s son who’s made a name for himself on the bull-riding circuit. Problem? She can’t stop daydreaming about the cocky bastard—and all the things she longs to do to him out behind the chutes.

Professional bullfighter Dean MacKinnon is home helping his family while his father fights cancer. Haunted by bad memories, jaded by love, Dean finds escape in a no-strings-attached go-round with brainy, sexy Monica, whose close-knit Sikh-American family would sooner run him out of town than see her with a notorious rodeo Romeo.

In private, Monica and Dean play as hard as they work. But as the rodeo draws near, that clean break they promised each other is getting more and more hung up in the rigging.

Warning: Contains rope play, motel nooners, a blue-eyed charmer with a taste for kink, and a brown-eyed princess with a taste for cowboys.

On Sale in Digital: March 15, 2016

Amazon | Kobo| iTunes | B&N | Samhain| All Romance |  Books-A-Million

 Add COWBOY RESURRECTION to your TBR pile on Goodreads!

CELEBRATE THE RELEASE WITH A GIVEAWAY!

Grand Prize: $30 Gift Card to Amazon

5 Runner-Ups: A digital copy of COWBOY VALENTINE by Mia Hopkins

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Excerpt:

“So,” he whispered against her lips. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was barely audible, a ghost of air carried away by the wind.

“I think you know.” He kissed her again, and before she knew what was happening, he’d pulled her down to the ground with him. The dry grass and soft blanket of flowers crinkled like hot paper beneath them. He sat down and she straddled him, her knees crushing petals that looked like orange fire in the desert.

Dean took off his hat, placed it on the ground, and traced a trail of hot kisses down the side of her neck. Pleasure ran a circuit through her body, firing her nerve endings as her lust rose to high tide.

She dug her hands through his dark hair. It was silky, long enough to curl. When he began to lay hot, open-mouthed kisses on her throat, she grabbed his hair in her fingers and tugged at it gently. A low moan rumbled in his chest.

His lips found hers again. They quickly established a rhythm of breath and tongues that pulled all consciousness from her brain. She was flying, far too high on Dean to realize she was riding him, rubbing herself against the hardening bulge in his jeans.

He broke their kiss and rested his forehead against hers. He let go of her waist and dragged his fingers through her hair, clasping it and gently pulling it back until her lips parted with a gasp.

“Tell me what you want.” His deep voice sent shivers up her spine.

She was silent, paralyzed with pleasure.

“Tell me what you want, Monica,” he said again. His firm tone made her insides clench. Already she could feel how wet she was, how ready.

“You need it. Same as I do.” He touched her face and skimmed his fingertips down her throat. “Don’t you?”

“I do.” She was still. “But no one can know about this.”

“I understand.”

“Dean, I’m serious. Not a soul. Promise me.”

He nodded. “I promise.”

See what people are saying about COWBOY RESURRECTION:

“Wow, wow, and wow…The love that blossoms between [the hero and heroine] is unrushed, genuine, true. *sigh* I loved this book from start to finish and highly recommend it, and not just for fans of western romance.” —Goodreads review, 5/5 stars

“The writing is excellent, the emotions leap off the page, and the sex is downright earthy…This is a feel-good romance with a strong, career-minded heroine, a swoon-worthy working class hero, a great setting and lots of lovingly detailed sex.” —Jill Sorenson, RITA-nominated author of romantic suspense

Cowboy Resurrection is the second book in Mia Hopkins’ Cowboy Cocktail series.  I enjoyed the first book, Cowboy Valentine, and was looking forward to reading more by Hopkins.

Monica and Dean kept the pages turning.  I liked their instant attraction, it had me wondering what was going to happen next.  The secret romance works well with the attraction of opposites.  Cowboy Resurrection is a fun, quick, and steamy read.

Mia Hopkins has quickly become an author that I’ll be on the lookout to read again and again.  She gives readers some diversity with her characters that is refreshing.  I hope to see this continue in her future books.

Check out the first book in The Cowboy Cocktail series, COWBOY VALENTINE!

Forget chocolate and flowers. This homegrown honey is all the sweetness he craves.

Small-town life is nothing but a waiting room for eighteen-year-old honor student Corazón Gomez. Work and school leave little time for love, but with a full-ride Ivy League scholarship and a one-way ticket out of the boondocks, who needs it?

The answer appears on Valentine’s Day when her old cowboy crush ambles into the ice cream parlor where she works, inviting her to go on a late-night ride in his truck. For the first time she wavers between staying on the straight and narrow, and going off-road with the handsome heartbreaker.

After four years working on ranches all over the country, Caleb MacKinnon is back on the family farm helping out his mom and brothers while his father fights cancer. The one bright spot: smart, funny, and wickedly sexy Cora.

From the start, they both know this blazing-hot love affair can’t last. But when autumn comes and Cora has to leave for the East Coast, Caleb must find a solution to keep himself—and his heart—from falling apart.

Warning: Contains hard, cherry-poppin’ sex in a pickup truck and a cowboy charmer who talks dirty in two languages.

Book 1 Available at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Google Books | Kobo | BAM

Author Bio:

Mia Hopkins writes lush romances starring fun, sexy characters who love to get down and dirty. She’s a sucker for working class heroes, brainy heroines and wisecracking best friends.

When she’s not lost in a story, Mia spends her time cooking, gardening, traveling, volunteering and looking for her keys. In a past life, she was a classroom teacher and still has a pretty good “teacher voice” and “teacher stare.”

She lives in the heart of Los Angeles with her roguish husband and two waggish dogs.

You can also visit her online at the following places:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Amazon | Goodreads | Pintrest | Instagram

Buy the Book

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When a seventeen-year-old girl vanishes,

A community is shaken.

Parents turn desperate.

Friends hold vigils.

And the boy who loves her searches.

When a year goes by,

The community is recovering.

Parents feel hopeless.

Friends feel helpless.

And the boy who loves her continues his search.

When ten years go by,

The community has forgotten.

Parents cling to the past.

Friends move toward the future.

And the boy who loves her . . .

Brings her home.

Jade Childs spent ten years in captivity, but now that she’s back, the real battle for survival begins. The media shadows her. Flashbacks haunt her. Her old life evades her. Her so-called new life rejects her. She spent too many years in the dark to recognize the light. She spent too long repressing her feelings to remember how to express them. She spent a decade abandoning hope and cannot dare letting it back into her life. Jade’s not just defined by what happened to her—she’s collared to it.

When the twenty-seven-year-old woman is found,

A community wants to know the story,

Parents want to forget the story,

Friends want to be a part of the story,

And the man who still loves her faces the greatest challenge yet: letting her go.

I feel something swirl at my ankle, then it grabs me. I’m sucked under instantly as the undercurrent slams me to the ocean bottom and tumbles me around. It’s happened before, so I don’t panic. I know that once it’s done with me, it will let me go. Once it’s twirled me around a few times, it will leave me alone.

I can feel it starting to lose momentum when two arms brace around me and break me free. When we pop through the surface, Torrin spins me around, terror drawing up his expression.

“Are you okay?” He holds me with one hand, inspecting me with the other like he’s going to find an elbow or organ missing.

I’m totally wet. I feel ocean water draining out of my ears and nose. My hair feels like a cyclone just had its way with it, and I know my skin’s red and blotchy from the sand exfoliation treatment I just received free of charge.

I laugh. This is what alive feels like. I remember.

It’s adrenaline pulsing so hard in my veins they feel about to burst. It’s feelings that twist my stomach into knots. It’s feeling so cold my body goes numb and so attracted to someone my body feels the opposite of numb.

This is it. Living. I can almost feel the blood warm in my veins as it starts to run again.

“Why are you laughing?” Torrin’s face flashes with relief when he sees I’m okay, but he doesn’t let go of me.

On the beach, my parents slowly make their way back to the beach blankets once they’ve seen I’m okay.

“That was fun.” I rub my stomach because it hurts. From the laughter. I’d forgotten stomachs could hurt from laughing.

“Fun? Not my idea of fun.”

I wipe the water from my face and find just as much sand pasted to it. “What’s your idea of fun then?”

Torrin’s still shaking his head when he suddenly shouts, “This!”

He pulls me under the water with him. He lets me go right away, but I don’t want him to. I don’t want him to ever let go.

           I splash him when he resurfaces a few feet away. “Did you just dunk me?”

           He splashes back. “I just did.”

           “You’ve heard of payback, right?” I move a little closer, ignoring the way I can feel my parents watching us from the beach.

           “I’ve heard of it. Not really a big fan though.”

           When I lunge at him and try to knock him under, he’s clearly bracing for it because all I do is smash into him. My wet body against his, our arms tangled together, our faces too close to not be aware of where each other’s mouths are . . .

           “What’s this payback thing again?” He’s practically gloating, so I come at it from a different angle.

           My eyes drop to his mouth and stay there until his lips part from his breaths coming faster. When my hand curves against the side of his face, sweeping down the line of his jaw, I feel his chest moving hard against mine. His arms tangle tighter behind me because I’m slipping through them. When that doesn’t work, he hoists me higher, and his arms form a net beneath my backside.

           I need to clear my head before I can’t remember what I’m doing.

           My eyes lift to his and hold there. When he blinks, a drop of water rolls off his eyelashes. My hand slides lower until my thumb is touching the corner of his mouth.

           “Torrin?” I whisper, my mouth lowering.

           “Yeah?” His voice is rough, coming from low in his throat.

           I move my mouth just outside his ear. “This . . . is . . .”—I burst free of his hold and slide his legs out from beneath him with my foot—“payback!”

           He goes down with a surprised shout and an explosive splash. I’m laughing again, and so is he when he pops his head above the water.

“Well played, Childs.”

           “Thank you very much,” I say with a bow, hoping he can’t see right through me the way I feel he can sometimes.

If he does, he’ll know. He’ll know I would have rather kissed him. I would rather still be kissing him. He’ll know that while I’m content to put most of the past behind me, there’s one part I want to pack and bring with me to the future.

           Him.

           I think he might see it though, because I think I might see it in him too.

The sun catches his eyes just right when he looks at me. “You always had a way of taking the ground right out from beneath me.”

Nicole Williams is the New York Times and USATODAY bestselling author of contemporary and young adult romance, including the Crash and Lost & Found series. Her books have been published by HarperTeen and Simon & Schuster in both domestic and foreign markets, while she continues to self-publish additional titles. She is working on a new YA series with Crown Books (a division of Random House) as well. She loves romance, from the sweet to the steamy, and writes stories about characters in search of their happily even after. She grew up surrounded by books and plans on writing until the day she dies, even if it’s just for her own personal enjoyment. She still buys paperbacks because she’s all nostalgic like that, but her kindle never goes neglected for too long. When not writing, she spends her time with her husband and daughter, and whatever time’s left over she’s forced to fit too many hobbies into too little time.

Nicole is represented by Jane Dystel, of Dystel and Goderich Literary Agency.

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After reading Collared, I think it was Nicole Williams intention to have me in tears.  She wasn’t satisfied with having me feel all the emotions, it had to wring more than one track of tears from me.  I haven’t yet met Nicole Williams,  so this supposition is only in my reality.  But seriously, Williams packs a punch filled with emotion in her latest, Collared.

We start out knowing that Jade and Torrin are in love and belong together.  Then the unbelievable happens, she’s abducted.  After ten years Jade is rescued and that’s when the pages don’t stop turning.

I couldn’t stop reading.  I needed to know what was going to happen next with Jade, with Torrin, with everything.  Without giving too much of the story away, coming back home isn’t always easy.  Williams gives you characters you want to know.  I might have to break out the tissues again and reread Collared, I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to this story.

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