#NewRelease: Dream Lover by Nancy Fraser @nfraserauthor

Like most authors, Nancy Fraser began writing at an early age, usually on the walls and with crayons or, heaven forbid, permanent markers. Her love of writing often made her the English teacher’s pet, which, of course, resulted in a whole lot of teasing. Still, it was worth it.

When not writing (which is almost never), Nancy dotes on her five beautiful grandchildren and looks forward to traveling and reading when time permits. Nancy lives in Atlantic Canada where she enjoys the relaxed pace and colorful people. She invites you to visit her website, her blog, and follow her on Twitter. Or, more importantly, just enjoy what she writes. 

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Blurb:

Haley Parker lost her academic scholarship when she quit school to care for her dying mother. Now, eager to return to her studies, she must find the perfect job that will allow her the freedom to attend evening classes.

Her best friend Chloe teaches at one of Boston’s finest private schools, a job Haley had once hoped would be hers. When Chloe snags Haley a referral for a position as nanny to high-powered attorney, Eric Garrison’s, two young children, Haley looks forward to taking on the task.

Eric finds himself drawn to the intelligent and loving young woman who has bewitched his children. It’s not long before he’s re-thinking his plan to avoid romantic entanglements. On a family vacation to Paris, he finds it impossible to resist the lovely, yet innocent Haley.

 Haley willingly gives up her innocence for a chance to make love with Eric, even though she realizes it will change their professional relationship forever.

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Haley shifted in her seat, admittedly a bit nervous about her lack of expertise. “I have no practical experience as a nanny. However, I have extensive babysitting experience, first aid training, and three years of college specializing in education, focusing specifically on the early years. Plus, I am in good health, a quick learner, and I love children.”

Rather than respond, Haley noticed a change in Mrs. Wilkes demeanor, a lift of her head as if she were looking past Haley. “Mr. Garrison,” Mrs. Wilkes said suddenly. “We weren’t expecting you to visit today.”

Visit? Haley turned in her chair to get a look at the man who only visited his own home.

Eric Garrison wasn’t at all what she expected. Much younger than she’d anticipated, his rakish smile and tousled blond hair spoke more of a professional athlete than a distinguished attorney.

Their gazes met, his smile broadened and he winked at her. Haley immediately turned back around in her chair, and met Sally Wilkes stern frown, the woman’s disapproval aimed directly at the man behind her.

“Who have we here, Sally girl?”

Sally girl? What a strange way to address your employee.

“This is Miss Haley Parker. She’s here to interview for the position of the children’s nanny.”

“Has my sainted perfectionist of a brother scared another one away?” the man asked.      Brother? The realization sank in quickly, along with the young man’s words. Just how did one scare away a nanny?

Sally Wilkes released a long-suffering sigh. “Miss Parker, may I introduce Stephen Garrison, Mr. Eric Garrison’s younger brother.”

“Half-brother,” Stephen corrected. “We wouldn’t want Miss Parker to think Eric and I are fully related. She might get the wrong impression of me.”

Haley turned to face the younger Garrison. “It’s a pleasure, Mr. Garrison.”

“Call me Stephen, please,” he said. He turned to Mrs. Wilkes and smiled broadly. “She’s a keeper, Sally. I can tell. I suggest you give her the job.”

Under any other circumstances, Haley would have been grateful for a recommendation. However, she had the distinct impression Stephen’s opinion might do more harm than good.

Nancy will be awarding $15 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

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#NewRelease The Gladiator's Bride by @NhysGlover

After a lifetime of teaching others to appreciate the written word, Aussie author Nhys Glover finally decided to make the most of the Indie Book Revolution to get her own written word out to the world. Now, with almost 100,000 of her ebooks downloaded internationally and a winner of 2013 SFR Galaxy Award for 'The Titan Drowns', Nhys finds her words, too, are being appreciated.

At home in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales of England, Nhys these days spends most of her time "living the dream" by looking out over the moors as she writes the kind of novels she loves to read: The ones that are a little bit steamy, a little bit different and wholly romantic.

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Crippled by shyness, shunned for being not-right-in-the-head, gifted artist and Roman noblewoman, Marcia Mica, has only two people in the world who truly love her – her teacher, Daedalus, and her childhood friend, Asterion, both slaves in her father’s household. But when forbidden love blooms between the unlikely friends, only disaster can come of it. That disaster leaves Marcia horribly scarred and Asterion sold into the arena as a gladiator.

Years later, Daedalus brings a broken Marcia to Britannia, and Sabrina, the healer who saved his life when he was a boy, works miracles on the scarred girl. However, not all scars are physical and those Sabrina has no ability to heal.

When Sabrina and Marcia are kidnapped by a Celtic leader bent on revenge, Asterion must depend on the dreams of a Celtic Seer to find the love of his life and help foil a revolt that threatens the fragile peace in Roman Britannia. But even if he and his friends succeed, can scars that are more than just physical ever really be healed and can those whose lives are owned by others ever truly be free to follow their hearts?

Excerpt:

Dath edged across the room towards Marcie. He hadn’t noticed the wall behind her until the bastard pointed it out. Now he saw that it was a monochrome painting: a reddish-brown scene that would have suited the Christians and their belief in Hell and Damnation. It was, he realised instantly, a picture of the night of the fire. There was Asterion, tied to the large cartwheel, his back scourged with cruel welts. There was the Master, his face a mask of such ugliness he could have made Medusa a perfect mate. And around them both were flames; a fire raging out of control, eating everything in its path.

With a shudder, it suddenly dawned on him what she’d used as paint. The brownish-red colouring could only be one thing: Blood.

Had this animal not allowed her paints? Had she been forced to work using her own blood as the medium? Or had she intentionally chosen to work in blood because it captured her agony as nothing else could?

‘Blood?’ He hadn’t realised he’d spoken the word out loud until the merchant replied.

‘She did it in burned pieces of wood in my suite. So when I moved her in here I made sure she didn’t have access to anything she could disfigure my walls with. But she outsmarted me. Made brushes out of her own hair and cut her arm to get blood.’

Nhys will be awarding a $10 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour

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#BookBlast: Moccasin Trace by Hawk MacKinney

With postgraduate degrees and faculty appointments in several medical universities, Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem. In addition to professional articles and texts on chordate neuroembryology, Hawk has authored several works of fiction.

Hawk began writing mysteries for his school newspaper. His works of fiction, historical love stories, science fiction and mystery-thrillers are not genre-centered, but plot-character driven, and reflect his southwest upbringing in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award, details the family bloodlines of his serial protagonist in the Craige Ingram Mystery Series… murder and mayhem with a touch of romance. Vault of Secrets, the first book in the Ingram series, was followed by Nymrod Resurrection, Blood and Gold, and The Lady of Corpsewood Manor. All have received national attention.  Hawk’s latest release in the Ingram series is due out this fall with another mystery-thriller work out in 2014. The Bleikovat Event, the first volume in The Cairns of Sainctuarie science fiction series, was released in 2012.

"Without question, Hawk is one of the most gifted and imaginative writers I have had the pleasure to represent. His reading fans have something special to look forward to in the Craige Ingram Mystery Series. Intrigue, murder, deception and conspiracy--these are the things that take Hawk's main character, Navy ex-SEAL/part-time private investigator Craige Ingram, from his South Carolina ancestral home of Moccasin Hollow to the dirty backrooms of the nation's capital and across Europe and the Middle East."

Barbara Casey, President

Barbara Casey Literary Agency

Hawk will be awarding a $25 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour.

Blurb:

… it was about the land…a tale of love and loss and hope…

“The most engaging and brilliantly crafted historical work since Margaret Mitchell’s great classic.”

Barbara Casey

Author, The Gospel According to Prissy

Hamilton Ingram looked out across the fertile Georgia bottomlands that were Moccasin Hollows, seeing holdings it had taken generations of Ingrams to build.  No drop of slave sweat ever shed in its creation.  It was about the land…his trust, his duty to preserve it for the generation of Ingrams to come…

It is July of 1859, a month of sweltering dog days and feverish emotional bombast.  Life is good for widower Rundell Ingram and his Hazel-eyed, roan-haired son, Hamilton.  Between the two of them, they take care of Moccasin Hollows, their rustic dogtrot ancestral home, a sprawling non-slave plantation in the rolling farming country outside Queensborough Towne in east Georgia.  Adjoining Ingram lands is Wisteria Bend, the vast slave-holding plantation of Andrew and Corinthia Greer, their daughter Sarah, and son Benjamin.

Both families share generations of long-accepted traditions, and childhood playmates are no longer children.  The rangy, even-tempered Norman-Scottish young Hamilton is smitten with Sarah, who has become an enticing capricious beauty—the young lovers more in love with each passing day, and only pleasant times ahead of them.

But a blood tide of war is sweeping across the South, a tide that might be impossible to stand before.

Excerpt:

He took special care to have quiet times for Sarah, 'specially since night before last. He got real excited when she told him she might be with child again.  She hadn't been sleeping well, often wanted him to rub her aching back.  Now he knew why.

Threadbare clothes and unshorn hair gave Hamilton Bothington Graeme Ingram the look of a run-down, unkempt derelict instead of heir to one of the largest non-slave plantations in Saint George Parish.  He ducked under what was left of the split-rail fence with its crooked corner post.  Rails and most posts had long gone up in the smoke of hoards of campfires.        

"Step wide."  He reached back to help her through.  "I don't want the mother of our children to step on a canebrake rattler catchin' sun on this fine day."

"Lord have mercy."  Sarah clutched her bonnet in her hand so as not to get it snagged in the coiled tangle of wire.  "I suppose it's up to me to get used to your hoverin' over me again."           

"Yep," he grinned.  "Reckon my favorite sweetheart will have to do just that."

"Your favorite sweetheart?"  She giggled, wrinkled her nose at him.  "Just listen to you and your Ingram fiddle-faddled talk."     

He grinned as she brushed back strands of the golden hair Hamilton loved to run his fingers through.  She gathered her mended skirt, slipped her hand into his, and quickly stepped wide over the fallen post.         

"C'mon..."  Her voice lilted soft, and she squeezed her grip on his hand.  "Let's hurry."

Her singular tenderness refused to let the devastation around them blight their few alone-times.  In the spoliation around them, such times when they managed to make it just the two of them held a more-than-special meaning.

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