Spotlight: Excerpt from A Rogue at Stonecliffe by Candace Camp

 

Author: Candace Camp
ISBN: 9781335513106
Publication Date: June 27, 2023
Publisher: Canary Street Press
  
New York Times bestselling author Candace Camp invites you back to Stonecliffe for a second adventure! Action and romance ensue on this adventurous trip through the beautiful English countryside.
 
When the love of her life left without any explanation, Annabeth Winfield moved on despairingly, knowing she'd never have a love as thrilling as her first ever again. Sloane Rutherford was roguish and daring, but as Annabeth grew up, she realized that their reckless romance was just a passing adventure, never meant for stability. Twelve years later, Annabeth is engaged to someone new, ready to start her life with a dependable man.
 
That's when Sloane returns. And he brings with him a serious warning: Annabeth is in trouble.
 
After spending the last dozen years working as a spy, Sloane thought he'd left espionage behind him. But now a dangerous blackmailer is after Annabeth. Sloane offers to hide his former lover at Stonecliffe, the Rutherford estate, but stubborn Annabeth demands to be part of the investigation. As the two embark on a dangerous and exciting journey, memories of their past romance resurface. Sloane and Annabeth aren't the wide-eyed children they used to be, but knowing they're wrong for each other makes a nostalgic affair seem very right...
 
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Excerpt:

CHAPTER ONE

1822

Sloane Rutherford wasnot a man who hesitated. He made his decisions, for good or ill, and he lived with them. But today he sat slouched at the breakfast table, food untouched, turning a note round and round in his hand, unable to make up his mind. Should he go to the wedding or not?

Actually there was no question whether he should do it; clearly he should not. The question was whether he would. The event itself didn’t figure into his thoughts. While he was surprised and faintly pleased by the fact that Noelle had invited him, he held most of his own family in disregard…and they looked on him with even less liking. Estranged wasn’t the word for his relationship with the Rutherfords. Shunned would be more like it.

So, no, he had no interest in the wedding itself, no reason to go, and normally he would have tossed the invitation in the ash can. But what drew him almost painfully to attend was precisely the thing that set up an equal ache of reluctance inside his chest: she would be there.

“Annabeth?” Marcus said from the doorway.

Sloane glanced up, startled, and scowled at his father.

“So you’re reading minds now? One would think you would have done better at the card tables.”

“Yes, wouldn’t one?” Marcus replied amicably, and strolled across the room. “Sadly, it didn’t seem to work that way. And your problem didn’t take much intuition. It’s written all over your face.”

Marcus settled into a chair across from Sloane. Clad in his dressing gown and soft slippers, Marcus looked every inch the indolent aristocrat that he was—his luxurious white mane of hair combed back stylishly, his jaw smooth from his valet’s shaving, and his dressing gown made of the richest brocade and cut to fit perfectly. Even if he looked somewhat more worn than his age from years of reckless living, he was still a handsome man.

Sloane wondered if his father might catch the eye of some wealthy widow who would take the man off his hands…but no, Marcus was equally banned from the ton—more because of Sloane’s history than his own numerous vices.

“What are you doing up so early?” Sloane asked, ignoring Marcus’s comments. “You usually don’t stir from your room until ten or eleven.”

“Unfortunately the only appointment Harriman had available was at the ungodly time of nine. It’s quite difficult to get in to see him on such short notice.”

“Ah, your tailor. That would be enough to pull you out of bed.” Sloane’s mouth quirked up. Marcus was still a peacock at his age. No doubt the bill the tailor sent Sloane would be enormous, but Sloane didn’t mind. He’d far rather spend his money on his father’s fashion than on some of Marcus’s other habits.

“But I won’t complain. I was lucky he was able to make room to see me.”

“I expect he’s grateful that I pay your bills on time, unlike most of his aristocratic clients,” Sloane said dryly.

“And I’ll have the entire afternoon to enjoy the prospect of the wedding,” Marcus went on.

“A wedding?” Sloane asked skeptically. “You look forward to weddings?”

“Not everyone is as much of a hermit as you are. Some of us find social occasions agreeable.”

“I’m not a hermit.”

“Mmm, yes. No doubt that’s why you spend so much time alone, brooding. Cornwall suits you perfectly.” Marcus picked up the cup of tea the footman had just set before him and took a sip, his blue eyes twinkling with amusement. “But this wedding, I must admit, offers rather more entertainment than the usual one.”

Sloane made no response. The last topic he wanted to discuss was this wedding.

But his father needed no reply. He went on, “For one thing, there is Noelle, the lovely bride herself, and the potential of gossip over her scandalous past.”

“I can’t see how running from Thorne is any scandal,” Sloane interjected. “Anyone with sense would do so. I find it far stranger that she stopped.”

Marcus chuckled. “Yes, he is a dull one, isn’t he? But I suspect Noelle livens him up. Still, the wedding offers more excitement than that. Lady Lockwood can always be counted on to cause some sort of contretemps…though hopefully she will not bring her dog. Of course Lord Edgerton will be there. I believe he annoys her ladyship even more than her first son-in-law—who knows what barbs she will cast his way?” He paused, then added, “And just imagine the stir if you show up.”

Sloane grunted and slid back from the table, standing. “Which is precisely why I am not going to the wedding.”

“Of course not. That’s why you haven’t tossed out that invitation. Why you were sitting there mooning over it when I came in.”

“I wasn’t mooning over anything. I was just…” He trailed off his sentence with a grimace.

“You were just contemplating whether facing down your relatives outweighed the prospect of seeing Annabeth Winfield.”

“I don’t give a tinker’s damn about facing my relatives.”

“Ah…then it’s whether seeing Annabeth is worth the pain.”

“Don’t be absurd.” Sloane’s voice held little conviction, and he turned away, walking over to the window. He crossed his arms and gazed out at the street below. A moment passed, and he said in a quiet voice, “It would be foolish to see her.”

“No doubt.” Marcus let out a sigh. “The foolish things are always the ones you most desire.”

“I’ve done well enough not seeing her for eleven years.” Being out of the country most of that time had helped. But even since he returned to England, Sloane had avoided Annabeth—well, maybe there was that one time when he first returned and he’d stood outside Lady Lockwood’s house in the dark to get a glimpse of Annabeth coming down the front steps and getting into a carriage. With Nathan. Sloane’s lips tightened at the thought.

It had come as something of a shock to see her at Stonecliffe two months ago. He had not realized that she and Lady Lockwood were visiting or he wouldn’t have gone there.

But as he had stood in the entryway with Noelle and the others, a door had opened down the hall, and there she had been: her soft brown hair in a little disarray, her face faintly flushed from activity, carrying a basket full of flowers. And in the moment, he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, could only stare. She was as lovely as ever. And he was as dumbstruck as ever.

He’d turned and left like someone had shot at him. He wasn’t sure whether he even tossed a goodbye to Noelle and Carlisle. And bloody Nathan—of course he’d been there. That moment had disrupted Sloane’s carefully nurtured indifference, and even after his heart stopped beating like a madman’s and he’d reminded himself that he’d gotten over her years ago, he had not been able to keep his mind from going back to Annabeth time after time. Like a tongue returning to a bad tooth.

Behind him his father said, “Why do you continue like this? Why don’t you go to see her, tell her how you feel?”

Sloane snorted. “I’d have to fight my way through the butler and probably Lady Lockwood, too, to talk to her.”

“I’ve never known you to avoid a fight.”

“Maybe not. But I can’t fight Annabeth. And she’s the one who hates me.”

“How do you know that?” Marcus persisted. “She’s never married in all this time. She has no money, of course, but a sweet, pretty girl like that? She’s bound to have had plenty of offers.”

“No doubt.” Sloane’s jaw tightened. “But that doesn’t mean she’s been pining after me. I broke her heart. I knew I was breaking her heart. And the fact that I broke mine as well wouldn’t have made her feel any better or despise me any less.”

“Why don’t you tell her the truth?” His father’s voice turned sharp, his usual affability gone. “Explain what you did. Why you did it. Tell her that bastard Asquith blackmailed you into it.”

Sloane whirled, his eyes flashing. “I can’t tell her that. The truth would cause her just as much pain now as it would have then. I knew when I did it that I was sacrificing her love for a lifetime. I just thought my lifetime wouldn’t last very long.”

Letting out a disgusted noise, Sloane started out of the room. Before he’d taken two steps, there was a furious pounding at the front door. Frowning, he turned toward it. The pounding continued, along with someone shouting his name. Sloane reached the entry hall just as the footman opened the door and began an indignant dressing-down of the boy before him.

But the boy on the doorstep paid no attention and shoved his way past the footman, calling again. “Mr. Rutherford!”

“Timmy.” Sloane strode toward the door, alarm rising in him. “What is it? What the devil are—”

“It’s the docks, sir. Mr. Haskell sent me. You’ve got to come quick. The new warehouse is on fire.”

Excerpted from A Rogue at Stonecliffe by Candance Camp. Copyright © 2023 by Candace Camp and Anastasia Camp Hopcus. Published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

 

Author Bio: 
 

PhotoCredit:
Anastasia Hopcus

Candace Camp is a New York Times bestselling author of over sixty novels of contemporary and historical romance. She grew up in Texas in a newspaper family, which explains her love of writing, but she earned a law degree and practiced law before making the decision to write full-time. She has received several writing awards, including the RT Book Reviews Lifetime Achievement Award for Western Romances. Visit her at www.candace-camp.com.
 Social Links:
Author Website
Facebook: @Candace Camp Author
Instagram: @CandaceCampAuthor
Twitter: @CandaceCamp
Book Summary:

Spotlight: Excerpt from The Paris Agent by Kelly Rimmer

 

Kelly Rimmer
On Sale Date: July 11, 2023
9781525826689
Trade Paperback
$18.99 USD
368 pages 
 
BUY LINKS:
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For fans of fast-paced historical thrillers like Our Woman in Moscow and The Rose Code, Rimmer’s brilliant new novel follows three female SOE operatives as their lives intersect in occupied France, and the double agent who controls their fate.
 
Twenty-five years after the end of the war, an aging Marcel Augustin is reflecting on his life during those perilous, exhilarating years as a British SOE operative in occupied France—in particular the agent who saved his life during a mission gone wrong, whose real name he never knew, nor whether she survived the war. Piqued by her father’s memories, Marcel’s daughter Charlotte begins a search for answers that resurrects the unrest and uncertainty from that period of his life. What follows is the story of Eloise, Josie and Virginia, three otherwise ordinary, average women whose lives intersect in 1943 when they’re called up by the SOE for deployment in France. Taking enormous risks to support the allied troops with very little information or resources, the three women have no idea they’re at the mercy of a double agent within their ranks who's causing chaos within the French circuits, whose efforts will affect the outcome of their lives.
 
As Charlotte’s search for answers continues, new suspicions are raised about the identity of the double agent, with unsettling clues pointing to her father, and more mysteries are unearthed from the last days of the war about the eventual fates of Eloise, Josie and Virginia.
 
Enjoy this excerpt:

Prologue

ELOISE

Germany

October, 1944

Perhaps at first glance, we might have looked like ordinary passengers: four women in civilian clothes, sitting in pairs facing one another, the private carriage of the passenger train illuminated by the golden light of a cloudless late-summer sunrise. Only upon closer inspection would a passerby have seen the handcuffs that secured us, our wrists resting at our sides, between us not because we meant to hide them but because we were exhausted, and they were too heavy to rest on our bony thighs. Only at a second glance would they have noticed the emaciated frames or the clothes that didn’t quite fit, or the scars and healing wounds each of us bore after months of torture and imprisonment. 

I was handcuffed to a petite woman I knew first as Chloe, although in recent weeks, we had finally shared our real names with one another. It was entirely possible that she was the best friend I’d ever known—not that there was much competition for that title, given friendship had never come easy to me. Two British women, Mary and Wendy, sat opposite us. They had trained together, as Chloe and I had trained together, and like us, they had been “lucky enough” to recently find themselves imprisoned together too. Mary and Wendy appeared just as shell-shocked as Chloe and I were by the events of that morning.

As our captors had reminded us often since our arrests, we were plainclothes assassins and as such, not even entitled to the basic protections of the Geneva Convention. So why on earth had we been allowed the luxury of a shower that morning, and why had we been given clean civilian clothes to wear after months in the filthy outfits we’d been wearing since our capture? Why were they transporting us by passenger train, and in a luxurious private carriage, no less? This wasn’t my first time transferring between prisons since my capture. I knew from bitter personal experience that the usual travel arrangement was, at best, the crowded, stuffy back end of a covered truck or at worst, a putrid, overcrowded boxcar.

But this carriage was modern and spacious, comfortable and relaxed. The leather seats were soft beneath me and the air was clean and light in a way I’d forgotten air should be after months confined to filthy cells.

“This could be a good sign,” I whispered suddenly. Chloe eyed me warily, but my optimism was picking up steam now, and I turned to face her as I thought aloud. “I bet Baker Street has negotiated better conditions for us! Maybe this transfer is a step toward our release. Maybe that’s why…” I nodded toward our only companions in the carriage, seated on the other side of the aisle. “Maybe that’s why she’s here. Could it be that she’s been told to keep us safe and comfortable?”

Chloe and I had had little to do with the secretary at Karlsruhe Prison, but I had seen her in the hallway outside of our cell many times, always scurrying after the terrifyingly hostile warden. It made little sense for a secretary to accompany us on a transfer, but there she was, dressed in her typical tweed suit, her blond hair constrained in a thick bun at the back of her skull. The secretary sat facing against the direction of travel, opposite the two armed guards who earlier had marched me and Chloe onto the covered truck at the prison, then from the covered truck onto the platform to join the train. The men had not introduced themselves, but like all agents with the British Special Operations Executive, I’d spent weeks memorizing German uniforms and insignias. I knew at a glance that these were low-ranking Sicherheitsdienst officers—members of the SD. The Nazi intelligence agency.

The secretary spoke to the guards, her voice low but her tone playful. She held a suitcase on her lap, and she winked as she tapped it. The men both brightened, surprised smiles transforming their stern expressions, then she theatrically popped the suitcase lid to reveal a shockingly generous bounty of thick slices of sausages and chunks of cheese, a large loaf of sliced rye bread and…was that butter? The scent of the food flooded the carriage as the secretary and the guards used the suitcase as a table for their breakfast.

It was far too much food for three people but I knew they’d never share it with us. My stomach rumbled violently, but after months surviving on scant prison rations, I was desperate enough that I felt lucky to be in the mere presence of such a feast.

“I heard the announcement as we came onto the carriage— this train goes to Strasbourg, doesn’t it? Do you have any idea what’s waiting for us there? This is all a bit…” Wendy paused, gnawing her lip anxiously. “None of it makes sense. Why are they treating us so well?”

“This is the Strasbourg train,” Chloe confirmed cautiously. There was a subtle undertone to those words—something hesitant, concerned. I frowned, watching her closely, but just then the secretary leaned toward the aisle. She spoke to us in rapid German and pointed to the suitcase in her lap.

Had we done something wrong? More German words but it may as well have been Latin to me, because I spoke only French and English. Just then, the secretary huffed impatiently and pushed the suitcase onto the empty seat beside her as she stood. She held a plate toward me, and when I stared at it blankly, she waved impatiently toward Chloe and spoke again in German.

“What…”

“She wants you to take it,” Chloe translated for me, and I took the plate with my one free hand, bewildered. Chloe passed it to Wendy, and so on, until we all held plates in our hands. The secretary then passed us fat slices of sausage and cheese and several slices of bread each. Soon, our plates were filled with the food, each of us holding a meal likely more plentiful than we’d experienced since our arrival in France.

“She’s toying with us,” Mary whispered urgently. “She’ll take it back. She won’t let us eat it so don’t get your hopes up.”

I nodded subtly—I’d assumed the same. And so, I tried to ignore the treasure sitting right beneath my nose. I tried not to notice how garlicky and rich that sausage smelled, how creamy the cheese looked, or how the butter was so thick on the bread that it might also have been cheese. I told myself the increasing pangs in my stomach were just part of the torture and the smartest thing I could do was to ignore them altogether, but the longer I held the plate, the harder it was to refocus my mind on anything but the pain in my stomach and the feast in my hands that would bring instant and lasting relief.

When all the remaining food had been divided between us prisoners, the secretary waved impatiently toward the plates on our laps, then motioned toward her mouth.

“Eat!” she said, in impatient but heavily accented English.

Chloe and I exchanged shocked glances. Conditions in Karlsruhe Prison were not the worst we’d seen since our respective captures, but even so, we’d been hungry for so long. The starvation was worse for Chloe than me. She had a particularly sensitive constitution and ate a narrow range of foods in order to avoid gastric distress. Since our reunion at the prison, we’d developed a system of sharing our rations so she could avoid the foods which made her ill but even so, she remained so thin I had sometimes worried I’d wake up one morning to find she’d died in her sleep.

“What can you eat?” I asked her urgently.

She looked at our plates then blurted, “Sausage. I’ll eat the sausage.”

For the next ten minutes we prisoners fell into silence except for the occasional, muffled moan of pleasure and relief as we devoured the food. I was trying to find the perfect compromise between shoving it all into my mouth as fast as I could in case the secretary changed her mind and savoring every bite with the respect a meal like that commanded. By the time my plate was empty and my surroundings came back to me, the guards and the secretary were having a lovely time, laughing amongst themselves and chatting as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

For a long while, we prisoners traveled in silence, holding our plates on our laps at first, then after Wendy set the precedent, lifting them to our mouths to lick them clean. Still, the guards chatted and laughed and if I judged their tones correctly, even flirted with the secretary? It gradually dawned on me that they were paying us very little attention.

“How far is Strasbourg? Does anyone know?” I asked. Wendy and Mary shook their heads as they shrugged, but Chloe informed me it was hundreds of miles. Her shoulders had slumped again despite the gift of the food, and I nudged her gently and offered a soft smile. “We have a long journey ahead. Good. That means we have time for a pleasant chat while our bellies are full.”

By unspoken agreement, we didn’t discuss our work with the Special Operations Executive (SOE). It was obvious to me that each of the other women had been badly beaten at some point—Wendy was missing a front tooth, Mary held her left hand at an odd angle as if a fractured wrist had healed badly, and Chloe… God, even if she hadn’t explained to me already, I’d have known just looking at her that Chloe had been to hell and back. It seemed safe to assume we had all been interrogated literally almost to death at some point, but there was still too much at stake to risk giving away anything the Germans had not gleaned from us already. So instead of talking about our work or our peculiar circumstances on that train, we talked as though we weren’t wearing handcuffs. As though we weren’t on our way to, at the very best, some slightly less horrific form of imprisonment.

We acted as though we were two sets of friends on a casual jaunt through the countryside. We talked about interesting features outside our window—the lush green trees in the tall forests, the cultivated patches of farmland, the charming facades of cottages and apartments on the streets outside. Mary cooed over a group of adorable children walking to school, and Wendy talked about little shops we passed in the picturesque villages. Chloe shared longing descriptions of the foods she missed the most—fresh fruit and crisp vegetables, eggs cooked all manner of ways, herbs and spices and salt. I lamented my various aches and pains and soon everyone joined in and we talked as if we were elderly people reflecting on the cruelty of aging, not four twenty-somethings who had been viciously, repeatedly beaten by hateful men.

I felt the warmth of the sunshine on my face through the window of the carriage and closed my eyes, reveling in the simple pleasures of fresh air and warm skin and the company of the best friend I’d ever known. I even let myself think about the secretary and that picnic, and feel the relief that I was, for the first time in months, in the company of a stranger who had shown kindness toward me. I’d almost forgotten that was something people did for one another.

I’d never been an especially cheerful sort of woman and I’d never been an optimist, but those past months had forced me to stare long and hard at the worst aspects of the human condition and I’d come to accept a certain hopelessness even when it came to my own future. But on that train, bathed in early morning sunlight and basking in a full stomach and pleasant company, my spirits lifted until they soared toward something like hope.

For the first time in months, I even let myself dream that I’d survive to embrace my son Hughie again. Maybe, even after all I’d seen and done, the world could still be good. Maybe, even after everything, I could find reason to have faith.

Excerpted from The Paris Agent by Kelly Rimmer, Copyright © 2023 by Lantana Management PTY Ltd. Published by Graydon House Books. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kelly Rimmer is the worldwide, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of The German Wife, The Warsaw Orphan, and The Things We Cannot Say. She lives in rural Australia with her husband, two children and fantastically naughty dogs, Sully and Basil. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages. Please visit her at www.Kelly.Rimmer.com 
 
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Author website: https://www.kellyrimmer.com/
Facebook: @Kellymrimmer
Twitter: @KelRimmerWrites
Instagram: @kelrimmerwrites

Blog Tour: Excerpt from Morning Star by Kris Jayne

Morning Star
Kris Jayne
(Lone Star Crossed Saga, #3)
Publication date: June 15th 2023
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

The marriage is fake, but the passion is real.

Famous for his last name, devilish Anthony Star-Hunter is the black sheep of the Star clan. He’s an expert at using his tall, dark, and handsome charm to get women into bed—the last remnant of his declining hard-party escapades.

But the bucks are about to stop here. His grandfather’s will demands he marry to inherit his fortune. Anthony panics. Even with his bad boy allure, how the hell is he going to find a tolerable bride, like, yesterday?

The minute Sarah Pennington spots the tattooed muscles her new stepsister’s ex hides under his Italian suits, she rolls her eyes. Anthony is not for her. And with her father maybe headed to prison for a financial fiasco, she’s had enough bad male behavior. She’s responsible. She’s hard-working. She…can’t stop having naughty dreams about the sexy “celebutant.”

At a beach-side wedding, a drunken mishap throws Sarah into Anthony’s bed, and he’s intrigued. Can he convince her to give fake marriage a chance? Can she convince herself to keep her heart out of the deal?

Their slow-burn, un-love affair isn’t what either expect, but it might be what both of them need forever.

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Enjoy this excerpt!

Sarah

“Don’t you ever think about having a passion that drives you to distraction? Something that makes you feel like you could dedicate your life to it and it would never feel like work?” Anthony asked.

“Of course, but that’s unrealistic. Most people just do a job every day and come home to their family. Not every career is a passion,” I said.

“But you’re not having fun either. You’re just working. If your job isn’t your passion, then you should find something that is. Or someone. Life should be enjoyable. Pleasurable.”

I would have thought he was being deliberately provocative if his emotional intensity hadn’t bordered on pleading. It was as if the idea of my not giving in to joy went against everything he stood for. As if my less than decadent life was an injustice and he needed me to see the error of my ways.

For a second, staring into his dark eyes with the evening shadows flickering at the edges of his face, denying myself pleasure felt unjust. I wanted it as much as he did—maybe more since it had been so long since I’d felt anything close to that level of heat. I wasn’t sure I ever had.

“I imagine I’ll feel that when I get married one day,” I said, thinking of the future and what my life might one day be like—beyond working, beyond bailing my dad out of trouble. I didn’t think of how that must sound to someone like Anthony.

“Are you a virgin?”

His deep-toned voice rose to nearly a squeak that caught the attention of a neighboring table with its disbelief. Luckily, I don’t think they heard the specifics of his question.

“Keep your voice down,” I hissed and leaned closer to whisper. “Why would you ask me that?”

He tipped my way in his chair, giving our conversation the air of conspiracy. “Because you make it sound like you have to wait until you’re married to experience any form of pleasure. It’s…old-fashioned.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said with a sniff.

“When do you let yourself have fun?” The question had a seductive rumble.

“This isn’t something I’m going to talk about here, and certainly not with you.”

I glared into his eyes to make my point, which was a mistake. The dark pools were bottomless and black and shining with a glint of wickedness.

“That was a deft deflection of my question, by the way. It only leaves me more curious.” He snickered.

What the hell?

“Of course, I’m not…I’m thirty-one.”

“Age has nothing to do with that. You can be a forty-year-old virgin, like the movie.”

“Well, it’s too late for that,” I snapped and stabbed a piece of zucchini. “Not that my…er, love life is any of your business.”

“What ‘love’ life.” He framed the word with finger quotes. “Doesn’t sound like you have one. You mentioned work, your friends, and brunch. And your sister is convinced you’re quite boring and need help finding a date.”

“Stepsister,” I corrected, keeping my voice to a hoarse whisper. “And just because I’m not bed-hopping every weekend—”

He interrupted with an exaggerated yawn. “Sex only on the weekends?”

My lips pinched, stifling a trapped scream that turned into a hissing sigh as I regained control of my emotions. “Just because I have self-restraint doesn’t mean I don’t have a love life. Love and sex are not the same thing.”

Anthony sat up and grinned. “Oh, darlin’, that I know.”

“I’m not your darling.”

His midnight eyes smoldered with a flirtation he had no business directing at me. “Don’t you want to be?”

“Not every woman on the planet wants to fuck you,” I spat in a low voice meant only for him.

He fanned himself with affected horror and adopted a lilt from deeper in the South than Texas. Damn the man for looking so deliciously pleased with himself.

“Oh, my. Watch that language, Saucy Sarah.”

“Shut up.” I ate more of my vegetables.

“Be nice. I’m only trying to help you.”

My fork slid from my fingers as I balked. “Help me what?”

“Get laid, darlin’.”

 

Author Bio:

Kris Jayne is a devoted writer, reader, and traveler, crafting addictive contemporary romance novels with heat and heart. She spends her days blissfully sweating out the writing process in the Dallas area with her dogs, Otis the Shih Tzu, Rocco the Terrier, and Red the Foxy Mutt.

Her passion for writing is only matched by her passion for the adventures of travel. In 2008, she let a friend talk her into sleeping outside for the first time in her life when she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.

P.S. If you’re buying her a gift, she has a penchant for single-malt Scotch and scarves.

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Spotlight: Excerpt from Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale

Author: Holly Smale

On Sale June 6, 2023
Mira Books
Hardcover
ISBN: 9780778334538
Price: $30.00

If you had the power to change the past, where would you start?
Cassandra Penelope Dankworth likes what she likes, and strongly dislikes what she doesn't. Her life runs in a pleasing, predictable order…until all these things happen on the same day.

• She gets dumped.

• She gets fired from her PR job for not being a 'People Person’

• Her local café runs out of her favorite muffins

Then, something truly unexpected happens: Cassie discovers she can travel back in time and change the past.
She decides to use this newfound ability to change all the broken parts of her life. Get undumped, unfired. And with time on her side, how hard can it be?

PRAISE:
A Reese’s Book Club Pick
An Amazon Best Book of June 2023
An Apple June Must Listens Pick 
Country Living, Best Spring Books for Adults to Add to Your 2023 Reading List
Katie Couric Media, What to watch, read, and listen to this week
Gizmodo, Here Come Tons of New Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Books
Booklist Queen, The Most Anticipated June 2023 Book Releases

 Buy Links:
HarperCollins 
BookShop.org 
Books a Million 
Barnes & Noble
Amazon

Enjoy this excerpt:

WHERE DOES A STORY START? 

It’s a lie, the first page of a book, because it masquerades as a beginning. A real beginning—the opening of something—when what you’re being offered is an arbitrary line in the sand. This story starts here. Pick a random event. Ignore whatever came before it or catch up later. Pretend the world stops when the book closes, or that a resolution isn’t simply another random moment on a curated timeline. 

But life isn’t like that, so books are dishonest. 

Maybe that’s why humans like them. 

And it’s saying that kind of shit that gets me thrown out of the Fentiman Road Book Club. 

Here are some other things I’ve been asked not to return to: 

• The Blenheim Road Readers Group 

• A large flat-share I briefly attempted in Walthamstow 

• My last relationship 

• My current job

The final two have been in quick succession. This morning, Will—my boyfriend of four months—kissed me, listed my virtues out of nowhere and concluded the pep talk by ending our relationship.

The job situation I found out about eighty seconds ago.

According to the flexing jaw and flared nostrils of my boss, I’ve yet to respond to this new information. He seems faint and muted, as if he’s behind a pane of thick frosted glass. He also has a dried oat on his shirt collar but now doesn’t seem the right time to point it out: he’s married—his wife can do it later.

“Cassie,” he says more loudly. “Did you hear me?”

Obviously I heard him or I’d still be giving a detailed report on the client meeting I just had, which is exactly what I was doing when he fired me.

“The issue isn’t so much your work performance,” he plows on gallantly. “Although, Christ knows, somebody who hates phone calls as much as you do shouldn’t be working in public relations.”

I nod: that’s an accurate assessment.

“It’s your general demeanor I can’t have in this office. You are rude. Insubordinate. Arrogant, frankly. You are not a team player, and do you know what this office needs?”

“A better coffee machine.”

“That’s exactly the kind of bullshit I’m talking about.”

I’d tell you my boss’s name and give him a brief description, but judging by this conversation, he isn’t going to be a prominent character for much longer.

“I’ve spoken to you about this on multiple occasions— Cassandra, look at me when I’m talking to you. Our highest-paying client just dropped us because of your quote, unquote relentlessly grating behavior. You are unlikable. That’s the exact word they used. Unlikable. Public relations is a People Job. For People People.”

Now, just hang on a minute.

“I’m a person,” I object, lifting my chin and doing my best to stare directly into his pupils. “And, as far as I’m aware, being likable is irrelevant to my job description. It’s certainly not in my contract, because I’ve checked.”

My boss’s nostrils flare into horsiness.

I rarely understand what another human is thinking, but I frequently feel it: a wave of emotion that pours out of them into me, like a teapot into a cup. While it fills me up, I have to work out what the hell it is, where it came from and what I’m supposed to do to stop it spilling everywhere.

Rage that doesn’t feel like mine pulses through me: dark purple and red.

His colors are an invasion and I do not like it.

“Look,” my boss concludes with a patient sigh that is nothing like the emotion bolting out of him. “This just isn’t working out, Cassie, and on some level you must already know that. Maybe you should find something that is better suited to your…specific skill set.”

That’s essentially what Will told me this morning too. I don’t know why they’re both under the impression I must have seen the end coming when I very much did not.

“Your job has the word relations in it,” my boss clarifies helpfully. “Perhaps you could find one that doesn’t?”

Standing up, I clear my throat and look at my watch: it’s not even Wednesday lunchtime yet.

Relationship: over.

Job: over.

“Well,” I say calmly. “Fuck.”

So that’s where my story starts.

It could have started anywhere: I just had to pick a moment. It could have been waking up this morning to the sound of my flatmates screaming at each other, or eating my breakfast (porridge and banana, always), or making an elaborate gift for my first anniversary with Will (slightly preemptive).

It could have been the moment just before I met him, which would have been a more positive beginning. It could have been the day my parents died in a car accident, which would have been considerably less so.

But I chose here: kind of in the middle.

Thirty-one years into my story and a long time after the dramatic end of some others. Packing a cardboard box with very little, because it transpires the only thing on my desk that doesn’t belong to the agency is a gifted coffee mug with a picture of a cartoon deer on it. I put it in the box anyway. There’s no real way of knowing what’s going to happen next, but I assume there will still be caffeine.

“Oh shit!” My colleague Sophie leans across our desks as I stick a wilting plant under my arm just to look like I’m not leaving another year of my life behind with literally nothing to show for it. “They haven’t fired you? That’s awful. I’m sure we will all miss you so much.”

I genuinely have no idea if she means this or not. If she does, it’s certainly unexpected: we’ve been sitting opposite each other since I got here and all I really know about her is that she’s twenty-two years old and likes tuna sandwiches, typing aggressively and picking her nose as if none of us have peripheral vision.

“Will you?” I ask, genuinely curious. “Why?”

Sophie opens her mouth, shuts it again and goes back to smashing her keyboard as if she’s playing whack-a-mole with her fingertips.

“Cassandra!” My boss appears in the doorway just as I start cleaning down my keyboard with one of my little antiseptic wipes. “What the hell are you doing? I didn’t mean leave right now. Jesus on a yellow bicycle, what is wrong with you? I’d prefer you to work out your notice period, please.”

“Oh.” I look down at the box and my plant. I’ve packed now. “No, thank you.”

Finished with cleaning, I sling my handbag over my shoulder and my coat over my arm, hold the box against my stomach, awkwardly hook the plant in the crook of my elbow and try to get the agency door open on my own. Then I hold it open with my knee while I look back, even though—much like Orpheus at the border of the Underworld—I know I shouldn’t.

The office has never been this quiet.

Heads are conscientiously turned away from me, as if I’m a sudden bright light. There’s a light patter of keyboards like pigeons walking on a roof (punctuated by the violent death stabs of Sophie), the radiator by the window is gurgling, the reception is blindingly gold-leafed and the watercooler drips. If I’m looking for something good to come out of today—and I think I probably should—it’s that I won’t have to hear that every second for the rest of my working life.

It’s a productivity triumph. They should fire people for fundamental personality flaws more often.

The door slams behind me and I jump even though I’m the one who slammed it. Then my phone beeps, so I balance everything precariously on one knee and fumble for it. I try to avoid having unread notifications if I can. They make my bag feel heavy.

Dankworth please clean your shit up

I frown as I reply:

Which shit in particular

There’s another beep.

Very funny. Keep the kitchen clear

It is a COmmUNAL SPaCE.

It wasn’t funny a couple of weeks ago when I came down for a glass of water in the middle of the night and found Sal and Derek having sex against the fridge.

Although perhaps that is the definition of communal.

Still frowning, I hit the button for the lift and mentally scour the flat for what I’ve done wrong this time. I forgot to wash my porridge bowl and spoon. There’s also my favorite yellow scarf on the floor and a purple jumper over the arm of the sofa. This is my sixth flat-share in ten years and I’m starting to feel like a snail: carrying my belongings around with me so I leave no visible trace.

I send back:

OK.

My intestines are rapidly liquidizing, my cheeks are hot and a bright pink rash I can’t see is forming across my chest. Dull pain wraps itself around my neck, like a scarf pulled tight.

It’s fascinating how emotions can tie your life together.

One minute you’re twelve, standing in the middle of a playground while people fight over who doesn’t get you as a teammate. The next you’re in your thirties, single and standing by the lifts of an office you’ve just been fired from because nobody wants you as a teammate. Same sensations, different body. Literally: my cells have cunningly replaced themselves at least twice in the interim.

The office door swings open. “Cassandra?”

Ronald has worn the same thing—a navy cashmere jumper—every day since he started working here a few months ago. It smells really lovely, so I’m guessing there must be plural.

He walks toward me and I immediately panic. Now and then I’ve caught him looking at me from the neighboring desk with an incalculable expression on his face, and I have no idea what it could be. Lust? Repulsion? I’ve been scripting a response to the former for a month now, just in case.

I am honored by your romantic and/or sexual interest in me given that we’ve only exchanged perfunctory greetings, but I have a long-term boyfriend I am almost definitely in the process of falling in love with.

Well, that excuse isn’t going to work anymore, is it.

Ronald clears his throat and runs a large hand over his buzz-cut Afro. “That’s mine.”

“Who?” I blink, disoriented by the grammar. “Me?”

“The plant.” He points at the shrubbery now clutched under my sweaty armpit. “It’s mine and I’d like to keep it.”

Ah, the sweet, giddy flush of humiliation is now complete.

“Of course,” I say stiffly. “Sorry, Ronald.”

Ronald blinks and reaches out a hand; I move quickly away so his fingers won’t touch mine, nearly dropping the pot in the process. It’s the same fun little dance I do when I have to pay with cash at the supermarket checkout, which is why I always carry cards.

I get into the lift and press the button. Ronald now appears to be casually assessing me as if I’m a half-ripe avocado, so I stare at the floor until he reaches a conclusion.

“Bye,” he says finally.

“Bye,” I say as the lift doors slide shut.

And that’s how my story starts.

With a novelty mug in a box, a full character assassination and the realization that when I leave a building I am missed considerably less than a half-dead rubber plant.

Excerpted from CASSANDRA IN REVERSE. Copyright © 2023 by Holly Smale. Published by MIRA, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Author Bio:

 
Holly Smale is the internationally bestselling, award-winning author of the Geek Girl (soon to be a Netflix series) and The Valentines teen series, which have sold 3.4 million copies worldwide. In January 2021, Holly was diagnosed autistic at the age of 39. Suddenly a lot of things made sense. Holly regularly shares, debates about, and celebrates neurodiversity on Twitter and Instagram @holsmale. Cassandra in Reverse is her adult debut and was named A Reese’s Book Club Pick, an Amazon Editors’ Top Pick of the Month, and a June Must Listen on Apple.
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