. . Despite her desire for control, Ara Hopkins has always felt like a pawn—constantly being maneuvered by those surrounding her. Carrying a riddled past of abandonment by her mother, a jealous step-sister and exploitation by men she was supposed to be able to trust, Ara craves a social media certified life. So, when she meets her husband, a New York congressman’s son, she believes she’s finally won her game. Secure in a life her mother would approve of—and having firmly shut the door on her chaotic and miscalculated past—Ara feels she’s thriving. Until the night her husband is murdered. Thrust into a game of deceit and lies, Ara realizes that nothing is as it seems and that the past can quickly return to the present. The facade crumbles as relationships are tested and family boundaries crossed. Faced with losing it all, she discovers what a person is really capable of. Because in this game of life, it's either rook or be rooked. An intricately braided plot with unforeseeable twists and a sucker-punch ending, Rooked is a captivating thriller that shatters all perceptions.

    Who could have predicted what a person would do to possess another soul? Michael Prim is a cop’s cop, taking down drug dealers, killers, and all kinds of predators, until he realizes a sorcerer has a vendetta against him and is using hellhounds, demons, and soul slaves to exact revenge. MICHAEL PRIM Michael Prim is a hard charging beat cop soon to be thrust into a world of dark magic. He has always been a bit of a freak: different, strange, and always needing to prove himself. His last memories of his father were of bedtime stories—the mercenary war, dragon slaying, and demon fighting variety. He knows how to come down hard on wife beaters, pedophiles, and cop killing drug lords, but nothing has prepared him for the sorcerer who is coming for his soul. KEITH MARIN Keith Marin takes a new prostitute under his wing and tries to protect her, because she continually winds up in the gutter raped, tortured, and clutching a strange jar with a preternatural magnetism. He begins a dangerous dance with the sorcerer who has found his way to Blue Point, and discovers people from all walks of life who are slaves to the soul jars and little more than zombies. When two homeless layabouts who frequent his beat turn up driving a BMW, wearing tailored silk suits, and carrying serious firepower, Marin takes his investigation to the next level.NICOLE SIMMONS Nicole Simmons has come out of hiding and reinvented herself—as a rookie cop. She begins to doubt her choice as soon as she is assigned to a training officer who is the archenemy of her kind. She should kill him and disappear again, but she had hoped this time would be different. DRAGON BADGE Michael Prim does what any good cop would do after discovering a soul reaving sorcerer is hunting on his beat, he goes to war, even as hellhounds and Rashfellen warriors come after him. He gets a little help from his friends—a tough as nails veteran and a zombie like prostitute who holds a soul trapped in a magical jar—but when the apocalypse comes, there is only his most hated enemy, the gang member who murdered his partner, to stand against Travass Isegurad and his demons.

    Only this family’s past is darker than most18-year-old Clara is trapped in an abusive life by her Pa who is hiding a dark secret. Home schooled and with no outside social contact – constantly on the move – she wishes him dead.After they move to a small town, local youths vie for her attention against his wishes. When her Pa is found murdered by the town sheriff, the circumstances point firmly to Clara as the guilty party. Assigned to the case, a personal conflict causes Detective Alana Bossé to dig deeper. As her suspect list grows, it looks as though there is a slim chance that Clara could be innocent.But is everything as it seems? Or should they lock Clara up and throw away the key?

    As the wait for his father stretches unforgivably into months, a local girl, whose own mother died a brutal death, captures his heart and imagination, reminding Wes that hope always floats to the surface.When buried truths come to light in the spring thaw, wounds are exposed and violence erupts, forcing Wes to embark on a search for his missing father, the truth about his mother, and a future he must claim for himself—a quest that begins back at that frozen lake.A powerful, page-turning coming-of-age story, Winter Loon captures the resilience of a boy determined to become a worthy man by confronting family demons, clawing his way out of the darkness, and forging a life from the shambles of a broken past.

    Or, that a strange apparition would issue her a chilling message. Despite the cadaver's warning, Marlie is married a year later to Tennessee State Senator, Daniel Cannon, and living in a plantation-style mansion with two step-sons. Add to the mix her growing suspicion that something is amiss with the death of Daniel’s first wife, Gentry, and newlywed Marlie is definitely in over her pretty Yankee head. What begins as an innocent inquiry into her new husband’s clouded past ends with Marlie in the midst of a dangerous conspiracy.A modern twist on the classic Gothic romance novels of Rebecca and Jane Eyre, Replacing Gentry follows Marlie’s precarious journey as she learns the truth about the man she married.

    As he sits on the side of the road trying to calm his nerves, a man driving a red El Camino pulls up and invites him to have a drink at a saloon just up the road. At first Barlow doesn’t think much about the man in the meticulously-restored classic car, but when he gets back on the road and continues his journey into the mountains he starts to get the sinking feeling that something is just not right.On his way to the saloon he stops at a gas station that appears to be from a bygone era. There he meets Velton, the gas station attendant who rides a 1947 Knucklehead Harley. But there is something strange about Velton that he can’t quite put his finger on. And later, when he arrives at the saloon and meets Lucy, the bartender and driver of the El Camino, Barlow begins to realize that despite what he might have thought, the near-miss he had with the truck might not have been such a near-miss after all.***Infused with healthy dose of dark humor and set against a vivid backdrop of the author’s version of Hell, The Darklands is a haunting tale of the afterlife played out in a bizarre landscape populated by the souls of the damned. Follow along the winding backroads with Barlow and Candy, a sexy hitchhiker he meets along the way, as they ride through the eternal night while searching for the reason both of them have been dealt such a horrific twist of fate.Will they find a way out? Or will they suffer the same fate as the rest of the condemned souls and be forced to ride the haunted roads of The Darklands forever.

    Now Ivy’s gone and half the town believes Brittany murdered her daughter.A HAUNTED DETECTIVEDetective Matthew Finn, a big-city fish out of water in small-town Evansburg, Washington, struggles with his wife’s betrayal as he investigates Ivy Morgan's disappearance. The clock is ticking and he can't find any witnesses.AN UNUSUAL RESEARCH SUBJECTImaginative, manipulative, and volatile, with the intelligence of a five-year-old child, Neema cannot speak, but she knows enough sign language to invent jokes and insults. She can also hurl a grown man across the room. Neema is a gorilla.A DISTRESSED SCIENTISTAfter a psycho murdered one of her “talking” gorillas in Seattle, Dr. Grace McKenna relocated to the Evansburg area. Now with the economy on the rocks and her funding cut, her beloved gorillas Neema and Gumu are in jeopardy. When Neema repeats a story of a crying baby, a cucumber car, and a snake, Grace realizes her gorilla is the only witness to whatever happened to baby Ivy.Does Grace dare go public with Neema’s sketchy clues? Can she afford not to?

    One phone call unravels that tidy world when she is summoned to the bedside of her critically ill mother, whose dying declaration stuns her. She is the adopted daughter of a murdered prostitute with an entire family she’s never met. After her mother’s funeral, Joal decides to stay in Indiana to figure out who she really is and poke around the edges of her birth family. As an investigative reporter, Joal has unraveled hundreds of sordid business deals and personal relationships. Eventually someone reveals the truth, but her mother’s murder isn’t the cliché “prostitute killed by pimp.” The answer may lie with the only witnesses. Her grandmother, the matriarch who tries to keep the family together. Her two brothers, one now a supremely optimistic minister and the other an overly pessimistic doctor. Or the murderer himself, now incarcerated in an Indiana prison.From the homey heartland of Indiana to the humid jungles of Vietnam, Joel follows two stories riddled with criminal acts and hidden agendas. Her work sends her overseas to follow a homebuilder Ponzi scheme while at home she widens the net to include some more colorful members of her family. Unwittingly, they all provide little pieces to a puzzle that begins to come together revealing a conspiracy of silence that has been suppressed for over three decades.Shooting Star is first and foremost the story of a woman trying to reclaim her shattered identity. Only by uncovering the essential truths about the mother she never knew can she put some kind of stability back into her life. Solving a thirty year old murder and finding her place in a family she never knew existed are just added bonuses.

    Ten years later... The body of a young woman is discovered along the path of a park in the same town. The killer is cunning and ruthless, but even the best killers make mistakes. Fiona Wolfe, the second woman to be attacked, survives and reveals a potential link between the current killer and the attack on Avery Hart. Noah Cotter, an ambitious new inspector, becomes drawn to the case when his curiosity combines with his attraction to Avery. The dangerous search for truth appears to be muddied with each shocking secret brought to light, as Avery, Fiona, and Noah realize that when someone is deceived for too long, sometimes... Lies Come True*Free with sign up to Emerald O'Brien's newsletter http://eepurl.com/4YHaX

    At one of these, Kait is outted by the most popular guy in school, Ethan Ripley. Yet, instead of humiliating her for all the world to see, he asks for her help, and Kait finds herself entangled in a murder mystery. Not only is the thrill of the mystery exciting, but more importantly Ethan knows her name! A little sleuthing is well worth that!

    Someone is demanding a lot of money from her husband and she wants to know why.What do the dying words of one man - he made me - actually mean?As the mystery unfolds people will come undone and reputations will be ruined before the answer becomes clear.At the end of the day Mrs Swaine might end up wishing she’d let sleeping dogs lie… Also available in the Booker & Cash series: Bad Sons

    The strain of it on her young shoulders led her to a downward spiral of drug abuse, which in turn led to Alice being placed with her grandmother.But Alice’s life, living with her grandmother, isn’t much better and by the time she is 21 she is suffering from a host of mental health problems, with a growing fear of what lies outside her front door. Stuck in her house and fearful of being outside, Alice uses social media to compensate for her miserable life, building an online persona over the years, that is nothing like she is in reality. With it she lives out her fantasies, safe in the knowledge that her grandmother will provide what she needs.But when Alice suddenly disappears from her online world and cannot be contacted, Rachel turns to her estranged brother for help. With a body discovered in the house and a man closely linked to Alice now in custody, they search for the truth about her disappearance.What has happened to the daughter Rachel lost all those years ago? And what is the truth behind the body in the house? The truth will be far stranger than they could have imagined.

    Get your copy today."Debut novelist Andy Holloman speeds us on a journey with punch, twist, and emotional dilemmas straight from our worst fears. Shades of Gray is a colorful, rollicking ride from start to finish." - Franz Wisner, New York Times bestselling author of "Honeymoon with My Brother" and "How the World Makes Love" "Wow! Holloman delivers on a taut thriller that will keep you turning the pages far into the night. This book should be at the top of everyone's reading list for 2012"- S. Burnham, PeakCityPublishing.com ---------------------------------------------------How far would you go to save your child's life? Could you break the law? What if your travel business was suddenly in danger of going under because of 9/11? A single father decides to partner up with woman from the opposite side of the tracks.Can their partnership deliver the cash they BOTH desperately need?Could they fall in love? And will they survive to see the Summer of 2002? ------------------------------------------------Start with "Breaking Bad", add dash of "Cops", and stir in a darker version of the "Love Boat" and you get all the right flavors for "Shades of Gray".

    Years of trying and failing to bear a child have given her an air of sadness overlaid with a hardened determination to persevere. Hiring Brazilian Professional Bull Rider, Alex, who is on a slow road to recovery from potentially career-ending injuries, will help Hanna get her wheat in before the fall rains come. The handsome cowboy makes it clear that he will return to bull riding before the start of the new PBR season in January. Alex didn’t count on his ex-wife dropping off his toddler daughter Chloe without warning. Hannah didn’t count on caring for the cowboy or his precious daughter. Despite his love for Chloe and the way he cares for Hannah, Alex’s goal remains the same—to return to bull riding, the only life he’s ever wanted. Three hearts hang in the balance, and one decision will break them all. If you like hot cowboys, strong women, and ranching in the new West, then this book will have you burning through the pages.

    Awesome!!!""OMG this book. Holy heck the gruesome descriptions of blood and gore and guts was SO RAD. I found myself cringing and fidgeting and yes, even feeling a bit nauseous in some spots - but totally in a GOOD WAY! Painless was exactly what I wanted in a super-unique, creepy, shocking horror-thriller."About the Book...The debut psychological-horror novel from author Marty Thornley is a page-turning ride, a front row seat to a clinical trial gone horribly wrong. For Greg Owens, this was supposed to be a chance to end years of back pain and escape his reliance on pain pills. If it all worked out, he could maybe even get back the life he left behind as the pills took control.Instead, as the patients are cured of their physical pain, they encounter a different sort of pain building inside them – obsessive thoughts, depression, self-destruction. The side-effects grow worse, and the suspense ratchets tighter. The patients want answers and violent revenge, setting them on a collision course with a crazed doctor, determined to protect his life's obsession.