Showing posts with label ghosts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ghosts. Show all posts

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Inheritance by Gail Z. Martin - Cover Reveal & Release Blitz with Excerpt and Giveaway


COVER REVEAL


Book Title: Inheritance

Author: Gail Z. Martin

Cover Artist: Lou Harper

Release Date: October 22, 2019

Genre/s: Urban fantasy with romantic elements. 

(Note—Characters from my Morgan Brice (MM paranormal romance) books make several key appearances in this book. 

Also, a long-time committed MM couple figure prominently in the plot).

Trope/s: Established relationships, strengthening commitment, supportive partners, protective partners

Themes: Friendship, found family, loyalty, family always has your back, trust

Heat Rating: 0 - 1 flame (No sex, kissing/hugging for MF and MM characters)

Length: 66 000 words/ 222 pages

It is the fourth book in the series but can be read as a standalone.


 



Can Cassidy and her friends find the demon box, stop the killer ghosts, and break the Pendlewood curse before Beckford’s murderous cousins and the vengeful demon destroy them all?


Blurb

Cassidy Kincaide runs Trifles & Folly in modern-day Charleston, an antiques and curio shop with a dangerous secret. Cassidy can read the history of objects by touching them, and she teams up with friends and allies who use magic and paranormal abilities to get rid of cursed objects and keep Charleston and the world safe from supernatural threats.

Caribbean ghosts terrorize Charleston and start racking up a body count. Then Beckford Pendlewood, the heir to a powerful family of dark warlocks, shows up raving about a bound demon locked in a lost box and begs sanctuary. Can Cassidy and her friends find the demon box, stop the killer ghosts, and break the Pendlewood curse before Beckford’s murderous cousins and the vengeful demon destroy them all?

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Excerpt

From Chapter 1

“I have a problem antique I’d like you to take a look at.” The man on the other end of the call sounded rattled. I recognized his name—Alfred Stone, from Stone Auctions—but I didn’t think we had ever spoken, let alone met.

“What kind of ‘problem’ does it present?” I asked. A number of possibilities came to mind. “Questionable provenance? Not sure how to authenticate?”

“I think it’s trying to kill me.”

Well, damn. That kind of problem. “All right, Mr. Stone. Try to stay calm.”

“I just told you, it’s trying to kill me. I heard you…know…about these things. Please, help me.”

Across the store, Teag Logan glanced up to make sure everything was all right. I nodded, and he went back to helping a customer.

“I can come now. Are you at the showroom?”

“Yes. Thank you. And…please…hurry.”

I ended the call and sighed. This might be the first time Alfred Stone had an antique try to kill him, but that made it just another day here at Trifles and Folly.

I’m Cassidy Kincaide, and I own Trifles and Folly, an antique and curio shop in historic, haunted Charleston, South Carolina. The shop has been in my family for more than three hundred years. While we’re known as a great place to buy high-quality antiques, the shop is also a cover for the Alliance, a coalition of mortals and immortals who save Charleston—and the world—from supernatural threats. I’m a psychometric, which means I can read the history and magic of objects by touching them. Teag is my assistant store manager, best friend, and sometimes bodyguard—and he’s also a talented Weaver witch. Sorren, my business partner, is a nearly six-hundred-year-old vampire. Together with some other friends with very specialized abilities, we do our best to keep the world safe from dark magic and things that go bump in the night.

“Problem?” Teag asked when the customer left.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “Alfred Stone just called—from the auction house. He says he’s got an item that’s trying to kill him.”

“You want me to go with you?” Teag pushed a lock of dark hair out of his eyes. His skater-boy haircut and skinny jeans made him look younger than his late twenties. “Maggie can handle the store.”

On cue, Maggie—our lifesaver of a part-time associate—waved to agree from the other side of the store. She was sporting a new bright pink streak in her short gray hair, and it matched her sweater, a reminder—as if I needed one—that she believed in taking risks and living large.

I reached up to slick my humidity-frizzy strawberry blond hair back into a ponytail and shook my head. “Let me go see what the problem is, and I’ll figure out what to do from there. It’s not far away, in case I need to give a shout.”



About the Author 

Gail Z. Martin writes epic fantasy, urban fantasy and steampunk for Solaris Books, Orbit Books, SOL Publishing, Darkwind Press, Worldbuilders Press and Falstaff Books. Recent books include Convicts and Exiles, Sellsword’s Oath, Inheritance, and Night Moves. With Larry N. Martin, she is the co-author of the Spells Salt & Steel, Wasteland Marshals, Joe Mack and Jake Desmet series. As Morgan Brice, she writes urban fantasy MM paranormal romance including the Witchbane, Badlands and Treasure Trail series. Recent books include The Rising, Flame and Ash.


 
 

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Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Grimmer Intentions by Jodi Hutchins - Release Blitz with Excerpt and Giveaway


Title: Grimmer Intentions
Series: Tales from the Grim, Book Two
Author: Jodi Hutchins
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: December 9, 2019
Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex
Pairing: Female/Female
Length: 91100
Genre: Paranormal, LGBT, romance, paranormal, demons, ghosts, spirits

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Synopsis

She screwed up. She broke protocol. She saved a life. Grim Reaper Margo Petrov may have resurrected a drowned surfer on the brink of death, but she isn’t earning any awards or receiving employee of the month from Corporate; she’s under more scrutiny from the Grim governing body than ever before. Since she has a massive secret that could spell disaster if revealed, she sure as hell doesn’t want to be in the spotlight, in any form.

Margo vows to keep her head down and stay out of trouble, reaping her quota of spirits lest she cause more problems for herself and the woman she saved with an illegal blood bond. She certainly shouldn’t be opening doors to the Fae lands or offering her neck to an Empusa woman suffering from bloodlust, but Margo’s laundry list of bad decisions keeps growing. With the threat of becoming decommissioned by Corporate looming in her periphery, Margo stumbles deeper into the politics of her people and soon realizes their intentions are far worse than she initially thought.

Excerpt


“Margo, calm down. You can’t go killing someone just because they pissed you off.”

Margo Petrov pumped her arms, increasing her speed as she cut across the dead grass of the front lawn, though her initial fury had settled to a low broil. The cold metal of the baseball bat against her palm was soothing but not calming enough to ease the rage completely.

The sound of Luis’s sneakers pounding the asphalt behind her indicated he’d finally caught up. “I’m not going to kill them,” she grumbled.

Luis snorted. “Okay, well, when you storm out of your apartment, yelling, ‘I’m going to fucking kill ’em, Luis,’ I think I can safely assume you’re going to kill someone.”

She stopped abruptly, causing Luis to run into her chest as she turned to face him. “Fine,” she said, tossing the bat into the bushes lining the sidewalk. She grabbed his shoulders, lowering her gaze to his. “Nobody fucks with my brother without consequence. Nobody,” she said, shaking him slightly to emphasize her seriousness.

Headlights from a passing car gleamed in his wide brown-eyed gaze as he nodded.

“Besides”—she started, as she dropped her hands from him, quirking an eyebrow—“I just want to know if they’re afraid of the dark.” She’d been livid when Luis told her the resident group of asshats from their high school decided to give Luis hell on his way back from the library.

Without further discussion, Margo continued down the cracked sidewalks of downtown Philadelphia.

“They still hang out at the bowling alley on Daly Ave?”

Luis huffed a discontented sigh, eliciting a grin from Margo. “Dude come on. Think about this for a second; do you really want to risk another arrest? You’re almost eighteen, and you could be charged as an adult.”

He had a point, and she admitted that to herself, but she continued down the sidewalk anyway, cutting across the street, her feet displacing loose black asphalt pebbles on the worn roadway. “Yeah, but they need to leave you the hell alone. This is getting ridiculous.” For years, she and her brother experienced taunting for their otherness, Luis taking the brunt end most times. The basketball team tormented Luis for merely existing; however, Margo guessed they blamed their mocking on his differences. They needed a good scare, using a bit of magic, the otherness his tormentors weren’t aware of. She wanted to scare them so bad they’d piss themselves. If all else failed, she’d just beat the shit out of them.

Luis gave a shrug of nonchalance, something she instantly recognized as her brother’s passive language, which furthered the desire to teach the perpetrators a lesson. Instead of digging into his dismissal, she turned and continued her way toward downtown.

Luis followed.

The streets were busy even though rush hour had ended a few hours prior. Cars zipped past, a stray honk resounding a few blocks away, voices rising in a cacophonous argument. The late-night city sounds were laden with a warning, hinting at the kind of night bad things happened, stirring a deep foreboding in the air around them.

Luis jabbed her in the ribs, ripping Margo from her eerie thoughts. “Hey, do you see that?” He pointed to LOVE Park on the opposite side of the crosswalk. Standing beside the water fountain was a child, their head turning from side to side in rapid succession. Luis was clearly pointing to the small person; however, the iridescent shift of air around the child indicated to Margo they weren’t alive.

Before meeting Luis, she agreed with the titles given to her—weirdo, crazy, psychic—the names condensing her down to a freak who could see ghosts with the only person to possibly believe her long dead. Of course, she’d been ecstatic to find kinship in another, to prove at least to herself she wasn’t crazy. That is until Luis stopped for every spirit in sight with their Sally-sob story. “Yeah, I see them, and no, we don’t have time.”

Luis scoffed just as the light turned, and he hurried across the street without waiting for Margo.

She rushed after him, forgoing her planned scare tactics on the basketball team in hopes she’d convince him to leave well enough alone.

They approached the park’s edge, Luis carefully watching the child. Luckily, the park held no other visitors, alive or dead. “We have to help her,” he whispered before he stuck his lower lip out.

She rolled her eyes. “They aren’t stray puppies, Luis. We can’t help every single one of them.”

Brows cinching, he met her gaze with an icy stare. “Maybe this is why we can see them, to help them move on.”

Though reluctant to admit it, she’d come to the very same conclusion herself a long time ago. With no way of knowing why they could guide ghostly apparitions to the other side, she couldn’t come up with a better reason herself. She glanced over at the redheaded girl and sighed. “Fine, but we need to be quick, and I still want to find those idiots so I can mess up their night.”

Purchase

NineStar Press | Amazon | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

Meet the Author

Jodi Hutchins is a healthcare professional by day and fanatical writer by night. They are also an avid reader, coffee connoisseur, helpless romantic, amateur artist, enthusiastic maker-upper of things, spouse, and parent. The frequent rain of western Washington doesn’t stop Jodi and their wife from gallivanting through the next trail head with their two children.

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Monday, November 18, 2019

The Mysterious and Amazing Blue Bllings by Lily Morton - Release Blitz with Excerpt

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The Mysterious and Amazing Blue Billings
Lily Morton
Gay Romance/Paranormal Ghost
Release Date: 11.14.19

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Blurb

Levi Black is at a crossroads. After suffering a loss and breaking up a long-term relationship, he’s looking for a change. When he receives the news he’s inherited a house in York, he seizes the opportunity to begin a new chapter in his life.

However, when he gets there, he finds a house that has never kept its occupants for very long. Either through death or disinclination, no one stays there, and after a few days of living in the place, Levi can understand why. Strange noises can be heard at all hours of the day and night, and disturbing and scary things begin to happen to him. He never believed in ghosts before, but when events take a sinister turn, he knows he must look for help. He finds it in the unlikely form of the blue-haired leader of a ghost tour.

Blue Billings is edgy, beautiful, and lost. Utterly lost. He conceals so many secrets that some days it’s a miracle he remembers his own name. He knows that he should ignore Levi because he threatens the tenuous grip Blue has on survival. But there’s something about the kind-eyed man that draws Blue to him. Something that demands he stay and fight for him when he would normally run in the opposite direction.

As the two men investigate the shocking truth behind Levi’s house, they also discover a deep connection that defies the short length of time they’ve known each other. But when events escalate and his life is on the line, Levi has to wonder if it was wise to trust the Mysterious and Amazing Blue Billings.


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Excerpt
His audience are raptly hanging onto his every word, but attention is disrupted when a large group approaches. At its lead is a thin man with long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. He’s handsome, but his expression is discontented and his mouth is sharp. He’s dressed in similar clothes to Blue, and he carries a large wooden box.
The group moves past us, coming to a stop a few yards away. The man places his box on the ground with a rather dramatic precision. My mouth twitches as he climbs on with a great deal of dignity. 
“I’ve brought you here,” he says in a ghoulish tone, “to talk about plague and death and a terrible end in solitary confinement locked away in a small house.”
“Excuse me.” Blue’s loud voice cuts straight through the man’s dramatic spiel. 
The man stops talking with an impatient sigh. “Can I help you?” he asks.
“I’ll say you can,” Blue says sharply. “This is my pitch for the next ten minutes. That’s the agreement if I keep off the York Devil bit until last thing.”
“Well, Frank changed the route. Sorry if you didn’t get the memo,” Box Boy says in a bored voice.
“You don’t sound sorry,” Blue says calmly. “You sound quite cross.” He pauses. “Or constipated. I never could tell the difference.” He looks him up and down. “Both ways were a build-up of shit.”
The man seems to lose his grasp on his temper. “You don’t own York,” he says loudly.
“Obviously not,” my guide says patiently. “Or I wouldn’t be doing ghost tours.” He clearly remembers his audience and turns back with a charming smile. “I would, of course, still be doing ghost tours for wonderful groups like this even if I owned the city of York, because I live to impart spectral knowledge.” The other man snorts slightly, and Blue smiles at us kindly and winks. “You’ll have to excuse us,” he says. “We used to date. Can I just say there is no correlation at all between box size and penis size?”
I snort out a laugh despite myself and watch as the other man picks up his box and gestures to his group in a bad-tempered way. I watch him go, smiling. The grin drops away as I suddenly become aware that the group is staring at me and our guide is talking to me.
“Sorry,” I say quickly. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Obviously,” he says. “Because you missed the bit where I said I wasn’t a resident charity.”
“I think I’ve missed something,” I say slowly.
The other members of the group shift slightly, obviously enjoying the entertainment, but not wanting to draw too much attention to themselves in case his laser gaze turns on them. 
“You have missed something,” he says. “You’ve missed the part where you pay for the tour.”
“Oh fuck, sorry.” I edge forwards and dig in my pocket for my wallet. “Of course I’ll pay. How much is it?”
“Well, usually it’s six pounds.” I open my wallet, and he stares at me. “But that’s for people who are on time. You, however, are late, so it’s a tenner.”
I’m about to argue with this logic when a big man stirs at the back of the group. “Can we get a move on? It’s fucking freezing.”
“Could you watch your language?” another man says crossly.
“I can. I just might not want to,” the big man says.
My guide sighs and glares at me. “See what you’ve done now? This was a very well-behaved group before you turned up. You’re like a human grenade.”
I open my mouth to refute this unfair observation, but he shakes his head. 

“Okay, people,” he calls out to the group. “Let’s be off to our next stop on the ghost tour led by the Mysterious and Amazing Blue Billings.”



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Lily writes contemporary romance novels, and specialises in hot love stories with a good dose of humour.

Lily lives in sunny England with her husband and two children, all of whom claim that they haven’t had a proper conversation with her since she bought her first Kindle.

She has spent her life with her head full of daydreams and decided one day to just sit down and start writing about them. In the process she discovered that she actually loved writing, because how else could she get to spend her time with hot, funny men!

She loves chocolate and Baileys and the best of all creations – chocolate Baileys! Her lifetime’s ambition is to have a bath in peace without being shouted by one of her family.



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Monday, November 4, 2019

Graveyard Shift by Jenn Burke - Release Blitz with Excerpt and Giveaway




Graveyard Shift by Jenn Burke
Series: Not Dead Yet #3
Release Date: November 4, 2019
Subgenre: LGBTQ+ Paranormal Romance

Order here:



Synopsis:

Ghost/god Wes Cooper and his not-life partner, vampire Hudson Rojas, have settled into cohabitation in an upscale part of Toronto. So what if their hoity-toity new neighbors haven’t exactly rolled out the welcome mat for the paranormal pair? Their PI business is booming, and when a suspect they’ve been tailing winds up in the morgue, it’s alongside a rash of other shifters in apparent drug-related fatalities.


Now Wes and Hudson must connect the dots between the shifter deaths and an uptick in brutal vampire attacks across the city. Throw in a surprise visit from Hudson’s niece—who may or may not be on the run from European paranormal police (who may or may not exist)—and guardianship of a teen shifter who might be the key to solving the whole mystery (if only she could recover her memory), and Wes and Hudson have never been busier…or happier.

But when a nightmare from Hudson’s past comes back to haunt him, their weird, little found family is pushed to the brink. Mucking this up would mean Hudson and Wes missing their second chance at happily-forever-afterlife…


Excerpt :

No sooner had I hung up with Ren than my phone buzzed again—this time with the ringtone I’d assigned to Hudson, “Axel F.” To say he wasn’t amused by it was an understatement—“I’m not Eddie Murphy, for fuck’s sake”—but that was about 80 percent of the reason I kept it. The other 20 percent was that I really liked Beverly Hills Cop.

“Hey,” I answered. “How’d the client meeting go?”

Now that Hudson and Evan, his baby vampire and junior investigative assistant, weren’t affected by sunlight anymore, thanks to regular sips of my blood—godhood had its benefits—we’d adjusted the hours of the firm to reflect their new availability. We worked late when needed, but usually most nights we wrapped things up around ten instead of after midnight. Hudson had taken to being the lead on client meetings during the day now, since Iskander’s voice was iffy thanks to a throat injury he’d suffered the year before.

“Lots of crying. Jesus.” Hudson huffed out a breath. “I mean, she knew. She told me at our first meeting she was certain he was fooling around. So I’m not sure why all the waterworks.”

“Because she knew, but she didn’t know. You know?”

“No.” I could hear the smile in his voice at the wordplay.

“You hugged her, didn’t you?”

He grunted. “Yes. Ruined another goddamned shirt.”

God, I loved this man. He could grumble and complain all he wanted, but he loved being a private investigator. It showed in the bounce of his step and the lightness in his eyes, even if he tried to maintain the gruffness that had been way more natural when he’d been a homicide detective.
“Look, I’m going to miss lunch. I got a call from Kat—she wants to meet me at the morgue.”

“Uh…” That was not where I thought this conversation would go. “Why?”

“Weird stuff.”

Of course. Hudson’s old boss, Detective Sergeant Katrina Li, brought him in on anything that seemed hinky these days. “Anything to do with our buddy from yesterday?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Okay, come get me.”

Silence came over the line. “It’s the morgue, Wes.”

“I’m dead, Hudson.”

“Yeah, but not—not dead-dead. Not morgue dead. It might be gross.”

“I can handle it.”

“Wes—”

“I can handle it. Come get me. You might be able to use my godly insights.”

Hudson made his trademark can’t react don’t react breathy-grunt noise, but I wasn’t sure if he was holding back a chuckle or a groan. Maybe both. I had that effect at times.

“Fine,” he finally said. “I’ll be there soon.”

I hung up, triumph flashing through me. Lately he’d made a real effort to show, on a regular basis, that he trusted me and my judgment. This was progress, and I was excited.

“The morgue?” Lexi bit off the last of her lollipop and crunched it. “Ready to witness an autopsy?” She smirked.

My elation faded. “He didn’t say anything about that.”

“Oh, cool. Maybe it’s not that, then.” She chucked the stick at the garbage can next to the end table and got it in. “Could be an identification request. Sometimes bodies come in so decomposed or damaged—”

“Lexi—”

“Watch out for the brains in jars.”

Yeah, that definitely wasn’t happiness in my stomach now.

Author Bio:




Jenn Burke has loved out-of-this-world romance since she first read about heroes and heroines kicking butt and falling in love as a preteen. Now that she’s an author, she couldn’t be happier to bring adventure, romance, and sexy times to her readers.

Jenn is the author of a number of paranormal and science fiction romance titles, including the critically acclaimed Chaos Station science fiction romance series (authored with Kelly Jensen) from Carina Press.

She’s been called a pocket-sized and puntastic Canadian on social media, and she’ll happily own that label. Jenn lives just outside of Ottawa, Ontario, with her husband and two kids, plus two dogs named after video game characters…because her geekiness knows no bounds.


Author links:

Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/295814398039168/ (Jenn Burke’s Epic Adventurers)
Newsletter sign-up: http://bit.ly/jennburkenewsletter


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Win a amazing prize package for the "Graveyard Shift" release!