THE DISH

From the desk of Hope Ramsay

Dear Reader,

Picture, if you will, a little girl in a polka-dot bathing suit, standing on a rough board jutting out over the waters of the Edisto River in South Carolina. She’s about six years old, and standing below her in the chest-high, tea-colored water is a tall man with a deep, deep Southern drawl—the kind that comes right up out of the ground.

“Jump, little gal,” the man says. “I’ll catch you.”

The little girl was me. And the man was my Uncle Ernest. And that memory is one of those touchstone moments that I go back to again and again. My uncle wanted me to face my fear of jumping into the water, but he was there, big hands outstretched, steady, sturdy, and sober as a judge. He was the model of a man I could trust.

I screwed up my courage and took that leap of faith. I jumped. He caught me. He taught me to love jumping into the river and swimming in those dark, mysterious waters, overhung with Spanish moss and sometimes visited by snakes and gators!

I loved Uncle Ernest. He was my favorite uncle. He’s been gone for quite a while now, but I think of him often, and he lives on in my heart.

There is even a little bit of him in Clay Rhodes, the hero of my debut novel, WELCOME TO LAST CHANCE. Jane, the heroine of the story, has to learn that Clay is the type of guy she can always trust. A guy she can take a leap of faith with. A guy who will always be there to catch her, even when she has to face her biggest fears.

And isn’t love all about taking a leap of faith?

I had such fun writing WELCOME TO LAST CHANCE, because it afforded me the opportunity to go back in time and remember what it was like spending my summers in a little town in South Carolina with folks who were like Uncle Ernest—people who made up a village where a child could grow up safe and sound and learn what makes a life meaningful.

I hope you enjoy meeting the characters in Last Chance, South Carolina, as much as I enjoyed writing them.

From the desk of Cynthia Eden

Dear Reader,

Have you ever wondered how far you would go to protect someone you loved? What would you do if the person you loved was in danger?

Love can make people do wild, desperate things… and love can certainly push people to cross the thin line between good and evil.

When I wrote DEADLY LIES, I created characters who would be forced to blur the lines between good and evil. Desperate times can call for desperate measures.

The heroine of this book is a familiar face if you’ve read the other DEADLY books. Samantha “Sam” Kennedy was first introduced in DEADLY FEAR. Sam lived through hell, and she’s now fighting to put her life back on track. She knows what evil looks like, and she knows that evil can hide behind the most innocent of faces. So when Sam is assigned to work on a serial kidnapping case, she understands that she has to be on her guard at all times.

But when the kidnapper hits too close to home and her lover’s stepbrother is abducted, the rules of the game change. Soon Sam fully understands just how “desperate” the victims are feeling, and she vows to do anything in her power to help Max Ridgeway find his brother.

Anything. Yes, desperation can even push an FBI agent to the edge of the law. Lucky for Sam, she’ll have backup ready to help her out—all of the other SSD agents are back to help track the kidnappers, and they won’t stop until the case is closed.

I’ve had such a wonderful time revisiting my SSD agents in this book. And I hope you enjoying catching up with the characters too!

If you’d like to learn more about my books, please visit my website at www.cynthiaeden.com.

From the desk of Robyn DeHart

Dear Reader,

There have always been certain things that fascinate me—the heinous crimes of Jack the Ripper; why cats get up, turn around, then settle back into the exact position they were just in; people who can eat only one Oreo cookie; and the ancient legend of the Loch Ness monster. Recorded sightings of the creature date all the way back to the seventh century, and not all of these sightings have been water-based—there are those who claim to have seen the monster walking on land.

Regardless of what you believe, it’s interesting to think that there just might be some prehistoric animal hiding in a loch in the Highlands. It was this interest that compelled me to write TREASURE ME.

Another interesting tidbit about this book is that it was actually the first romance novel I ever wrote. Okay, that’s not entirely true, but the concept of a couple who fall in love near Loch Ness, centered around adventure and action and danger, well, that was all in that first book—even the characters’ names stayed the same. But I didn’t keep anything else. When it came to the third book in my Legend Hunters trilogy, I took my basic concept and started from scratch.

If you’ve read SEDUCE ME and DESIRE ME (the first two books in the series), then you might remember meeting Graeme, the big, brooding Scotsman who looks and sounds remarkably like Gerard Butler. Graeme has been after the authentic Stone of Destiny for years, because he believes the one sitting in Westminster is a counterfeit. He’s gone back to his family’s home in the Highlands to do some research, and meets with trouble in the form of a delectable, self-proclaimed paleontologist named Vanessa. She’s just run away from her own wedding and is determined to make a name for herself as a legitimate scientist.

Add in a marriage of convenience, a deadly nemesis, and some buried treasure and you’ve got yourself a rollicking adventure full of intrigue and seduction that will leave you as breathless as the characters.

Dare to love a Legend Hunter…

Visit my website, www.RobynDeHart.com, for contests, excerpts, and more.

From the desk of Kira Morgan

Dear Reader,

It’s easy to write about a match made in heaven. Cinderella meets Prince Charming, they fall in love at first sight, and they live happily ever after.

But for my latest book, SEDUCED BY DESTINY, I wanted to take on the challenge of star-crossed lovers, characters like Romeo and Juliet—a man and a woman cursed by fate and thrown together by chance, who have to overcome their tragic history to find true love.

In SEDUCED BY DESTINY, set in the time of Mary, Queen of Scots, Josselin Ancrum and Andrew Armstrong each have a dark secret in their past and deadly peril looming in their future. They have little in common. They should avoid each other like the plague.

She’s Scottish. He’s English.

She likes to stir up trouble. He likes to fly under the radar.

She’s a tavern wench who loves to play with swords. He’s an expert swordsman who’d rather play golf.

Her mother was killed in battle.

His father was the one who killed her.

Talk about Fortune’s foe…

All this would be fine if only they hadn’t started falling in love. If they hadn’t felt that initial spark of attraction… if they hadn’t begun to enjoy one another’s company… if they hadn’t succumbed to that first kiss… their story might be a simple tale of revenge.

But Drew and Jossy, unaware of the fateful ties between them, are drawn to one another like iron to a magnet. And by the time they discover they’ve fallen in love with their mortal enemy, it’s too late. Their hearts are already tangled in a hopeless knot.

This is where it gets even more interesting.

To make matters worse, outside forces are working to drive them apart. What began as a personal mission of vengeance now involves their friends, their families, and ultimately their queens. Suspected of treason, hunted by spies, they become targets for royal assassins.

The uneasy truce between Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary is mirrored in the fragile relationship between Drew and Jossy. The lovers are swept into a raging battle bigger than the both of them—a battle that shakes the foundation of their union and threatens their very lives.

Only the strength of their fateful bond and the power of their love can save them now.

Of course, unlike Romeo and Juliet, Drew and Jossy will triumph. Nobody wants to read a historical romance with an unhappy ending! But just how they manage to overcome all odds, when their stars are crossed and the cards are stacked against them, is the stuff of nail-biting high adventure and a story that I hope will keep you up all night.

To read an excerpt from SEDUCED BY DESTINY, peruse my research photos, and enter my monthly sweepstakes, visit my website at www.glynnis.net/kiramorgan. If you’d like to read my daily posts and interact with other fans, become my friend at www.facebook.com/KiraMorganAuthor or follow me at www.twitter.com/kira_morgan.