Book Blitz & Excerpt: Harleigh Sinclair and the Raiders of the Lost Ankh + Giveaway

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Harleigh Sinclair and the Raiders of the Lost Ankh
by Tamara Grantham
Publication date: October 17th 2023
Genres: Adult, Paranormal, Romance

Getting confessions from notorious serial killers? Easy.
Stealing priceless Egyptian artifacts? No problem.
Doing it with a cocky, too-handsome-for-his-own-good bad boy? Impossible.

My name is Harleigh Sinclair, and I’m a Neotact. That’s a fancy word for a person who has special powers using touch. My special power? I can touch a person, see into their mind, and find any object they’ve physically contacted. Comes in handy when you’re employed by San Antonio’s wealthiest entrepreneur who’s in the business of finding lost relics. However, my job description does come with a few hitches.

My most recent client is a man named Jagg Ransom. He’s arrogant and too attractive for his own good. My mission is to purchase an ancient Egyptian ankh from him and deliver it to my boss. Sounds easy, right?

But Ransom refuses to cooperate, so I have no choice but to break into his apartment and steal the location of the amulet from his mind. Bad idea. Like, really bad idea.
I find out that this relic happens to be the relic that gave five percent of Earth’s population Neotact powers. I also learn that Ransom isn’t who he says he is, and I’m forced onto a path that will take me from my home in Texas to a hidden dungeon of a Scottish castle, and then into the heart of a deadly Egyptian desert. Finding the ankh is hard enough. Fighting my feelings for Jagg Ransom is worse.

If I can’t find the ankh in time, not only will I be out of a job, but I’ll lose everything I value—including my own life.

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EXCERPT:

I’m afraid of the usual: heights, snakes, dirty toilets. Crazy psycho serial killers? Maybe I should’ve been more afraid of them as I walked through the halls of San Antonio’s max security jail.

Detective Mendoza marched alongside me, her stilettos clicking with each step. Her penciled eyebrows didn’t flinch as she stared straight ahead. Generously applied makeup couldn’t hide the wrinkles lining her eyes or the creases around her mouth. She stayed quiet as we paced behind the guards, which clued me in to her current mood. Pure panic. Nothing else would’ve made her speechless.

Wild guess here, but I imagined trying to get a confession from Texas’s most notorious serial killer was a tad bit stressful.

Harsh lights gave the linoleum floors a sterile feeling. I had to suppress a shiver as we passed by the cells. Lean, hungry eyes fixated on me from behind the bars. One of the inmates, a bald man with a tattooed face, glanced at my hands. His eyes widened.

My red leather gloves creased as I flexed my fingers. I stifled the jolt of electricity coursing through my veins.

Yeah. Neotact here. Keep your distance.

I was used to the stares by now.

We reached a room barricaded by a steel door. Keys jangled as one of the guards unlocked the latch.

“I won’t force you to do this,” Mendoza said. “Leave now and I won’t blame you.”

“I’ll be fine.” After everything life had thrown at me, it took more than a little to scare me.

She gave me a shrewd glance. “I’ve already warned you about him. You know what’s at stake, and what he’s accused of…” She trailed off, and though unwanted, the bodies of the mutilated teens intruded on my memories. Beheaded. Their hands surgically removed. I took a deep, cleansing breath and pushed the images away. “Don’t let him get into your head whatever you do,” she finished.

I flexed my hands. “I’m not planning on it.”

“Fine.” Her eyes flicked to the door. “Just be careful in there, all right?”

“Aren’t I always?” I said with an overconfident smile.

She sighed with annoyance. “Sinclair, he’s not like the others. You understand that?”

I gave her my best stern glare. “I got it.”

Mendoza stood tall and ran a hand down a crease in her jacket, returning to her usual demeanor, all business in her navy suit, her hair pulled back in a tight bun with enough gel to make it shine. “I’m counting on you to get a confession. Otherwise, he walks.”

“Trust me, Mendoza. I got this.”

“You’d better.” She narrowed her eyes, then nodded to a guard, and he opened the door.

Through the open doorway, I spotted the prisoner.

Not that I was scared or anything, but this guy gave a serious creepy vibe.

A single bulb buzzed overhead. Metal clasps pinned his hands to the tabletop where he sat, and cuffs linked his ankles to chains bolted to the floor. Gray streaked his unwashed blond hair. Dark eyes peered from a pockmarked face, boring into me with a hatred I could feel from here.

Like I said. Creepy.

 

Author Bio:

Tamara Grantham is the award-winning author of more than a dozen books and novellas, including the Olive Kennedy: Fairy World MD series, the Shine novellas, and the Twisted Ever After trilogy. Dreamthief, the first book of her Fairy World MD series, won first place for fantasy in INDIEFAB’S Book of the Year Awards, a RONE award for best New Adult Romance, and is a #1 bestseller on Amazon with over 200 five-star reviews.

Tamara holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from Lamar University. She has been a featured speaker at multiple writing conferences, and she has been a panelist at Comic Con Wizard World speaking on the topic of female leads. For her first published project, she collaborated with New York-Times bestselling author, William Bernhardt, in writing the Shine series.

Born and raised in Texas, Tamara now lives with her husband and five children in Wichita, Kansas. She rarely has any free time, but when the stars align and she gets a moment to relax, she enjoys reading fantasy novels, taking nature walks–which fuel her inspiration for creating fantastical worlds–and watching every Star Wars or Star Trek movie ever made. You can find her online at www.TamaraGrantham.com.

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Book Blitz & Excerpt: The Fall That Saved Us + Giveaway

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The Fall That Saved Us
by Tamara Jerée
Publication date: September 5th 2023
Genres: Adult, LGBTQ+, Paranormal, Romance

Nephilim—humans with direct lines to the angels—are natural demon hunters. All nephilim, it seems, except Cassiel. The weakest among a family touched by archangels, she’s abandoned her angelic inheritance for a mundane life as a bookseller. But even in the noise of the city, she remains burdened by the strict tenets of her old life. And recently, something far more sinister haunts her.

Avitue is a succubus out for revenge—though she has little say in the matter. As part of the greater demons’ plan to ruin Cassiel’s family for slaying a duke of Hell, Avitue’s been sent to claim a particular nephilim soul, one she’s told will pose little challenge. It should be an easy seduction. Quick, fatal. But Avitue is surprised to find her own pain reflected in Cassiel, a nephilim deemed fallen by her own family’s standards.

By choosing trust, they reveal the lies that bind them, but as unwilling participants in an eternal war, trusting each other is the most dangerous thing they can do.

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EXCERPT:

I try not to speak to the angels, but sometimes, I still hear their songs—when my mind is empty in the white noise of the shower, when I clumsily bloody my hands with the kitchen knife, when I stir sugar into my tea. These incidental joys and pains and nothings are the only times in my new life when I’ve been able to cry, compelled to do so as if by divine command. Their words course through me like molten gold, precious and searing. The world flashes white, then settles anew, unchanged but briefly brighter. Here’s the proof that they still turn their eyes to me. I wonder whether they see a wayward child.

The first time I heard their voices, I’d regained consciousness on the cold cellar floor of my childhood home, my face tear damp. It’s not so incapacitating as that anymore, but neither familiarity nor my angelic inheritance can fully diminish an encounter with the divine. I’m still human despite what my mother would like to believe about us.

Their songs are louder today, more frequent, as if the angels, too, have been keeping count.

Today marks the third anniversary of my leaving. I don’t know what the angel song means on this day, whether the chorus is passing judgment or merely observing with me. They sang the night I left, bright and clear. I took it as a sign.

Three years ago, at midnight, when my sister Zuriel caught me descending the stairs of our family estate, I begged her one more time to come with me out into the world. It’d been our secret for months that I planned to leave, to live in the city among regular people. I’d needed to tell someone, and she was the only one I could tell. My truth turned our relationship tense. We tried to be each other’s shelter as we always had, but it couldn’t last when I was trying at every turn to convince her to leave while she tried to convince me to stay.

“We can survive this if we have each other,” she’d say to me—when she braided my hair, when we traced protective sigils into each other’s skin. We sparred harder at the end as if winning meant the loser would have no choice but to adopt our perspective. I knew that as long as she would fight with me, she would fight for me.

But on those stairs, she’d stared too long at our clasped hands, and I doubted her. I couldn’t breathe. Two stairs separated us, she above, framed by the darkened stained-glass window on the landing. I, below, looking up. A terrible look crossed her face, as if this final meeting was a test of her devotion.

I’d wanted her to say something about us. Instead, she invoked duty and legacy.

“Don’t be like Gabriel,” I said.

We rarely called her mother. To us, she has always been Gabriel. For some, she’s a beacon.

Our records of all the angels and their nephilim are inconsistent, but the one most thoroughly documented through history is Gabriel. For the generation before my mother’s, there was no Gabriel born, no nephilim namesake of the great archangel. The reappearance seemed a sign for some. Other archangels, too, had claimed nephilim in our family. We’d clearly been blessed. When I was young, pilgrimages to our home were common—and also how our mother spread her philosophy of denial and restraint as the way. She was a beacon, and I should’ve been grateful to be her daughter. Our Aunt Raphael might’ve become a black sheep, but in Gabriel’s eyes, my siblings could make up for her lack. Because of their namesakes, Michael and Zuriel were burdened with more expectations, but Zuriel internalized the pressure the most. And suffered from it the most.

My sister gave me a tight smile. “You’ll come back,” she said, withdrawing her hand from mine to weave a familiar blessing in the air. For good fortune and protection, the one we drew before a hunt we knew would be especially dangerous. She pushed its energy toward me, and it settled into my skin with a light shimmer.

I wanted to tell her she had it wrong. I wasn’t the one entering a dangerous world. It was a wasted blessing, and we didn’t waste blessings.

I wanted her to say she’d miss me. I wanted an affirmation that we’d made this life less terrible for each other.

She retreated silently up the stairs, and I fought to breathe in her absence. Alone on the dark stairs, my bag cutting an ache into my shoulder, I considered scrambling after her, making one last bid for us. Together. As we’d always been.

But that had never been the way our family handled emotion. Big displays were anathema to us. For the last time, I followed her stoic lead, this time away from her.


Author Bio:

Tamara Jerée (they/them) is a graduate of the Purdue University MFA Program and the Odyssey Writing Workshop. Their short stories have appeared in the Shirley Jackson Award-winning anthologies Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness and Professor Charlatan Bardot’s Travel Anthology. Their poem “goddess in forced repose” in Uncanny Magazine was nominated for the inaugural Ignyte Award. They’ve worked as an indie bookseller and a writer in the video games industry. The Fall That Saved Us (out 9/5/2023) is their debut novel.

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Book Blitz & Excerpt: Hungry is the Night + Giveaway

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Hungry is the Night
by Robin Jeffrey
(The Night Series, #1)
Publication date: August 22nd 2023
Genres: Adult, Paranormal, Romance

The werewolves of the world live in tight knit gangs, or “dens”, for protection from outsiders – and each other. Every major metropolis has one; to belong to a den is to have a family for eternity. However, Grace Holtz, next in line to lead the Seattle den called The Nameless, has had enough of living under the crushing weight of her den’s expectations. Having fled to a small, rural town in southeast Oregon, her goal is to blend in and be as “normal” as possible for the rest of her unnaturally long life.

But Marcus Bowen, a wolf from the UK-based Feóndulf den (and the closest thing Grace has ever had to a lover), has other plans. Reappearing thirty years after their affair came to an abrupt and bloody end, Marcus needs Grace. He needs her to return to Seattle and arrange an audience with Mama, the current leader of The Nameless and Grace’s estranged grandmother. The leader of the Feóndulf and his heir have both been brutally murdered, and Marcus suspects that Grace and Mama are next.

Teaming up to hunt for the killer in the Emerald City, the pair slowly begin to realize their romance may not be as dead as they thought. However, as it becomes clear that the person they’re looking for holds secrets about both their dens, Marcus and Grace must grapple with competing loyalties, conflicting desires, and ultimately decide what matters more: their dens or each other.

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EXCERPT:

The sensation of his lips against mine rippled through me like a shot of whiskey, warming and intoxicating, setting my blood dancing while at the same time making me shiver. When he reciprocated the gesture, when he reached out to hold my cheek with trembling fingers and shifted against my lips without withdrawing, the tight coil of control in my chest unraveled. I took a step forward, my body flush against his, and lifted my hands to grip at Marcus’ shoulders with a possessiveness I barely recognized.

Marcus mimicked my stance, but instead of pulling me closer, he took a step back, breaking the kiss with a small gasp. My eyes flickered open.

While he shook his head, Marcus’ eyes remained closed as he whispered, “Grace, we shouldn’t—”

“Marcus.” His eyes opened wide at the sound of his name. I gave a weak smile and lifted my hand to his face, trailing my thumb across his lower lip. “Don’t be so stupid as to make the same mistake twice.”

He blinked at me once, then twice. The corners of his mouth shot down into a frown and his hands dropped from my shoulders to my hips. He pulled me against his body while quietly whispering, “Ah, sod it, then,” before kissing me hard.

I answered in kind, my hands skittering unmoored across first his jaw, then his shoulders, then his sides, then his chest. I deepened the kiss with a flick of my tongue at his bottom lip, a teasing, tentative request that Marcus answered with unabashed eagerness, opening his mouth to my explorations.

Slowly at first, then in a progressively frantic tumble, I pulled Marcus back into my room toward the bed. I kicked off my shoes as I went, running the tip of my tongue along the top of his palate. He tried desperately to keep pace with me, capturing my lower lip between his teeth and biting down, not too hard, but just hard enough. Still, there was hesitation in his movements. No longer content with the skin available to my hands, I began easing his shirt up and over his body. Marcus tried to register a verbal protest, but it was lost in the crush of our mouths. It wasn’t until I relinquished his lips and began lavishing attention on his neck that he was able to say anything at all.

As soon as his mouth was free of mine, he breathed my name imploringly, caressing my back and shoulders through my thin sweatshirt. “Grace…”

“Don’t worry,” I answered, my words muffled as I pressed my lips against his carotid artery, my wandering hands pushing up under the hem of his T-shirt, fingers dancing over the newly exposed flesh at his side. “I’ll take care of you.”


Author Bio:

When Robin Jeffrey isn’t checking out books to students at the academic library where she works, she can be found cranking out punchy flash fiction, lyrical essays, and world-rich romances. Her writing has been published in magazines across the country and around the world. She currently calls the Pacific Northwest of the United States home, where she lives happily with her husband and their out of control comic book collection. She currently resides in the rainy Pacific Northwest. More of her work can be found on her website, RobinJeffreyAuthor.com.

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / TikTok


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