Book Recommendation: FINDING ORION

My good friend Erin Lark has a new book out!  Finding Orion is now available from Evernight Publishing. Additional links are available on Erin's website. 

Check it out!  (I love that cover!)

Brianna's had just about enough of real life, one night stands and stale relationships. So when a Dom binds her in her dreams, she's all in.  

The last thing Brianna needs after submitting to Orion in her dreams is a man, let alone one that looks exactly like him. But there's something hauntingly familiar about Jace and the way he looks at Bree when she meets his gaze from across the bar.  

Unable to sleep, no thanks to her neighbors' sexcapades, she's aching for an out. Even if it means a one night stand with her Dom's lookalike—the Dom who up until now, she thought didn't exist. But when this new stranger declines her sexy invitation, she's determined to figure Jace out—one painful layer at a time.  

After getting screwed by his ex, Jace isn't even remotely interested in being someone else's master, especially when it involves putting his band's career on the line. But avoiding the lifestyle of a Dom is easier said than done, unless he finds someone to take him off the market—which makes Bree just the woman he's looking for.  

Cute. Confident. Great in bed. There's no possible way she could be a sub. But what happens when her submissive tendencies begin to show through? Can he suppress his Dominant side, or will he give in to his internal desires—even if it means leaving the band?

Book Recommendation: Baptism For The Dead

Disclaimer: The author and I are friends. Still, this book has knocked my socks off every time I've read it (I beta read it several months ago).

This is not a romance. It's not erotica.  It is, however, a spectacular literary novel that I will probably read a hundred more times. Easily. By next week.

Do yourself a favor, folks, and pick up Libbie Hawker's Baptism for the Dead.

The perfect Mormon wife in the perfect Mormon town has a secret: she doesn’t believe in God. Her husband has a secret, too: he’s in love with another man. She’s stood by her husband for two years, tending their secrets, fading into the easy background of Rexburg, Idaho. But when she meets a man who calls himself “X,” an untidy, beer-drinking artist on a rambling sabbatical through the Western States, her resolve to be the perfect wife finally crumbles.

At first her affair with X is just another secret to keep. He’ll be gone soon, and no one will be the wiser. But she quickly realizes she can no longer be content with the structured, wholesome life of a Rexburg woman. Though she fears her husband’s reaction and the town’s rejection, she leaves to join X on his journey through the Rockies. 

Amid mountains and deserts, surrounded by art and creation, she discovers the realities of eternity. But just as she is beginning to build a life without religion, a death in the family pulls her and X back to Rexburg. She must return to the place that created and confined her, this time not as the perfect Mormon wife, but as something monstrous to the people she loves.

NOW AVAILABLE From Lavender Ironside: THE SEKHMET BED

My good friend Lavender Ironside's Egyptian Historical, The Sekhmet Bed, is now available from Amazon. I've read this book, and it is le awesome. Highly, highly recommended. (Note this is not an erotic historical)

"In Lavender Ironside's ancient Egyptian historical, two sisters share a husband and a burning desire to be the mother of the next Pharaoh. With accessibly modern prose, vivid detail, and deadly sibling rivalry, The Sekhmet Bed is reminiscent of Michelle Moran's Nefertiti." ~Stephanie Dray, author of the critically acclaimed Lily of the Nile

Queen Ahmose knows her duty: to give the Pharaoh a son. But she is young, and has just watched her closest friend die in childbirth. If the Pharaoh plants his seed in her she will die the same way, in a pool of blood, surrounded by wailing women. She has her husband’s love, but a king must have an heir…and even the Pharaoh’s patience will run out. Meanwhile, a lesser queen – Ahmose’s own sister – has given him three sweet, bright children, all of them boys. Ahmose knows her grasp on the Pharaoh’s heart is loosening.

Desperate, she begs the gods for courage to become a mother. They give her more than courage: she is granted a vision of a shining prince, her son – a gift for Egypt who will bring glory to the land. He will be more than the son of a king. He will be the son of the god Amun.

But when the child arrives, it’s a girl.

Ahmose knows the vision was not wrong. Her daughter Hatshepsut has a male soul, and Amun intends the girl to rule. But the Pharaoh will not scandalize Egypt by proclaiming a female successor. If she cannot convince the Pharaoh to accept Hatshepsut as his heir, everything Ahmose loves will be destroyed.

Book Recommendation: Wicked Empress

Another of my author friends has an epically awesome book out this week. If you haven't read any of Anitra Lynn McLeod's Onic Empire series, you totally should.

Especially since Book 4, Wicked Empress, is now available.
BUY IT. YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.

Book Recommendation: Smoke

Okay, so vampire stories usually aren't my thing, but this book is the bomb. I mean, it's by Aislinn Kerry, so of course it's good.

Check it out:
Blurb:

Loving another man is a sin...but loving a vampire is worse...

In deeply religious 19th-century Italy, Valentino knows that admitting his attraction to men, even to himself, could put him in grave danger. The church prefers to burn vampires to keep their congregation living in fear and paying their tithes, but a sinner like Val would also do in a pinch.

Val suppresses his sexual desires and joins the clergy, hoping to live a life of piety and devotion, until the day Dante, one of the devil's own vampires, comes to him begging to confess his sins. Val can’t help his attraction to the vampire, and refuses to succumb to it, even as Dante tries to seduce him. But Val soon realizes he can no longer deny the truth of who he is, or what he wants.

In desperation, and putting his life on the line to save the soul of the vampire he loves, Val searches for proof that a man can be a vampire without being damned. But his questions soon attract the church’s attention, and they arrest him, and also plan to make an example of him for the congregation to see.

Will Val face a horrific execution, or will Dante somehow be able to rescue him in time?

***

Highly recommended.