M.J. Rose - THE WITCH OF PAINTED SORROWS is showcased on the HBS Author's Spotlight

The Showcase is a special feature of the Author's Spotlight. It is designed to highlight Spotlight author's NEW releases and their soon to be released novels.

The HBS Author's Spotlight SHOWCASES M.J. Rose's book:
THE WITCH OF PAINTED SORROWS. 

Author M.J. Rose is the international best selling author of the Historical Fiction, Mystery & Thrillers Novels and Publishing Industry books.

THE WITCH OF PAINTED SORROWS

The Daughters of La Lune

Author: M.J. Rose


AVAILABLE
Amazon


Sandrine Salome flees New York for her grandmother’s Paris mansion to escape her dangerous husband, but what she finds there is even more menacing. The house, famous for its lavish art collection and elegant salons, is mysteriously closed up. Although her grandmother insists it’s dangerous for Sandrine to visit, she defies her and meets Julien Duplessi, a mesmerizing young architect. Together they explore the hidden night world of Paris, the forbidden occult underground and Sandrine’s deepest desires.

Among the bohemians and the demi-monde, Sandrine discovers her erotic nature as a lover and painter. Then darker influences threaten—her cold and cruel husband is tracking her down and something sinister is taking hold, changing Sandrine, altering her. She’s become possessed by La Lune: A witch, a legend, and a sixteenth-century courtesan, who opens up her life to a darkness that may become a gift or a curse.

Excerpt

Paris, France April 1894

I did not cause the madness, the deaths, or the rest of the tragedies any more than I painted the paintings. I had help, her help. Or perhaps I should say she forced her help on me. And so this story—which began with me fleeing my home in order to escape my husband and might very well end tomorrow, in a duel, in the Bois de Boulogne at dawn—is as much hers as mine. Or in fact more hers than mine. For she is the fountainhead. The fascination. She is La Lune. Woman of moon dreams, of legends and of nightmares. Who took me from the light and into the darkness. Who imprisoned me and set me free.

Or is it the other way around?

"Your questions," my father always said to me, "will be your saving grace. A curious mind is the most important attribute any man or woman can possess. Now if you can just temper your impulsiveness..."

If I had a curious mind, I'd inherited it from him. And he'd nurtured it. Philippe Salome was on the board of New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art and helped found the American Museum of Natural History, whose cornerstone was laid on my fifth birthday.

I remember sitting atop my father's shoulders that day, watching the groundbreaking ceremony and thinking the whole celebration was for me. He called it "our museum," didn't he? And for much of my life I thought it actually did belong to us, along with our mansion on Fifth Avenue and our summerhouse in Newport. Until it was gone, I understood so little about wealth and the price you pay for it. But isn't that always the way?

Our museum's vast halls and endless exhibit rooms fascinated me as much as they did my father—which pleased him, I could tell. We'd meander through exhibits, my small hand in his large one, and he'd keep me spellbound with stories about items on display. I'd ask for more, always just one more, and he'd laugh and tease: "My Sandrine, does your capacity for stories know no bounds?"

But it pleased him, and he'd always tell me another.

I especially loved the stories he told me about the gems and fate and destiny always ending them by saying: "You will make your own fate, Sandrine, I'm sure of it."

Was my father right? Do we make our own destiny? I think back now to the stepping-stones that I've walked to reach this moment in time.

Were the incidents of my making? Or were they my fate?

The most difficult steps I took were after certain people died. No deaths were caused by me, but at the same time, none would have occurred were it not for me.

So many deaths. The first was on the morning of my fifteenth birthday, when I saw a boy beaten and tragically die because of our harmless kisses. The next was the night almost ten years later, when I heard the prelude to my father's death and learned the truth about Benjamin, my husband. And then there were more. Each was an end-ing that, ironically, became a new beginning for me.

The one thing I am now sure of is that if there is such a thing as destiny, it is a result of our passion, be that for money, power, or love. Passion, for better or worse. It can keep a soul alive even if all that survives is a shimmering. I've even seen it. I've been bathed in it. I've been changed by it.

Author Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery & Thrillers

Website: M.J. Rose
Author's Blog: Museum of Mysteries
Blog: AuthorBuzz
Twitter: @MJRose
E-Mail: mjroseauthor@gmail.com
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Author Description: New York Times Bestseller, M.J. Rose grew up in New York City mostly in the labyrinthine galleries of the Metropolitan Museum, the dark tunnels and lush gardens of Central Park and reading her mother's favorite books before she was allowed. She believes mystery and magic are all around us but we are too often too busy to notice... books that exaggerate mystery and magic draw attention to it and remind us to look for it and revel in it.

Please visit her blog, Museum of Mysteries

Her photo was taken by Judith Pushett utilizing an old relic: a turn-of-the-century 11 x 14 inch wood camera.

Rose lives in CT with her husband the musician and composer, Doug Scofield, and their very spoiled and often photographed dog, Winka.

Her most recent novel THE COLLECTOR OF DYING BREATHS (Atria/S&S) was chosen as an Indie Next Pick and her next novel, THE WITCH OF PAINTED SORROWS will be released March 2015.

Rose's work has appeared in many magazines including Oprah Magazine and she has been featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, WSJ, Time, USA Today and on the Today Show, and NPR radio. Rose graduated from Syracuse University, spent the '80s in advertising, has a commercial in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and since 2005 has run the first marketing company for authors - Authorbuzz.com

The television series PAST LIFE, was based on Rose's novels in the Reincarnationist series. She is one of the founding board members of International Thriller Writers and currently serves, with Lee Child, as the organization's co-president..


Author's Book List
What To Do Before Your Book Launch
What To Do Before Your Book Launch is a guide for authors, covering everything from working with your publisher, to reading in public, to help for publicity and marketing, to using (and misusing) social media, to how to dress for your author photo . . . and far more, including cautionary tales, worksheets, timelines and etiquette tips.


Order the Book From: Amazon - Barnes and Noble
The Collector of Dying Breaths - A Novel of Suspense
Florence, Italy—1533:

An orphan named René le Florentin is plucked from poverty to become Catherine de Medici’s perfumer. Traveling with the young duchessina from Italy to France, René brings with him a cache of secret documents from the monastery where he was trained: recipes for exotic fra­grances and potent medicines—and a formula for an alchemic process said to have the poten­tial to reanimate the dead.

In France, René becomes not only the greatest perfumer in the country, but also the most dangerous, creating deadly poisons for his Queen to use against her rivals. But while mixing herbs and essences under the light of flickering candles, René doesn’t begin to imag­ine the tragic and personal consequences for which his lethal potions will be responsible.

Paris, France—The Present:

A renowned mythologist, Jac L’Etoile—trying to recover from personal heartache by throw­ing herself into her work—learns of the sixteenth-century perfumer who may have been working on an elixir that would unlock the secret to immortality. She becomesobsessed with René le Florentin’s work—particularly when she discovers the dying breaths he had collected during his lifetime.

Jac’s efforts put her in the path of her estranged lover, Griffin North, a linguist who has already begun translating René le Flo­rentin’s mysterious formula. Together they confront an eccentric heiress in possession of a world-class art collection, a woman who has her own dark purpose for the elixir . . . for which she believes the ends will justify her deadly means.

This mesmerizing gothic tale zigzags from the violent days of Catherine de Medici’s court to twenty-first-century France. Fiery and lush, set against deep, wild forests and dimly lit cha­teaus, The Collector of Dying Breaths illuminates the true path to immortality: the legacies we leave behind.


Order the Book From: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - KOBO - iTunes
Seduction - A Novel of Suspense
Grieving his daughter’s death, Victor Hugo initiated séances from his home on the Isle of Jersey in order to reestablish contact with her. In the process, he claimed to have communed with Plato, Shakespeare, Dante- and even the devil himself. Hugo’s transcriptions of these conversations have all been published. Or so it has been believed…

A hundred years later, recovering from her own great loss, mythologist Jac L’Etoile is invited to Jersey to uncover a secret about the island’s mysterious Celtic roots. She’s greeted by Neolithic monuments, medieval castles, and hidden caves. But the man who has invited her there, a troubled soul named Theo Gaspard, hopes she’ll help him discover something quite different…something that will threaten their sanity and put their very lives at stake.


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The Book of Lost Fragrances
A Secret Worth Dying For…

Jac L’Etoile has always been haunted by visions of the past, her earliest memories infused with the exotic scents that she grew up with as the heir to a storied French perfume company. These worsened after her mother’s suicide until she finally found a doctor who helped her, teaching her to explore the mythological symbolism in her visions and thus lessen their painful impact. This ability led Jac to a wildly successful career as a mythologist, television personality, and author.

When her brother, Robbie—who’s taken over the House of L’Etoile from their father—contacts Jac about a remarkable discovery in the family archives, she’s skeptical. But when Robbie goes missing before he can share the secret—leaving a dead body in his wake—Jac is plunged into a world she thought she’d left behind.

Traveling back to Paris to investigate Robbie’s disappearance, Jac discovers that the secret is a mysterious scent developed in Cleopatra’s time. Could the rumors swirling be true? Can this ancient perfume hold the power to unlock the ability to remember past lives and conclusively prove reincarnation? If this possession has the power to change the world, then it’s not only worth living for…it’s worth killing for, too.

The Book of Lost Fragrances fuses history, passion, and suspense in an intoxicating web that moves from Cleopatra’s Egypt and the terrors of revolutionary France to Tibet’s battle with China and the glamour of modern-day Paris. This marvelous, spellbinding novel mixes the sensory allure of Perfume with the heartbreaking beauty of The Time Traveler’s Wife, coming to life as richly as our most wildly imagined dreams.


Order the Book From: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - KOBO - iTunes
The Hypnotist - The Reincarnationist
Haunted by his inability to stop the murder of a beautiful young painter twenty years ago, Lucian Glass keeps his demons at bay through his fascinating work with the FBI's Art Crime Team. Investigating a crazed collector who's begun destroying prized masterworks, Glass is thrust into a bizarre hostage negotiation that takes him undercover at the Phoenix Foundation—dedicated to the science of past-life study. There, to maintain his cover, he submits to the treatment of a hypnotist.

Under hypnosis, Glass travels from ancient Greece to nineteenth-century Persia, while the case takes him from New York to Paris and the movie while the case takes him from New York to Paris and the movie capital of the world. These journeys will change his very understanding of reality, lead him to question his own sanity and land him at the center of perhaps the most audacious art heist in history: a fifteen-hundred-year-old sculpture the nation of Iran will do anything to recover.


Order the Book From: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - KOBO - iTunes
The Reincarnationist
A bomb in Rome, a flash of bluish-white, and photojournalist Josh Ryder's world explodes. As Josh recovers, thoughts that have the emotion, the intensity, the intimacy of memories invade him. But they are not his. They are ancient...and violent with an urgency he cannot ignore--pulling him to save Sabina...and the treasures she protects. But who is Sabina?

Desperate for answers, Josh turns to the Phoenix Foundation--a research facility that scientifically documents past-life experiences. He is led to an archaeological dig and to Professor Gabriella Chase,who has discovered an ancient, powerful secret that threatens to merge the past with the present.

Here, the dead call out to the living, and murders of the past become murders of the present.


Order the Book From: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - KOBO - iTunes
Lip Service - A Novel
Lip Service probes the secret world of phone sex and one woman who becomes empowered by what she discovers there. Not since Erica Jong's Fear of Flying has a novel so masterfully examined the relationship between sexuality and identity.

On the surface, Julia Sterling's life seems blessed. Married to a renowned psychiatrist, living on Manhattan's tony Upper East Side, Julia deeply loves her stepson, and is forging a career as a journalist.

When a writing job at The Butterfield Institute - a sex therapy clinic - exposes her to the world of phone sex, Julia glimpses a world that stirs her erotic fantasies but threatens her carefully constructed reality. As she explores her emotional and sexual connections to the men she knows and several she will never meet, she confronts evil, perversity, and her own passions.

Tracing the currents of desire, illusion, and psychological manipulation,Lip Service is an astonishingly vivid glimpse into one woman's inner life. At the same time, this electrifying thriller grips the reader as it builds toward a battering climax.


Order the Book From: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - KOBO
In Fidelity - A Novel
Hot on the trail of her much talked-about debut, Lip Service, M.J. Rose once again explores the dark corners of the human psyche in a riveting and erotic tale of love, lust...and betrayal.

Although everyone thinks she's being paranoid, psychotherapist Jordan Sloan knows better. Haunted by the long-ago murder of her father, she learns that his killer has been paroled and she instantly fears his revenge. Only she knows the dark secret of her relationship with Mallory -- and the depth of her deception in providing the testimony that put him away. She sees him in shadows, in mirrors, in photographs her teenage daughter takes in the park....

Still suffering the bruises of her husband's betrayal, Jordan grapples with ambiguous emotions even as she is drawn again to her estranged spouse. Clinging desperately to the hard-earned stability of her life, she maneuvers through the meshwork of love's fragile bonds, layers of longing, and the chaos that is human relationships. All the while, a mysterious new patient seems intent on contributing to Jordan's unraveling. For as she struggles to prove that her fear of Mallory is justified, she also wrestles with how it might feel to finally forgive Robert's infidelity.

M.J. Rose has crafted a rare and evocative new novel of spellbinding energy, as a woman come to terms with her own life -- assuming she will continue to enjoy the luxury of living it.


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Flesh Tones
In a New York courtroom, a woman stands accused of a controversial crime. Genny Haviland, thirty-eight, is said to have drugged and suffocated legendary painter George Gabriel. For two decades the tempestuous Gabriel has challenged audiences with his wild work. And in the end, the prosecution claims, he alienated the woman he first seduced, then enslaved—enough to cause his own death at her hands.


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Sheet Music
From a seductive storyteller who dares to plumb the dark, passionate depths of the heart and soul comes an absorbing new erotic thriller that is also a gripping tale of psychological suspense. Grief-stricken Justine Pagett fled to Paris after her mother's death, but scandal forces her back to the States to redeem her tarnished reputation as a journalist. Commissioned to write a piece on the eccentric composer Sophie DeLyon, Justine finds herself part of a mysterious deception. At Euphonia, the exclusive institution De Lyon created to nurture America's most gifted music prodigies, a malevolent presence is composing a deadly work. Threatening cybermessages meant to intimidate convince a determined Justine that fascinating secrets await her. But when Sophie suddenly disappears, Justine's assignment to mine the story behind the legend becomes an even greater challenge. The disharmonious De Lyon family seems more interested in Sophie's estate than in her artistic legacy, and a group of devoted fans is fiercely defending the name of the enigmatic genius. As Justine is forced to wrestle with her own demons, she is also all too aware of the presence of her past lover on the estate, a man who was also once married to Sophie's daughter. An expertly crafted opus of obsessive passions and poisonous shame, of brilliant achievements and brutal deception.


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The Halo Effect - Erotic Psychological Thriller
Prominent New York sex therapist Dr. Morgan Snow finds her life taking a dangerous turn when her client, a high-priced prostitute, gives her a manuscript vividly detailing all of the sexual favors and fantasies she has performed for the city's most powerful men, and then disappears.


Order the Book From: Amazon - Barnes and Noble - KOBO
The Delilah Complex - Erotic Psychological Thriller
As one of New York's top sex therapists, Dr. Morgan Snow sees everything from the abused to the depraved. The Butterfield Institute is the sanctuary where she tries to heal these battered souls.

The Scarlet Society is a secret club of twelve powerful and sexually adventurous women. But when a photograph of the body of one of the men they're recruited to dominate -- strapped to a gurney, the number 1 inked on the sole of his foot -- is sent to the New York Times, they are shocked and frightened. Unable to cope with the tragedy, the women turn to Dr. Morgan Snow. But what starts out as grief counseling quickly becomes a murder investigation, with any one of the twelve women a potential suspect.

The case leads Detective Noah Jordan -- a man with whom Morgan has shared a brief, intense connection -- to her office. He fears the number on the man's foot hints that the killings have just begun. With her hands tied by her professional duty, Morgan is dangerously close to the demons in her own mind -- and the flesh-and-blood killer.


Order the Book From: Amazon - Barnes and Noble
The Venus Fix - Erotic Psychological Thriller (The Butterfield Institute Book 3
As one of New York's top sex therapists, Dr. Morgan Snow sees everything from the abused to the depraved. From high-profile clients with twisted obsessions to courageous survivors, the Butterfield Institute is the sanctuary to heal battered souls.

Morgan Snow's newest patient is a powerful, influential man -- secretly addicted to watching Internet Web cam pornography. He's not alone in his desires. She's also working with a group of high school teenagers equally and dangerously obsessed with these real-time fantasies.

Fantasies that are all too accessible.

Then the woman start dying online, right in front of their eyes.

Now it's all about murder.


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Lying In Bed
There was a time when Marlowe Wyatt had abandoned herself to the unrestrained pleasures of love; she'd been bold and unashamed, giving her heart and body to her lover without inhibition or hesitation. Until she was betrayed. It's ironic, then, that she now earns a living composing love letters for clients incapable of communicating desire -- erotic fantasies she skillfully creates with her head, but never her heart . . . deliberately disconnected from her passionate core.

Her newest client is about to challenge all that. From the moment of their first encounter, Gideon Brown ignites in her an overpowering hunger like none she's ever known, and a vulnerability she thought she'd vanquished. As the powerful attraction that sizzles between them inspires Marlowe's best work, sensations and desires she'd long held in check sweep her toward the brink of surrender. Yet her own fear, plus thoughts of the woman for whom Gideon hired Marlowe to write the letters, holds her back. But for how long?


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