Monday, November 27, 2017

HBS Author's Spotlight Bookshelf – Great Reading for a Cold Winter Night 2017

The Bookshelf is a special feature of the HBS Author's Spotlight. It is designed to highlight Spotlight author's outstanding novels and short stories. Today's bookshelf features the following novels and novellas from a group of outstanding authors:

Finding Gina - Lizzie Chantree
The Revenge of Excalibur - Sahara Foley
DEVIANT - Douglas Wickard
On the Edge of Death - Ciara Ballintyne
Exposure - Rose Edmunds
Full Slab Dead - EM Kaplan
The Double Cross - Michael P. King
The Cairo Puzzle - Laurence O'Bryan
Blink of an Eye - Eric Wilder
One Wrong Turn - Deanna Lynn Sletten




HBS Author's Spotlight Bookshelf - Winter 2017



Finding Gina

Can a sprinkling of stardust overcome a past full of demons?


Author: Lizzie Chantree

AVAILABLE at Amazon


A contemporary romance read with a magical twist! By award winning author, Lizzie Chantree.

Can a sprinkling of stardust overcome a past full of demons?

Gina had traversed the breadth of the country in her little campervan to try and find everyone on her grandmother’s list, before her father drunk himself into an early grave. She leant down and pulled the battered and worn journal from her bag and opened it to the latest page. The neatly written names were etched onto her heart and she was determined to visit every single one and compensate them in some way. Her family’s debt had to be repaid.

Lewis read another provincial story about a ‘guardian angel’ who had been helping families across the country and his reporters nose began to itch. He was sure that if he could track down the girl they were talking about, he would unearth an even bigger story. He just had to work out how to locate her and then find out what it was that she was running from!


Author: Lizzie Chantree
Author: Lizzie Chantree
Author Genre: Chick Lit, Romance, Fiction

Website: Lizzie Chantree
Twitter: @Lizzie_Chantree
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Google+: Check Out Google+
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
Award-winning inventor and author, Lizzie Chantree, started her own business at the age of 18 and became one of Fair Play London and The Patent Office’s British Female Inventors of the Year in 2000. She discovered her love of writing fiction when her children were little and now runs networking hours on social media, where creative businesses, writers, photographers and designers can offer advice and support to each other. She lives with her family on the coast in Essex.




The Revenge of Excalibur

Excalibur Saga Book 2


Author: Sahara Foley

AVAILABLE at Amazon
Barnes and Noble


Twenty-seven years after Pamela's father disappeared, she starts having disturbing dreams that Arthur's in danger. Her dreams are confirmed by a strange messenger who tells her that the father she never met has been imprisoned on a distant planet, and the only one who can save him, is her. To do so, she must release the evil entity trapped within the famous sword, Excalibur, and in the process, she could be endangering Earth and all the other planets in the Universe.

Should Pamela gamble her life for a father she never knew? Will she be strong enough to control the Shalit to save her father. Will she be willing to risk the lives of everyone she loves if she's not?


Author: Sahara Foley
Author: Sahara Foley
Author Genre: Fantasy, Paranormal, Horror

Website: Readers' Junction
Author's Blog: Readers' Junction
Twitter: @SaharaFoley
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Google+: Check Out Google+
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
Until my husband died on Christmas 2012, I never thought about becoming a writer. In fact, the act of writing a story terrified me. And writing dialogue scared the bejeebers out of me. Don't get me wrong, I loved reading, just never had the knack for writing. See, Bob was the writer. He wrote stories for years but could never get a traditional publisher to even read one of his unpolished manualscripts/outlines. Then, after 30 years together, Bob passed away and my life was turned upside down.

About a month later, I was sitting around my apartment, trying to adjust to the worst event in my life, when a little voice spoke to me. Why not publish Bob's stories? To be truthful, ever since the advent of self-publishing, I always wanted too, that's how much I believed in his stories. But I knew I would have to fight him for every little change I made to his outlines. Sorry, honey, but they have to be done.

So, I pulled out the box of stories, dusted them off, and started on a new adventure: The World of Self-Publishing. Boy, did I have a lot to learn. I finally published several short stories early in 2014, then my horror novella, It Lives in the Basement. While I was working on them, I was slowly learning the craft of writing, and getting The Secret of Excalibur ready for publication. Excalibur was my favorite story of them all, and in the back of my mind, I knew I wanted a publisher. One day on Twitter, I ran across a tweet from Creativia Publishing, and that was another game changer for me. I signed up with them in December of 2014, and it was the best decision I've made.

One thing I've discovered on my new adventure, are all the really awesome and talented Indie Authors. If you find the right community of Indie Authors, all they want to do is help each other. I found that I love promoting them and their books, so that's how I setup my blog, for readers to meet Indie Authors. So, if you love Indie Authors and looking for a new author to follow, check out my blog.




A Perfect Wife

A Sami Saxton Series Book 4


Author: Douglas Wickard

AVAILABLE at Amazon


What would you do?
What choice would you make?
How far would you go to erase the past?

SMITTY FOWLER, (the Tri State Serial Killer) terrorized the rural areas of NY, PA and NJ for years. During Fowler’s reign, six teenage girls were killed, each one indoctrinated into his macabre collection of dead wives. Sami Saxton made international news for single-handedly killing Smitty Fowler. Jeanette, his wife, wasn’t so lucky. Recently diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and left alone to raise her daughter, Amanda, her options seemed limited. This is her story…

She had written the suicide note before, many times… but had always thrown it away. Sometimes she would take a lit match to the paper and watch as it slowly burned in the kitchen sink, the edges folding in on themselves, the corners crumpling inward – the colors changing from lava red, to black, then gray – before collapsing into its papery defeat. Today would be different…
Today would be a different story…


Author: Douglas Wickard
Author: Douglas Wickard
Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers, Thriller, Gay and Lesbian

Website: Douglas Wickard
Author's Blog: Douglas Wickard
Twitter: @DouglasWickard
E-Mail: douglas@douglaswickard.com
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
Amazon Kindle Bestselling author of the SAMI SAXTON thriller series and FBI Agent DAN HAMMER Detective series NOTHING SACRED and ENCOUNTER. Soon to be released: A PERFECT WIFE. Read the excerpt at douglaswickardbooks.com! LULLABY, the new Dan Hammer thriller coming in 2016 as well as DEVIANT, the second in 'The Queer Diary' Series.




On the Edge of Death

The Sundered Oath Book 2


Author: Ciara Ballintyne

AVAILABLE at Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store


When an evil necromancer threatens all she loves, Ellaeva must risk her sanity to face down the darkness within her soul.

All the Left Hand of Death wants is something to call her own, but is the price too high?

Ellaeva, the fated avatar of the death goddess, is desperate to track down her missing family but the trail is decades old. Instead, she discovers her battered and bloodied sister priestesses driven across the Jerreki border on pain of death. Ellaeva must turn aside from her personal quest to investigate the murders, only to find her parents have been taken into the heart of the conflict.

Lyram Aharris, favoured son of the royal line of Ahlleyn, is the only living person she trusts to help her infiltrate the enemy stronghold and uproot the horror they find there, but their chequered past threatens the mission. Accompanying him is his crown prince, the one man Lyram wants dead above all others.

Now Ellaeva must face down the darkness in her soul before a dark god is brought into the world.

At the boundary of life and death, all oaths will be tested.


Author: Ciara Ballintyne
Author: Ciara Ballintyne
Author Genre: Fantasy

Website: Ciara Ballintyne
Author's Blog: SOMEBODY HAS TO SAY IT
FLIGHT OF THE DRAGON
Twitter: @CiaraBallintyne
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
Ciara Ballintyne was born in 1981 in Sydney, Australia, where she lives with her husband, two daughters, one masochistic cat, and one cat with a god complex. She holds degrees in law and accounting, and has been a practising financial services lawyer since 2004. She is both an idealist and a cynic.

She started reading epic fantasy at the age of nine, when she kidnapped Castle of Wizardry by David Eddings from her father. Another two years passed before she began her first attempts at the craft of writing. Confronting the Demon is her debut book.

She enjoys horse-riding, and speculation about taking over the world. If she could choose to be anything it would be a dragon, but instead she shares more in common with Dr. Gregory House of House. M.D.




Exposure

Crazy Amy Book 2


Author: Rose Edmunds

AVAILABLE at Amazon
Barnes and Noble


Brilliant but unstable City high-flyer Amy has crashed and burned. In rehab and with her career in tatters, it looks as though she's finally hit rock bottom. But as Amy is about to discover, things can always get worse…

When an old friend dies in suspicious circumstances, Amy's decision to investigate pitches her into a nightmare where no one can be trusted and nothing is what it seems.

In mortal danger, and with enemies old and new conspiring against her, has Amy made her last mistake...?

Exposure is the second book in the Crazy Amy series by British author Rose Edmunds, but can also be read as a gripping stand-alone thriller.

Hailed as Britain's flakiest amateur sleuth, Amy is rapidly becoming a cult figure. If you visit Rose's website (link at back of books), you can join the Crazy Amy VIP Fan Club and enjoy exclusive access to a selection of free short stories which complement the main series.


Author: Rose Edmunds
Author: Rose Edmunds
Author Genre: Thriller, Contemporary, Suspense

Website: Rose Edmunds
Twitter: @RoseEdmunds
E-Mail: rose@roseedmunds.co.uk
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
For more than 20 years, Rose Edmunds almost passed as normal, working undercover in in several well-known financial firms in London while quietly gathering material for her novels.

Since jumping off the corporate hamster wheel Rose now writes thrillers with a strong ethical theme. Her writing draws heavily on her considerable insight into business world and in particular the uncomfortable conflict between capitalism and humanity.

Rose’s debut thriller, Never Say Sorry, was about a Big Pharma conspiracy to suppress a cancer cure. Since then, she has been working on the Crazy Amy thriller series—an ambitious project which will follow the brilliant but unstable Amy Robinson on her journey from senior finance executive to who knows where…

You can find out more by checking out Rose’s website at www.roseedmunds.co.uk or on Facebook at Rose Edmunds – Author Page. Via the website, you can also join the Crazy Amy VIP Fan Club, for exclusive access to free bonus Crazy Amy short stories and other exciting offers. There is also a closed Facebook group for club members.




Full Slab Dead

osie Tucker Mysteries Book 4


Author: EM Kaplan

AVAILABLE at Amazon


Trouble down in Texas... When snarky food critic, Josie Tucker, heads to Austin, Texas, to wax philosophical about the local barbecue joints, she stumbles on to a decades' old missing person case. With the help of a local reporter, a Goth ghost hunter, and a bunco-playing transvestite, she tries to unravel the heart-tugging, hidden history before the whole place goes up in smoke.


Author: EM Kaplan
Author: EM Kaplan
Author Genre: Mystery, Fantasy, Young Adult

Website: EM Kaplan
Twitter: @meilaan
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
While all the other school kids moaned about homework, Emily scribbled satires of her least favorite classes, redrawing teachers as evil alien overlords. She is the living embodiment of the axiom, "It's always the quiet ones."




The Double Cross

The Travelers Book 0


Author: Michael P. King

AVAILABLE at Amazon
Barnes and Noble


A con artist betrayed by his partners. A plot for revenge. Can he and his new partner outwit his old crew… and escape with the cash and their lives? In 1989, where it all begins…

Paul Kendal, 26 years old, is a con artist in a robbery crew. When he has all the information necessary to disarm their targets’ alarm systems and empty their safes, his partners go to work.

Originally, it seemed like a sweet plan, but as he begins to have doubts, his partners double-cross him. Now he wants payback. For that he needs a new partner.

Carol, 17 years old, uses her movie-star good looks to entice victims for her boyfriend to mug. But when her boyfriend lands in jail, Paul makes her an offer she can’t refuse…

The Double Cross is a novella-length dark crime thriller that tells the story of how the Travelers met. If you like fast moving action, unpredictable plot twists, and criminal chicanery, you’ll love this prequel to Michael P. King’s Travelers series.


Author: Michael P. King
Author: Michael P. King
Author Genre: Suspense, Thriller, Crime

Website: Michael P. King
Twitter: @mpking3312
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
How many times have you heard or read a news report that made you think, "You just can't make this stuff up. What could they possibly have been thinking?" People often involve themselves in a chain of events that leads to unforeseen consequences simply because they want to take what they think is the easy way out or what they think is a short cut to wealth or fame. I'm fascinated by this tendency, and it's the jumping off place for my fiction.

I’m a Kirkus Reviews critically acclaimed crime fiction author. I’m currently working on a series of noir crime thrillers featuring a husband and wife team of con artists, the Travelers, who specialize in stealing from other criminals. The Traveling Man, The Computer Heist, and The Blackmail Photos are the first three novels of the series.




The Cairo Puzzle

A Puzzle Series Thriller


Author: Laurence O'Bryan

AVAILABLE at Amazon


Henry warned her. “If you go to Cairo, you'll get yourself killed.”

But what choice does Isabel have? She has to find Sean, her missing husband, and she's discovered that a hospital in Cairo treated an American patient recently, flown to Cairo from Germany for some unexplained reason. But she's arrived at the wrong moment. A mass uprising is being crushed in Tahrir Square. The next day, an Egyptian billionaire announces a discovery at the Great Pyramid of Giza. Isabel decides to talk to him. He might help her find Sean.

She ends up deep in the desert, at a camp run by the Muslim Brotherhood. They murder her driver in front of her, then ask her to carry one simple task. They will lead her to Sean if she agrees. But what they are asking goes against everything she believes in. And time is running out.

The Great Pyramid of Giza provides the final piece of the puzzle, which Isabel and Sean first encountered in Istanbul. In a fabled hall, assumed by most to be an ancient myth, Isabel finds out what happened to her husband. She also discovers what lies beneath the Great Pyramid, based on real, ground penetrating archaeology, which will undermine what millions cherish as the truth.


Author: Laurence O'Bryan
Author: Laurence O'Bryan
Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers Mystery & Thrillers, Literature & Fiction, Contemporary

Website: Laurence O'Bryan
Author's Blog: Laurence O'Bryan
Twitter: @LPOBryan
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Google+: Check Out Google+
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
There are five novels in the series, The Istanbul Puzzle, The Jerusalem Puzzle, The Manhattan Puzzle, The Nuremberg Puzzle and The Cairo Puzzle, released in July 2017.

This series has:
* Achieved #1 status in Amazon's US Mystery chart,
* Been translated into 10 languages.

My roots go back to a small estate deep in the Mountains of Mourne, near the Silent Valley, in County Down, Northern Ireland. You'll know what the area looks like from watching Game of Thrones.

I went to school in Dublin, drank way too much, studied English and history, then business, then IT at Oxford University. While a student, I worked as a kitchen porter in a gentlemen's club near the Bank of England.

I have also published a guide to social media called, Social Media is Dynamite.

My research has taken me all over the world, from San Francisco to deep in the Muslim world. There are secrets everywhere. I enjoy writing about them. I hope you enjoy reading about them.




Blink of an Eye

Paranormal Cowboy Book 3


Author: Eric Wilder

AVAILABLE at Amazon
Barnes and Noble
KOBO Store
iTunes Store


THE PERFECT MIXTURE OF MYSTERY AND THE PARANORMAL

P.I. Buck McDivit must stop a killer, but first he must travel back in time to a 1000-year-old Mississippian pyramid and drink hallucinogenic tea with the most powerful Indian chief in North America and his spiritual adviser, a gorgeous woman with a rattlesnake tattoo and designs on Buck's soul.


Author: Eric Wilder
Author: Eric Wilder
Author Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Paranormal

Website: Eric Wilder Louisiana Mystery Writer
Author's Blog: Eric Wilder's Blogspot
Twitter: @EricWilderOK
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
Born on a sleepy bayou, Louisiana Mystery Writer Eric Wilder grew up listening to tales of ghosts, magic, and voodoo. He's the author of ten novels, four cookbooks, many short stories, and Murder Etouffee, a book that defies classification. His two series feature P.I.s adept in the investigation of the paranormal. He lives in Oklahoma, near historic Route 66 with wife Marilyn, three wonderful dogs and two great cats.




One Wrong Turn

Author: Deanna Lynn Sletten

AVAILABLE at Amazon
Barnes and Noble
iTunes Store


Author Deanna Lynn Sletten returns with an unforgettable novel about one man’s crisis of self and his greatest act of love.

The words “I’m her husband” roll off Clay Connors’s tongue, but with his estranged wife lying in a coma—and no assurance that she’ll awaken—he knows he’s perilously close to losing everything. A singular, terrifying accident has left Jess Connors suspended between life and death. Now Clay is reunited with the family he hasn’t seen for two years, including the daughters he left behind.

Clay should have been there for his family. He never should have stayed away so long. The alcohol that took over his life destroyed everything but a shred of his self-preservation. Sober and haunted, Clay revisits the memory of love, marriage, and how his life unraveled. He hopes that by trying to reconnect with the daughter who blames him and the daughter who barely knew him, he can find a light of hope in this darkest hour. As his family faces its most grueling, emotional test yet, Clay must summon the courage to make right what was wrong—and find forgiveness from his harshest judge: himself.


Author: Deanna Lynn Sletten
Author: Deanna Lynn Sletten
Author Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Chick Lit

Website: Deanna Lynn Sletten
Twitter: @DeannaLSletten
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile


Author Description:
Deanna Lynn Sletten is the author of MAGGIE'S TURN, FINDING LIBBIE, ONE WRONG TURN, and several other titles. She writes heartwarming women's fiction and romance novels with unforgettable characters. She has also written one middle-grade novel that takes you on the adventure of a lifetime. Deanna believes in fate, destiny, love at first sight, soul mates, second chances, and happily ever afters, and her novels reflect that.

Deanna is married and has two grown children. When not writing, she enjoys walking the wooded trails around her home with her beautiful Australian Shepherd or relaxing on the lake in the summer.

Deanna loves hearing from her readers.


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