Book Spotlight: Ghost Love by Nelli Rees

Ghost Love
Nelli Rees




Genre: Romance (with a hint of the paranormal)
Publisher: Phaze
Date of Publication: 20th January 2015
Number of pages: 332
Cover Artist: Niki Browning


Book Description:

In the madcap, chaotic days when Communism crumbled in the USSR, Tonia meets and falls in love with Englishman, Peter Monroe. Despite the protests of her family and the more strenuous
objections of the KGB Tonia agrees to marry Peter only for him to mysteriously disappear.

Twenty years later a life-toughened Toni must revisit these bitter-sweet memories when she finds herself and her daughters endangered by the consequences of that love affair.

In her despair Toni comes to realise that true love really does conquer all … even death.

Phaze | Amazon  | BN  | ARe 

Excerpt:

Prologue

Present Day: Dorset, England

Excitement being a kindred spirit to fear, Toni was undecided as to whether it was a trickle of fear she felt shivering down her spine or a trickle of excitement.

As she sat staring at the screen of her laptop, the darkness shrouding the room seemed to draw in on her: her head swam, her palms became clammy. Tears welled up in her eyes. She blinked them away, hoping that by doing so the message on her screen would disappear. It didn’t.

Peter Monroe wants to be friends on Facebook

Hesitantly she maneuvered the cursor over the ‘connect’ button and pressed ‘enter.’ The screen mutated to show the Facebook page for ‘Peter Monroe.’ It was Peter! She recognized the profile photograph instantly. She’d taken it. She remembered posing him in front of the bandstand in Gorki Park on that spring day back in 1990, remembered laughing at the stupid faces he pulled, remembered the way his long chestnut hair flopped over his forehead, remembered…

How could she forget? He had been her one true love.

Love. A word made empty by misuse…by overuse. She wondered how many had ever endured the touch of real love, that soul-eviscerating sensation that comes when you know you have found your soul-mate. Very few, she decided. Perhaps this was all for the good: true love brought anguish in equal measure to joy. As the last twenty years had taught her, finding true love was a bitter-sweet blessing. Her fingers trembled as she typed.

Is it really you, Peter?

The reply was instantaneous.

Yes…I’ve missed you, Tonia.

She couldn’t stop herself: the tears flowed down her cheeks.

But…

She paused, terrified that what she would type next might cause this marvelous mirage to vanish.

But I thought you were dead.

The seconds ticked by, then:

I am.

About the Author:

Nelli Rees, born in Moscow, trained as a linguist and a musician. With her future husband Englishman Rod she worked and travelled around Russia, finally coming to live in England in 1998. Nelli has had several successful careers: recording a critically acclaimed nu-jazz album “Jazz Noir”, becoming an award-winning jewellery maker, writing a book “Glass Bead Jewelry Projects”, and doing all this whilst being a mother and a wife. “Ghost Love” is Nelli’s first novel and draws heavily on her own experiences as a young woman in Soviet Russia and the obstacles she and her husband-to-be faced during those difficult times.

Author Links:
Blog | Facebook | Goodreads

Video of Nelli performing "Falling In Love Again":

Spotlight: Bound by AM Hudson

Bound
Bound Series
Book One
AM Hudson



Genre: New Adult/Paranormal
Publisher: AM Hudson
Date of Publication: April 20, 2015
Cover Artist: AM Hudson



Book Description:

Elora can speak to the dead, but she has an affinity with the undead.

Born of immortal blood, her curse not set to trigger until around her twenty-fifth year, she was sent away to remain unaware of and hidden from the world of magic. And from vampires. But after Elora befriends the cocky, self-loving Ric Mason, she discovers secrets about him and his distant link to her family that reshape her entire world.

A dark, sexy three-book series that will have you screaming for more...

Preorder at Amazon

Excerpt:

In my state of distraction, I hadn’t noticed how far into the prison we’d walked. I passed the other tour group on my way out, trying really hard not to advise a few people to check over their shoulders, and when I reached the yard, I stopped dead. A wide space of black grass, darkened by the absence of the orange lights and by the high cream wall, stared back at me, empty and oddly quiet. Usually, there were other groups lingering after their tours, but tonight … no one. Nothing. Not even flashes of torchlight showing the whereabouts of the rent-a-cops.

A cold shiver passed over me, pushing the summer heat away from the thick walls behind me.

I put my head down and brought my shoulders up, making myself as small as possible, casting my eyes to the glowing streetlight outside the prison gates. A hundred paces across the yard, that’s all that stood between me and freedom. A hundred paces through almost pitch darkness. A hundred paces past four ghosts that just made themselves visible to me, knowing I could see them.

They all looked up as I stepped out onto the grass, their eyes falling on the tight fist of fear in my chest. My heart raced as each step drew me closer, and I tried to remind myself that they had no physical power. They couldn't actually hurt me. I hoped.

Tales of horror, of the tortures and other atrocities that led these murderers to prison, filled my head as I walked between them. I could feel the hairs stick up on the back of my neck as another one came up behind me. I wasn’t sure who it was, but his energy felt dark and menacing. Every cell in my body screamed at me to turn around and just take one look. But if I did, or if I ran, they’d know I was afraid and they’d feed on that—they’d follow me, most likely outside the prison walls and to my car. If I let them think they had no power over me, they might let me be once I reached the gates.

My breath hitched and my stride shortened as I quickened my pace. I hugged my chest, holding tight to the keys, but as I my heart leaped forward, just six steps away from the gates, my hand went loose for no reason and the keys dropped to the ground. The clunk didn't register until I stepped outside the prison walls and as I spun around to look back at the shiny metal cluster—a few steps away into the pitch blackness I’d just walked through—the spirits closed in, standing shoulder to shoulder. No faces now. No form. Just wavering pulses of light. They hovered there just in front of the keys as if challenging me to cross the threshold back into the prison.

About the Author:

AM Hudson lives and works in Australia. She has four sons, a husband that plays in a band, and writing is her full-time job. In her spare time she reads books and spends too much time on Facebook.

Some of her works include: The Dark Secrets Series (complete), and Willa Wicked.

Author Links:
AmazonAuthor | Facebook | Twitter | Google+ | Goodreads

Guest Blog and Spotlight: A Portal in Time by Claire Fullerton

A Portal in Time

Claire Fullerton

Genre: Paranormal/Historical Romance

Vinspire Publishing

About the Book:

It is the year 2000: Enigmatic and spirited Anna Lucera is gifted with an uncanny sixth-sense, and is intrigued by all things mystical. When her green, cat-eyes and long, black hair capture the attention of a young lawyer named Kevin Townsend, a romance ensues which leads them to the hauntingly beautiful region of California’s Carmel-By-The-Sea, where Anna is intuitively drawn to the Madiera Hotel. Everything about the hotel and Carmel-By-The-Sea heightens her senses and speaks to Anna as if she had been there before.
It is the year 1902: Young Valeria Sienna has never been in love until she meets the mesmerizingly  handsome artist, Anders Kristiansen, at an art gallery in San Francisco.  She must make Domenico Sienna, her formidable and prominent Italian father, consent to allowing Anders Kristiansen to court her, and she knows her adored sister, Francesca, along with her genteel, Italian mother, Adriana will help.
Combined, the three women will convince Domenico that the elegant Norwegian artist, Mr. Kristiansen, is worthy of Valeria in every way, even though he is not of their Italian lineage.
Rich in history, mystique and foreshadow, “A Portal in Time” is an intertwined story of two romances that are steeped in the language and social mores of two different time periods. The words and actions of the unforgettable characters fit seamlessly together, and bridge the time frames like pieces of a puzzle, creating an intriguing whole.
That which draws two people into the arms of love is often times eerily familiar, and that which resounds in the depth of our memory can sometimes spring from a portal in time. 

Amazon | BN

MRP is delighted to welcome author and guest blogger, Claire Fullerton~

Inspiration for a novel can come from the most unusual of circumstances, and the idea for “A Portal in Time” is no exception. In the year 2000, my husband and I took a trip up the California coast to Carmel-by-the-Sea on the hauntingly beautiful Monterey Peninsula.  As it was our one year wedding anniversary, we had reservations for the weekend at Carmel's historic, La Playa Hotel-- a hotel we'd never stayed in before.  Everything about the lobby of the antiquated hotel piqued my interest, and as my husband checked us in, I let my imagination roam free, taking in every inch of the opulent lobby with its travertine floors, sand-stone fireplace, and sweeping Mediterranean tiled staircase.  I explored a particular hallway looking at architectural maps of various stages of the hotel's growth that hung beside sepia tinted photographs of people in period clothing.  By the time my husband came to find me, I had already envisioned myself living in a house of this exact constitution, wearing a dress exactly like the one I saw in one of the photographs.  Next, I started thinking of what it was like to be alive at the turn of the 19^th century, living in a house by the sea along with how it would feel to have it as the setting of my life.  I decided I would love it-- that there would be a fabulous, interesting, fully-realized life at play with myself at the center of a thriving artistic community and oh the thrill of the environment.

But it occurred to me that life is life, and things happen to people unwittingly, and the story of people’s lives tend to happen in increments of cause and effect no matter where one lives. 

My eyes kept returning to the lobby’s staircase, and I wanted to climb them to their top.  When I did, I was drawn to a wooden cathedral door at the end of a long hallway.  I stood looking down the hall thinking, “If this were my house, the master bedroom would be at the end of this hall with a bay window overlooking a garden.”  I could feel myself standing before the window as if I were looking at my garden, then I started asking, “Now why would I be here looking out the window?”

“A Portal in Time,” my paranormal/historical novel, is the explanation of an entire imagined life that brought me to that window at the top of the stairs in Carmel’s La Playa Hotel.  I decided the story would be best told in oscillating time periods in order to lend an eerie, mystical feel. I like to give my readers an experience by taking them on a journey.  I want them to see and hear and feel everything for themselves by giving them a specific reality, and in this case, the reality is “A Portal in Time.”

About the Author: 

Claire Fullerton is a two-time, award-winning essayist, a newspaper columnist and a contributing editor for numerous magazines. She hails from Memphis, Tennessee, and now divides her time between Malibu and Carmel-By-The-Sea, California with her husband, two German shepherds, and two black cats. Claire's second novel, "Dancing to an Irish Reel" will be released in 2015.

Author Links: 

Facebook | Website