This should surprise no one:

Magic Strikes

Nor this one. Oooo. Another purple cover…

Dark Crusade

Another book by the same author as above:

Amazon Ink

The next two are by the same author (Pamela Palmer). Anxiously waiting to hear when Book 3 in The Esri will be released:

Desire Untamed

Sapphire Dream

Nalini Singh’s new series:

Angels' Blood

These I’ll order directly from Harlequin:

The Whispering Room

Silent on the Moor

Midnight Cravings

The Devil's Footprints

Author: Amanda Stevens
Copyright: 2008 (Mira); pgs.377
Series: N/A
Sensuality: N/A

Who:  Sarah DeLaune
Where: New Orleans and Arkansas

From the back:  In 1922 a farmer in Adamant, Arkansas, awakes to a noise on his roof and finds his snow-blanketed yard marked with thousands of cloven footprints. The prints vanish with the melting snow. . .only to reappear seventy years later near the gruesome killing of Rachel DeLaune.  Years after her sister’s unsolved murder, New Orleans tattoo artist Sarah DeLaune is haunted by the mysteries of her past.  Sarah as always believed that her sister was killed by a man named Ashe Cain.  But no one else had ever seen Ashe.  He had “appeared” to Sarah when she needed a friend the most, only to vanish on the night of her sister’s murder.  The past bleeds into the present when two mutilated bodies are found near Sarah’s home, the crime scene desecrated by cloven footprints.

Comments:   Sarah DeLaune was always an outcast, even in her own family.  Rachel was Judge James DeLaune’s pride and joy.  There was nothing that Sarah could say or do to make her father love her.  The only person who understood her was Ashe Cain, the mysterious stranger she met one day while out walking her dog, and never saw again after her sister’s murder.  Sarah begins to question whether he was real or not, and if he wasn’t, does that make her the killer?

Sarah’s past comes back, in more ways than one, when her former lover — and homicide detective — Lieutenant Sean Kelton asks for help on his new case.  The victim has tattoos, and Sarah knows the handiwork of all the local artists.  Sean and Sarah had been in in relationship for two years before Sean walked out.  Sean had looked into Rachel’s murder, but things weren’t adding up and Sarah wouldn’t confide in him.  Sean also has his own troubled past that played a part in his leaving.  He still cares about Sarah very much, and neither has really gotten over the other.  If they both can overcome their pasts, they might have a second chance at a life together.

Sean and Sarah aren’t the only characters with troubled pasts.  Nearly everyone we meet has some trauma in their past that helped conceal the identity of murderer.  There were several times where I feared for Sarah’s safety because the author kept me guessing.  I was shocked when I learned the identity.  I never would have guessed, and that’s rare.  Very creepy book, but I enjoyed it very much.

Teaser Tuesdays post.

Started: 14 October 2008
Finished: 21 October 2008

Rating:

Liked A Lot

Teaser Tuesdays asks you to:

Grab your current read.
Let the book fall open to a random page.
Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

Please avoid spoilers!

The teaser:

From where she stood now, she could still see the strange message on the wall behind her reflection. I am you.

– from page 53, The Devil’s Footprints (Amanda Stevens)

Why I picked this book:  I’m reading this book for the RIP III Challenge.

Texas Ransom

Author: Amanda Stevens
Copyright: 2008 (Harlequin); pgs. 242
Series: Silhouette Intrigue #1035; Intrigue’s Ultimate Heroes
Sensuality: Subtle

Who: Graham Hollister and Kendall Hollister

Summary: Wealth, power and the perfect life. That’s what Graham Hollister thought he had with his beautiful wife, Kendall. He’d almost lost her in a deadly car crash, but since then he’d reveled in their renewed marriage. Until one Texas night changed everything. A brutal crime cartel came to abduct Kendall. Only the kidnappers didn’t want just ransom — they were out for revenge. But as Graham raced against time and all odds to rescue his wife, everything he thought he once knew about her was now in question. Would the dark, dangerous secrets she harbored destroy them both?

Comments: If you’re the sort of Romance reader that doesn’t like it when the author keeps the main couple apart for nearly the entire book, then this book is not for you. Kendall is kidnapped early on and the couple is reunited during the last few pages. You’ve been warned.

I liked Graham, which is fortunate, since we spend so much time in his head, as he tries to cope with a situation where he is in over his head. Graham is not the aggressive, golden boy of the family — that would be his older brother, Terrence. Graham was the less athletic, studious son. He wears glasses. He suffers from vertigo. Though he owns his own architectural firm, his life is relatively simple and quiet. All that changes when his wife is taken from him.

Graham is anxious to get his wife back, but is afraid that the kidnapper will carry out their threats against his family if he doesn’t follow their instructions to the letter. Graham is able to make contact with the FBI covertly, but he realizes pretty quickly that they are suspicious of him. Things aren’t adding up for them. Over the course of the book, Graham learns that there are many things he doesn’t know about his wife, and those things are making the FBI suspicious of them both. Through it all, nothing shakes he determination to get her back.

As noted above, Kendall is hardly in the book. It’s hard to talk about her, because it would be a spoiler. Suffice to say, she truly loves Graham. She, too, was in way over her head and afraid of losing the man she loves.

Started: 1 July 2008
Finished: 6 July 2008

Rating:

Enjoyed it!

Ash Corbett had been gone for twelve years. And now he was back in Jacob’s Pass, Texas, as brash and as beautiful as ever. But something about him wasn’t right. His family knew it. . . Emma Novick knew it. And what would take DNA typing precious tie to reveal, Emma had only to look in his eyes and sample one kiss to know for sure.

Author: Amanda Stevens
ISBN: 0-373-22954-2 (Harlequin Intrigue)
Finshed: 17 July 2007
Who: Emma Novick

Imposter stories can be tricky in romances, especially if the imposter is either the hero or the heroine — and more so if they have a past. After all, they’re suppose to be soul mates. How could the heroine fall in love with someone who wasn’t the man she loved?

This is my third Intrigue and it is by far my favorite. I was caught up in the story. I questioned whether the author could present the reader with a hero who may not be the real Ash, and still have the reader be sympathetic toward him. Since the rest of Ash Corbett’s family consists of a tyrannical matriarch grandmother and an assortment of equally manipulative and selfish aunts and uncles who threaten Emma and her father with unemployment, I found myself hoping that Ash — regardless of his true identity — would just whisk her and her father away.

As long as there was a believable connection between the supposed Ash and Emma, and she could be happy with the man in front of her instead of the one in her memory, then I could accept their story.

Rating:

Liked A Lot