Book Blitz + #Giveaway: Secret Worlds Boxed Set - 21 Novels by 21 USA Today & Amazon Bestselling Authors for ONLY #99cents!

 

Secret Worlds: A Paranormal Romance Boxed Set 

Publication date: June 29th 2015
Genres: New Adult, Paranormal Romance

 

 

 

 

Limited Edition, includes:

Taken by the Beast by C. Kressley and R. Hamilton: Women who look a lot like Charisse are going missing. And the man this beauty is falling for may be the beast responsible.

The Forever Girl by R. Hamilton: Sophia gets more than she bargains for when she finally decides to trust a shapeshifter.

Summoned by Rainy K.: Dimitri can’t reveal the paranormal bond controlling him, and Syd won’t tolerate his secrets.

Purgatory by S. Stec: A sex-hungry myth with no name, no flesh, and no identity …unless it wears one of you.

The Pandora Principle by N. Cosper: As a descendant of Pandora, Cassi must discover if her lover is one of the evil spirits she hunts before all her friends die.

Heart Song by S. LaFantasie: When incredibly handsome Marren frees Relena, there’s a catch.

Changeling by D. Herbert: As a changeling and a witch work together to restore order in Fairy, they discover that love, like magic, casts its own spell.

Shiftless by A. Easterling: After years of suppressing her inner predator, Terra meets a shifter who forces her to reclaim her wilder side.

The Black Parade by Kyoko M: Poltergeist Michael is the key to saving Jordan’s soul from hell, but can she handle the cost of her salvation?

Haunting Echoes by C. Faron: Will Amaia’s clan kill her ex-fiancé before she learns whether he returned from the grave for love or revenge?

Braving Fate by L. Hall: Diana and Cadan fight demonic forces and a deadly passion that has lasted centuries.

Trinity Rising by J.E. Taylor: Damian and Naomi are desperate for victory against the devil, but one wrong step could trigger Armageddon.

Moonlight by K. Salidas: Good girls don’t wear fur, fight over men, or run around naked, howling at the moon. But Fallon’s not a good girl.

Lash by L.G. Castillo: Lash must choose where to place his trust–in a home he fought so hard to regain or in a forbidden love he can’t bear to lose.

Between by L. Swallow: Alek could kill Rose with a kiss. Finn, with a touch. Pulled into an intense affair with Alek, Rose discovers her connection to Finn threatens them all.

The Devil’s Fool by R. McClellan: When vampire Boaz gives Eve the one thing she never had–love–she falls into a world of greed and seduction.

Spark Rising by K. Corcino: A runaway Spark and the agent arresting her ignite a revolution to end their people’s enslavement while resisting the electricity between them.

Ruby’s Fire by C. Stine: On the run from a desert cult, Ruby must choose which handsome stranger to trust with her heart and her darkest secret.

Cursed by L. Leroux: Isobel has been hiding an uncanny ability her whole life–until the day she must use it to save herself from a madman.

Hunted by A.J. Colby: With Agent Holbrook’s help, Riley races time to stay ahead of a crazed werewolf killer.


Vigilant by A. Lawson: Ari stumbles into a world of crime and vigilantism while discovering the one man that sets her heart on fire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

– Sample – Spark Rising – Sample –

 

“I’m here, Mama.” Lena strained against the straps. They bit into her skin and her rigid muscles. “Please don’t go. I’m right here.”

Her mother’s lips moved. A breath of sound escaped. The pause between glimmers grew long now.

Reyes bowed his head in regret. He lowered her mother to the floor.

Lena stared at him. “No! She’s not gone. I can help her, Reyes. Get me off of here. Reyes!”

Her mother’s bloom didn’t pulse back. Lena could help her if she could get off the damn bed. Her mother blurred as tears rose.

She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound building within her chest caught in her throat. Her muscles slackened. Her watery view of her mother, of Reyes placing her upon the floor and closing her eyes, faded away as her body sank back. Her mouth hung open, the scream still caught, beating at her vocal cords, waiting for an exit. She sagged onto the bed.

Lucas’s voice intruded, disgusted. Put upon. “I should have sent for the sister.”

I will do no harm…. But they could? They could do whatever they wanted to the people she loved? No more. I will do harm. I will be free.

She focused the grief inside, rage making her immune to the effects of the current. Dust swarmed to answer her. The scream howled free. With it, white light arced across the room, seeking the men. Her electric-coated shriek of rage and grief released something within her. She convulsed, her body arching up in a corona of white light that flashed up and across with a concussive boom of sound that drowned her out. It sucked away her breath, and her voice died, the electricity following it back, crackling away into nothing.

When her eyes fluttered open, the windowless room was dark. The brilliant after-flare of the branching white heat etched her vision, glowing in the black. From somewhere nearby, a metal fixture squeaked as it swung. Voices shouted from outside. Someone banged at the door.

No sounds came from inside. She pulled her body up to the right, trying to roll to the limits of the straps, but they didn’t hold. As her body pressed against them, the leather cracked and fell away from the buckles with dry pops and faint metallic tinging. Waiting for the pull of the taut, thick restraints, she rolled up and almost off the bed. She caught herself with one shaky hand.

She leaned her face over the edge, vainly searching past the vivid memory of light into the darkness below. Her mother was down there. She’d freed herself to go to her mother.

“Mama?” It hurt to make even the faint, hoarse sound she managed.

No response.

She pushed with her hand and eased up to sit, pulling her legs free of the cracked restraints to swing over the edge of the bed. She turned in the darkness. Something brushed her head, and she jumped back from the sound of swinging metal. Pushing her hand out in front of her in the dark, she reached up, searching. Her fingers made contact with one of the metal lights that had been trained upon her when she woke. It hung down over her now, loose and broken.

What had she done?

— Kate Corcino’s Author Secret—

 

Hello and welcome! I’m so happy to be here! I am Kate Corcino, author of Spark Rising, a romantic futuristic fantasy featuring a complicated super-powered heroine, a compromised double-agent hero, romance, and non-stop action adventure for the New Adult/Adult audience. I am thrilled to be a part of the SECRET WORLDS boxed set.

Perhaps that’s because I have secrets of my own?

Want to know my writing-process secret?

I wrote in a sex scene to keep one of my characters happy.

My characters talk to me—and refuse to talk to me. If they’re not pleased with the way the action is going, they will refuse to cooperate. Perhaps this is what other authors experience as writer’s block, but to me, it’s pretty clear who’s in control (and it’s not me!).

Once you get to know Agent Alejandro Reyes, it probably wouldn’t be surprising in the least to know that as I headed into the second half of Spark Rising, he made it known that he was unhappy with the state of affairs (or lack of one!) between himself and Lena Gracey. And he sat down and refused to talk for his POV scenes until I promised some—ahem—action.

It seems Agent Reyes knows what he wants, and he’ll do anything to get it. ;)

So many of the characters you’ll find in the over a MILLION pages of fiction the SECRET WORLDS boxed set offers are just as determined…and just as hot (Okay, Alex, almost as hot…happy now?). Pre-order your copy now and get ready to be let in on twenty-one different worlds of secrets, headstrong characters, and love!

I hope you enjoy the excerpt below from SPARK RISING! Have a fabulous day!

 

 

— Sample – Summoned – Sample –

 

I dislike having to murder someone. Kidnapping is worse. At least when I setup a kill, I know what's coming. No connections, no honesty, no surprises. Everything I say and do are just steps to luring in my victim. Once the victim falls right into the trap, the next move is swift: crushed windpipe, fatal concussion, or a good ol' fashioned headshot.

Kidnapping, on the other hand, is a little trickier. First, the victim has an opportunity to respond. I don't like this. Sometimes they cry. Sometimes they manage to alert the authorities. And sometimes they escape, usually by inflicting bodily harm on me.

Dead people don't retaliate.

The second major difference between killing and kidnapping is my conscience. I get in and out with a kill. We have no chance to bond.

Abductees require a little more one-on-one. As much as I try to keep the switch turned off, I can't help but listen to their pleas and demands. And I usually realize I'm a jerk.

That's exactly where I find myself one late afternoon in June. I prefer doing this at night, but moreover, I would prefer not doing this at all.

Instead, I have a belligerent nine year old girl sitting in the passenger seat of my Honda Accord, shackles on her wrists and ankles and a small stuffed bunny on her lap. She's eying me in a way that makes me self-conscious. Like I'm the bad guy.

Probably because I am the bad guy.

“My dad will shoot you!” She glares at me. “He has lots of guns and knows how to use them good. He'll shoot you.”

Right now, that feels more like a mercy than a threat. I focus on the road and say nothing.

“But you won't die, and he'll call the police, and you'll go to jail!” She rattles her chains like a new specter trying out the haunting thing.

And she keeps rattling them.

I clamp my jaw and tighten my hold on the steering wheel.

The clanking grows louder. From the corner of my eye, I catch she is shaking the chains at me. She's nine. She's angry. This is all she's got.

It's annoying as shit.

“Okay! Stop it!” I reach for the middle chain to still her.

She shrieks. High pitched, icepick to the eardrum shrieks.

I snap my hand back to the steering wheel. “Please stop.”

She shrieks louder. Dear God.

“Enough!”

She silences. Her eyes are fixed on me though.

I'm supposed to be the bad guy here. Probably a good idea to say something bad guy-ish.

I got nothing.

My conscience sneaks in, whispering questions about what is going to happen to her after delivery.

Ransom, I decide. She will be held for ransom.

Truth is, I will never know.

I bet she is in a lot of extracurricular activities. Star of her class, ringleader of her friends, exasperation to her parents.

They don't know she's missing yet. She was heading home from school when I cut her off at a crosswalk, slapped the chains on her in the backseat, and peeled away. I am a pro at this.

Unfortunately.

If I didn't know better, I would think she was too. She sang. In the backseat. At the top of her lungs. The Song That Never Ends.

Come to find out, that song never ends.

Ever.

So we struck a deal. She would stop singing, and I would let her ride in the passenger seat.

It was a compromise. Her first offer was that I let her go.

Nice try, kid.

She juts her chin. “Where are you taking me?”

“A big house.” I bat my hair out of my eyes. “A mansion. With lots of expensive things. There's maids and cooks. Huge yard with a pool that might as well be a lake. Has a waterfall and everything.”

“Is there a pony?”

“Well, there's—” I stop and glance at her.

She's fuckin' with me.

I groan and slouch in my seat. Not very bad guy-ish, but I think she's already figured out I'm a poser.

“Look, just be quiet, will ya?”

She starts screaming again.

Mental note: bring a gag next time.

The thing is, I'm not afraid of the cops. They're more of a nuisance than anything.

Want to scan my record? Go for it. Leo Hartz is clean.

And my real name, Dimitri Hayes? I do not exist.

I don't have fingerprints—they were seared off—and any of my DNA in the federal system links to long discarded aliases.

Thanks to me, cold cases litter the desks of investigators across the nation.

I frown. Hopefully another file isn't going to be added soon.

The city gives way to desert: packed dirt, patches of dry brush, and a few tall cacti. Purple mountains stand against the empty sky.

After ten minutes or so, I roll down her window a quarter of the way. We could both use some fresh air.

The drive isn't over yet.

Despite her shackles, she manages to push herself up on the door and wedge a hand in the crack. The stuffed bunny rolls to the floorboard. She ignores it and tries to force the window down farther. Probably thinks she can leap out. Wouldn't surprise me if she tried.

“You need to sit,” I say, voice even.

“I'm planning my escape,” she says, matter-of-fact.

“I see that. Can you stop?”

“If you kill me, my dad will track you down.” She drops back into her seat and looks at me again. “He'll track you down and kill you back.”

Great, I picked up Liam Neeson's daughter.

“Yeah, I'm not worried about your dad, 'kay? Just be quiet.”

“What's your name?”

In the eight years I've been doing this, I've never had such an inquisitive victim. Normal kids freak out. I just drug the adults. They're too difficult to move otherwise.

I'm not exactly built for hauling around people against their will. When I learned what I would spend the rest of my life doing, I tried to pack on a few pounds. I was fifteen, and the job description didn't make pumping iron a thrill.

So I traded in the weights for a couple of guns and a supply of benzodiazepines. I won't use the benzos on the kiddies, though. Too dangerous.

I turn onto a dirt road, and the car bounces along. Hondas get great mileage, but they aren't designed with this terrain in mind.

Not a big deal. When the Accord finally gives out, Karl will have another vehicle waiting for me. Whatever I need, I get. It's not as exciting as it sounds, especially since I can't draw attention to myself.

No fancy rides, no fawning ladies. Just a nondescript car and all the ammo and tranqs a guy could want.

Up ahead looms solid metal gates set in a twenty-foot high brick wall.

My passenger goes quiet. I have stopped making sense of her words a while ago. The gates roll to either side, and she sits forward into the dash.

“Wow.” Her voice is a soft breath.

For a moment, she has forgotten she's going to die.

Wait, held for ransom. That's the story, and I'm sticking to it. I might believe it with enough whiskey. As soon as this delivery is over, I'm heading straight to the bar. The trip back from the mansion is the worst part, though. The silence. The thinking.

I press on the gas and drive up the long carport. On either side, the landscaping is like a mirage. Tall arching trees. Manicured hedges whose maintenance alone cost more than the upkeep on my car. A pond that would look impressive if I didn't know there really is a pool with a waterfall on the other side of the estate. And the pool is nothing compared to the tennis court, the ten-car garage, and the empty horse stable.

The mansion itself stands three stories high and sprawls so far I sometimes wonder if anyone has ever walked it end to end. There's at least a dozen covered patios with stone archways. I can't even guess how many balconies.

Uniformed men bust through one of the four sets of double-doors and head straight for my car. My passenger screams. This time, it is real terror.

The men yank open the side door and drag her out. Not so much as a nod at me. They carry her back the direction they had come, disappearing into the mansion.

Silence.

I will never see her again.

The stuffed bunny is still on the floorboard. I lean over to pick it up and toss it into the glove compartment.

During the drive back to the city, I sing The Song That Never Ends to drown out my thoughts.

 

— Rainy Kaye’s Author Secret —

I'm trying to convince my HOA to let me have a goat.

 

 

 

– Sample – Taken by the Beast – Sample –

As I read over the poster, checking out the girls brown curls, her full cheeks and bust, and the curve of her hips that could have been a reflection of my own, I shuddered. Sure, he nose was a little bigger, and her eyes were a darker shade of blue. But, for the second time in two days, I was face to face with a picture of a woman who looked a great deal like me. And, for the second time, it was clear something horrible had happened to her.

Annabeth Girts was last seen heading to her car on the night of April 16th. At the time of her disappearance, she was wearing an orange sweater and jeans. Any persons with information on her whereabouts are to contact—

I would have kept reading, except that was when my heel broke.

As I went winding down a nearby stairwell, I thought about a lot of things— none more than the fact that the piece of garbage Italian shoes were eleven thousand goddamn dollars! And they were now likely about to kill me.

I braced for impact, envisioning my bloodied face and broken teeth that would no doubt come as a result of tumbling down concrete stairs.

I wonder who I could sue at this point.

But there was no pain, no metallic blood taste, no broken teeth or bruised tailbones. Instead, I found myself in the arms of a man—the second unexplainably attractive man I had crossed paths with in a single day.

Either I was losing it, or Lulu was right. This town had changed. Especially with the selection of…er, well…men.

My rescuer this time had dark eyes and even darker hair that slicked back on his head. His cheekbones, dusted with stubble, looked as though they could cut glass. He stared down at me for a long moment before his lips, pink and inviting, finally parted to speak.

“You-you have a freckle in your eye,” he said.

“I got it from my father,” I mumbled, staring at him hesitantly, as though his face were the sun and I didn’t want to blind myself.

“What are you doing down here?” he asked, shaking his head hard.

“I…I fell,” I said, bristling at the steel in his voice.

“I can see that.” His scowl set firmer. “I mean what were you doing skulking around at my doorstep? And what did you do with my barrier?”

He glared at the street above, at the decidedly barren stairwell that apparently was supposed to be blocked off.

“I didn’t see any barrier,” I said, trying—and failing—to squirm my way out of his arms.

“Damn children,” he growled. His chest, firm and impressive, rose and fell in deep, sharp intakes of breath. “Look, no one is supposed to be down here. It’s not safe.”

“Obviously,” I said. “Now can you put me down?”

He sighed heavily and sat me on the pavement. I winced as pain shot up my ankle and my leg folded under me.

“Damn it, you’re hurt,” he said, scooping me back up, but sounding more perturbed than concerned. “I suppose you’ll have to come in now.”

“Well, don’t put yourself out or anything. Wouldn’t want you to overdo it with the compassion and pull a muscle.”

He glared down at me and huffed, marching me through a door he unlocked by pressing a series of numbers against a keypad.

I bit at the inside of my cheek, debating if I might be better off hobbling home with my injuries or letting this jerk help me, and decided the way things went this morning were perhaps bad enough without adding fuel to the fire.

We entered a huge, barren space that, upon first inspection, was probably almost definitely a murder dungeon. On the off chance I was wrong, I muttered, “What is this place?”

“A club,” he answered flatly. “Or it will be in two weeks.”

“A club?” I asked, looking around at the dark, dank void, thinking about how big of a turnaround two weeks would have to bring for this to be anything even close to such a thing.

“Yes,” he said, setting me on a lone, dusty stool. “For dancing, mingling…you know, general merriment.”

“General merriment?” I asked, giggling inwardly. “Why would you even want a club in a town like this? There’s no market for it.”

“There are young people in this town,” he answered. “This will give them someplace to go. Someplace safe,” he finished under his breath. “Let me get you ice and get you on your way.”

“You’re a ray of sunshine, aren’t you?” I said as he disappeared off into a backroom.

Looking around the space, I saw it was even more pathetic right side up. There was no way this guy was going to turn this place into a club in two weeks. It would take someone of immense taste and talent to pull that sort of thing off. It would take someone who had been around the block a time or two, someone who knew what she was doing and had the foresight to get it done, someone like…

My gaze fell on a ‘Manager Wanted’ sign.

While it was true I didn’t want to stick around, this was the sort of thing that could really help me out. I could help Mr. Deadpan get this place up and running, make a little scratch, and then take off once I got my legs back under me. Plus it would give me something to do so I wouldn’t feel like such an anchor around Lulu’s neck.

“You’re looking for a manager,” I yelled into the distance.

“No,” he yelled back.

“You’re not?”

“I am, but it’s not you,” he answered, still in the other room. “There’s a form and protocol. But that aside, you wouldn’t be a good fit.”

 

– Conner Kressley’s Author Secret –

 

 

I’m a grown man. I’m 6’2, 190lbs, and can bench press my entire body weight. I was on the football team, the wrestling team, and I worked summers on farms where I welded, climbed on top of barn roofs, and rode horses.

Oh yeah, and I am scared to death of cats.

Don’t judge me yet. They’re so freaky with their weird agile bodies and eyes that glow in the dark for no good reason. They can jump insanely long distances, slither into spaces no human being could ever think of going into, and they always land on their feet for some reason.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not a cat hater, and I totally get why people would want them as pets. But I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that they’re watching me. Watching and judging.

Cats.

No thank you.

 

 

 

GIVEAWAY

Blitz-wide giveaway (INTL)

$25 Amazon Gift Card
 

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway