Release Day Blitz Only Chance by Trish Arcangelo

Only Chance
Chisholm Falls Series
Book Two

Trish Arcangelo

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Date of Publication: 8/31/18

ISBN: 9781386217381

Number of pages: 147

Word Count: 46,351

Cover Artist: Diana Carlile

Tagline: This old flame still burns hot….

Book Description:

Fallon Gentry is back in her hometown after leaving an affluent life in Dallas, and her cheating ex-husband, behind.  She's ready to start over, even if that means dealing with the pain of her first love's betrayal left buried in the past.

 Lucas Chance is a working class guy leading a simple life.  He plays the part of the town ladies' man but deep down he's still reeling from old wounds, namely a heart shattered when the only woman he ever loved walked away.

They're both shocked when Fallon unknowingly shows up on Lucas's duplex door step, looking to rent the unit next door.  Lucas is too intrigued to tell her no and Fallon is too desperate for a place to live.  There's also the blazing attraction still between them.  Now as landlord and tenant, Fallon and Lucas battle their feelings.

Will they discover the truth behind what drove them apart and take their only chance at true love?

Amazon     iTunes     BN

Excerpt:

She knocked on the door.  “Lucas?”

The door opened and an arm shot out.  Before she knew it she was pulled inside and the door slammed shut with her back against it.  The bank bag and paper slipped from her hand as he caged her in.

“Where’s Laurel?” he rasped.

“I-in the bathroom.”

“Good,” he said, moments before his lips covered hers.

He didn’t touch her anywhere but on her lips, his hands braced against the door on either side of her head and his rigid body inches from hers.  Somehow that only made it hotter. The intensity of that one contact was like a lightning strike, incinerating all rational thought.  There was nothing but the wicked mouth of the only man she’d wanted for as long as she’d wanted.

Her lips and tongue submitted to his, following his lead as his mouth devoured her.  God, how she missed this.  Tears stung the backs of her eyes at the acute need, the longing.  She reached for him.

Lucas broke the kiss.  “Don’t.”

Her eyes fluttered open.  “W-what?”

“If you touch me, I’ll lose it.”  His voice was husky and warm, the sound of sin.  “Why do you think I’m keeping my hands to myself?  It’s so I don’t take you right here.”

Fallon felt dizzy with want, leaning in.  “But, can’t we just---”

“I’ve been sitting in here all night thinking about what that asshole told me,” Lucas interrupted, leaning down to capture her eyes with his.  “Did you really call out for me, Duchess? All those nights, lying next to him?”

Her brain was screaming at her to lie.  To remember why she was here and the implications of her next words.  But the rest of her was still a quivering mass of pent up desire.  A younger woman who wanted only to please the man in front of her.  Her love.  “Yes,” she whispered.  “All the time.  I dreamed about you.”

About the Author:

Trish published her first book in 2015 and is currently working on her Chisholm Falls contemporary romance series.  A native Texan, Trish lives just outside Austin with her incredibly supportive husband and their incredibly spoiled dog.  She’s been an avid romance fiction reader since she was a teenager and still devours as many romance novels as she can when she’s not writing.  Her other loves include (in no particular order): warm weather, red wine, dogs, trivia, and Halloween. 

Learn more at www.trisharcangelo.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/trisharcangelo

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13272014.Trish_Arcangelo

Piper's Quest Finding Magic Book Seven by Blair Drake

Piper's Quest

Finding Magic

Book Seven

Blair Drake

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Magic Quest Books

Date of Publication: August 30, 2018

ASIN: B07DGLXYBN

Number of pages: 225

Word Count: 78,750

Cover Artist: Jennifer Zemanek/Seedlings LLC

Tagline: What would you do to find your magic?

Book Description:

The only thing Piper is worried about, until that fateful morning, finals. She wants to graduate with good grades, and go to an Ivy League university. After being summoned to the headmaster’s office, Piper’s life changes forever.

Reunited with her long-lost aunt, Piper learns things about herself she should have known for years. Aunt Winnie lives in a dimension parallel to Piper’s, where magic is a way of life. Now in Rowan’s Landing, Piper learns about her own abilities, and who to trust. When she trusts the wrong person, she may never return to Gray Cliffs Academy and graduate.

Amazon

Excerpt:

The woman standing before her looked close to her mom’s age, and had wild, curly black hair sticking out in ringlets around her head. Her pale skin made the dark circles around her eyes look even darker. Piper would have looked closer at the woman’s eyes, but they looked black and scared the crap out of her.

This was Hell, she just knew it. She’d been a terrible brat all her life, but she didn’t think she deserved to go to Hell when she died. This has to be a mistake. But Hell sure had a nice bathroom, even with the stinking liquid on the floor. She’d be a good girl if only she could get out of Hell.

Looking the woman up and down, as the woman did the same to her, Piper marveled at her tiny waist, cinched in with a corset. She wore a black dress of a fine fabric Piper couldn’t name, with red satin at her bust. And what a bust it was, with the flesh pushing out the top of the dress.

Piper watched the lady’s red lips as she repeated, “Piper? Is that you?”

Afraid to speak, Piper nodded.

The woman grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around. “Look at you. What a fine girl you’ve grown into.”

Piper’s expression would be one of confusion, but she couldn’t manage anything more than a blank stare.

“Are you okay? You look dazed.” The woman looked around Piper, toward the bathroom. “What were you doing in there? Your bum is wet.”

Piper finally found her tongue. “Who are you?”

The woman’s lips curled up at the corners. “You are Piper Cavanaugh, aren’t you? Cuz you sure look like her.”

“I thought we already established that.” Piper mentally slapped herself. She was supposed to start being good, so she’d be moved up.

The woman opened her arms wide and Piper thought her boobs might spill out from the fabric. “I’m Aunt Winnie, sweetheart. Don’t you remember me?”

Aunt Winnie? How would she remember her? It had been too many years since she last saw her, and that was only for a moment. They hadn’t even talked.

“Aunt Winnie? Where am I? And what’s happened?” Piper looked around.

Winnie wrapped her arms around Piper and drew her in for a hug. “I’m so thrilled. I can’t believe you finally came to visit. I thought for sure your mom was hiding the letters. And then when I tried to find you online, nothing. Honey, don’t you even have a Facebook account?”

Piper shook her head. Winnie was happy to see her, and she knew she should be happy too, but she was too confused to be happy at the moment. “I’m…uh…”

“Come. Sit.” Winnie led her to the upholstered booth of a restaurant table. “I’ll explain what I can, or at least what I think happened.”

Piper sat on the aqua vinyl seat and scooted across to the middle of the booth. The wetness of her pants felt cold and made sliding across the vinyl feel sticky. She looked around and noticed she was in some kind of café with a beach theme.

“Where am I?” She continued to look around without looking at Winnie, who slid into the seat across from her.

The place had fifteen booths, and a dozen stools at the counter. It looked like the ‘50s cafés she’d seen in movies, except this one had deep sea fishing items on the walls, along with starfish, sand dollars, and hanging nets she assumed were for fishing, too.

“You’re in my café.” Winnie’s chest raised as she said it.

“You still have the café?” Piper remembered her mom talking about it.

From her mom’s description, it was a rundown money pit not fit to eat in. Her mom couldn’t be more wrong. The café felt like a breath of fresh air. Ocean air.

The aqua vinyl booth she sat in looked new. She could smell the fabric, almost like new car smell. The tables were covered in pristine white linen clothes with matching white linen napkins she assumed were wrapped around silverware. She reached forward to touch the violet flower in the lead crystal vase.

“That’s a blue violet. It brings love and inspiration. But I keep them on the tables to protect my guests from all evil.” She plucked a flower and handed it to Piper. “Carry this for protection and good fortune.”

Piper accepted the flower. “Thank you, it’s lovely.” She held it between her fingers, taking in the graduated colors of the five petals. She didn’t want to put it down, but she tucked it in the breast pocket of her shirt.

“Press it between the pages of a large book when you get a chance. Then you’ll be able to keep it forever. But do it soon, before it wilts.” A bell chimed behind her, and Winnie’s gaze moved to the door of the café.

Piper looked over her shoulder. When she did, she almost forgot she had a crazy morning.

The guy who just walked in the door looked like he was her age. His athletic build made her body warm, but it was his dark, brooding eyes she locked onto. And he looked back. The smell of salt air flowed in with the guy, and Piper breathed deeply.

“Aaron,” Winnie said in a tight voice. “What can I do for you?”

Aaron, Piper thought. Yes, he looked like an Aaron. He looked like he could be anyone he wanted to be, and the girls probably hung on his every word, drooling over his strong facial features and muscular arms. She wondered what his tanned skin looked like under the knit sweater and canvas vest he wore.

“Hank said he called in an order and asked me to pick it up.” Aaron shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled at Piper.

“I’ll be right back, honey. Hang tight, and I’ll explain everything.” Winnie jumped up from the booth like she’d been stung. Her stride looked broken, like she was fighting something as she disappeared into the kitchen of her café.

Not wanting to be obvious with her interest, Piper turned away from Aaron and looked out the window.

From her vantage point, she saw the café sat at the end of a wharf of some sort. Aunt Winnie lived near the water? Did she live on the island, and somehow the winds blew Piper to her café? No, wait, she’d landed in the bathroom. She cringed at the thought of what was on her pants, and what might have been on her hands. She really hoped it was just water.

She felt the air move behind her, and when she turned around, Aaron stood so close she could reach out and touch him. He smelled sweet and salty, with a hint of ash.

“I thought I knew every pretty girl in town. I haven’t seen you before.” His wide smile was infectious.

It took Piper a second to break her gaze from his eyes and find her manners. “Oh, hi, I’m not from here. And I just got here. I’m Piper Cavanaugh.” She reached out to shake his hand.

Her entire body felt the jolt as he took her hand in his. It wasn’t the “love at first sight” kind of jolt like she read about in romance novels. This was an overpowering energy disappearing as soon as he let go of her hand.

“Aaron Payne. I’ve lived here forever, so if you need to know anything, I’m your guy.”

Winnie reappeared with a white bag. “You’re not anyone’s guy for anything here.” She shoved the bag of food at him. “Now run along before the food gets cold.”

Aaron didn’t even look back at Piper as Winnie practically shoved him out the door.

When she came back to the table, she sat again. “There are much better people to get your information from. Aaron is trouble.”

About the Author:

Blair Drake believes in magic, especially the magic of stories with fantasy, adventures, romance, action, and surprises. She has loved writing and living in the stories of the Finding Magic series and is so excited to share the quests of the Gray Cliffs Academy students with her readers.

When she’s not writing about magic, she’s reading about it. Her influences are Cassandra Claire, Neil Gaiman, Rick Riordan, Garth Nix, and many more.

In the mortal plane, following the lure of magic has drawn Blair into strange and wonderful adventures from Australia to New York City, with many stops in between. She currently lives near Denver. Her very favorite spot is a red loveseat in her office, frequently shared with two cats, an outnumbered Dalmation, and occasionally her bewitched husband.

She might have gone to a school similar to Gray Cliffs Academy and would love to go through a magic portal. In the meantime, she’s creating her own in more books of magic.

Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dyl_vv

Website: http://blairdrake.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BlairDrakeBooks

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorblairdrake/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18107775.Blair_Drake

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B07DFZH9P4/

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/blaire-drake

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Spirit Warrior by Ella J. Smyth

Spirit Warrior

Spirit Walker

Book Three

Ella J. Smyth

Genre: Urban Fantasy Romance

Publisher: Unapologetic Romances

Date of Publication: 26th August 2018

ISBN: 9781386686910

Number of pages: 299

Word Count: 65600

Cover Artist: CoverMe Designs

Tagline: A mighty spirit walker with a personal grudge, set to destroy them both.

Book Description:

Adi and Honi journey to Southern Oklahoma to meet Honi’s Mekui’te tribe at the reservation where he grew up. Honi’s infectious excitement almost erases Adi’s apprehension at meeting his family, and she’s desperate to make a good impression.

When Adi is met with silent hostility that gets worse rather than better, she realizes there may be more to the initial resistance Honi had warned her to expect.

Honi is confused and hurt by his family’s reaction, and by Adi’s increasingly strange behavior. She’s claiming the spirit animals of his tribe are diseased and sickly, but they look just fine to him. On top of that, when Adi meets Honi’s ex, Nina, her jealousy gets way out of hand, and threatens to drive them apart.

While mysterious forces manipulate and distort their realities, can Honi and Adi join forces to figure out what is happening before it’s too late and they are separated forever?

Books2Read     Amazon

Spirit Warrior – Excerpt, by Ella J. Smyth

When he opened his eyes again, it was still pitch dark. For a moment Honi panicked, his heartbeat increasing, and his breath coming faster. He stretched his hand out to the side, hoping to connect with Adi sleeping next to him. The bed was empty—Adi hadn’t returned yet.

He forced himself to calm down. There was no reason to panic. Even though his eyes couldn’t make out any shapes, power cuts weren’t rare in this area. That seemed to be the most likely explanation. There was a lamp outside the motel room window, and when he’d tried to fall asleep initially, the yellow glow had made it difficult. Now it was gone, and so was the green and blue flashing light off the busted motel sign.

Honi swung his legs out of bed. 

“I’m sure she’s fine,” he muttered. Ho’neo growled softly, bumping his head against Honi’s side.

He wasn’t particularly keen on walking barefoot on the ancient carpet. He stretched out his feet, feeling around as far as they would reach. But no matter how far he stretched, there was no sign of his shoes. He was sure they should have been right next to his bed, but maybe Adi had slipped into them when she’d gotten up. She sometimes did that, even though they were several sizes too large for her.

Finally he moved slowly, his arms outstretched, towards the door. After taking four or five shuffling steps, he stopped. He should have reached the door by now. He moved forward another three steps, and then stopped again. This was crazy. He moved his arms to the left and right, but there was nothing, not the chintzy floor lamp he remembered, not the nicotine-stained wall, nothing.

Honi squeezed his eyes shut and listened. He had never felt so alone in his life. There was no sound of traffic on the nearby road, or any of the everyday noises you would expect in a large motel. When he’d finally fallen asleep, there’d been a dripping tap, people talking outside, even the strains of country and western music carried on the breeze. Now the silence was so absolute that it pushed against his eardrums like cotton wool. Honi shivered and held himself tightly.

When he felt the pressure of a heavy body against his legs, he nearly screamed. He swallowed the sound, realizing it was only Ho’neo. He moved his hand to touch the wolf’s hard skull. Cold, giant teeth closed gently on his skin. Before he could react, Ho’neo tugged him insistently towards his left.

Honi didn’t argue. When the spirit wolf wanted him to do something, there was always a reason for it. Honi followed the gigantic animal through the room. Very soon the cheap, scratchy carpet under his feet changed. The surface turned softer and slightly damp. Honi stopped for a second to marvel at the grass under his feet, before Ho’neo pulled him further.

Something sounded nearby—first so quietly that Honi wasn’t sure he didn’t imagine it. Then it got louder until there was no mistaking the sound of somebody sobbing. Not wailing or crying out in pain. No, it was a male voice, crying quietly, as if he were afraid to be heard.

Honi followed the sound and soon reached the source of it. He said gently, so as not to scare him, “Hey, are you okay?”

About the Author:

Unapologetic Romances Because Love Needs No Excuses

Growing up in Germany, Ella always had a passion for myths and fairytales. No surprise then that she married an Irishman and lived 6 years in Ireland, the country of Leipreachán, Sidhe, Púca and other fascinating creatures. There's nothing like walking at night through a deserted laneway, fog swirling around your feet, knowing that maybe, just maybe, on the other side of the hedge, there might be some old lady in a black cloak waiting for you...

If you got the shivers right now, you know why Ella feels compelled to write stories around the supernatural and paranormal. There's nothing like a delicious shudder making you enjoy life just a little more... Plus she’s a romantic.

So look forward to modern romantic stories set against the background of ancient myths and legends. Ella hopes you enjoy reading them as much as she enjoys writing them!

https://www.ellajsmyth.com/

https://twitter.com/ellajsmyth

https://facebook.com/ellajsmyth

https://pinterest.com/ellajsmyth

Free Book Friday August 24 Truth and Solace Love at Solace Lake Book Three by Jana Richards

Free Book Friday August 24 
Truth and Solace

Love at Solace Lake Book Three 
by Jana Richards

Truth and Solace

Love at Solace Lake

Book 3

Jana Richards 

Love is worth the risk…

When their grandfather dies, the Lindquist sisters, Harper, Scarlet and Maggie, inherit the northern Minnesota fishing lodge that had been in their family for three generations. The inheritance is bittersweet. They were raised at the lodge by their grandparents. The natural beauty of the place hasn’t changed, but the building itself is crumbling and desperately in need of repair. The lodge also reminds them of what they lost. Twenty-two years previously, their parents died there in what was ruled a murder/suicide.

As the sisters struggle to breathe new life into the failing lodge, old fears and questions rise to the surface even as new love presents itself. Why did their father murder their mother? What truths did their grandparents keep from them? The sisters must fight to keep the wounds of the past from putting their futures, and their fledgling relationships, in jeopardy.

The truth could destroy them. Or set them free.

Maggie Lindquist left Solace Lake determined never to return. Circumstances have pulled her back and she’s helping to restore her family’s dilapidated fishing lodge. When she agreed to the plan she didn’t expect to have to work side by side with the man who abandoned her ten years earlier. She didn’t expect to like him, or want him ever again. But can she trust him as she once did?

Luke Carlsson rushes home to tend to his ailing mother. Her lengthy illness means he needs to stay, at least temporarily. And to stay, he needs to work. Solace Lake Lodge offers him a job and an opportunity to work with the woman he’s never stopped loving. But the restoration is unleashing secrets hidden for decades and no one is left unscathed. Especially not Maggie and Luke, whose love needs to be resilient enough to forgive, and strong enough to build a future together.

Free at Amazon

Natasha's Quest by Blair Drake

Natasha's Quest

Finding Magic

Book Six

Blair Drake

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Magic Quest Books

Date of Publication: August 9, 2018

ASIN: B07DFV612Q

Number of pages: 221

Word Count: 77,350

Cover Artist: Jennifer Zemanek/Seedlings LLC

Tagline: What would you do to find your magic?

Book Description:

Tash Pruitt lands in 17th century Massachusetts with a mission which soon becomes clear to her: she has to save Goody Cooke from a charge of witchcraft and escape back to the present before she herself is charged as a witch.

Seventeenth-century Massachusetts, and charges of witchcraft fill the air. When Tash Pruitt is catapulted from the Grey Cliffs Academy into this strange colonial environment, she has no idea that she herself is a witch. All she knows is that she has to save the woman who has taken her in—an unmarried healer—from charges of witchcraft, and keep the woman’s ward safe. Soon enough, Tash realizes that another life she has to save is her own.

Amazon

Excerpt:

Owww.

Tash lifted her head and gazed around. She was propped up on her hands and knees like a baby learning to crawl, planted in the middle of a dirt road. She had landed hard. Her knee throbbed.

Where was she?

More dirt road stretched ahead of her, rutted gray and brown. On one side of the road was a field filled with weeds and wildflowers, bordered by dense forest. On the other side was more forest—thick, towering pines, streaks of white birch, a crazy tangle of undergrowth lining the road. She recognized ferns, ragged daisies, and poison ivy sprouting through a carpet of rust-colored pine needles. She might have the wind knocked out of her, but she knew enough not to mess with poison ivy. A painful rash would spoil the soccer season, plus she wouldn’t be able to get close to Kyle. Poison ivy was contagious, wasn’t it?

Why was she wasting time worrying about poison ivy when she had no idea where she was or how she got here? One minute she was standing in her dorm room, her backpack slung over one shoulder and her phone in her other hand while she texted Kyle about their plan to study for the calculus final together. The next minute Headmistress Lalane was ordering Tash to put her phone away and herding her, along with a bunch of other kids, first to Headmaster Auster’s office, where they’d stood around, confused, while the office got darker and colder, and then they’d been taken up to the roof. And the minute after that…

The minute after that, Tash opened her eyes to find herself crawling down a dirt road, with pebbles embedded in the palms of her hands and her right knee bruised and bleeding.

This was really weird.

She shifted to sit, swinging her leg around carefully because it hurt. After plucking the grit out of her hands, she flexed her fingers to make sure they still worked, then checked her knee. The skirt of her uniform was dirty. The flesh around her kneecap—her patella; she’d knocked herself memorizing the proper names of the bones in the human skeleton in honors biology last year—looked like a puffy pink sponge. The skin was scraped raw. Trickles of blood skittered down her shin.

She groped for her backpack and discovered it missing. Great. No tissues. More important, no phone. No wallet. No money. No anything.

Where the hell was she?

What the hell happened?

She was in major trouble. Leaving campus without permission was a serious breach. She’d probably be dragged before the disciplinary board, and they’d contact her parents, and God knew what would happen next. Loss of senior privileges? Expulsion just weeks before graduation? Serious shit from Mom and Dad?

Would they go light on the punishment if she explained she hadn’t done anything wrong? She was minding her own business, texting back and forth with Kyle about studying for the calc final, when Lalane poked her head through the open door to Tash’s dorm room and ordered her to come. Tash obeyed. Surely the school would cut her a little slack.

Especially since she had no idea how she’d even gotten here—wherever here was.

Her dorm. Auster’s office. The roof. She recalled the other kids—nine of them—murmuring among themselves as Lalane hustled them up the stairs to the roof. She recalled Lalane dropping something into the pocket of her blazer. She recalled the roof. The air was chilly, the sky surprisingly dark, clouds as dark as soot obliterating the morning sunlight.

She reached into the pocket of her blazer and pulled out a pin. Round, sort of gold, it didn’t look like much. Why had the headmistress stuck it in Tash’s pocket? Was Tash supposed to pin it to her blazer?

She did now, fastening it to a lapel. Who knew why Lalane gave her the pin? Some of the students were kind of pals with the headmistress, but Tash always maintained her distance from the administrators. She was a scholarship student. She didn’t want to run the risk of antagonizing the folks in charge—or to seem like she was kissing up to them.

She returned her attention to her knee, using her thumb to wipe the rivulets of blood leaking out of her torn skin. Now her thumb was bloody, too. Wonderful. She supposed she could use the tail of her shirt to mop up the mess, but then her shirt would be stained, and she’d get in trouble for that.

Above her, the sky was a crisp, vivid blue marbled with rippling white clouds. One minute she was breathing the aroma of the travel-mug of coffee she filled in the dining hall during breakfast and brought back to her room, and the next she was breathing a dry, piney fragrance. No hint of the musty scent hanging in the corridors of the old school buildings, or the stale smell of the locker room adjacent to the soccer field, or the ocean-tinged breezes drifting across campus. Was she even still on the island? She’d never seen this field before, or these woods.

She forced herself to stand. Her knee ached, but her leg didn’t buckle. No broken bones, she decided. Correction: no broken patella, femur, tibia, or fibula. If she was going to do pre-med next year, a notion she was considering at the moment, she ought to practice using the correct terminology.

She bent over and tried to rub the blood from her sticky thumb on a patch of grass. That didn’t work too well, but a little saliva helped, and she got most of the blood off. Then she straightened up and started down the road. Maybe her backpack dropped somewhere along the way. She’d be royally screwed if she couldn’t find it. It contained not only her phone and wallet but a few textbooks. If she lost them, she’d have to pay to replace them, and she wasn’t exactly rolling in money.

Replacing her textbooks would be cheap compared to replacing her phone. When her parents gave it to her last Christmas, they went on and on about how much it cost, which kind of spoiled the whole Christmas thing. You weren’t supposed to mention the price of presents at Christmas. You weren’t supposed to make a person feel guilty about the gift you were giving them. You were just supposed to give it and say, “Merry Christmas.”

She hobbled along, scanning left and right in search of her backpack. If it slid off her shoulder somewhere in the field, she would spot it easily, but it could have landed in the woods. She hoped she wouldn’t have to traipse through poison ivy to retrieve it.

Like that was going to happen. How could she think logically when this was so illogical? She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know how she’d gotten here. She didn’t know why she was here.

She ought to be scared—except she didn’t do scared. Scared was for wusses. Tash was the girl who killed the spiders venturing into the third-floor bathroom in her dorm. She was the girl who argued with Mr. Pritchard, the meanest history teacher in the school, when he insisted on popping surprise quizzes or grading essays on a curve. She was the girl who stood up to that bitch Susie Martland two years ago, when she was picking on Mary Ann Leominster, who obviously had Asperger’s, even if she wasn’t officially diagnosed. Mary Ann was hard-wired and weird, everyone knew it, but that was no reason for Susie to give her a hard time.

Tash noticed a movement in the woods. Not her backpack, which didn’t  move, at least not on its own. A shadow weaving through the trees, meandering toward the clearing. An animal? A dangerous beast? Not that Tash was afraid, but were there wolves on the island?

The shadow drew closer, and Tash noticed a flutter of pale gray, and then a crescent of white. She halted, which actually made her knee hurt a little more, and watched as the figure moved through the forest toward the clearing.

It was a girl, dressed in a shapeless gray dress with long sleeves and a full skirt falling to her feet, which were shod in dusty black flat-heeled shoes. A sagging drawstring bag hung from a belt around her waist, and a strange white cap fit snugly over her head. Her hair was tucked up under it, but a few pale strands leaked out and drizzled down around her round, open face. Freckles dappled her tiny nose. Her mouth shaped a perfect O as she gaped at Tash.

Tash gaped back. If this girl was a student at Gray Cliffs Academy, Tash had never seen her before. It wasn’t as if she knew all the younger students, but the school wasn’t that big. And if she ever heard about some eccentric freshman who dressed like a stowaway on the Mayflower, she would remember.

To her surprise, the girl broke into a smile as she stepped into the clearing. “Greetings, wayfarer!” she called to Tash.

About the Author:

Blair Drake believes in magic, especially the magic of stories with fantasy, adventures, romance, action, and surprises. She has loved writing and living in the stories of the Finding Magic series and is so excited to share the quests of the Gray Cliffs Academy students with her readers.

When she’s not writing about magic, she’s reading about it. Her influences are Cassandra Claire, Neil Gaiman, Rick Riordan, Garth Nix, and many more.

In the mortal plane, following the lure of magic has drawn Blair into strange and wonderful adventures from Australia to New York City, with many stops in between. She currently lives near Denver. Her very favorite spot is a red loveseat in her office, frequently shared with two cats, an outnumbered Dalmation, and occasionally her bewitched husband.

She might have gone to a school similar to Gray Cliffs Academy and would love to go through a magic portal. In the meantime, she’s creating her own in more books of magic.

Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dyl_vv

Website: http://blairdrake.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BlairDrakeBooks

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorblairdrake/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18107775.Blair_Drake

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B07DFZH9P4/

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/blaire-drake

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