Wednesday 29 April 2015

Available Now: One Night in Biarritz by Izzy French

ONE NIGHT IN BIARRITZ
City Nights, #11
Izzy French

ISBN: 9781310858307
ASIN: B00UGPGEJK
Length: Novella
Genre: Erotic Romance
Price: $2.99

Buy Here: Tirgearr Publishing

Chloe has followed Matthieu, the Frenchman of her dreams, to France, only to be unceremoniously dumped. But sometimes romantic and erotic adventures come from unexpected sources – in this case Liam, an attractive British photographer mysteriously ‘honeymooning’ alone invites Chloe up to his luxury Honeymoon Suite in the Hotel du Palais where Chloe works as a receptionist.

Chloe and Liam, both on the re-bound, have nothing to lose, so together they explore the sensual delights the fabulous Honeymoon Suite has to offer. The Ice Maiden, Chloe’s spiteful boss, endeavours to thwart their fun, and Matthieu, jealous now, also attempts to intervene. But Chloe and Liam have 24 hours together in Biarritz, and they are determined to make the most of every moment.

But then Sabine the hotel masseuse, on/off lover of the Ice Maiden and current lover of Matthieu, lets slip to Chloe that explicit photos Liam has taken of her have gone viral. Has Chloe been too easily seduced, and trusted Liam too readily? Will she leave France alone, but with her dignity intact?

• • •

“Bonjour Monsieur. Bienvenue a l’Hôtel du Palais.”

Chloe was quite convinced her voice lacked the French insouciance she was aiming for, in addition to the efficiency, professionalism and friendly tone required by the Ice Maiden, AKA Mademoiselle—who was she kidding?—Labelle, Chloe’s manager. She forced a smile. It was 8.30am, and she’d been on shift since 9pm—or, as she was supposed to say, 21.00 heures. She was jaded, ready for her bed.

The bed which no longer held Matthieu.

In a way it had been pretty easy to give up on the day shift and move to nights. Then she didn’t have to be there in the morning, missing him and all that entailed. He would always awaken her each morning. He’d been an early riser, in more ways than one, and would bring her croissants and espresso. When crumbs fell from the croissants he would devour them with apparent delight, from wherever they fell.

She’d always been an untidy eater. He had always been a speedy but efficient lover. Confident of his abilities, careful to satisfy them both. She shivered at the memories of his tongue sliding down her body, heading for the place that gave them both pleasure. She’d hit the snooze button on her phone just as he reached the spot and forced a groan from her.

They’d both be late for work; her at the Hôtel du Palais, him teaching surf school on La Grande Plage. She’d arrive flushed and with her uniform in disarray, buttons done up incorrectly, or left undone. The Ice Maiden, the woman with the perfect pout, beautifully groomed glossy black hair and her scarf at a stiff but jaunty angle, always had something to say about that.

Matthieu. It was he who had brought her to Biarritz and its recently revived Belle Époque glamour. They’d met in Chamonix during the ski season a couple of years ago. She’d thought it was a fling. He’d obviously seen it as something more serious; or so she’d thought. Writing to her—little billets-doux on scented paper, crammed full of statements of love, tiny hearts and kisses. Très romantique. If she hadn’t known differently she might have suspected he was gay, but she had pretty good evidence he wasn’t; unless of course he swung both ways. Like the Ice Maiden.

He’d landed her a job on reception at the Hôtel du Palais. His father was someone big in the Biarritz business community. The Ice Maiden and her team had not exactly welcomed her with open arms, but she could cope, and the time spent with Matthieu more than made up for the frosty reception she sometimes encountered at work.

On his invitation she’d zigzagged her way down through France, taking a couple of weeks or so to arrive in Biarritz, working at the occasional bar on the way to fund her trip; some of it by train, some by bus and some in huge French articulated lorries.

“Mademoiselle Prentiss. That’s not very French.” Chloe was drawn back to the man who was still standing patiently on the other side of the reception desk. He was staring at the name badge pinned to her chest. “I’m not sure I have your complete and undivided attention,” the man said.

• • •

Izzy French has been writing erotic short stories for a number of years. Her short fiction appears in a number of erotic collections including Black Lace’s 'The Affair’, and Xcite’s ‘Sex, Love and Valentines, ‘Seduce Me’, ‘Satisfy Me’, ‘Seriously Sexy 2’, ‘Ultimate Submission’, ‘Ultimate Curves’ and ‘Girl Fun 1’.

Izzy also writes short fiction for women’s magazines and has had short fiction has in Scarlet, Take a Break, Woman’s Weekly, The Weekly News, Woman, That’s Life (Australia) and You Magazine (South Africa). N She has also had stories published in two charity short story collections ‘Sexy Shorts for the Beach’ and ‘Diamonds and Pearls’, both published by Accent Press. She has won and been runner up in a number of writing competitions.

Find Izzy Online

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/izzyfrenchwriter
Twitter - https://twitter.com/izzyfrenchbooks
Blog - http://www.izzyfrenchwriter.wordpress.com
Tirgearr Publishing - http://tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/French_Izzy


Wednesday 22 April 2015

Available Now: Looking for Charlotte by Jennifer Young

LOOKING FOR CHARLOTTE
Jennifer Young

ISBN: 9781311565303
ASIN: B00UEVPWIK
Length: Novel
Genre: Contemporary Romance

Price: $4.99

Buy Here: Tirgearr Publishing

Divorced and lonely, Flora Wilson is distraught when she hears news of the death of little Charlotte Anderson. Charlotte’s father killed her and then himself, and although he left a letter with clues to the whereabouts of her grave, his two-year-old daughter still hasn’t been found.

Flora embarks on a quest to find Charlotte’s body to give the child’s mother closure, believing that by doing so she can somehow atone for her own failings as a mother. As she hunts in winter through the remote moors of the Scottish Highlands, her obsession comes to threaten everything that’s important to her — her job, her friendship with her colleague Philip Metcalfe and her relationships with her three grown up children.

• • •

Flora hadn’t thought. If she didn’t come up with something she’d have to go shopping and pass judgement on Grace in a series of beige and mustard-coloured suits. She grabbed inspiration from the headline in The Scotsman. ‘I thought I’d pop into the library.’
‘I’ll chum you.’

They parted just beyond the bridge across the Ness, Grace heading up the pedestrian streets and Flora cutting across to the library, fronted by the long line of cars full of Saturday shoppers manoeuvering towards the car parks. She wasn’t a regular library user, but once the idea had taken her she remembered that there was something she wanted to check.

In the reference section, she stood for a moment before selecting the Ordnance Survey map that covered the area south of Ullapool. She knew it quite well. When the children were young they’d gone walking there regularly, able to reach the open spaces without pushing the slowest (usually Amelia, though Beth was the youngest) too hard. They’d graduated to more difficult walks, then stopped walking altogether. Eventually she had developed a fondness for the slightly less bleak terrain to the south of Inverness, where she went occasionally with Philip and his brother, or with a colleague from work. She hadn’t been out all year, not since before Christmas, in fact, and even then they’d been rained off not very far in and driven back to the comfort of a tea shop in Grantown-on-Spey.

A nostalgic yearning for a good long walk swept over her as she unfolded the map and smoothed it out across one of the desks. She and Danny used to look at maps together plotting their routes. His stubby forefinger, with its bitten nails, had traced the most challenging route to start, sliding along the steep and craggy ridges until he remembered the children and reluctantly redrew, shorter, safer.

She thought she knew the place where Alastair Anderson had left his car, and found it easily enough. Under her fingers the map was a flat web of never-parallel lines, of ugly pock-marking that told of steep, loose rocks and inhospitable terrain, just the type of place they used to walk. Somewhere up here, Charlotte Anderson was buried. Carried there, already dead? Or walked there and then killed? Surely neither was realistic; surely they would have found her, with their dogs and their mountain rescue helicopters scouring the ground for new scars, and all the rest of the equipment they had at their disposal.

Looking at the map had been a mistake. It was obvious now. Besides, she couldn’t see it any more; all she could see was the image of Suzanne Beauchamp, that beautiful face with the cold façade, like a wax death mask from Madame Tussauds. More poignant, of course, since it must hide a struggle, a struggle to conceal or to suppress a deadly mixture of grief and guilt.

‘Go away!’ she said softly to this mirage of a grieving woman, a little afraid of its power. ‘Go away!’ And then, in the only defence left to her, she began to fold the map away.

• • •

Jennifer Young is an Edinburgh-based writer, editor and copywriter. She is interested in a wide range of subjects and writing media, perhaps reflecting the fact that she has both arts and science degrees. Jennifer has been writing fiction, including romantic fiction, for a number of years with several short stories already published. Thanks You For The Music, which is set on the Balearic island of Majorca, is her first published novel.

Find Jennifer Online

Website - http://www.jenniferyoungauthor.com
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/jenniferyoungauthor
Twitter - https://twitter.com/JYnovelist
Twitter - https://twitter.com/JYoungWriter
Blog - http://jenniferyoungauthor.blogspot.co.uk
Blog - http://novelpointsofview.blogspot.co.uk
Tirgearr Publishing - http://tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/Young_Jennifer


Friday 17 April 2015

Available Now: Strangers in the Night by Betsy J. Bennett

STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT
Betsy J. Bennett

ISBN: 9781311689757
ASIN: B00U0OE2FA
Length: Novel
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Price: $4.99

Buy Here: Tirgearr Publishing

His life was ruined...

When his knees were shattered, physician Alex Horne lost his ride to the International Space Station, but when called to investigate an alleged UFO landing site, he agrees, if only to prove the hoax.

She didn’t like his attitude...

Although Alex rescued her from a freak blizzard, Devra felt Alex could not understand her fears and he certainly didn’t believe in aliens, which meant he couldn’t believe in her.

They found love under the stars...

They were not looking for love, but Alex and Devra found completion in each other. Now if only they could survive an encounter with a UFO.

• • •

Alex Horne released the hand brake and inched the van forward until it rested a mere three inches from the car in front of him. Although the directions had been vague, the kind that went "a few miles past the large cottonwood tree..." he'd certainly had no trouble following them. From the traffic congestion, he knew he'd reached his destination as surely as if there were a neon sign flashing, "Alien invaders stopped here."

"Looks like a damn circus," he muttered.

Traffic along the highway had been all but stopped for the last five miles as rubberneckers tried to get a look at whatever devastation or freak show was planted a hundred miles from nowhere. He swore, annoyed at how quickly word had spread. What stone did all these people crawl out from under?

In another fifteen minutes there would be hot dog stands and "I survived a UFO attack" T-shirt kiosks. Alex sincerely hoped there was something left to make his trip worthwhile; although he had been convinced he was wasting his time before he even stumbled out of bed.

A rigid, un-smiling Texas state trooper stood at the center of the worst of the traffic jam, waving cars forward, trying to keep things moving. Alex rolled down his window and stuck out his NASA ID.

"Yes, Sir," the trooper said, halting the oncoming traffic with a flat palm. "You can park anywhere in there."

Alex flipped on his turn signal and pulled off the road to the most convenient spot he could find. He set the parking brake, and then killed the engine.

"Do you really want to do this?" he muttered, wishing he hadn't been half-doped out of his mind when he agreed to investigate. He should have taken another one of those little white pills, then the phone could ring to San Antonio and back and he wouldn't hear it. It wasn't too late to turn around and head for home.

"Idiot that you are," he continued to mutter as he buttoned his coat, eyeing the heavy storm clouds, "as long as you're here, you might as well get the fifty-cent tour."

He had let his hair grow, so he brushed it back off his forehead with his fingers and plopped his battered Stetson on his head. Julie had given him the hat years ago. She had laughed, saying he was finally going native, and she loved tall, handsome cowboys. Dr. Julie Plaising had taken his ride to the International Space Station. Alex kept both the hat and the memory much longer than the relationship.

With a sigh of resignation, Alex maneuvered his wheelchair over to the hydraulic lift which would enable him to exit the van. Now he only had to deal with news teams with microphones, tourists, and the thousand odd fanatics who had stopped to see the spectacle. So if this was a real honest to goodness UFO sighting, whatever that meant, chances were excellent all the evidence had been carted away as souvenirs, or would be covered in footprints, candy wrappers and cigarette butts, which, he decided, was just about par for these events. Alex believed the reason sightings could never be completely debunked was there was never enough evidence remaining to expose the hoax. An official investigative team was coming from California, a second from Indiana, the earliest not expected for another three hours. His job was to secure the scene until they arrived, a simple assignment, except he was probably already a good two hours late.

Frigid air assaulted Alex as the door of his van slid open. What was it the radio announcer had said, highs expected in the twenty-five-degree-range for the next three or four days? Focused on the pain from his legs, he had only briefly caught something about a major storm coming to show this part of west Texas exactly what cold was.

“Whatever happened to nice, mild Texas winters?”

To the north he noticed a front of black storm clouds charging forward like Santa Anna approaching the Alamo. Another two or three hours and everything not nailed down would likely be blowing toward the Gulf of Mexico. So much for saving anything for the pros.

Although the ground was level, it was rocky; each bump sent fresh shards of agony through his shattered kneecaps. Not exactly the best place for cruising in his wheelchair. Alex pushed forward and managed to head toward the worst of the congestion, keeping his mind off the pain by reciting a liturgy of short, descriptive words which lately comprised the entire extent of his vocabulary.

The expletives colored the air behind him, hitting on several diverse topics, starting with the obvious, the unpredictable Texas weather and the genealogy of those who perpetrate hoaxes, branching out to his father and the current crew for the next Russian headed trip to the International Space Station.

There was a scuffle as he passed, fanatics trying to get under the yellow police tape. “I know my rights,” a large, red faced man said, oddly enough waving a Confederate flag. “You can’t keep me away. I’m a taxpayer. I want to see what’s here, before it’s all carted off to Area 53.”

“Fifty-one,” Alex corrected silently, not that he believed there was anything there, either. He kept moving.

Why can't these bloody UFO hoaxes happen in wheelchair accessible places, anyway?

• • •

Betsy J. Bennett lives in Michigan with her husband, two adult daughters, three obnoxious cats and an English bulldog. She has five grandchildren. She collects dragons, creche's and Santas. She has always believed in Christmas and in Santa, and although she has yet to meet the real Santa, she has hope that with the publication of this book he'll seek her out. She is currently at work on her next novel.

Find Betsy Online

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/betsy.bennett.58
Blog - http://www.betsyjbennett.blogspot.com
Tirgearr Publishing - http://tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/Bennett_BetsyJ