Stone Heart The Compelled Chronicles Book 1

Dani's new home isn't just another stopover in a long chain of places she'll never see again, it's the home of both Caine and Jerek, two guys like nobody she's ever met before. One represents the best friend she's been hungering for, and the other represents something much more. It should be the perfect recipe for a fairytale, but Caine and Jerek live in a dark, shadowy world and one of them is hiding secrets that will change everything, secrets that relate directly to Dani. Publisher's Note: Stone Heart is a YA Paranormal Romance book, and is the first novel in The Compelled Chronicles a series of clean books, which have been written so that they can be safely enjoyed by both teens and adults. Dean Murray is the successful author of multiple clean young adult paranormal romance, urban fantasy, and epic fantasy series which collectively have more than half a million copies in circulation. Keywords: Young Adult, Romance, Paranormal, Paranormal Romance, YA, Teen, Mythology, Clean, Action

'A crime fiction force to be reckoned with' ERIN KELLY The twisted and unpredictable new crime thriller from winner of the Richard and Judy Search for a Bestseller competition, perfect for fans of The Innocent Wife. He told me he was innocent of his girlfriend's murder. He told me his wife was out to get him. What he didn't tell me was why. He has a history of cheating. He attended the party where his girlfriend was murdered. And so did his wife. Adulterer. Murderer. Victim. Can I find the truth in the lies? *** 'A treat for all crime fans' ANN CLEEVES 'I loved . . . brilliant' CLARE MACKINTOSH 'An absolute knockout of a novel' C J TUDOR

COILHUNTER Welcome to the Wild North, a desolate wasteland where criminals go to hide—if they can outlast the drought and the dangers of the desert. Or the dangers of something else. Meet Nox, the Coilhunter. A mechanic and toymaker by trade, a bounty hunter by circumstance. He isn't in it for the money. He's in it for justice, and there's a lot of justice that needs to be paid. Between each kill, he's looking for someone who has kept out of his crosshairs for quite a while—the person who murdered his wife and children. The trail has long gone cold, but there are changes happening, the kind of changes that uncover footprints and spent bullet casings. Plagued by nightmares, he's made himself into a living one, the kind the criminals and conmen fear. So, welcome, fair folk, to the Wild North. If the land doesn't get you, the Coilhunter will. RUSTKILLER Welcome to the Rust Valley. The Wild North is full of nasty places, but there are some places you just don’t go. One of them is that scrapyard desert known as the Rust Valley. It’s where vehicles go to die. That’s why you don’t go in after them. The bounty hunter Nox made a promise to himself that he’d never be caught dead there. Yet, when a couple of kids end up wandering inside that metal maze, he finds himself with no other choice. He decks himself out in his finest armour. He’ll need it. That land is where the rust-covered Clockwork Commune live, and if they don’t scavenge the metal off you, they’ll scavenge the flesh instead. Nox is used to being called the Coilhunter, but this time he’s saddling up with a new, more fitting title: the Rustkiller. DUSTRUNNER Nox is a wanted man. While searching for a criminal, the fabled Coilhunter wanders into a tribal village massacre. He didn’t do it, but that doesn’t matter. The clues point to him, and he’s made a lot of enemies over the years. Many would happily see the tables turned. His pleas of innocence fall on deaf ears. No sooner does he try to find the real killers than posters go up across the Wild North—posters with his face and his name. He isn’t the only bounty hunter out there. Dozens assemble to cash him in. Tasked with finding out who’s framed him, Nox must also survive the constant onslaught of frontier law. He’s used to hunting others. He’s not so used to life on the run.

Kale, the youngest of the elite Light Fae Warriors chosen to protect the Human World from the dark creatures that lurk in the shadows, has had a life that’s been hard fought and racked with betrayal, loss and heartache. Finding comfort in the physical manifestation of pain, Kale has discarded what is expected of Rowan’s Warriors, and now lives for the harder side of human life with his trusty bottle of Patron, hiding from the scars of his past. Katarina knew the day Darion imprisoned her that the life she’d once longed for was gone. The illusion that a Light Fae could ever love a woman of the Dark was over. Yet, while building a new life among the humans, Katarina’s past is thrust upon her when the Warriors call on her to help in finding an elusive Fae, who is leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Katarina is then forced to follow the orders of the very Fae who betrayed her. As secrets and lies unravel around them, Kat and Kale find that their past was never what it seemed, and that discovering what is true will be the most difficult battle of their lives. “The truth, Kale… The truth would be the best place to start.” “You and I must have a differing view of the truth in this situation, because in no way would the truth as I know it make you any less guilty.”

When magazine writer Kate Donovan is assigned to profile the building and architectural firm of her first and only love, she heads back to the South Carolina Low Country to face the demons she left behind. Nothing about Danny Flannery’s life is what Kate thought it would be, and as the truth is revealed she longs for a big fat do-over. Danny’s made a success of his building firm but is hesitant to participate in a flashy magazine spread. He’s dead-set against it when he realizes the journalist sent to interview him is the only woman he’s ever loved and lost. Under pressure from his business partner, Danny agrees to sit down for an interview with the girl he once knew as Kat Fordham and realizes her name isn’t the only thing that’s changed. Everything he thought was true about the past is a lie. When Danny discovers Kate still wears the heart-shaped, sea glass necklace he made for her years ago, they clear the air and their passion reignites. But Kate’s still keeping secrets to protect their fragile new relationship. With her family estranged and her career on the line, will she come clean before Danny finds out the truth, and can Danny risk his heart again for the only woman he’s ever loved? Contemporary Romance, New Adult Romance, Second Chance Romance, Southern Romance, Romance, Women's Fiction

It is more than three centuries since the ravages of a devastating war nearly tore apart the kingdom of Eutracia. In its wake, those who masterminded the bloodsheda quartet of powerful, conquest-hungry Sorceresseswere sentenced to exile, with return all but impossible and death all but inevitable. Now a land of peace and plenty, protected and guided by a council of immortal wizards, Eutracia is about to crown a new king. And as the coronation approaches, the spirit of celebration fills every heart. Except one.

Second in line for succession to the throne, Prince Dagnarus will have his crown...and his queen -- though his heart's prize is a married elfin beauty. Let his hated half-brother Prince Helmos and the Dominion Lords dare to oppose him. For Dagnarus's most loyal servant has ventured into the terrible darkness, where lies the most potent talisman in the realm. And once it is in the dark prince's hand, no power will deter his Destiny.

The AlmKore children are attempting to carve a place out for themselves in the dangerous Rekyee forest. Years earlier they survived a bloody ambush that ripped their mother violently from their lives and left them to be found and raised by the Trog priest Galad. The human/gorilla hybrid was a priest of the One True God, and though not recognized by the Garashun Church he was faithful to teach respect for God and obedience of His edicts. Unfortunately, the children couldn't shake the shadow of pain and violence that haunted their nightmares and twisted their daydreams. As she come of age, Ly'n chose a bloody path that didn't quite forsake their surrogate father's teachings, but if they didn't break the rules they sure twisted them into a blacksmith's nail puzzle The Edicts of Will dictates one be willing to fight to the death in the protection of widows, orphans, family, life and limb.. Ly'n chose to haunt the trade routes through Rekyee forest that is fairly crawling with robbers, murderers, and thieves. As soon as Is'c found out he stuck extra close to his sister and never let her leave on her own. His conscience being more sensitive than his angry sister's made him insist they give each band they encountered the option of fighting the seven- and eight-foot ice giant hybrids or surrender their fealty to the twins. The charismatic and powerful twins were soon gathering mercenary followers by the droves. As their army grew, Is’c inspires loyalty through his innate physical strength, mastery of a large array of weapons, and his instinctual ability to read a battlefield and lead his warriors to victory but also due to his easy going, good nature. Meanwhile, Ly'n, arouses an adoration in the majority of their followers that is based more on her exotic pale sea-blue skin and her captivating eyes that shine like violet sapphire gemstones, than on her unmatched military mind or even the rumors that the seven-foot-tall teen is stronger than her eight foot tall brother. Ly'n is as oblivious to her own beauty as she is of the band's near worship and she rules Respite, the fledgling city that sprang up around their mercenaries with the threat of violence instead of enjoying her people's adoration. It was Ly'n with her analytical mind that organized the city's growth into a defensive pattern that Sunday shoppers find frustrating, but an invading army would find a death trap. She insisted on a stone battlement as soon as the settlement began to form and refused to allow buildings to be built with wooden outer walls anywhere inside Respite's fortifications. Even forbidding the use of any other wood besides Iron Wood for interiors of homes and businesses. The city, warriors or otherwise, respect Is'c as a natural leader and as one they act on his every command, but Ly'n is the one responsible for establishing Respite and it was she that invoked the Law of Asylum on her city. Ly'n is a brilliant strategist that directs the handpicked mercenary band while Is'c is a gifted tactician that lead the Lioness' Marauders to victory after victory. As a knife-in-the-dark she has S'Kye, the Child Assassin, who is known more for the tinder age he was introduced to violence than for the fact he is the most prolific blade-for-hire alive or that due to his quick mind and innate magic he has never failed an assignment. S'Kye is hardly a teen but his sister sends him to hunt at her discretion but is it out of cruelness or does she sense that if the boy's broken conscience isn't directed there is no telling which direction it will lash out. The older three AlmKore children for all there faults are admired, respected, and even loved but there is a dangerous edge to all three of them as if they are always a hair's breadth away from trauma and abuse taking the helm of their will. Each has their own ways of coping with a past that haunts them like an incensed apparition. To the three nothing binds them as tight as their immediate family, that includes each other and Galad , but most importantly Er’t, the youngest AlmKore and one of the few humans with no magic at all. Are the children's choices leading them to greatness or will they choose to remain hidden away in a world of violence and blood? They have their faults, their weaknesses, their fears, and shame but no one doubts whether any one of them would lay down their life for any of the other's without hesitation and all are most protective of Er't their powerless baby brother. Er't holds his family in the highest regard and longs more than anything to fight by their side. He has their love, but he yearns for their respect as well. When he witnesses his brother's backing down from a vampyre ambassador that was passing through their forest and sees the respect his sister shows the vampyre Er't senses an opportunity. The power of a three-thousand-year-old Vampyre Prince is a temptation Er't can't resist. More than anything Er't wants to be strong enough, powerful enough, to fight beside his giant siblings instead of cowering behind them. If what he has heard is true Prince Rupart Fontanae DeEtiqua, may be the answer to his prayers. Will the children conquer their own demons in time to save their baby brother from his . Are they cursed with an inevitable life of souls searing loss and bond rending pain, will they surrender to being Children of Fate or can they, with nothing but the unyielding power of their will, be able to rewrite their own destiny?

The Whitbread Prize–winning author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit delivers a novel that “transports us to something like the future of our own planet” (The Washington Post Book World). On the airwaves, all the talk is of the new blue planet—pristine and habitable, like our own was sixty-five million years ago, before we took it to the edge of destruction. Off the air, Billie Crusoe and the renegade Robo sapien Spike are falling in love. Along with Captain Handsome and Pink, they’re assigned to colonize the new blue planet. But when a technical maneuver intended to make it inhabitable backfires, Billie and Spike’s flight to the future becomes a surprising return to the distant past—“Everything is imprinted forever with what it once was.” What will happen when their story combines with the world’s story? Will they—and we—ever find a safe landing place? Playful, passionate, polemical, and frequently very funny, The Stone Gods will change forever the stories we tell about the earth, about love, and about stories themselves. “Scary, beautiful, witty and wistful by turns, dipping into the known past as it explores potential futures.” —The New York Times Book Review “[A book] that you don’t so much read as drink in, refuse to put down, cast inside of like a hunting dog, seeking against all odds the insight that will illuminate everything, a true answer to the fix we’re in.” —Los Angeles Times “A vivid, cautionary tale—or, more precisely, a keen lament for our irremediably incautious species.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, bestselling author of Changing Planes