New York Times bestselling author Deanna Chase tops today’s Buffet with the paranormal romance Influential Magic, the first book in her “Crescent City Fae” series. As one reviewer put it, this book is “a rich world of magically infused cupcakes, faerie tree huggers, Shih Tzu-Wolf shape shifters, and a mafia-like vampire family who keep getting in everyone’s dark way.”
Deanna is a native Californian who was transplanted to the slower-paced lifestyle of southeastern Louisiana. When she isn’t writing, she is often goofing off with her husband in New Orleans, playing with her two shih tzu dogs, making glass beads, or out hawking her wares at various bead shows across the country.
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Influential Magic (Crescent City Fae Book 1)
It’s tough being a faery in New Orleans, a city fraught with vampires… especially when their very existence drains your life-force.
Willow Rhoswen, owner of The Fated Cupcake and part-time vampire hunter for the Void is having a rough week. Four years after her twin brother’s mysterious death, Willow’s life is threatened and the director saddles her with a new partner—her ex-boyfriend, David. To her horror, he’s turned vamp, which causes her physical pain whenever she touches him… and any other specimen of the undead.
In order to save Willow’s life, David agrees to turn double agent against the most powerful vampire organization in New Orleans. Or so he says. And she’s convinced they know something about her brother’s death. Unsure where David’s loyalties lie, she turns to Talisen, her childhood crush, to help her solve the mystery.
Caught between two gorgeous men and a director who’ll stop at nothing to control Willow’s gifts, she’ll have to follow her instincts and learn who to trust. Otherwise, she risks losing more than just her life.
Hawks Mountain (The Hawks Mountain Series)
Rebecca Hawks has come home to remember who she was before the lure of life as a social worker in a big city nearly destroyed her-and might, still. She’s moved back to her family’s namesake mountain in West Virginia, where Granny Jo Hawks can help her forget the horrors she’d seen and been unable to prevent.
Ex-Navy Corpsman, Nicholas Hart, has moved to Hawks Mountain in hope that its timeless Appalachian serenity will help him overcome his painful war memories. Now Rebecca and Nicholas must find each other-and their chances of a life together after putting the past to rest-on Hawks Mountain.
Why Should I Love You
Abe Masters seem to have it all from looks, his bank accounts, and profession. He’s surrounded by family and friends that adore him, and he takes pride in being an influential member within the community. Even though all seems to be good, he has a troubled past and can’t find love. He thought he’d found it in his fiancé, only to find her in bed with her boss. As he’s beginning to feel that all is lost, an optimistically charming woman, by the name of Lovely, enters the picture.
The beautiful Lovely Prasad is visually impaired and unfortunately, also romantically impaired. Twelve years prior, she loses her sight and any kind of possibility at ever finding that one true love. However, she remains positive and free spirited which ultimately lands her in the arms of Abe Masters.
As Abe and Lovely’s relationship grows, those surrounding them can’t seem to get it together. And, unfortunately for Abe, his past transgressions resurface.
Roadtrip to Redemption (Pawleys Island Paradise, Book 1)
It started as a trip to lose old memories. It became a journey to find her heart.
Leslie Malone faces an empty, lonely summer. Her marriage is over. Her daughter is overseas, living her dream. Her students are enjoying a carefree summer break. What’s the purpose of her life if she’s not a wife, mother and teacher? The idea of a roadtrip beckons her. Aimless wandering? Or inspired discovery? A woman of faith, she asks God for His guidance, then does her best to follow His direction.
Hank Harrison is a quiet man, good with his hands, but short on words. He’s paid a heavy price for not forgiving his son for horrible mistakes made years ago, mistakes with vast consequences. Hank recognizes Leslie as an answer to his prayers, and together, they begin to mend their futures.
Neither of them plans to fall in love. Will the worst summer of Leslie’s life become the season that redeems them both?
Love In The Chamber
Sienna and Frog belong to an organization run by Kema, a ruthless and calculating mastermind who will stop at nothing in order to maintain her stronghold on the city’s streets.
Frog is her number one enforcer and Sienna is her protege. Together, Frog and Sienna hold Kema down and wreak havoc as they discover an immeasurable degree of love in each other.
Daughter of Bathory
Ophelia Winter is a Daughter of Bathory, a woman imbued with supernatural abilities and fiendish desires by a parasite hosted inside her body. A cult of men, known as Pales, serve her, beguiled by the blessing she imparts upon them. The parasite keeps Ophelia young, but she must extract a dying worm and replace it with a more vital one from time to time, giving her immortality. This time of transference is at hand, but her domination of her hive of Pales has weakened, and thoughts of revolution stir among the men.
Meanwhile, Neva Mulroney struggles with the return of her mother, a heroin addict that disappeared two years earlier. Her mother’s return causes strife among the family, but is also met with drastic retribution from a local dealer that she unwittingly wronged. As the family is endangered by their matriarch’s ties to the drug world, Neva finds herself thrown into Ophelia’s struggle as well, and is given a choice that will forever change all of their lives.
Face the Wind and Fly: The Heartlands Series
She builds wind farms, he detests them. Can they ever generate love?
After 15 happy years of marriage, Kate Courtenay discovers that her charismatic novelist husband is spending more and more of his time with a young fan. She throws herself into her work, a controversial wind farm that’s stirring up tempers in the local community. Sparks fly when she goes head to head against its most outspoken opponent, local gardener Ibsen Brown – a man with a past of his own. But a scheme for a local community garden brings the sparring-partners together, producing the sort of electricity that threatens to short-circuit the whole system.
Bleeders
FBI profiler Trisha McCleery has been on a twenty-year personal search for the person who brutally murdered her mother. At the same time serial killer Gene Lassiter has been on an obsessive twenty-year search for the daughter of his first kill. If she finds him, justice can at last be served. If he finds her, one man’s reign of terror can continue unabated. In a stunning life-or-death final act, the hunter and the hunted go head-to-head, with a shocking ending that bleeds justice dry.
Killer’s Island (The Maria Wern Series Book 1)
Every Breath She Takes
Cal Taggart’s rugged ranch life doesn’t need any more complications. His stubborn determination cost him his marriage, and now may cost him his livelihood. But then beautiful Lauren enters his corral…with danger close behind. And Cal wants nothing more than to protect her. They can’t deny their intense attraction. Nor do they want to. What begins as a fling with no strings becomes a fight for survival—and for true love.
“Ultra-sexy, heart-pumping suspense and adventure.” – Julianne MacLean, USA Today best-selling author
Foamers (The Primal Age Chronicles)
Terminally diagnosed with Huntington’s disease as a child, Kade gave up on living a productive existence. He spent most of his time preparing for the Primal Age, even though he knew the end of the world wouldn’t happen in his shortened lifetime.
In Kade’s twenties, the United States is being ravaged by the Feline Flu. After the Flu hits pandemic levels, a vaccine is released to the public. Viewed as the last chance to stop the virus, over ninety percent of the population receives the vaccine within a single day.
The vaccine takes on a life of its own and deprives the recipients of their higher functions, leaving them with only their primal urges. These bloodthirsty monsters become known as foamers because of the red foam that forms around their mouths when they hunt.
As the world as he knows it descends into the Primal Age, Kade finds that he is not only useful, but is expected to lead other survivors. His group is constantly assaulted by foamers and a warmongering paramilitary unit. In an unrelenting fight for their lives, his group is forced to redefine humanity in a world without law.
Six Days of War
For six tense days between June 5 and 10, 1967, war raged between Israel and its neighbors, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. There are many contexts in which this story makes sense, but only Michael Oren, a widely published American-born Israel scholar and historian, has so far knitted the diverse strands into a cohesive fabric that remains vital and relevant today. With educated authority and authorial integrity, Oren manages to sketch out facts and motives with the same intrigue as battles and strategies.
Escalating territorial and populist tensions in the Middle East only serve to make this title more relevant. Anyone who wants to have a grasp of Middle Eastern politics or political tensions involving Israel must read this title. Six Days of War was a New York Times Bestseller and Washington Post Best Book Award Winner in 2002 and has gone on to be an internationally acclaimed bestseller. The book has been widely recognized as the definitive telling of the Six Day War.
Walk Me Home
Since their mother’s sudden death, 16-year-old Carly and her eleven-year-old sister, Jen, have been walking and hitchhiking across the Southwest trying to find Teddy, the closest thing they have to a family. Carly desperately hopes Teddy will take them in and save them from going into foster care—and forgive them for the lies told by their mother.
But when the starving girls get caught stealing food on a Native American reservation, their journey gets put on hold. While the girls work off their debt, Carly becomes determined to travel onward—until Jen confesses a terrible secret that leaves both sisters wondering if they can ever trust again.
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2