Ex Libris

1. Bad Boys Do by Victoria Dahl (Book #2 in the Donovan Brothers Brewery series)
2. Timeless Desire by Gwyn Cready
3. An Illicit Temptation by Jeannie Lin
4. A Vengeful Affair by Carmen Falcone
5. Misplaced Princess by Mari Carr and Lexxi Cooper
6. A Question of Trust by Emma Hillman
7. Take it Like a Vamp by Candace Havens 
8. West of Want by Laura Kaye (Book #2 in the Hearts of the Anemoi series)
9. Crazy Love by Nicola Marsh
10. Clean by Alex Hughes (Book #1 in the Mindspace Investigations series)
11. Ashwyn by Nadia Lee
12. In Bed with the Opposition by Stephanie Draven*
13. Taming the Tycoon by Amy Andrews 
14. When You Give a Duke a Diamond by Shana Galen (Book #1 in the Jewels of the Ton series)

1. Ravish Me by Cindy Jacks
2. The Virgin Huntress by Victoria Vane (Book #2 in the Devil DeVere series) 
3. Her Forbidden Hero by Laura Kaye
4. Tempting the Best Man by J. Lynn (Book #1 in the Gamble Brothers series)
5. Luscious by Amanda Usen
6. In-Flight Delight by Francesca St. Claire
7. Nightshifted by Cassie Alexander (Book #1 in the Edie Spence trilogy)
8. Clean by Alex Hughes (Book #1 in the Mindspace Investigations series)

This month I had these absolute favourites:

Ever since I discovered Nicola Marsh thanks to  she became a must read author for me. I love her witty writing style which is full of sexy banter between the h/h, and this latest novel of hers was even better than any of the 2 novels  have read from her so far! was heart-warming, sexy, romantic and oh so witty, LOVED it! Come back on Wednesday to read my review of  and my interview with Nicola as she reveals some behind the scenes secrets about the book and you could even win a copy of !

I loved this book! It reminded me of my favourite romantic comedy films (like While You Were Sleeping) I got the same warm and fuzzy feeling. Loved the witty and funny parring dialogue between the hero and heroine, and it was a sweet and sexy story I'm sure I'll be re-reading many times as a comfort read. It became one of my favourite reads of 2012 and you can read my review detailing why very soon.

And to keep the balance here are the two books which disappointed me the most:

This started out like a light and fun sexy paranormal romance but sadly I found the heroine irritating and the story just dragged on. I kept forcing myself to read it, and though there were come moments, overall it wasn't a story I enjoyed.

- Book Depository -

I was excited to read this book (mostly due to the premise, the cute cover and the reference to Diana Gabaldon's series), but it was a let down. You can read my dual review with Marlene over at Book Lovers Inc. until I post my review here.

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I think that's all for now, I hope you didn't have a too hard time getting back to work/school after the summer. 

A Book Hangover
by Jessica Scott

Thanks so much for having me here today on Ex Libris! Like Stella, I’m an avid reader but for the last couple of years and especially since “becoming a writer” I read more critically now. Because of that, I end up reading less and end up stopping a whole lot more books than I end up finishing.

I’m not honestly sure why that is. Part of it is that I enjoy books that really grab hold of me and don’t let go. It’s hard for a book to have that kind of connection for me. Another way I’ll end up reading a book is that if I read a sample and can’t stop thinking about it. was like that for me. I could not get the line where Katniss says something to the effect of “that was as close as our relationship was going to get: entrails, no hissing” when talking about her sister’s cat. Man did that cat do me in on . I bawled for DAYS. I was wrung out, completely empty and could not fathom another book or series that was going to tear me up like that.

Anyone who’s been following me knows just how much I loved Nalini Singh’s . There was just something about Honor’s broken courage and Dmitri’s cold, wounded shell that just spoke to me. I love a good romance as much as the next gal but I’ll tell you I really love a romance that brings two wounded souls together and let’s them heal. I think that’s why I’m still hung up on Dmitri and Honor.

In my next book , I don’t necessarily pick up the series where left off but I do try to keep to one of my deeply embedded themes of bringing wounded souls back together. Captain Claire Montoya is badly damaged and trusts very few people. Captain Evan Loehr is very much a rule follower for his own reasons. And when they’re faced with a situation that requires both of them to give a little bit, the battle is on.

Below is an excerpt:

He shifted uncomfortably, then cleared his throat. The sound pulled her attention from the agenda and made her look up. She shifted the paper, and he gripped the edge to angle it so he could see it better. His fingers slid against hers, and he froze. She looked up, their fingers still touching, her green eyes darkening.

Then she swallowed and pulled her fingers free from his touch.

This was not the woman he knew—the wildfire, out-of-control officer he was used to seeing in the tactical operations center. That woman made snap judgments and spoke before engaging her brain. This woman was restrained. Tense. This was new, a side of Claire that Evan had never seen before.

Her gaze met his, hesitant.

“What are you doing?” Her voice was thick, edgy and filled with a wariness that made his heart flip in his chest.

“Listening to your brief.” His voice sounded off to his own ears, harsh and rough.

“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.” She leaned back in the booth and stared at him, a sharp, hunted expression in her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

Silence hung over them, awkward and cold. She said nothing, and he could see her searching for the right words, fighting the edge of panic. “Like you’re looking to start rumors. Captain America doesn’t sleep with members of his team, remember? Violates some superhero code or something.”

“I wasn’t planning on sleeping with anyone, let alone with you,” he said dryly.

She laughed out loud and just like that, the tension snapped and fizzled into an almost comfortable silence. “Well played, Captain America. Well played.” She paused then. “Do you have any issues with this training plan?”

He studied the chart that outlined the key measures of success for the convoy operations. After a long moment, he glanced up at her. Shadows fell across her face, casting it in a soft, subtle glow. “No. The timeline sucks, but the convoy stuff is a good plan.”

“All right, that does it,” she snapped.

“What?”

“You’ve never said ‘good job’ to me on anything. What’s wrong with you?”

Jessica Scott is a career army officer, mother of two daughters, three cats and three dogs, wife to a career NCO and wrangler of all things stuffed and fluffy. She has commanded two companies, served in Germany, Korea, Fort Hood and Iraq, and been lucky not to get fired. She is a terrible cook and even worse housekeeper, but she's a pretty good shot with her assigned weapon and someone liked some of the stuff she wrote. Somehow, her children are pretty well adjusted and her husband still loves her, despite burned water and a messy house.

Book #2 in the Coming Home series

He plays by the rules, she’s not afraid to break them. Now these two strong-willed army captains will prove that opposites attract . . .

A by-the-book captain with a West Point background, Captain Evan Loehr refuses to mix business with pleasure—except for an unguarded instance years ago when he succumbed to the deep sensuality of redheaded beauty Claire Montoya. From that moment on, though, Evan has been at odds with her, through two deployments to Iraq and back again. But when he is asked to train a team prepping for combat alongside Claire, battle-worn Evan is in for the fight of his life.

Strong, gutsy, and loyal, Captain Claire Montoya has worked hard to earn the rank on her chest. In Evan, Claire sees a rigid officer who puts the rules before everything else—including his people. When the mission forces them together, Claire soon discovers that there is more to Evan than meets the eye.

He’s more than the rank on his chest; he’s a man with dark secrets and deep longings. For all their differences, Evan and Claire share two crucial passions: their country and each other.

Read my review

Buy at | B & N | Powell's |

I love the kind of hope heroes bring to such situations. I love the tiny stories of success and sorrow, the threads of humanity (and better-than-humanity) that rise in those times. Patrick Rothfuss and Neil Gaiman often bring me to that emotional point, that turn-of-no-return, even over as small a thing as a cat who loves his family enough to fight the devil for them.

My world is not your world.

You see only water, black and still, a mirror to your dark reflections. I see life – my creator, my lover, she who embraces us when we die.

You see lowly slaves, broken creatures, monsters made dull by your control. I see brothers, sisters. Family in servitude, in humiliation, suffering pain that leads to death.

You see yourselves as masters, supreme. You see your glory, the structure and safety of your cities, the great creations of your past barely remembered in moldy books and mutated histories. I see a people who have forgotten who they are, content to feed pride for things they did not accomplish while letting their own culture die.

You see what you were. I see what you could be.

I do not see glory when I look at you. I see ruin. I see beings with the ability to create, with the skill and talent to make new from nothing, like little gods. I see people who choose to wallow in their vices instead. I see men who waste their strength and women who waste their beauty. I see children taught not to love and create, but to take, to use, to enjoy, and destroy.

I see a people rotting with the disease your so-called freedoms have brought you. I also see a cure.

Do you know what you could be, humans? Do you have any concept of the colors you can mix, the shapes, the new tales of heroism and love which did not exist before you imagined them? Do you have any idea how we feel when you sing, when you pull limited notes, like magic, into new and seemingly endless configurations? You do not. You need to be saved from yourselves.

There are those of us who would help you. Who would, at least, try - but first, we must be saved by your hand, and from it.

If we fall, you fall.

If only you understood.

Buy at - - Book Depository

Ruthanne Reid was raised in the woods, but fortunately her isolation was offset by regular visits to New York City. She pursued music for years before realizing she wanted to tell stories rather than sing them.

Ruthanne has lived on both US coasts (she prefers the West one), is distantly related to royalty, and has sung in a thousand-year-old cathedral. Her favorite authors tend to be dramatic (J. R. R. Tolkien, Neil Gaiman, Patrick Rothfuss), but she doesn’t see this as a bad thing.

Writing in and around Seattle, she owns dust-covered degrees in music and religion, and is generally considered dangerous around household electronics. She belongs to a husband, a housemate, and a cat, respectively.

is her first novel.

Connect with Ruthanne at: Website /  /

Harry Iskinder knows the rules. Don't touch the water, or it will pull you under. Conserve food, because there's no arable land. Use Sundered slaves gently, or they die too quickly to be worthwhile.

With extinction on the horizon and a world lost to deadly flood, Harry searches for a cure: the Hope of Humanity, the mysterious artifact that gave humans control over the Sundered centuries ago. According to legend, the Hope can fix the planet.

But the Hope holds more secrets than Harry knows. Powerful Sundered Ones willingly bow to him just to get near it. Ambitious enemies pursue him, sure that the Hope is a weapon. Friends turn their backs, afraid Harry will choose wrong.

And Harry has a choice to make. The time for sharing the Earth is done. Either the Sundered survive and humanity ends, or humanity lives for a

while, but the Sundered are wiped out.

He never wanted this choice. He still has to make it. In his broken, flooded world, Hope comes with a price.

Buy at - - Book Depository

2. Sam

Book #1 in the Mindspace Investigations series

A RUTHLESS KILLER—OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND

I used to work for the Telepath’s Guild before they kicked me out for a drug habit that wasn’t entirely my fault. Now I work for the cops, helping Homicide Detective Isabella Cherabino put killers behind bars. My ability to get inside the twisted minds of suspects makes me the best interrogator in the department. But the normals keep me on a short leash. When the Tech Wars ripped the world apart, the Guild stepped up to save it. But they had to get scary to do it—real scary. Now the cops don’t trust the telepaths, the Guild doesn’t trust me, a serial killer is stalking the city—and I’m aching for a fix. But I need to solve this case. Fast. I’ve just had a vision of the future: I’m the next to die.

Read my review

Buy at - - Book Depository

You’re right that the premise of – “wedding coordinator meets photographer” – sounds like the lead-in to a cotton candy romance. And  is definitely not cotton candy.

Here’s the thing. I’m not afraid to say the word rape. According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), one in six women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. This is happening all around us. And it’s not just happening to other people. It’s happening to teachers, nurses, mothers, sisters, wedding coordinators, friends – it can happen to anyone. And when it happens, it is devastating.

That’s what  does. It’s more of a Thanksgiving meal than a sugary treat. It contains a lot of complex flavors and it takes a long time to digest. And it requires a certain degree of participation from the reader, because it brings up a lot of difficult questions and doesn’t necessarily answer them. But I think my readers have come to expect that from me. I don’t explain Sarah’s every thought or decision, because I know my readers are smart and engaged enough to come to their own conclusions without needing me to explain it to them.

Sarah Murphy plans other people’s weddings. She’s gorgeous and successful, but she also carries a dark secret.

At one of her events, she meets Joe Sullivan, a sexy photographer with a difficult past of his own. When he snaps a rare unguarded photograph of her and captures the real person hiding behind the facade, she feels exposed. To restore the upper hand, she tries to do what she always does: use sex to defuse the situation.

While Joe is eager to deepen his relationship with Sarah,
he’s aware of her emotional shield and the way she disconnects from her body. Seeing her at her most vulnerable doesn’t scare him off, but he needs to know what she’s hiding.

Sarah has a tough decision to make. Does she want to go on living a lonely, emotionally frozen life? Or can she finally risk revealing the truth and move forward with Joe?

Buy it at  - Barnes and Noble - Carina Press

Contact her at her website / /

One lucky commenter will win a copy of !

Goodreads appetuzer: A RUTHLESS KILLER—OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND

I used to work for the Telepath’s Guild before they kicked me out for a drug habit that wasn’t entirely my fault. Now I work for the cops, helping Homicide Detective Isabella Cherabino put killers behind bars. My ability to get inside the twisted minds of suspects makes me the best interrogator in the department. But the normals keep me on a short leash. When the Tech Wars ripped the world apart, the Guild stepped up to save it. But they had to get scary to do it—real scary. Now the cops don’t trust the telepaths, the Guild doesn’t trust me, a serial killer is stalking the city—and I’m aching for a fix. But I need to solve this case. Fast. I’ve just had a vision of the future: I’m the next to die.

“So if it took three days to send an e-mail through all the layers of Quarantine, if the small Web was regarded with the same respect/ fear as a pit viper, if even Cherabino had to have a thorough background check and be monitored constantly in the Electronic Crimes works for fear she’d come across something truly dangerous, well, a lot of people had died in the Tech Wars.”

“Psych, Off, and Construct.” When her eyes narrowed, I explained. “Psych is trained in psychology and telepathy; they treat mental illness. If you want somebody to lose their mommy issues for good, you call Psych.”
“So schizophrenia and stuff?” she asked.
“No, schizophrenia is actually a brain-chemistry or mind-structure issue—Biochem or Construct. Psych treats the more normal kinds of mental illness, usually the severe ones talk therapy doesn’t touch. Off is Offensive Battle, the black ops guys. They’re trained to kill, because, well, that’s what they do for a living. They’re all at least a little crazy by definition, and mostly you hope it’s not at you. And Construct—the deconstructionists—well, we’re the structure guys. The mind, not the brain, though the two influence each other. If you want a criminal to literally not be able to think about molesting children again, or if you’ve lost your ability to see color from a brain injury and you want it back, or if you want to literally upgrade your personal memory and remember more of what you see, we’re the guys you call.”

“I was not the guy I was ten years ago. I was not the golden boy, the genius professor, the idealist anymore. I was a drug addict, a cynic— a doubter.”

“I thought of Cherabino. Beautiful Cherabino, strong, angry, quiet, sad Cherabino. The woman who’d brought greenhouse-grown lilies to her husband’s grave. The one who’d taught me that being beaten up wasn’t the end, and how to fight back. The woman who’d dragged me kicking and screaming into a healthy life, again and again, with no regard for the consequences to herself. The woman who’d called me a failure and meant it. Cherabino in the living room with the silky robe, her hair loose and beautiful, her body . . . I moved that one aside. Cherabino.”

“I have to be at the . . . You’ve already set up a meeting with Kara?” she barked. “What did you do, send a psychic message by pigeon?” “Something like that.” Most people called it the phone, but if I got social capital from the mystery, so be it.

Swartz let me sit for about thirty seconds before grilling me. “So, what are you grateful for this week?”

“Puppies. Sunshine. Rainbows.”

“Rumor had it [the captain] had told her getting herself kidnapped was against department policy. An amateur mistake.”