Dear Reader,
Here in North America, we’re swinging back around to cozy days spent inside reading, while some of you (picture me waving at you, Australia) are headed into summer beach days. Whatever weather you’re enjoying—or not enjoying, as the case may be—a good book is always in order, and I have a few that may be just what you’re looking for.
This month, we’ve got a particular emphasis on the mystery and romantic suspense genres. We also have the first in several new series and are introducing four new-to-Carina authors!
Barreling onto the scene with a new series, new genre and a new pen name, Piper J. Drake offers explosive (at times literally) action and an endearing romance in the first book in her new romantic suspense Safeguard series, . Meet military-veteran-turned-mercenary Gabriel Diaz. Betrayed, injured and building a new mercenary team, the last thing he expects to do is sweep Maylin Cheng off her feet—and out of the path of the car that tries to kill her. But now that he’s fallen for her, he’s all in to protect her at all costs, while helping find her kidnapped sister.
The always incredible Josh Lanyon joins Piper in the romantic suspense category, with a charming and loveable male/male romance, . With only an outdated copy of Esquire’s Europe in Style to guide him, Jefferson Blythe sets out to see the world and runs straight into death, danger...and the boy next door.
And making her debut, Mia Kay brings us her romantic suspense . Wounded FBI agent Gray Harper will honor his dead partner by returning to work—as soon as the Bureau shrink clears him for duty. In the meantime, a long vacation in his best friend’s hometown sounds like the perfect distraction. But Nate Mathis has another plan. His twin sister, Maggie, has a stalker, and Gray’s the only one Nate trusts to catch the bastard.
In a contemporary romance that unexpectedly hooked the entire Carina Press acquisitions team from the first page, Lucy Parker brings everything we love about romance and our heroines to the page—and the stage—in her debut book, Act Like It. Enter our heroine stage right: she’s the darling of the London press. Enter the hero stage left: he’s public enemy number one. They barely tolerate each other—and they’re about to become the most mismatched couple on the West End stage.
Two new authors join Carina Press with new mystery series. Debut author Lisa Q. Mathews is first on the scene with The Ladies Smythe & Westin series. In , Summer Smythe, a twentysomething party girl making a fresh start in a ritzy Florida retirement community, teams up with her neighbor, feisty senior Dorothy Westin, to clear her name in the murder of her popular—but heartless—cardiologist boss.
Jonathan Watkins debuts with Carina with his previously self-published and newly reedited and revised Bright & Fletcher Mysteries. As soon as criminal defense lawyer Issabella Bright’s long-lost father blows into the Motor City, kidnapping, ransom and murder follow him and threaten to tear asunder the work-and-romance partnership she’s built with the man who will go to any length to keep her safe. And that man, Darren Fletcher, soon learns that shielding Issabella from danger could swiftly end with his .
Weather (ha, get it?) you’re under a blanket keeping warm on your couch or enjoying the sun of your summer, these books will keep you company for a few hours and provide some take-you-away entertainment.
Coming in December: Hitting both physical and digital shelves just in time for Thanksgiving here in the States is book two of Shannon Stacey’s combustible Boston Fire series, . Also in December: ties up her dragon-shifter romance trilogy, male/male author Annabeth Albert joins the Carina team and is back with a terrific new hockey romance.
Until next time, here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.
Happy reading!
~Angela James
Executive Editor, Carina Press