Other Works by M. Stratton
The Storm Series
(Romantic Thrillers)
After the Storm - Book One:
Alexia “Lexi” Hanson moved across the country to rebuild her life after the attack which almost destroyed her. She enjoys the simple things in her beach cottage. Life is finally complete.
Noah Matthews is Rock & Roll’s hottest star and on top of the world. After years without a break, he finds the solitude he craves at his beach house. Enjoying his early morning coffee, Noah is surprised to see his neighbor sneak into his garden and crawl around.
They never saw that fateful morning coming. Someone was watching them. Someone who thought Lexi belonged to him and would stop at nothing to have her.
Lives are changed forever when they meet amongst the blooms in his garden. Even when things seem darkest, there is always light After the Storm.
Eye of the Storm - Book Two:
Evie Taylor loves her life in Boston, running her bookstore and café, but an accident has made it so she needs to return home to take care of her grandmother. With extra time on her hands, she decides to start looking for the monster which haunts her best friend’s nightmares, and a chain of events begins which no one could see coming.
When the last person she ever expected shows up and rings her grandmother’s doorbell, she finds herself in the middle of danger. Bound together in a common mission, they’ll search the world looking for answers. But can they find them in time, or will they end up paying the ultimate price?
As the storm rages around them, they find each other and the calm in the Eye of the Storm.
Caught in the Storm - Book Three:
What happens when the hunter becomes the hunted?
Kat Snyder has spent years chasing after the man who attacked her and left her for dead. It is her one obsession, and she won’t let anyone stand in her way. Now that they are getting closer to finding him, she begins to doubt herself and her need for revenge.
Jackson “Jack” Taylor lost the only woman he truly loved. Now that he’s found her again, he’s not letting go and will do everything in his power to make her see they can have a life together. Together they search for the monster who has hurt so many women.
The closer they get, the closer they become, until they are both Caught in the Storm.
The Storm Series Box Set
Includes all three above books plus two short stories where you learn more about the darkness behind the books, from the killers point of view.
Born in the Storm:
Lexi and Noah Matthews celebrated the news of the pregnancy, but things soon turned dire. To make sure their baby has the best medical care they temporarily move to Rock Springs, Nebraska to be close to the doctors who through their research, was said to be the best. The doctors, both top in their field, are prepared to operate on baby Matthews at the moment of birth.
Evie and Anthony Maldono were ready to start their family when her best friend Lexi’s pregnancy compilations came to light. Worried for her friend, she is consumed with fear of what the future had planned for each of them. Hating that there is nothing she can do but sit back and help where she can, anger adds to her stress.
Never believing she’d have her happy ever after were fulfilling one of her dreams. After years of work, Kat Taylor and her husband Jackson were finally going to be able to adopt a child and enlarge their family to three. She won’t allow herself the joy of becoming a mother until the baby is in her arms and the papers are signed. She has seen in Lexi and Evie, along with her own past, the joy of motherhood is not a right but a privilege that not all experience.
The Storm Series introduced you to the characters you grew to love and care about. Now it’s time to see where life took them as they try to move on from the past in this exciting crossover novella with the doctors from Baby Don’t Go, a Yeah Baby Series.
The Dana Marshall Files
Volume 1 (Two short stories) -
Blown Away
While Dana Marshall didn’t have a perfect life, she did have a mother who loved her, a mother who encouraged her to be whatever she wanted when she grew up. They both had dreams of all she could accomplish, what she could do when she left this small town.
Then her mother was killed and everything changed. What Dana Marshall wanted to do when she graduated was something completely different than what her and her mother imagined. Mama didn’t have this in mind.
Her life was destroyed when a monster killed her mother. Without protection, she fell prey to her alcoholic father. Taking her time, Dana did her research, saved her pennies until finally the storm blew in and scattered her problems to the other side of the county.
The first kill is always the hardest.
Kiss of Death
After successfully killing two men and getting away with it, Dana Marshall had her next kill.
Adrian Silva started beating his wife, Maria before the ink was dry on the marriage license. When his stepdaughter became a teenager, his eyes turned to her. After an unsuccessful rape attempt, Yara Rivera took matters into her own hands. She attempted to kill him by putting boric acid in his whiskey. He drank it, but lived. Sent to juvenile hall, Yara is unable to protect her mother. She knew there was nothing she could do but get her mother to leave Adrian.
Successfully escaping from him, Yara protected her family with everything she had, leaving her listening for every bump in the night in their small apartment every night.
With her file complete, Dana travels to Upstate New York to give Adrian her own kiss of death.
Stand-Alone Novels – Romantic Thriller
Fade to Black:
Devlin Cross is one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. He has his pick of the scripts and his pick of the women. While on a break from filming his current movie, he takes a drive through the countryside and stops at a local art gallery. There, the owner isn’t starstruck by having him in her shop.
Lily Walker is a single mother who wants nothing to do with men. Her goal in life is to raise her son to the best of her ability and give him the stable home life she never had. With her failed marriage behind her, the last thing on her radar is a relationship, especially one with a famous movie star.
Not every breakup is mutual. Some ex-lovers never let go. Some will do whatever it takes to have that person back in their lives. Dead… or alive.
Bender:
Since high school, everyone thought Jake Bender would end up behind bars; after all, he comes from a long line of bad boys. He spent years away from the place he called home. When he finally comes back, everyone thinks he’s just a punk kid all grown up who’s now running a dive bar called The Night Club. What they don’t know is he heads a special task force which cleans up neighborhoods and makes them safe again.
Stormy Ryan has always felt more comfortable with her books than with people, and she loves to spend her days within the pages. When her second-hand bookstore is robbed for the third time in as many months, her employees quit leaving her to run the shop on her own. With the pressure of having to deal with her shop and people, not to mention the declining neighborhood, she is at the end of her rope.
When closing up her shop late one night, she is held up and the neighborhood bad boy saves her, putting both of them at the forefront of a psychotic’s obsession.
Being bad has never looked so good.
Revenge:
Ten years plotting.
Ten years of waiting.
Ten years of patience and planning.
Finally, he would have his revenge.
But--there is another side.
A dark side.
Revenge can cloud your judgement.
Revenge can take over your life.
Revenge can take away the one thing you really want.
After the murder of his partner, Mick, and watching his Stormy yanked from his grasp, all Nutter could think about was making Bender hurt. He wanted to show him more than the pain he lived with each and every second of the day, he wanted Bender to be nothing but pain.
Without Mick by his side, Nutter expected to feel alone, without purpose--but something wonderful happened, instead. He found his focus. He found his Kitten, the one woman who could match his intelligence and his appetite for killing. Together, they could rule the world. All they had to do was fulfill Nutter’s plan for revenge.
This is one killer of a story...
With a Twist:
This novella is a standalone that is part of The Club series. To learn more about The Club, visit www.theclub.website or www.facebook.com/theclubseries
The rules at The Club were simple:
Keep your mouth shut.
Keep your mouth shut.
Keep your mouth shut.
This was a rule Starr Fields could follow. After searching for years, she finally found what she thought was home. A place where she could go in, keep a bar between her and the customers, pour drinks, make good money, and go home. A place where she didn’t have to worry about her mama’s boyfriends thinking she was fair game. A place where she could simply be.
Bryant Harrison was new to Karim, Texas. After years of moving around and buying one company after another, he threw a dart on a map and decided to move his home base from New York City to where it landed. Now he had every failing businessman in town trying to get him to take their problems away.
One glance was all it took for these two to know this was going to be more than a casual meeting. Their feelings were growing quickly as the air became crisp and the leaves changed color. As Halloween approaches, it would seem the unknown monster that hunted Starr wasn’t going to just watch from the shadows for much longer.
Can Bryant be her Knight in Shining Armor and save her in time, or will she slip away as quickly as they fell in love?
**Warnings: This book is intended for adults over the age of 18, includes sexual content, language and possible triggers for certain readers**
This is a multi-author project; you can find all The Club books at
Nevermore:
Raven Pallas ran from her past.
Easton Poe had a past he couldn't escape.
When Raven gets her dream job on Nevermore—a private, remote island—she can relax for the first time in years. As the person in charge of the island and making sure the buildings are kept in perfect condition, especially the large English manor house, is her ideal job. Using her unique skillset learned from her father, she has forgotten more than most men knew of construction.
The memories of Easton's wife’s brutal murder haunt him still. Escaping the mainland and Poe Distilleries, he’s holed up on Nevermore, alone with only memories of his Lenore to keep him company. For almost five years, he has driven away all the other caretakers his twin brother had hired to make sure he was safe on the remote island.
Raven is different. He can't chase her away--and for reasons he doesn’t understand, he is relieved when she stays.
But something—and someone—dark and sinister is just along the edges of their oddly tranquil life. Secrets long buried come back to haunt both of them and the answers will haunt them, evermore…
Nevermore, a modern gothic romance inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven.
Contemporary Romance
120 days…
120 days... The average number of days someone stays at Last Resort.
17 weeks... Surrounded by love, laughter and support.
4 months... More time than they had before they walked through the door.
Real estate developer Ethan McGregor’s life was changed forever when his younger brother told him he was dying of cancer. Ethan was ready to do whatever it took to save Evan, but Evan had other plans.
Say goodbye…
Samantha Truman runs the privately-funded Last Resort. Watching her parent’s drive and determination to live longer than the doctors gave them was the inspiration for the resort. It is her heart and soul--she lives to make sure that each day is precious, and one more sunrise or sunset can make all the difference the guests at Last Resort need.
After finding his brother’s journal, and discovering more about Last Resort, Ethan is determined to find out if this place is one of those “too good to be true” places that turn out to be a scam. But he was not ready for Samantha Truman, he was not ready for everything to change, for his point of view in life to be so incredibly altered, for the world to turn its axis. There are, after all, some things Ethan can’t control, who to fall in love with is one of them.
How much can change in 120 days?
Contemporary Romance with a Side of Humor
When Dreams Come True -
(Book One of The Star Series)
What would you do if one day all of your dreams came true?
Melissa ‘Lissa’ Loring was a successful author. She was happy living in her home at the base of the mountains in Tucson with her assistant, Hannah Mills. First, the phone call came; they wanted to make one of her books into a movie. Within six months, she was flying out to Los Angeles and talking with the studio about the final script and a list of actors to play the roles. Excited about her lunch meeting, she was shocked when her muse for one of the characters walked in and sat down at the table with her.
Will Martinsson was riding high on his fame and loving every minute of it. He traveled the world meeting his legions of fans and could pick which roles he wanted. When the script was presented to him, he read it and was intrigued. Then he found out that the author had modeled the character after him, so he searched out information on her and his interest was piqued. He told the studio he wanted in, but he also wanted to meet her before he would sign on the dotted line.
When two independent, successful people meet and have a strong connection, there is nothing they can do but see where the dream takes them.
Wishing on a Star -
(Book Two of The Star Series)
At what point do you stop wishing on stars?
Hannah Mills was content in her life. She was the personal assistant to best-selling author, Melissa Loring. But now Melissa was engaged to the famous actor, Will Martinsson, and they were traveling around the world based on his filming and interview schedule. Hannah loved traveling with them, but she didn’t want to run into Royce Rivers, Will’s co-star and friend. The same man she called a friend, until one night, things went too far. She tried as hard as she could to keep him out of her heart and body, but she knew if she saw him again, she’d lose the battle, and she couldn’t allow herself to fall for him.
Royce Rivers grew up in the spotlight, a second-generation actor. When he was younger, he did everything and anything to rebel, becoming a typical Hollywood statistic on bad behavior. It took many years, but he cleaned his act up and was at a point in his life when he could try and enjoy it. Then one Miss Hannah Mills walked into his life and nothing was the same. He knew she was keeping something from him. If there was one thing he was familiar with, it was demons, and she had hers. What started as fun and games with a new friend, soon changed to something more. Royce wanted nothing more than to slay the demons which kept her away from him so they could have their happily ever after.
When two people battling demons meet and can no longer deny their feelings, there is nothing they can do but see if their wish comes true.
Paranormal/Science
Fiction Novellas
Fate of Elements:
Raina Owens, who’d been taught from a young age that she could never be too careful, lived vicariously through the characters in her books. She never expected the letter informing her of a mysterious uncle she never knew, whose untimely death left her the only remaining heir to his estate. What she thought was a leap of faith into her first, real life adventure was only the beginning. Her uncle, and the house he had willed to her, held secrets beyond her understanding, but she held the answers to her future in the palm of her hand: The Skeleton Key. Would she be brave enough to turn the lock and step into her destiny?
Hallet, King of the Fire Elements, spent his life obsessed with the prophecy of the Skeleton Door and the one who would walk through it. As the tensions between the elements of his world rose, all he could do was wait for the one who would bring peace. His power over the fire element burned in his soul, and although he loved ruling over his people, deep down, something was missing.
A battle had been brewing for centuries. Betrayal, blood, and suspicion ran just below the surface of the people of Aimsir. Only the one who crossed through the Skeleton Door could bring them hope and peace. But was she ready to be The One to fulfill the prophecy? She would have to rely on her training, magic, and power over the elements to defeat the age-old rivalries which had been smoldering for centuries. Who could she trust? And was she strong enough to be the leader they so desperately needed? She was more than she ever thought she could be.
She was the key to uniting their world.
Procris:
(Book One in The Complex Series)
The Complex Book Series.
A Lone Planet. One Complex.
Unlimited Chaos.
http://www.thecomplex.info
After a brutal war between Humans and Metas, an uneasy truce is declared in the Seldova solar system. At the conclusion of the treaty signing, the Complex is created on the lone planet, Lorn. The Complex is a blended community of Humans and Metas, all sent to test the waters of a more peaceful existence between the two races. Living under a domed community can only mean one thing for the Humans and Metas. Chaos.
Halley has lived her life in the shadow of her vibrant sister, her only future, taking care of her family. After a brutal attack leaves her sister a shell of the Human she used to be; Halley is told she is going to the Complex, so the family can have the money it needs to possibly help her sister.
Lucian and his brother, Fandare, come to the Complex to make double the money for their clan. As the leader, Lucian will do whatever it takes to keep his people safe and give them everything they need. The brothers see an opportunity to make some extra cash, knowing both Meta and Human alike covet items the Complex will not allow.
When magic decides an outcast Strogi should be forever linked with a Human, they discover they are allowed something neither one thought they’d ever have, love.
Fandare
(Book Two in The Complex Series)
After a brutal war between Humans and Metas, an uneasy truce is declared in the Seldova solar system. At the conclusion of the treaty signing, the Complex is created on the Lone Planet, Lorn. The Complex is a blended community of Humans and Metas, all sent to test the waters of a more peaceful existence between the two races. Living under a domed community can only mean one thing for the Humans and Metas. Chaos.
Cynthia—Cyn, as most people thought of her—made a habit of using her beauty and charm to get what she wanted. Not quite Human and not quite Meta, she was a cross-breed whose origins were muddy. She was an outcast no one trusted fully.
Caught by a ruthless clan, she needed to buy her freedom with a priceless, and stolen, artifact from a warring tribe. Failure guaranteed her sale to the highest bidder.
Fandare spent his long life in laissez-faire pursuit of whatever grabbed his interests. As long as his clan was taken care of, being second in command gave him more freedom than his brother Lucian. Nearing the end of their two years on the Complex, their black market business was bringing in more money than they had hoped for. But even all the money in the galaxy wasn’t enough to interest Fandare. Bored, he started counting down the days until they could go home.
But things always got interesting when Fandare got bored. And this time, his boredom landed squarely on the elusive Cyn.
As Cyn’s time starts running out to gain her freedom, the last thing she needs is the complication of Fandare.
There’s no escaping love when magic decides two souls belong to each other.
Constant Echo:
Reagan Beckett left her hometown and finished her senior year while staying with her aunt. She built her life in a city far away from her memories, never having contact with anyone who knew her back then. No one would recognize her now. She transformed herself and tried to get as far away from the captain of the cheerleading squad as she could.
She was successful until the letter arrived and everything changed. Now ten years later, she’s on her way back to face her demons. The closer she gets, the more she feels herself slipping back to that scared young girl who fled in the early morning light, and she doesn’t like it. Her stomach clenches knowing what she was headed back into. Scared of having to go back to the house where her best friend was murdered in front of her.
Sometimes the past isn’t ready to let go.
Dreaming in Moonlight:
This is a paranormal stand-alone novella in The Moon Series.
Ghosts are real. They are all around us. Most of the time, they are satisfied to watch us go by and not interact. When a couple was cursed to spend three hundred years in death searching for the one living couple who could release their bonds, they hunt for centuries to find a love which will make time stand still. If they fail, they will be sent to Hell to live out the rest of eternity.
Demons are real. They are all around us. Their one goal is to make our lives a living Hell. They will stop at nothing to destroy our minds and bodies. With the curse rapidly approaching its end, the deepest, darkest demon is summoned to make sure they don’t succeed.
Kate O’Malley fell in love with the old two-story farmhouse in Maine at first sight. She had to live there. Spending all of her savings, she was able to buy it and moved right in. The very first night, strange things happened, and her dreams weren’t her own. Looking for answers, she calls on a friend who puts her in contact with a ghost hunter, Sawyer Hamilton. Neither knows what is in their future. Neither knows if they are going to survive it.
Dreaming in Moonlight, when your sleep is filled with passion and your nightmares are real.
The Thinnest Veil
(Stand-alone paranormal novella part of the Happy Endings Resort Series)
October, when the veil between the living and the dead thins until it becomes transparent on the 31st, and the living and dead once again walk together.
Happy Endings Resort, where everyone gets their happy ending. Right?
Esmeralda “Es” Boswell lives at Happy Endings Resort, but she is still waiting for her happy ending. She spends her days working as a receptionist for a local construction company, watching couples come in to design and build their dream homes. Her nights and weekends are spent traveling around the countryside giving happy-ever-after psychic readings at fairs and carnivals. Even her dreams are filled with happy endings, of what could be. But in reality, she is alone, trying to earn enough money to take care of her father’s mounting medical bills and so far, away from her happily-ever-after, she believes she is destined to walk her life alone.
Hardened newspaper owner and reporter, Dominic McKay, knows there is no such thing as happily-ever-after. As a boy, his parents died and he was left with his only living relative, his spunky grandmother who raised him. She taught him to stand up for what is right and to fight what is wrong, a trait he takes very seriously as an adult. When she dies suddenly, he knows there is more than meets the eye, there had to be something sinister behind her death. Someone had to benefit from killing her, and he was going to figure out who it was. He looks no further than the local psychic who had been giving her readings on an almost daily basis, and looks to prove she’s behind the murder of the one person he could always depend on.
But where there is one death, there is always another. And death follows Es wherever she goes. Can they both survive what is heading in their direction? Will they have their happily-ever-after? Or will they let this once in a lifetime chance slip through their fingers?