The demon warlord Nikodemus has negotiated a shaky peace agreement between the magekind and the demonkind. (Did I mention them? They are fiends, a kind of demon. And they don’t take kindly to the mages who kill them in order to extend their miserable magic-using human lives by stealing a demon’s life force.) Because of the peace, demons in Nikodemus’s territory have agreed not to harm the magekind. In return, the magekind aren’t supposed to kill any more demons.
Basically the problem is this: Gray intends to kill Christophe, and the demon warlord’s most feared assassin has to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Uh-oh.
After all that, I have what may seem like a strange confession to make about my assassin hero who is, after all, a wee bit scary at times. He’s been alive for a long, long time, and for much of that time, women lived very restricted lives. Sometimes he is completely flummoxed by these modern women. It was a lot of fun writing a hero like that, and I hope you enjoy reading about how Christophe learns to deal with Gray as much as I enjoyed writing about it.
Yours Sincerely,
http://www.carolynjewel.com
From the desk of Sophie Gunn
Dear Reader,
After years living in upstate New York, my husband got a new job and we moved back to my small hometown outside of Philadelphia. I was thrilled to be near my parents, brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins. (Hi, Aunt Lillian!) But I didn’t anticipate how close I would be to quite a few of my former high school classmates. Didn’t anyone ever leave this town? My life had turned into a nonstop high school reunion.
And I was definitely still wearing the wrong dress.
One by one, I encountered my former “enemies” from high school. They were at the gym, the grocery store, and the elementary school bake sale. It didn’t take long to realize two things. First, we had a blast rehashing the past. What had really happened at that eleventh-grade dance? What had become of Joey, the handsome captain of the football team? (Surprise, there he is now. Yes, he’s the one walking that tiny toy poodle on a pink, blinged-up leash!) Second, we were still terrifically different people, and it didn’t matter. We were grown-ups, and what someone wore or whom they dated didn’t feel so crucial anymore.
Cups of coffee led to glasses of wine, which led to true friendship. But friendship that was different from any I’d ever known, because while we shared a past, our presents were still radically different. My husband started to jokingly call us the Enemy Club, and it stuck.
That was what we writers call an aha moment.
The Enemy Club would make a great book. Actually, a great series…
The rest, as they say, is history. Each book of the Enemy Club series is set in small-town Galton, New York. Four friends who had been the worst of enemies are now the best of friends, struggling to help one another juggle jobs, kids, love, heartbreak, and triumph as seen from their very (very!) different points of view.
HOW SWEET IT IS is the first book in the series. It focuses on Lizzie, the good girl gone bad. She made one mistake senior year of high school that changed her life forever. Now she and her teenage daughter get by just fine, thank you very much, with a little help from the Enemy Club. But then Lizzie’s first love, the father who abandoned her daughter fourteen years before, decides to come back to town on Christmas Day. Lizzie imagines her life as seen through his eyes—and she doesn’t like what she sees. She has the same job, same house, same everything as when he left fourteen years earlier. She vows to make a change. But how much is she willing to risk? And does the mysterious stranger, who shows up in town promising to grant her every wish, have the answers? Or is he just another of life’s sweet, sweet mistakes?
I’m really excited about these books, because they’re so close to my heart. Come visit me at www.sophiegunn.com to read an excerpt of HOW SWEET IT IS, to find out more about the Enemy Club, to see pictures of my cats, and to keep in touch. I’d love to hear from you!
Yours,
From the desk of Sue-Ellen Welfonder
Dear Reader,
Wild, heather-clad hills, empty glens, and the skirl of pipes stir the hearts of many. Female hearts beat fast at the flash of plaid. Yet I’ve seen grown men shed tears at the beauty of a Highland sunset. So many people love Scotland, and those of us who do know that our passion is a double-edged sword. We live with a constant ache to be there. It’s a soul-deep yearning known as “the pull.”
In SINS OF A HIGHLAND DEVIL, the first book in my new Highland Warriors trilogy, I wanted to explore the fierce attachment Highlanders feel for their home glen. Love that burns so hotly, they’ll even lay down their lives to hold on to the hills so dear to them.
James Cameron and Catriona MacDonald, hero and heroine of SINS OF A HIGHLAND DEVIL, are bitter foes. Divided by centuries of clan feuds, strife, and rivalries, they share a fiery passion for the glen they each claim as their own. When a king’s writ threatens banishment, long-held boundaries blur and forbidden desires are unleashed. James and Catriona soon discover there is much pleasure to be found in each other’s embrace. But the price of their yearning must be paid in blood, and the battle facing them could shatter their world.
Fortunately, true love can prove a more powerful weapon than any warrior’s sword.
There are a lot of swords in this story. And the fight scenes are fierce. But passions flare when blood is spilled as James and Catriona showed me each day during the writing of their tale.
It was an exhilarating journey.
Catriona is a strong heroine who will brave any danger to protect her home and to win the heart of the man she never believed could be hers. James is a hardened warrior and proud clan leader, and he faces his greatest challenge when his beloved glen is threatened.
Because SINS OF A HIGHLAND DEVIL is a romance, James and Catriona are triumphant. Their ending is a happy one. Numberless Highlanders after them weren’t as blessed. Later centuries saw the Clearances, while famine and other hardships did the rest. Clans were scattered, banished from their glens and hills as they were forced to sail to distant shores. Their hearts were irrevocably broken. But they kept their deep love of the land, their proud Celtic roots remaining true no matter where they settled.
Their forever yearning for home still beats in the heart of everyone with even a drop of Scottish blood. It’s the reason we feel “the pull.”
I hope you’ll enjoy reading how James’s and Catriona’s passion for their glen rewards them with a love more wondrous than their wildest dreams.
With all good wishes,
www.welfonder.com
Table of Contents
Front Cover Image
Welcome
Dedication
A Preview of How to Seduce a Scoundrel
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Acknowledgments
The Dish
Copyright
“In her lively debut novel, Vicky Dreiling has penned a fresh, engaging take on Regency matchmaking that brims with clever wit and repartee. I found myself smiling and laughing out loud on numerous occasions. Here’s hoping for more of this promising new author’s historical romances!”
—Nicole Jordan, New York Times bestselling author
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s im
agination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Vicky Dreiling
Excerpt from How to Seduce a Scoundrel copyright © 2011 by Vicky Dreiling All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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Forever is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The Forever name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
First eBook Edition: January 2011
ISBN: 978-0-446-57421-1
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Table of Contents
Copyright Page
How to Marry a Duke Page 35
