Welcome to another round of My Sexy Saturday, where authors offer seven words, sentences, or paragraphs from their work for your entertainment. Be sure to click on the graphic at the bottom of the page and visit the other participants.

EXCERPT

“Ah. An interesting picture is emerging.” Ted paused. “Are you naked?”

“Yes. How about you?”

“I don’t own pajamas. Kara, have you been playing with yourself while we’ve been talking?”

“A little.” She sounded chastised. “I didn’t plan to.”

“It’s okay. Are you playing with your clit imagining my fingers?”

“A little. Are you hard thinking about me?”

“Lady, I’ve been hard thinking about you ever since I left Elk Grove.” He encircled his shaft with one hand and closed his eyes, then thought better of it. “We’d better stop. I don’t want our first time to happen when we’re hundreds of miles apart.”

BUY LINK

Amazon

BLURB

A heist? A murder? It’s villain’s choice.

A special-order art theft? Tedious, but seamless – until small town museum director Kara Daniels calls in the experts. Furious her favorite trio of priceless impressionist paintings has been stolen from its traveling exhibit on her watch, Kara is determined to save not only the paintings, but her future in the art world. She’ll stop at nothing to entrap the thief.

Ted Springs knows the underbelly of the criminal world a little closer than he might like—but he’s turned it to good advantage, first as a police officer, and now as detective for the Upper Midwest Arts Council. His job? To guarantee the security of the valuable paintings in the Council’s traveling exhibits.

Heat sizzles when Ted and Kara collide—can they work together, before it’s too late?

Click on the graphic
to travel to other hop posts

Welcome to Book Hooks, a Wednesday offering by members of Marketing For Romance Writers to share a little taste of our work and entice you into wanting more! Click on the graphic at the end to travel to other Book Hook posts, and enjoy!

Did you read Luci’s juicy diary entry from last week’s Book Hook post? Luci’s sister, Kate, has just started to read it. Here’s her reaction, in seven sentences.

EXCERPT

“Luci, how could you?” Kate Noble slammed her sister’s diary shut. Kate tried to breathe normally, but how could she do that when she’d just discovered that her baby sister was some kind of nymphomaniac?

Why had she even opened the diary? Because it was there on her sister’s desk. She’d resisted opening it for at least half an hour while she busied herself watering plants and freshening the small apartment—a task Luci had dumped on her in a note telling her she’d be out of town for a while.

This wasn’t the first time Luci had up and left virtually overnight.

BUY LINKS

REVIEWS

Joyfully Reviewed: Recommended Read “The Diary was a fan-frickin’-tastic read! I didn’t want to put it down to do anything else, and when I did, I was just chomping at the bit to pick it back up again. The growth and development of Grayson and Kate was well-written and very realistic. And the sex scenes? Oh, man, talk about hot!”~ Tera

CoffeeTime Romance: “Ms. Kraft takes you to a world where anything and everything can and will happen. Be open minded and dive into this erotically charged, passionate story. All your preconceived notions will disappear into thin air. The intimacy is genuine and breathtaking.” ~ Krista

Romance Junkies: Four Blue Ribbons “THE DIARY is positively a work of art; sweet, funny, sexy and irresistible. Readers won’t be able to put this story down” ~ Amanda

BLURB

Lust, revenge, dark sexual escapades and the mysterious disappearance of her younger half sister, Luci, will take art curator Kate Noble on a whirlwind transcontinental journey. The diary Luci’s left behind paints vivid images of shameless erotic exploits with a rake named only as G.C.

Can Kate learn enough under the delightful hands of her bisexual best friend, Gina, to ensnare the sensual and elusive Professor Grayson Cosgrove into a marriage proposal of her making? Can she find Luci before it’s too late? If only she could read between the lines.

The Diary ~ never have the secrets of another been so electrifying!

Welcome to another round of My Sexy Saturday, where authors offer seven words, sentences, or paragraphs from their work for your entertainment. Be sure to click on the graphic at the bottom of the page and visit the other participants, and don’t forget to scroll down and enter my giveaway!

A heist? A murder? It’s villain’s choice.

Now available at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LNE7366

BLURB

A special-order art theft? Tedious, but seamless – until small town museum director Kara Daniels calls in the experts. Furious her favorite trio of priceless impressionist paintings has been stolen from its traveling exhibit on her watch, Kara is determined to save not only the paintings, but her future in the art world. She’ll stop at nothing to entrap the thief.

Ted Springs knows the underbelly of the criminal world a little closer than he might like—but he’s turned it to good advantage, first as a police officer, and now as detective for the Upper Midwest Arts Council. His job? To guarantee the security of the valuable paintings in the Council’s traveling exhibits.

Heat sizzles when Ted and Kara collide—can they work together, before it’s too late?

REVIEW

Five stars at Amazon and Goodreads: “The sex is hot and I loved the phone sex scenes. Never did I expect the ending. It was brilliant. The Heist is a winner!” Sheila

EXCERPT

“I’m afraid I already have a dinner commitment. I’m on a conference committee,” Kara explained. “If you come by my hotel around nine o’clock, you could help tuck me in for the night.”

“I see,” Ted responded. “And do I get to stay an hour, or will you require more of my services than that?”

“No need to get pissy about it,” she snapped. “We can always wait until the next night if you prefer. I don’t have any dinner plans then. As for time limits—you can stay the night if you want. We might even have time for breakfast in bed. But I have to be at a meeting by eight thirty. Does any of this work for you?”

“I’ll make it work. I’m a little surprised I get to stay the night.”

“By the time I’m done with you, I doubt you’ll have the strength to crawl out of the hotel. And that way we get to enjoy waking each other up in the morning.”

“Maybe you won’t want to be around me early in the morning. I’m told I can be a bear.”

“Maybe I’m better at waking up a man than your other women are. Besides, I like bear hugs.”

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Welcome to another round of My Sexy Saturday, where authors offer seven words, sentences, or paragraphs from their work for your entertainment. Be sure to click on the graphic at the bottom of the page and visit the other participants.

Coming to Amazon July 15!

The Heist, by Adriana Kraft

A heist? A murder? It’s villain’s choice.

A special-order art theft? Tedious, but seamless – until small town museum director Kara Daniels calls in the experts. Furious her favorite trio of priceless impressionist paintings has been stolen from its traveling exhibit on her watch, Kara is determined to save not only the paintings, but her future in the art world. She’ll stop at nothing to entrap the thief.

Ted Springs knows the underbelly of the criminal world a little closer than he might like—but he’s turned it to good advantage, first as a police officer, and now as detective for the Upper Midwest Arts Council. His job? To guarantee the security of the valuable paintings in the Council’s traveling exhibits.

Heat sizzles when Ted and Kara collide—can they work together, before it’s too late?

EXCERPT

“Maybe we should talk about that embrace,” Ted added.

“Embrace?” Kara squeaked. “We didn’t embrace.”

“Wrong. Perception is the key to everything. I perceived it as an embrace. You didn’t rush out of my arms.”

“Because,” Kara snapped, “you hung onto me to keep us from falling.”

“So that was your perception,” he quipped. “Damn, woman, you have the most incredible breasts.”

Ted was delighted to see a blush moving up Kara’s neck. “I can’t tell you how often I’ve picked up the phone to call you.”

She frowned and glanced at him with a flicker of renewed interest. “But you didn’t.”

Welcome to Sneak Peak Sunday, where authors offer six paragraphs from their work to entice and entertain! Click on the graphic to travel to other participating authors for their snippets.

Today I’m featuring The Unmasking, which is #FREE through midnight tonight, June 22. Reviews at Amazon average 4.7, with comments like  One of the best stories ever written by Adriana Kraft…a truly great read, and could not put it down until I finished it,and full of unexpected twists, the mystery and suspense intensifies as does the need to keep turning the pages.

Here’s cover, blurb, and a fresh excerpt for you.

BLURB

Whose mask will crumble first—
the enigmatic professor of Celtic Studies,
the undercover cop masquerading as a co-ed,
or the campus stalker,
biding his time to strike again?

Is anthropology professor Matt Bayfield the Blackthorn College rapist, or a potential ally? Aloof and unapproachable, Matt has academic ambitions. He can’t escape Blackthorn College soon enough, and he doesn’t want any entanglements to slow down his exit.

Nancy Appleby would like nothing more than to solve the string of campus rape cases before Thanksgiving so she can go home. The last thing she wants is a relationship to complicate her life—but she’ll settle for a fling, especially when the sex sizzles.

The stalker has his own carefully crafted timetable, with a special date just for Nancy. Can Matt and Nancy force him out of his hidey-hole before it’s too late?

BUY LINKS

#FREE through midnight June 22 at Amazon

EXCERPT

Set up: Nancy and Matt are spending Christmas at a remote cabin in Wisconsin’s North Woods, where they’ve just tramped out a new cross-country ski trail on their snowshoes. They’ve paused to rest in a spruce grove.

“I still like to dream little girl dreams when I sit under these boughs—of a knight on a great steed coming to rescue me,” Nancy said

“You do have a vivid imagination.” Matt wondered what she had in mind.

“This is my favorite tree.” Nancy crawled under a huge spruce that had to be very old and stretched out on spruce boughs that shifted with her weight. Had the boughs fallen that way, or had she arranged them? She held out her hand inviting him to join her. Without breaking the silence, he stretched out beside her. The bed of boughs flexed accommodating his weight.

They lay there with their heads tucked up against the tree trunk. Without saying a word, Nancy pointed above them. It was uncanny, but through the boughs he saw a patch of blue sky. Was that the canopy of heaven so many of the ancients had talked about?

This was a charmed place, almost surreal. There was no wind. The layer of snow on the boughs added to the illusion of having a blanket of warmth. Maybe he’d crossed into the non-ordinary reality of the shaman. He caught a glimpse of Nancy out of the corner of his eye. There was nothing ordinary about that woman either.

“So,” Nancy said, “has my knight recovered enough from snowshoeing to make love to his damsel?”

~ I hope you enjoyed that – just the right amount of winter chill to take the edge off this summer’s heat wave, and then a chance to heat things up with a little action. When hubs and I lived in Minnesota’s North Woods, we created our own cross country ski trails using snowshoes, just like Nancy and Matt. Not gonna confess whether we ever took that next step in the frozen tundra, though…

Did you watch the Kentucky Derby two weeks ago? California Chrome ran a perfect race – just off the pace until the last furlong, but then in perfect position to push through to the finish ahead of everyone else. He won by a length and three quarters.

Here’s what one analyst says about how this colt races: “It wasn’t just that California Chrome was running fast, but how he was running fast that so impressed me. He ran completely relaxed, no wasted energy. Then, when it was time, the colt, with one devastating move, ended his races” (Daily Racing Form, May 7). You can catch photos of the race at this LINK.

What hubs and I especially love about this year’s Triple Crown race is the rags-to-riches story behind this colt, so much like our heroine’s dad, Tug O’Hanlon, in Cassie’s Hope (Riders Up, Book One). California Chrome’s owners, Steve Coburn and Perry Martin, bought the dam for only $8,000. When they decided to breed her, they were told only a “dumbass” would do that. They boldly named their racing stable “Dumb Ass Partners” and their racing silks sport a donkey on the back.

They bred the dam into a line we’ve been following for years – the sire, Lucky Pulpit, is a son of Pulpit, out of AP Indy. We wrote those bloodlines into Cassie’s Hope. Early on, Clint tells Tug, “The Pulpit and his lines should add some vigor to your foal crops. Could give you some interesting nicks in the future.”

So you can bet we’ll be pulling for California Chrome and thinking of Tug O’Hanlon when the starting gates open at this week’s Preakness Stakes, the second leg of the Triple Crown.

To celebrate, Book Two in our Riders Up series will be FREE all day Saturday, the day of the race. Be sure to stop by this LINK on Saturday May 17 and pick up your copy!

Heat Wave
Riders Up Book Two

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During an oppressive Iowa summer of drought and farm foreclosures, widowed Maggie Anderson makes a bold decision: She’ll merge her love of horses and her family’s three hundred and twenty acres into a horse farm and try her hand at nearby Prairie Meadows Race Track, where racing purses have just been augmented by the recently added casino gambling.

Down on his luck after being falsely accused in a racing scandal and banned from training, former Arlington Race Track trainer Ed Harrington has skulked home to Des Moines to drown his sorrows and wait for the dust to clear. He’s unprepared for the piercing robin’s-egg-blue eyes of pint-sized Maggie Anderson, who finds him at a flophouse and offers him a job. Can he pull himself together and meet the challenge?

As the two forge a tumultuous working partnership, they soon discover someone is out to get Maggie’s farm and will stop at almost nothing to force her off the land. Can they find and stop the culprit before someone is killed? Can they survive the far greater danger unleashed by the raw passion simmering just beneath the surface of their relationship?

REVIEWS:

Five stars at Amazon:

Heartfelt with mystery and hope…made me cry. Spot on interplay between the main characters…well written and extremely enjoyable to read. Donna H.

I felt like I was on a roller coaster reading this story! Laughing one second, then felt like crying the next, always on the edge wanting to know what is going to happen next. Amy B.

BUY LINK

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JZ6GW6G
FREE all day Saturday, May 17, to celebrate the running of the Preakness Stakes!

EXCERPT

Maggie couldn’t get away from him. He was too close; too much a man. They’d worked side by side for two weeks refurbishing the barn, making plans for purchasing horses, and developing a vision for the long term growth of Anderson Stables. Harrington had proven to be a good teacher.

Though he could be gruff and sparse with words, he exhibited much more patience with her than she had imagined possible. His knowledge of thoroughbreds and what was required to turn them into competitive race horses was expansive. And her pulse quickened when his eyes caught fire with the awe and thrill he clearly felt for the challenge of horseracing. There was no question she’d hired the right man for the job.

But she couldn’t get away from him.

Snap! “Shit,” Maggie blurted, examining the spatula she used for scraping dishes. She avoided glancing at Harrington, who was sitting at the table finishing his last cup of coffee, oblivious to her turmoil.

As was part of the original agreement, he ate his meals with her family. But he also slept in the same house and used the same bathroom. Hers was a farmhouse, not some expensive home in the woods built by people trying to escape the city for fresh country air.

His scent invaded her space; it was as simple as that. Not that they were unpleasant smells, but they were man smells, and they were undeniably Harrington smells.