Category Archives: Book Spotlight

Book Excerpt

Dread coursed through Jessa Montgomery’s body. She rubbed her forehead, hoping like hell she wouldn’t get a headache. She pressed her back against the cool concrete, its chill strangely soothing through her thin blouse.
She had no idea what she was doing here. Standing outside the locker room like a damn groupie. This wasn’t her job. Her father, TJ Montgomery, owned the New York Empire major league baseball team. He had people to do this kind of thing. People that weren’t her.
TJ was known for his unorthodox methods when it came to his players, treating them all like the favored sons he’d never had. He’d only had her. And even though he’d raised her in ballparks around the country, instilling his love for the game deep in her heart, she’d never quite felt as if she were enough.
And it still didn’t explain why he’d sent her here. He’d been adamant that she not be directly involved with the players, and that suited her just fine. She knew the games men played. Especially those who were young, talented, and had their pick of women.
Setting aside the fact that she had an uncanny ability to track talent and spot weaknesses in a player’s game, Jessa preferred to be a behind-the-scenes kind of girl. Give her a game tape and a quiet office any day. She handled the administrative side of her father’s life. She managed finances and paperwork from behind a desk. In New York.
She didn’t attend spring training to babysit. Ever.
So, why this player? Why now?
One thing was for certain, TJ had never gotten as excited about anything Jessa had done as he was about the man she was here to meet. Her dad’s new star player.
Jealousy left a bitter taste in her mouth as she glanced at her watch. A star player with a shitty sense of time.
Jessa inhaled deeply and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. God save her from spoiled athletes with more talent than sense. And damn her dad for putting her in the position to deal with a guy who probably thought the world revolved around him. They’d shelled out enough cash to fund a small country to make sure Garrett Donovan played for New York; the least he could do was show up on time.
Unable to stand still any longer, Jessa strolled up the tunnel, dragging her fingertips along the painted cinder blocks as she went. What the hell was she going to do?
Keeping track of Garrett on the field was one thing, but off the field … why the hell would her dad want her to keep an eye on his extracurricular activities? There were few who could match her knowledge of the game, but there had to be someone more qualified to deal with this man after-hours.
Jessa wasn’t socially inept, but she chose to keep to herself. Her experience with men was limited, primarily because she hated being treated like a piece of meat. Female friendships were even harder to form. It seemed as if no one could look past her name or her dad’s money to see who Jessa really was. Everyone wanted something from her. Call her cynical, but been there, done that.


The Buzz

I absolutely LOVED Spring Training! This author is amazing and did a great job of making the characters personable–I feel like Jessa could be one of my girlfriends that I call for advice and Garrett a man that would definitely sweep me off of my feet (hey, a girl can dream!!) I loved the danger behind their love for each other–it made their passion exciting! It definitely kept me anxious and wondering what was going to happen next! I didn’t want the story to end and I hope this author continues to put out more awesome books! I know all of my college friends are looking forward to more!! ~ 5 -Star review by Mallory F, Amazon

I loved every minute of this book! The characters are so real and believable that I was able to completely submerse myself and get lost in the steamy, super hot love scenes. Parker Kincade is my new favorite author, hands down. ~ 5 -Star review by Ren999, Amazon

How To Purchase:

Spring Training, Book 1 in the Game On series is available through our bookstore.

About the Author:

National Bestselling Author, Parker Kincade, writes edge-of-your-seat-sexy romantic suspense, hot and steamy sports romance, and erotic western romance. Her first novel, One Night Stand, won the 2013 Reader’s Crown Award for Best First Book, the category of Best Erotic Romance in the Celtic Hearts Romance Writers Golden Claddagh contest, and was named finalist in the Romance Writers of America/Passionate Ink Stroke of Midnight contest.

Parker lives in the southern United States. She loves to read, play golf, spend time with her family and friends, snuggle with her beloved boxer, ice cream from the ice cream truck, and watching old musicals.

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How To Purchase:

Man’s Best Hero: True Stories of Great American Dogs is available through our bookstore.

About The Author

Ace Collins is the writer of more than sixty books, including several bestsellers: Stories behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas, Stories behind the Great Traditions of Christmas, The Cathedrals, and Lassie: A Dog’s Life. Based in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, He continues to publish several new titles each year, including a series of novels, the first of which is Farraday Road. Ace has appeared on scores of television shows, including CBS This Morning, NBC Nightly News, CNN, Good Morning America, MSNBC, and Entertainment Tonight.

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Book Excerpt

Born to Wander

Trains and rivers spelled joy and adventure for young TJ Kearney; they defined much of his childhood and, later, the young man’s journey through life. More than anything else, the Mississippi River was a place of endless joy and discoveries for the slight child with endless questions about life, and sensitivities that sometimes spooked those around him.

TJ was a child deeply touched by the world around him, and by the people inside his family circle. TC and Cynthia Kearney’s fourth child was born June 25, 1906. From childhood on; the one person he revered most in the world, was his father. TJ perceived Thomas Clayton Kearney as near perfect. There is little question that he loved his mother as well; but he dreamed of growing up to be just like the man he called “Papa.”

His world – Chicot County – held great enjoyment and awe for young TJ, in spite of his parents’ poverty, constant moves…and later, the tragedies that would touch their lives. Without the opportunity to forge lasting friendships, his brothers played an especially important role in his life. Harry would be his alter ego and closest confidante. The two boys experienced most of life sitting or standing or walking side by side.

TJ had called many addresses “home” before the pivotal age of 11. And, though as a child he was not privy to the reasoning for his parents’ continuous moves, in adulthood, he would understand—the moves represented the harsh reality of being black in the south, and who his father was – a proud man who worked hard, but refused to work for men who treated him as anything less. In many ways, TJ would, indeed, grow up to be like his beloved Papa.

TJ was born on Macon Lake Road, just a few miles north of Lake Village. He was still a toddler when his parents moved from Macon Lake to Beth River. That would be the first of many moves during his young life. Throughout his life, TJ would be forever drawn by the allure of the river and the exotic river life.

Young TJ’s reverence for the Mississippi River was deep, and grew deeper as he got older. At 11 years old, after his father’s death, the first job TJ took would be on a steam ship that he’d often seen docked on the Mississippi river. He was already finding his way in the world.

How To Purchase

Sundays with TJ: 100 Years of Memories on Varner Road is available through our bookstore.

About the Author

Janis F Kearney, author, memoirist and oral historian is one of 19 children born to Arkansas Delta sharecroppers and cotton farmers. She graduated from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a B.A. in Journalism. She worked for Civil Rights legend Daisy Gatson Bates as Managing Editor of the Arkansas State Press Newspaper before purchasing the newspaper in 1988, and becoming Publisher/Owner of the award-winning publication. She served eight years in the Clinton Administration, serving in the roles of White House Media Specialist; Communications Director –U.S. Small Business Administration, and Personal Diarist to President William Jefferson Clinton. Kearney founded Writing our World Publishing (WOW! Press) in 2001. She has published seven books, including the critically acclaimed Cotton Field of Dreams, Something to Write Home About: Memories of a Presidential Diarist, and Daisy: Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Her latest book is Sundays with TJ: 100 Years of Memories on Varner Road, which chronicles the life of her 107-year old father whose journey included years of traveling the country as a vagabond and train hopper, before settling in Lincoln County, Arkansas to raise his children in spite of dire poverty and racial obstacles of the times.

Book Excerpt

“Samantha. Look at me.” When she didn’t move, he crouched in front of her. He tilted her chin until she looked at him. “I don’t dislike you. I need you to know that.”
She offered him a sad smile. “The gesture is appreciated, Caleb. Thank you.” She pulled her face away.
Refusing to let her retreat, he tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and cupped her face. Soft, warm skin greeted his palm. He brushed his thumb across her cheek, amazed by its smoothness. “It’s the truth.

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean —”
She put a finger to his lips and he barely resisted the urge to open his mouth and taste her.
“Yes, you did. And it’s okay. We may not get along, but at least you’ve never lied to me. Please don’t start now. I’m a big girl, Caleb. I can take it. And I owe you an apology. I’m sorry for not considering your feelings where Amanda is concerned.”
Her touch rocked him. Revamped his desire to have her wet and screaming his name. “I’m sorry for all that.” He offered her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’m so used to you calling me horseman now, I’m afraid I’d never answer to anything else from your lips.” Those sweet, succulent lips. “What is it about you that makes me so crazy?” he murmured.
She chuckled. “I’m too tired to fight anymore, Caleb. The best course of action would be to find the evidence I need to bury Matteo. Then we can move on.”
The mention of her stalker snapped his brain back to attention. He had a job to do. Eliminate the threat and protect Samantha.
Best he remember that.
Distractions led to mistakes. He couldn’t afford any more mistakes.
He forced his voice level, undemanding. “It’d be a lot easier if you’d let us help. Let me help. Trust me to take care of this for you.”
Asking for her trust was a long shot. In truth, he probably didn’t deserve it. But, he had to try. Needed to try. He would protect her.
“Trust you?” She seemed to consider his words. After a moment, she surprised him by nodding. “I can’t promise miracles, but I’ll do my best to follow your lead … until this is over.”
Caleb resisted the insane urge to pump his fist in the air. “So, we have a deal then?”
She caressed her fingers over his jaw. He leaned into her gentle touch, feeling it all the way to his bones.
“Oh, now you’re willing to make deals?” She looked him dead in the eye. “All right then, but once Matteo is caught and the threat against me is gone? You’ll go on with your life and I’ll go on with mine, and hopefully, we can stay out of each other’s way. That’s the deal.”
She dropped her hand to her lap.
“After this, Caleb, we’re done.”

The Buzz

Night Owl Reviews TOP PICK, 4.5 Stars: “This story pushed all my happy buttons and found a few I didn’t know about in the process.”

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The BookChick, 4.5 Stars: “I loved this story … Caleb was the type of alpha male hero that lands him on my book boyfriend list.”

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“Shadow of Sin is a sexy, suspenseful read. I’ll read anything Parker Kincade writes.” -Monette Michaels, author of the Security Specialists International series.
How To Purchase

Shadow of Sin, Book 2 in the Martin Family series is available through our bookstore.

National Bestselling Author, Parker Kincade, writes edge-of-your-seat-sexy romantic suspense, hot and steamy sports romance, and erotic western romance. Her first novel, One Night Stand, won the 2013 Reader’s Crown Award for Best First Book, the category of Best Erotic Romance in the Celtic Hearts Romance Writers Golden Claddagh contest, and was named finalist in the Romance Writers of America/Passionate Ink Stroke of Midnight contest.

Parker lives in the southern United States. She loves to read, play golf, spend time with her family and friends, snuggle with her beloved boxer, ice cream from the ice cream truck, and watching old musicals.

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Excerpt from The Day the Snake Got Killed
The tiny green body writhed, exposing a pale white-yellow belly. Twisting over and over, dark eyes unblinking, it flashed a forked tongue and thrashed, helpless. The three children gawked.
Elvoy, oldest at age fifteen, had located the snake under umbrella-shaped squash leaves, snapped it out by its tail, whacked it with a stick, and flung the small form toward Billman.
The child let loose with a single high screech, whirled around, stumped his toe on a stob, and sprawled face down. Still screaming, he scrambled out of the garden on all fours. At the edge of the yard, he realized the snake had landed among green beans. Standing up, he snuffed, rubbed his skint knee, and attempted to recover his seven-year-old male dignity.
Dissolving in guffaws, Elvoy bent over and clutched his stomach. A slender, bony fellow, he sprang from a clan of white trash who survived near a palmetto hammock. His people hunted and trapped without regard to any law. They caught live rattlers and gators and sold them to gas stations and tourist courts as roadside attractions. Travelers on their way to Miami or Fort Lauderdale liked to stop, lean over snake pits or crocodile ponds, and throw empty Coke bottles, rocks, and other debris at the hapless reptiles in an attempt to incite some action.
“Chop his head off! Use this here grubber.” Elvoy taunted both younger children. He grabbed a hoe propped on the fence and shoved it on Sissy. “Do it. Chop his head off. It ain’t nuthin’ but a snake.”
“It’s harmless.” Sissy shook her head and backed away.
“No, it ain’t. Make you sicker than a dog if it bites.”
They watched the garden snake struggle. Billman, on the edge of the drama, wiped his nose and inched back cautious-like toward them.
“Do it. Do like I tell you.” Elvoy’s eyes narrowed. He sneered at Sissy. “You chicken. You yellow pussy chicken.”
“No. I’m not going to. You’re chicken. Besides, it’s harmless,” she said.
The tall boy pushed Sissy sideways. She stumbled, fell and scraped her hands in coarse sand. She glared at the dirty, overalls-clad figure standing over her.
He stared down and thumped a stick in his callused palm. She wiped her nose, scrambled up, grabbed the hoe, and shoved it back at him.
“Do it your own self.”
“You do it.” He stood splay-legged before her. “I double dog dare you to do it Miss-teacher’s-pet too-goody-pants,” he snarled, stained teeth practically snapping. “Do it or I’m gonna whack ya ‘side yer head.” He stepped toward her, stick raised.

The Buzz

“. . . compelling, wide-ranging stories. Hartney brings to mind both Caldwell and Allison, but her voice at last is her own. ‘Last Love’ is both gritty and warm, and ‘The Fig Trees’ is deftly nuanced.”
~ Robert Cochran, Center for Arkansas and Regional Studies, University of Arkansas

“This brief collection of stories deals with such diverse experiences as a river baptism and coon hunting while it embraces emotions of love, jealousy, and altruism. The seven southern tales contain some real gems.”
~ Pat Carr, author of One Page at a Time and The Radiance of Fossils

“No better voice of the south can be found than Nancy Hartney, with her touching stories of life looked at in a most extraordinary way. Hartney writes about people we can love or despise, but most of all sympathize with and enjoy.”
~ WILLA Award-winning author Velda Brotherton

How To Purchase

Washed In The Water: Tales From The South can be purchased through our bookstore.

About The Author

I write about the Deep South. My roots dig into the piney woods that I rode through on horseback and into the sweat-soaked hardscrabble farms. My slice of life tales chronicle a time past that is poignant, vivid and sometimes brutal. My readers stare into the eyes of people struggling with living, grasping for understanding, doing the best they know how.
My debut collection of short stories, Washed in the Water: Tales from the South, reflects a region historically peopled by eccentric characters and less-than-honest politics. But therein also dwell independent, caring and resourceful individuals.
I write non-fiction for Ozark Mountaineer, Flashback Historical Quarterly, Horsemen’s Roundup, and American Iron. My short stories have appeared in Voices, Cactus Country, Frontier Tales, Rough Country, and Echoes of the Ozarks. I live in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

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Book Excerpt

All morning he rode far out ahead of her on the trail, but always in sight. Without consulting her, he found a suitable nooning spot, and she came upon him leaning against a tree. She wanted to ride on, not even look his way, yet she reined in the team and gratefully climbed down, as if he had cast some kind of spell on her. He grinned, but said nothing, just fetched wood and water and built a fire.
Going about her own chores, Allie couldn’t help but glance his way. In spite of the limp he accomplished a lot with little effort. He was so pitifully thin that she pulled out all the stops preparing their noon meal, trying to ignore the familiar lecture running through her head.
Just like a woman to take pleasure in waiting on a man. And what had she just told herself? That she wanted nothing to do with him, that he could be on his way. But what did she do but open one of her precious jars of canned peaches brought from home. After that morning’s work with the wagon wheel, he deserved a meal that would stick to his bones.
“Go ahead, Allie,” she muttered to herself even as she did so. “Pick up a stray and see where it gets you.”
To add to the disgust she felt, she mixed up biscuits, nested them in the Dutch oven, and piled hot coals over its cast-iron top. Then she peeled the last of the potatoes salvaged from her cellar and sliced them into sizzling grease. While that cooked she cut several thick chunks off a cured, smoked ham and spread them on top of the potatoes to heat. She decided she ought to be proud of her own foolishness, and wondered where Jake had gotten to.
He had been down at the creek for a long time, and she began to wonder if he might have fallen in when she heard him coming back, whistling “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” A Union song. She and her family had been caught up between the two sides in the war, and merely surviving had curtailed any sympathy she might have felt for either the Yankees or Johnny Reb. She had watched bushwhackers murder her mother and sister. They’d worn no uniforms at all, yet that evil war had birthed them.
The song cut off midway, and she glanced up to see him sniffing the air. ‘Tell me I’m not dreaming. Is that ham and biscuits I smell?”
“You’d better like it, too.”
He ignored her grumpy mood. “Oh, I’ll like it. This is kind of you. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.” He squatted awkwardly beside the fire and gazed into the skillet of potatoes and meat.
“There’s some coffee left over from breakfast. Want some red-eye gravy?” The look on his face when she asked the question was all the answer she needed. It was difficult to stay annoyed at someone so easy to please.

The Buzz

For those of us who love western historical romances, Velda Brotherton’s Images in Scarlet is a book that proves difficult to put down and has you longing to get back to it. Brotherton skillfully weaves in historical characters, such as Jesse James and Clay Allison, and settings, particularly along the Santa Fe Trail, that give the book a strong sense of time and place. Allie’s work as a photographer is so clearly described that you feel you might be able to develop a photographic plate right along with her. And while at times I felt like wringing Jake’s neck or giving Allie a good kick up the butt as they go through the permutations of their on-again/off-again relationship, it is only because they are such engaging characters. The feisty heroine and the caring, patient hero are totally endearing, flaws and all. But it was the final surprises and twists in the plot that truly make this a five star read. ~5-Star Review, Andrea D., Goodreads

I absolutely loved the story. I could barely put it down. I finished it over a two day period of reading. In my opinion, the story is a good western with plenty of action and romance. The cover doesn’t give much hint as to what the story is about. The author, known for researching historical facts for her stories, does an outstanding job of making the reader feel like you are there in the middle of each scene. I loved the attention to details of what it was like to travel west as part of a caravan.

I gave it five stars because it is such a compelling story with characters the reader can’t help but have sympathy for. Danger lurks around every bend in the trail as they head west. I wanted to find out what happened in Jake’s past that causes him to have blackouts. I had to keep reading to see how Allie and Jake would handle the next bit of trouble, and whether or not they would be able to stay together. I can’t remember the last time I pulled so hard for two fictional characters to make things work out so they could be together. I also liked Defoe and the outlaw Clay Allison who helped find Jake after he took off on his own. All three were strong tough men. Don’t let the book cover fool you. This story is for all readers with lots of suspense for the men and plenty of romance for the women. It is one of the best blends of both, I’ve read in a while.

As I approached the ending, I began to fear the worst for Jake’s outcome. I kept telling myself the author better not let them kill Jake. I really liked the ending. This story has the kind of characters a reader continues to think about for a long time after finishing the novel. I will be reading more books by this author, for sure. ~5-Star Review, J M Davis, Goodreads

How To Purchase

Images In Scarlet can be purchased through our bookstore.

About The Author

Since 1987 I’ve lived other people’s lives more than my own. Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m one of the characters in my books or myself. As myself I live and work in the Arkansas Ozarks. I have a husband, two children, three grandchildren and two great grandchildren. My greatest accomplishment. Next comes the 20-odd books I’ve managed to have published.

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