Life is but a Nightmare Erin Hayes (The Elysium Legacies, #2) Publication date: February 28th 2017 Genres: Adult, Mythology, Urban Fantasy
The sequel to the genre-bending, hugely imaginative Death is but a Dream.
“There must always be a God of Wealth…”
Former police detective Callie Saunders shouldn’t be alive, but she’s been thriving with her new lease on life away from the machinations of the ancient Greek gods and goddesses.
Yet there’s always been someone missing from this little piece of paradise.
When a vengeful god kidnaps her son, she travels back to a world she barely understands to find him. A world where she must face humanity’s greatest enemies and her former lover. If she’s not careful, she’ll lose her soul again. And, maybe, even her heart.
Sci-fi junkie, video game nerd, and wannabe manga artist Erin Hayes writes a lot of things. Sometimes she writes books.
She works as an advertising copywriter by day, and she's an award-winning New York Times Bestselling Author by night. She has lived in New Zealand, Hawaii, Texas, Alabama, and now San Francisco with her husband, cat, and a growing collection of geek paraphernalia.
You can reach her at erinhayesbooks@gmail.com and she’ll be happy to chat. Especially if you want to debate Star Wars.
Blurb:
Walker Callaghan doesn't know what happened to her. One minute she was living her teenage life in suburban Chicago...and the next minute, she was in a strange place and in a brand new school with absolutely no homework, no rules, and no consequences. Walker Callaghan, 17, is dead. She doesn't go to heaven or hell. She lands at The Academy, a middle realm where teenagers have one thing in common: They were the morning announcement at their high schools because they died young.
These high school kids are now caught in a strange “in-between” zone where life hasn’t changed very much. In fact, this special teen limbo looks a lot like life in a quaint Michigan town complete with jocks, popular girls and cliques. "There are even cheerleaders in death," Walker observes. It's not a coincidence that the music teacher is a guy named Kurt who "used to have this band." The drama teacher, Heath, is crush worthy because back in his life, he starred in some superhero movie. Principal King explains the rules -- there are none. Why? You can't die twice. There is no homework. No tests. No SATS. You're just there to learn because the human brain isn't fully formed until you're 24.
By the way, you can't get hurt physically, so race your Harley off that hillside. But falling in love is the most dangerous thing you can do ...because no one knows how long you'll stay in this realm or what's next. "Losing someone you love would be like dying twice," Walker says.
* * * * * *
Walker Callaghan has just arrived at the Academy after a tragic car accident. “Is this heaven or is this high school?” she asks. She finds out her new life is a bit of both as she falls in love with tat-covered, bad boy Daniel Reid who is about to break the only sacred rule of this place. He's looking for a portal to return back to the living realm. He needs just one hour to retrieve his younger brother who strangely never arrived at The Academy. Bobby is an Earth Bound Spirit, stuck at a plane crash site that took both of their lives as their rich father piloted his private jet nose-first into a cornfield on Christmas Eve. Walker loves Daniel and risks it all to go with him. Have they learned enough to outsmart dangerous forces while transporting a young child with them? Can their love survive the fragmented evil parts of themselves that are now hunting them down as they try to find a way back to the middle? At the Academy, you learn the lessons of an after-lifetime.
Blurb:In the Midst—a place for those who die young—there are no rules except one. And Walker Callaghan, dead at seventeen, just broke it. She briefly revisited her earthly life . . . and the punishment is eternal. Longing for her rebel love interest, Daniel Reid, Walker finds an ally in Cass, whose attraction to her is as alive as he is. “Life is short,” he tells her. “I’m banking on eternity. With you.”In the second book of the Ascenders Saga, a realm-jumping journey takes Walker and Daniel back to life again when they search for something buried in history. They team with students from several other schools in the middle realm including a place for teens born with oddities. It’s home to the Claires . . . beautiful, ruthless, and quite dead seventeen-year-old quads who each have a different clairvoyant gift.
Can Walker survive another adventure of an afterlife-time—or will she find herself on the downside of eternity?
CL GABER is the author of ASCENDERS, the first book in the ASCENDERS saga. She's also the co-author of the YA book JEX MALONE and the sequel due in 2016. Muggletnet.com, the world's largest Harry Potter site, did a rare review of a non-Potter book and called Ascenders, "a book we wish we could read over and over again." Book 2 in the Ascenders Saga will be published in spring, 2015. A trailer for the book series contains original music by Roger O'Donnell of the iconic rock band The Cure and was produced by Orian Williams ("Control," "Shadow of a Vampire."). As Cindy Pearlman (her maiden name), Cindy is a well known senior entertainment journalist for the New York Times Syndicate, with stories appearing worldwide, and the Chicago Sun Times. A pop culture expert, her work has appeared in Entertainment Weekly, People, TV Guide, Elle and National Geographic, and many other publications. Cindy has co-written over 40 books for actors, musicians, athletes and wellness experts including several New York Times best sellers. She is the author of her own film anthology book "You Gotta See This." A native of Chicago, Cindy lives outside of Las Vegas. Author Links: Amazon: http://amzn.to/1KgEUkHFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorclgaber
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CLGaber
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7854535.C_L_GaberWebsite: http://ascenderssaga.com/Buy Links:Ascenders - http://amzn.to/2iSgzAjPaperback - http://amzn.to/2k5Ibi6SkyPunch - http://amzn.to/2jOhotd
I was there. And then I was gone.
My mother gave me no notice that we were relocating.
Suddenly, we had just moved without all that annoying planning and packing. Somehow my clothes were thrown into boxes with shoes that were missing mates. Someone had packed my books and CDs, and had even reached under my bed into that secret hiding place I counted on to protect my treasures; like the iPod loaded with the best and worst of everything from Nirvana to the Stones, plus my lucky green rabbit’s foot—because you just never knew when you would need a little extra luck.
My mother must have remembered the family photo album because there it was on our brand-new living room coffee table that I passed on the way to my very own bedroom and a bed I had never slept in a day in my life.
It was strange because we could barely afford to pay the rent each month, let alone buy something as nice as a hand-carved oak table imported from someplace far, far away. When I had looked, the tag didn’t say from where. It was just imported.
It was one of those times when you go from A to Z so fast that you hardly remember any of the in-between. Or as I—Walker Callaghan—senior at Kennedy High School in suburban Chicago and news editor of the school paper the Charger liked to say, “Maybe it’s not about the happy ending. Maybe it’s about the story.”
Flopping onto my new, handsome, four-poster bed with lovely little tulips carved into the wood, I thought it was so unlike my mother, the master planner, to do something this off-the-cuff. My mother was a woman who made a battle plan to go to the local 7-Eleven for almost-expiration-date milk. Even weirder was the fact that we had moved farther away than anyone imagined. A lot farther.
“So run this by me one more time, Mom,” I shouted. “I must have been heavily medicated or feeling really sorry for myself. We moved? You pulled the trigger. Bang-bang—relocation?”
I didn’t give her time to answer.
“A new school in my senior year of high school?” I called out to her on a murky, cold winter morning on Burning Tree Court.
Even though I was letting the heat escape and Mom had always said we didn’t live to “support Commonwealth Edison,” our old electric company, I still opened my bedroom window wide and found that the air drifting in was stun-your-senses Arctic cold. It smelled green and fresh outside and those dense marshmallow patches of white fluff in the sky could only mean serious snow because they were roasted dark on the bottom.
I tried to shiver, but couldn’t. I was perfectly warm despite the window and the fact that I was wearing faded jeans and a well- washed blue cotton tank that read: Normal People Scare Me.
In true dramatic fashion, I couldn’t resist needling the one 12
person responsible for our fate, our new house, and everything in it that was unknown and strange. “Mom, new school. Senior year. I’ll have no friends here. Are you trying to kill me?”
Without knowing how or why, I was now enrolled in this elite- sounding new school called the Academy, which sounded quite upscale and serious to a girl whose educational pursuits consisted of a generic public-school education outside of a big melting-pot city, where you were either rich (if you were lucky) or you were normal (if you were like everybody else). Our family worked hard at being desperately normal.
“Great, it will be a bunch of rich, stuck-up snobs who will hate me—and cheerleaders. There are always cheerleaders. They’re like cockroaches. You can’t get rid of them,” I concluded, yelling from my new room to hers, which was somewhere down a hallway that I had never really navigated before.
“I hear it’s quite fancy,” Mom called from her room. “A Callaghan going to a private school. Imagine.”
I didn’t have to imagine it as I was living it. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, but when I had asked that question, Madeleine Callaghan, my mom, the mover and shaker in my life, had cringed and then cried hard into a brand-new washcloth she didn’t recognize—the thick kind we could never afford. The weeper was the one who had given me the odd-for-a-girl first name, which was her maiden name before she married my father, steel worker Sam Callaghan. We weren’t just blue-collar, but faded blue-collar from clothes that had far too many seasons of washings. In our family, the rule was “Don’t throw it out unless it’s dead-dead.”
Running my finger along the smooth wood of my expensive new dresser with the intoxicating just-cut-tree smell, I ducked down on the ground to read the label on the bottom. Imported from R-19877. Really? Did we win the lottery? And what was with the secret spy code?
“Honey, please, I’m begging you,” Mom answered after appearing in my doorway. “For once, let’s not do the Diane Sawyer investigation act. I can’t do twenty rounds of questions. Not today.” Her voice sounded thick like she had a cold, so I closed the window.
“There is no need to insult Diane who probably doesn’t even have a dresser this nice,” I replied.
“Walker, let me make you some breakfast,” Mom said. “Everything is always better after a little oatmeal and orange juice. You’ll see.”
2.
Back home in suburban Chicago, Principal Amanda Stevens was toying with the loudspeaker at Kennedy High School. It was time to make an announcement that drifted across her desk once or twice a year (every year)—and it always pulled her heart right out of her chest. She couldn’t dwell on herself, but had to think of her students. Many of them knew this girl from her work on the school newspaper. What would she say about her? Principal Stevens went through the usual lines in her head: It was a terrible shame. A waste. A tragedy. It was all those sentiments that meant nothing really because they were just words.
a
This was a heart ripper—dead at seventeen. Good night, Irene.
Ms. S knew that she better just do it. So she clicked the on button on the PA system, took a deep breath, and said what needed to be said. Nothing more. Nothing less.
“I regret to tell the student body that we lost one of our own last night. Walker Callaghan, a well-respected senior and news editor of the Charger, has died.”
She released the on button and grabbed for a bottle of extra- strength aspirin, wishing there was something stronger. Then she clicked the PA back on again. “Of course, counselors are available,” she added.
Join the hot-bodied men of Hamilton Investigation & Security as they do whatever it takes to protect the women who have stolen their hearts in books 1-3 of the best-selling HIS series, featuring Jesse, AJ, and Jake.
HIS DESIRE When FBI Special Agent Kate Ross is injured in a drive-by shooting, HIS leader, Jesse Hamilton, believing she is the target of a killer seeking revenge against him, pulls the full force of HIS into action to protect her. Keeping her alive and out of his heart is more difficult than he expected. Then he makes a decision that could cost Kate her life.
HIS CHOICE AJ Hamilton, tangled up with Baltimore's largest crime boss, is ordered to threaten a pesky reporter, but he never expected his attraction to Megan Rogers to make him want to protect her instead. Now on the run, their passions flare as they fight to stay alive. Then AJ is forced to make a choice where he may not be able to protect her or their hearts.
HIS RETURN Jake Cavanaugh is haunted by that fateful night when he woke to find Emily Hamilton in his bed and a furious best friend banishing him. Returning four years later, he's confronted with the danger that surrounds Emily. As the web of corruption unravels, their passion reignites. Can he keep them safe and mend her broken heart?
This is books one–three in the HIS romantic suspense series. If you like thrilling, edge of your seat reading with sizzling sex scenes, then you’ll love each installment of Sheila Kell’s best-selling series.
Pick up your copy of the HIS Series Box Set, Volume I, to meet the hot-bodied men of HIS today!
That’s a word Bailey Winsor
knows well, having endured it since she was a child from the people who were
supposed to protect her. Just when her life appears normal, something Bailey
has never experienced, she meets a man and falls in love.
Love can be deceiving.
Bailey jumps from the frying
pan that was her childhood and into the burning bowels of hell, which is her
sick and twisted husband. It’s hopeless. Suffering more years of abuse, Bailey
eventually realizes she has no choice but to run.
Forced to stop in a small
town in Ohio, Bailey encounters a town full of people that welcomes her with
open arms, especially Jaxon Walker, the tattooed and pierced local bar owner.
Bailey has secrets she’s unwilling to reveal. Jaxon senses her fear and refuses
to give up trying to discover them. Will Bailey be brave enough
and learn to trust Jaxon with her deepest secrets? Will Jaxon be strong enough
to protect Bailey when her past comes knocking at her door?
Enduring the ultimate betrayal on her
eighteenth birthday by the one person she loves most in the world, Mia Walker
is no longer the innocent, sweet young woman she used to be. She is now cold
and hard, letting no one get close to her heart, except family.
Mackai (Mac) Weston sees the changes in Mia on
a daily basis. He knows he is the reason Mia is now the way she is. Never given
the chance to explain what really happened that night so long ago, Mac is
determined to make Mia finally listen and reclaim what was always his.
When the truth finally comes out, danger shows
its ugly face. There are people in Jaded Hollow who do not want Mac and Mia
together. They are willing to do whatever it takes to keep them apart. Will Mac be strong enough to overcome
temptation, even when the odds are against him? Will Mia forgive Mac when she
realizes things weren’t what they seemed ten years ago?
Andrew Donovan is the outrageous goofy
guy everyone loves. In any setting he takes center stage and makes everyone
laugh; from his ridiculously funny t-shirts, to his naughty jokes, to his
shameless flirting with anything that walks, male or female. But what you see
on the outside can sometimes be deceiving. Andrew has a secret. A secret that’s
slowly withering away the fun-loving guy everyone knows. A secret even his
closest friends know nothing about.
When he first sees Jase in a picture,
he knows instantly he’s found the one person who will be his forever. He’s just
impatiently biding his time until Jase gets to Jaded Hollow. Andrew is torn. On
one hand, he’s finally found the other half of his soul, while on the other,
he’s slowly dying inside. Tragedy is on the horizon and there’s nothing he can
do to stop it.
Jase Matthews comes to Jaded Hollow a
dead man walking. He knows it’s only a matter of time before they find him.
There is no way they’ll let him live. He’s instantly drawn to Andrew, but he
refuses the connection, knowing his days are numbered. However, it’s not long
before he realizes the pull Andrew has on him is something he can’t fight. Can Andrew find the courage to reveal
to his loved ones the secret he’s kept for years? Will Jase be the man to help
him overcome the grief he feels inside? And what happens when Jase’s past
catches up to him and threatens to take away the man Andrew’s waited forever to
meet?
What
do you do when you lose the single most important thing in your life? You
grieve. You sink so deep in a hole, you can no longer see the top. All you see
is dark. Your life becomes dull and dreary. You withdraw from your friends,
lash out at the ones you’re closest to, and become so absorbed in your pain,
you feel the only way out is to end it permanently. Your heart no longer pumps
properly and you can never get enough air in your lungs. You drink, you neglect
your health, and you rent dirty hotel rooms with the sole purpose of ending
your pain in them. Guilt eats at you for not being at the one place you were
needed the most. And you become angry because you were left behind.
Or
at least, that’s what I did. Until she came along….
Chris,
the bane of my existence. She’s always there in the background, watching me,
trying to “be there” for me. I don’t want her help. I don’t need her to butt in
where she’s not wanted. I just want to be left alone in my grief. But she’s not
giving up, even when I throw insult after insult her way. Every time I turn
around, there she is. And what’s worse, she’s starting to make me want things.
Things I never thought I could have again. She’s making me forget the pain and
bringing color back into my life with her fiery red hair, bright green eyes,
and the silly faces she makes at herself in the mirror. But what happens if I
let her in? Could I be brave enough to open myself up, knowing the possibility
of having it snatched away again? Once I know the feeling of touching Chris, of
having her heart and soul blend with mine, I would never survive losing that. Can
I take the chance of her being my savior, even knowing that she could also be
the one to push me over the edge of self-destruction?
Alex Grayson is originally from the south, but has recently moved to Northern Ohio. Although she misses the warmth of Florida and often times detest the cold of Ohio, she absolutely loves living in the north. Her and her husband bought a house on two acres of land and live there with their daughter, son, one dogs, two cats, eight ducks, and three chickens. She hopes to eventually get a couple of goats to add to their country way of living. Besides her family and home, her next best passion is reading. She is often found with her nose obsessively stuck in a book, much to the frustration of her husband and daughter. On more than one occasion Alex found herself wanting a book to go a certain way, but it didn’t. With these thoughts in mind, she decided to start writing stories according to her own visions. Although this is a new endeavor for her, she hopes that readers find her concepts on romance intriguing and captivating. Alex welcomes and encourages feedback, of any kind. She can be contacted at alexgraysonauthor@gmail.com.
*This is an alpha male novelette, which was previously published in the Alphas of Sin anthology.
Bachelor doctor, Liam Kase, is the Chief of Surgery. One cold night, he rescues a woman who falls in an icy parking lot. A woman who happens to be a nurse at a competing hospital.
Amelia Finch doesn’t want his help, and she knows all about his reputation. She’s fully capable of diagnosing and driving herself to the emergency room, but Liam refuses to allow it. He is an alpha male, who always take charge, after all.
White-hot sparks fly from their first encounter, searing the memory in both their minds. The Unattainable Chief: the man no woman can hook. Will she be the one who finally reels him in? She’ll certainly try.
Michelle Dare is a romance author. Her stories range from sweet to sinful and from new adult to fantasy. There aren’t enough hours in the day for her to write all of the story ideas in her head. When not writing or reading, she’s a wife and mom living in eastern Pennsylvania. One day she hopes to be writing from a beach where she will never have to see snow or be cold again.
Allister Marshall is no stranger to saving the down on their luck staff at the club he runs. But the day he walks into a locked basement dungeon and his eyes rest on the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, this white knight is nearly brought to his knees. He’s a man’s man, but he’s kept his v-card waiting for ‘the one’, and now that he’s found her nothing will ever come between them. Leah Morgan grew up cloaked in riches. Only she and her sister were kept locked away until a turn of events thrusts Leah out into the world where she’s a lamb primed for lions to pounce. When Allister saves her from the clutches of those sworn to care for her, she finds herself swept away by this monster of a man who is obsessed with making sure the rest of her life is filled with happiness and a few million orgasms. Can this brute of a virgin man manage to overcome sweet Leah’s distrust of nearly everyone? When Leah once again disappears, Allister comes to grips with just how far he will go to bring home what is his. Only, will the forces at work to tear Leah from her first glimpse of true happiness be more than Allister can overcome? Authors Note: The Forever Collection is all virgins, love-at-first-sight, indulgent fantasy. Each book a standalone. It’s fall hard, fall fast and get right to the sticky bits. If you want to lose yourself for a while with a happily ever after, no cheating and all wrapped up with an obsessed, alpha hero who will stop at nothing to make babies with his woman, then step inside, it’s steamy.
Dani Wyatt loves her alpha men; make them military, cowboys, MMA -- any uber alpha with a wicked possessive streak and an insatiable libido. Receive a free exclusive unpublished title when you join Dani's private readers group for updates, free chapters and discounts.
She's a 40 something regular lady who just happens to love badass alpha males who pull your hair and love their women with a lethal passion.
When she's not writing (which is not often) she is probably laughing about some irony (like A-1 Steak Sauce is vegan), riding her horse, wondering why The Walking Dead can't have a new episode every night, or looking cross-eyed at some piece of technology sent to ruin her day.
