The voting has started for the elevation of RONE Nominees to Finalists. Each year, InD’tale Magazine nominates the best of the fiction it has reviewed in the past year. Readers then vote for the finalists that will be judged by a panel of authors and reviewers.
I’m super thrilled that my first foray into Urban Fantasy has made the cut, and more so that it is classed with a such a great selection of books.
Sin Marston is a rare human who can see through glamor. With the veil with the treaty of 2010, the magical visitors, known as the Hidden, flowed into the Terran realm. With her unique talent, Sin’s services are in demand from businesses and law enforcement with Hidden problems. She also has a growing clientele of Hidden visitors wishing to avoid confrontation with the Human Protection Society and other anti-Hidden Terrans.
After thwarting a daring art heist, Sin encounters a stunning fire elemental who reveals the theft was something very different. Everything she thought she knew changes.
Radzik Cray has lived for centuries, building his magical and political power base. The appointment as the Elders’ Council Warden for the Eastern United States comes with untold wealth and power, as well as untold danger. When he meets Sin Marston, he is interested in a pleasant distraction. Instead, he discovers that Sin is not all she appears and his control over his territory is not as absolute as he thought.
Tinker Bell, banished from her homeland for doing the unthinkable, selling the hottest drug in Neverland—pixie dust—wants absolution.
Determined to find a way home, Tink doesn’t hesitate to follow the one lead she has, even if that means seducing a filthy pirate to steal precious gems out from under his…hook.
Captain Hook believes he’s found a real treasure in Tink. That is, until he recovers from her pixie dust laced kiss with a curse that turns the seas against him. With his ship and reputation at the mercy of raging storms, he tracks down the little minx and demands she remove the curse. Too bad she can’t.
However, the mermaid queen has a solution to both of their problems, if Tink and Hook will work together to retrieve a magical item for her.
As they venture to the mysterious Shrouded Isles to find the priceless treasure, their shared nemesis closes in. However, his wrath is nothing compared to the realization that achieving their goal may mean losing something they never expected to find—each other.
A king chased by the demons of his past. A merciless god seeking redemption through bloodshed. And the woman whose very existence defies possibility.
It’s been three months since Margrete Wood defeated her depraved father and saved the mystical island of Azantian. But the monstrous creatures released that night have hidden themselves in the human realm, and Margrete and her king set sail to hunt them down.
When disaster strikes on the high seas, Margrete and the crew find themselves stranded on the shores of a new and dangerous island. It’s there that they come across an ancient coin, one that legend claims belonged to a powerful goddess. It signifies the first of three deadly trials that must be completed. If they fail these tests, they forfeit their lives to the very place that traps them.
As Margrete and Bash struggle to survive gruesome horrors lurking around every turn, a mighty god watches. He’s waited centuries for this moment, and in Margrete, he sees the queen he’s been searching for.
Once the third and final coin is found, Margrete and Bash will discover if their love can conquer all… even death itself.
Artist Jessica Stone has a death sentence, an inoperable brain tumor. As her health declines, Jess is compelled to paint the captivating image of a mythical realm protected by a crystal called the Rose Stone. A mysterious crimson glow infuses the canvas, and Jess wakes in the Commonwealth of the Rose. She meets Griffin, a warrior engaged in a struggle with the malevolent darkling, who seeks to control the power of the Rose Stone. With Griffin’s help, Jess evades the darkling’s assassins. Then the hallucination vanishes, and she discovers her connection to the Rose Stone may run deeper than mere illusion.
Torn between two worlds, Jess battles the darkling in one and a tumor in the other while struggling to determine her true reality. Is the Rose Stone a dream, a hallucination, or a summons to something greater?
The night the Prince of the East razed her village, Raina Bloodgood’s life changed forever. Forced into someone else’s war—and into the arms of the Witch Collector, Alexus Thibault—Raina discovered that everything she believed was wrong, and that she was capable of far more than anyone imagined.
Now, the Prince of the East has taken the Frost King as a pawn in his war against the Summerlands, causing Alexus’s life to hang in the balance. To thwart the prince’s endgame and prevent the Tiressian empire from returning to an age of gods, Raina, Alexus, and a band of Northlanders race against the sands of time to reach a mystical desert land where merciless assassins lurk around every corner.
In the midst of tragedy, Raina and Alexus fight to stay together and alive, all while a nefarious presence follows them straight to the jeweled gates of the Summerland queen’s citadel—the City of Ruin. With much to fear, it’s the terror of a past she shouldn’t remember that Raina cannot cast from her dreams.
A past that’s determined to find her. One way or another.
A kingdom in mourning… Six princes turned dark in their grief… One maiden holds hope to save them.
Selene, the Swan Herder for the kingdom of Melthkior, once filled her days in the company of the Royal Family. She grew up as a companion for the Princes of the kingdom, and they enjoyed close friendships. But when the Queen died during the birth of her sixth son, everything changed. The King fell into mourning, and the Princes turned dark and cruel in their grief.
Now, as a maiden, Selene must endure the brutal mockery and abuse from those she once called friends. Her only allies are her beautiful swans and those on the kitchen staff who love her. Until the mysterious Conway appears and seems determined to be a part of her life.
Conway is fascinated by the girl with the silver hair and dismayed by how she is treated. He welcomes her into his heart, and Selene slowly begins to trust what she feels is real.
Can Conway show her a different way of life, or will she stay stuck in a cycle of suffering? And when the Gods become involved, a curse strikes the six Princes of Melthkior. Will Selene choose to help them, or leave them to their fate?
Breaking the curse will risk her heart, her life, and the future she never thought possible.
Before Arya was Chosen, she knew nothing of what lay waiting in the eternal night—certainly not alluring yet arrogant winged Watchers, a cursed queen, nor the possibility that she could be more than a runner, carrying messages through the vampyre-infested wastelands of Valdihr.
But the biggest surprise waiting in the dark is the brazen Watcher who sparks her heart and calls her a Huntress.
A hundred years shrouded in darkness and Arya is the only one who can finally bring back the dawn. With a blessing that marks her for death and an infuriatingly tantalizing man at her side, Arya must embrace her calling and her courage in order to face the danger lurking in the shadows. Because the night holds more than just secrets, and the monsters are closer than she realizes.
US$4.99 Or KU
AMAZON
Myra has spent years hiding—in servitude of the now imprisoned Queen Amelia, and from a lineage she never wanted.
Now that she is freed from Amelia’s clutches, Myra is ready for a new start, but the echoes of the past, and the truth of who she is—a direct descendant of Stula, the goddess of death—will only disrupt the peace she wants to find in the kingdom of Oxare.
The kingdom is beautiful, as is the handsome prince Alvis and though his offer to join him at the Golden Palace is tempting, Myra is determined to make her own way.
But when a life on her own becomes too difficult, Myra is forced to accept Alvis’ offer and lands in the thick of a plot to free Queen Amelia. To keep the entire realm and her people safe, Myra and Alvis must find out who among the Golden Palace court is the betrayer before Amelia escapes.
But with each passing day Myra feels her connection to Alvis growing stronger, and her past continues to haunt her. Can they protect the kingdom and each other, before Amelia takes her revenge and Alvis finds out the truth?
The meteor brought more than space dust.
Verena is a grad student living in Alaska when she receives a phone call that changes her life. Her family has been keeping secrets about their origins and their purpose. Soon, she’s on a mission to save the world from Chernobog’s demonic beasts. Will she master her new magic in time? Will Owen, a man with his own demons, help her in her quest, or will he break her heart?
As she crosses the world to the snowy Ural Mountains, Verena must decide if she’s ready to lead or if the price is too high.
US$2.99 or KU
AMAZON
Luke Irontree fled to Portland to escape vampires…and his memories. He failed.
Born in the first century, Luke has been hunting vampires since the gods made him their immortal weapon. Now he’s one man awash in a sea of fangy monsters. When Portland’s most vulnerable disappear, he’s the only one who even cares.
Things go from bad to FUBAR when he realizes he’s number one on the menu. Fortunately, a nosy werewolf and a tough human woman are determined to join forces with the curmudgeonly hunter. While he appreciates the help, he fears he won’t be able to keep them alive.
With the gutters running red with the blood of innocents, three against an army of bloodthirsty villains might not be enough. Luke will have to dig deep to overcome his own trauma and forge the group into a force to be reckoned with. But if he fails, it’s not just a city’s survival but his immortal life that hangs by a fraying thread…
A healer and dabbler in the dark arts of life and death, Barus is as gnarled as an ancient tree. Forgotten in the chaos of the dying queen’s chamber, he spirits away her stillborn infant and in a hovel at the meadow’s edge, breathes life into the wisp of a child. He names her Aster for the lea’s white flowers. Raised as his daughter, she, too, learns to heal death.
Denied a living heir, the widowed king spies from a distance. But he heeds the claims of the fiery Vicar of the Red Order—in the eyes of the Blessed One, Aster is an abomination, and to embrace the evil of resurrection will doom his rule.
As the king’s life nears its end, he defies the vicar’s warning and summons the necromancer’s daughter. For his boldness, he falls to an assassin’s blade. Armed with righteousness and iron-clad conviction, the Order’s brothers ride into the leas to cleanse the land of evil.
To save her father’s life, Aster leads them beyond Verdane’s wall into the Forest of Silvern Cats, a wilderness of dragons and barbarian tribes. Unprepared for a world rife with danger and unchecked power, a world divided by those who practice magic and those who hunt them, she must choose whether to trust the one man offering her aid, the one man most likely to betray her—her enemy’s son.
A warrior fighting his destiny.
A woman desperately seeking hers.
And a magic portal that joins them both.
Dál Cruinne is a world of warriors and mages, clan kings and sages. Asleep since the Dragon Wars of millennia past, the beasts have now awoken.
Arlan, warrior son of the High King of the Sovereignty of Dál Gaedhle, is destined to be the war chief of his clan. But the cost is a future that ignores his desire to choose his own path.
Scottish librarian, Rhiannon, adrift after losing her job due to economic cuts, now lives a second-rate life, feeling more out of place than ever. When Arlan bursts into her world on his war horse and brandishing weapons, he turns her existence up-side-down.
He thinks he’s found the perfect woman. She can’t understand why he’s delaying his return.
Now with his world on the brink of war, and Rhiannon challenging his attitudes, Arlan must choose between his growing feelings for her and his responsibilities to his people.
Will the call of his home world be stronger, and is her desire to fight beside him even possible?
*Price reflects time of posting.
** To qualify for Spotlight Indie Romance, EG has read and rated at least one book in the series 4 or 5 Stars. ** For the RONE nominees, I accept the judgment of the InD’tale reviewers and may not have read and enjoyed an particular author’s work.
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