DUKES BY THE DOZEN

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What's better than a dashing duke? A dozen of them! In this case, a baker's dozen--thirteen of your favorite historical romance authors have come together to bring you more than a dozen tantalizing novellas, with one per month, for a year's worth of never-before-released romances.

Duke in Winter by Alyssa Alexander

February - The Difference One Duke Makes by Elizabeth Essex

March - Discovering the Duke by Madeline Martin


April - The Duke and the April Flowers by Grace Burrowes

May - Love Letters from a Duke by Gina Conkle

June - Her Perfect Duke by Ella Quinn

July - How to Ditch a Duke by May McGoldrick

August - To Tempt A Highland Duke by Bronwen Evans

September - Duke in Search of a Duchess by Jennifer Ashley

October - Dear Duke by Anna Harrington

November - Must Love Duke by Heather Snow

December - The Mistletoe Duke by Sabrina York

January - Dueling with the Duke by Eileen Dreyer

Read an Excerpt from Dueling with the Duke

by Eileen Dreyer

January

She had a face that was completely forgettable. At least that was the way Jamie had described her. A girl you might overlook if you weren’t careful, which Jamie had said would be a shame.

Jamie had been correct. If Adam had simply seen Jamie’s wife sitting at a desk, he would have walked right by. It was when she moved that she began to make an impression. She had a compelling grace, especially for a small woman. He would have expected her to, well, bounce like a small bird on a fence. She glided as if books rested on her head.

Of course, he thought almost smiling. A marquess’s daughter. She had undoubtedly balanced a goodly number of books on her head.

“How can I help you, Your Grace?” she asked, setting her glasses down on a table and rising to her feet. “I don’t believe we’ve met?”

“To my eternal regret,” he said, “we have not met before now. I should have begun at the beginning. I am Adam Marrick, Mrs. Grace. Jamie’s cousin.”

And there it was, he thought. The reason Jamie had fallen in love with Georgina Wyndham in the first place. That smile. Wide, bright, warm, all-encompassing, as if she embraced not just him but the world. Before he knew it, Adam was smiling back.

“He loved you very much,” he said.

Her eyes glittered with welling tears, but that smile held. “I know,” she whispered. “I loved him dearly. I am so very glad to finally meet you. He spoke of you as well, of course. You were quite his hero. Hussars, wasn’t it?”

“It was.”

She invited him to sit, where they enjoyed a bit of society over tea.

“Lully,” he blurted out, appalled at his own clumsiness. “I’m really here for her.”

His words were met with a rather stark silence. “Pardon?”

He nodded, setting down his saucer. “I am actually here to bring her some news.”

Again Georgie tilted her head. “Lully is four, Your Grace. What news could you have to give her?”

This wasn’t going the way he’d planned. He should have believed Jamie from the start. Maybe his reaction to Georgie wouldn’t have knocked him so off-center.

“I need to take her to Scotland.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He tried briefly closing his eyes. “She is needed there.”

She was staring at him as if he’d begun to bark like a dog. “In Scotland.” Suddenly she was getting to her feet. “Are you feeling perfectly well, Your Grace?” she asked. “I can call for the local physician. He is old, but….”

He should have known this would be her reaction. “No,” he said, There was no avoiding it. He had to get to his feet as well. “No,” he said, grabbing his cane and hoisting himself up, his knee protesting like an unoiled hinge. “I am not ill. I was coming to see you anyway. I promise. Not only because I wanted to meet the woman who had stolen Jamie’s heart, but because I made a promise to him.”

“That is lovely.” Her voice didn’t sound like it. “But not to the point.”

He nodded and took another breath. “There is news,” he repeated. “Jamie’s mother has died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She neither sounded nor looked like she meant it. Having known Jamie’s mother well, he couldn’t really blame her. “If we could sit...”

Giving him a chagrined nod, she sat after him. “How can that concern us?” she asked. “Jamie’s family made certain we knew we were not welcome.”

“Well, since Jamie is…gone, it means that Lully has inherited. I need to take her with me to accept.”

Adam didn’t think you could see fire in the color green. He certainly could now.

“Inherited? Inherited what? Jamie was disowned.”

“You cannot disown a title, Mrs. Grace.”

“A what?”

“She is no longer simply a little girl,” he said as gently as he could. “She’s a duchess.”

She seemed to glide up to her feet, rising to her full height, which suddenly seemed not so insignificant. Following to his own feet, Adam wondered suddenly how anyone could possibly think she was forgettable. She was Boedica, Titania, Maeve. He had the oddest feeling she was looking down at him, instead of standing at his shoulder.

And then she closed the conversation.

“No.”

About the Author

New York Times Bestselling, award-winning author Eileen Dreyer has published 40 novels and 10 short stories under her name and that of her evil twin, Kathleen Korbel in contemporary romance, paranormal romance, historical romance, romantic suspense, mystery and medical forensic suspense.

A proud member of RWA's Hall of FAME, she also has numerous awards from RT BookLovers and an Anthony nomination for mystery.

She is now focusing on what she calls historic romantic adventure in her DRAKE'S RAKES series. A native of St. Louis, she still lives there with her family. She has animals but refuses to subject them to the limelight.




Website: http://eileendreyer.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EileenDreyer

Twitter: https://twitter.com/eileendreyer

Instagra: https://www.instagram.com/eileendreyerauthor/

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/list/19012.Eileen_Dreyer

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/eileen-dreyer




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PINE PITCH, BOAR'S HAIR, AND ROMANCE

Pine Pitch, Boar’s Hair, and Romance

By Paty Jager

My love of the west and the area where I grew up, led me to write the Christmas Novella in the Silver Belles and Stetson Western Christmas Anthology. Christmas Redemption came about from my reading a story about a man from Joseph, OR who robbed a bank as a young man and twenty-seven years later became the vice president of the same bank. 

 Van Donovan, the hero in Christmas Redemption, doesn’t become the bank president, but I used that premise as the catalyst for the story. At the age of fifteen he thinks being a lookout for a bank robbery would be exciting and knows it will infuriate his father. Van’s lark was soon over when an innocent man is killed and Van ends up in prison without one word from his family.

Van redeems himself by learning a trade while in prison and having the courage to come back home and prove to the town and his family he is a changed man. 

Van’s occupation isn’t one seen very often in westerns. He’s a boot maker. I spent several hours in the shop of bootmaker DW Frommer II, who specializes in teaching the art of boot making in the 1800s. I learned about pine pitch that is boiled down and rubbed like wax into the threads that sew the boots together. This is done to make the boots waterproof. Usually the heavier boots worn in winter or by people who work outdoors had the pine pitch thread. 

Hair from the back of a boar’s neck was split and the thread stuck in the split. The boar’s hair was used like a needle, sewing the pieces together through the holes made with an awl. The hole patterns the bootmaker makes with an awl can distinguish his work.  While I came home with several pages of notes and information, I ended up using very little of this information.

That is the way of most research, several pages of information are carefully written down and that is boiled down into a sentence or a paragraph in the book. Hopefully, learning about the different types of leather, the different threads and what is pitched and what isn’t, helps the authenticity show through in what I do have about boot making in the story.

Blurb for Christmas Redemption

Van Donovan returns to Pleasant Valley, Oregon where twelve years earlier as a boy of fifteen he left in handcuffs after standing guard for a bank robbery. He's learned a trade and excelled at it and is ready to prove to his father and the town he can amount to something.

Upon his return he learns the fate of the daughter of an innocent man who died in the robbery crossfire. To make amends he takes her out of the saloon and gives her a job, not realizing she'd been squatting in the very building he'd purchased for his business.

Can two battered hearts find solace or will the past continue to haunt their lives?

Silver Belles and Stetsons: A Western Christmas Anthology
Available as a $.99 boxed set for a limited time

Ten Western Romance Christmas Novellas
Available as a boxed set for a limited time 

Bestselling and Award-Winning Authors bring you ten western romance novellas featuring alpha-cowboys from the past. This boxed set will take you back in time when
men were rugged and handsome and the women who loved them, courageous and
daring.

The Greatest Gift: A Montana Cowboy Christmas by Kathleen Ball. Amazon Bestselling
and Award- Winning Author. Looking for the man who ran out on her, Ginger finds a
cowboy worthy of love but he doesn't want or need love.

Catherine’s Cowboy by Cait Braxton, Amazon Bestselling and Award-Winning Author.  During a supernatural dust storm, Fate steps in when rugged army tracker, Elam, helps Catherine deliver her child.

Stone Mountain Christmas by Caroline Clemmons, Amazon Bestselling and Award-Winning Author. Can Celia restore the town's Christmas spirit? "A beautifully written story about love and hope and all the emotions Christmas brings out in people." Karren Lucas

Angel and the Texan from County Cork by Carra Copelin.  Amazon Bestselling and Award-Winning Author. Does Angel trust marriage to the man she suspects of killing her husband or the stranger who promises to pay off her debt and set her free if she decides their marriage of convenience won’t work?

The Drifter’s Proposal by Kristin Holt, Amazon Bestselling Author. The baker's man is home for Christmas... "Compelling. Heartwarming. Tender." ~Diane Darcy, USA Today Bestselling Author

The Perfect Gift by Lyn Horner. Friendship has blossomed into young love, but it seems destined to die on the vine...until an unexpected Christmas gift promises happiness.

 Marshal Mistletoe by Susan Horsnell. She married the wrong man. Will fate intervene?

Christmas Redemption by Paty Jager, Amazon Bestselling and Award-Winning Author. Can two battered hearts find solace or will the past continue to haunt their lives? "A story of forgiveness that has a wonderful hero who has worked hard to redeem himself."

A Hard Candy Christmas by Hebby Roman, Amazon Bestselling Author. Two damaged souls. Can their budding love and the healing power of Christmas bring them together?

Cowboy Christmas by Margaret Tanner. Will a miracle Christmas baby unite two tortured souls, or will it forever keep them apart?

BUY LINK:     Amazon

Paty Jager, Author, with equine friend

Award-winning author Paty Jager and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. On her road to publication she wrote freelance articles for two local newspapers and enjoyed her job with the County Extension service as a 4-H Program Assistant. Raising hay and cattle, riding horses, and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Her penchant for research takes her on side trips that eventually turn into yet another story.

You can learn more about Paty at:

her blog; Writing into the Sunset 

her website; http://www.patyjager.net 

Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/pages/Paty-Jager/132536633482029

Newsletter: Paty’s Prattle: http://eepurl.com/1CFgX

Paty’s Posse: https://www.facebook.com/groups/402519373168442/?ref=bookmarks

Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1005334.Paty_Jager 

twitter  @patyjag.

YEE HAW! WE'RE RIDING AGAIN!

Thanks to those of you who purchased the first WILD WESTERN WOMEN box set last fall (that set is still available). The five of us in that box set enjoyed such success that we created another edition called WILD WESTERN WOMEN RIDE AGAIN for the same great price of 99 cents for five novellas. Even those like me who abhor math can figure out the price is less than 20 cents for each novella. The difference is that this time the box set is available only at Amazon.

Here are the novellas in WILD WESTERN WOMEN RIDE AGAIN:

USA Today Best Selling Author Kirsten Osbourne

Mail Order Mischief

When Elizabeth Miller agreed to manage a mail order bride agency eight years before, she'd had no idea that it would leave her lonely and isolated. She has secretly loved one man for almost a decade, and she is about to give up on marrying for love entirely. When she receives a letter from a man in Fort Worth looking for a bride, she considers becoming a mail order bride herself, because by doing so, she could be close to her sister. She doesn't want to be alone for the rest of her life.

Bernard Tandy agrees to work for Elizabeth after his life is shattered. As he slowly heals and picks up the pieces, he gets to know his beautiful employer. As the years go by, he realizes he is falling for her more and more, but he knows his place in life. When she insists on taking a trip to Fort Worth to check out a potential groom and see her sister, he knows he can't send her alone.  Will he be able to survive the long train ride to Fort Worth without letting his feelings show? Or will Elizabeth somehow convince him that they are meant to be? 

USA Today Best Selling Author Callie Hutton

Daniel’s Desire: In the Shadow of War (also available as a single title)

When Confederate soldier, Lt. Daniel McCoy makes his escape from a Union prison toward the end of the Civil War, his only thought is to get as far away from enemy territory as possible. But he doesn’t count on saving young widow Rosemarie Wilson’s life from an infected leg wound.  

Rosemarie has no use for Rebels soldiers, having lost everything, including her husband, the last time they came to her home. However, Daniel has not only saved her life, but is sticking around to help with the farm and her three young children until she recovers. 

With Union soldiers searching for him, every day that Daniel remains puts him in danger. Or is it the beautiful, feisty widow who has captured his heart the greater risk?

Best-selling Author Caroline Clemmons

Tabitha’s Journey (also available as a single title in the Stone Mountain series)

Would you become a mail-order bride?

Tabitha Masterson is certain whatever awaits her in Radford Crossing, Texas will be better than what her brother and that awful William have in mind for her in Boston. After her father’s death, her brother becomes a tyrant. She escapes to begin her new life in Texas, but trouble can’t be far behind. She believes if she’s married when trouble arrives, she’ll be safe. But her fiancé is reluctant to accept her as a substitute for the mail-order bride he’d courted.

Bear Baldwin is crushed when he receives a wire notifying him that the woman with whom he has corresponded for almost a year has passed him off to her friend. Do the two women believe he’s like an old shirt to be handed down? His mother urges him to give the substitute fiancée a chance, but his pride is stung and he hasn’t decided.

Best-selling Author Sylvia McDaniel

Scandalous Suffragette Brides: Abigail (launches a great new series)

Women Wanted – Feisty, Head Strong Women Need Not Apply

In New Hope, Texas women like children, are to be seen and not heard. Their only job in life is to marry, procreate and be a loyal, obedient wife. Thus the shortage of available women. Until, Abigail Vanderhooten is unexpectedly called home, her head filled with ideas of changing the world where a woman can own a business and have a bank account. This little rebel is determined to bring the town’s laws into the nineteenth century, even if it means sacrificing her reputation.

Jack Turner likes being the mayor in a small, quiet western town where the biggest rabble rousers are cowboys on Saturday night. Everything is about to change when Abigail Vanderhooten, a tiny sprite of a woman returns to town, ready to take on the local laws. While trying to keep the town from splitting apart, he’s surprised how her strong spirit captivates him. And he’s shocked when she manages to worm her way into his bachelor heart, with her controversial ideas of women earning a living the same as a man.

With a woman’s revolution brewing, will Jack be forced to run her out of town, before he has a chance to convey how she’s changed him. Or will Abigail give up on New Hope, Texas and return to Boston?

Best-selling Author Merry Farmer

Trail Blaze

Darcy Howsam has one last chance to be a respectable woman and to have a secure life: traveling along the Oregon Trail to become a mail-order bride for a miner in California. But when the man who paid her way to meet him at Ft. Laramie takes one look at her and rejects her, demanding his money back, Darcy finds herself alone and desperate…. That is, until handsome stranger, Gregory Quinlan comes along. Greg isn’t looking for a wife, but love has other plans.

These are fun stories, some with action and danger. Don't miss out on this good reading box set. Want to grab your copy? Here’s that link again at Amazon.

 Thanks for stopping by!