Check out these previously posted features, because you can enter to win these books all the way until December 21!
- December 3 - Joanna Bourne
- December 4 - Pamela Callow
- December 5 - MK McClintock
- December 6 - Steve Vernon
- December 7 - Sophie Perinot
And don't forget to enter to win the GRAND PRIZES at the bottom of the page!

Summary:

A passion for humanity drives Rona Altrows’s Key In Lock. The people in these entertaining yet poignant stories wrestle with self-doubt, ethical dilemmas, money problems, health issues. Yet somehow they survive and sometimes they even thrive. Key In Lock also marks the return of Irene, beloved manager-in-all-but-name of Marjorie’s Lingerie introduced in A Run On Hose. This time Irene takes on issues as diverse as dating later in life, the effect of childlessness on a person’s psyche, stress incontinence, and the love rituals of banana slugs. Irene also brings us tales of her youth in the days of the polio epidemic and Vincent Price horror movies.

Excerpt:

A man needs a certain amount of intercourse. You can stay at the rubbing-pressing-groping stage for only so long. You may be able to stretch it out for months, which is how it’s been going with Raymond and me. When you are in your sixties, like we are, you like to extend everything out, move at a more relaxed pace, as though that will convince the Grim Reaper not to rush.

It’s not as if he’s said so in words, but through the way he acts, Raymond has shown me how he would like the scene to unfold; he’ll be ready any time I am. And to be fair to him, I can’t hold out forever. I mean, he has been patient, a gentleman—no pushing or insisting. But at some point, no matter how sweet a guy is, or how old, only penetration will do. I’m in a jam now. He’s great company, a fine man, and easy on the eyes, but I’ll never love him. What’s more—and this is the part that scares me right now—there’s something I don’t want him to know. If we keep seeing each other, there’s a chance he’ll learn my secret; if we go all the way, he’ll find out for sure. Can I live with that?

So I’ve given myself a deadline. Tonight. We’re going out to a movie, and then he’ll drive me back to my apartment for a drink. By then, I’ll have made up my mind.
Right now I’m still doing the back and forth. We humans would probably be better off if we were built more like banana slugs. In her university classes, my young friend Julie learns how animals go about their business. She knows I am curious and tells me the juiciest stuff, like the slugs’ story. She talks about how they court for hours, which is like years for them, and how they snack on each other’s slime before sex. But to me, the best part is the location of the genitals, not too far from the head. With that anatomy, I figure there’s a good chance that they use their heads when it comes to deciding about sex. Not like us. All that distance between the brain and the other place leads to nothing but trouble. Bad matches, heartache, aggravation—I’ll bet those are not major problems among the slugs.

And there’s another thing slugs have got on us—mucus. In slug sex, there is an exchange of mucus, which is what I will need more of if I am going to take that next step with Raymond. Not mucus exactly, but lubricant.

Author:

Rona Altrows was born and raised in Montreal and lives in Calgary, Canada. She is the author of two books of short stories, A Run On Hose and Key in Lock and is currently writing a book of flash fiction. She has received the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize and the Brenda Strathern Prize for her fiction and has been a finalist for the Howard O'Hagan Award for Short Fiction. Altrows's work has appeared in many Canadian and American magazines and ezines. With Naomi K. Lewis, she is co-editor of Shy, an anthology in which 39 writers reflect on their own shyness. Shy will be publshed in fall, 2013 by the University of Alberta Press.

#1 GRAND PRIZE:

Kaki Warner's acclaimed trilogy: THE RUNAWAY BRIDES—three strong-willed women headed West in search of new lives. But when their train is stranded in a dying Colorado mining town, they get more than they bargained for…and find love where they least expect it.

"Lightning paced, innovative, topical … and most of all, frightening." 
-- James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author

Check out these previously posted features, because you can enter to win these books all the way until December 21!
- December 3 - Joanna Bourne

Summary:

Book #3 of the Kate Lange thriller series

She is obsessed with tattoos.
He is obsessed with her.

When a body is found on the outskirts of Halifax, rumors run wild about the victim’s identity. But tattoo artist Kenzie Sloane knows exactly who she is. They share a tattoo… and a decade-old secret.

Lawyer Kate Lange remembers Kenzie Sloane. The former wild child was part of the same crowd that attracted her little sister, Imogen, before her death. Now Kenzie needs her help. And Kate needs answers.

But there are others who know about the tattoo and its history. And one of them is watching Kenzie’s every move, waiting for the perfect moment to fulfill a dark promise that had been inked in her skin.

Excerpt:

Flushed with triumph at finding sarracenia purpurea -- also known as the purple pitcher plant – Rebecca Chen crouched above the surprisingly clear and shallow water of the peat bog.  Bag this last plant and then I’m outta here.

It was a pretty plant, and yet, according to her notes from her biology class, it was a predator, capturing its food in its petals. She plunged her hand into the muck, her fingers scrabbling down the plant’s stem, searching for the root ball. But the stem curved sideways under the dense thicket of hummock. She exhaled, her forehead prickling with sweat. 
Further up the slope and beyond the cliffs, lay the outer mouth of the Halifax Harbour. Fog hung over the horizon, a ghostly waterfall hovering over the deep blue of the ocean, but the cooling breeze carrying its afterdamp did not reach her.

With a grunt, she pushed her hand deep into the underside of the hummock. Her fingers hit a rock. The stem appeared to be wrapped around it. 

Frig. She sat back on her heels. The peat bogs stretched around her, serene blue pools dotting scrubby hummocks of low-lying shrubs. She had never even been out to Chebucto Head until her biology teacher assigned this lab, and she cursed him when she had missed the class trip and had to find her own way to the peat bogs. After a twenty-five minute drive, she found the road to the headland. It was flanked by a protected nature reserve, but it eventually opened to a cove dotted with houses. They huddled, higgly-piggly, on the granite bedrock cliffs, as if holding their collective breath. 

The peat bogs were a twenty-minute hike across the headlands. “Just find the old bunkers,” her teacher had told her. “There are two. The bogs are down the slope.  You can’t miss them.”
True enough, after twenty minutes of following a scraggly, muddy path, she spotted the bunkers on a crest of the cliff.  There were two: one facing the water, the other offset behind it.  The bunkers had been built eighty years ago as the outer battery to defend Halifax Harbour. The lower bunker perched on a slope, its flat, sharp roof appearing crooked against the sky. Tall shrubs and a handful of stunted evergreens grew around the squat concrete boxes. Rather than softening the forbidding exterior of the wartime posts, the dense thicket of shrubs and the lush branches of the evergreens served to emphasize their brutal purpose. 
Even in the May sunshine, they were creepy. She veered around them, and headed down hill to the peat bogs. They gleamed in the sun, the area a large, open marsh with a pleasant piney scent. It hadn’t take much time to find the samples for her biology lab.

Until now.

Last lab of the school year, last lab of high school, Rebecca. That knowledge lent extra urgency to her scrabbling. She wrapped her fingers around the rock anchoring what she now viewed as “her” plant. She yanked the rock-and-plant specimen from under the hummock, falling back on her heels. She staggered to her feet, the prize clutched in her hand.
Her butt was soaked from her efforts. Figures.

She unraveled the roots clinging to the rock.  

Her fingers froze.

Beneath the plant debris and muck, the rock appeared calcified. And smooth.

God. It felt suspiciously like a bone.

It’s not a bone, Rebecca.

It was a bone. Her heart pounding, Rebecca tore away the roots of the plant. The smooth curve and calcified exterior were obvious now.

It’s just an animal’s bone. Probably a deer.

She peered at the hummock, searching for the hole she had tunneled through the underside.
Her breath caught in her throat.

She couldn’t move.

Couldn’t blink.

Couldn’t scream.

All she could do was stare at the two bulging colorless eyes that pinned her in their malevolent gaze. Then she saw the hooked nose, the gaping smile, the hair floating from the head. Everything tinted the same brownish color.
Horror in sepia wash.

Her brain, at first, couldn’t process what she saw. Finally, her lungs forced her breath out in a gasp. And her brain interpreted the image.

The bulging eyes belonged to a mask. A rubber Halloween mask that someone had thrown into the bog. Her insides liquefied with a warm rush of relief. Then she remembered the cold, smooth length of bone in her palm.

It hadn’t been just a mask she had dislodged. The mask had been on a dead body.

She was holding proof of it.

A scream built in her throat.

The dead body was under the hummock. Under her.

Oh, dear Lord. She was holding a dead body!

She threw the bone into the water, so forcefully that water splashed onto her torso, her face. And into her mouth.  An earthy, decayed taste swelled the tasted buds on her tongue. Bog water.

The water had a putrefied body in it.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. With the hand that was filthy with muck.

Muck that contained a dead body.

Her stomach heaved. Vomit flecked her rain boots.

She began to scream.

Excerpt from TATTOOED (MIRA Books, June 2012)
Copyright 2012 by Pamela Callow

Author:

A member of the Nova Scotia bar, Pamela Callow is the internationally published author of the Kate Lange legal thriller series for MIRA Books. RT Book Reviews hailed series lead Kate Lange as a, “…standout character.” DAMAGED, the debut novel of her series, was chosen by Levy Home Entertainment as a “Need to Read” Pick, with Top Ten Bestseller placement in retail stores across North America. 

Callow’s critically-acclaimed series has been compared to works by Robin Cook, Tess Gerritsen and John Grisham. She is also a contributor to the International Thriller Writers' bestselling THRILLER 3: LOVE IS MURDER anthology, edited by New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown.
Prior to making writing a career, Pamela Callow worked as a Strategic Services manager for international consulting firm Accenture. She lives in Nova Scotia, along with her husband, two children and a pug. She loves to go for walks (unlike her dog), and drink coffee. Visit www.pamelacallow.com to learn more about her books.

#1 GRAND PRIZE:

Kaki Warner's acclaimed trilogy: THE RUNAWAY BRIDES—three strong-willed women headed West in search of new lives. But when their train is stranded in a dying Colorado mining town, they get more than they bargained for…and find love where they least expect it.

GRAND PRIZE #2:

"Lightning paced, innovative, topical … and most of all, frightening." 
-- James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author