Source: author

A- #BookReview: Guard the East Flank by M.L. Buchman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Guard the East Flank by M.L. BuchmanGuard the East Flank: a military romantic suspense (Night Stalkers Reload Book 1) by M L Buchman
Format: ebook
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: action adventure romance, military romance
Series: Night Stalkers Reload #1
Pages: 358
Published by Buchman Bookworks on July 1, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


Emily Beale returns! And the Night Stalkers will never be the same.

Captain Sharelle Vargas may be the best pilot in the 160th SOAR helicopter regiment, but is she ready for Colonel Emily Beale?
Captain Troy Ryland loves three things in his his family farm, flying the most lethal helicopter in the US military, and the woman he flies with. Each pull him in a different direction. The clock isn’t ticking—it’s running out!
A new mission slams them into action as they must infiltrate the notorious “Wind from the East”—Russia. Once in, will their combined skills prove enough to escape with their lives and their hearts intact?
“(For) fans of Suzanne Brockmann, Maya Banks, Catherine Mann, and Kaylea Cross.” – Booklist
“OMG, I love how this guy writes military romantic suspense!!” – Smitten with Reading

My Review:

Lieutenant Colonel Emily Beale was a legend among the Night Stalkers. And so she should be, considering her many, many firsts and achievements and successful missions. (If you want details – and you should if you love military romance! – check out the original Night Stalkers series that began with The Night is Mine.)

The thing about legends is that people generally expect them to be dead. Or at least retired. Definitely past their prime.

But Emily Beale is none of the above. She’s clearly not dead, she’s still on active duty, and she’s not in the least past her prime. It’s just that her missions have shifted from overt to so covert they are black-in-black, while she seemingly spends her days and her time and her energy running Henderson Ranch and it’s many, many side-businesses with her husband, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Henderson (retired) and raising their tween daughters.

It’s a good life. It’s a happy life. And it’s a fulfilling life. Well, it is for Mark. For Emily – not quite so much. Almost, but not quite.

Which is when and where Colonel Cassius McDermott, the current commander of the Night Stalkers, drops into Henderson Ranch with an offer that Emily Beale both does and doesn’t want to refuse. Cass is being promoted out of the job he’s held for the past decade. The Night Stalkers need someone who knows the command from the inside out AND has the necessary intelligence and experience to think outside the box – because 21st century warfare no longer takes place inside that box.

The Night Stalkers need Emily Beale to step up and take the reins – at least long enough to prepare someone to follow the trail that she’ll blaze. Again.

Escape Rating A-: There are two – or maybe it’s three – plot points circling the skies in this first book in the Night Stalkers Reload series.

(If you haven’t read the original series, it is marvelous and well-worth a read. Howsomever, you don’t have to read it first to get into this one. As with many romance series, it’s the setting and the setup that carries over from book to book – or series to series – and not the main characters. Not that previous main characters don’t appear in later books or later series, but you don’t have to know – or remember – all the deets about what happened before to get into what’s happening now. Of course, that doesn’t mean you won’t WANT to, but you don’t HAVE to.)

Back to those plot circles. The first, biggest and most obvious is the return of Emily Beale to the Night Stalkers. Not because she takes over the story, but she does take command, links long-term readers back to the original series – and, and most importantly – shows Beale as a woman at mid-career AND midlife caught between a huge rock and a ginormous hard place that seems real to any woman caught in that middle – even if they aren’t or weren’t an elite fighter pilot.

Emily loves her family, loves the life they’ve built, is mostly satisfied with the way things are and feels all of her commitments very strongly. Those black-in-black operations that she handles intelligence and analysis for keep her hand in without taking her away from the life she’s built.

But she’s not done, not intellectually and not emotionally. Her husband has retired from the military because their life at Henderson Ranch satisfies him all the way down to his toes. That’s not true for Emily. And yet, she doesn’t want to go back into the field.

Which doesn’t mean that there isn’t something missing in her life. Just as there will be something missing if she takes command of the Night Stalkers. Either choice leaves her half-bereft and full of regrets.

It’s so easy to feel for her dilemma. The specifics of her choice aside, the fact that she has to choose is very true-to-life. And that eventually realizes that she can’t handle the huge task before her without help – both from her family and from the people she commands and serves with.

At the same time, as with all of the books in the Night Stalkers series, there are two other plots that move from the foreground to the background as the story follows the early months of Emily’s command.

Both of those storylines rotate around Captains Sharelle Vargas and Troy Ryland, the present-day number one pilot team in the 160th SOAR. Their relationship is in flux in multiple ways. They’ve been carrying torches for each other since the day they were assigned together – three long years ago. But Troy knows that he’s a short-timer, getting out after 10 years to return to his family’s struggling farm. And he knows that Sharelle is in until the day they take her wings – or rotors – away.

A relationship is impossible – or it should be. But even as Troy’s contract is winding down, their romance is heating up.

And so is the danger of the black-in-black mission they’ve been assigned – to disrupt the supply chain between North Korean arms manufacturers and the Russian military fighting in Ukraine. All they’ll have to do is sabotage the Trans Siberian Railway using stolen Russian helicopters in Russian airspace with no one being the wiser – not even on their own side. Ever.

The mission is fascinating – and perhaps just a tiny bit prescient – which is scarier than any reader will want to admit. The romance is very much in the author’s trademark style in that it is a relationship of absolute equals in every possible way. Even if Troy has a bit of the misunderstandammits – not with Sharelle, but with his own hopes, dreams and particularly his obligations. For a really smart man – which he is – the situation he’s put himself into is pretty much the opposite.

But he does finally get his brain in gear along with his heart, leading to a terrific happy ending for the romance, even as the future of the Night Stalkers begins to wrap itself around his partner.

I’ve been a fan of this author since I read the very first Night Stalkers book, The Night is Mine, back in 2012. This series – and all of the author’s other series that I’ve dipped into and/or devoured over the years – have always been an excellent reading time – and this first entry in the Reload series absolutely did not buck that trend.

If you’re a fan of military romance in particular, or if you are just jonesing for a romance where the characters are always standing on equal ground – in spite of or because of whatever emotional baggage they may be trailing behind them – Buchman is a author who always delivers no matter the setting or setup. This reader will certainly be back for the next book in the Night Stalkers Reload series whenever it appears – and in the meantime I’m definitely looking forward to the next book in the Miranda Chase series, Wedgetail, coming this Fall!

A- #BookReview: The Hero She Craves by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Hero She Craves by Anna HackettThe Hero She Craves by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure romance, contemporary romance
Series: Unbroken Heroes #3
Pages: 248
Published by Anna Hackett on June 13, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

The last thing he expects on his ship is the off-limits woman he can’t stop thinking about—his best friend’s daughter.
After a tough military career as a Navy SEAL, and a member of a covert Ghost Ops team, Lorenzo “Ren” Santoro now calls a research ship home. The ocean, very few people, and solitude…it’s all he needs.
Then as a favor to his best friend, he agrees to take a research team to sea to test a top-secret Navy project. He’s shocked to discover his best friend’s daughter is one of the scientists. The beautiful Halle Bradshaw who Ren once kissed, who ignites a powerful craving inside him. She’s too young, too innocent, and too off-limits.
When strange things start happening to Halle, Ren suspects she’s in danger…and he’ll do anything to keep her safe.
Marine biologist Halle loves the ocean, her work…and Ren Santoro. Being aboard his ship, she finally has the chance to show the stubborn man how good they could be together.
But someone is targeting the highly classified project she’s working on. One she can’t let fall into enemy hands.
The only person she can trust is Ren. Forced to abandon their ship, they will face the danger of the sea and the wilds of a jungle-covered island, all while being hunted by a relentless enemy.
Ren and Halle will no longer be able to hide from their white-hot desire or their demons. She’s determined to convince him to take a chance on love…but first, they have to survive.

My Review: 

Some tropes are classics for a reason, and The Hero She Craves wonderfully illustrates every single one of those reasons for one of my absolute faves.

There’s a bit of an age gap between former Navy SEAL Lorenzo “Ren” Santoro and Halle Bradshaw. And so there should be, as Halle’s dad is Ren’s mentor AND best friend. Tom Bradshaw saved Ren’s life when a young, tough, and let’s face it, dumb Ren tried to steal the older man’s car.

Instead of turning him in, Tom Bradshaw turned Ren’s life around, which means that Ren was around to watch Halle turn from a sulky, grieving teen after the loss of her mom in an automobile accident, to a beautiful woman that he knows he should keep his hands off of.

At her 20th birthday party, he didn’t. It’s been three years and neither of them has ever been able to forget that one, searing kiss. The one that marked both of their hearts – even if Ren is too caught up in guilt – and the damn ‘bro code’ to admit it – while Halle is just a bit too innocent to go out and get her man.

But those  three years later, Halle’s tired of waiting for Ren to quit avoiding her and the tension simmering between them. She’s a marine biologist, he’s the second-in-command of the research ship her team has contracted with for their latest round of experiments with a highly experimental – and sought after – submersible.

She thinks she’ll have all the time in the world to pin him down. He thinks he only has to avoid spending too much time with his greatest temptation for four days and then he can go back to avoiding the inevitable.

The forces that want to steal the submersible – a device that is even more revolutionary than Ren and his captain were originally told – have put Halle in their crosshairs as the weak link in the device’s security.

But Halle’s not weak at all – not with Ren to protect her from the very, very bad guys. Especially when he finally gets hit with the clue by four that the last thing he ever needs to protect her from is himself.

Escape Rating A-: Three books in, I have to say that I’ve enjoyed the first two books in the Unbroken Heroes series, The Hero She Needs and The Hero She Wants, but this is the first one where I’ve got to admit that this time around I fell hard for the cover, too.

That being said, the story in this entry in the series combines something that has been a feature in the whole series so far with one of my favorite romance tropes.

Not a single one of the heroines in the Unbroken Heroes series has been any kind of damsel. It’s true that they’ve each experienced more than their fair share of distress, but they’ve each participated 100% in their own rescues – often by rescuing themselves first. Halle doesn’t quite have that opportunity, but she keeps up with Ren through every step and stroke and kick of their dangerous escape, doing her part to make it deadly for the other guys and not for them.

No matter how kickass Halle turns out to be – and she does – the tension that lies at the heart of Ren’s bad case of “I’m not worthy” revolves around two very real problems. Ren is her dad’s best friend – and her dad is not going to be happy that someone at least a decade older than his daughter can’t keep his hands off of her. And there’s that decade or so itself. I adore an age gap romance because the problems involved are very real – and they are here as well.

It’s not that Halle isn’t an adult and doesn’t know her own mind or heart, it’s that they are at different points in their lives, have different-sized trains of emotional baggage behind them, and will need to reconcile those differences to have a decent chance at a future.

Of course, first they have to deal with the villains chasing them, otherwise they won’t have a future to worry about. And it’s that realization that gets Ren to finally acknowledge what’s been between them for so long.

I had a terrific time with this latest entry in the Unbroken Heroes series, and I have plenty to look forward to. The author’s next book will be a wrap-up novella in her Sentinel Security series, Stone. I’ve already read it and it was a terrific finale for that series! After that, it’ll be back to New Orleans for the Fury Brothers, which I’m very much looking forward to because I always enjoy books set in that fantastic city!

#BookReview: My Dearest Mackenzie by Rachel Blaufeld

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
#BookReview: My Dearest Mackenzie by Rachel BlaufeldMy Dearest Mackenzie by Rachel Blaufeld
Format: ebook
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: contemporary romance
Series: 40s Love and Romance #3
Pages: 217
Published by Rachel Blaufeld Publishing on April 25, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

Frankie Burns, brash and bold on the outside, divorced and scarred on the inside, is determined to figure out what really happened with her Paps and his long-lost love, Rosie. Understanding why the duo didn’t find their happily-ever-after is her biggest mission. With every inch of her five-foot-two frame, she’s determined to discover why they were separated and forced to live a life without one another, convinced it will fix her own unhappiness.
Mackenzie Miller, handsome, rich, and one of New York’s most eligible bachelors, keeps everyone at an arm’s length and believes the only barometer to happiness is how wealthy and powerful he becomes. Shoving back his grandmother Milly’s wishes for him to find an everlasting love, he is successful in every other area of life. Abandoned by his mother, fairy tales are not part of Mack’s world, but running his makeup and perfume empire is paramount.
That is… until a feisty blond woman blasts into his life and won’t accept no for an answer when it comes to looking for a connection between his beloved Milly and her beloved Paps. He doesn’t understand the severity of her search. She needs to know the story to fill a gap in her own life.
The twist neither of them expects is falling for one another in the process…

My Review:

It’s not exactly a meet-cute, although Mackenzie Miller thinks that Frances Burns is plenty cute – also feisty and ferocious – which is how she managed to barge her 5 foot nothing self into his usually well-guarded office.

Frankie has a quest that Mack doesn’t even believe in – and he’s not remotely willing to hear her out. He’s pretty sure that her quest is for his money – and he’s been there and done that and is way, way over any further attempts.

But Frankie doesn’t care about his money – or the cosmetics and perfume empire he inherited from his beloved grandmother Milly.

Although that’s not quite right. Frankie is interested in one product and one only. A perfume that is now considered old fashioned and was discontinued long ago. Frankie only cares about “Rose’s Lily” because it was named for the love of her late grandfather’s life.

Frankie found the letters that Milly wrote to James Burns during the year that they fell in love – back when her grandfather and Mack’s grandmother were seventeen. Milly’s father – Mack’s great-grandfather – dragged the young lovers apart and got Milly married off before she even turned eighteen because Milly was Jewish and James Burns was not – and in those days that mattered and it mattered a lot.

But neither James nor Milly EVER forgot the person who was their “One” – not over the course of their long and relatively successful, but separate, lives.

Frankie, whose own tilt at the “Happy Ever After” windmill went down in flames, feels like she needs to learn what happened to that young woman her grandfather loved and lost in order to get some closure on the loss of the person who meant the most to her in this world.

At first, Mack doesn’t believe her. Then again, his mother’s abandonment of him to his grandmother’s waiting arms left him with a whole trunk of emotional baggage that he mostly deals with by running away, including a belief that romantic love doesn’t really exist.

But the irresistible force has met the immovable object – and sparks have been struck no matter how much both Frankie and Mack deny it – and each other – at every turn.

Escape Rating B: This isn’t exactly a dual-timelines story. It is a bit, but not really. Mack and Frankie’s tempestuous relationship – whatever it might be at the time – is always front and center in the story. What they discover about the past really doesn’t change things for them – although it does change some of the dynamics in their present-day relationships with others.

Their journey of discovery, both of their grandparents’ past and of their mutual present, is a story of two steps forward and one step back for multiple reasons – although the biggest reason is that every time they get close emotionally Mack runs away. Often literally. Once leaving Frankie behind in the Hamptons with no transportation.

(Not that ride-sharing isn’t a thing, and not that she doesn’t call one, but really, that’s a douche move. Or at least the move of a man who’s scared of touching his own emotions – let alone anyone else’s. And his behavior dovetails all too well and very badly with Frankie’s fears of abandonment.)

Each time they discover something about the past – it temporarily derails their present. Not because the revelations are so terrible, but because each one peels back a layer of reserve and self-protection and neither of them is really all that great at handling any of THAT.

Even though they should be as both are well into adulthood – and for the most part are doing a decently successful job of adulting. But that also means that their emotional scar tissue is many layers deep – and that scraping at it hurts rather a lot.

I really enjoyed that this was a romance between two people at midlife – and not fresh and dewy 20somethings. Their baggage is real and heavy, but the rewards feel that much sweeter because they were much harder to earn.

At the same time, the story they are searching for, Paps and Milly’s blighted young love, had a lot of resonance for this reader. Not because there’s something like their story in my own family’s history, but because the idea of it, that young lovers could be forcibly separated by a difference in religion – to the point of disownment or declaring the one who married out to be deceased – was very real in my own family. It’s a practice that has changed over time, but there were a few cousins of my parents’ generation who disappeared from family gatherings only to reappear decades later with non-Jewish spouses after the immigrant generation of the family had passed on.

Also, Milly’s real name was Rose and so was my own grandmother’s. So there’s that.

Returning to Frankie and Mack – as the story itself does frequently and often. I liked their midlife romance. I felt that their emotional baggage had weight and heft and made a huge difference both in what brought them together and what kept them apart. I really did enjoy their journey, but as a reader I felt like the book should have ended a bit sooner. The last few chapters dragged a bit because it felt like everything had been resolved and I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And it finally did, but when it dropped it was more of a whimper than a thud and didn’t seem to quite justify those last “slice of new life” chapters. Not that it wasn’t nice to see their HEA get firmly planted, but the lingering last bits did, well, linger a bit too long.

But I still did enjoy My Dearest Mackenzie with its dip into the past and its exploration of midlife romance in the present. I didn’t learn that this is might be part in a series until I finished, so I’ll be looking for the author’s loosely connected 40s, Love and Romance series that starts with The Back Nine, the next time I’m in the mood for a bit of romance.

TLC

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Reviews:

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#BookReview: Knightqueen by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Knightqueen by Anna HackettKnightqueen by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Oronis Knights #3
Pages: 221
Published by Anna Hackett on May 2, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

A queen and her battle-scarred guard are on the run on an alien planet…with a relentless enemy hunting them.
Knightqueen Carys of Oron lives a life of duty to her people and planet. After the murder of her parents, she worked hard to become a fair and dedicated leader. She never expected to be abducted by the vicious Gek’Dragar and locked in a mountain prison, but having her head knightguard at her side makes it bearable. Older, scarred Sten is duty personified, the one man she’s always been able to trust.
He’s also the only man she’s ever loved, not that she’s ever told him that.
Knightguard Thorsten Carahan has sworn to protect his knightqueen, and lives and breathes her safety. He works hard to keep his mind on his duty, and not on the too young, too beautiful, and too kind queen who is way out of his league. But now they’ve escaped their enemy’s prison and are on the run on a dangerous planet. When they learn that the Gek’Dragar have created a lethal weapon to use against the Oronis, Sten knows he must get Carys home. But with danger at every turn, lines get blurred.
With only each other to depend on, Carys and Sten’s bond of duty and respect tangles with forbidden desire and need. As passion flares, they can no longer deny their connection, and they will discover just how far they are willing to go for their people…and each other.

My Review:

When last we left our heroes – actually, in this particular case, it’s more like “when first we met our heroes” back in the first book in the Oronis Knights series, Knightmaster. In the first story, the Oronis had just welcomed a delegation from Terra, our very own Earth, in the hopes of forging an alliance to fight the rapacious Gek’Dragar.

The Terrans had already formed a similar alliance with the Eons, in spite of a somewhat rocky beginning, as part of the stories told in the marvelous Eon Warriors series. The Eons are long-standing allies of the Oronis, and now all three planets face the same enemy, the Gek’Dragar.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” as that saying goes. Not that this alliance was EVER smooth sailing, as it began back in Knightmaster with the Gek’Dragar kidnapping the Oronis Knightqueen and her Knightguard, and framing the Terrans for the crime.

But once that misdirection got straightened out, the Oronis and the Terrans have been on a joint mission to rescue the Knightqueen – assuming that she and her Knightguard don’t manage to rescue themselves, first.

Which is where we left those heroes at the end of the second book in the series, Knighthunter. That hunter team blew open and blew up the prison where the queen and her bodyguard, were being held, and Carys and Sten escaped in the chaos.

Meaning that they unknowingly ran away from their rescuers, jumped out of the frying pan into the fire – sometimes literally – and have spent the past several days outrunning their Gek’Dragar pursuers, throwing off the effects of the drugs they were injected with that suppressed their normally formidable powers, and generally running themselves into the ground.

Because the monsters on this hellhole planet are just as deadly as the Gek’Dragar – if not maybe a bit worse – and Carys and Sten have no weapons or armor until their powers return.

All they have is each other. Which has always been more than enough – even if neither of them has ever admitted that to themselves – let alone each other.

It’s not right, it’s not proper, for a Knightqueen to fall in love with her Knightguard. But this time, it’s inevitable.

Escape Rating B+: Knightqueen is the culmination of the whole, entire Oronis Knights series – which is only three books long. Meaning that, on the one hand, you really do kind of need to start at the beginning with Knightmaster, while on the other hand, three novellas is just a lovely amount of reading for a rainy spring weekend – of which there are PLENTY this time of year!

Knightqueen is a bodyguard romance. Maybe not exactly like the movie – certainly the SFnal setting if Knightqueen is literally light years away from the movie – but the trope is the trope is the trope – and it’s ALL here in Knightqueen.

Except the music, so you’ll just have to bring your own. I kept hearing Whitney Houston singing “I Will Always Love You” in the back of my mind as I read – and it took the longest time to figure out why.

Unlike the movie, the ending of Knightqueen results in a resounding HEA. That may seem like a bit of a spoiler, but all of this author’s stories end in either an HEA or an HFN depending on just how FUBAR the world they are set on happens to be.

It is part of why I enjoy her work so much.

But this particular entry in the series hit one of my less than favorite tropes pretty hard. The relationship between Carys and Sten does have its questionable aspects, she’s queen, he’s her bodyguard, he’s over a decade older which isn’t itself enough to make things squicky but he watched her grow up which is at least on the border of questionable.

As it’s usually not so much the years as the mileage, it’s not the age difference per se so much as it is that Carys is inexperienced with romantic relationships – which is not a surprise as she’s been queen from a very young age and it would never have been politically safe for her to go on dates or experiment with either love or sex.

Nevertheless, the trope that this fell into that put me off a bit was that Sten had a really bad case of the “I’m not worthy’s” that was a whole lot more personal and ingrained in his psyche than just the difference in their respective stations. This is a “me” thing and may not be a “you” thing.

Putting it another way – I did love the bodyguard romance but wasn’t thrilled with how little the bodyguard thought of himself in it. Your reading mileage obviously may vary.

That being said, I still had a grand time with the entire Oronis Knights series and am a bit sorry to see it come to end even though I’m happy to see the Gek’Dragar put in their place – a grave.

As this series has come to a close – and doesn’t end with teasers for a spinoff, it looks like the author will be turning back to contemporary action adventure romances for most of this year. Leaving this reader looking forward to the next book in her Unbroken Heroes series, The Hero She Craves, coming next month!

#BookReview: Fury Brothers: Burn by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Fury Brothers: Burn by Anna HackettBurn (Fury Brothers #3) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure romance, contemporary romance, romantic suspense
Series: Fury Brothers #3
Pages: 274
Published by Anna Hackett on March 13, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

I have one goal—arrest billionaire businessman Kavner Fury.
I’m dedicated to my job as a Treasury agent, and taking down crooked financial criminals. Just like the one who destroyed my family.
Kavner Fury is wealthy, powerful, and ambitious, a combination I know too well. He’s New Orleans’ favorite billionaire. Sure, he’s also handsome, charming, with a hard body no man who sits behind a desk should have, but I have no plans to let that distract me.
He’s my enemy, my nemesis…and pure temptation. I won’t let our scorching attraction derail my investigation. But as my money laundering case leads me into dangerous territory, I find myself under attack.
Injured and betrayed, I’m shocked that there is only one man I can turn to. One man who can keep me safe.
Now I’m working with Kavner, side by side, and I uncover a protective man who’s taking a blow-torch to my icy defenses. I get to see the real man beneath the gorgeous exterior, and I’m having trouble keeping my hands off him.
Suddenly, the only man I trust is my enemy, and we’re both caught up in a fiery attraction that could leave us both burned.

My Review:

Treasury Agent London Coleman investigates white collar crimes. She’s back in her hometown of New Orleans on the trail of someone laundering money for the cartels by buying expensive works of art with dirty money, shipping that art out of the U.S. to sell, and returning the ‘cleaned’ money to the cartel to do more of whatever terrible things they do with their money – which is mostly drugs.

London is happy to be back home, not just because she gets to spend time with her sister Lexxie, but because she honestly loves the city that made her who she is. Literally as London looks like the Creole descendant that she is, while the genetic gumbo that made her and Lexxie gave them completely different skin tones as well as looks.

As this third entry in the Fury Brothers series opens, the person of interest, both in her case and personally – even though she’s not ready to admit the second part even to herself – is billionaire businessman Kavner Fury.

His name has come up more than a few times in her investigation. She thinks it’s because he’s dirty and she hasn’t found the evidence yet. In reality, it’s because Kavner’s rich, he likes art, and he especially likes donating art to museums and galleries where kids just like the ones he and his brothers used to be have the opportunity to view beautiful things in just a little bit of peace and safety to help them hold on and survive until they can live their own dreams.

Just as he and his brothers did when they were all in the foster system and all too frequently at the mercy of neglectful, abusive or just plain violent caregivers.

London may not be willing to admit it, at least not yet, but keeping Kavner in her sights does put her in the places where whoever is hiding in the shadows is doing their dirty business. And he’s much too easy on the eyes, and too smooth in his business dealings, not to raise a few red flags.

That those red flags have more to do with her past than anything Kav has actually done is another secret that London is doing her damndest to keep to herself and out of her investigation. Something that proves utterly impossible when the cartel starts gunning for her, directly and literally – and Kav is the only one standing at her side and watching her back.

Escape Rating B+: Burn is a quick, hot read that is a whole lot of fun – for both parts of the category ‘romantic suspense’ into which this book and its series most definitely fit.

Like the first two books, Fury and Keep, this one is told in alternating first-person viewpoints, meaning that first we see inside London’s head and then we get Kavner’s take on what happens next.

Her head is a bit of a hot mess. The case has been long, drawn out, and utterly frustrating. The powers-that-be are hammering her boss hard. London has more than a bit of tunnel vision, seeing Kavner as a stand in for the fraudster who suckered her own father in and ruined the family’s life. She’s fixated on him being in this scheme up to his neck, when really it’s that she’s in the River DeNial up to hers.

Kavner isn’t worried about London’s investigation because he knows there’s nothing to find. He may hide the darker details of his origin story in the foster system before he and his brothers met, he may have taken on a much more polished veneer than he’d prefer because it’s good for business, but his money was legally earned, all his businesses are completely legit as well as profitable, and he really does give back a tremendous amount of money and effort to the city he loves.

And he has all the money he needs to get himself out of any ‘manufactured’ trouble. That’s what money and the lawyers it can buy are for, after all.

Which means that while London is focussing on Kavner as a suspect, Kav is keeping his sights on London as a woman – in ways that make him think, not just sexy thoughts, but also romantic and protective ones. The kind of thoughts he’s been avoiding all of his adult life, too busy being focused on buying and creating financial security for himself and his brothers, and their whole extended family.

What made this story work well for this reader is the way that London and Kav worked against some familiar tropes. He does not have a case of the ‘I’m not worthy’s’ that happen entirely too often. He’s just been too busy to think about settling down. London is definitely in distress, but she’s no damsel. She stands her ground and maintains her own boundaries even in the face of Kav’s protectiveness. She doesn’t get rescued by Kav and his brothers – she gets assistance in her own rescue.

There’s a whole lot of push-pull between these two workaholics and it’s fun – and filled with sexytimes – to see them work towards each other and their happy ever after. Often in spite of themselves. Making Burn the kind of read that will make any reader burn up the pages in one sitting.

There are two Fury Brothers left, Reath and Beau. Currently neither of them are even thinking about looking for an HEA of their own but that’s about to change. Their stories are coming in the fall, in Take (probably Reath’s story) and Claim. In the meantime, I have Knightqueen, the climactic final book in the author’s science fiction romance Oronis Knights series to look forward to. And I most definitely AM!

A- #BookReview: The Hero She Wants by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Hero She Wants by Anna HackettThe Hero She Wants (Unbroken Heroes) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure romance, contemporary romance, romantic suspense
Series: Unbroken Heroes #2
Pages: 220
Published by Anna Hackett on January 25, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

The last thing he wants is to trek into the jungle to save the President’s daughter.
Shepherd “Shep” Barlow left the military behind. All he wants is to stay on his Colorado mountain—alone, with no interruptions, and no people. He especially likes to avoid people.
Then his former commander arrives, asking him to risk his life on a deadly mission to Central America. A mission to rescue the archeologist daughter of the President of the United States.
Once a member of a covert Ghost Ops team, Shep has the skills to get in quietly and rescue Ms. Sinclair. And as much as he wishes otherwise, he can’t leave an innocent woman in danger.
Hayden Sinclair loves her work. It keeps her far away from the liars, cheats, and phonies in Washington D.C. But when she’s abducted from her archeological dig in Nicaragua, she’s plunged into a life-or-death situation. Her captors plan to use her as a bargaining chip, and Hayden knows she has to escape.
What she never expected was to collide with the world’s biggest, grumpiest rescuer.
On the run in the jungle with six and a half feet of rugged, muscular, scowling man, she finds Shep rude and annoying. But as her captors ruthlessly hunt them, she also discovers a man who’ll risk his own life to protect hers.
Neither of them are looking for love, especially when they have to fight to survive…besides, there could never be a happy ending for the daughter of the President and a grumpy, battle-scarred soldier, could there?

My Review:

Archaeologists make the best protagonists – because there are just SO MANY WAYS they can get into trouble. Just ask Indiana Jones – or better yet, his father, Professor Henry Jones.

That rule certainly applies to this author’s work, as her very first heroine, in her very first book, At Star’s End, was an archaeologist among the star-scattered human diaspora. It’s a theme that has cropped up again and again, not just with the entire Treasure Hunter Security series (distant ancestors of the crew in that first book, but, also in this latest work with Dr. Hayden Sinclair, expert in pre-Columbian Central American history.

An archaeologist who also happens to be the daughter of the sitting President of the United States.

Hayden was determined to go on this dig, and determined to do it as a working archaeologist and not as a visiting dignitary or show pony or whatever. This is her job, and she’s determined to do it well and more importantly without a whole squad of Secret Service agents guarding her every step.

No matter how much, as it turns out, she might need them. Or, at least her teammates and fellow archaeologists do. Or did.

After all, the kidnappers plan on keeping her alive so that she can be auctioned off to the highest bidder looking for leverage on the U.S. President. The rest of her colleagues are merely…collateral damage.

Hayden Sinclair, is tied up and held captive in the middle of a compound full of the men who just killed her team and her friends. She should be at her lowest ebb – and she kind of is. But that doesn’t stop her from rescuing herself.

Only to walk straight into the arms of the one-man rescue team that has been sent to take care of that job FOR her.

Shep Barlow may be just a bit behind on Hayden’s jailbreak, but he’s EXACTLY the man she needs to walk beside her every step of the way home. No matter what it takes. No matter what he has to give up.

Because he’s the hero she wants, and she’ll do anything and defy anyone to keep him. Even her own father. Even Shep himself.

Escape Rating A-: This whole, entire series so far gives me a giant earworm. Everytime I even think about either of the books in this series so far, I get the chorus of Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” playing in my head. Or even better – or worse depending on persistence – the scene from Shrek II.

Although Hayden doesn’t actually NEED a hero. She’s already rescued herself. Not that she can’t use Shep’s help and survival skills, because she certainly can. But she’s no delicate flower and doesn’t need anyone who will treat her like one.

The title of this entry in the series says it all. Hayden doesn’t NEED a hero, but Shep Barlow is certainly the man she wants – precisely because he knows better than to treat her like she needs rescuing. Not even her father is able to figure that out.

What makes the story in this one such a compulsive page-turner is the way that Hayden and Shep jump together out of the frying pan and into yet another fire, over and over again, as her kidnappers do their damndest to close off all avenues of escape.

What makes the romance in this one sing and zing is that this is a romance of equals in spite of the heroine-in-jeopardy start, a romance that has to carry both partners’ heavy baggage until they finally figure out they can drop it all and hold onto each other for dear life. For the rest of their lives.

The Unbroken Heroes series has been terrific so far, beginning with The Hero She Needs and continuing with this second book, The Hero She Wants. The third book in the series, The Hero She Craves, is coming in June and I expect that terrific streak to continue. What I’m loving about this series so far is that, although the link in the series is through those heroes, it’s the heroines who stand up, take charge, and participate oh-so-actively in their own rescues.

There are no delicate flowers here, and that’s the way I like it. One of the other things I like is that this particular set of heroes has interesting friends in some very high and dangerous places, like Hayden’s father-the-president, and the stories have high stakes that extend beyond the mutual rescue and the heart stopping romance.

Which is reminding me quite a lot and very much of M.L. Buchman’s romantic suspense series(es), particularly his Miranda Chase series, where smart civilians find themselves walking the halls of power to find the loves of their lives and keep the country safe along the way. So if you’re looking for something to tide you over between Anna Hackett’s heroes, consider this a recommendation for M.L. Buchman’s books as excellent readalikes with lots to explore.

Meanwhile, I’ll be waiting for Anna Hackett’s next entry in her action/adventure romantic suspense Fury Brothers series, Burn, coming in March.

Grade A #BookReview: Gryphon by M.L. Buchman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: Gryphon by M.L. BuchmanGryphon (Miranda Chase NTSB #14) by M L Buchman
Format: ebook
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure, political thriller, technothriller, thriller
Series: Miranda Chase NTSB #14
Pages: 370
Published by Buchman Bookworks on January 23, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

With the rising threat of Russia, Sweden joins NATO for its own protection. But someone wants to make them pay—in blood. Sweden’s home-built, world-class jet fighters, the Saab JAS 39E Gripen—named for the mythological Gryphon—are falling out of the skies. The stability, the very existence of NATO could be torn apart, as if trapped in the Gryphon’s mighty eagle claws. Can Miranda’s team of air-crash investigators solve the crisis before the powerful lion-half shreds them asunder?

My Review:

Like all of the previous entries in the Miranda Chase series from the very first page in Drone, Gryphon is an edge-of-the-seat political technothriller with World War III looming over every action on every page.

What makes this OMG FOURTEENTH book in the series stand out is that this is the one where all of the hyper-competent people that we have come to know and love over the course of the series so far are anything but.

Not that they don’t still manage to get the job done – because of course they do! – but rather because it’s clear from the opening page that all of the members of Miranda’s team are broken after the events of Osprey – and Miranda herself is the most broken one of them all.

It’s hard to lead anyone anywhere when your heart, your soul and your entire psyche are lying in pieces on the ground at your feet.

But time, tide, plane crashes and international catastrophes wait for no one. Even if not a single one of Miranda’s team remotely has their shit together, between them they still have enough to figure out exactly which enemy is responsible for the recent series of disasters plaguing Sweden’s civilian and military aviation.

Although Sweden doesn’t have a whole lot of enemies. Which doesn’t make Ian Fleming’s old truism any less true, that “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” It’s just that this time around they’ll have to start by identifying just who they have to stop.

Escape Rating A: Gryphon is a hard read for fans of Miranda Chase and her team. Which isn’t to say that it’s not a good read, because it oh-so-definitely is. But rather, it’s hard to see people that we’ve come to like and respect and care about act this observably broken.

It’s a heartbreaking response to the events of the previous book, but damn it hurts to watch.

But it does make it easy for someone, actually a few someones, to slip a whole lot of things past them all – because they are all very much NOT at the top of their respective games. More like at the bottom.

The crisis is a conundrum, because it only makes sense in bad ways. Either the Swedish aviation industry is having the worst luck in the universe, over and over, or someone is out to get them. And yet, the usual suspects are all quiet.

And on the third hand being held behind someone’s back, considering the current crisis in the Ukraine, blaming Russia for everyone’s troubles is a damnably easy conclusion to jump to. So it becomes a question of whether Russia has faked out literally everyone – or whether someone else is trying to make it look that way in the hopes of, what? Causing World War III? Who is crazy enough to want to ring that bell?

A question which, in its own way, is at the center of what makes this series so damn good. Because both the question and the solution in each entry in the series isn’t about the techno part of the thriller. It’s always about the human factors. Technology may make the events and crises and calamities and near-catastrophes possible, but it’s always human beings who set them into motion for all too human reasons.

And it’s the humans of Miranda’s team – pulling together and putting it all together – that have to stop the worst from happening.

Not that the tech isn’t fascinating and not that we don’t get a lot of it while following Miranda and her team – but it’s the humans we feel for and with and it’s the human cost of the disaster they’re trying to prevent that make us keep turning pages until they pull literally everyone’s fat out of whatever particular fire they’re facing this time around.

And all of that is just, well, harder in Gryphon because the humans on all sides of this particular equation are all broken, The villains are broken because the game they are playing is not worth the cost, and the ‘good guys’ are broken because they’ve been pulling separately instead of pulling together, so they’re a mess and getting messier by the day.

Whether the radical solution they come up with to begin to start fixing their broken places is something that we’ll all get to find out in the next book in this awesome series, Wedgetail. Until that comes out this summer, we’ll all just have to hope right along with the rest of the team.

Review: The Hero She Needs by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Hero She Needs by Anna HackettThe Hero She Needs (Unbroken Heroes Book 1) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure romance, contemporary romance, romantic suspense
Series: Unbroken Heroes #1
Pages: 223
Published by Anna Hackett on December 7, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

The last thing he expects to catch in his river is a billionaire heiress.
Loner Boone Hendrix left the military with ghosts that haunt him. He lives with his dog Atlas on a farm in Vermont. Alone. Just the way he likes it. Until he rescues a half-drowned, beautiful brunette from his river.
Gemma Newhouse is the daughter of the richest man in America, and from the abrasions on her wrists and her drugged state, she’s on the run from someone dangerous. She’s nothing like Boone expected—sweet, smart, and likes baking—and she ignites a fierce need inside him.
Being a member of a covert Ghost Ops team taught him deadly skills, and he’ll use them all to keep her safe.
Gemma can’t remember the last twenty-four hours. All she knows is that someone abducted her. Someone dangerous. Her only goal is survival and she’s used to taking care of herself. She’s a constant disappointment to her driven, successful parents. She doesn’t want a brilliant career, all she wants is to bake and make people smile.
Finding herself in Boone’s strong arms wasn’t on her plan. Nor was his rugged face, hard body, and gold-brown eyes. She sees how much he’s cut himself off from life, how he believes he’s broken.
Thrust together, she realizes this quiet hero will do anything to protect her. Despite the danger around them, they can’t resist their growing attraction, but her captors are hunting her…
And Boone is the only thing standing in their way.

My Review:

When Gemma Newhouse runs away from her mysterious captors in the middle of densely forested nowhere, she doesn’t have time to hold out for a hero, she needs one right NOW. She doesn’t know there’s one just down the river – literally – so she does her damndest to get herself out of her kidnappers’ hands.

She doesn’t merely find one hero, she finds two. Or rather, one of those heroes pulls her out of the river that has been carrying her away from whoever grabbed her off the street in Los Angeles – just not as far or as fast as she would have liked.

If she were still conscious, that is.

But Atlas is a Very Good Boy, so he alerts his human that there’s something in the water that needs to be rescued. Which is exactly what Boone Hendrix does. Because that’s what he does – even if, or especially because – there was no one to rescue him when he needed it the most.

But, maybe that’s now after all, and maybe Gemma is that rescue. If he can just keep her alive long enough to deliver her to safety and figure out who is after her and why. While somehow managing to keep his hands off of her – even if that’s exactly where she wants them to be.

Unless, just maybe, she’s his rescue too.

Escape Rating A-: I always love it when the heroine rescues herself or is an active participant in her own rescue. Which is EXACTLY what Gemma Newhouse does. Everything that happens in this action adventure romance happens because first and most importantly, Gemma Newhouse put on her big girl panties and escaped from her captors.

She’s not a badass agent, she’s not a cop, she’s just a more-or-less ordinary woman that a bunch of asshole men believe is at their mercy for reasons she doesn’t even know yet. But as soon as she can get her feet under her after the drugs she was injected with even start to wear off – she’s off and running.

Boone – and Atlas – are her reward for taking care of her business. She just doesn’t know it yet.

The romance between Boone and Gemma is sweet and hot and funny, all at the same time. (Although a lot of that fun is that Gemma doesn’t want Atlas to witness any of the human’s ‘funny business’.)

Speaking of Atlas, he is a very good boy and is every bit as fine and good at the end of the story as he was at the beginning – if not a little better because he has two humans to spoil him instead of just one. So don’t worry about Atlas.

There’s more than enough to worry about between Gemma and Boone. Gemma is a combination of poor-little-rich-girl and bird-in-a-gilded-cage, but again, she’s doing a damn good job of filling her own well of purpose and happiness and kicking the door off the gilded cage. (OTOH, if she’d kept the bodyguards her dad wanted her to have she probably wouldn’t be in her present fix. OTOH, that might just have resulted in a couple of dead bodyguards as the stakes in all this are pretty high.)

It’s also excellent and different that Gemma’s relationship with her wealthy parents is still a loving one even though that relationship has a bunch of sharp edges in it. They’re not terrible, she’s not a misbehaving fuck-up, it’s just that they are not remotely on the same wavelength and everyone gets a bit hurt by it. Except for her parents’ megabucks, that relationship feels grounded in the real, which made it more interesting and all the better to empathize with.

Boone is one of the author’s classic too-damaged-to-think-he’s-good-enough heroes. He used to be a member of Vander Norcross’ Ghost Ops team (Vander’s book is The Powerbroker), and those ops left plenty of scars that may never heal. So Boone’s got a bad case of the I’m-not-worthies when it comes to a relationship with Gemma, but he’s all in on saving her life and is absolutely the right man for that job.

So, soft and sweet but with a core of steel goes head to head with hard and brittle with a core of marshmallow. The sweet treat that gets baked in that fire means that a good time is had by all the characters and absolutely for the reader as well.

I had a great reading time with this first entry in the author’s Unbroken Heroes series, and I can’t wait to see what happens with her next hero early next year.

Review: Fury Brothers: Keep by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Fury Brothers: Keep by Anna HackettKeep: A Grumpy Single Dad Romance (Fury Brothers Book 2) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure romance, contemporary romance, romantic suspense
Series: Fury Brothers #2
Pages: 250
Published by Anna Hackett on October 19, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

My boss is a tough, grumpy bounty hunter—and a hot single dad—and now he’s sworn to keep me safe, whether I like it or not.
My name’s Macy, and I always look on the bright side of things. Life’s too short not to. Super grump extraordinaire Colton Fury is the total opposite. Luckily for him, along with the muscled bod, tattoos, and rugged face, it works for him.
When I start getting creepy calls at the office and someone breaks into my house, it becomes clear I’m a target, and Coltsort of…loses his mind. He turns even bossier and more protective.
Now I’m living with him and his super cute daughter, and trying very hard to remember that I can’t let myself fall for him.Before long, there’s kissing, touching, and a whole lot more. Colt tells me—okay, more like growls at me—that he doesn’t do relationships. And I promise him no strings or complications.
Every day that passes, the complications are growing and I’m starting to realize I want them. All of them.
But soon, it’s not only me in danger, and it’s not only Colt who’ll risk it all to save the people he loves.
The Fury fierce, loyal, and live by their own codeFive men who grew up in foster care and became brothers by choice. They vow to always have each other’s no questions, no doubts, no hesitation. They protect their own…always.

My Review:

Colton Fury and Macy Underwood are each firmly of the opinion that they have their lives together all by themselves. Separately, that is.

Neither of them does relationships – at least romantic relationships. Macy’s certainly all in on her job as Colt’s office manager, wrangling the arrangements for his frequent trips to capture the latest escaped criminals while coercing him to deal with the resulting paperwork as often as needed.

Macy feels needed, the job pays well, and the problems she left behind in San Francisco are well back in her rearview mirror. Or at least she believes they are. And believes that big, tough successful bounty hunter Colt Fury – along with his equally fierce and protective brothers – take care of their own when anything goes wrong.

As evidenced by the way they all gathered around Dante Fury and HIS bartender turned love-of-his-life Mila when her past troubles came calling for her in the first book in the series, Fury.

Colt, on the other hand, doesn’t do relationships because the way he sees it his life is already full up. Not with romance, because he doesn’t think he deserves that, but with the loyalty of his brothers and the heartwarming and heartstopping love between Colt and his niece-turned-adopted-daughter, seven year old Daisy Fury. Making sure that Daisy has everything she needs is a full time job all by itself, and he thinks he can’t afford to split his heart’s focus to find a more adult kind of love.

When Macy starts receiving prank calls she assumes it’s nothing that needs anyone to handle it besides herself. Just like her free-spirited mother taught her.

At least until the pranks escalate to life-threatening accidents, and Colt Fury can’t stop himself from stepping in and taking over Macy’s security and a bit more of her life than either of them ever planned on. Not that they haven’t both had entirely too many seriously hot daydreams about all the delicious possibilities.

But Macy’s ex didn’t take no for an answer then, and doesn’t plan on taking one now that he’s chased her down to New Orleans. Unless the Fury Brothers take him down before its too late for both Macy AND Daisy.

Escape Rating B+: I liked Keep better than Fury because I was able to get inside Macy’s head in a way that I wasn’t Mila’s or even Dante’s. I also enjoyed Macy more as a character because she was getting on with her life and living her best one in spite of the EvilEx™ lurking behind her in San Francisco. She’s not focusing on him, she’s not constantly looking over her shoulder at him, she’s not even thinking much about him until he turns up like a bad penny and puts himself back in her life.

One of the fun things about this series so far is that the romances haven’t been insta-love. We enter the story at the point where the relationship turns so fast on its dime that it almost seems that way, but Colt and Macy have been working together for months when their story begins. They are already part of each other’s lives – and part of each other’s daydreams even if neither of them is willing to admit that.

Well, Macy is willing to admit to the occasional sexy daydream, but recognizes that it’s not a good idea to go there because they work together. Colt, on the other hand, has a bad case of “I’m not worthy” that he’s only able to start getting over when Macy needs him to protect her.

There’s also a bit of ‘Kidfic’ mixed in, as Colt is an excellent dad to Daisy, and part of the whole Fury Brothers brotherhood is wrapped around taking care of little Daisy Fury. When Macy goes all in on being another one of Daisy’s caregivers it gives the story a gooey center that just worked for me. (I’ve been reading a whole lot of 9-1-1 fanfic recently, in spite of having never watched the TV series, and a whole lot of that fandom is kidfics – which are awesome if the kid is awesome and Daisy so is!)

Of course Colt gets over his stupidity in thinking that he’s a) not good enough for Macy and b) gets to make that decision for her. Meanwhile, Macy, in spite of a bit of stupid decision making over a threat to Daisy, manages to rescue the little girl and sets up her own rescue quite handily in the process, proving to herself and the reader that she’s the perfect addition to the Fury Brothers’ family.

One final comment. This series so far has books with VERY long subtitles. The subtitle for Dante’s book, “a fake dating workplace romance” was only true for a little while. Not that it wasn’t a workplace romance, but the fake part of their fake dating didn’t last very long at all.

Very much on the other hand, Colt is a grumpy dad from the very first page of his story until the last. Grumpy is part of Colt’s core personality. That grumpiness hides a heart of marshmallow when it comes to his family, but he’s a grump through and through. That gets to a place of being considerably happier in his grumpiness over the course of this story adds just that extra bit of sweetness – albeit still covered in a crusty – but delicious – exterior. (Come to think of it, Colt is a bit like a s’more – or at least Macy certainly thinks so!)

Ending this entry in the series on a high note, at least for this reader, it looks like business mogul Kavner Fury will be going head to head with Treasury Agent Coleman in the next book in the Fury Brothers series, sometime next year. I always love it when the heroine is able to kick ass and take names alongside the heroes, so I can’t wait to see Coleman do her level best to take Kav down – one way or another!