Showing results by narrator "Nick Cracknell" in All Categories

Celia Gray finds herself house-sitting a silver-shingled cottage at Stony Point. She arrives with her guitar, a few staging jobs...and a bit of summertime sadness. That is, until an unforgettable group of beach friends draws her in like a breath of salt air. Sal DeLuca heard the words in a dream: Take me to the sea. So after a decade of demanding work, he takes his first vacation in years. When Stony Point's two wash-ashores, Sal and Celia, meet, some say it's a match made in beach-heaven.

I’ve been abducted by aliens and auctioned to an alien pirate. My epic love of movies sort of comes in handy, what with all the sci-fi suddenly in my face. Therefore, I don’t completely lose my mind when my new owner takes me to his ship where I learn I’m under the control of not one, but five space pirates. (And it’s not scary at all when I only meet four of them, and everyone warns me away from the mystery fifth alien.) Luckily, they’re not deterred by the fact that I've come to them carrying a passenger. I’m pregnant.

During two August weeks, denim designer Maris Carrington and coastal architect Jason Barlow prepare for their much-anticipated wedding. The wedding is a reason for old friends to gather again; to meet in their shabby beach hangout and get the jukebox cranking; to walk that weathered boardwalk beneath a starry sky; to breathe the sweet salt air. "Cures what ails you," one of the friends, Neil, always said, long before his life was sadly claimed. When Maris discovers Neil's long-lost journal, its passages reveal a heartbreaking secret.

Escape to Stony Point, cuff your jeans, and walk along the water's edge in this nostalgic story bringing old friends and their lives back to the sea. After years of pursuing a denim design career, Maris Carrington never imagined trading her Chicago studio for a New England shingled cottage. But a forgotten home movie tucked inside a dusty attic box leads to an unexpected summer.... Can Maris ever really go back?

I was abducted by aliens and auctioned to a positively lovely, bleak place called the Underwater Pleasure Dome. An amphibious alien with hands like bug zappers helped spring me, and if you've followed my friends' adventures, you know Dohrein and I teamed up because we're both equally stellar, and awesome attracts awesome. This is the story of what happened after abduction life. The good part. The part where we settle in and build brand-new lives on this brand-new planet. I just need to have tea with my alien-in-law and convince her to set her pet humans free. No biggie.

Once the belle of her village, life took a dark turn for Adelaide upon her parent’s death. Plagued by lingering grief, there was not a soul who didn’t turn their back on her. They called her angry and spiteful...hell, they called her a monster. One fateful day Adelaide finds herself alone, lingering on the edge of the perished woods - a cursed and evil place. Without warning, an orc army attacks. Her village ablaze, Adelaide races into the perished woods, seeking refuge in a place of nightmares. With orcs at her heels, she’s desperate to escape.

All Deputy US Marshal Dirk Sterling’s instincts warn him not to trust his new boss, Chief Emory Grey. In the few weeks Dirk has known her, Grey has already lied to him and is proving to be something other than she seems. Grey tasks Sterling with heading up a Federal Task Force to hunt down an international smuggler suspected of crossing the US border carrying an invaluable ancient artifact.

In 1558, during the reign of Bloody Queen Mary, Earth is visited by extraterrestrials who initiate first contact. Their mission is to gather samples of life on Earth and observe but not interact with humanity. After witnessing a brutal execution, their patience is tested beyond breaking point... First Contact is a series of standalone novels that explore humanity's first interaction with extraterrestrial life.

When my employee propositions me, I’m taken aback. Yeah, she's gorgeous, exotic, and adventuresome, but besides the issue of me being her boss, she proposes something casual. Which is reason enough to give me pause, because I’m not a casual kind of guy. But long story short, we get together, it’s great, and I’m crazy about her, which means I have a big problem. Seven of them, actually—that’s how many brothers she has. And I don’t know about you, but to me, that sounds like the recipe for an @$$ whooping.

Frank Lombardo's never been spontaneous. The closest he's come was accepting a side job chopping firewood for a lakeside community of rustic cabins. But with another lonely holiday season imminent, Frank's sister urges him to be spontaneous because, seriously, who does he ever expect to meet out in the woods?

With a suitcase in hand and a bit of reluctance, too, Penny Hart arrives at Cardinal Cabin on Snowflake Lake. It's only for a brief stay, though nobody knows where she is. Not her boss, not her friends....

Only Frank Lombardo.

Lining the granite walls of the first, high above an orderly reservoir of fossilized eggs, an inscription spanning 85 miles describes the genome of a proto-mammalian species eradicated during the Permian Extinction. In the next, researchers discover etchings of the constellations as they would have appeared across the eons; a global timeline of 10 billion years remembered and foretold by a primordial intelligence beyond our own.

Aspiring rock star Annika Brisby thinks she knows where her life is going until she steps through a broken portal that leaves her stranded in a fae-filled realm of fairies, shapeshifter druids, psychic vampires, and other mythical beings. Unable to return until it's repaired, she's rescued by wood nymphs who believe her sudden arrival is no accident. After being taken in by a prominent family of elves, Annika finds herself struggling to resist the seductive spell of their youngest son, Talvi.

Scandal. Blackmail. Obsession. It's just another day if you're a Marinossian. When Annika disappears without a trace, Talvi launches the hunt for his most infuriating rival yet. His only clues are from a government he's increasingly at odds with. In exchange for access to their resources, he does the unthinkable and reveals Annika's true nature. Time is short, but the list of names Talvi can trust keeps getting shorter.

The aliens who have been raising us humans for hundreds of generations love to focus on developing and accentuating all the traits that Homo sapiens can express. And the man I’ve been locked in a cage with is an example of selective tampering at its most extreme.

I have one rule: Never mix business with pleasure. I was never much good at following rules. Alright, so my new partner isn’t the worst. It doesn’t hurt that Logan is big, tall, and smokin’ hot. I started out hating him, but this human hunk is starting to grow on me….when we’re not fighting like cats and dogs. Even our coworker thinks there’s something going on between us. Is there something between us? Humans like him and faeries like me don’t usually click, but we’re on a case in Arizona and things are getting pretty freakin’ hot.

Runic Awakening is the first book in the Runic series, a contemporary epic fantasy series set in the world of Doma, where magical engineers called Runics rule the land. They are equaled in power only by Weavers, men and women that can manipulate the very fabric of the universe with their wills.

After a heartbreaking summer on the Connecticut shore, a group of beach friends is as adrift as an unmoored rowboat. When a dismayed Jason Barlow drives as far away from the sea as he can, leaving behind his wife, Maris, as well as their stately cottage on the bluff, that news hits like a sudden wave. Gathering over an intimate meal in a coastal diner, the friends make a solemn pact to lean on each other and not make any more rash decisions. Which is all well and good, until each friend wavers--testing relationships, commitments, and especially love in the little beach community of Stony Point. But can the magic of the weathered boardwalk, whispering lagoon grasses, and sweet salt air cure what ails them?

I’ve never laid eyes on a man, not even in pictures. Eden is a woman’s world...a world no man has ever stepped foot on. But then the Khetar arrive. They’re big alien men, in a big alien ship, with big alien d—let’s just say it’s a big problem, especially because High Command assigns me to operate the airlock for a diplomatic mission. I make first contact with their king, their scion: Thuliak. One look into those burning teal eyes is all it takes. He’s the first and last man I ever need to see. A woman from Eden may never touch a man.

Novi Navarro's life hangs in the balance after being sentenced to serve in the Temple of the Chimera. The Prioress in charge seems intent on breaking not only her spirit, but the spirit of every living thing within those impenetrable walls. When a chance encounter leads to an unexpected friendship with one of the sacred creatures inside, she discovers a new reason to go on.

Jane March's greeting cards have lost their jingle. While worried about her job at New England's Cobblestone Cards, she stumbles upon a forgotten box of her mother's nostalgic paintings. They depict small-town Addison's covered bridge and red barns and picket-fenced colonials. If only Jane's designs could capture the same heart. When her mother shows her how with a Christmas to-do list of memories in the making, Jane gets checking.