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Celebrate spring, slip into an enchanting tale, and show your support for World Central Kitchen!

Remember waking up with the first blush of a new romance filling your morning with joy?

Seven breakout authors bring you a medley of love stories that will quicken your senses, lift your hearts, and make you imagine love in whole new ways. Spanning the scale from gentle and sweet to spicy hot, each entry brings a fresh look at love in all its variations along with the perennial promise of morning's renewal. ALL proceeds go to the charity feeding people in need here and in every corner of the globe: World Central Kitchen.

Laurel's story, Falling into Place, features beloved secondary characters from The Luminated Threads, a year before the saga:

In 1867 England, ambitious Mary Clare dreams of an independent life outside her tightknit family, but she’s stymied by a magical Knack she must keep under wraps. While she’s filling in at a cooperative farm’s kitchen, a handsome shapeshifter catches her eye, but the kind fellow flusters her Knack control, risking her chance at a permanent job.

Shapeshifter Rivley’s blood-bound obligation to a friend prevents him from romantic commitments, so instead he throws himself into mechanic’s training. When a farm emergency falls beyond his skills, the cute kitchen staffer offers help—and inspires him to consider how to restart his life.

Can they overcome fear and doubt to reveal their feelings for one another?

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Ingenious Victorian contraptions. Enchanted farmlands. Can a struggling orphan switch gears and run full steam into freedom?

 

England, 1868. Nineteen-year-old Annmar Masterson refuses to be an underpaid pawn in a lecherous businessman’s steam-engine factory. Escaping the boss’s advances by taking an advertising job in the country, the young illustrator is astonished when she discovers the rural valley is rife with magical creatures. Her wonder turns to horror when the night-guard shapeshifters and their handsome polecat leader are nearly killed by a mysterious swarm of crop-eating pests.

 

Accustomed to her prim and proper former lifestyle, Annmar worries not even her blossoming magic will help her fit into the rowdy farming community. But when the out-of-place city girl heals the flirtatious guardian, she sparks a powerful connection…making her rare power the target of an evil mastermind.

 

Will she find a new home in the arms of the coy shifter, or will the wild magic of Blighted Basin prove as dangerous as the city?

 

The Unraveling begins a novice mage’s eye-opening discovery in volume one of The Luminated Threads serialized historical fantasy saga.

 

NOTE: The Unraveling is the 1st story in a serialized novel. It ends with mild cliffhangers.

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Danger mounts in a land of wild magic… He’s stepping up. She’s growing in skill. Will his determination and her rare magic save Blighted Basin from destruction?

In a rural valley hidden from the rest of Victorian England, Daeryn Darkcoat’s livelihood and life as a polecat shifter are driven to the brink of collapse by mysterious crop-eating pests. As leader of the predator guards, he’s scrambling for new methods to protect Blighted Basin and its residents, especially the sweet city girl his dreams cannot shake loose.

Then, desperation drives landowners to try new, untested machines, regardless of the threat to their way of life. For a shifter to rely on mechanical devices is…unheard of. When Annmar confides she’s found an alternative using the glowing threads, he’s relieved—wild magic has been his lifelong companion.

But the pests are not natural, and Annmar’s plan to combat them also relies on Outside ways. Daeryn’s lack of confidence in her strategy drives them apart. Will she risk her safety and the future of Blighted Basin—as well as their love—by confronting the scheming villain behind the pests?

The Twisting follows an apprentice’s heart-wrenching struggle to protect a wild land in volume two of The Luminated Threads serialized historical fantasy saga.

 

Note: The Twisting is the 2nd story in a serialized novel. Please read The Unraveling first.

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A magical artist and a polecat shifter fight a deadly pestilence. Can they save their countryside from an evil mastermind without sacrificing their spark of love?

 

Annmar Masterson has one chance to foil the obsessive industrialist taking over the farmlands—a man who covets her body and the staggering power of her luminated threads. She must leave her proper Victorian upbringing behind and dedicate herself to mastering the threads—the heritage of her blood.

 

Shapeshifter Daeryn Darkcoat can’t protect Annmar until he faces the spell tying him to old friends and heartbreaking memories. But as he rallies his community, they stumble into a lost domain and find a people caught in the crossfire of the industrialist’s ruthless fight to attain power.

 

While Daeryn defends these innocents, Annmar faces an impossible choice. If she uses her luminated threads to harm, she loses them. But fighting without the threads will bind her new homeland to a madman.

 

The Binding concludes a mage’s fantastical journey to wield wild magic in volume three of The Luminated Threads serialized historical fantasy saga.

 

NOTE: The Binding is the 3rd story in a serialized novel. Please read The Unraveling first.

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