You Had Me At Cougar

Master baker Ava Lamar has one mission in mind after baking tons of treats for the Fourth of July celebration in Yuma Town—swimming at Lake Buchanan on this hot summer’s day. What she doesn’t expect is to be saddled with running the fortune telling booth—using her real psychic abilities—and giving a hot, bachelor cougar a place to stay for the whole weekend. Cougar Shifter Force Special Agent Chet Kensington has just finished a tough mission, been chewed up a bit by rogue cougars, and he’s taking a break to be with his old team, but he has no place to stay, everything being booked up in Yuma Town for the big cougar celebration. When Ava reluctantly allows him to stay with her, he finds himself drawn to her the whole celebration long. But back home in Wyoming, things are getting out of hand. A serial killer is murdering female cougars and he and some of his old team have to find him, pronto. The problem is all the trouble leads right back to Ava—and now he has to do his best to keep her safe before the killer adds her to his list of victims.

THE WOMAN HE'D ALWAYS LOVED She had a heart of gold—and a beauty to match her compassionate spirit. But she was a Donovan—the daughter of his arch enemy. THE MAN SHE LONGED TO HOLD He was strong and true—and something of a hero in Rachel's hometown. But years of strife between her ranching family and his made Jim Cunningham the one man she was forbidden to love. A WEDDING BEYOND THEIR WILDEST DREAMS? From the starry night he'd saved Rachel's life on a snowy mountaintop, Jim felt bound by this compelling woman. And though the rugged rescuer had faced many battles in his day, loving Rachel would be his greatest challenge of all…. Cowboys of the Southwest: These rough and rugged men lead the Donovan sisters hime again—this time forever!

Rowdy Sanderson, a special agent for the United Shifter Force, a group of jaguars and wolves who aid shifters in trouble and deal with those who are trouble, isn’t even one of them. But he wants to be a wolf in the worst way. When a special agent needs help at her USF branch in Ely, Minnesota, he volunteers because he’s the only one in Houston without a family for the holidays. Maybe he will still get his Christmas wish—to be a wolf shifter like some of his friends and coworkers so he will have their “superpowers” to do his job. Justine Winters is grateful the director of the USF is sending a special agent to her branch in Ely to aid her if she gets swamped. He’s really hot, according to the photos the director sent her of Rowdy, but is he a wolf or a jaguar? Preferably a wolf. But then she learns he’s human! No one’s supposed to know that shifters exist. No way will he be able to sniff out shifters and assist her. She reluctantly agrees to accept him—figuring she’ll have to put him on desk duty. All that changes when she meets the real man—who desperately wants to be a wolf, who grows on her just like the director said he would, who risks his life for shifters, who she defends to others of her kind for working with the USF. But being the one to bite him has consequences and nothing’s turning out the way she planned.

Prince Argon has taken Lady Kersta and her companions hostage because he needs them to help him rescue his sister from captivity and then he must return to his princedom and make his twin brother pay for his crimes. Kersta and her friends have special abilities that he hopes to use. But now they have a new problem. The prince’s sister is being offered to either one of two suitors, and they’re in the fight to the death to keep her. The man who holds the strings is a king who claims she’s his niece, but Argon knows the man is not their uncle! Kersta can’t believe she and her companions have paid passage on the prince’s ship to take them home and instead he’s taken them to the Emerald Isle of Mists on a rescue mission and all because a soothsayer has predicted this will come to pass. Not only is danger all around them, but Kersta’s whole life is about to be turned upside down.

As wolves, Isobel, her kin, and a Highland slave are on the run from her Icelandic clan and now they must find a way to live in peace in Scotia without anyone discovering they are wolves or Vikings. Wearing traditional Icelandic clothes, sailing a Viking longboat, and speaking Gaelic with a Nordic accent, it won’t be easy. Alasdair is the wolf pack leader of his Highland clan, in the middle of adding fortifications to his castle when he spies what he thinks is a small Viking longboat—which can mean raiders and a fight. But what he discovers is two adult wolf females, a nearly grown male, and a female and male bairn on their shores. He can’t imagine the family making the treacherous journey to his land all on their own, but he’s captivated by Isobel, the woman who led her people to what she hopes will be safety. Not everyone in his pack welcomes having Vikings living among them though. And Isobel is a wild and unpredictable woman, which fascinates him all the more.

Erin Chambers is leaving the FBI to join her father in his Big Cat Investigative Agency. She loved her job, but she wants to be closer to her father and have more freedom to run as a jaguar shifter when she can. But she knows dealing with her dad’s sole private investigator, Jason Biggerstaff, is going to take some work. He’s a hot jaguar and turns up the heat whenever he’s around her without any effort at all, to her consternation. But he’s not fond of the FBI, and she and he butt heads all the time. He’s been like a son to her father, so she knows he was thinking he could take over the business one day. That’s not happening. Jason Biggerstaff is busy with investigations, not thrilled that Erin is joining the agency, but all that changes when they are embroiled in missing kids’ cases, their usual run-of-the-mill investigations, and she’s really good at her job. No matter how much he fights the attraction he has for her, it’s a losing battle. What starts out as just them handling their usual cases, turns into something worse—a shifter in trouble and they must save him without landing themselves in a worse mess than they already are, which includes dealing with this growing need to take their relationship to something they never bargained for.

A desperate entity trapped on the other side of an active hellmouth pleads for cougar shifter Belle Foye’s help, and she can’t stop herself from running toward it, even though it means putting her own life in danger. As if that weren’t inconvenient enough, Belle’s inner cat’s biological clock is loudly ticking, which means her body is acting in all sorts of ways she wishes it wouldn’t—particularly when it comes to her new babysitter. Former soldier Steven Welch has been tasked with keeping Belle away from the hellmouth at all costs. It’s just his luck that the cat has taken a shine to his human self. Unfortunately, sticking close to her means he has no choice but to confront a fear of the supernatural he’d hoped he left in the Afghan desert. When the pair learns Steven’s own secret paranormal gift could help solve Belle’s problem, their differences collide. Steven insists he’s no hero, but Belle wants to enter the hellmouth and end the trouble it’s brought on her family once and for all. If Belle can’t convince him that she has his back as well as he has hers, she’ll lose her fated mate and the only man she’s ever trusted enough to call “partner.”

It’s 1960 and Frankie Valentine is doing just fine. The transplanted New York photographer is living it up in the Hollywood sunshine surrounded by beautiful women more than willing to dispose of their clothes and pose. He has no reason to go back east. That is, until the body of a childhood friend, who had disappeared in 1950, turns up. Valentine flies back home to lend his expertise as a crime scene photographer and help out a friend who’s in a jam. Instead he finds a compromised crime scene, a hidden stash of cash, and trouble. A Junkie stripper and her mother—a woman who ushered Valentine into manhood—a mob boss racked with jealousy and homicidal rage and assorted low-lifes all roll out the unwelcome mat. It’s all blood, money, sex and lies…sealed with a Cougar’s Kiss. Praise for Frank De Blase… “A fifties pulp-noir that has ex-crimescene turned girlie photographer, Frankie Valentine leaving Hollywood for a return to Rochester to ferret out whodunit. Mobsters, murder and plenty of femme fatales…what’s not to love.” —Steve Hodel, New York Times bestselling author of Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder “Frank De Blase writes with the world-weary wit and hardboiled grit of a literary veteran, but his natural talent for storytelling transcends mere nostalgia. The compelling immediacy of his charismatic voice carries the reader not down memory lane, but onward through a brilliantly realized alternate noir-verse that is vibrantly vivid and palpably pulpy, populated by colorful characters and drenched in retro-rich atmosphere.” —Will Viharo, author of the The Thrillville Pulp Fiction Collection and the Vic Valentine, Private Eye series