KAREN’S KILLER BOOK BENCH: Welcome to Karen’s Killer Book Bench, where readers can discover talented new authors and take a peek inside their wonderful books. This is not an age-filtered site, so all book peeks are PG-13 or better. Come back and visit often. Happy reading!
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Region Two Urban Fantasy Series Book 4
BY JANET WALDEN-WEST
Blurb
The vampires are uniting.
There’s a sword hanging over my family’s head.
And I’ve accidentally adopted a semi-feral killer who thinks I’m his fated-mate.
As the team’s intel specialist, I can hack a CCTV camera in my sleep, and my contact network is the best in the Company’s history. It still took getting captured for me to discover how close our enemies are. At least I left a surprise planted in their system.
I escaped with more than a backdoor into their files, though. Owen, a human the vampires molded into a lethal fighter, is an invaluable addition to our team, despite his only knowledge of life outside his cage coming from pilfered romance novels. Super unexpectedly, the brooding, barely socialized warrior who swears we’re fated-mates gets me in a way no one ever has.
But overconfidence once nearly cost me everything. As the vampire army closes in, I’m racing to decrypt the stolen data and uncover the vamps’ weakness. With the Company and my family’s existence at stake, there’s no margin for error. Plot twist? The longer I spend with Owen, the less sure I am that he’s really human.
Do I dare trust my instincts, then ones screaming Owen would never betray me, when the wrong choice means the destruction of everyone I love?
Excerpt
Kimi
“Targeting a bunch of little kids? Who does that?” Josh grumbled from the second-row seat beside mine, compulsively smoothing his palm back and forth over his sniper case in his lap. “Even for vampires, that’s low.”
“Demons have no decency. The more depraved their sin, the greater their enjoyment,” Stavros said, scowling at the lightly populated streets and iconic double row of palm trees flashing by the SUV window. The steering wheel creaked, protesting his killer grip.
Aside from the fact that technically, vampires were humans mutated by a virus, and our adopted papá was a product of his four-hundred-year-old Christian upbringing, I agreed with him.
The virus twisted its host, amping up the parts of the brain devoted to survival, damping those associated with kinder emotions. Basically, leaving vicious, self-centered predators who enjoyed tormenting their prey.
Stavros rocketed onto a side-street. We were close to our objective, a call-out mission that’d dragged us out of bed. A group of civilian children were scheduled to leave the oceanic science museum sleepover. And a surveillance van and vampires were lying in wait.
Attacking children was ugly, a totally vamp-ish move. And the last few years’ exponential increase in vampires, especially those without Masters, produced clueless newbies dumb and desperate enough to attempt feeding in a super public spot, one guaranteed to draw human law enforcement attention. Worse, the attention of older vampires, who held a rigid policy against cluing the human world in on their existence.
But something felt off.
I leaned between the front seats, catching my sister and Commanding Officer’s eye, and signed, my specialty since losing my voice. “We should consider there’s more going on than a pack of starving, nestless vamps.”
“Children are easy prey,” Vee said.
“There’s desperation, and then there’s suicide.”
Janet Walden-West lives in the Southeast with a pack of show dogs, a couple of kids, and a husband who didn’t read the fine print. She writes intersectional sexy-times Contemporary and Paranormal romance, and snarky Urban Fantasy heroines.
A Pitch Wars mentee/mentor alum, and RWA Golden Heart finalist, she’s the author of the Contemporary SALT + STILETTOS: South Beach Romances series, and the Region Two Urban Fantasy romance series. Her Urban Fantasy short stories can be found in multiple anthologies.
She is represented by Eva Scalzo of Speilburg Literary Agency.
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Links to Janet’s websites, blogs, books, #ad etc.:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3PbyzDg
Website: http://www.janetwaldenwest.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JanetWaldenWest
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/janetwaldenwest/
Reader Group–Advanced Cryptid Recon Agents: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1279025259621839
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/janetwaldenwestauthor
Newsletter Sign Up:
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Special Giveaway: Janet will give away an ebook copy of AGENT OF CHANGE to one lucky reader who comments on her Karen’s Killer Book Bench blog.
Happy Reading!
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Thanks, Janet, for sharing your book with us!
Don’t miss the chance to read this book!
blurb sounds interesting and like blurb, book cover
Good morning, Janet, and welcome back to Karen’s Killer Book Bench. The excerpt caught me, as does the premise. I can’t wait to read this book. Thanks for sharing it with us today!
Alrighty then! What next?
Thanks, Janet and Karen.
nice excerpt
I haven’t read many vampire books, but of those I have read, I am always amazed at the different world building , rules, and behaviors involved.I guess that is one advantage of writing in this genre, you can make up your own rules.
This sounds like an exciting story!