Bestselling author Lauren Blakely writes sexy contemporary romance novels with heat, heart, and humor. She tops today’s Buffet with Caught Up In Us, a tale about a second chance at first love.
Lauren’s books have appeared on the New York Times, USA Today, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iBooks bestseller lists. She also writes for young adults under the name Daisy Whitney.
Lauren lives in California with her husband, children, and dogs. She is an unabashed fan of clever jokes, toast, and good guys in novels. Like the heroines in her novels, she thinks life should be filled with hot men, cool clothes, and the kind of love that love songs promise.
As usual, each book here has gone FREE within the past 24 hours, except for the Bargain books in the yellow section below. Warning: Kindle book promotions can end without notice, so before downloading click the link “See Kindle price at Amazon” to verify that the book is still free. (Prices and availability may differ outside USA.)
Caught Up In Us
Women’s Fiction > Romance
Author: Lauren Blakely
Five years ago, Kat Harper fell into a dizzying summer romance with her brother’s best friend Bryan. It was a mad, crazy love full of kisses all through the night — but he broke her heart and she had to move on. Five years later, Kat is finishing her graduate degree and building her business as a jewelry designer, when Bryan, head of his own successful company, walks back into her life.
Bryan has been assigned to Kat as her new business mentor and the rules are clear. No hanky panky permitted. Kat can handle that because she’s totally over him… right? Except, he still makes her laugh, and he remembers all the things she likes. Not to mention that he’s even more handsome now than he was then. Then there’s the spark between them — the simply undeniable chemistry, and the tender ways he shows he still cares for her. Can they resist each other the second time around or will first love trump all?
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Anybody’s Daughter (Angela Evans, Book 2)
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Author: Pamela Samuels Young
Is Anybody’s Daughter Ever Safe?
Based on the real-life horrors faced by thousands of girls, award-winning author Pamela Samuels Young takes readers deep inside the disturbing world of child sex trafficking in a fast-paced thriller that educates as much as it entertains.
Thirteen-year-old Brianna Walker is ecstatic. She’s about to sneak off to meet her first real boyfriend—a boyfriend she met on Facebook. But Brianna is in for a horrifying surprise because her boyfriend doesn’t exist. Instead, Brianna unwittingly becomes the captive of a ring of drug dealers- turned-human traffickers who prey on lonely girls from dysfunctional homes. But they’ve made a big mistake in targeting Brianna because she doesn’t meet either of those criteria.
Brianna’s Uncle Dre, a man with his own criminal past, is determined to find the niece who is more like a daughter to him. Rather than sit back and rely on police to bring Brianna home, Dre scours the dark corners of Los Angeles looking for her. He is stunned to learn that the trafficking of children isn’t just happening in other countries. It’s occurring at epidemic levels right in his own backyard.
Dre is not alone in his desperate search. Loretha Johnson knows this world well. A social worker who previously lived “the life,” Loretha now dedicates her time to saving as many young girls as she can find. She turns out to be an invaluable resource for Dre, who ultimately gets a lead on The Shepherd, a mastermind in the trafficking world whose every move is fueled by ego and greed. Dre vows to bring his reign of terror to an end.
While Brianna makes a futile effort to thwart her captors, Dre is getting closer and closer to finding her. The woman he loves, attorney Angela Evans, knows the dangers faced by sexually exploited children because she represents them in juvenile court. Angela lends her moral support and, eventually, an important clue to Brianna’s whereabouts.
As he races against the clock, Dre ultimately comes up with a daring plan—one that puts many lives in danger, including his own. But will he find Brianna before it’s too late?
Rigged for Murder (Windjammer Mystery Series)
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Author: Jenifer LeClair
High seas adventure turns to high stakes sleuthing when a beautiful but troubled homicide detective and a New England sea captain join forces in this award-winning mystery set on the coast of Maine.
On leave from the Minneapolis Police Department after being shot, homicide detective Brie Beaumont has gone to Maine where she has family roots. She ships out on the Maine Wind for an early season cruise with Captain John DuLac and eight others. Caught in a gale, they anchor off remote and windswept Granite Island. But when someone aboard is murdered, Brie must single-handedly stage an investigation that moves from the ship to the small fishing village on the island. Plagued by flashbacks, and fighting a growing attraction to Captain DuLac, Brie works to unravel a mystery that will place her directly in the path of a psychopathic killer.
Worst Week Ever (A Long Road to Love)
Romantic Comedy
Author: Liza O’Connor
What do you get when you put a hardworking, can-do middle-class young woman together with a egoistical, outrageous, billionaire boss, then throw in the worst week of disasters imaginable?
Trent Lancaster spends one month without his Executive Assistant, or as his drivers refers to Carrie: ‘Trent’s brain, left hand, and right hand’. He’s had a miserable month without her at his side and to ensure it never happens again, he intends to marry his brilliant beauty. Only given all the times he’s threatened to fire her, he’s not sure she even likes him. However, the future of his company and his happiness depend upon him succeeding, so Trent begins a slow one week seduction that happens to coincide with Carrie’s Worst Week Ever when everything that can go wrong does so in hilarious form.
Death Whispers (The Death Series, Book 1)
Fantasy > Paranormal & Urban
Author: Tamara Rose Blodgett
Almost fifteen-year-old Caleb Hart is a Cadaver-Manipulator in the year 2025. When teens receive a government-sanctioned pharmaceutical cocktail during school, paranormal abilities begin manifesting… making the teens more powerful than the adults.
After Caleb discovers he has the rare, Affinity for the Dead, he must do whatever it takes to hide it from a super-secret government agency whose goal is exploitation.
Caleb seeks refuge in his new girlfriend, Jade, until he realizes that she needs as much protection from her family, as he does from the government.
Suddenly, Caleb finds that hiding his ability while protecting Jade and his friends is a full time job; can he escape the government, protect Jade and lose the bullies that are making him miserable?
Girl with Guitar (Kylie Ryans)
Romance > New Adult & College
Author: Caisey Quinn
After Kylie’s dad dies in a freak accident, he leaves her with nothing other than her crazy stepmother, Darla, and the ability to play guitar. When Darla kicks Kylie out and she loses her job all in the same day, she hops a bus to Nashville determined to make her late father’s dreams come true.
Waitressing and saving her pennies to record a demo, her big break comes when she’s asked to join a tour going down the tubes with once platinum album-selling country music superstar Trace Corbin. But touring with Trace is hardly a dream come true since he’s pretty much drinking his career down the drain. If Kylie can’t pull Trace out of his rut, he’ll pull her and her dreams down with him.
River’s Recruit (The Sanctuary Series, Book 1)
Romance > Paranormal
Author: Charlotte Abel
A beautiful, young shape-shifter discovers a lost backpacker trespassing in her territory during a blizzard. She has two choices: recruit him into her cult-like tribe, or kill him.
Seven Sons (Gypsy Brothers)
Romance > Mystery & Suspense
Author: Lili Saint Germain
My father was most certainly NOT an innocent man. As the leader of the Gypsy Brothers MC, he was guilty of many things. But he died for a crime that he didn’t commit, framed by an enemy within who then stole his club and everything he had ever worked to protect. Including my innocence.
When Dornan Ross framed my father, he set into motion a series of events that could never be undone. My father was murdered by Dornan Ross and his sons when I was fifteen years old. Before my father died, Dornan and his sons stole my innocence, branded my skin and in doing so, ensured that their lives would be prematurely cut short. That they would suffer.
I’ve just turned twenty-one, and I’m out for blood. I’m out for revenge. But I didn’t expect to fall for Jase, the youngest brother in the club. I didn’t expect that he would turn my world upside down, yank my heart out of my chest and ride away into the sunset with it.
Now, I’m faced with an impossible choice – Jase, or avenging my fathers death?
TODAY’S BARGAINS……………What’s this?
I, Sniper: A Bob Lee Swagger Novel
Action & Adventure > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Author: Stephen Hunter
Regularly $9.99, Today $1.99
Four famed ’60s radicals are gunned down at long range by a sniper. Under enormous media scrutiny, the FBI quickly concludes that Marine war hero Carl Hitchcock, whose ninety-three kills were considered the leading body count tally among American marksman in Vietnam, was the shooter. But as the Bureau, led by Special Agent Nick Memphis, bears down, Hitchcock commits suicide. In closing out the investigation, Nick discovers a case made in heaven: everything fits, from timeline, ballistics, and forensics to motive, means, and opportunity. Maybe it’s a little too perfect.
Nick asks his friend, the retired Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger, to examine the data. Using a skill set no other man on earth possesses, Swagger soon discovers unseen anomalies and gradually begins to unravel a sophisticated conspiracy — one that would require the highest level of warcraft by the most superb special operations professionals. As Swagger penetrates the deepest secrets of the sniper world and its new technology, Nick stands firm in the face of hardball PR initiatives and an inflamed media calling for his ouster.
Swagger soon closes in, and those responsible will stop at nothing to take him out. But these heavily armed men make the mistake of thinking they are hunting Bob, when he is, in fact, hunting them.
Perfect Ruin (The Internment Chronicles)
Teen & Young Adult > Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author: Lauren DeStefano
Regularly $9.99, Today $1.99
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Chemical Garden trilogy: On the floating city of Internment, you can be anything you dream. Unless you approach the edge.
Morgan Stockhour knows getting too close to the edge of Internment, the floating city in the clouds where she lives, can lead to madness. Even though her older brother, Lex, was a Jumper, Morgan vows never to end up like him. If she ever wonders about the ground, and why it is forbidden, she takes solace in her best friend, Pen, and in Basil, the boy she’s engaged to marry.
Then a murder, the first in a generation, rocks the city. With whispers swirling and fear on the wind, Morgan can no longer stop herself from investigating, especially once she meets Judas. Betrothed to the victim, he is the boy being blamed for the murder, but Morgan is convinced of his innocence. Secrets lay at the heart of Internment, but nothing can prepare Morgan for what she will find—or whom she will lose.
Following Atticus
Sports & Outdoors > Biographies
Author: Tom Ryan
Regularly $9.99, Today $1.99
Following Atticus is the remarkable true story of a man and a dog embarking on the challenge of a lifetime. This is author Tom Ryan’s inspiring tale of how he and his miniature schnauzer companion, the “Little Buddha” Atticus M. Finch, attempted to scale all forty-eight of New Hampshire’s four thousand foot White Mountains twice in the dead of winter. It is a story of love, loss, and the resilience of the human and animal spirit that’s as thrilling as Into Thin Air and featuring the most endearing and unforgettable canine protagonist since Marley and Me.
The Rosie Project: A Novel
Romantic Comedy
Author: Graeme Simsion
Regularly $9.99, Today $1.99
MEET DON TILLMAN, a brilliant yet socially challenged professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. And so, in the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers.
Rosie Jarman is all these things. She also is strangely beguiling, fiery, and intelligent. And while Don quickly disqualifies her as a candidate for the Wife Project, as a DNA expert Don is particularly suited to help Rosie on her own quest: identifying her biological father. When an unlikely relationship develops as they collaborate on the Father Project, Don is forced to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that, despite your best scientific efforts, you don’t find love, it finds you.
Arrestingly endearing and entirely unconventional, Graeme Simsion’s distinctive debut will resonate with anyone who has ever tenaciously gone after life or love in the face of great challenges. The Rosie Project is a rare find: a book that restores our optimism in the power of human connection.
Chris Powell’s Choose More, Lose More for Life
Health, Fitness & Dieting
Author: Chris Powell
Regularly $9.99, Today $2.99
Transform Your Body, Transform Your Life!
Each season, millions of viewers tune in to see Chris Powell lead extraordinary transformations on ABC’s breakout hit reality-transformation show, Extreme Weight Loss. Now, building on the basic weight-loss philosophy introduced in his bestselling book Choose to Lose, Chris has created a transformation plan anyone can follow–one that recognizes that no weight-loss journey is the same, and that more options mean longer-lasting results.
At the center of Chris Powell’s Choose More, Lose More for Life is Chris’s carb-cycling plan, which kicks your metabolism into full gear by alternating between low- and high-carb days. Never carb-cycled before? No problem. Powell provides all the information you need to get started and see immediate results. Been carb-cycling but need to shake things up? This book provides four different cycles–Easy, Classic, Turbo, and Fit–to help you find a plan that fits you.
Chris also understands that weight loss plateaus when we get bored. So in this book, he focuses onchoices–including more than twenty new workouts called Nine-Minute Missions–that pack maximum results into minimal time. He also offers more delicious and easy recipes to keep you eating well, more tracking logs to keep you motivated, and more success stories to inspire you as you write your own–one that lasts for the rest of your life!
… See the rest of today’s Editor’s Picks here on page 2