January 31, 2017

RELEASE DAY REVIEW: 1001 Dark Nights Discovery Bundle Nine


1001 Dark Nights is back with another fantastic bundle of novellas from a combination of well-known and possibly new-to-you authors. Check out my review of this Discovery Bundle...


1001 Dark Nights Discovery Bundle #9, by Carrie Ann Ryan, Heather Graham, Jennifer Probst, Christopher Rice, Melanie Harlow and Lili Valente
Publish Date:
January 31, 2017
Publisher: Everafter Romance
Format: e-ARC, provided by the publisher and Inkslinger PR
Genre: various romance genres
To Buy: Amazon

Rating: 4.5 STARS


(Synopsis) HIDDEN INK by Carrie Ann Ryan 
Hailey Monroe knows the world isn’t always fair, but she’s picked herself up from the ashes before. Sloane Gordon lived through the worst kinds of hell yet the temptation next door sends him to another level. He’s kept his distance but when she comes to him with a proposition, he’ll do everything in his power to protect her.

BLOOD ON THE BAYOU by Heather Graham
When a family friend receives a message from the Blood Bayou killer—It's your turn to pay, blood on the bayou—he comes to Danni Cafferty for help. Cafferty and Quinn soon realize that a gruesome local history is being repeated. They find themselves in a fight to save not just a friend, but, perhaps, their very own lives.

SEARCHING FOR MINE by Jennifer Probst
Connor Dunkle knows what he wants in a woman, and it’s the three B’s. Beauty. Body. Boobs. Other women need not apply. Ella Blake is a single mom and a professor at the local Verily college. When sparks fly, neither of them are ready to face their true feelings, but will love teach them the ultimate lesson of all?

DANCE OF DESIRE by Christopher Rice
From New York Times bestselling author Christopher Rice, comes a steamy, emotional tale of forbidden romance between a woman struggling to get her life on its feet and the gorgeous cowboy her father kept her from marrying years before.

SOME SORT OF HAPPY by Melanie Harlow
Skylar Nixon. She’s even more beautiful than I remember. Ten years ago she was an impossible dream, and now she’s right here in front of me, offering everything I ever wanted. But happiness never lasts, not for someone like me. 
Sebastian Pryce. He’s the most complicated, frustrating, beautiful man I’ve ever met, and my body craves his with a hunger I’ve never known. My heart is his completely. Why won’t he let me in?

MAGNIFICENT BASTARD by Lili Valente
Face it, ladies: love sucks and then you cry…while your ex rides off into the sunset banging your best friend. But why let a break-up end in tears when it can end with sweet revenge? Enter Magnificent Bastard Consulting and me, chief executive bastard. With the help of my virtual assistant, I’ve built an empire giving broken-hearted women the vengeance they deserve, while keeping myself far from the front lines of the heart. Until my virtual assistant shows up on my real doorstep for the first time, begging for a Magnificent Bastard intervention of her own.

These 1001 Dark Nights Discovery Bundles are absolutely perfect for when you find yourself in a reading rut. You know the authors and genres you prefer, and you mostly stick to them because they're sure things. But, sometimes you just need to change things up a bit, maybe with a different sub-genre that you haven't read much of, or perhaps a different writing style or POV. 

There's always one author in these bundles that hooks me, and it's usually one I'm very familiar with. In this case, that hook was Hidden Ink by Carrie Ann Ryan. It's the only novella from her Montgomery Ink series I haven't read yet, and it was everything I expected it to be. It was sexy and had plenty of feels in not a lot of pages. Carrie Ann Ryan's novellas give you a glimpse at the relationships forming around the main Montgomery family, which helps flesh out the full-length novels. 

Of the remaining five authors, only Jennifer Probst was one I've read before, and I've read none in the Searching For series, which Searching For Mine is a part of. That is the great thing about these Discovery Bundle novellas - even if you've never read the series that they belong to, in nearly every case, it's not necessary. You can still appreciate the story and the featured characters without knowing the backstory of the other couples they come in contact with. 

One caveat to this is that all of these stories have already been published separately. If a novella - like Hidden Ink - is in the middle of a series, chances are, by the time you read it in the Discovery Bundle, the series has already moved on with at least one other novel. The Montgomery Ink series actually has two additional novels out now, so I already knew that Hailey and Sloane were a couple. For me, it doesn't diminish the impact of going back and reading their story anyway, but I know for some, it would. 

The 1001 Dark Nights series has a core group of authors that regularly contribute novellas to the collection. These authors were asked to nominate additional authors to be added as "discovery authors," and each of the five bundles that will be released in 2017 will feature two of them. In Bundle Nine, we get books by Melanie Harlow, author of Frenched, and Lili Valente, author of the Bought by the Billionaire series. 

And, truly, Some sort of Happy and Magnificent Bastard are not novellas, but rather full-length novels. These two take up the last 51% of the bundle, which was completely awesome. It gave me a better taste of these two new-to-me authors' writing styles, and I really liked what I read. I've already added several books by both authors to my TBR.

The 1001 Dark Nights Discovery Bundle Nine is a easy bet. It's less than six bucks, and for that you get two novels and four novellas. You seriously can't beat that. I encourage you to check out a bundle, and maybe slip a novella or two in between your regular full-length reads. You may just discover a new favorite!

About Carrie Ann Ryan:
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Carrie Ann Ryan never thought she’d be a writer. Not really. No, she loved math and science and even went on to graduate school in chemistry. Yes, she read as a kid and devoured teen fiction and Harry Potter, but it wasn’t until someone handed her a romance book in her late teens that she realized that there was something out there just for her. When another author suggested she use the voices in her head for good and not evil, The Redwood Pack and all her other stories were born.

Carrie Ann is a bestselling author of over twenty novels and novellas and has so much more on her mind (and on her spreadsheets *grins*) that she isn’t planning on giving up her dream anytime soon.

Learn more about Carrie Ann Ryan --> Website ** Facebook ** Twitter


About Heather Graham:
New York Times and USA Today best-selling author Heather Graham has always been an avid reader, from classics to sci-fi, mystery, horror, thriller, romance, and all kinds of non-fiction. She’s fairly certain that her mom’s deliciously crazy family–arriving in the US a bit before her birth from Ireland–gave her the love of storytelling. She started out in theater and commercials, but once her children began to arrive, she stayed home and gave writing a try. She’s incredibly grateful to be doing what she’s doing for a living. Heather belongs to MWA, RWA, Sisters in Crime, HWA, and ITW, and has the recipient of the RWA Lifetime Achievement Award, a Silver Bullet for charitable works, and this year, she will receive the Thriller Master title from ITW. She has over 200 novels in print, and has been published in 22 languages.

Learn more about Heather Graham --> Website ** Facebook ** Twitter


About Jennifer Probst:
Jennifer Probst wrote her first book at twelve years old. She bound it in a folder, read it to her classmates, and hasn’t stopped writing since. She took a short hiatus to get married, get pregnant, buy a house, get pregnant again, pursue a master’s in English Literature, and rescue two shelter dogs. Now she is writing again.

She makes her home in Upstate New York with the whole crew. Her sons keep her active, stressed, joyous, and sad her house will never be truly clean.

She is the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of sexy and erotic contemporary romance. She was thrilled her book, The Marriage Bargain, was ranked #6 on Amazon’s Best Books for 2012, and spent 26 weeks on the New York Times. Her work has been translated in over a dozen countries, sold over a million copies, and was dubbed a “romance phenom” by Kirkus Reviews.

She loves hearing from readers. Visit her website for updates on new releases and her street team on her website.

Sign up for her newsletter for a chance to win a gift card each month and receive exclusive material and giveaways.

Learn more about Jennifer Probst --> Website ** Facebook ** Twitter


About Christopher Rice:
After publishing four New York Times bestselling thrillers by the age of 30 and being declared one of People Magazine’s Sexiest Men Alive, award-winning writer Christopher Rice became the first author to make his erotic romance debut part of the 1,001 DARK NIGHTS series. THE FLAME: A Desire Exchange Novella kicked off a steamy new series set in New Orleans, featuring magical candles and a sexy new breed of supernatural beings, The Radiants, who are devoted to helping heroes and heroines realize their heart’s desire. THE FLAME earned accolades from some of the biggest names in erotic romance and was quickly followed up by THE SURRENDER GATE: A Desire Exchange Novel, available from Evil Eye Concepts as a Blue Box Special. Aside from authoring eight works of dark suspense, Christopher is also the co-host and executive producer of THE DINNER PARTY SHOW WITH CHRISTOPHER RICE & ERIC SHAW QUINN, all the episodes of which can be downloaded at TheDinnerPartyShow.com and from iTunes. Make sure you’re subscribed to The Dinner Party Show’s You Tube channel to receive their newest content in 2016.

Learn more about Christopher Rice --> Website ** Facebook ** Twitter


About Melanie Harlow:
USA Today bestselling author Melanie Harlow likes her heels high, her martini dry, and her history with the naughty bits left in. She’s the author of AFTER WE FALL, MAN CANDY, the HAPPY CRAZY LOVE series (contemporary romance), the FRENCHED series (contemporary romance) and the SPEAK EASY duet (historical romance). She writes from her home outside of Detroit, where she lives with her husband, two daughters, and one insane rabbit.

Learn more about Melanie Harlow --> Website ** Facebook ** Twitter


About Lili Valente:
USA Today bestselling author Lili Valente writes both naughty things and funny things (that are also naughty). She has slept under the stars in Greece, eaten dinner at midnight with French men who couldn’t be trusted to keep their mouths on their food, and walked alone through Munich’s red light district after dark and lived to tell the tale.

These days you can find her writing in a tent beside the sea, drinking coconut water and thinking delightfully dirty thoughts.

Learn more about Lili Valente --> Website ** Facebook ** Twitter

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