Myths & Magic: Science Fiction and Fantasy - Giveaways




Myths & Magic: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection
Publication date: August 22nd 2017
Genres: Adult, Paranormal Romance, Science Fiction, Urban Fantasy



MYTHS & MAGIC sends you on a wild ride across universes where a safe return cannot be guaranteed.


Abolished magic returns to Earth. Telekinetic sorcerers, witches, and fairies discover their powers. Humans become cyborgs. Dragons prowl the depths of Iceland's volcanoes.

All this and more is packed inside one boxed set overflowing with stories from today's hottest USA Today and International Bestselling authors!

From dystopian thrillers to steampunk romance, from gothic fantasies to paranormal adventures, come journey with unlikely heroes, valiant shifters, rogue vampires, and even a sensual brujo. Dabble in scientific espionage, thwart scheming sorcerers, and challenge hordes of vengeful demons. And maybe fall in love...

If you're ready for 21 exclusive full-length novels and novellas, including some BRAND NEW material, in a boxed set where vampires, shifters, ghosts, demons, and even Djinn haunt the pages, then fall into MYTHS & MAGIC, a collection of science fiction, fantasy, and a dash of paranormal romance that will take you to the edge of your imagination



FORBIDDEN THIRTEEN

Erin Richards

Back Cover 

The number thirteen follows Aria Elle Walker like a bulldog. Lucky or unlucky, it triggers her telekinesis in freaky ways. In an era of banned magic, it could get her jailed…or worse.

One Friday the 13th, Aria’s telekinesis goes wild and she accidentally kills a bounty hunter in her home. Before her freakout begins, in walks Ronan Riley, another “thirteen” telekinetic, and his doppelgänger—a dying Forbidden fairy. Hells bells, everyone knows fairies and the Forbidden are extinct!

After claiming she’s the gateway “key” to releasing ancient magic into the world, the doppelgängers whisk Aria away from the goons Ronan’s father hired to snag her. Dodging bounty hunters and screwy magic, the trio race to fix the damaged Rift before tainted magic kills the doppelgängers…or opens the floodgates to abolished magic. But Aria never expected their desperate alliance to generate a force of a different kind...an uncanny bond and undeniable desire for both doppelgängers.

Destroying Ronan’s father, the mastermind behind the mayhem, is just icing on Aria’s chaos cake. If her luck cooperates and doesn’t kill her first, that is. And will unluck add Ronan to the body count after he betrays Aria?


CHAPTER 1

It figures my natural bad luck and a blind date on Friday the 13th dumped me in the emergency room. I should’ve shied away from the creepy combination of cursed luck and locked myself in a closet. Lucky for me, I was okay. Unlucky for my date, Michael, he’d suffered an allergic reaction after eating Mexican cornbread. Talk about bonehead move. I mean, hello, he has a corn allergy. What part of Mexican cornbread had he missed in that little tip? To top that off, the inept artist had left his epinephrine shot at home. Zoe, my soon-to-be ex-best-friend, swore her cousin was available and smart. No wonder he was single. No sense in pleading the fifth on smart. Just another craptastic date on a merry-go-round of losers.

A guilty sigh pushed out of me as I stepped onto the elevator. I punched the fourteen button and the doors whooshed shut. The fact that Michael had ordered dinner number thirteen and the thirteen sombreros hanging from the ceiling had everything to do with him landing in the hospital. My stomach became a tight fist of unease.

Too many thirteens together equaled crapstorm in my life. Cursed at birth, I’d entered the world on Friday, January thirteen, at one thirteen in the afternoon. Or in military terms, thirteen thirteen. The bad luck number affected everything around me. I controlled some of it if I caught it in time, and fate took a spin on the rest.

Had Michael become an unwitting victim in my jinxed life or what? I certainly hadn’t known he had a corn allergy until after his face nearly exploded. Honestly, I barely paid attention to what he was ordering while he ogled my chest and babbled on about how he’d love to paint me in the nude for an art class project. As if. Knowing it was Friday the 13th, I should’ve paid more attention once I’d counted the sombreros due to my insane need to count everything to avoid the number thirteen. Or my not-so-insane need to use my telekinesis to thwart the inevitable bad luck. Or I could’ve persuaded him to order dish number seven, but he was so freaking obnoxious, he’d left my brain practicing its freedom to terminate the date.

I sucked in my bottom lip. It was just too risky for others to be near me. I mistrusted my ability to control the bad luck side of my telekinesis, and I didn’t know where my so-called freaky gift stemmed from. I wasn’t sure if I had been born with telekinesis or if it’d developed over time. My abilities hadn’t shown up until I’d turned seven years old.

Thank my lucky stars I’d never gotten caught. I mean, seriously, if the government honed in on my abilities, they’d lock me up like Hannibal Lecter, pink mask and all. For the most part, practicing any kind of extra-sensory perception and magic, whether innate or externally created, was illegal. People were scared of ESP abilities and magic, a deeply rooted fear from over three hundred years ago, when Earth was overrun with sorcerers and fairies who’d done the nasty and created a race of powerful fairy-sorcerers. Eventually, the governments eradicated them all and enacted permanent worldwide laws and heavy sanctions on magical use after the Abolishment. Yet, they never defined “extrasensory perception” as magic. That spooked me, so I lived way under the radar.

The elevator stopped on my floor, and I slipped between the doors before they opened all the way. I slid my card key into the security slot and pressed my thumb to the bio-reader. Automatic entry lights flickered on, lighting my way inside the dark condo on top of the Stargazer Casino, San Jose’s newest residential-entertainment complex. The top floor of the residential tower was really the thirteenth floor, but marked fourteen. Like people can’t count.

I kicked my pink pumps off and dumped my jacket on the antique chair in the foyer. My purse clunked on the marble console, the strap leaving tracks in a film of dust. I jiggled the potpourri bowl until a wimpy bouquet of cloves and cinnamon drifted to my nose. Housework hadn’t risen to the top of my To-Do list yet.

“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.” I yanked my phone from my front pants pocket and hopped the two steps down to the living room. The floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the glittery amber dots of downtown’s lights. Winds had swept away the clouds, and a soothing star-blazing night greeted me, a far cry from the doom and gloom of my date.

“Cody, Cleo.” My two Himalayans always skittered away from the havoc they wreaked the second they heard my voice. “Where are you?”

Creepy crawlies teased the nape of my neck. I slanted a glance down the two empty hallways. My right pinkie twitched. Oh, hell. If the crawlies advanced to a pinkie twitch, it was bad. Alarm dipped in and squeezed my heart.

Slipping my hand inside the small drawer of the end table, I gripped my stun gun. I tapped in casino security on my cell phone without punching the send button. The wall clock tick-tocking from the dining room eclipsed the sound of my uneven breathing in the quiet-as-a-church space. Not even a mouse stirred.

“Where are you ding-a-ling cats?” My voice trilled unnaturally. “You better not be leaving stinky presents in my new ficus.”

Three halls broke off from the living room. The wide hall led to the foyer, and two narrower halls led left to the kitchen and right to the bedrooms. I tiptoed down the right hallway. The recessed lights automatically winked on. At the first door—the hall bathroom—a whiff of cheap Old Spice cologne assaulted me, reminding me of the casino blackjack dealer who marinated in it. My heart thudded in my ears, and I about hightailed it toward the front door. Gossamer threads of something foreign fluttered in my head. As a telekinetic, I sensed ESP, and I oddly absorbed the intangible energy of other beings through my aura, but never to the point where it invaded my mind.



A TRACE OF COPPER (An Elemental Web Tale)

Anne Renwick

Back Cover Copy

New recruit to the Queen’s agents, Dr. Piyali Mukherji is given a simple first assignment. Travel to the small Welsh village of Aberwyn and solve the mystery of a young woman’s blue skin lesion. A challenging task, for the alarming infection is unlike anything she’s seen before—and it’s spreading.

Evan Tredegar, the town’s pharmacist and the only man to ever capture her heart, knows more than he’s telling. Despite his efforts to push her away, her touch reawakens old desires. As more villagers fall victim to the strange disease, he’ll have no choice but to reveal his secrets, even if it means sacrificing his freedom.

Together they must move past broken promises, capture a rogue frog, and stop the infection before it spreads out of control.


CHAPTER ONE


Aberwyn, Wales
Spring, 1885

“It bit me,” the young woman informed Piyali, hiking her skirts and rolling down her woolen hose. “Right through my stocking.” Miss Price, the shopkeeper’s daughter, plopped down on a chair and propped her foot upon a stool, pointing. “And now it’s blue.”

Dr. Piyali Mukherji leaned closer. As insane as Miss Price’s words sounded, they rang true. Her ankle was indeed blue.

Well, part of it. There was a decided lesion approximately two inches in diameter above her fibular protuberance. Piyali pressed two fingers against the blemish. She would describe it as an infection. Except it didn’t appear inflamed, and it wasn’t hot to the touch.

And it was blue.

Unheard of. But that was why she’d accepted the Crown’s commission, taken on the added duties of a Queen’s agent. The Duke of Avesbury, the gentleman at the head of this small, select group, had offered her a chance to be on the forefront of investigations into strange and unusual medical conditions. This certainly fit the bill.

“A frog bit you.” Piyali’s eyebrows rose, hoping she’d heard wrong. “A blue frog. With teeth.” Did frogs have teeth? And frogs—at least in Britain—were supposed to be green. Or brown.

Miss Price bit her lip. It didn’t bode well that she needed to consider her story.

Hoping for an explanation, she looked to the man who loomed beside her taking up far too much space in the small parlor. Time had turned familiar into foreign. Mr. Evan Tredegar wore his dark, tousled curls longer, no cravat wound under his collar beneath the rough shadow of his beard, and a small, curved scar cut through the edge of his right eyebrow. Under her study, a muscle twitched at his jawline, and his lips pressed into a thin line. He refused to meet her gaze. Perhaps it was just as well, for his eyes never failed to ignite a slow burn beneath her skin, and she needed to focus.

Still, a certain unease gave her pause. Once she’d been able to read his every mood and would have labeled his expression as concerned. Except the man she’d known wouldn’t withhold information vital to a patient’s treatment. What wasn’t he telling her?

“Miss Price?” Piyali prompted.

The young woman nodded. “Then it hopped away and disappeared into the woods.” Sticking her lower lip out in a pout, she looked up at her mother. “Is this really necessary? Besides, she can’t be a real doctor. How can a woman hold such a degree?” With a sidelong glance at Piyali’s clothing, her voice dropped to a whisper. “An Indian woman.”

A real doctor. Piyali resisted the urge to roll her eyes. If she had a shilling for every time she’d heard that sentiment… Instead, she lifted her chin and replied, “I attended medical school at the Université de Paris where women have been accepted since 1860.”

Never had Paris seemed so far away. Four of the best—and worst—years of her life. She’d earned her place there by being twice as good as the other students, most of them men. Any who had sneered at her inclusion swiftly adjusted their opinion as she collected one award after another, graduating first in her class. As to the prejudice, she no longer felt the need to justify the traditional clothing she wore. If a person could not appreciate the richness and intricacy of Indian designs, then it was their loss.

With an unsteady hand, Mrs. Price patted her daughter on the shoulder and threw Piyali a nervous look. “Lister University’s choice of medical practitioner is alarming. No doubt Dr. Mukherji was all they could spare, but I have every confidence in Mr. Tredegar’s ointment. The blue stain has barely spread since you first applied it. In fact, I think it’s grown smaller.” From the pinched expression on her face, the woman clearly wished Piyali elsewhere. “But your father worries and wanted to consult a board-certified physician in case amputation becomes necessary.”

“Amputation!” Miss Price’s chest began to heave, her eyes growing wide, her fingers digging into the cushion of her chair. “It’s just a spot!”

“A very unusual spot.” Evan finally spoke, though his words were tight and strained. “One that must be examined by someone with more expertise than myself.”

Resentment sparked. His defense of her skills was unwelcome. Both by her and, judging from the deep frown upon her face, Miss Price.

Piyali glanced again at the blue lesion. Could it be no more than a stain of blue ink? Had she interrupted a hoax, a bizarre courtship trick designed to lure a handsome, young pharmacist into this parlor? For upon her arrival, her purported patient had been fluttering eyelashes and casting Evan glances drenched with unfulfilled longing. Or—she narrowed her eyes—did the fault lie squarely on Evan’s shoulders? Did he toy with the young shopkeeper’s daughter, making promises he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—keep?

For once he’d made her promises, ones she’d clung to for four long years abroad. Promises he’d failed to keep when he returned from his overseas voyage some three months ago. Upholding her own vow, she’d sent him a message, then pounced upon the daily post for days—weeks—hoping for word of his imminent arrival, but… nothing. Save a devastating silence.

Pre-Order today to secure YOUR copy of this exciting collection!

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BONUS GIFTS  

The Myths and Magic authors are offering FREE gifts to everyone who pre-orders our boxed set. Don’t miss this amazing deal. $.99 pre-order gets you 21 full-length SF&F and paranormal tales in the boxed set, plus 15 FREE eBooks and an exclusive Myths and Magic coloring eBook. Here's how you can claim these free gifts

After pre-ordering your copy of Myths and Magic, head to http://www.subscribepage.com/mythsmagic, enter your e-mail address and your confirmation number (or the store name and date, since some vendors don't have confirmation numbers). You'll be sent to a "success" page that shows you all the book covers with links to the download sites and then you'll receive a one-time courtesy e-mail with the download links as well.

Download a sneak peek of each book in this fantastic collection.

Be sure to like the Myths and Magic Facebook page and join the authors on release day, August 22, 2017, for an all-day release party with tons of giveaways, including a loaded Kindle Fire! https://www.facebook.com/MythsMagicGathering/


MORE MYTHS & MAGIC GIVEAWAYS!


KINDLE FIRE HD8
KINDLE FIRE 7, a $25 Amazon gift card and more, courtesy of author Erin Richards

SUPER GIVEAWAY courtesy of author Anne Renwick
KINDLE FIRE HD8 courtesy of author Bradon Nave






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