Guest Author: NY Times Bestseller Ruth Harris & Giveaway!

I have a very special (read: awesome!) author featured on the blog today.  She’s New York Times bestselling, women’s fiction author Ruth Harris, who has written for just about every powerhouse publisher out there, including Random House, Simon & Shuster, and St. Martin’s Press.  Ruth’s fabulous novels have sold millions (millions!) of copies in hardcover and paperback, have been translated in 19 languages, published in 25 countries and selected by the Literary Guild and the Book-of-the-Month Club.

Crikey!  That’s a damn impressive resume, wouldn’t you say?

Ruth started in publishing right after she graduated from university.  She’s been with Dell, Bantam, and went on to become the publisher at my own house, Kensington Publishing.  So it’s safe to say that Ruth not only knows what readers want to read, she also knows how to deliver the goods!

Like many authors these days, Ruth has been acquiring the rights to her backlist and reissuing them as digital books.  Indie publishing has become a huge boon to both writers and readers, as novels that were once out of print are now available on a number of reading devices, including the Kindle and Nook.  And if you don’t have an e-reader, no worries!  You can just download the books right to your computer or smart phone.  How cool is that?

Ruth currently has five of her backlist books available in digital:  Husbands and Lovers, Love and Money, Decades, Modern Women, and The Last Romantics.


Take Modern Women, for example, a New York Times bestseller that has sold over one million copies.  One.  Million.  Copies.

This is the book that New Woman Magazine called “fiction at its best,” and the Chicago Sun-Times labelled “passionate, daring and unconventional.”

Or how about The Last Romantics, her wonderful historical romance set between the two World Wars?


Here’s the blurb for The Last Romantics:

A passionate and sweeping historical romance set in the glittering capitals of Paris and New York between the end of World War I in 1918 and the beginning of World War II in 1940.

Kim Hendricks is American, a legendary war reporter and celebrated novelist, a daring big game hunter, glamorous but dangerously flawed. Nicole Redon is French, a gifted fashion designer whose shocking and revolutionary ideas changed the image of women around the world. She is beautiful, charming, lonely, haunted.

He confronts a devastating tragedy. She guards a desperate secret. They meet by chance and pursue their star-crossed romance in New York and Paris, on safari in Africa, in glamorous resorts on the French Riviera and the savage blood-drenched front lines of two world wars.

They were the last romantics, the first contemporaries. Destiny brought them together but would fate—and the tides of history—keep them apart?

Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?

It’s just so great that these novels are now available in digital mass market and at incredibly reasonable prices too.  If you haven’t read any of Ruth’s books, here’s your chance!

And just for us, Ruth has generously agreed to give away one copy of each of her books to 5 of my readers.  All you have to do is tell me what book you happen to be reading right now, and what you’re looking forward to reading next.


Guest Author: Kelly McClymer & Giveaway

I’m so pleased to be hosting Kelly McClymer on my blog today.  Kelly is a multi-talented, multi-published author who writes in a true diversity of genres, including science fiction, fantasy, historical romance, and paranormal YA.  Her historical romance novels, including The Fairy Tale Bride, were published with Kensington Zebra and she has three YA books with Simon Pulse, the YA imprint for Simon & Shuster.  Fortunately for us, Kelly is now re-releasing her historical romances, and she’s here today to tell us all about it.

Charmed by the Boundary Pushing Earl…Again!

There’s something about a charming rake that makes many a woman lose her common sense.  That’s certainly true for Helena Fenster in The Next Best Bride.  After all, her charming rake agrees to marry her in her twin sister’s stead and doesn’t seem to mind the last minute switch.  You’d think she’d have more sense than to fall for him. But you’d be wrong.


Worse, though, while writing the book, I fell for the earl’s charming determination to stay unscathed by the bonds of love.  I made excuses for him and let him push my boundaries to the breaking point, just like he pushed Helena’s. After all, he saw Helena’s artistic talent and encouraged her to nurture it. So what if he wanted her to paint him nude? Artists benefit from studying the human form. Okay, I could write those scenes.

You’d think a seasoned historical romance writer would know better than to let her hero seduce her into writing three times as many love scenes as she had ever written in one book before.  But you’d be wrong.

You might also think, after ten years, when that same writer was editing Rand and Helena’s story for the ebook version of The Next Best Bride, that she’d be immune to the rakish earl’s charm. Surely, after so long, she could resist his insistence that he needed to have a more active role in the end of his story. Wrong. He charmed her into writing three extra scenes for him.

I hope he’s happy now, because I need some sleep.

Kelly McClymer recently rereleased The Next Best Bride, Book 5 in the Once Upon a Wedding series, after tussling with the charming earl over some key revisions he wanted to his story. The first book in the series, The Fairy Tale Bride, is also on sale for 99 cents until the end of July, for the last days of the big wedding promotion to help her pay for her daughter’s wedding (you can read all about it on her blog at http://kellymcclymer.com if you’re curious).

I don’t know about you, but I love a hero who makes you write extra sex scenes.  Sounds like a whole lot of fun to me!

For my readers, Kelly is giving away a copy of The Next Best Bride, either in its older print edition or in the newly revised digital format.  And since we’re talking about weddings – an ever popular theme in romances – tell me about your favorite wedding.  Was it the latest royal wedding, one in a book or on a TV show, or your own?  One reader who comments will win a copy of The Next Best Bride.


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