A Cutting Deceit

As a doctor, Mick McVey knows what a mental health crisis looks like. Her own still takes her by surprise. When she inherits a house from the grandfather she’s never met, she puts herself on sabbatical and travels to the small hometown of the mother who abandoned her. It’s a temporary solution.

Mick might not be grieving her grandfather, but to her new neighbor Katy, his death is one blow too many. Mick’s arrival feels like Katy’s chance to forget her ex and her struggling cinema and reinvent herself. She’ll finally get her hot rebound and make this year her year.

When the COVID-19 lockdown traps both women in situations they’d convinced themselves were temporary, they’re forced to face what they really want from their lives, and who they want to share them with.

Picturesque retreat Valley of Rubies is intended only for the young women of Sanctity Covenant, but dark secrets lurk behind locked doors. The truth that emerges from the shadows is nothing less than terrifying.

Adel Rosse, an investigative journalist for Vanity Fair in the cutthroat world of Manhattan journalism, has just been handed an assignment that will catapult her career—if she can survive undercover at Valley of Rubies and find out what lies beneath the surface. Just as she starts to uncover the nefarious truth behind the shadowy cult running the organization, she falls in love with the one woman who holds the key to the story...if only she knew the reason Adel was there was to write one.

Grace Waters is an old maid at twenty-six, at least by Covenant standards, and her annual idyllic summers spent as an instructor at Valley of Rubies are rocked by the sudden expectation that she must marry a man she despises at the end of the session. If she refuses, she risks being excommunicated—or worse—but a mysterious new writing instructor at camp makes her brave enough to wonder what would happen if she dared to write her own story. Reprint. 

Alessia Cavalii is a rising star in the competitive international wine scene, and one of only twenty-six female master sommeliers in the world. Her home is a gorgeous, renovated winery on the sun-soaked southern coast of Italy, she has a career she adores, and she has finally managed to end a long-term toxic relationship. But Alessia is hiding a dangerous secret—and she’s edging dangerously closer to losing the beautiful life she’s worked so hard to create.

Parker Haven is a captain in the US Army and stationed at the NATO military camp in Italy. A detective with the military police, she’s recruited to help solve a string of murders in the city and becomes inexplicably drawn into Alessia’s world. As the intrigue surrounding the case—and Alessia—spins dangerously out of control, Parker must choose between her military career and the woman she’s falling in love with.

How can we be sure we truly know the people we love?

Reprint. Previously published as The Last First Kiss.

Diana Dillon and her eleven-year-old daughter, Ryder, are moving back to Diana’s father’s farm in rural Illinois hoping for a new start. There’s something mysterious about the Dillon farm that Diana can’t quite remember, not even as vague memories begin to surface after she encounters an ominous stranger on her way to the farm during a heavy snowstorm.

Deputy Melonie “Mel” Defoe has just returned home from military service in the Middle East. She’s new to the local sheriff’s office, joining at the insistence of her father, former sheriff Norman Defoe. Though it’s not exactly the job she’s dreamed of, she is drawn into the web of mystery surrounding the apparent attack on newcomers Diana and Ryder Dillon and the unusual occurrences at the farm no one can explain.

With Diana healing from the attack and Ryder trying to adjust to life on the farm with her grandfather, can Mel discover the mystery behind the Dillon farm before they all fall victim to the deadly and cursed land?

Cain Casey has much to be thankful for—a loving wife in Emma, three beautiful children, and an ever-expanding family. Her business continues to grow, giving her the power to keep it all safe, but is it? Unknown federal agents are not playing by the government’s rules, and the Russian mob comes seeking revenge for the losses Cain’s inflicted. Cain and Emma have agreed to partner with the local feds to root out their rogue agents, but their goals for the endgame are completely different. Cain wants to remove the threat the way she knows is best—permanently. There is also Nicola Antakov, who she plans to handle the same way. 

Cain Casey is the devil you know. She loves her family and will do anything to keep them safe and whole.