After her affair with a married senator makes prime time news, congressional aide Teal Giovanni is fleeing her shattered life. Betrayed by the lover who was her partner in a successful law practice, August Reese is waiting at a small cattle ranch to testify against a drug kingpin. Attraction sparks when Teal’s aging Honda blows its engine and she and August meet on a steamy Texas blacktop. But as the spark bursts into flame, their worst nightmare comes calling. Will they survive or swelter as the heat becomes unbearable?
Actor Davis Hart’s career is in a death spiral after her drunken sleep-and-tell outs the star of their hit television show. Hoping time and distance will offer a new start, Davis returns to her small hometown where it’s Christmas year-round and the community theater where she honed her acting skills draws thousands of tourists every year. Only everything has changed. The theater is struggling to stay open, and its last hope is a mesmerizing hazel-eyed woman with a grant to produce an original holiday play.
Playwright and director Asia du Muir is serious and very focused on her career. She’s finished her education at Columbia University and hopes a fellowship grant to write and produce a play at a community theater will launch her career. She’s not going to let some party girl actress ruin her best chance to get noticed by a Broadway critic.
Neither of them expects the feelings they can’t deny, but everyone knows personal and professional relationships shouldn’t be mixed. Is their love destined to wait in the wings?
Teague Maxwell, a brilliant, reclusive inventor, knows two things about herself—she prefers the company of animals, and she will die in the next year following her fortieth birthday. Resigned to the inevitable, she hires Baye Cobb from a local pet rescue to find new homes for her menagerie of pets.
When Baye decided to turn her late grandmother’s farm into an animal rescue operation, she had no idea so many animals would land on her doorstep. In dire need of more funding, more space and much better business management, Baye has no choice but to accept the lucrative offer from Teague—her very eccentric, but largest, donor. She agrees to help rehome Teague’s pets despite her disgust for someone who would adopt so many animals, only to rehome all of them.
Neither woman expects Teague’s desperation and Baye’s disapproval to explode into undeniable attraction. The more time they spend together, the more they realize it’s not just animals Baye is adept at saving—she could be the one to rescue Teague from her catastrophic fate.
Competitive barrel racer Lacey Bishop has worked her way from homelessness and poverty to needing only a few points to qualify for the National Rodeo Finals when her only horse suffers a career-ending injury. Without the money to buy a new horse, Lacey has no choice but to trust an offer from Two Rivers Ranch to lease one of their best barrel-racing horses.
Horse trainer Wil Rivers is working hard to get her family’s ranch profitable again after the coronavirus pandemic shut them down for more than a year. Her best chance to save the ranch from foreclosure is a million-dollar-plus offer to buy the one barrel horse that could defeat the mare she’s leased to the bewitching Lacey Bishop.
When Lacey discovers Wil’s plan to sell the Two Rivers “money” horse to her fiercest competitor, she sees their chance for a future together and her chance to qualify for the finals disappearing in the rodeo arena dust.
Efficiency expert Perry Chandler lives what she preaches on her internationally popular podcast. She wakes at exactly the same time to begin her precisely scheduled day with no wasted minutes. Perry’s entire life is planned in advance, which is exactly how she likes it. How else do you get anything done?
Holistic, naturopathic physician Ming Lee greets every sunrise with arms outstretched as she opens herself to the earth’s slow, steady rhythm. Millions follow her podcast on how to live a healthier life by refusing to get caught up in the idea you must hustle to be successful. After all, what’s the point of life if you don’t enjoy it?
Perry and Ming are both sure they hold the key to success until the attraction sizzling between them, and the three rambunctious mutts they’re unexpectedly responsible for, teach them lessons in life and love that they never imagined.
Army veteran Catherine Daye long ago accepted her passable looks, mediocre talent, and average intelligence. In fact, she bought a rundown farm on seventy acres to retreat from the world and live out her simple, ordinary life. Atlanta marketing superstar Autumn Swan’s world is anything but simple. Constantly plugged in to what’s trending on social media, it’s her job to keep her clients ahead of the competition. When her favorite cousin dies suddenly, she finds herself the owner of a modest country home, guardian to a sullen, tomboyish ten-year-old, and neighbor to an intriguing woman who isn’t as ordinary as she appears.
Veterinarian Trip Beaumont likes being a big fish in a small pond. There’s hardly an animal she can’t heal or a woman she can’t charm within fifty miles of Pine Cone, Georgia—except for the irritating and elusive new cop who keeps leaving parking tickets on her truck.
Officer Jamie Grant has never liked rule breakers, but she’s especially incensed when she discovers Trip owns the truck that is constantly parked illegally. She’s searched carefully for a quiet, eclectic community to settle down with her drug-sniffing—albeit gastric-challenged—canine partner, Petunia. Instead, she finds herself on a collision course with the woman who stole her college girlfriend and broke her heart after an ill-conceived threesome.
D. Jackson Leigh is one of those authors whose books I'll always pick up. Swelter provides a good solid read - everything you want from a Jackson Leigh novel - horses, lesbians, a bit of action, a lot of romance. I wasn't sure if I liked Teal's character at first but she grew on me...[O]verall it was still a fun and engaging read.
Reviewed by Megan Cooper
Once started I didn't put down
By Netgalley.com on Mar 24, 2017 11:03
This is my first time reading D Jackson Leigh novel and I have to be honest it won't be my last.
DJL really knows how to write, and as a reader she kept hooked, once started I didn't put down
This is a wonderfully written story, the romance between TJ/Teal and August is both enjoyable and the build up is heart warming.
The plot has it all romance, passion tension and danger.
I would certainly recommend this novel, a very good read
Reviewed by Cathy Williams
This was an amazing book
By Netgalley.com on Mar 6, 2017 01:03
This was an amazing book...I couldn't put it down. The setting, problem, and characters got to me. Especially Rio! This author tells a great story with three dimensional characters that you won't get enough of!
Reviewed by Penelope Parker
A great mix of romance, action, angst, and emotional drama.
By Netgalley.com on Feb 10, 2017 02:02
This book is a great mix of romance, action, angst, and emotional drama. Teal is escaping a scandal after it was revealed she was the lesbian lover of a married senator. On the way to her cousin’s place her car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Luckily for her, August is on the road that day, and comes to Teal’s rescue. August has her own painful secrets and is also in hiding – Christine, her lover and partner in her law practice, has been helping a drug lord, Luis Reyes, launder money, and August has turned in both of them to the DEA. While the agency try to gather evidence to bring the pair to trial, August is in hiding on the ranch she inherited from her grandfather.
By the time August finds her, Teal is suffering from heat exhaustion, so August simply takes her home to the ranch so that Teal can recover. It’s here we meet the secondary characters in the book, which – surprisingly, but it works – are all men. August has grown up with some of the guys who work on the ranch, and they’re more like family than employees. The older men in particular soon figure out that August and Teal are hot for each other, and make amusing matchmakers.
The first half of the book focuses on the budding relationship between the two women, and the gradual revealing of secrets. The second half ramps up the action side of things, with Reyes’s henchmen (and hired killers) relentless in their search for August and the evidence she has that will put Reyes, and a few other people, in jail. Both halves are written equally well, with a good buildup of the tension between August and Teal in the first half, and some exciting scenes in the action-packed latter half.
...the author did a good job of convincing me they’d both go for a new relationship that soon, given how sizzling the chemistry was between them. There were some good sexy scenes, and also an appropriate amount of angst and introspection by both women as feelings more than just the physical started to surface.
I enjoyed all the male characters at the ranch, and especially the role they came to play toward the end. I also really enjoyed the author’s descriptions of the ranch, the horses, and the landscape, which were richly evocative. There was a hint of Native American spirituality toward the end that I actually would have liked to read more of from earlier in the book, and the story resolved in a nicely satisfactory way. A good read.
Reviewed by Rainbow Book Reviews
D Jackson Leigh writes great romances, and this one is no exception.
By Netgalley.com on Dec 30, 2016 06:12
Swelter finds ex-congressional aide Teal Giovanni, escaping from the paparazzi, thrown into the path of August Reese, in hiding from the drug lord she has exposed to the law. The attraction is instant, although they both keep their secrets. Over time, however they can’t keep their hands off each other, their bodies collide and their hearts aren’t far behind.
D Jackson Leigh writes great romances, and this one is no exception. The characters are gorgeous, strong, powerful women, more than capable of handling themselves. They are all high achievers in one way or another, and live out the dream finding their happy ever after.
The plotline is exciting, a decent page turner – we always know its going to turn out ok, but what our heroines have to suffer first keeps the interest and the juices flowing. I really enjoyed the portrayal of the ranch and wilderness, the story makes excellent use of the land and the heritage imbued in it’s history and culture.
As always D Jackson Leigh’s heroines and sex scenes are hot and steamy, this time the landscape adds to the heat. She writes extremely good erotic action as well as well done action and adventure.
Traditional romance at its steamy best – definitely no fade to black found here!
