A sparkling romantic comedy starring a bestselling author who goes to Paris to overcome writer’s block and rediscovers family, independence, and love along the way.
MAGGIE FINDS HER MUSE
by Dee Ernst
St. Martin’s Griffin, April 2021 (voir catalogue)
Maggie Bliss is in trouble. A forty-something, bestselling romance author, Maggie needs to finish the last novel of her current trilogy; except she has the worst case of writer’s block of her career. When her agent offers her a chance to get away to his apartment in Paris, complete with his housekeeper, how can she refuse? She can write undisturbed and pampered in the most beautiful and inspiring city in the world, and she can visit her daughter who is studying in France. Even better, on arrival she meets a charming and sexy Frenchman, Max, the housekeeper’s son, who becomes her writing inspiration. But then her ex-husband shows up in Paris to see their daughter as well, and it seems that he might be interested in rekindling a romance with Maggie. As sparks fly with both men, can Maggie finish her book and find her happily-ever-after?
Dee Ernst was born and raised in New Jersey, which explains a great deal about her attitude towards life. Although she always loved reading women’s fiction and romantic comedy, she never loved the twenty-something heroines who couldn’t figure out how to go about getting what they wanted. She began to write about women like herself —slightly older, confident, and with a wealth of life experience to draw upon. She self-published her first novel in 2012, Better Off Without Him, which became an Amazon bestseller with nearly 70,000 copies sold when Amazon picked it up in 2013 for their Montlake line. She has continued publishing with Amazon and has self-published several books including A Safe Place To Land, which garnered a Rita Award nomination as Contemporary Romance Novel: Short.
Skye Starling is overjoyed when her boyfriend, Burke Michaels, proposes after a whirlwind courtship. Though Skye seems to have the world at her fingertips—she’s smart, beautiful, and from a well-off family—she has also battled crippling OCD since her mother’s death when she was eleven, and her romantic relationships have suffered as a result. But now Burke—handsome, older, and more emotionally mature than any other man she’s met before—says he wants to take care of her. Forever. Except, Burke isn’t who he says he is. And interspersed letters to his therapist reveal that he is happily married and using Skye for his own, deceptive ends. In a third perspective, set thirty years earlier, a scrappy seventeen-year-old named Heather is determined to end things with Burke, a local bad boy. But can her adolescent love stay firmly in her past—or will he find his way into her future? On a collision course she doesn’t see coming, Skye throws herself into wedding planning, as Burke’s scheme grows ever more twisted. Meanwhile, three decades in the past, Heather’s longed-for transformation finally seems within reach…yet even the best laid plans can go astray. And just when you think you know where this story is going, you’ll discover that there’s more than one way to spin the truth.
Two queens, separated by a thousand years must face their ultimate destinies. Queen Rielle, pushed away from everything she loves, turns to Corien and his promises of glory. Meanwhile, whispers from the empirium slowly drive her mad, urging her to open the Gate. Separated from Audric and Ludivine, she embraces the role of Blood Queen and her place by Corien’s side, determined to become the monster the world believes her to be. In the future, Eliana arrives in the Empire’s capital as a broken shell of herself. Betrayed and abandoned, she fights to keep her power at bay―and away from Corien, who will stop at nothing to travel back in time to Rielle, even if that means destroying her daughter. But when the mysterious Prophet reveals themselves at last, everything changes, giving Rielle and Eliana a second chance for salvation―or the destruction their world has been dreading. An epic fantasy with female protagonist, the Empirium Trilogy has captured the hearts of many and LIGHTBRINGER concludes this beloved teen fantasy series.
Jack has always known what he wanted: to follow in his father’s footsteps to Columbia University and become a doctor. But when his father unexpectedly dies, Jack’s careful plans start to unravel. Then, on the eve of leaving for college, he discovers a letter his father wrote to his estranged brother, Alex, stamped and unsent. Jack sees an opportunity: if he goes to San Francisco and finds his brother, he might be able to heal the past and truly move forward.
A return trip to the South Pole is an impossible dream for many of us – but the medic Carmen Possnig did just that. On behalf of the European Space Agency, she spent a year in the heart of the Antarctica to find out what it’s like to live in extreme weather conditions, with a distinct lower level of oxygen and in complete isolation from the rest of the world. With twelve other scientists, she spent the winter at the Concordia research station in the eternal ice. There, she not only encountered the breathtaking beauty of the most extreme continent on Earth, but also her own limits: Sharing a tight space with other people for twelve months, in a world that remains dark for months on end and where the temperature drops to -80°C, requires a huge physical and mental effort. Carmen Possnig’s personal and witty travel report, and its wealth of photographs, opens up a window onto an alien world – making us marvel at our planet’s diversity, and at how adaptable human nature can be.