The 12 Days of Christmas with N.Y. Times Best Selling Author Melissa Foster

Welcome to Day 10 of the 12 Days of Christmas Giveaway

Today we have New York Times Best Selling Author and Founder of the World Literary Cafe, Melissa Foster.

From Melissa:

When I was growing up, I was one of three Jewish families on my block. I was about the only girl in my nursery school who didn’t have straight blonde hair. I remember my mother putting my long, dark, mop into two ponytails and by the time I came home from school I looked a little like Mickey Mouse. Needless to say, when holidays came around, I was about the only kid without a Christmas tree. And yeah, I was wicked jealous.?

My favorite holiday memory would be one that I made up in my mind. I remember wanting nothing more than to have someone dress up like Santa Clause and visit my best friend in the world, my next door neighbor, Jean Pieranunzi. I didn’t want presents and I didn’t want to celebrate the holiday (okay, secretly I did, but that’s not what my hope was for). I wanted to see her eyes grow wide when “Santa” showed up at her door.?

Needless to say, I can’t work miracles, so she never got the chance to meet Santa. Total bummer. While I didn’t get to realize that particular dream for the holidays, I did make a habit of sitting on Santa’s lap every year once I was able to drive. Now that I think about it, and after watching the movie Bad Santa, that might not have been such a good idea (ha!). Anyhoo…my favorite memory was definitely hoping to find someone to show up at Jean’s house dressed as Santa. Even if the dream never came true, it was something I loved hoping for, and to this day I still think about how happy she might have been if I’d been able to make it happen. That was present enough for me.
Happy Holidays!

 

Books by Melissa Foster

Megan’s Way:

What would you give up for the people you love?

When Megan Taylor, a single mother and artist, receives the shocking news that her cancer has returned, she’ll be faced with the most difficult decision she’s ever had to make. She’ll endure an emotional journey, questioning her own moral and ethical values, and the decisions she’d made long ago. The love she has for her daughter, Olivia, and her closest friends, will be stretched and frayed.

Meanwhile, fourteen-year-old Olivia’s world is falling apart right before her eyes, and there’s nothing she can do about it. She finds herself acting in ways she cannot even begin to understand. When her internal struggles turn to dangerous behavior, her life will hang in the balance.

Megan’s closest friends are caught in a tangled web of deceit. Each must figure out how, and if, they can expose their secrets, or forever be haunted by their pasts.

Come Back to Me:

Tess Johnson has it all: her handsome photographer husband Beau, a thriving business, and a newly discovered pregnancy. When Beau accepts an overseas photography assignment, Tess decides to wait to reveal her secret–only she’s never given the chance. Beau’s helicopter crashes in the desert.

Tess struggles with the news of Beau’s death and tries to put her life back together. Alone and dealing with a pregnancy that only reminds her of what she has lost, Tess is adrift in a world of failed plans and fallen expectations. When a new client appears offering more than just a new project, Tess must confront the circumstances of her life head on.Meanwhile, two Iraqi women who are fleeing honor killings find Beau barely alive in the middle of the desert, his body ravaged by the crash. Suha, a doctor, and Samira, a widow and mother of three young children, nurse him back to health in a makeshift tent. Beau bonds with the women and children, and together, with the help of an underground organization, they continue their dangerous escape.

What happens next is a test of loyalties, strength, and love.

Chasing Amanda:
Nine years ago, Molly Tanner witnessed a young girl’s abduction in the busy?city of Philadelphia, shifting her occasional clairvoyance into overdrive. Two days later, the girl’s body was found, and Molly’s life fell apart. Consumed by guilt for not acting upon her visions, and on the brink of losing her family, Molly escaped the torturous reminders in the city, fleeing to the safety of the close-knit rural community of Boyds, Maryland.

Molly’s life is back on track, her son has begun college, and she and her husband have finally rekindled their relationship. Their fresh start is shattered when a seven-year-old girl disappears from a local park near Molly’s home. Unable to turn her back on another child and troubled by memories of the past, Molly sets out to find her, jeopardizing the marriage she’d fought so hard to hold together. While unearthing clues and struggling to decipher her visions, Molly discovers another side of Boyds, where the residents–and the land itself–hold potentially lethal secrets, and exposes another side of her husband, one that threatens to tear them apart.“CHASING AMANDA will resonate with readers of Lisa Scottoline, Lisa Gardner, Tess Gerritson, and Kristen Hannah. It will tug on your heart and send you sailing through the pages.”

Traces of Kara:
TRACES OF KARA is an action packed, pulse pounding psychological thriller/suspense novel that features a determined killer who slowly loses his grip on reality as his carefully detailed plan starts to fall apart and a heroine determined to move forward with her life who now must reconcile everything she believed to be true about her family with the reality of their tragic past.
Kara Knight can’t wait to leave her hometown for the promise of nursing school and a fresh start on her future–leaving behind an over protective mother, a broken heart and painful memories. However, twenty-five miles away, the twin she doesn’t know exists is determined to be reunited with the sister he cannot forget.Kara is abducted and thrown into her obsessive captor’s delusional world. As the past she thought she knew unravels around her, Kara struggles to make sense of the memories that come creeping back, threatening her sanity and her safety. Meanwhile, Kara’s mother races against time to save the daughter she fears she will lose when a long-held secret is revealed. The hours tick away as her captor plays out his plan–to take Kara with him into death at the exact moment of their birth, never to be separated again.
Have No Shame:
The racially-charged prejudice of the deep South forces eighteen-year-old Alison Tillman to confront societal norms–and her own beliefs–when she discovers the body of a hate crime victim, and the specter of forbidden love turns her safe, comfortable world upside down.

Alison Tillman has called Forrest Town, Arkansas home for the past eighteen years. Her mother’s Blue Bonnet meetings, her father toiling night and day on the family farm, and the division of life between the whites and the blacks are all Alison knows. The winter of 1967, just a few months before marrying her high school sweetheart, Alison finds the body of a black man floating in the river, and she begins to view her existence with new perspective. The oppression and hate of the south, the ugliness she once was able to avert her eyes from, now demands her attention.

When a secretive friendship with a young black man takes an unexpected romantic turn, Alison is forced to choose between her predetermined future, and the dangerous path that her heart yearns for.

Where Petals Fall:

On the surface Junie Olson’s life looks idyllic, from her handsome husband and beautiful daughter to her successful business, the bakery she’d always dreamed of opening. But in the past few months her world has slowly unraveled. Her precocious child is withdrawing, showing unexplainable signs of emotional regression, a condition that frays the bonds of Junie’s once impenetrable marriage. When her father dies suddenly of a heart attack, Junie packs up her daughter and goes home to help her mother. Her homecoming stirs up memories of the nightmare she thought she had put behind her, the disappearance of her childhood friend, Ellen. Haunted by recurring memories of what happened on that fateful day, Junie must gather the courage to revisit her past and untangle the secrets surrounding her missing friend, and the trauma that has caused her little girl to climb back into herself. As the pieces come together on the event that shook her small town, and at the risk of losing everyone she loves, Junie will question everything she thought she could rely on and everyone she thought she knew.

WHERE PETALS FALL is a gripping and emotional novel with an undercurrent of suspense, featuring a determined mother whose world slowly comes apart around her. Readers will root for Junie as they follow her transition into an indomitable heroine who must reconcile what she discovers about her husband and family’s tragic past, and find a way to put the pieces of her family back together and carry on.

Sisters In Love (Love in Bloom, Snow Sisters #1)

Danica Snow has always been the smart, practical, and appropriate sister. As a therapist, she prides herself on making reasonable, conservative choices, even if a bit boring, and as part of the Big Sister Program, she has little time for anything more in her life.

Blake Carter is a player. He never gets bored of conquering women, and with his sexy good looks and successful lifestyle, he has no trouble finding willing participants. When his friend and business partner dies in a tragic accident, he suddenly, desperately, wants to change his ways. The problem is, he doesn’t know how to stop doing what he does best.

When Blake walks into Danica’s office, the attraction between them is white hot, but Danica isn’t the type to give into the heat and risk her career. Danica’s desire sets her on a path of self-discovery, where she begins to question every decision she’s ever made. Just this once, Danica wants to indulge in the pleasures of life she’s been so willingly ignoring, but with her Little Sister in turmoil and her biological sister’s promiscuousness weighing heavily on her heart, she isn’t sure it’s the right time to set her desires free.

Sisters in Bloom (Love in Bloom: Snow Sisters #2)?
You loved Danica and Kaylie in?SISTERS IN LOVE, find out what happens next with ?SISTERS IN BLOOM.

Kaylie Snow has always been the fun, flirty, pretty sister. Now her burgeoning baby bump, hormone-infused emotions, and faltering singing career are sending her into an unexpected identity crisis. Watching her older sister, Danica, glide through a major career change and a new relationship with the grace of a ballerina, Kaylie’s insecurities rise to the forefront–and her relationship with fianc? Chaz Crew is caught in the crossfire.

Chaz Crew has everything he’s ever wanted: a lovely fianc?e, a baby on the way, and soon, the film festival he owns will host its biggest event ever. When he’s called away to woo the festival’s largest sponsor–and the lover he’s never admitted to having–secrets from his past turn his new life upside down.

With her baby shower around the corner and her fianc?’s big event looming, the pressure is on for Kaylie to pull herself together–and for Chaz to right his wrongs. In a few short weeks, the couple who had it all figured out will learn things about life and love that may change their minds–and their hearts.

Sisters in White (Love in Bloom: Snow Sisters #3)

Danica and Kaylie Snow are about to celebrate the biggest day of their lives–their double wedding–on an island in the Bahamas. But no wedding is complete without a little family drama. The two sisters aren’t ready to face the father they haven’t seen since he divorced their mother and moved away to marry his mistress, and live with Lacy, the half sister they’ve never met.

While Danica has exchanged letters and phone calls with Lacy, Kaylie has fervently tried to pretend she doesn’t exist. Lacy is sweet, fun, and nearly a mirror image of Kaylie. To make matters worse, not only is Lacy looking forward to meeting her sisters, but she idolizes them, too. As the countdown to the wedding date ticks on, their parents are playing a devious game of revenge, and there’s a storm brewing over the island, threatening to cancel their perfect wedding. The sisters are about to find out if the bond of sisterhood really trumps all.

Lovers at Heart (Love in Bloom: The Bradens, Book 1):

Handsome, wealthy resort owner Treat Braden is used to getting what he wants. When Max Armstrong walked into his life six months earlier, he saw right through the efficient and capable fa?ade she wore like a shield, to the sweet, sensual woman who lay beneath. She sparked an unfamiliar desire in him for more than a one-night stand, leaving his heart reeling and his blood boiling. But one mistake caused her to turn away, and now, after six months of longing for the one woman he cannot have, he’s going home to try to forget her all together.

Max Armstrong has a successful career, a comfortable lifestyle, and she’s never needed a man to help her find her way–until Treat Braden caught her attention at a wedding in Nassau, causing a surge of emotions too reminiscent of the painful past she’d spent years trying to forget. Max will do anything to avoid reliving that pain–including forgoing her toe-curling, heart-pounding desire for Treat.

When a chance encounter turns into a night of intense passion, Treat realizes that the mistake he made six months earlier may cause him to lose Max completely. He will do everything within his power to win her heart forever–and Max is forced to face her hurtful past head on for the man she cannot help but love.

Destined for Love (Love in Bloom: The Bradens, Book 2):

Rex Braden is wealthy, hard working, and fiercely loyal. Sweat at his brow, he works the family ranch by day, then kicks back at night with part time lovers who require nothing more than his physical presence a few times each week. But that was before. Before Jade Johnson, the daughter of the man his father has been feuding with for over forty years, moves back into town.

After ditching a horrific relationship–and her veterinary practice in the process–Jade Johnson returns to the safety of her small hometown and finally finds her footing. That is…until her horse is injured and Rex Braden comes to her rescue. The last thing she needs is a bull-headed, too-handsome-for-his-own-good Braden complicating her life.

Despite the angry family history, sparks fly between Rex and Jade, and attitudes follow. Fifteen years of stifled, forbidden love stirs a surge of passion too strong for either to deny–and the rebel in each of them rears its powerful head. Loyalties are tested, and relationships are strained. Rex and Jade are about to find out if true love really can conquer all.

Friendship on Fire (Love in Bloom, The Bradens, Book 3):

Small-town overachiever Riley Banks has finally scored her big break–working in Manhattan as a fashion design assistant for her childhood crush, Josh Braden. She enters her new job hoping to make a name for herself and–just maybe–explore the romance that slipped through her fingers way back when.

Josh Braden has models at his beck and call, a staff that never says never, and an elegant clothing line for the holiday season. When he hires Riley Banks, he expects her to learn the business from the ground up. But the girl next door turns out to be much more than he remembered.

Josh and Riley’s friendship heats up. Every steamy kiss and every erotic caress stirs a love they cannot deny. But when Riley designs a wedding gown that would cause even the most jaded fashion editors to swoon, Riley’s mentor accuses her of stealing the design.

Facing indisputable proof and the mistrust of her lover, Riley is not sure she can take the heat of life in the fast lane of the fashion industry–and Josh is forced to choose between the woman he loves and the career he adores.

Sea of Love (Love in Bloom: The Bradens, Book 4):

Lacy Snow wasn’t looking for love when she met strikingly handsome and seductive Dane Braden. But how could she ignore the six-foot-three darkly handsome god who tagged and researched sharks for a living–and made every nerve in her body tangle into an overly sensitive knot? Even her fear of sharks could not suppress their intense attraction.

As founder of the Brave Foundation, Dane Braden travels from port to port, educating and advocating on behalf of the mammals he adores–and spends his nights finding solace in the arms of strangers. The last thing Dane was looking for when he met Lacy Snow was a relationship, and the last thing he expected was to fall in love.

Fifteen months–and hundreds of flirty emails, steamy phone calls, and sensual video chats–later, they reunite and take passion to a whole new level. But as Lacy’s phobia meets Dane’s past love life, their steamy romance is upended, and when tragedy strikes, Dane and Lacy are forced to face their deepest fears head-on as they try to navigate their own sea of love.

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To all of Melissa Foster’s Books on Nook

THE FOLLOWING BOOKS ARE INCLUDED IN THE E-BOOK GIVEAWAY!

Traces of Kara

Chasing Amanda

Come Back to Me

Megan’s Way

Have no Shame

Where Petals Fall

Sisters in Love, Love in Bloom, Snow Sisters Book 1

CLICK HERE TO TAKE YOU TO THE GIVEAWAY HOME PAGE TO ENTER TO WIN!!