the sea where she is lucky enough to enjoy herself avoiding housework and writing sensual stories of paranormal romance and fantasy.
Marie has published more than twenty ebooks with small presses, (Samhain Publishing, Ellora’s Cave, Changeling Press and The Wild Rose Press), including a former Kindle bestseller, Killing Joe. Blood on Silk: an Awakened by Blood novel, was her New York debut with NAL.
Other E-Books by Marie Treanor
BLOOD GUILT (Blood Hunters, Book 1): a sequel to the Awakened by Blood trilogy
Available now from NAL Signet Eclipse:
The Awakened by Blood trilogy:
BLOOD ON SILK
BLOOD SIN
BLOOD ETERNAL
Available now from Ellora's Cave:
The Psychic Seductions trilogy:
HUNTING KAROLY
GUITAR MAN
FREEING AL
Available now from Samhain Publishing:
KILLING JOE
GOTHIC DRAGON
ARIADNE'S THREAD
THE DEVIL AND VIA
QUEEN'S GAMBIT
REQUIEM FOR RAB
Fairytale Fantasies (with Bonnie Dee):
CINDERELLA UNMASKED
DEMON LOVER
AWAKENING BEAUTY
Available now from Changeling Press
Tales of the Damned:
CITY OF THE DAMNED
Christmas Cookies: CHRISTMAS OF THE DAMNED
DRAGUL RISING
ROGUE WARRIORS
Jack o' Lanterns: WITCH OF ALLOWAY
ESCAPE: Devilish Fantasy
Hot Flash: SWAN SONG
Big, Blooming and Wild! WILLOW THE WISP
Heat Stroke: COOL POOL
STEAMY NIGHTS
DEMON'S KISS
WOLF HUNT
Holiday Howlz: CRY FOR THE MOON
Available now from The Wild Rose Press:
MAGIC MAN
GHOST UNLAID
Coming November 2012
SMOKE AND MIRRORS (The Gifted, Book 1)
by Marie Treanor
Deceit and desire, and a treasure beyond price…
When struggling Scottish writer Nell Black accepts a one-off job with the police, translating for an arson suspect from the isolated ex-Soviet republic of Zavrekestan, she stumbles into a terrifying world of organized crime and paranormal abilities that turns her whole belief system upside down. Faced with an incomparable thief, hit men who spontaneously combust, gangsters, drug dealers, British Intelligence and a fiery goddess, Nell no longer knows who to trust. The man who saves her life is a criminal to whom deceit is second nature. He has more smoke screens and more plans in motion than anyone else can keep track of. He is, moreover, probably insane. Even his fellow gangsters are afraid of him. So why is he the one man Nell wants to touch her?
Rodion Kosar is in trouble. His convoluted plans all lead to one goal - the retrieval of his treasure - and to achieve that, he needs Nell to believe he isn't the bad guy. He has many reasons beyond his own desires to make love to her. Especially when a plan goes wrong and he has to play dead before someone really kills him - either the police, the menacing Russian crime lord known as the Bear, or the powerful Guardian of the Gifted whom he's defied once too often. Nell's burgeoning gift of second sight could be his best route to the treasure, and yet keeping her with him spells danger. For Nell has her own agenda, her own mission, and she could just as easily cause his final downfall.
Please enjoy the prologue and the first chapter from Smoke and Mirrors…
Prologue
Fourteen years ago…
The Russian captain ran from the village as if all the fiends in hell were after him—instead of just one unarmed boy. He stumbled and slipped his desperate way through the snow, trying to reach his horse, any horse that would get him away from here. The dying screams of his men still rang in his ears, the stink of their burning flesh clogged his nostrils and churned his stomach. If it hadn’t been fire, he’d have coped better, but his greatest fear—maybe even his only fear—had always been death by burning.
He still couldn’t quite believe the boy had killed them all. Just by looking. There must be money in this, if only he could stay alive long enough to find the way to it. Visions of the last hour flashed back in front of his eyes—tracking enemy survivors of the battle on horseback, because it was the easiest way to travel in these dense woods; the trail of blood his troop had followed here, bright, shocking scarlet against the pristine whiteness of the snow; the wounded separatist soldier, dragged from his house with his wife and the boy clinging to him; the sight of the once awful wound healing and closing before his eyes; his own gun shooting the soldier; the screams of the women; one of his men seizing a young girl of the family, grabbing for her skirt—just before he burst into flames.
There had been a barrage of shooting then. The soldier’s wife, the boy’s mother, had fallen beside her husband as the Russian soldiers began the rampage of looting, raping and killing that was all they fun they ever got out of this shitty little war. Only that hadn’t happened either, because of the boy.
With