Saturday, July 18, 2026
Red Wine Lover Excerpt Reveal
Title: Red Wine Lover
A Small Town Romance Perfect
for Lovers of Growly Guys and Kissing K9s
Series: Tales from the Chocolate Lab Café #2
Author: Kristin Jeffries
Genre: Small Town Romantic Comedy
Tropes: Golden Retriever/Black Cat, Love at First Sight
Found Family, OTT Protective MMC, Meddling Fur Babies
He Falls First, Forced Proximity, Later in Life Love
Release Date: August 21, 2026
BLURB
Their dogs tricked them into one bed, but will their secrets kick them out?
Lauren escaped to Dogwood to start over, taking her Papillon dog, Baby, and her secrets with her. Running from her toxic ex and those who said she was too poor, too weak, too good-girl to make it at her age.
She’s ready to stand on her own two feet—well, her own two red, high heel, De Luxe Chucks. And she found the perfect place to launch her dream French bakery just down the street from her bestie’s café.
Unexpected distraction…or attraction? A certain tatted, black-bearded, sooty-eyed Frenchman, whose dimples don’t quite make up for his over-the-top watchful ways.
Wine seller Jean-Luc was struck by a coup de foudre—thunderbolt of love—the stormy night they met. He promised to return to his family wine estate, yet he can’t get the stunning and sassy Lauren out of his head.
Sure, Lauren parked Jean-Luc in the friendzone—she needs friends more than flings right now. But why is the recovering bad boy so hot to protect her at any cost? And why does he hide from thunderstorms just like his rescue Bernese Mountain Dog, Cabernet?
When instant BFFs, Baby and Cab, force the couple into sharing one bed, the stakes just get higher. Will they unleash their deepest desires? Or will they fall prey to their regrets and run from forever love?
Can Lauren and Jean-Luc trust each other with their hearts…and ALL their secrets?
Red Wine Lover is a swoony, spicy romcom featuring a belly-button-baring wine tasting, matchmaking fur babies, meddling found family, and all the rich, full-bodied feels.
PRE-ORDER LINKS
EXCERPT
Prologue - Valentine’s Day almost twelve months ago…
Lauren
“Jean-Luc? Jean-Luc?” my friend Rose called out. “You’ve got some thirsty tasters out here. And where’s that candied bacon you promised?”
The shop appeared deserted even though wine bottles marched in a line down the long high bar on the right, each in its own anonymous brown paper bag. Long-stemmed glasses sat next to small plates of sliced baguette and bacon bites, along with a pitcher of water.
To the tune of another clap of thunder, I struggled to pull off my raincoat. We were all soaked, despite our vow to run between the raindrops from Rose’s Chocolate Lab Café to Dogwood Wine Merchants a few blocks down the street.
I was up from Sonoma to Portland for the winter dog show, and Rose had invited me to join her and her friends for a Valentine’s Day blind wine tasting at her neighborhood wine shop.
The love is blind theme worked for me. Turned out, the other four women were unattached on this most romantic day of the year. But I was happy to take a break from…all the pre-dog-show schmoozing.
Except now I’d lost track of the dog in question.
“Baby? Oh, Baby, come back.”
The moment I’d set my giant yellow tote on the floor, my little girl had jumped out and raced toward the back of the shop, her nails ticking against the wood floor.
Crackles and pops sounded overhead as I wove between stacked open boxes and crates, pursuing Baby to the back. She disappeared through a door, and I pushed it all the way open when I reached it.
My breath caught in my throat.
The tiny Papillon had crowded between two monsters…in size, at least. Though at five foot nothing, I saw monsters everywhere.
But my Baby was fearless. She stood facing a humongous Bernese Mountain Dog, her butterfly ears perked forward, her tail on the wag, ready for anything. When she didn’t get the expected play bow, Baby sat down and scooted closer, tilting her head in inquiry.
I started forward to rescue my girl, then stilled. The poor big baby had wedged himself between two rows of wine crates, shivering and whimpering and whining at each blast of thunder.
A monster of a man knelt in front of the Bernese, crowding Baby from the back. A fine sheen covered his face, even under his closely trimmed dark beard. His corded and veined forearm, visible below the rolled-up sleeve, trembled as he reached around Baby to offer a bacon chunk to his pup.
Thick, longish, midnight-black hair glimmered under the harsh bright light, like it had a life of its own.
Even kneeling on the floor didn’t disguise his brawny shoulders, towering height and muscular thighs.
“It’s all right, ma petite,” he rumbled, wrapping his other huge hand around Baby to prevent her from getting closer. “Cab’s just afraid of loud noises.”
Baby resisted his efforts to hold her back and moved forward to nudge the big dog’s throat with her muzzle. Cab gave one last shudder and settled down on his stomach, head on paws, peering at this new part of his world.
The man swung his head toward me and then jerked back, like I’d surprised him. At the same time, a boom shook the walls around us. Had lightning struck nearby?
I met his stare in alarm and was instantly sucked in. Sooty thick lashes surrounded eyes so black they seemed out of this world. The intensity of the moment must have caused his pupils to dilate, drowning the more common brown beneath.
Nobody had eyes like that in real life, right?
Jean-Luc
I couldn’t tear my gaze away from la belle who stood frozen at my side. The reverberations from the thunder rolled right through me, shaking me to my core.
Sleek honey-blonde hair curved around her cheeks, framing delicate features in a heart-shaped face…delicate except for her generous mouth. Even though her lips clenched together—in concern? in fear?—there was no mistaking the plump, sensuous Cupid’s bow.
Made for kissing, for…sucking.
Her petite yet perfect form shivered once, then twice. Was she cold from the rain? Where was her raincoat? Did she need a jacket? Mine was upstairs in my apartment… I’d get it, but I couldn’t leave Cab when he was like this.
All I really wanted to do was gather this beautiful stranger in my arms. Wrap her close to my heart. Make sure she was safe.
What stopped me? Aside from the whole stranger part.
Her eyes. The shadows of bruising beneath, the lines knifing from the corners. The denim blue lurking under half-lowered lids. All still vivid against her pale skin, damp from the rain.
Like she hadn’t gotten a good sleep in a long time. Like she had too many worries to share. Like she hid secrets I wanted to uncover.
Was the fabled French coup de foudre—love at first sight—a real thing? The thunderbolt to the heart? Or was I exhausted from the usual memories, the usual panic, that came with a storm and not thinking clearly?
I shifted to face la belle, never breaking eye contact, when Rose, the café owner from down the street, burst through the door.
“There you are, Jean-Luc. Have you met my friend Lauren? She’s visiting from California for the dog show.” Rose paused for breath. “Besides dogs, you guys have a lot in common. Lauren and her husband own a vineyard in Sonoma County.”
I blinked. Struck down before I could even rise to claim her.
AVAILABLE NOW
AUTHOR BIO
Kristin Jeffries writes about her favorite escapes—romcoms and dogs—from her home in Portland, Oregon. After years in health care marketing, she decided to prescribe a dose of healthy escape from daily stress for romance readers like her. Kristin draws her inspiration from her family’s past Chocolate Lab Café in a small Midwest town. Plus, she’s married to the original red hot roaster who advises her on all things coffee. And she injects her affection for a long line of smouchy pups, including an IRL Pirate, into her tales.
AUTHOR LINKS
COVER REVEAL - The Challenge
Title: The Challenge
Author: Penelope Ward
Genre: Standalone Contemporary Romance
Tropes: Single Dad, Second Chance, Forced Proximity
Friends to Lovers, Small Town, Found Family
Cover Design: Letitia Hasser, RBA Designs
Photographer: Robert Dahey Photography
Model: Beau Carrillo
Release Date: August 30, 2026
BLURB
From New York Times bestselling author Penelope Ward comes a new, STANDALONE contemporary romance…
Nothing says welcome home like accidentally moving in with your first heartbreak…and his little girl.
Coming back to my small Wyoming hometown was supposed to be temporary. I only planned to stay long enough to help my ailing mother and sort through the mess of my family’s old belongings.
Instead, I somehow ended up living in Evan Ricci’s house. The single dad now owned a bunch of properties and one of them was the place I’d rented. He’d taken it off the market and moved in before I got there. I just never got the memo. Unfortunately, there was no other place in town available, so Evan let me stay.
Evan—the guy my parents took in years ago after his mother died.
The same Evan who used to dare me into ridiculous challenges that somehow always made me stronger—a game we’d dubbed The Challenge.
The same guy who ultimately rejected me before I left for college after I’d finally garnered the courage to shoot my shot.
Now Evan was a rugged single dad with an eight-year-old daughter, a cocky attitude, and a dangerous ability to make me forget every reason I should still hate him.
Sharing a house with him should’ve been unbearable. Instead, it felt dangerously familiar, nearly making me forget that I had a life and a job to get back to in Chicago. I realized the biggest challenge wasn’t surviving living with Evan Ricci.
It was not falling in love with him all over again.
PRE-ORDER LINKS
Special pre-order price of $3.99
(price will go up after release)
Will be free in Kindle Unlimited
Audio Preorder will go live in mid-August.
The current paperback preorder is for the alternate cover only.
A model-cover paperback will be live on release day.
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT
SINGLE DAD
SMALL TOWN
FRIENDS TO LOVERS
SECOND CHANCE
FORCED PROXIMITY
FOUND FAMILY
AUTHOR BIO
Penelope Ward is a New York Times, USA Today and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author of contemporary romance.
She grew up in Boston with five older brothers and spent most of her twenties as a television news anchor. Penelope resides in Rhode Island with her husband, son, and beautiful daughter with autism.
With millions of books sold, she is a 21-time New York Times bestseller and the author of over forty books. Her novels have been translated into over a dozen languages and can be found in bookstores around the world.
AUTHOR LINKS
Friday, July 17, 2026
The Closing Window Blitz@RABTBookTours #RABTBookTours #TheClosingWindow #GreggRoman #Thriller
Espionage Thriller, Political Thriller, Literary Thriller
Date Published: July 1, 2026
A thirty-nine-day war between the United States and Iran ends the way
modern wars end now: not in surrender, but in a memorandum. The guns go
silent. The money is promised. The world exhales.
Buried within the language of the peace are nineteen words that quietly abandon the people who believed the bombing meant deliverance.
In Washington, a small policy institute that has spent its life describing the world decides, for the first time, to act on it, and learns that the line between analysis and operation, once crossed, cannot be uncrossed.
In Tehran, an air-defense colonel runs the only arithmetic that has ever governed his life, weighing the family the regime holds against a door that may not be real. In a blacked-out city, a nurse keeps a count the state intends to erase, while an organizer discovers that the most dangerous thing a broken country can do is begin to hope.
As a sixty-day clock counts down to the vote that will make the peace permanent, three lives on opposite sides of a sealed border move toward a single decision and toward a question no government can answer for them: What is owed to the people you cannot save?
The Closing Window is a literary espionage thriller of statecraft, intelligence, political consequence, and moral responsibility. A novel about power, responsibility, and the narrowing distance between describing a catastrophe and becoming part of it.
About the Author
Gregg Roman is a Middle East policy and security analyst who has spent more than a decade at the center of American debates over Iran, counterterrorism, and the politics of the region. He serves as Executive Director of the Middle East Forum, has testified before Congress, and writes and comments widely on national security and foreign policy. He divides his time between the United States and Israel. The Closing Window is his first novel.
Contact Links
Purchase Links
Thursday, July 16, 2026
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𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲. 𝗜𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿.
Quinn Delaney becomes a bride only after her sister walks away, and two syndicates need the problem fixed. She is quiet, careful, and replaceable. Exactly what the alliance requires.
Lorenzo Mariano is the most dangerous man in the room, and he never pretends otherwise.
He gives Quinn his name, his protection, and his rules. He keeps his distance. He expects her to survive it.
She tries. But being overlooked hurts more than being hated.
When lies from Quinn's past reach Lorenzo before the truth can, the distance between them turns to ice. He married a stranger. Now he's not sure who he's living with.
𝗛𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗵𝗲𝗿. 𝗛𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲.
𝗕𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘃𝗼𝘄 𝗺𝗮𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗵𝗶𝗺 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴. 𝗞𝗲𝗲𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗵𝗶𝗺 𝗵𝗲𝗿.
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Brooke Summers writes Dark Mafia and MC Romance. Her Heroes are Alpha and her Heroines are all kickass! Sometimes she lets her alter ego out to play– Stella Bella! Where she writes all things steamy and taboo!
Brooke is a Londoner born and raised but she currently lives with my husband and her daughter in Ireland.
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