Sci-Fi Romance books

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Temporal Driftwood

2012 Daily Dose | Time is Eternity

David tried not to stare, but it wasn’t easy. Gorgeous Guy had a mop of dark hair, dark brown eyes that David knew he could stare into for eternity, an adorably dimpled chin, and just enough of a five o’clock shadow (it was just after noon) to give him that dangerous, bad boy look. This guy is totally out of your league, Lassen.

Then GG is gone, replaced by a little man with spectacles telling David he’s got one more opportunity to connect with the love of his life. The question is… will David take the chance?

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The Color of Spring Lightning

2012 Daily Dose | Time is Eternity

Kody Higgins is crossing the park in a spring thunderstorm when - kapow! - he suddenly wakes up in 1898. The turn of the century may not be the ideal age for a graphics designer/gym bunny to surface in, but when handsome tinker Jarvis Banks takes Kody under his wing, Kody decides that Victorian-era America just might have some perks.

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The Florentine Treasure

2012 Daily Dose | Time is Eternity

Art history professor Daniel Wollek is delighted to assist the Uffizi Gallery in Florence in cataloguing a cache of Renaissance artworks uncovered by an earthquake. But when a second earthquake pitches him headlong into the fifteenth century, Daniel finds himself more involved than he expected in rescuing precious artifacts from a fanatic’s bonfires. Then he meets Leonardo di Vinci’s assistant, Giacopo di Careggi, and finds in the beautiful young model a treasure even greater than art from the past.

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The Witching Hour

2012 Daily Dose | Time is Eternity

When teenager Perry Green witnesses his adult neighbor, Seth Moore, crying in his car late one evening, Perry sets out to console the man he’s spent many a year fantasizing about. But Seth’s personal crisis takes a backseat when a magical grandfather clock sends the two of them back in time to witness a pivotal moment in his past. As Seth and Perry work to solve the problem, romance blossoms—or it would, if Perry could just convince Seth that love surpasses time itself.

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Violet’s Present

2012 Daily Dose | Time is Eternity

When Matt’s Great-great-aunt Violet dies, she leaves him a precious gift: a photo album he loved as a child. Then Matt starts having dreams—very good dreams—about Joseph, one of the men in the pictures from the 1940s. One morning when Matt wakes up, the bruises are still there. Could there be more to Violet’s present than he thought?

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Mechanical Magic

The Laitha Chronicles

A Laitha Chronicles Tale

When Aster Genisov, a creator of mechanical novelties, is asked to help a wounded elf, his special talents and painful past could be the key to the elf’s survival.

Y’rean was born to touch the sky, but when his wings are destroyed by a cruel master, not even the life he begins to build with Aster can assuage his despair.  Aster has the means to help him—it’s written in his gypsy blood—but is love enough for Aster to face his past and embrace his talent for mechanical magic?

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Wayward Grace

Steamcraft and Sorcery

A Steamcraft and Sorcery novella

Just after its crew rescues an Alchemist named Radley Timmons from a ship’s wreckage, the occasionally piratical Wayward Grace is pursued through a magical storm by the Anglican Navy, and the company ends up stranded on an island ringed by impassable mountains with an injured captain.

Crewman Keyfer Lockswit considers the diverse crew his family but cannot deny the attraction he has for their newest arrival—an attraction that proves mutual. But Radley has a secret, and the Navy wants it badly. So the crew is split: are they better off where they are or should they invent some way of escape? And if the crew of the Grace does find a way off the island, will Keyfer and Radley's blossoming love survive?

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The Stars are Brightly Shining

2011 Advent Calendar | I'll Be Home for Christmas

Corbin wants to make a good impression on his lover’s family, so when Neil docks the Wanderer at the space station Noel Prime on the Christmas tree planet of Navidia, they set out together to find the perfect tree. On their quest, they relive the enchantment of their first times, and on their journey to Neil’s childhood home, they realize that magic is sometimes in the surprises and that if their love is true, the Wanderer is always home.

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Connor is a netrunner: a hacker who ventures into cyberspace to steal data from corporate computers. As he hides out in the slums of Seattle, he’s attacked by a street gang and, incredibly, rescued by one of the members. His rescuer is a man named Luis, who has decided Connor needs his protection.

But instead of providing safety, Luis’s presence wreaks havoc with Connor’s online identity, and they find themselves hunted by a lethal security force. While they attempt to escape the city, Connor finds himself struggling to survive with the most lethal killer ever pitted against the corporations that control the FreeCorp—and he risks losing his heart to the same man.

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In an act of heroism and self-sacrifice, Anderson Rawn's sister saved him from the destruction of their tiny mining colony, but her actions condemned the thirteen-year-old to ten years of crushing loneliness on the hyperspace journey to a new home. Using electronics and desperation, Anderson creates a family to keep him company, but family isn't always a blessing.

When Anderson finally arrives, C.J. Poulson greets him with curiosity and awe, because anyone who can survive a holocaust and reinvent holo-science is going to be a legend and right up C.J.'s alley. But the more C.J. investigates how Anderson endured the last ten years, the deeper he is drawn into a truly dangerous fantasy, one that offers the key to Anderson's salvation—and his destruction.

In spite of his best intentions, C.J. can’t resist the terribly seductive Anderson. Their attraction threatens to destroy them, because the heart of a man who can survive the destruction of his people and retain his sense of self holds a solid core of alpha male that will not be denied.

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Gabriel Blackstone’s world is divided quite clearly into castes: everyone knows their place and abides by it. As an inventor in the merchant caste, his life is predictable in its routine until the night his best friends and assistants, Caleb and Andrew, purchase the time—and body—of a companion for his birthday. As an activist in the Caste Equality movement, everything Gabriel believes in tells him to refuse the gift, but then he meets Lucio. The beautiful and alluring companion is far more than the vapid courtesan he'd expected, and he can’t get the man out of his mind.

After that night, Gabriel tells himself to forget about Lucio, but a chance meeting at a ball makes it clear neither of them is willing to ignore the compelling chemistry between them. It will take all their combined trust and cunning, plus the help of a wily aristocrat and a plucky political activist, to overcome the challenges of infidelity, abuse, and social stigma that lay along their road; however, Gabriel knows it will all be worth it if at the end of the day he can call Lucio his own.

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A Hot Cargo Story

Desperate for an edge in the war against the Gavenelians that will keep the Confederation from losing as many ships to the sadistic aliens as they destroy, Sasha Dmitrov contacts the space pirate he knows only as Harry, hoping the mysterious engineer will be able to pull off one more miracle. Having been warned of Harry's disdain for the Confederation, Sasha is prepared for Harry to tell him to jump out an airlock without a space suit. The last thing he expects is an invitation to Nicodemus Vector, Harry’s shielded planetoid. What Sasha discovers is an Andromedite empath who sees far too deeply into his soul.

As they race against time for a breakthrough that will tip the scales in their favor, Sasha finds himself more and more attracted to the reclusive mercenary. But duty calls, and Sasha has a war to win before he can even think about returning to Harry’s side—assuming that either of them will risk opening himself to the other's empathic touch.

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Mongrel

The Mongrel Trilogy | Book One

Mongrel Trilogy: Book One

Hunzinger's Mechanical Circus, a rollicking seaside carnival where imagination meets machinery, shines as the only bright spot in the dreary city of Purinton. A shadow is cast there one day when a tall, cloaked figure approaches the stand of Will Marchman, a young patent-medicine salesman. Fanule Perfidor, commonly known as the Dog King, isn't welcome at the Circus. No resident of Taintwell is; they're all Branded Mongrels, officially shunned. But Will is beguiled by the stunning, mysterious Perfidor. Their mutual wariness soon gives way to desire, and a bond forms.

Soon the naive but plucky pitchman becomes embroiled in a dangerous quest. Fanule suspects Alphonse Hunzinger and Purinton's civic leaders are responsible for the disappearance or incarceration of countless Branded Mongrels. But why? As Will's passion and regard for his tormented lover grow, he's determined to help Fanule get answers and prevent any further persecution... or worse. They just have to stay together—and stay alive long enough—to see their plan through.

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A Hot Cargo Story

When the Starfire is struck by a mysterious and deadly plague, the captain and crew have no choice but to throw themselves on the mercy of the healers of a nearby, uncharted planet. First Officer Ryan Nelson accompanies the sickest patients to the planet’s surface, where he is put under the supervision of Juo-ta-ri, an apprentice to one of the healers who is helping the crew. The two have barely begun to explore the chemistry between them when Ryan’s body betrays him and he falls ill as well. Now it’s a race against time to see if Juo can bring the fever down before Ryan’s hallucinations kill him.

2nd Edition
First Edition published in the Dreamspinner Press anthology Size Matters.

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All Captain Gabel Telsun wants is to score a diplomatic success large enough to earn the money to purchase his own ship. He seems to have his chance on planet S-B73NF—all he has to do is get through just one night without offending anyone—but when a gorgeous concubine appears in his bed, all bets are off.

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Torn from his home and family by slavers, Varan escapes the brutality of the mines only to struggle for existence in the hellish desert of an alien world. When he stumbles across an injured, winged being, he can barely believe the beautiful stranger isn't a hallucination conjured by his loneliness. Hiding from the slavers as they learn to communicate, Varan teaches Tvri'il how to survive, and Tvri'il teaches Varan how to love again. But can that love endure once the secrets of the slave planet—and of Tvri'il himself—are revealed?

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Captured and accused of piracy, privateer Blaise Risner, captain of the Golden Stallion, finds himself in a clinch - literally - with Confederation Admiral Peter Keller, who promises to see justice done by way of hard labor. But when the chemistry between them rivals the heat of the twin Talixin suns, the dominant admiral decides he wants to handle the rehabilitation of the provocative pirate himself. After their first close encounter, Blaise figures that serving Keller in such a personal capacity won't be such a terrible sentence.

Keller dispenses his own forms of painful justice and sensual discipline, which usually involve a not-so-resistant Blaise on his knees bound and determined to give as good as he gets. The privateer can't deny that suffering the handsome admiral's punishments makes him burn like the fires of the Horsehead Nebula. Serving in the roles of prisoner and captor defines their 'relationship', but no power can stop a shooting star ... the star of startling passion that flares every time they touch.

Just when Blaise thinks he can navigate the treacherous asteroid field of emotion to find common ground with Keller, an interstellar war tears them apart. Through it all, Blaise's desire for his captor stands as tall and strong as the monoliths of Maraven, and he'll go to the very edge of the galaxy and back if that's what it takes to crack the ice around the admiral's heart.

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A collection of three m/m sci-fi novellas by Madeleine Urban: Enhanced, Close Encounter, and Following the Sun.

Enhanced

In Earth’s not-too-far future, a talented scientist stumbles over a plot to use the genetically enhanced military to declare martial law and take over the government. Dr. Ryne Siler enlists his friend, Dr. Cary Matthews, a brilliant engineer, to figure out how to stop it. When the investigation goes awry, they’re on the run, and the only thing between them and capture is a hidden cache of sleeping soldiers with enhancements of their own. Ryne and Cary are desperate, but will waking these soldiers help – or just make things worse?

Close Encounter

Space privateer Tris is just doing his job – delivering canisters to a military science vessel – when he discovers that he is transporting people infected with an engineered virus designed to exterminate the human race. In the midst of an alien attack, can the rogue pilot save patient Retter - the key to the cure? Or will he lose both humanity’s salvation and his heart?

Following the Sun

The nearly fatal crash of their spacecraft leaves Jack and Samuel stranded on a verdant planet far from civilization. Discovered and sheltered by a native tribe, the two resign themselves to new lives – lives that include a new culture, a new language, and even new love. But their new home isn’t at all what it seems, and when war and illness strike, they find out just how far from home they are.

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