THE COUNT TO TEN WITH ME BOOK TAG + FAVORITE QUOTES

Found this at Read Betwixt Words. This is a fun tag to answer and it’s not too long. The idea is simple, prompts counting up from 1 to 10. I thought it would be quick but it was actually kind of challenging to find the right book for some numbers, especially for number 10. I ended picking a series that had 10 stories but does not necessarily have 10 books.

Anyway, enjoy!

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Publication date: July 17th 2020
Pages: 254
Genre: Historical, Paranormal, Urban Fantasy
Series: Rath & Rune

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“They certainly seem … eager to get to work,” Ves said carefully.

“They believe in the library’s mission,” Sebastian replied, pride warming his voice. “To preserve knowledge and assist in research, to defend the town against arcane threats.”

“You do realize how mad that sounds, don’t you?” Ves asked.

Sebastian frowned. “No. It’s a necessity. We serve Widdershins, in whatever way is required of us.”

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Monsters. Murder. Librarians.

Librarian Sebastian Rath is the only one who believes his friend Kelly O’Neil disappeared due to foul play. But without any clues or outside assistance, there’s nothing he can do to prove it.

When bookbinder Vesper Rune is hired to fill the vacancy left by O’Neil, he receives an ominous letter warning him to leave. After he saves Sebastian from a pair of threatening men, the two decide to join forces and get to the truth about what happened to O’Neil.

But Vesper is hiding secrets of his own, ones he doesn’t dare let anyone learn. Secrets that grow ever more dangerous as his desire for Sebastian deepens.

Because Kelly O’Neil was murdered. And if Sebastian and Ves don’t act quickly enough, they’ll be the next to die.

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Publication date: August 18th 2019
Pages: 248
Genre: Dark, Crime, BDSM
Series: The Killough Company

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“You have the spirit of someone who belongs at my side.”

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Conall Morrissey’s life is pretty bloody easy. He helps his brother take care of the whores at The Exotic Virtue, an exclusive high-end brothel owned by The Killough Company. They might not be earning as much as the other brothels, but if they make ends meet, the Morrisey brothers can get by fine. Until they get a visit from the boss of the mob who owns it, Sloan Killough.

Sloan Killough means business. He’s brash, violent, and tough. He’s the boss for a reason and he doesn’t deal in excuses or exceptions. He visits The Exotic Virtue for a taste of his product, and when he sees Conall, he knows he must have him as his pet. When Sloan demands Conall on his knees, Conall’s horrified. He may be bisexual, but he’s not the guy who takes it. When his brother sells him like one of their whores, Conall has no choice but to submit to their boss if he and his brother wants to live.

Being a whore to a mob boss isn’t what Conall expects. He fights Sloan’s orders at every chance he gets, but the boss seems to enjoy the fights, and has no problem in teaching Conall his place. Conall promises himself he won’t give in, but with each touch and taste, he finds himself addicted to the dark, dangerous man who could rip out his throat the very moment he gets bored of him.

Trigger Warnings: This book is a dark romance. It contains triggering scenes which includes public humiliation, ownership, and violence. If you’re unsure whether you wish to read this book, feel free to contact the author for more detailed warnings.

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Publication date: May 16th 2019
Pages: 322
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Series: Marital Bliss

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As tough as he acted, it wasn’t really who he was inside. Julien had developed a hard outer shell for defense, but Caleb still knew the boy underneath. And more than anything, he wanted to protect that boy from the world, even though he knew it was far too late for that.

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Can two men fake their way to marital bliss?

Caleb Taylor is shocked to learn his family could lose Bliss Island Resort — their home and livelihood — unless he makes use of a clause to marry the child of investor Louis Chastain. Sofia Chastain is more like a sister than a love interest, and Caleb isn’t ready to sign over his future. But Sofia has a brother, and Caleb has a plan …

Julien Chastain was disowned at fifteen and has made a life as a go-go dancer in Miami, but he lives paycheck to paycheck. When his childhood friend proposes an outlandish marriage contract, he thinks he’s crazy. But it’s a chance at a future that’s tough to pass up.

Caleb and Julien must present themselves as an authentic couple for the legal loophole to work, but the lines between “fake” and “real” keep shifting as they navigate intimacy, public scrutiny, and sabotage.

Love isn’t part of the plan, but plans change. If they can outsmart Julien’s father and prove their love is worth more than a transaction, they just might find a true happily-ever-after.

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Publication date: February 28th 2020
Pages: 237
Genre: Contemporary, Action, Crime
Series: Nothing Special

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Ex grunted in the tight embrace. “Mere.”

“I’m right here.”

“How do I control this?” Ex’s knees tried to give out, and he leaned back to put the weight of his sorrow on his partner, because he wasn’t sure he could carry it alone any longer.

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Police Lieutenants, God and Day are under intense pressure from the chief to take back control of Atlanta’s streets.The last thing their task force needs is a pair of trained killers in town with a personal score to settle.

Take a man and strip him of his ability to feel compassion, empathy, remorse, or any of the emotions that make him human, but leave the ones that ignite rage and aggression and you have the perfect killing machine—now imagine two of them.

Code names Ex and Meridian are synonymous for ‘guaranteed death’ to international terrorists. Two broken men from the same crooked streets, recruited into an unsanctioned government program that few know about. Trained to operate most efficiently—lethally—together.

When Ex returns from an op in Bolivia to learn his little brother has been accidentally killed in a feud between drug gangs, he’s stateside before he can consider the rules he’ll be breaking, and of course Meridian is right beside him. There’s mayhem on the streets of Atlanta and the police are losing control. If Godfrey and his elite team of detectives can’t get the job done then they’d be happy to lighten their caseloads for them. And Ex nor Meridian care about doing it quietly.

“I know who you are.”The man grunted when Ex turned to leave.“You’re the fucking devil.”
Meridian walked past, glaring one final time.“Say that loud enough… maybe God will save you.”

But after their first run-in with the big lieutenant and his protective husband, Day, Ex and Meridian start to reevaluate their own relationship. Wondering if they could be even deadlier if they let loose the feelings for each other that they’ve been forced to suppress for years.

Meridian’s dark eyes stayed locked on his, “A man who can fight beside the one he loves doesn’t make him weaker, Ex—it makes him more dangerous.”

No multiple pairings. No cliffhangers. Ends with a HEA.

Note: This title focuses on two new characters in the series. And while it can standalone, there are appearences from prior main characters.
Note: This is a partners-to-lovers, out-for-you, action romance.
Note: There are depictions of violence in this novel.

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Publication date: November 27th 2018
Pages: 96
Genre: Poetry
Series: Standalone

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It’s kind of sweet actually,
what you’re given to believe
     in the goodness of the world–
your own good name,
             your own good light,
your own wise and grown life,
            all traded for a galaxy
            that wouldn’t hurt
                      a fly.

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In Andrea Gibson’s latest collection, they continue their artful and nuanced looks at gender, romance, loss, and family. Each emotion here is deft and delicate, resting inside of imagery heavy enough to sink the heart, while giving the body wings to soar.

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Publication date: October 9th 2018
Pages: 254
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, Mystery
Series: Keith Curry’s Case Files

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“I’m not a nice goblin boy,’ Keith said, then added, ‘I’m not even nice.’
Gunther gazed out the windshield, smiled in that slow way he had, and replied, ‘I know, but you sure can cook.”

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Vampire Hunter. Leprechaun Fighter. Food Inspector. Keith Curry has his work cut out for him. NATO’s Irregulars Affairs Division is a secret organization operating in thousands of cities around the globe. Its agents police relations between the earthly realm and those beyond this world, protecting citizens from both mundane and otherworldly dangers. Former chef turned NIAD food inspector, Special Agent Keith Curry found out about magic the hard way and is now determined to keep dinner safe for everybody. Includes the novellas Cherries Worth Getting, Magically Delicious and the never-before-published Bring Out Your Best plus bonus shorts and more! 

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Publication date: November 30th 2016
Pages: 475
Genre: Historical, Paranormal
Series: Standalone

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Rufus stopped in the patch of sunlight in front of the altar. His own earthly fate kept leading him to this place. A stray vision touched him—the life of a normal man, who one day might hope—assume the right, almost—to stand here with a chosen companion.

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It’s 1946, and the dust of World War Two has just begun to settle. When famous archaeologist Rufus Denby returns to London, his life and reputation are as devastated as the city around him.

He’s used to the most glamorous of excavations, but can’t turn down the offer of a job in rural Sussex. It’s a refuge, and the only means left to him of scraping a living. With nothing but his satchel and a mongrel dog he’s rescued from a bomb site, he sets out to investigate an ancient church in the sleepy village of Droyton Parva.

It’s an ordinary task, but Droyton is in the hands of a most extraordinary vicar. The Reverend Archie Thorne has tasted action too, as a motorcycle-riding army chaplain, and is struggling to readjust to the little world around him. He’s a lonely man, and Rufus’s arrival soon sparks off in him a lifetime of repressed desires.

Rufus is a combat case, amnesiac and shellshocked. As he and Archie begin to unfold the archaeological mystery of Droyton, their growing friendship makes Rufus believe he might one day recapture his lost memories of the war, and find his way back from the edge of insanity to love.

It’s summer on the South Downs, the air full of sunshine and enchantment. And Rufus and Archie’s seven summer nights have just begun… 

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Publication date: May 10th 2011
Pages: 280
Genre: Fantasy
Series: Kria

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“Names are power. Power of life. Power of death. Do not give a name lightly, do not take a name lightly, do not share a name lightly, do not speak a name lightly. To give a name is to give a life. To strike a name is to kill a man. Whosoever names you has power over you”

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A man whom all men fear…

General Dieter von Adolwulf has led the Scarlet Army of Kria to victory for the past decade, holding the infamous field known as the Regenbogen against Kria’s hated enemies—the deceptive Illussor and the ruthless Salharans. War has waged between the three nations for longer than anyone can remember, but no one has held the Regenbogen as well as the notorious Wolf of Kria and his fearsome army.

A man who fears nothing…

Returning home at the end of the year, the Scarlet Army is attacked in the dead of night by a single man who manages to kill hundreds before he is finally captured. A Salharan soldier with no name, no purpose but to kill, he refuses to bend to the Wolf who takes him prisoner and forces upon him a despicable Krian name.

A man with nothing to lose…

When the rest of his army is slaughtered by Illussor soldiers desperately seeking his prisoner, Dieter determines to hold fast—both for answers and in revenge for the men he lost. But answers and revenge are hard to come by when surrounded by secrets and treachery, and the man least likely to kill him is the prisoner who most wants him dead.

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Publication date: September 28th 2020
Pages: 249
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Western, Sports
Series: Down Home

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“guess we’re all just stumbling around, half-blind with pain, and none of us can see the carnage we leave behind until its too late.”

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His broken bones could finally mend their broken bond…

Bull riding was the only thing that calmed the thrill-seeking, self-destructive beast inside of Calvin Craig. It allowed him to escape a small-minded town and the pain of his troubled youth, fleeing to bright lights and big city fame without looking back.

One trip on the horns of the wrong bull changed everything.

Cal is forced to come crawling back home for the first time in ten years, his body broken and riding days behind him. But not everyone is happy for the return of their local celebrity.

Eli Jackson was once the tall, dark, and sinful preacher’s son who had Cal wrapped around his little finger. Now the steely-eyed sheriff of Sweetwater, Eli is hell bent on running him right back out of town. He’s never forgiven Cal for the spectacular implosion of their relationship. Even though the lingering tension soon has them burning up the sheets, he refuses to be tamed.

Cal is surprised to find himself rising to a new challenge: breaking the bull that is Eli Jackson.

He might have run out of luck, but he’s not out of miracles… yet.

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Publication date: October 31st 2013
Pages: 91
Genre: Paranormal, Mystery, Crime
Series: Tyack & Frayne

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For a while he could follow the hawthorn-edged track, the ceremonial way with its odd feel of safety, as if it led over shark-filled water. Leaving it, he had a sense of leaving human territory behind, of entering into the realm of…

Of what? He forced himself to analyse his fears.

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Gideon Frayne has spent his whole working life as a policeman in the village of Dark on Bodmin Moor. It’s not life in the fast lane, but he takes it very seriously, and his first missing-child case is eating him alive. When his own boss sends in a psychic to help with the case, he’s gutted – he’s a level-headed copper who doesn’t believe in such things, and he can’t help but think that the arrival of clairvoyant Lee Tyack is a comment on his failure to find the little girl.

But Lee is hard to hate, no matter how Gideon tries. At first Lee’s insights into the case make no sense, but he seems to have a window straight into Gideon’s heart. Son of a Methodist minister, raised in a tiny Cornish village, Gideon has hidden his sexuality for years. It’s cost him one lover, and he can’t believe it when this green-eyed newcomer stirs up old feelings and starts to exert a powerful force of attraction.

Gideon and Lee begin to work together on the case. But there are malignant forces at work in the sleepy little village of Dark, and not only human ones – Gideon is starting to wonder, against all common sense, if there might be some truth in the terrifying legend of the Bodmin Beast after all. As a misty Halloween night consumes the moor, Gideon must race against time to save not only the lost child but the man who’s begun to restore his faith in his own heart.

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Happy Tuesday!