Friday, March 27, 2015

Excerpt & Giveaway - The Second Lie (The Immortal Vikings #2) by Anna Richland



The Second Lie
(The Immortal Vikings #2)

by Anna Richland 

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BLURB:

A woman desperate to achieve her dreams. 

To reassure wealthy clients, Christina Alvarez Mancini invented a jet-setting British owner for her Napa Valley wine collection service. Success has brought her close to buying her own winery, when irregularities at a London wine auction threaten her business. 

A man in love with a good plan. 

Stig, an immortal Viking thief, knows he’s found the perfect role. The California woman who created his character won’t discover what he’s up to in England until after he’s pocketed the money he needs. Then Christina walks into the auction preview, ready to ruin his plans, and he knows his boredom has ended. 

Secrets that turn deadly. 

By the end of the night, these two rivals must cooperate to escape kidnappers, British authorities, media and a pair of mysterious watchers. That’s when a game Stig’s played for a thousand years puts Christina’s life at risk. 

Can two people whose identities are based on lies trust each other enough to survive? 

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EXCERPT: 

Because Stig thought he and Christina were in the clear, free of the men who tracked them from London to France, he let his guard down. Big mistake. 

Pounding his fist on the steering wheel wasn’t going to get them out of here, but it might keep him from letting out a string of gutter profanity in front of Christina. “Who are those guys?” 

“How should I know?” She twisted to try to look out the rear windshield. “You’re the fugitive. They have to be following you.” 

If the men from the train had followed them out of Calais, there must be a tracking device. He wasn’t carrying a phone, and Skafe had taken Christina’s at Bodeby’s, so it wasn’t mobile phone signals. The car was a random choice, too down-market for fancy factory locating devices, thus it should be clean. “Get the black duffel.” 

She struggled to reach between the seats and yank the bag forward while he monitored the other car. It stayed back, but he was certain the circular headlights were his and the silhouette fit. The even distance between the two cars didn’t alter as he lowered the passenger side’s electric window. Freezing wind emphasized how screwed they were. He had to yell to be heard. “Anything that’s not from my flat or your personal items, throw it out.” 

“What?” she yelled back. 

Ivar, Wend and Skafe were known quantities, but he didn’t like having players he couldn’t identify moving around the board. “They’re tracking us, so get rid of their shit. All of it. Including the bag.” 

It went. Random toiletries, a pair of black socks, a paperback book. And then the bag. She was left with the purple dress, the blond wig, her purse and his old fire medic pouch in a heap on her lap. 

“Now you can add littering to the tally of my transgressions I know you’re keeping.” 

“Do you joke about everything?” Her hands clutched her purse and his old satchel, even though it no longer held the bottle of Perlus. 

“If you’d lived as long as I have, you’d realize humor is the only way to get through your five hundred thousandth day.” Even dark humor beat despair over the isolation forced on him by eternal life.

She sighed. “Trying to distract me with your immortal story? I was hoping for a better one, or, heaven forbid, a plan.” 

“We could assume they’re tracking the car and steal a fourth one.” 

“Isn’t crazy defined as doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different result?” 

“That’s me. Crazy.” Clearly he could recount the complete story of Beowulf’s crew, shoot himself a couple more times for emphasis and receive no more than a few tuts and raised eyebrows. Rarely had honesty had such a complete lack of success. It goaded him. “We could go to a hotel, strip search each other for tracking chips and do a full body scan to find the implants aliens put on us while we were unconscious. What do you say to that idea?” 

“The hotel part sounds good, because I really need to shower and sleep, but the search for tracking chips part reminds me of gorilla grooming.” 

He gripped the wheel hard with both hands before making his real suggestion, risky only to her, a plan he couldn’t implement unless she agreed. “What if we ram them off the road into a ditch?” 

She didn’t contradict the idea.
 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links: 

Anna lives with her quietly funny Canadian husband and two less quiet children in a century-old house in Seattle. The perpetual drizzle is a good excuse to drink more coffee. She’s a former US Army officer who now writes The Immortal Vikings series from Carina Press and also the author of His Road Home, a novella which Publishers Weekly called “Tantalizing … a raw, emotional story” and the website SmartB*tchesTrashyBooks gave an A rating.

She donates a portion of her book proceeds to two charities: the Fisher House Foundation, which provides housing for families of wounded soldiers in the US and Great Britain, and Doctors Without Borders, which delivers emergency medical care in more than sixty crisis zones world-wide.  

To sign up for Anna's newsletter, find out more about her books, and read longer excerpts, please visit her website at www.annarichland.com.
 

Connect with Anna Richland: 

Anna’s Website:  http://www.annarichland.com/ 



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INDIVIDUAL RETAIL LINKS: 
 
AMAZON
 
B&N 

 iBOOKS  

KOBO  

GOOGLE  



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Giveaway:
 
 
Anna will be awarding a set of En Route notecards, gorgeously illustrated by Kate Pocrass (because falling in love with an Immortal Viking is a wild journey!) to a randomly drawn winner (INTERNATIONAL) via rafflecopter during the tour. 
Follow the tour HERE
  

3 comments:

  1. The beautifully sexy cover is my favorite part of the post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for posting excerpts from The Second Lie! It's been fun being on tour, and now I get to give away prizes (and go to the post office). Love it!

    I also have a giveaway of a paperback copy of the first book in the series, FIRST TO BURN, going on now at goodreads - but it's for UK only. And the author Cecilia Grant is giving away a copy of my Rita-nominated novella, HIS ROAD HOME, at her blog. So tons of giveaways!

    Thanks for stopping in to read -- the beginning of the story is on my website.

    ReplyDelete