Out of this World

Overview

Love, Supernatural Style

Love is the universal language. And nowhere is this more apparent than in these extraordinary stories from four of today ' s hottest authors. From a futuristic cop caught in a crisis of the heart to a smoldering vision of an unusual love triangle, from the hunger for a human touch on an alien planet to a witch ' s desperate search for the love of one man, these tales of paranormal romance will transport you to a time and a place you ' ve never been before ' .

Featuring:

New York Times bestselling author J. D. Robb ' with a new Lieutenant Eve Dallas story

New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton ' with a new Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter tale

and

USA Today Bestselling Authors, Susan Krinard and Maggie Shayne

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Author Information

Bio of J. D. Robb

In the spring of 1995, J. D. Robb's first book, Naked in Death, appeared on bookshelves with very little fanfare. Robb introduced readers to New York City in the near future, 2058 to be exact, as seen through the eyes of Eve Dallas, a detective with the New York City Police and Safety Department. The Gothic Journal hailed Robb's work as "a unique blend of hard-core police drama, science fiction and passionate romance" while The Paperback Forum called it "a fantastic new detective series." The popularity of that first book built up through the release of the subsequent Eve Dallas books, Glory In Death, Immortal In Death, Rapture In Death, Ceremony In Death, Vengeance in Death and Holiday In Death. Readers were taken with Eve Dallas's integrity, strength and heart and her burgeoning relationship with the mysterious Roarke. It's been a fairly open secret that J. D. Robb is the pseudonym of the more familiar New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts. But Ms. Roberts, and her publisher, Berkley, were content to let the Robb books build slowly with very little tie-in to the Nora Roberts's style of romantic suspense. The pragmatic reason for creating J.D. Robb was the astounding pace at which Nora Roberts produces books. With nearly 100 published books to her credit by 1995, she had built up a surplus of titles to be released by her publishers, Berkley and Silhouette, and still was creating more. Reluctant to publish romantic suspense books akin to what she was already writing under a pseudonym, Ms. Roberts was convinced that readers would enjoy romantic suspense with a difference. Thus J. D. Robb was born. The initials were taken from Ms. Roberts's sons, Jason and Dan, while Robb was a shortened form of Roberts. "I wanted to try something a little different. I love writing romance, and suspense, but also wanted a twist," explains Ms. Roberts. "The near future setting provided this, and allowed me to more or less create a world. What would it be like in 2058? I could decide. And I could illustrate my own feeling that while the toys may change, people remain basically the same. They still love and hate and covet, they still have courage and cowardice. They're still human." The In Death books have afforded Ms. Roberts an opportunity to explore a relationship beyond the ending of the first book. Her trilogies and family stories have been hugely popular with fans--the just-completed Chesapeake Bay trilogy, Sea Swept, Rising Tides and Inner Harbor have all spent time at the number one spot on The New York Times bestseller list--but when the story was over, she moved onto other characters. "One of the things I wanted to do was develop those characters over many books rather than tying it all up in one," she says. "I wanted to explore these people, and peel the layers off book by book. Eve and Roarke have given me the opportunity to explore a marriage as well. Each book resolved the particular crime or mystery that drives it, but the character development, the growth and the changes, the tone of the relationships go more slowly. I'm enjoying that tremendously." The experiment has succeeded beyond expectations. The eighth J. D. Robb book, Conspiracy in Death, was released in April 1999 as a lead title from Jove. Loyalty in Death followed in the fall, and Witness in Death was released in March 2000. This time, it's freely acknowledged that J. D. Robb and Nora Roberts are one and the same. An excerpt appeared at the end of Inner Harbor. And the Robb books will appear twice a year, much to the delight of Ms. Roberts' fans who are vocal in their demands for more of Eve Dallas and Roarke. And Nora Roberts--in any guise--will continue to delight that audience with her inimitable combination of romance and suspense in this century or the next.

Bio of Maggie Shayne

Maggie Shayne began her writing career in kindergarten, when she painstakingly copied The Brementown Musicians onto construction paper in full Crayola color, complete with illustrations of her own design, and presented it proudly to her teacher. Of course this was not an exact copy. She had tweaked the story a bit, improving it greatly, in her five ' year ' old opinion. By third grade her tastes had matured. At story hour, when it was her turn to choose the book from which the teacher would read, Maggie picked Poe ' s The Tell ' Tale Heart, which she proceeded to recite from memory as the teacher began reading. Far from being suitably impressed, Maggie recalls her teacher seemed to pale a bit, and looked at her oddly from then on. Her fondness for the macabre stayed with her, as did her penchant for rewriting her favorite stories. As a teen, while watching her beloved Universal Pictures Monster Classics over and over, she became more and more certain someone had to fix the endings. It was so obvious that Dracula, the Wolfman, and the dusty Mummy had been cheated! These were not horror flicks, in her teenage opinion. They were romances. They portrayed a love that went beyond life itself. But the endings were all wrong. Anyone could see the monster was supposed to get the girl! Well, one marriage and five daughters later, Maggie has made it her mission in life to see to it that old wrongs are set right. Her stories range from down ' home Westerns (Texas Brand miniseries, Silhouette Books) to glitz (Million Dollar Marriage, 8/99) to modern ' day fairy tales (her Avon contemporary titles). But her best love is the genre known as paranormal romance. And Maggie writes these like no other author. No one else writing today manages to combine the hearts of two such diverse genres as romance and horror, while still thrilling both segments of the readership with the stunning results. Shamelessly romantic, breathtakingly emotional, chilling in their suspense, with edge ' of ' the ' seat tension, her stories capture the classic allure that makes beauty ' and ' the ' beast tales so beloved ' the key, is the redemption of the monster by the sheer power of love.

Bio of Laurell K. Hamilton

Author Laurell K. Hamilton was born in Heber Springs, Arkansas on February 19, 1963. After her mother died in a car crash in 1969, she was raised by her grandmother in Sims, Indiana. She writes the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series and the Merry Gentry series. She currently lives in St. Louis, Missouri with her family.

Bio of Susan Krinard

Susan Krinard never dreamed of becoming a writer. Trained as an artist with a BFA in Illustration from the California College of Arts and Crafts, she first considered the possibility when a friend read a short story she'd written -- "Fan Fiction" based on the television show "Beauty and the Beast" -- and suggested she try writing a romance novel. A longtime reader of science fiction and fantasy, Susan began reading romance -- and realized what she wanted to do was combine the two genres. Prince of Wolves, her first romance novel, was the result. Within a year, Susan had sold the manuscript to Bantam in 1993 as part of a three-book contract, and the novel went on to make several bestseller lists. Since then, Susan has written thirteen fantasy romance novels and several novellas, including Kinsman in the New York Times Bestseller Out of This World, and has begun a new fantasy series with LUNA Books, which launched with Shield of the Sky in 2004. Born and raised in California, Susan now makes her home in New Mexico, the "Land of Enchantment," with her husband, Serge, her dogs Brownie, Freya and Nahla, and her cat, Jefferson. In addition to writing, Susan's interests include music -- especially classical, oldies and new age -- old movies, nature, baking and making jewelry for artisan beads.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Penguin Group, Inc.

Filesize

988.59 KB

Number of Pages

368

eBook ISBN

9780786585458