Today, I’m really excited to bring back to MSW one of my dear friends, Shiloh Walker. Shi has a new trilogy launching tomorrow. I’ve read the first two books and loved them. I’m excited you’ll all get to read them now, too. She’s also offering a $15 GC to BN or Amazon (winner’s choice) to celebrate. Enjoy! ~ Sylvia
The first romantic suspense I can remember reading was Nora Roberts’ Honest Illusions. Not long after that one, I read Divine Evil.
Those two books were all it took to get me hooked on romantic suspense, and the grittier, the better. Since then, Nora Roberts has remained a favorite and not long after that, I discovered Linda Howard. Since then, I’ve discovered other authors like Allison Brennan, Iris Johansen, Maya Banks…and the list goes on.
Sometimes I go for the romantic suspense with the paranormal bent, sometimes I go for the straight romantic suspense, but I almost always want it dark, just a little bit twisted…with a strong hero, a strong heroine, a plot that keeps me reading all through the night…that’s a good book.
I’m reading Linda Howard’s Prey and I suspect I’ll stay up all night reading. Then I’ll wonder why I didn’t read it the second I got it (although I know the answer—I was on a deadline).
I’m planning on taking a couple of days of downtime before plunging back into the madness that is my life. After Prey, I’ll probably move on to JD Robb’s New York to Dallas… the JD Robb books are some of my favorite romantic suspense books—they always keep me guessing, keep me wondering. I’ve lost so much sleep over those…
That’s the best compliment you can give an author, you know. I stayed awake all night reading that book! And with that not-so-subtle segue…I’m going to mention my book, If You Hear Her, the first book in my new series, the Ash trilogy. I’m hoping it will keep at least somebody awake—other than me, as I sit up tonight, tomorrow night, Wednesday… biting my nails and worrying…
It’s due out tomorrow, and it’s about screams and serial killers and sexy cops and smart-mouthed heroines.
Here’s a quick peek at the scene that sets up the entire trilogy… Lena, the heroine, is dreaming.
As he ran his hands down over her body, stripping away her clothes, Lena lifted her eyes upward and stared at the sun again.
Lost herself in the warm golden glow and the feel of a man’s hands on her body.
She could see… see his face as he guided her to the ground and knelt between her thighs.
She could touch… touch his shoulders and fist her hands in his hair.
She could feel… feel the fiery hot pleasure blistering through her as he levered up over her.
She could hear—
“Help me!”
* * *
Lena came awake with a gasp. Her heart knocked against her ribs and she shivered as cool air danced over her sweat-slicked body. A breeze drifted in through the open window.
It was cool… not cold. But she was freezing.
Hearing one low, questioning yip, she held out her hand. Puck pressed his nose against her palm and she heaved out a breath. The dog’s body was tense—all over tense and he had his hackles up.
“Sorry, boy. Just had a bad dream,” she muttered. She’d gone and freaked her dog out.
As she started to lie back down, she heard it.
A voice.
“…help me…”
** Read more about If You Hear Her and The Ash series **
So… do you go for romantic suspenses? Like them scary? Like them a little lighter? What are some of your favorites? Tell me about them to enter to win a GC to either Amazon or Barnes & Noble (winner’s choice)
Shiloh Walker ~ Website/ Blog | Facebook | Twitter
Really looking forward to this new trilogy. Loved Fragile and Broken, Ms. Walker is an amazing writer! I love RS, but have to mix up my genres to keep them all fresh! I’ll read just about anything!!
So glad to have you here, Shiloh! Can’t wait to read this one!
i love your books and cant wait to read this new one 🙂
Love Love Love the In Death series. My go-to comfort reads. My first exposure to romantic suspense was The Shadow Side by Linda Castillo, where I discovered to my delight, that one could write a ‘romance’ that didn’t follow the rules everyone else had been trying to cram down my throat–that h/h had to meet by page 3, that the 1st man on scene had to be the hero. With the confidence to write what I wanted to read, I moved forward and didn’t worry that I was doing it “all wrong” with my “Mysteries with Relationship” books.
And I do prefer puzzles to dark and scary. It still bugs me that someone decided that ALL mystery sub-genres that fall under the umbrella of romance are called romantic SUSPENSE because there are so many other ways to roll.
Terry
Terry’s Place
I love the IN DEATH series too! (But I think you already know that, LOL.)
I’m on Book #14 in the In Death series now and I dread reading too fast and getting to the point where I have to wait for the next release. I’m trying to slow down, but it’s hard!
Best wishes for success of If You Hear Her.
I picked up Helen MacInnes’ Above Suspicion in Nuremberg when 18. It had everything–history in a foreign country; romance for a married couple no less; suspense in the form of espionage; and scary in the form of Nazis. The film, alas, was awful. But the book, and author, remain favorites. If only I had not lent my copy (sigh).
Hi Shiloh! And welcome to MSW 🙂 I think we share some of the same reading tastes. Like you, my first RS book was by Nora Roberts… It was The Villa. I have migrated to some darker reading since then. Love twisty stories.
Congratulations on the upcoming series! Looking forward to If You Hear Her.
The new series sounds good. Loved Fragile and Broken. My favorite genre is romantic suspense. I just like the “extra” that brings the H/H together. I love Cindy Gerald and Laura Griffin they keep me up many nights.
Hi
I am so excited to read this book. I love these stories and I read all types, sometimes I want to sink my teeth into a dark book that may make me cringe and then other times I want a lighter book that I may read fast. Just depends on my mood.
Thanks for your stories.
Pam
I just started getting into RS stories and I am loving them. I really like the darker ones, they are just so much more of a punch. I love that the darker the story is, the better the transformation and intensity. I am looking forward to IF YOU HEAR HER!
Best wishes to your new series coming out. I have not read any of your books yet. Your a new author to me. I love romantic suspenses whether they are scary or soft at heart. I love Nora Roberts, Allison Brennan, Karen Rose, Linda Howard, Sharon Sala, Roxanne St. Claire, Cindy Gerard, Leslie Parrish, and Kay Hooper are what i can think off the top of my head. My first Nora Roberts book was Montana Sky and The Reef.
Shiloh rocks! You’ll love her work. 🙂
I’m a book whore, so I’ll read just about anything (still working on getting into paranormals), but RS is definitely my favourite. Lighthearted, dark & scary, somewhat in the middle… I’ll read them all, and throw in the occasional contemporary or historical for variety :). Got into it through some Nora Roberts (I’ve read them all, and most back-to-back, so it’s hard to remember which was first!), or possibly Julie Garwood’s Heartbreaker, and since then my RS auto-buy list has exploded. The In Death series is legend, but I’m so far behind [book 6] that I’m never going to catch up! 😛
Looking forward to the new trilogy!
hi shiloh! i tend to read the opposite of whatever i am working on. when i’m writing something light-hearted, i choose really, REALLY dark reads – things so far at that end of the spectrum they haunt my thoughts at night. But when i’m writing dark myself, i prefer light-hearted or at least redemptive stories, always with a romance in them.
Congratulations on the new series and release!
love the cover Shiloh, it’s gorgeous and the books sounds wonderful. i can’t wait to read it and see what happens next.
i love romantic suspense, i like them with a bit of a darkness in them and also a unique twist, the kind that you never saw coming. My favorites are Iris Johanson’s Eve Duncan series and i also like Catherine Coulters’s FBI series among others(not enough room on the website to list them all.) LOL.
trvlagnt1t@yahoo.com
I think the cover is gorgeous, too. 🙂
I did start with Nora Roberts, but read quite a bit of Karen Rose, Allison Brennan and authors that have similar tastes that I think I like them a bit dark-lol. I also like the puzzles, but I think I read in phases.
Love your books, by the way-I have read several!!
I read all different kinds of romance books and I love romantic suspense. What got me started with them was the Harlequin Intrigue series. I love reading Jayne Ann Krentz, Linda Howard, Beverly Barton and Linda Castillo to name a few. I’ll read just about anything as long as it has some romance in it and it needs a HEA or HFN ending.
I do enjoy romantic suspense and scary is fine. Someone recommended Karen Rose’s books to me and I was completely hooked. She treated the suspense and the romance with equal importance.
Those are my favorite RS books–with an equal mixture of suspense and romance. I think Cynthia Eden does a good job of that, too. 🙂
I have never been a fan of RS but I did decide to read Cynthia Eden’s Deadly series and fell in love. I never realized how exciting a good RS novel can be! I am sooo excited to get my hands on this book. I
Leagh ~ I read your comment after responding to the one just above yours. 🙂 Agreed on Cynthia Eden!
I love romantic suspense! I will take them any way they come. I love the edge of your seat feeling you get when reading them. I can’t wait to get my hands on this book.
Hello!
Sylvia & MSW ladies… thanks for having me…
Everybody, thanks for your comments. I see some names I need to add to my TBR list, it looks like…
Romantic Suspense is where my true passion lies. I LOVE it. It’s my favorite genre for reading, it’s what I really want to write. You know, for the longest time, it was *all* I read, and the darkest and the more twisted, the better. I liked them very, very psychotic (the killers!) and full of blood and guts. I never really ventured out for light and romance driven. THEN, I started reading Roxanne St. Claire, who showed me Romantic Suspense under a whole new light, which can be just as engaging, exciting, thrilling and amazing. That really broadened my reading horizons. She also broke me into contemporary romance, haha! I’m thinking even if Rocki starts writing phone catalogs, I’m gonna love them, too 🙂
I still love my psychotic Romantic Suspense, though. That’s what I want to write. A serial killer that could have come out of Criminal Minds, but with sex, love, passion and friendship.
Rocki can’t write anything that doesn’t rock. She’s too awesome. 🙂
I love romantic suspence. I am reading Sandra Brown’s Lethal. It is so good.
Hi Shiloh,
I do enjoy romantic suspense and I don’t mind scary, although I prefer intense and filled with tension. I remember when I first discovered the sub-genre -I was hooked and was thrilled to find so many books available to me. One of my earlier romantic suspense authors were Linda Howard, Karen Robards and Julie Garwood. Since then I have gone on to read many more from many authors.
Congrats on the new series, Shiloh. I love my romantic suspense to be dark and gritty. Sometimes I in the mood for the gory ones like those from Karen Rose. I’m also a fan of Shannon K. Butcher and Jeanne Adams.
I love Jeanne Adams! Personally and professionally. 🙂
The new series sounds good. Loved Fragile and Broken. My favorite genre is romantic suspense. I just like the “extra” that brings the H/H together. I love Cindy Gerald and Laura Griffin they keep me up many nights.
Cindy Gerard is one of my favorite people. 🙂
Hi, Shiloh! I cut my teeth on Mary Stewart’s books in the sixties. She always had elements of romance but the suspense and mystery were so well crafted I couldn’t put them down! JD Robb rocks my socks as does the MSW gals! I’d also like to add Leslie Kelly, writing in her Leslie Parrish persona–dark, gritty, and definitely leave the light on to read suspense. I’m looking forward to the Ash series!
K, I love Leslie Kelly, too.
Hello Shiloh,
I’m looking forward to your new series! Romantic Suspense is my favorite sub genre. I see that you mentioned Linda Howard – one of my favorites is her book, Cry No More, with a darker type hero. I guess some of my faves have a darker/ more tortured hero in them. I also like Pamela Clare’s I-team series with my top choice being Hard Evidence, Cindy Gerard’s Boi’s series, especially Show No Mercy, Christy Reece’s LCR series, Suz Brockmann’s Navy Seals (I love Sam Starett!), Roxanne St Claire’s Bullet Catcher’s series, Julie Garwood’s contemporaries especially Kill Joy and I could go on and on. Can’t wait to read If you hear her. Thanks.
I really like them all ways. But the darker ones are the ones I will spend all night reading. And if you add paranormal elements to it, it cant get any better for me. I just re-read Divine Evil by Nora Roberts and I think I liked it more the second time. Looking forward to New York to Dallas too. And I just read a couple really good stories by Trish McCallan and Jacqueline Paige. Its really my preferred genre to read whenever possible. Im really looking forward to If You Hear Her.
I do like romantic suspense and I think Nora Roberts started me reading them. Linda Howard’s Mr Perfect and Open Season are two of my favorites and now there are a whole bunch of great authors who write them. I do like them to be dark but I think the romance balances that out. Congratulations on the new story.
Hi Shiloh. I love your books. I like romantic suspense scary and light. Lisa Jackson is the author that got me to reading the genre.
Hi Shiloh! Welcome to Murder She Writes, and thanks for the shout out 🙂 … I remember those two Nora books. They may have been my first two romantic suspense titles, too! Or close to it. She, Jayne Ann Krentz, Iris Johansen, Lisa Gardner … there weren’t a lot of RS authors in the 1990s. I remember when Susan Anderson was writing RS (LOVED those books!!!) and she said the market for them crashed in the late 90s. I’m glad i got in on the upswing. I read THE SEARCH by Johansen and THE THIRD VICTIM by Gardner in 2001 and those two books really jump-started me writing again (at the time, kids and career had taken over my life.)
I love your cover — very atmospheric and sexy and suspenseful all at the same time 🙂 …
Oh, I remember The Search… it’s been a while since I’ve read that one…
Hi Shiloh!
I love the lighter romantic suspense: Linda Howard, Nora Roberts, Jayne Ann Krentz.
Hey Shiloh! Welcome to our hood! Um, YEAH, we like romantic suspense here! Congrats on yours – can’t wait to read it! xo
LOL.. yeah, I noticed! 🙂
I got hooked by Mary Stewart, Helen MacInnes, and Alistar Maclean to name a few. Now it’s Laura Griffin, Allison Brennan, Suzanne Brockmann, JoAnn Ross, Christine Feehan, Gennita Low, Jessica Andersen etc.
Hi, Shiloh!
Love your books – can’t wait to read
If You Hear Her.
I enjoy both light and dark romantic suspense. The first ones I remember reading are Mary Stewart and Helen MacInnes, courtesy of my older sister.
I always like Romantic Suspense, dark and light!
Romantic suspense is a genre I do read occasionally, but I’d rather have them lighter in tone, not too dark. I guess I’m kind of a wimp, I don’t like to be too scared. 😀
Don’t enter me. I’m reading the fabulous If You Hear Her now for review. Love rom. susp. Don’t like it too freaky like the one I won’t mention that I could only read in the daytime. What I just noticed with 2 of my faves here – Shiloh & Roxanne – is besides the rom. susp. intertwining, I like the romance to have a lot of chest achy emotional impact too.
I have complained to Shiloh before about her books making my chest ache – The Missing, Fragile & Broken & she just laughs at me!
Shiloh can be evil. She taunts me, too. But I love her anyway.
Congrats on the new trilogy! And yes, I love romantic suspense. I like them scary, I like some with a paranormal twist, I really like them all. In addition to the authors on MSW who write RS, I think Sandra Brown is awesome with her RS books. I like Heather Graham’s ghost RS books.
So it’s scary for the win? Or all of them above? Variety?
In all honesty, in the end, if it’s a good story, that’s all I really need, I’m just drawn to the darker, twistier stuff, but if there’s a good hero and heroine, that’s what I need the most.
Hi Shiloh!! I love love love romantic suspense but I like things a little spooky sometimes as well. One of my all time favorite books is yours, The Missing. I still get excited every time I think about that book and its been quite awhile since I read it. It had me all weepy in the first few chapters! I’m always recommending it to my friends! I can’t wait to get a hold of If You Hear Her! 🙂
Shiloh has The Departed coming up in the The Missing series. Then a novella in that same series releasing in an anthology with me next July. 🙂 Can’t wait!
You’re not supposed to mention that, Syl… I need to get over spazzing over this one FIRST! 😉
I love mysteries and thrillers. I like edge of your seat and a little lighter. It all depends on my mood. I love Lori Armstrong’s Julie Collins and Mercy series. I like Catherine Coulter’s FBI series. I think those two authors are opposite sides of the mystery coin!
I like ’em scary and on the lighter side. Laura Griffin is one of my favorites.
Can you believe I haven’t read any J.D. Robb? I’m not sure why either— time to get a move on! I’ve read a lot of other romantic suspence, and I love that edge of my seat feeling that keeps me turning the pages! I can handle light and dark– the only thing I have to do is give myself a break or I start seeing serial killers around every corner. BAHAHaha So, I try to not read too many dark stories in a row:)
I am a fan of Nora Roberts. I should read more Romantic Suspense because I do enjoy it.
I love me some Nora Roberts too. I don’t think i’ll ever read her entire back list but i’m trying. lol Romantic suspense is my favorite genre at the moment. I like with a little scary but not to much, lots of suspense and good sex scenes of course. Some of my favorite are Roxanne ST Claire’s Bullet Catcher and Guardian Angelinos. Cindy Gerard’s BOI’s and body guard series as well. My favorite Linda Howard is Mr Perfect which is suspense with a big dose of humor thrown in. lol Little comic relief is always good.
Unfortunately i have not read any JD Robb if you can believe it. I have several on my TBR list, but it seems a little daunting to read that entire back list. I’ll try though.
Lisa B
Romantic suspense has me enthralled and captivated. Sandra Brown and Carla Cassidy are great as is Wendy Corsi Staub. Best wishes.
I don’t really read romantic suspense since I tend to scare myself easily with stuff like that, heck, even watching a creepy episode of The Mentalist can make me freaked out for a while.
My romance reading began with romantic suspense, and I still read a lot of those same authors–Nora Roberts, Linda Howard (CRY NO MORE is a favorite,) Kay Hooper’s Biship series. Then there are these lovely MSW gals. I’m reading Laura Griffin’s UNFORGIVEABLE right now and SNAPPED will be up right behind it!
Thanks for visiting today. I enjoyed the excerpt and look forward to reading the new series.
love shilohs books!
I love romanitc suspense! It keeps me on my toes and second guessing where the story is going to go next. Some of my fav’s are Linda Howard and Karen Robards, Pamela Clare. Linda Howard’s Death Angel is one of my Fav’s though becasue it was the first romantic suspense book I picked up. I was on a huge paranormal kick and that book kind of through me into this whole other genre that I just love
i like them all if it written well i will read it all nite.
congrats on teh book shiloh and great contest everlyone on the blogs
whoo
i like them all. has long as it has romance, im happy. my moods always change when im reading, so its nice to be able to jump into other romance genres and get what im looking for!
Love your books! Thank you for sharing you wonderful talent and the stories in your head!
musicalfrog at comcast.net