Carina Press Presents: Editor's Choice Volume II

In honor of our second anniversary, Carina Press brings you four gripping novellas by some of genre fiction's hottest voices! Explore interstellar space, get caught up in a caper, dabble in the paranormal and solve a murder aboard a cruise ship in this collection of stories reflecting the variety of our books!

Edited by Deborah Nemeth, this anthology includes:

Dead Calm
by Shirley Wells

Detective Dylan Scott thinks cruising well above the Arctic Circle in November is nothing short of madness. He has zero interest in seeing the elusive aurora borealis, but agrees to the Norwegian holiday to keep his wife and mother happy. At least the biggest problem he'll have to deal with is boredom. But that boredom quickly dissipates when the unpleasant elderly woman in the neighboring cabin is found dead.

Everyone thinks Hanna Larsen had a heart attack. Everyone except Dylan. Dylan is convinced there's a killer aboard the Midnight Sun-a killer who may strike again...

34,000 words

Dance of Flames
by Janni Nell

Family vacations fill me with horror-and for a woman who makes her living as a paranormal investigator, that's saying a lot. Still, I couldn't turn down a month in sunny Spain and the chance of flamenco lessons with Casper, my gorgeous guardian angel-even if it did mean sharing a villa with my mother.

But it's true what they say, there's no rest for the wicked. We'd barely unpacked when the maid started having dreams of being tortured on the rack-dreams my intuition tells me are something more than your average terrifying nightmare. After all, we are in the land of the infamous inquisition, and she does have those unexplained marks...

So for now my dance partner's going to have to wait for me to get to the bottom of this mystery, and when I do, I plan to send evil packing.

21,000 words

No Money Down
by Julie Moffett

Me and the legendary Zimmerman twins-it's a friendship made in geek heaven. And it all started back when I worked for the NSA...

My best friend Basia dragged me to the beach for her idea of a vacation. All those annoying people, sand in embarrassing places-not exactly R & R for a girl who doesn't like the sun, the ocean or bathing suits. I couldn't wait to get back to work.

But things started looking up when I ran into Elvis and Xavier Zimmerman. We discovered we had a lot in common: gaming, anchovies, hacking. After that, the vacation was perfect-until I accidentally broke some poor guy's fingers. Then Broken-Fingered Guy disappeared, and things got really dicey. With the Secret Service and a bunch of thugs suddenly after me, all I wanted was to solve the mystery and enjoy what was left of my vacation-preferably alive.

Prequel to No One Lives Twice.

26,000 words

Pyro Canyon
by Robert Appleton

It's a galaxy-wide red alert...again.

And it's Corporal Gus Trillion's job at the Propaganda Office to drum up recruits. But the colonists have heard one too many calls to arm to care. Disabled in battle and on the verge of burnout, Gus feels pretty apathetic himself-until his reporter friend Lyssa Baltacha stumbles upon top secret satellite footage indicating that the treacherous Sheikers are planning to invade human-occupied space. Now Gus and Lyssa must find a way to galvanize humanity to rise up against the enemy-before it's too late...

37,000 words

Stories also available for purchase separately.

119,000 words


*Please note: files are ADVANCE UNCORRECTED PROOF and may contain errors*

**This title will be archived on Monday, July 2, 2012**