MEDIA KIT
The Love Brothers
By Liz Crowe
Series tag line: The Love Brothers: A family saga with humor,
heat and heart—not to mention beer, bourbon and basketball!
The pre-order link for LOVE GARAGE, the first book in the Love Brothers Series, is now available:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/
Love Garage
Book 1
January 5, 2015 (ebook and audio) ~
March 14, 2015 (Print)
ARC available November 1, 2014
Blurb
Antony Love is the quintessential
responsible oldest brother of a boisterous, Italian/Irish family, placed in
charge at a young age by his parents who are busy running the family business.
He manages his siblings with a fair but iron hand, until his life is shattered
by personal tragedy leaving him the shell of the man he once was.
When outspoken matriarch Lindsay
Halloran Love falls ill, the youngest brother Aiden shows up at Antony Antony
But Aiden Love, budding novelist, gets
one glimpse of Rosalee Norris, young widow of Antony
Set in horse country near Lexington, Kentucky, The Love Brothers Series is
a saga of family devotion that runs as wide and deep as the Ohio River--except
on Sundays when brothers Antony, Kieran, Dominic and Aiden work out their
frustrations on the basketball court, Love brother style.
Love Garage Excerpt:
Love Garage opened
bright and early the next morning, a Saturday, a day Aiden had hoped to spend
recovering.
“I get so many oil
changes and random small jobs on Saturdays, it doesn’t make sense to be closed
and let the jackasses with the Quickilube at Walmart get the business,” Antony
insisted when Aiden groaned with dismay upon being awakened after two hours of
drunken sleep. It didn’t help that the awakening occurred at the business end
of a thrown pillow. “Get up, Romeo. You owe me rent money.”
He did, slowly, queasily
hitting a shower, sore all over, his skin mottled from bug bites. But nothing
topped the glorious agony of a bourbon hangover like the one that had him
firmly in its evil grasp.
He slouched out the
door, cursing Antony, cursing Tricia, cursing her ex-husband for throwing her
in his path last night. But mostly cursing his own weak-ass uselessness. He
rested his head against the cool comfort of the truck window until Antony hit a
bump or two, which sent extra pain jolting down his spine.
“Sorry,” his brother
muttered, glancing over at him.
“No, you’re not.”
“Got me there. And you’d
better warn me if you’re about to toss your cookies. I won’t have that in my
vehicle, got me?”
Aiden rubbed his neck
and nodded, swallowing the urge to throw up all over the pristine interior on
principal. “Why d’you hate me so much? You used to like me.” He stared over at
his brother, heart thumping, ears humming, throat closing up with nausea. He
despised waking up still drunk.
“I don’t hate you.”
Antony turned onto the main road headed into town.
“Could’ve fooled me.
You’re a real asshole anymore. Worse than Dom.”
Antony merely shrugged,
not rising to that tried-and-true bait. So they spent the rest of the ride to
the garage in silence. Once there, Antony sat gripping the wheel. Aiden waited,
hoping he’d get something out of him—something he would assure him that the man
he thought he remembered as the protective, funny, and loving guy he’d grown up
with still existed inside the guy walking around wearing Antony’s skin.
Finally, he let go of
the wheel, exhaled, and squared his shoulders as if prepping for battle. Aiden
made a mental note to talk to Kieran about how badly Antony had descended into
his life of non-stop mourning and jerk-hood.
“So, Rosalee, not
putting out for you or what? You need to get laid maybe? Knock the edge off?”
The glare Aiden got for
saying those particular words did make him worry Antony might punch his aching
head through the passenger-side window.
He clenched his jaw in
the way Aiden remembered from their childhood. “That is so far outside the
realm of your business as to be in another galaxy. Get to work and don’t say
her name to me again.”
And with that, Aiden was
left with the fleeting thought that mentioning Rosalee directly was probably
not a good idea. He surely didn’t need Antony to guess that her name was on his
lips, or front and center of his mind.
He shook his head—a Bad
Plan because it summoned the pounding agony back with a vengeance. Groaning, he
climbed out and shuffled over to the door.
A new day began at Love
Garage.
Pre
order link available Dec. 5, 2014.
Coach
Love
Book
2
January
5, 2015 (ebook and audio) ~ March 14, 2015 (Print)
ARC
available Nov. 30, 2014
Blurb
The
smoldering intensity of first love ~ the forbidden fantasy of temptation ~ the
cold hard facts of real life.
When
one man’s hopes are dashed apart in a split second after years spent chasing a
dream, he returns home to Kentucky furious at the world and everyone around
him.
Kieran Francesco is the middle son of the
volatile, tight-knit Halloran-Love family. His role as peacemaker and the one
true athlete is well established. He now faces life devoid of the sport he
adores after a horrific, career-ending accident, which places him in a new and
entirely uncomfortable position—that of the brother with no future.
Over
the course of a few tumultuous months Kieran is plunged back into life at the
center of the Love family, where he must cope with one self-destructive
brother, one ill-timed reconnection to an old flame and a series of bad choices
that land him in more trouble than he’d ever known existed.
COACH
LOVE, book 2 of The Love Brothers, a family saga of sibling loyalty that runs
as deep and wide as the Ohio River—at least until Sunday, when Antony, Kieran,
Dominic and Aiden work out their frustrations at the weekly Love brother
pick-up basketball game.
Coach Love EXCERPT:
As he drove the twenty
or so miles from his parents’ house into town Kieran’s head began to clear. The
windows were down and the tunes cranked. The sun shone. Signs of summer--one of
his favorite seasons--were all around him. Parks packed with families, all the
basketball courts and swimming pools overflowing. The sight of a gaggle of boys
on bikes riding alongside him for a while, singing along with whatever random,
crappy rap song currently polluted the airwaves made him smile.
“Hey, it’s Kieran Love!”
one of the punks shouted after a few blocks. “Can you come over and shoot a few
with us?”
He waved and drove on,
gratified but sad, the sound of their cheerful unhappiness at his refusal
filling his ears, taking the stretch of four lane road at seventy miles an
hour, pressing the gas pedal to the floor, the throaty, powerful roar of the
car’s engine revving him from head to toe.
It would be all right
because he and Melinda loved each other. They had from the moment they’d met.
He passed some grandpa in a Toyota, as the deep green fields surrounded by
picturesque white fences and dotted with horses filled both sides of his
vision.
He’d been home and
recuperating from radical knee surgery with the best prognosis he could hope
for after such a nasty break--to walk normally, much less play the occasional
pick up game. His depression had been deep, wide, and terrifying. He woke every
day at his parents’ house, unwilling even to get out of bed, not that he could
without help for the first few weeks.
Antony had tossed a
laptop computer at him one day when he’d been sulking, unshaven, and eating an
entire bag of potato chips, something he’d not done since the age of ten when
his fate--bound for basketball fame and fortune--had been determined.
“Here, find a job, find
a date, find something,” he’d said before yanking the empty chip bag away and
smacking Kieran’s head hard enough to make his ears ring.
“Ow. Leave me alone,
asshole. I’m grievously injured,” he’d said, not caring about the swear-free
zone he inhabited.
“That’s three dollars
young man,” his mother had called out from the kitchen.
“You live with this,
jerk, and see how you feel about finding ‘a date.’“ He’d hooked his fingers
around the words, heart in his throat at how badly he’d wanted to call Cara
right then.
But by the next weekend
he was caning and limping his way toward the door to some faux-fancy Italian
restaurant in Lexington, rubbing his freshly shaved face and trying not to
sweat through his dress shirt. The woman from the internet site sat at the bar,
twirling an olive-laden swizzle stick in her martini glass, long, slim, bare
legs crossed, feet encased in sky-high patent leather heels. He’d exhaled,
beyond relived that he’d not been cat-fished by some troll, or worse, a dude.
He’d hesitated then,
something in him telling him to turn around and leave, fast. But at that
moment, she’d flashed him the whitest, most perfect smile he’d ever seen and
he’d been hooked. He still didn’t know how. They’d gone out for three weeks
before she let him kiss her. It’d been another three weeks before he got
anywhere near her tits. It had been a solid four months before he scored but
that encounter had been, in a word, epic.
Melinda liked to talk
dirty, wear heels and a garter belt while he fucked her. Loved doing it with all
the lights on and in semi-public places. She gave head like a pro at first,
before he’d given her an engagement ring.
Her bitchiness had come
across as extreme decisiveness, sort of hot in way, he’d admit, since he tended
toward the spontaneous and unplanned--”wishy washy” as he now understood it
thanks to Melinda’s re-categorization of his personality. Her tight grip on her
emotions and her surroundings, the OCD way she ordered her life did grate on
him at times but he figured she tolerated his innate sloppiness and willingness
to wake on a Sunday without a plan in place for the rest of the day. When he
realized he sat across from her at some overpriced, hipster restaurant near her
office after going out with her for eight months, ready to present her with a
ring he could barely afford, it had shocked him without seeming to even faze
her.
“Well, of course I’ll
marry you, but you’ve got to find a better job,” she’d drawled as she sipped
her champagne.
“A new job?” He’d gotten
the teaching gig at his old high school and couldn’t imagine any job he’d want
or like better. She made six figures for Christ’s sake, at least he thought she
did.
Elated, drunk with lust
and achievement, he’d tried to get his long legs adjusted under the small table
jammed between all the others and covered with small plates of “tapas” which,
best he could tell were “appetizers” only twice the price and half the
helpings.
“I’ll do anything you
want, Melinda. You saved me, honest to God you did.”
She’d fluttered her inky
black lashes and gazed at him with an expression that convinced him he’d made
the drastic move for the right reasons. The following year had been a
combination of frustration, anger and high school level blue balls. The double
drama Antony and Aiden had foisted on the Love family during that time hadn’t
helped but it had distracted him. He’d taught his classes, helped out with the
basketball team pro bono without telling Melinda and had been happier than he’d
ever been as a pro athlete.
The fact that she maintained
her uber-bitch persona around his family killed him. But he was hooked.
Still.
Mostly.
Love
Brewing
Book
3
March
1, 2015 (ebook and audio) ~ March 14, 2015 (Print)
ARC
available January 10, 2015
Blurb:
Every
family has one—the black sheep, the problem child, the prodigal. But Dominic
Sean Love could teach all of those guys a lesson or two. Stuck in the middle of
a boisterous group of siblings, he’s given “acting out” a new meaning from the day
he drew his first breath.
While
he’s the one son who follows his strict father’s footsteps into the Love family
business, he’s also the one who butts heads with him the hardest. Their epic
clashes are the stuff of family legend. But they have made peace and work side
by side to take Love Brewing to the next level of success.
Until
Dominic does the one thing his father can never forgive.
Diana
Brantley has been Dominic’s friend, girlfriend and ex-girlfriend so many times
she’s lost count. When he shows up at the farm she’s slowly transforming into a
wildly popular farm-to-table resource for restaurants all over the U.S. her
first impulse is to shoot first and ask questions later. But she doesn’t. And
their lives entwine once more, for good, bad and ugly.
Working (pre-edited) Excerpt:
Dominic would give
anything be able to talk to Kieran. They’d gotten close in the last months
since he’d required a rather alarming rescue from a jail down in Georgia and
his brother had shown up, very few questions asked. But no, Kieran had his own issues and likely
at that very moment was busy trying to convince his high school girlfriend to
marry him, even as she stood dressed and ready to marry someone else.
He had to squeeze his
eyes tight shut to banish images of Kent for the zillionth time.
“You need dry clothes,” Diana said,
interrupting his pity party.
He shrugged and kept his
gaze fixed on the view of rain. “Your garden looks like shit. When’s the last
time you bothered to pull weeds?”
She snorted. He smiled.
He used to love it when she’d do that. He’d honestly had no intention of
showing up here today. The Brantley farm remained way off the beaten track, if
the track around Lucasville could be considered “beaten” in any way. When he’d
raced out of the stifling hot sanctuary and hotwired Kieran’s car he’d driven
off without a single thought in his addled head other than “escape.”
But when he’d finally
released his death grip on the steering wheel he’d looked through the
windshield and found himself facing the old two-story farmhouse where he’d lost
his virginity—not to Diana but to her sister Jen, an older version of the girl
he’d been hanging around with since God was a boy. The whooshing sound that had
deafened him for the last couple of days had receded ever so slightly at the
sight of the place.
He’d not been anywhere
near it in over six years, ever since he’d run out here to find Diana when Gina
had bolted for New York. Her reaction to his surprise visit had been decidedly
less hostile then. He groaned and ran a hand down his wet face.
No
one to blame but yourself for this reception, numb nuts.
As if on cue, the dog whined and bumped his
leg with its huge muzzle.
“Bossy bitch,” he said
softly, giving her another scratch behind the ears. The animal gazed at him
adoringly. Yeah, dogs always did love him. He glanced up and caught sight of
Diana tugging on a shirt that looked way too big for her. The sight of it sent
a thrill of something he didn’t want to acknowledge as jealousy down his spine.
You have less than no
place being jealous of anything about her, he reminded himself. She stared at
him as she buttoned up the light blue, obviously man-sized shirt. He had to
restrain himself from blinking too fast at the onrushing memories that
threatened to mow him down.
“Put on a few pounds eh
Di?” he said, leaning back against the rough barn wall. The dog practically
crawled up onto the hay bale and laid its head in his lap. Damn thing weighed
over eighty pounds and smelled like rancid pond water, but he didn’t stop
it.
“Fuck you,” she said,
turning away and giving him a lovely view of the backs of her slim, tanned
legs. “Come up to the house and get some dry clothes on, you dumbass.” She
stood there, wearing that shirt that made his chest hurt, pondering where it
had come from, her legs bare and beautiful. It made him want to weep. He set
his jaw and turned away from her.
“I missed you and your
ladylike ways,” he said, almost absently, as he turned back to study the rain
that pounded the window. “Ow!” The towel pop flicked his neck, then his thigh.
“Damn girl, you on your period or what?” He rubbed his leg and noted that he
was, indeed, soaked through and could use a change of clothes. Too bad he
hadn’t thought of that when he ran away from what remained of his former life.
“I can feel your crybaby
BS from clear across this barn,” she said.
He turned fast, angry at
her words. But her gaze comforted him. And suddenly, he realized why he’d found
himself here, on what could be labeled as the worst day of his sorry-ass thirty
years.
“How’d marriage work out
for ya,” he said, shoving the dog off his lap and getting to his feet.
“How d’you think? I
mean, I’m sure it was the talk of the town.” She kept staring at him, not
moving. For a split second, Dom found himself headed toward her, needing to
feel her skin, taste her lips. But he stood, keeping the four or so feet
between them, the dogs milling around their ankles making worried noises. An
errant drop of water fell from a lock of hair over his eyes. The moment felt
fraught and he cursed himself for causing her pain, again. And again.
“Well, I guess the guy
was lucky to escape with his balls intact,” he said, finally. “You’re still as
ugly as homemade sin,” he lied.
The corner of her lips
lifted. He let himself exhale.
It was on now. And he
knew she’d let him stay as long as he needed.
And
coming late summer 2015: FAMILY LOVE (ebook, audio and print)
LOVE
BROTHERS TRAILER HERE:
**************
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Her early forays into the publishing world led to a groundbreaking
fiction subgenre, “Romance for Real Life,” which has gained thousands of fans
and followers interested less in the “HEA” and more in the “WHA” (“What Happens
After?”). More recently she is garnering even more fans across genres with her
latest novels, which are more character-driven fiction, while remaining very
much “real life.”
With stories set in the not-so-common worlds of breweries, on the
soccer pitch, in successful real estate offices and at times in exotic locales
like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are unique and told with a fresh voice. The
Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex storylines with
humor and complete casts of characters that will delight, frustrate and linger
in the imagination long after the book is finished.
A Grand Prize pack which includes $60 worth of Amazon GCs, ebooks, and other
prizes. There are also First and Second Place Prize packs consisting of Amazon
GCs and books.
All these excerpts sound wonderful. What a great series this is. I love the sound of them all.
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