This week, we're welcoming author Alison Morton with her exciting debut title, Inceptio. Join us on Sunday, when the author will offer a free copy of the book to a lucky blog visitor. Here's the blurb:
Learn more about author Alison Morton at:
The
first in a series of exciting alternate history thrillers set in mysterious
Roma Nova.
New York, present
day. Karen Brown, angry and frightened after surviving a kidnap attempt, has a
harsh choice – being eliminated by government enforcer Jeffery Renschman or
fleeing to the mysterious Roma Nova, her dead mother’s homeland in Europe.
Founded sixteen centuries ago by
Roman exiles and ruled by women, Roma Nova gives Karen safety and a ready-made
family. But a shocking discovery about her new lover, the fascinating but
arrogant special forces officer Conrad Tellus, who rescued her in America,
isolates her.
Renschman reaches
into her new home and nearly kills her. Recovering, she is desperate to find
out why he is hunting her so viciously. Unable to rely on anybody else, she
undergoes intensive training, develops fighting skills and becomes an
undercover cop. But crazy with bitterness at his past failures, Renschman sets
a trap for her, knowing she has no choice but to spring it...
**An Excerpt from Inceptio**
I
The boy lay in the dirt
in the centre of New York’s Kew Park, blood flowing out of both his nostrils,
his fine blond hair thrown out in little strands around his head. I stared at
my own hand, still bunched, pain rushing to gather at the reddening knuckles. I
hadn’t knocked anybody down since junior high, when Albie Jolak had tried to
put his hand up my sobbing cousin’s skirt. I started to tremble. But not with
fear – I was so angry.
One of the
boy’s friends inched forward with a square of white cloth. He dabbed it over
the fallen boy’s face, missing most of the blood. Only preppy boys carried
white handkerchiefs. Aged around eighteen, nineteen, all three wore blazers and
grey pants, but their eyes were bright, boiling with light, cheeks flushed. And
their movements were a little too fluid. They were high. I dropped my left hand
to grab my radio and called it in. Passive now, the second boy knelt by the one
I’d knocked down. The third one sat on the grass and grinned like an idiot
while we waited. If they attacked me again, I had my spray.
Keeping my
eyes fixed on them, I circled around to the slumped figure lying a few steps
away on the grass. Their victim. I laid two fingers on his neck and thankfully
found a pulse. After a glance back at his tormentors, I bent my face sideways
and felt his breath on my cheek. He groaned
and his body tensed as he tried to move. A battered, brown felt hat lay upside
down by the side of his head of long silver and black hair stiff like wire. He
opened his eyes. Dull with sweat and grime, the red-brown skin stretched over
high cheekbones showed he had to be an Indigenous. Well, damn. What was he
doing this far east, away from the protected territories?
I heard path
gravel crunching as Steff appeared through the cherry blossom cloud, driving
his keeper’s buggy with Tubs as shotgun.
‘Karen?’
‘One with a
bloody nose, and all three for banning. Tell Chip I’ll do the report as soon as
I finish here.’
They herded
the three delinquents onto the buggy. Before they left, I helped myself to
dressings and swabs from the emergency kit in the buggy trunk. I had to get
back to their victim. He sat up and put his hand to his head. He shrank back,
his eyes full of fear when he saw me. Maybe it was my green uniform, with its
park logo and ‘Autonomous City of New York’ stamped on the shoulder.
My hand
started to throb, but I managed to unscrew the top of my water bottle and gave
it to him.
‘C’mon, old
guy, drink this.’
He lifted his
face, grabbed the bottle and drank it in one go. His Adam’s apple bounced above
a grimy line on his neck around the level of his disintegrating shirt collar.
And he stank. But, right now, he needed my swabs and Band-Aids. Under a
diagonal cut on his forehead, a bruise was blooming around his eye to match the
one on his jaw. His hand was grazed, with bubbles of blood starting to clot. I
cleaned his wounds, speaking calming words to him as I bandaged him up.
‘Okay, let’s
get you to the nearest hospital,’ I said, but, as I lifted my radio again, he
seized my wrist.
‘No,’ he
said.
‘It’s okay,
there’s a free one, the other side of the park in Kew Road West.’ Which was
just as well, as he plainly couldn’t pay private.
‘No. Thank
you. I’m well. I can go now.’
The anxious
look in his dark eyes swung between my face and the safety of the tall trees.
I’d have to call in for the Indigenous New York Bureau number. As I spoke to
Chip, I looked over the lake at the old wood boathouse on the far side. Beyond
the trees behind it, the windows in the red-brick Dutch highhouses along
Verhulst Street threw the full sun back. When I turned around, the old man had
disappeared.
