Spotlight & Giveaway: The Bride Wore White by Amanda Quick

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Amanda Quick’s new release: The Bride Wore White

A psychic desperate to escape her destiny—and a killer—finds her future in the coastal town of Burning Cove in New York Times bestselling author Amanda Quick’s latest novel.

Being Madame Ariadne, Psychic Dream Consultant, wasn’t Prudence Ryland’s ideal gig, but it paid well which was reason enough to do the work—until she realizes that her latest client intends to kill her. But Prudence, a master at reinvention, finds a new job and home as far away as possible and is finally able to relax—which turns out to be a big mistake. Letting her guard down means being kidnapped and drugged and waking up in a bloodstained wedding dress in the honeymoon suite next to a dead man. With the press outside the hotel, waiting with their cameras and police sirens in the distance, it’s obvious she’s being framed for the man’s murder. Prudence knows who is responsible, but will anyone believe her?

It doesn’t seem likely that rumored crime boss Luther Pell or his associate, Jack Wingate, believe her seemingly outrageous claims of being a target of a ruthless vendetta. In fact, Prudence is convinced that the mysterious Mr. Wingate believes her to be a fraud at best, and at worst: a murderer. And Jack Wingate does seem to be someone intimately familiar with violence, if going by his scarred face and grim expression. So no one is more shocked than Prudence when Jack says he’ll help her. Of course, his ideas for helping her involve using her as the bait for a killer, but Prudence feels oddly safe with Jack protecting her. But who will protect Prudence from her growing fascination with this enigma of a man?

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from The Bride Wore White 

Prudence woke up at dawn with a knife in her hand and the fragments of a nightmare clouding her vision.
It took her a frantic, disorienting moment to realize that the wispy fog she was trying to peer through was actually a voluminous lace veil. There was something wrong with the netting. It was stained a reddish-brown color, as if it had been splashed with tea.
No, not tea. Dried blood.
The shock of horror paralyzed her for a couple of heartbeats. Her breath caught in her chest. Her throat was so tight she could not even give voice to a scream.
In the next instant she sat up with the violent force induced by raw panic. That was when she discovered that she was not alone in the bed. There was a man dressed in a tuxedo stretched out beside her. The front of his elegantly tailored white shirt was saturated with the reddish-brown evidence of multiple stab wounds.
The rising tide of terror threatened to drown her when she recognized the dead man—Gilbert Dover, the heir to the Dover fortune.
She was trapped in a nightmare. That was the only rational explanation for what was happening. She had to wake up. She managed to roll to the side of the bed, away from the dead man, and fell off the edge. She landed on her hands and knees with a jarring thud. The painful jolt forced her to face reality. She was not ensnared in a terrible dream. This was real.
When she tried to get to her feet, she got tangled up in the heavy satin skirts of a long, billowing gown—a once-white wedding gown that, like the veil, was stained with blood.
With a fierce effort of will she managed to scramble upright. She could feel fabric under her feet. When she looked down she saw that she was not wearing shoes. She stood on a rug.
She yanked off the wedding veil and flung it aside. Hoisting the folds of the gown, she nearly collapsed in relief when she realized she was still wearing the garter belt, stockings, panties, and slip she’d had on beneath the black business suit she had worn to work. There was no blood on any of her underthings. No signs of violence.
Memories came back in a rush. She is deep in the stacks of the library of the Adelina Beach College Department of Parapsychology. She is tracking down An Investigation of Dreams for Professor Tinsley. She turns to go down an aisle lined with towering bookshelves. She senses movement behind her. An arm snakes around her throat, dragging her back against a man’s chest. A wet cloth covers her nose and mouth. She recognizes the sweet, medicinal smell of chloroform, tries to struggle, reaches up for the crystal pendant, and then . . . nothing.
It had all happened so fast. She had not had the time she needed to focus her psychic energy and fight off her attacker.
She looked around the room, trying to orient herself. The gray predawn light revealed a luxuriously appointed suite. Heavy curtains were tied back with gold tassels. Through the windows she could make out lavish gardens.
It occurred to her that she was viewing the scene from a perspective that indicated the suite was several floors above the ground.
Whisking up a fistful of the satin skirts, she hurried across the room and stopped at one side of a window. Four, maybe five floors below were a sweep of lawn and a grand porte cochere. Several impressive limousines were parked in the long, curving drive. Liveried chauffeurs lounged against the fenders of the big cars, smoking and chatting. Bellhops came and went, escorting weary socialites who were returning from nightclubs and, no doubt in some cases, the wrong beds.
The scene answered one question. She was in a hotel that catered to the wealthy upper classes—people like Gilbert Dover.
She was about to turn away from the window when she noticed the small scrum of news photographers gathered near the lobby entrance. She knew they were there to catch the arrival of a Hollywood celebrity or a rising politician emerging from a limo with a woman who was not his wife on his arm. The press thrived on such scandals.
The grisly murder scene in which she was standing combined all of the elements required to ensure that the photographers and reporters would get front-page pictures and screaming headlines that would hit every paper on the West Coast.
It did not take the keen intuition of a former-psychic-dream-reader-turned-librarian to conclude that she had to escape the hotel without being seen.

Excerpted from The Bride Wore White by Amanda Quick Copyright © 2023 by Amanda Quick. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Excerpt. ©Amanda Quick. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 
 

Giveaway: 1 Finished copy of THE BRIDE WORE WHITE (U.S. only, 18+)

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Meet the Author:

Amanda Quick is a pseudonym for Jayne Ann Krentz, the author, under various pen names, of more than fifty New York Times bestsellers. There are more than 35 million copies of her books in print. She is also the author of the Ladies of Lantern Street novels and the Arcane Society series.
 
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