Format: Digital E-Book, 236 pages
Release Date: November 17, 2015
Publisher: Elewyn Publishing
Source: Barclay Publishing
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Digital ISBN: 978-1-9437-6802-8
Synopsis:
All that glitters may not be gold.
When an
antique gold show comes to Vegas, Tarot-reading magical artifacts hunter Sara
Wilde’s job is simple: locate and liberate a set of relics rumored to give
their bearers access to an ancient, incredible power. With whispers of a war on
magic racing through the Connected community, every psychic, mystic, warlock,
and witch descends on Sin City to claim the relics first. But no one wants
these talismans more than Sara’s client: the insufferably arrogant, criminally
sensual, absolutely untrustworthy
Magician.
And what the
Magician wants…
Sara’s heist
takes a turn for the trickier as the smoky-eyed specter from her past,
Detective Brody Rooks, is assigned to investigate a break-in at the gold show,
forcing her to confront the one man in Vegas she can’t bluff. Even worse, just
as she finally gets her hands on the goods, the game changes anew. The
resulting chase leads her across the world to an ancient Egyptian temple filled
with secrets, deception… and hints about her own abilities that could change
everything. Desperate for answers, Sara is forced to turn to the one person she
knows will lie, cheat, manipulate and steal to get whatever he craves. Only
now, it seems, the Magician wants her.
Sometimes,
when the deck is stacked against you… you’ve got to play the Wilde Card.
Wilde Card is the second installment in Jenn Stark's Immortal Vegas series featuring Tarot card reading relic hunter Sara Wilde. Sara, as we have learned, has the unique ability to use her cards as a compass to find anything. We have also learned that Sara will do anything to protect the innocents called Connecteds from being hunted down and killed by a powerful group known as the Sanctus.
Sara's primary employer is the Arcana Council led by the mysterious, and powerful Magician Armaeus Bertrand. As the story opens, Sara is once again on a mission to locate a valuable and powerful artifact in China. This time it's the Crown of Genghis Khan. Although it's not the main part of the story, it's still provides a major clue that will eventually show up later in the story. I don't believe I am spoiling anything since I am not telling you what the clue is.
The most important part of this story is the arrival of The Rarity to Las Vegas for the first time in recent memory. The Rarity brings in all sorts of investors, collectors, arcane artifact marketers, and various collectors of black market goods. It also brings enemies to town like flocks of seagulls. Sara, who is still dealing with the after effects of Getting Wilde, is also required to be High Priestess Eshe tool, saving the Connected, and facing a huge piece of her past that she still hasn't solved yet.
I love this series and can't wait for the third installment, called Born to be Wilde, coming February 2016. I love Sarah. I love her sarcasm, her wits, her courage, her unknown magical powers that grow leaps and bounds each novel. I love the fact that she stands Guardian for those who can't protect herself against those like Sanctus. I love that she uses the money she makes in searching for artifacts to help more Connecteds. I love that she tries hard not to be anyone's pawn.
I love that this series is based on Arcana Tarot cards like the Musician, The Fool, The Devil, etc. I do hope that we get a chance to meet the missing Arcana members. Loved that there is a DRAGON in this story! A DRAGON. IN. LAS VEGAS! Think on that. I am tempted by the possibilities for Sara. Especially since the ending is rather enlightening. I definitely want to know more about Sara and the Dragon and what happened to her 10 years ago that made her flee her hometown. I want to know if Stark will allow Sara a bit of romance with either Detective Brody, who I like, or Armaeus who seems to be able to push all the right buttons. Best of all, I love fact that Sara is finally home, and can stop running.
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Chapter One
I couldn’t
breathe. I couldn’t even blink. Six foot two of hard-bodied ex–Special Forces
operative was snugged up against my backside, and I was totally falling for
him.
For about
eight thousand more feet.
My helmet
crackled. “You’re doing great.”
“Unghflun.”
Worse, we were still spinning. They’d told me the spinning would stop, but it
didn’t feel like it was stopping. It felt like we were dying. And of all the
ways to die, French-kissing a cliff at a hundred miles per hour had not made my
short list. It gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “terminal” velocity.
“Right on
target.”
Something
shuddered above us, and I shifted from sprawl to nearly vertical in a sudden
blur. I squinted up past the man carabinered to me in not nearly enough places,
to see that our parachute had deployed.
That would be
the “Low Opening” portion of this joyride into the Siberian mountain range
surrounding Lake Baikal. The “High Altitude” section had been covered by our
plunging six-mile drop from a souped-up jet now well on its way to Beijing.
Getting off
this rock without alerting the local military would be its own special kind of
crazy, but I was down for that. Pretty much any kind of crazy that got me away
from Vegas and the Arcana Council for a few days worked for me.
“Drop point,”
echoed in my ear.
Beside us,
two other barely discernible shadows rocketed through the predawn gloom. We
were aiming for a strip of gravel tucked between two sheer cliffs where,
according to my client, X marked the spot for the ultimate Mongolian treasure:
the crown of Genghis Khan. Rumored to give its wearer the Khan’s magical mojo
for protection, abundance, and crazy long life.
Then again,
said crown was apparently resting on the head of a dead guy right now. So there
was that.
Another crackle
in my helmet. “Bend your knees.”
“If I had a
dollar…”
My guide’s
laughter carried through our final several hundred feet of descent, and
suddenly we were on the ground, a tumble of arms, legs, and high-tech padding.
With impressive military precision, mission leader Zander “Call me Zee” James
broke up with me without remorse, thrusting me aside. I lurched drunkenly to my
knees as he slowed his run then turned to his parachute and punched it into
submission.
The other men
landed beside us, neatly outrunning their chutes, and I ducked to avoid a fine
spray of rocks stirred up by the movement. Zee stripped off his HALO suit,
oxygen mask and gear like he was shimmying out of swim trunks, and shoved them
into a we-were-never-here-sized nylon bagel for easy transport out. He flapped
his hand at me for mine and I shoved them at him in a big ball. “Report?” he
snapped.
Zee’s
right-hand man squinted down at a device attached to his wrist. “No heat
signatures,” he said, aiming the thing at the rock wall. “Wall” was being kind.
The cliff face surged up as if an angry god had punched through the earth’s
crust, all crags and fissures and sharp edges. “Seismic activity currently
stable.”
As if to
counter his words, another crackle of falling rocks sounded high above us. “Right.”
Zee squinted up. “At dawn, this place’ll light up like the surface of the sun.
We don’t want to be here for that. We get in, we get out, we get gone.” His
gaze shifted to me. “Ready?”
I nodded,
then tugged down the zipper of my tech suit to fetch my own tools of the trade,
my trusty pack of Tarot cards.
With the deck
as my compass, I could find about anything—for a price. As it happened, a
hundred G was a heck of a price. That kind of money translated to at least
three more Connecteds hidden away from the dark practitioners who wanted to use
them for spare parts. Not enough to save them all, no. But enough to count. I
had to believe that.
“Sometime
today, princess.”
Double-tasking
one set of fingers to offer Zee my opinion of his people management skills, I
used the other to pull a scatter of cards out of the deck.
Here we go.
Available at:
WILDE CARD by
Jenn Stark is an exciting and sexy story about a Tarot-reading magical artifact
hunter who is falling under the spell of the mysterious Magician, while trying
to avoid a war within the magical community and herself. Readers will be in for a wild(e) ride with
the second installment of the Immortal Vegas series which is a cross between
the Adventures of Owl Series by Kristi Charish and Lara Croft Tomb Raider.
Praise for Getting Wilde (Immortal Vegas #1):
“Jenn
Stark’s Getting Wilde kept me riveted from cover to cover. Hilarious, sexy, and thrillingly high action
with a kick-ass herione and a bone-dissolving hero (AKA my new book
boyfriend!). GET THIS BOOK!” - NY
Bestselling Author Darynda Jones
Visit the following blogs for your chance
to win!
November 16th
November 17th
November 18th
November 19th
November 20th
Other Books
in the IMMORTAL VEGAS Series
About Jenn Stark:
Jenn Stark is a Golden Heart
award-winning author of paranormal romance and urban fantasy. She lives and
writes in Ohio. . . and she writes a LOT.
In addition to her work in paranormal, she is also author Jennifer
McGowan, whose Maids of Honor series of Young Adult Elizabethan spy romances
are published by Simon & Schuster, and author Jennifer Chance, whose Rule
Breakers series of New Adult contemporary romances are published by Random
House/LoveSwept.
The world of her first paranormal
romance, which was previously titled BLACK JACK, has now been reimagined as the
setting ONE WILDE NIGHT, GETTING WILDE and WILDE CARD, all to be published in
2015, with BORN TO BE WILDE to follow in early 2016!
Follow the tour from November 16th - 20th! One grand prize winner will receive a $25 gift card for Amazon (Open Internationally) and one grand prize winner will receive a ‘Dixie Quinn Approved “Girls Night Out” Gift Basket’ (Open to U.S. Residents Only).
Weee! Definitely reading this soon! I need me some good UF. I hope I don't get blue balls though, the last one was a painful tease!
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