Visions
of the future. A dark family secret. A beloved uncle seduced by evil …
Julia Elliot is a nurse
practitioner working in a busy trauma room. She is good at her job and well respected
by her colleagues—but she harbors a secret. One which has made her an outcast
all of her life. Now able to suppress the visions of the future that have
tormented her for as long as she can remember, she is living life on her terms—that
is, until the fragility of her “normal life” is shattered when a vision breaches
her defenses and sends her running back home to Savannah, Georgia.
Once home, Julia learns the truth about
her family: a genetic anomaly has woven its way through the generations … a gene
that allows Julia to travel through time.
But she is not the only living
family member who has inherited this ability—her Great Uncle Eli has been using
it to commit crimes under the cover of the Civil War in order to make himself
more wealthy and powerful in the present.
As the only other person in her
family with the ability to time travel, it falls to Julia to stop Eli. Forced
to travel to 1862, Julia must finally embrace her visions and learn to use them
to escape with her life and reclaim her future.
Julia’s plan to slip in and out of
time to stop Eli without anyone being the wiser is shattered when she meets
Confederate Captain Reave Montgomery. Julia finds herself equally attracted to
and frustrated by Reave as his insistence on protecting her gets in the way of
her hunt for Eli. As she investigates she discovers that Reave is doggedly
hunting The Phantom, an elusive criminal mastermind, and Julia realizes their
quests may be connected.
Despite her ability to see the
future, Julia is not prepared for the effect Reave has on her or the connection
she feels to the Savannah of the past. She feels a sense of belonging for the
first time in her life, to the city and to the man. How will she leave them if
she is able to stop Eli and the time comes to return to her present?
Excerpt
The sun would be up soon and I had been lying here for hours trying
to go back to sleep. I couldn’t pinpoint the reason for my insomnia
other than an uncomfortable niggling in my subconscious. I tried to
ignore it, knowing what it meant, but I could tell I was losing the
battle.
Then I felt it, a familiar tension gathering in the pit of my
stomach-there
was no stopping it now. I sat up and pressed my back against the
headboard. Bracing myself for what was to come. I pulled the quilt
to my
chest, clenching the fabric in tight fists. The gray light of early
morning
filtered through the window as the familiar shapes of my bedroom
began
to shift, the scene before me transforming.
I watched myself walk through a forest dense with smoke as the
vision
played before my eyes like a feature film. I gripped the quilt
tighter, trying
to remind myself that I was only a witness to the movie and not a
participant. Still, I jumped as the sounds of gunfire and cannons
exploded
all around me. The air thick with the metallic scent of blood and
the
stench of death. Suddenly I felt as though I were living the
vision, no
longer in the safety of my own bed. I looked around, taking in the
scene,
and noticed the ground was littered with bodies. Blood soaked the
ground
at my feet. Fear gripped me. My pulse raced, pounding in my ears,
and
adrenaline flowed through my veins. I prayed the vision would end.
Knowing it would not.
As I looked around I could see the faces of the dead illuminated in
flashes from the musket fire and cannon blasts. Dead eyes staring.
Blood
everywhere. Panic seized me and I started running. Making it only a
few
feet, I stumbled over something and fell hard to the ground. I felt
around
in the dark looking for whatever made me trip. My hands moved
across
the tall grass searching, then came in contact with something warm
and
wet. The metallic smell of blood became stronger. Another cannon
flash
illuminated the dark and I could see that I lay inches from the
face of a
dead soldier. One dead eye stared back at me, the other half of his
face
blown off. My hands were covered in his blood. I screamed and
clambered
away from him. Wiping my hands off on the long grass beside me, I
scrambled to my feet and started running again. The flashes of
light from
the battle guided me over and around the bodies littering the
forest floor.
As I ran, I frantically searched them for signs of life, turning
over one
after the other.
They were dead. All dead.
Degrees of Darkness is available at Amazon.
Author Bio
Lori has been a nurse for the last 25 years. She holds three
degrees in nursing: a bachelor’s degree, a Master of Science and a Doctor of
Nursing Practice. She continues to work as a pediatric nurse practitioner and
lives near Dallas, Texas, with her husband John, and two children Shelby and
Hunter. She enjoys time with her two miniature English bulldogs, Fergie and
Peaches, and her Blue Heeler, Harley.
Lori is an avid marathon runner and audiobook addict. As a fan of
the time travel genre, Lori’s love of history combined with her medical
background inspired her debut novel.
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Congrats 🎉 🎈on your release!
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