Book Title: Blue Moons and Unicorns
Author: Kathryn Allen
Publisher: Self published
Cover Artist: Fiverr
Release Date: April 1, 2021
Genres: Action, LGBTI+
Trope: Friends to lovers
Themes: Personal growth, self confidence
Length: 122 000 words/ 299 pages
It is the first book of an intended ongoing series and does not end on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Smashwords
Blurb
While holidaying with her friends in the Hamptons, Interpol agent Samira Neves finds out her father is missing. Following his cryptic breadcrumbs from New York to Amsterdam and London, Samira’s view of her father is challenged. Unwilling to involve the authorities, Samira is cut off from her usual networks to investigate the smuggling and trafficking she is uncovering. While never afraid to use her sensuality to her advantage, she finds herself stretching her erotic horizons when her bisexual friend Ashleigh suggests an unorthodox tactic to infiltrate the world of her swinger targets. Will this be enough to track down her father and find out exactly who was behind it all?
She searched the room as she would have any where she was hunting something hidden. She poked at all the fittings to see if there were secret catches or alcoves, shook open every book, examined every picture on wall. Occasionally she found a note from her dad. ‘Amateur’ or ‘Really, Sam?’ or something similar that made her smile. She came across heaps of photos in drawers of various holidays they’d been on. Uncle Dave featured in many of them as they travelled firstly with him and his wife, and then after her death, with an array of girlfriends. Chelsea too was present more often than not since they spent most school holidays together. Occasionally, their family would holiday on their own, but it wasn’t usual. On his desk was a photo of the three of them at Aspen one summer when she had decided that she was into horses. Sensibly her parents didn’t buy her thirteen-year-old self a horse despite her insistent begging that all her friends had them, but instead invested in a three-week horse riding and education camp. The photo was taken when they came to pick her up, she was bright eyed with excitement at going home and they were pleased they weren’t going to have to worry about horses anymore. It turned out she enjoyed horse riding but that was all the interaction she wanted. She smiled involuntarily at the look of relief on her father’s face. God, they all looked so young. She was a gangly teenager, all legs and arms, yet to grow into her mother’s beauty. Her mother, maybe 35 at the time, had the ease and confidence of someone much older a with her combination of dark eyed good looks and sharp intelligence. On the other side of her, with an arm slung around her shoulders and hand resting on his wife’s shoulder, was her father. At the time he sort of looked like a young Gerard Butler with a squarer jaw. He was clean shaven back then with no hint of the sheared, short beard shot through with grey he now sported. Little else had changed. She shook her head and turned over the photo to disassemble the frame. Apart from the words ‘My two beautiful girls’ in her father’s handwriting on the back of the photo there was nothing to be found. It was just a photo her father liked of his family.
Leaving the photo, she returned to searching the room. After almost an hour she put her hands on her hips and leant back to stretch her spine. She couldn’t have missed it, could she? Not that she even really knew what ‘it’ was. Papers were probable, USBs or something similar were possible but ‘it’ could be anything or ‘it’ didn’t exist at all. Then she remembered the notes. Ah. He was telling her that she was looking in the wrong place. She was thinking like he was a stranger. He would never have put anything important in so obvious a place as his den. He’d put it somewhere she would think of, but it was unlikely anyone else would. So…where the hell was that then? She let her mind wander through the house trying to think like her father. Nothing leapt out at her. Maybe she was looking at this the wrong way. She remembered that holiday in Tobago and she’d found her father’s notes because he was thinking like her, not the other way round. So, Sam, she asked herself, where would you hide something? In her mind she toured the house again. Everywhere was either too obvious or too accessible. So, then she mentally extended her thoughts into the grounds. Aha! The garden shed. They called it that even though it was practically a barn. She was pretty sure she remembered there was a plastic envelope hung on the wall by a piece of string which held all the manuals for the mower and other garden equipment. If she was going to hide something, she’d put it there.
Kathryn Allen is the author of the novels Ever Man and Last Loose End and a number of short stories. These can be found through Smashwords and Amazon. She enjoys the process of developing characters and hooking elements of plot together to make interesting stories. Kathryn lives in Queensland with her husband and dogs.
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