Book Feature: The Heart Collector

Carly's View welcomes Barbara Russell. Today we are featuring her newest release from the Auckland Steampunk series, The Heart Collector.  This book is steampunk and romantic suspense rolled into one. Check out the book trailer on below or just read on for a blurb and excerpt.

Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/loY3neS-Iko

Blurb from The Heart Collector:

Auckland, 1884. The Supernaturals are frightened. Despite being able to do extraordinary things like teleporting or lighting a fire with a stare, a serial killer, the Heart Collector, is slaughtering them. He rips their chests open and removes their hearts.

While other aristocratic, nineteen-year-old girls spend time dancing, Isabel trains hard to become an MI7 agent—Military Intelligence Seventh Division, a crime squad run by Supernaturals. The Heart Collector murdered her best friend, and enrolling at MI7 is the best way to help catch the killer.

Isabel senses other people’s feelings as if they were her owns. But MI7’s leader is too worried about Isabel’s safety to let her join the team.

Eager to prove that her power is valuable, Isabel volunteers to meet Murk, a dangerous Supernatural man who can turn himself invisible. MI7 desperately tried to recruit him and failed.

She believes that her power is enough to convince Murk to become an MI7’s agent and help apprehend the Heart Collector. If he wants to attack her, his feelings will broadcast his intention, and she’ll be ready.

What Isabel isn’t ready for is to fall in love with the man who will collect her heart.

Thoughts from Lady Ermintrude of The Heart Collector:

Auckland, New Zealand, 1884

You don’t mind if I whisper, do you? Hastings Manor is full of ears, and people’s best pastime is gossip. Thank goodness I’m not that type of lady. But I have to speak my mind.

My niece Isabel, the current Duchess of Sussex, has gone mad. She’s accommodating, here in Hastings Manor, street urchins. Street urchins! From Auckland’s rookery!

Good gracious, I need a sherry. These street urchins don’t even have decent names and the youngest one, called Trigger—ptf!—spat on his teaspoon to clean it. The older, the one called Murk, I think he’s a thief or a murderer. Apparently, he can turn himself invisible. Invisible! So inappropriate.

Those dark eyes mean trouble, mark my word, but Isabel thinks he’s charming. Poppycock, I say. I’m sure she’d like to dirty-puzzle with him. Oh, the horror. But does she listen to me? No one is listening to me anymore. A bunch of rebels they are. Now, where’s my sherry?

A Few Words from Barbara on Research for The Heart Collector:

Even if The Heart Collector is a steampunk novel, it’s set in Victorian Auckland and I did a lot of research to give the story a ‘real’ feel. I researched Victorian slang, currency, food, and of course clothes. The wildest thing I did for research is wearing a corset. I thought, was it that terrible? Would people faint for real? I had to know. So I got a corset from a shop that rented costumes and theatrical equipment and put the corset on (a friend helped me tie it up behind my back), and Oh My Gosh! I lasted a grand total of 1 minute and ten seconds before ripping it off me. Awful. I was about to throw up. Those women back in the nineteenth century were brave souls.

Follow Barbara Russell on Social Media:

Email: russell.barbara.84@gmail.com

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/barbara-russell

Twitter: @brussell84Kiwi

Facebook: www.facebook.com/RussellBarbara84

https://www.facebook.com/BRussell84/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07HHJGBBX

Blog: https://barbararussell.blogspot.co.nz

All-author: https://allauthor.com/profile/brussell/

Goodreads: https://goodreads.com/author/show/14108003.Barbara_Russell

Landing page:https://mailchi.mp/f3c0a9bf3544/barbararussell

Buy Link for The Heart Collector:

https://amzn.to/2Dll6m7

Bio of Barbara Russell:

I’m an entomologist and a soil biologist, which is a fancy way to say that I dig in the dirt, looking for bugs. I was a kid when I read The Lord Of The Rings and fell in love with fantasy novels.

When I discovered cozy mystery, I fell in love with Hercules Poirot and Sherlock Holmes. Then I grew up and . . . Nah, I’m joking. Don’t grow up, folks! It’s a trap.

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Carly Jordynn is the author of young adult, new adult, and middle-grade fiction.