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Title: Keeper vs. Reaper
Series: Graveyard Guardians, # 1
Author: Jennifer Malone Wright
Audience: New Adult
Genre: Paranormal
Formats: E-book and Paperback
Publisher: Jennifer Malone Wright
Cover by: Regina Wamba of Mae I Design
Editor: There for you editing
Pages: 300 pages
Date of Publishing: Aug 12, 2014.
BLURB supplied by Sparkle Book Tours
When her father died, Lucy Mae Estmond
inherited the family business. She has known all of her life that she would be
in line to watch over the souls of the recently passed, keeping them safe from
the Reapers.
The soul eating Reapers have been a
plague upon the Earth, stealing souls and leaving the Keepers as the only thing
that stands between Heaven and Hell. The factions despise each other and have
warred for generations.
Then Lucy discovers an ancient legend
predicting the arrival of the Chosen One, destined to bring forth an end to the
Reapers. The surprises continue when she realizes she is that person. For Lucy,
being the Chosen One doesn’t change much. Fighting Reapers is just another day
in the life of a Keeper.
When she meets Jack Walker, they both
realize they have an insane, mutual attraction. Too bad that he’s been sent to
prevent the prophecy from coming true. His only mission: to kill the Chosen
One.
BOOK LINKS
Goodreads
/ Apple / Barnes and Noble / Kobo / Smashwords
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer Malone Wright is best known for
her short story series, The Vampire Hunter's Daughter. Other works include the
follow up to The Vampire Hunter's Daughter series called The Arcadia Falls
Chronicles and her vampire novel called The Birth of Jaiden. Jennifer also
co-authors a series called Once Upon A Zombie Apocalypse.
She resides in the beautiful mountains
of northern Idaho with her husband and five children where she practices preparing
for the zombie apocalypse. Just kidding!
But seriously, between the craziness of
taking care of her children, Jennifer has little time left for herself. The
time she does have left, usually leading far into the night, is spent working
on her beloved fiction or chatting with her equally crazy friends.
Jennifer also loves coffee, has a
passionate affair with red bull, wishes the sushi were better where she lives
and dances while she cleans.
AUTHOR LINKS
EXCERPT
Inch by painstaking inch, the casket sank
lower into the freshly churned earth.
The scent of lilacs floated on the breeze,
along with the heavy stench of perfume and cologne, reminding Lucy of the
fragrance aisle in a department store.
Lucy stood beside the grave, dressed in a
modest royal blue sundress. She had chosen it specifically because her father
always said the color looked the best against her hair, which was a mix of
reddish brown that shone burgundy in the sunlight.
Tilting her head up, Lucy looked through
the canopy of the aging oak trees that were scattered throughout the cemetery.
The breeze shifted the branches, causing a few of the leaves to pull free and
flutter off into the wind. There were almost no clouds in sky, allowing the sun
to shine down over the funeral.
Her brothers and sisters surrounded the
open grave opposite of her. All six of them also wore something fitting for a
funeral, but nothing depressing enough to send their father into a rage in his
afterlife.
Smiling, Lucy remembered the argument she
and her father had during his last moments. “Lucy!” he had shouted at her.
“Don’t you dare let them bury me in a suit. I am not going to spend eternity in
a stuffy ass business suit. Make sure I’m wearing my khaki shorts and a Hawaiian
shirt because I’m going on the vacation of a lifetime.”
That was toward the end, when the cancer
was so bad that her dad spent most of his time in bed, moaning about how he
should be up and about doing something. They both knew that the end was near,
but Lucy had cried only in private. Her father wanted her to be happy he was
moving on to the next life, but she couldn’t understand in what way, shape or
form, his dying was a good thing.
So she shed her tears alone in her room
until there were no more left to cry.
The fog of the memory lifted from Lucy’s
mind and she looked across the grave at her brothers and sisters. The entire
brood of Estmond siblings were born with the same color hair as Lucy had been
blessed with. Each of them, as well as Lucy and Ethan, held a white rose in one
hand. Later, before the grave was sealed, they would each take a turn throwing
one down onto the casket, as a symbol of their wish for their father’s peaceful
journey into the afterlife.
Just behind her brothers and sisters stood
the mourners who came to pay their last respects. Most of them were town’s
people whom they had grown up with, except for one group who stood close
together, most of them around her father’s age. These were the Keepers whom her
family had been closest to over the years. She could see Gloria and Edward
White, the Keepers from one of the Napa Valley graveyards standing solemnly
beside Ellen and Stanly Evans, who worked in the hospital in Santa Rosa. There
were several other Keepers surrounding them who she recognized and made a note
to speak to them later.
Beyond them, further out into the trees,
the spirits began to show themselves. They appeared in the form of their human
bodies, a bit transparent, but solid for the most part. It was harder to see in
the daylight, but their misty blue auras swirled around them, helping form the
solidity of their bodies.
The spirits were fascinated by funerals.
When Lucy was little she used to think that they wanted to say goodbye to
someone, but really it was because there wasn’t much else to do in a graveyard
except talk to each other and attend burials.
Pastor Brown spoke solemnly, saying kind
words and telling her father’s life story. Inwardly, Lucy cursed her father for
choosing Pastor Brown, a man who had not known her father and she was sure
didn’t give a flying fuck about him either. Her father hadn’t set foot in
church since he was a child. Not because he didn’t believe in God, he just
didn’t believe in organized religion.
Sensing her tension, Ethan squeezed her hand
reassuringly. Turning to her left she looked up and met her best friend’s eyes
through the tint of his sunglasses. Even through the dark lenses she could see
the sorrow in his eyes. He had loved her father too, just as much as any one of
the Estmond clan. In response, she squeezed his hand back and then turned back
to stare at the grave again.
“And now, Lucy Mae, Gregory’s youngest
child, will say a few words about her father.”
The preacher cleared his throat, signaling to Lucy that it was time.
TEASER
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