The Last Wolf by Maria Vale, Bad Bachelor by Stefanie London, and Bellewether by Susanna Kearsley are 2019 RITA Award finalists

We are thrilled to share that The Last Wolf by Maria Vale, Bad Bachelor by Stefanie London, and Bellewether by Susanna Kearsley are 2019 RITA award finalists!

The Last Wolf is a finalist for Best First Book and Paranormal Romance, Bad Bachelor for Contemporary Romance: Long, and Bellewether for Mainstream Fiction with a Central Romance. 

The RITA is recognized as the highest award of distinction in romance fiction. Up to 2,000 novels are entered annually in over thirteen different categories. The RITA winners will be announced at the RWA National Conference this summer (July 25-28, 2019).

Click "read more" below to learn more about each book and author.

see the full list of rita finalists

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The Last Wolf ​by Maria Vale

For three days out of thirty, when the moon is full and her law is iron, the Great North Pack must be wild. 

If she returns to her Pack, the stranger will die. 
But if she stays…

Silver Nilsdottir is at the bottom of her Pack’s social order, with little chance for a decent mate and a better life. Until the day a stranger stumbles into their territory, wounded and beaten, and Silver decides to risk everything on Tiberius Leveraux. But Tiberius isn’t all he seems, and in the fragile balance of the Pack and wild, he may tip the destiny of all wolves…

"As Vale begins her The Legends of All Wolves series, her outstanding worldbuilding makes this sensuous tale of life and love in the Pack, a werewolf society, well worth reading. Spellbound readers will watch for the next installment, A Wolf Apart." --Booklist, STARRED Review

Maria Vale is a journalist who has worked for Publishers Weekly, Glamour magazine, Redbook, the Philadelphia Inquirer. She is a logophile and a bibliovore and a worrier about the world.Trained as a medievalist, she tries to shoehorn the language of Beowulf into things that don't really need it. She currently lives in New York with her husband, two sons and a long line of dead plants. No one will let her have a pet.Visit her online at mariavale.com.

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Bad Bachelor by Stefanie London

Everybody's talking about the hot new app reviewing New York's most eligible bachelors. But why focus on prince charming when you can read the latest dirt on the lowest-ranked "Bad Bachelors"—NYC's most notorious bad boys.

If one more person mentions Bad Bachelors to Reed McMahon, someone's gonna get hurt. A PR whiz, Reed is known as an 'image fixer' but his womanizing ways have caught up with him. What he needs is a PR miracle of his own.

When Reed strolls into Darcy Greer's workplace offering to help save the struggling library, she isn't buying it. The prickly Brooklynite knows Reed is exactly the kind of guy she should avoid. But the library does need his help. But as she reluctantly works with Reed, she realizes there's more to a man than his reputation. Maybe, just maybe Bad Bachelor #1 is THE one for her. 

"Genuinely entertaining and memorable." --Booklist, STARRED Review

"London does not disappoint...elegant, descriptive and delectable, readers will certainly want to spend more time at their local libraries if there’s any chance of their own personal Reed McMahon roaming around." --RT Book Review TOP PICK

Stefanie London is the USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romance and romantic comedy. Her books have been called “genuinely entertaining and memorable” by Booklist, and her writing was praised as “elegant, descriptive and delectable” by RT Magazine.

Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Stefanie now lives in Toronto, Canada with her husband. She loves to read, collect lipsticks, watch zombie movies and drink coffee. Her bestselling book, Pretend It's Love, was a 2016 Romantic Book of the Year finalist with the Romance Writers of Australia. 
You can visit her at www.stefanie-london.com.

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Bellewether by Susanna Kearsley

“The house, when I first saw it, seemed intent on guarding what it knew; but we all learned, by the end of it, that secrets aren’t such easy things to keep.”

It’s late summer, war is raging, and families are torn apart by divided loyalties and deadly secrets. In this complex and dangerous time, a young French Canadian lieutenant is captured and billeted with a Long Island family, an unwilling and unwelcome guest. As he begins to pitch in with the never-ending household tasks and farm chores, Jean-Philippe de Sabran finds himself drawn to the daughter of the house. Slowly, Lydia Wilde comes to lean on Jean-Philippe, true soldier and gentleman, until their lives become inextricably intertwined. Legend has it that the forbidden love between Jean-Philippe and Lydia ended tragically, but centuries later, the clues they left behind slowly unveil the true story.

Part history, part romance, and all kinds of magic, Susanna Kearsley's latest masterpiece will draw you in and never let you go, even long after you've closed the last page.

"Kearsley weaves a richly told contemporary story with an imaginative, authentically detailed tale from the past, throwing in just the right elements of romance and the paranormal." --Booklist, STARRED Review


"RITA Award–winning author Kearsley (The Firebird) pens a captivating tale of a Long Island family caught up in the tumultuous events of the French and Indian War (1754–63) that culminated in the fall of French Canada to the British...Highly recommended for Kearsley’s many admirers and fans of romantic dual-time historical fiction." --Library Journal, STARRED Review

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author and RITA award winner Susanna Kearsley is known for her meticulous research and exotic settings from Russia to Italy to Cornwall, which not only entertain her readers but give her a great reason to travel. Her writing has drawn comparisons to Mary Stewart, Daphne Du Maurier, and Diana Gabaldon. She won the coveted Romance Writers of America RITA Award for The Firebird, and hit the bestseller lists in the U.S. with The Winter Sea and The Rose Garden, both RITA finalists and winners of RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards. Other honors include National Readers’ Choice Awards, the prestigious Catherine Cookson Fiction Prize, and finaling for the UK’s Romantic Novel of the Year Award. Her popular and critically-acclaimed books are available in translation in more than 20 countries and as audio books. She lives in Canada, by the shores of Lake Ontario.

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