Autorentext

Ali Hazelwood is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Mate, Problematic Summer Romance, and The Love Hypothesis, as well as a writer of peer-reviewed articles about brain science, in which no one makes out and the ever after is not always happy. Originally from Italy, she lived in Germany and Japan before moving to the US to pursue a PhD in neuroscience. When Ali is not at work, she can be found crocheting, eating cake pops, or watching sci-fi movies with her three feline overlords (and her slightly-less-feline husband).

Klappentext

New York Times bestselling author Ali Hazelwood’s intoxicating paranormal romance novella duology—together for the first time in print and ebook!
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Read the captivating dark academia romance in Bound, then flip your book over to unleash the dangers of forbidden love in Unbound.**

Bound***
A reluctant con artist and a professor with too many secrets are bound by an arcane text—in more ways than one.

Veronica “Vero” Mercer grew up with grifters for parents, and she knows her way around a con. When grad school bills pile up and her friends are in trouble, she turns her art history skills into a forgery side hustle.

It’s supposed to be a short term deal, but her work draws the attention of Dr. Viktor Ashworth, a reserved, very British professor. Instead of turning her in, Ashworth kidnaps her—politely—and makes an unusual offer: forge a mysterious ancient manuscript for him.

Soon Vero finds herself spending long nights with Viktor, bent over rare vellum samples and obscure inks. But as the con grows riskier, Vero has to wonder: what does Viktor really want, and why can’t she stay away?

Unbound
A five-thousand-year-old woman who has outlived empires. A doctor who has spent his life fighting death. Their fates collide in a blood game of vengeance.

Lilit of Nineveh has spent millennia in control. As a powerful revenant, she enforces one rule above all: protect mortals. Disciplined and focused, she has never made the same mistake twice, and she has learned that attachments can only lead to ruin.

Enter Roman Martin. An overworked and relentlessly kind ER physician, he is the one mortal Lilit cannot quit. Any relationship between them is against everything Lilit has fought for. Still, she keeps coming back to him.

Until someone starts hunting Lilit, and Roman is caught in the crossfire. When everything comes crashing down, Lilit must choose between the world she has sworn to protect and the man she was never meant to love.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

As fond of and consumed by my own story as I am, I must admit that it's not too different from most others. Stories are stories, with their beginnings, trappings of middles, and nice, tidy conclusions; I've told so many, it should be second nature to grab a fountain pen, a stack of homemade paper, and add mine to the collection. But here I am, hesitating, because I cannot make up my mind on where to start.

A friend suggested that I begin with the summer prior to the final year of my PhD at Rockhaven University, a few months before I died. By then I had already been in trouble for quite a while, and my fate was decided, even though I was not yet aware of it. But I'm not convinced. It seems too bold a choice, starting in medias res, all the more because the first lines of this tale were written when I was still an elfin kid with oddly colored hair and a chewing gum addiction.

Back then, my main pastime was observing an elderly neighbor dip Kolinsky sable-hair brushes into vintage tins of watercolors. "You are lucky," Grace would say in her peeved, cigarette-rough voice, never glancing up from her latest piece. "That your no-good, credit card-skimming father got out of the clink just before your no-good, fake charity-driving mother went back in. Or you'd be in some foster home down in Tullahoma by now, just you and a box of Crayola. C'mere, kid. I'm gonna show you why this layering I just did turned out to be such crap."

I was never a devoted wishful thinker. I refused then, as I do now, to claim that Grace's insistence on teaching me the ins and outs of craquelure, or how to properly clean mildew from leather binding, were vocabulary words in her highly individualized love language. Still, if I'm going to tell my story, she should get some credit for being the first to set me on the path of those who appreciate a certain kind of beauty. So should the judge who made it clear that his eyes were on me, and that they were going to stay fixed right there for the foreseeable future-unless, of course, I cleaned up my act, boosted my grades, and sent out those university applications, stat. Honorable mentions: the Chemistry of Conservation class I chose to take in my second year of college because it was the only non-eight a.m. option; the undergraduate advisor who suggested that if this medieval art stuff was really my thing, he might have a friend at some fancy university up north; the way time and space always seemed to disappear whenever the world shrank to something consumable through my eyes and my hands; that letter Grace left for me to read after she was gone, the handwriting as jagged and sparse as her heart. I don't have much, but it should be enough for a U-Haul. Now get the hell out of this shithole.

So, that's how my story started. There were lots of beginnings, but they coalesced into a perfect storm a few weeks into my first year of grad school, when Mortimer "Don't Call Me Morty" McManaman pulled his best trick out of a top hat and convinced Roxanne, my landlady, to go out with him.

Mortimer was a floppy-haired rich boy who loved to introduce himself as a fine-arts connoisseur, owned polos in every color of the rainbow, and repeatedly failed at growing an authoritative mustache. Not very likable, although he tried very hard. Sometimes I felt bad for him, and maybe Roxanne did, too. Or maybe Mortimer took advantage of her rock-bottom phase. She was, after all, recently separated. Despite her reputation as one of the top gemstone experts in New England, her ability to take commissions had been severely curtailed by having to shoulder most of the care for Rorie, her toddler daughter. The ongoing divorce proceedings had been a financial hit, and desperate people tend to do desperate things. Dating a questionable guy was not qualitatively different from plucking a doctoral student from Craigslist and renting her out one's spare bedroom.

Mortimer may have been less threatening than Roxanne's lying, cheating ex, but they were still unlikely to have a future, especially after he started addressing her as kitten halfway through their first date and never wised up enough to stop. She knew it. I knew it. Judging by the sheer number of increasingly desperate presents that cluttered our home, Mortimer knew it, too. And yet, he clung fiercely to the idea that she might be the one. He'd come over once a week, or whenever Rorie was with Roxanne's ex for the night. He'd fuss with his hair in the entrance mirror and then lay his offerings at the altar of Roxanne's spin-sculpted body: imported coffee beans, wine that didn't live in a box, trays of assorted several-dollars-apiece pralines.

And, one fateful night, a first UK edition of Dracula by Bram Stoker.

This one, in all fairness, wasn't a gift, more like show-and-tell. "We just got it in today," Mortimer said, taking the book out of a leather briefcase and setting it on the table. The McManaman family was based in Boston, but they owned a local antique dealer of middling reputation here in Vermont, and Mortimer had recently gone on a break from his main gig-recommending local breweries and golf courses, unprompted-to take over the business. "Isn't it stunning?"

Roxanne gasped. "Oh my god." She reached out, ma…