Motor Mouth

Alexandra (Barney) Barnaby roars onto the Miami Beach scene in hot pursuit of her missing baby brother, "Wild" Bill. Leave it to the maverick of the family to get Barney involved with high-speed car chases, a search for sunken treasure, and Sam Hooker, a NASCAR driver who’s good at revving a woman's engine.

Engaged in a deadly race, Bill has "borrowed" Hooker's sixty-five-foot Hatteras and sailed off into the sunset...just when Hooker has plans for the boat. Hooker figures he'll attach himself to Barney and maybe run into scumbag Bill. And better yet, maybe he'll get lucky in love with Bill's sweetie pie sister.

The pedal will have to go to metal if Barney and Hooker want to be the first to cross the finish line, save Bill, Hooker's boat...and maybe the world.

Where there’s smoke there’s fire, and no one knows this better than New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum.
 
Dead bodies are showing up in shallow graves on the empty construction lot of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds. No one is sure who the killer is, or why the victims have been offed, but what is clear is that Stephanie’s name is on the killer’s list.

Short on time to find evidence proving the killer’s identity, Stephanie faces further complications when her family and friends decide that it’s time for her to choose between her longtime off-again-on-again boyfriend, Trenton cop Joe Morelli, and the bad boy in her life, security expert Ranger. Stephanie’s mom is encouraging Stephanie to dump them both and choose a former high school football star who’s just returned to town. Stephanie’s sidekick, Lula, is encouraging Stephanie to have a red-hot boudoir “bake-off.” And Grandma Bella, Morelli’s old-world grandmother, is encouraging Stephanie to move to a new state when she puts “the eye” on Stephanie.

With a cold-blooded killer after her, a handful of hot men, and a capture list that includes a dancing bear and a senior citizen vampire, Stephanie’s life looks like it’s about to go up in smoke.

Dear Reader:

In a previous life, before the time of Plum, I wrote twelve short romance novels. Red-hot screwball comedies, each and every one of them. Nine of these stories were originally published by the Loveswept line between the years 1988 and 1992. All immediately went out of print and could be found only at used bookstores and yard sales.

I'm excited to tell you that those nine stories are now being re-released by HarperCollins. Back to the Bedroom is presented here in almost original form. I've done only minor editing to correct some embarrassing bloopers missed the first time around.

I lived in northern Virginia when I wrote Back to the Bedroom. My children were young, and we spent a lot of time visiting the Washington, D.C. museums and wandering through the historic neighborhoods. One day while strolling Capitol Hill I came upon two townhouses that captured my imagination. The houses were totally different -- a birthday cake of a house and a bran muffin of a house, and yet they shared a common wall. I wondered about the people who lived inside the houses. And eventually thehouses inspired Back to the Bedroom.

Back to the Bedroom is the story of a young woman with the soul of a birthday cake living in a bran muffin house -- and a nice-looking guy with the substance of a bran muffin living in a birthday cake. They share some misadventures, some romantic moments, some misunderstandings, and ultimately they turn into wedding cake.

And for Plum fans, you'll be interested to find that this was the first of the four romances to feature Elsie Hawkins, the prototype for Grandma Mazur.

Janet Evanovich