I’d like to do a monthly post on under appreciated authors–you know the ones who fly under the general reader’s radar. Lately, when I’ve discovered a ‘new-to-me’ author, they’ve well and truly been discovered–as in New York Times bestselling author. Actually, when I think about it I did recently discover Mira Lyn Kelly. She writes for Harlequin Presents and I found her on Twitter. I think the deal was she had a book coming out so I requested a copy from Harlequin to review (like to support my Twitter followers as much and whenever I can). The book was FRONT PAGE AFFAIR and I absolutely loved it so I went back and found her debut, which was WILD FLING OR A WEDDING RING. Loved that one too.

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I love discovering new authors. There’s this thrill that comes with knowing that I now have an author whose books I will purchase just because they wrote it. The problem is said authors really need to write faster.

In this case, that author is Mira Lyn Kelly and she writes for the Harlequin Presents Extra line.  So this is how I came to truly love her books. Mira is on Twitter. She follows me and I follow her right back, so when it came to deciding which Harlequin books to review, I chose hers and thankfully, one of my reviewers wanted to review her latest book, FRONT PAGE AFFAIR.  Again the stars aligned once more and Deb loved it! (You can read her review of it here.) She gave it 9 Stars and subsequently made it a January Contemporary Top Pick.

Front Page Affair
Author: Mira Lyn Kelly
Publisher: Harlequin Presents Extra
Pub. Date: January 1, 2011
Series #: 136
ISBN-13: 978-0373528004
Retail: $4.75

Payton hasn’t seen Nate Evans in years—not since he used to hang out with her brother in high school. But now she and Nate are guests at the same wedding where the notorious millionaire offers her a wild proposal—a sexy, scandalous and irresistible affair!

Nate’s outrageous proposition was supposed to stay only paper-thin; it was merely a ploy to distract the tabloids from another, all-too-real scandal. But neither he nor Payton expected such a very public affair to prove so very hot in private…

Or to have such lasting consequences….

As I was editing the review to post, the plot and Deb’s enthusiasm for the book intrigued me. As you can imagine, I see a lot of books come across my kitchen island every day and I don’t feel compelled to read many (okay most). FRONT PAGE AFFAIR hit all the right chords for me and as you may know because I may have mentioned it a time or two, I’m always on the hunt for new contemporary authors. In my opinion, publishers aren’t printing enough single title ones and Harlequin is the only place to go for category romances. Anywho, getting back on point, I sat down over the holiday break and read FRONT PAGE AFFAIR. I loved it! Truly enjoyed the relationship between Nate and Payton. More than that, I loved that they were much more ‘real’ sounding and feeling characters than I think is generally written about in this line. This is in no way to disparage sheiks, princes or Greek tycoons and the like, but they were really quite normal people (okay, so yes, he’s very wealthy, which totally works in this story).  The dialogue was ‘real’ as were the characters’ actions and reactions.

Of course, after I finished reading it, I had to squeal my joy to the entire Twitter-verse–yep, my followers–and check out her back list. That hunt was a mixed blessing. Yes, Mira does have one but it’s egregiously short. One book was all I found. Her debut, WILD FLING OR A WEDDING RING. It was better than nothing, right? So I downloaded the ebook from the Harlequin e-book site and, yes, you guessed it, loved it. Two in a row for me puts an author on my auto-buy list. The same elements that made me totally love FRONT PAGE AFFAIR is what makes WILD FLING OR A WEDDING RING work. My suggestions is that for readers who are looking for something that has a single title feel à la Rachel Gibson but in an abbreviated format, you may want to give Mira Lyn Kelly a try.

To celebrate my new find, I’m giving away 2 copies of her latest release, FRONT PAGE AFFAIR. Comment to enter to win.