NERFA 2024 - And the Winners Are

And the Winners Are

Congratulations to every writer who published a book in 2023. We would like to thank all of you who participated in this year’s NERFA contest and wish you well in the coming year. Now, we come to the day everyone has been holding their breath for…And the winners are:

Contemporary Romance

Purchase A Guide to Being Just Friends by Sophie Sullivan
A Guide to Being Just Friends by Sophie Sullivan
Hailey Sharp has a one-track mind. Get By the Cup salad shop off the ground. Do everything possible to make it a success. Repeat. With a head full of entrepreneurial ideas and a bad ex in her rearview, her only focus is living life the way she wants to. No distractions.

SOPHIE SULLIVAN is a Canadian author as well as a cookie-eating, Diet Pepsi-drinking, Disney enthusiast who loves reading and writing romance in almost equal measure. She writes around her day job as a teacher and spends her spare time with her sweet family watching reruns of Friends

Historical/Regency Romance

Forgiven Not Forgotten by Susan Leigh Furlong
Forgiven Never Forgotten by Susan Leigh Furlong
Rory Campbell, falsely accused of participating in the Clan MacDonald of Glencoe killings, is sentenced to hang as a sacrificial lamb while the real agents of the slaughter escape blame. He risks everything to convince the love of his life, Joneta MacDonald, of the truth. He can never forget how completely she owns his heart.

Susan Leigh Furlong always wanted to be a teacher. She always made up stories as a child. Her first officially published work was an article written for a children’s magazine entitled “The Dumbest Kid in School.” Historical Romance is Susan’s favorite type of book. A bookstore is her favorite place in the whole world.

Mainstream Fiction with a Central Romance

Purchase Buried Hours by RS Grant
The Buried Hours by R.S. GrantInvestigative crime journalist Signe Gates’s life became a nightmare the day she was kidnapped and drugged. After forty-eight missing hours, she woke to a blur of unsettling memories and a warning from her unknown abductors: tell anyone what happened and they’ll die. They’ve already proved they will deliver on that threat.

R.S. Grant also writes as Rachel Grant, the USA Today bestselling author of Dangerous Ground and Crash Site in the Fiona Carver series; the Flashpoint series; and the Evidence novels. She worked for over a decade as a professional archaeologist and mines her experiences for story lines and settings, which are as diverse as excavating a cemetery underneath an historic art museum in San Francisco; surveying an economically depressed coal mining town in Kentucky; and mapping a seventeenth-century Spanish and Dutch fort on the island of Sint Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles.

Romantic Suspense

Trust Me by Rachel Grant
Trust Me by Rachel Grant
Archaeologist Diana Edwards is on a mission to uncover the link between artifact trafficking and terrorism. Just when she’s making progress, she’s kidnapped and forced to work for the very people she’s trying to stop. The nightmare deepens when she discovers the man who arranged her abduction is a terrorist everyone believes to be dead. A team of SEALs is sent in to save her, forcing her to make an impossible choice if she wants to stop looted artifacts from being used to fund brutal attacks across the globe.

R.S. Grant also writes as Rachel Grant, the USA Today bestselling author of Dangerous Ground and Crash Site in the Fiona Carver series; the Flashpoint series; and the Evidence novels. She worked for over a decade as a professional archaeologist and mines her experiences for story lines and settings, which are as diverse as excavating a cemetery underneath an historic art museum in San Francisco; surveying an economically depressed coal mining town in Kentucky; and mapping a seventeenth-century Spanish and Dutch fort on the island of Sint Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles.

Romance Novella

Staging Christmas by Kathryn Hills
Staging Christmas-A Dickens Holiday Romance by Kathryn Hills
Kendall Worthington lands herself on the naughty list the moment she crosses the Dickens town line. No one anticipates a car accident. But leave it to her to wreck a local woman’s car. Not just any car. A wedding present from the lady’s beloved groom. It’s no surprise since Kendall considers herself cursed when it comes to love, romance, and all things wedding related. After all her own nuptials disintegrated. Now she’s sworn off men and relocated to the place known for its holiday cheer to start over as a single, independent woman.

Author Kathryn Hills, the rich history and many mysteries of New England are the perfect backdrop for many of KATHRYN’s books. Winding roads lined by old stone walls, forgotten cemeteries, grand homes with shadowy pasts…all sparks for her imagination. Whether it’s a quaint seaside town or the vibrant city of Boston, it’s easy for this “hauntingly romantic” author to envision the past mingling with the present. No surprise, some of Kathryn’s favorite stories involve time travel. And ghosts! Sprinkle in some magic, and you’re off on a great adventure.

Speculative Romance

The Witch Whisperer by Barb DeLong
The Witch Whisperer by Barb DeLong
Perfectionist witch Willow Gladstone will go to any lengths to improve her weak and glitchy magic in order to avoid incarceration in the secret witch society’s Haven. She doesn’t bargain for a rehab residency with the one person she’d like to avoid—the exasperating, but sexy, on-line magic fixer The Witch Whisperer.

Author Barb DeLong – Barb DeLong is an award-winning author of contemporary and paranormal stories of love, laughter, and magic. With her love of animals, you know there’ll be a feature creature in her stories somewhere. She is currently working on a paranormal romance series called Keepers of Magic, about a society of witches desperate to keep their existence a secret.

Best First Book

The Witch Whisperer by Barb DeLong
See information above

 

THANK YOU TO ALL WHO PARTICIPATED AND WE HOPE TO SEE YOU NEXT YEAR!

 

We will be promoting each of the winners and their books over the next several weeks on our websites and social media pages. We hope you will take the time to visit our main website and subscribe to our Reader and Author Gazette newsletter. We are constantly finding new ways to support our members and romance readers as well. Check on our new website called NERCC – National Excellence Romance Cover Contest for the first year of our Romance Cover Contest.

– If you have any questions about our contest please use our CONTACT US form.

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