Misty Urban got her start as a writer by penning stories to help her younger sister learn how to read, running a family bulletin called the Urban Star, and creating fanfiction involving Indiana Jones, King Arthur, and the Tolkien-verse long before fanfiction was acceptable. After scribbling every moment she wasn’t studying in college or working her first job as a management consultant, or while loving her second job as a bookseller, Misty finally gave up on the idea of a profitable career and went to graduate school at Florida State University to study creative writing instead. There she found her calling as a scholar and went on to earn a Ph.D. in medieval literature and an MFA in fiction from Cornell University, trading live oaks and sun for gorges and snow in Ithaca, NY, where the long winters and cloudy days provided an excellent reason to spend more time in the library.
Misty then took her degrees and her award-winning dissertation on monstrous women and traveled to the majestic Pacific Northwest, where she assumed a new identity as a literature professor at Lewis Clark State College for a time. Eventually she was lured back to the Midwest of her birth and now lives in a white house with green shutters on a dead-end street where she can walk her children to school and then lock herself in her office to write until they return home.
Misty’s first publications include scholarship on medieval romance and monstrous women and assorted award-winning literary short fiction that has since been assembled into three collections. Lately, though, she’s returned to writing stories of love and adventure, publishing historical romances featuring ambitious women who challenge the conventions of their time, and contemporary romances with wounded heroines finding love where they least expect it. She also spends those locked hours in the office teaching creative writing, editing for clients of her writing service, Madwriters, and helping other writers turn their dreams into books.
When she emerges from her office, Misty likes to take walks, swim in the pool, eat good food, and occasionally experiment in the kitchen, concocting creations her family will refuse to eat. She also enjoys dragging her family to new destinations that can provide inspiration for her next story. She loves to hear from readers, fellow authors, and anyone who wants to talk about the complex and occasionally baffling beauty of medieval literature.
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Title: The Painter Takes an Earl
Author: Misty Urban
Genre: Historical romance
Publisher: Oliver Heber Books
Book Blurb
Eleven years ago, ragtag near-orphan Harriette Smythe made a lifelong friend when she defended the young Earl of Renwick from the village boys persecuting him for his stammer and clubfoot. When Ren returns to London with all the polish of his Grand Tour and the need to take up his duties, he finds a woman in crimson silk shimmying through his window: Harriette, all grown up into a delectable woman, who offers him a startling proposal.
Harriette, now an artist, has been helping support her eccentric household with salacious sketches that have made her notorious, but she needs to redeem herself with a respectable—and rich—clientele if she wants to keep a roof over their heads. She offers Renwick a trade: she’ll help him select a bride from London’s marriageable maidens if he agrees to sit for a portrait.
Ren soon falls back under the spell of wild, willful Harriette, the only person who thinks he’s perfect just as he is. But winning the one woman he cannot have will mean risking his life to free her from the grip of her past and the forces bent on tearing them apart.
Excerpt
The garden was cloaked in darkness, and Ren led them through the scented air along the graveled path to the back gate and the stables. The streetlamp above the tall iron fence turned Harriette’s powdered hair to silver.
“Don’t leave because my mother wishes it.” Ren wanted to whisk her to his bedchamber. Ply her with wine. See behind that crisp, cool calm she projected to the world. Discover her secrets, and what her mature woman’s body looked like beneath that gown.
“I don’t want to cause talk. You don’t need that cloud about your head.”
Ren opened the gate, and she whistled to the man seated in the driver’s perch of a small, fashionable cabriolet. She was truly leaving him.
“Where can I find you?” he asked desperately.
Her scent drifted beneath his nose as she paused to look at him. “Did you get my card?”
“I didn’t get anything.”
She traced the outline of his face, brow, cheekbone, jaw. Curls of warmth spread from the path of her fingers.
“It’s best I don’t tar you with my brush, Ren. I would so like to paint you. You always were beautiful, but now—there’s something about you that I would love to capture. I wonder if I could.”
His throat closed as she gave him that searching, considering look. She thought him beautiful? No one had ever in his life used that word in association with him.
He couldn’t let her walk away. “You told me before to give you a kiss, and I didn’t.”
“I’ll take it now.” Without hesitation, she stepped into his arms.
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Author Biography
Misty Urban is a medieval scholar, freelance editor, and college professor who likes to write stories about misbehaving women who find adventure and romance. She holds an MFA and Ph.D. from Cornell University and lives in the Midwest in a little town on a big river.
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Title: The Forger and the Duke
Author: Misty Urban
Genre: Historical romance
Publisher: Oliver Heber Books
Book Blurb
In 1776 London, orphaned vicar’s daughter Amaranthe Illingworth supports her small household with her skills as a copyist, but her quiet routine is shattered the day three children show up at her door seeking aid from her brother, their tutor. Behind them storms in Malden Grey, would-be barrister and their erstwhile guardian, who accuses Amaranthe of kidnapping the young Duke of Hunsdon and his siblings.
The former duke’s illegitimate son, Malden Grey has learned to live by his wits, and he’s told he’ll advance to the bar if he takes a proper wife. As she helps him restore order at Hunsdon House, Amaranthe seems a likely candidate—if only Mal can unearth the truth behind the rumors that she’s been forging, and selling, priceless medieval manuscripts. Amaranthe, in the meantime, needs to stay on her guard lest the charming Malden Grey steal her heart at the same time she’s hoping to borrow from his library a priceless book that could make her fortune.
But when Mal’s foray into Amaranthe’s past yields a discovery that will change both of their destinies, they’ll have to fight together to clear their names and stake out a future together—if either has a future at all.
Excerpt
Mal wondered which room in Hunsdon House Miss Amaranthe Illingworth would select for her own. Did she see her silk-smooth skin best set off by the draperies in the Blue Room? Would she choose the Oriental patterns of the Jade Room? Or would she, like an empress of old, demand the royal purple? He imagined her going about her nightly routine, taking down her hair, drawing off her prim robe, perhaps splashing water onto her face that would run down that softly stern neck to the collarbones hidden beneath her gown and—
The brandy had turned his wits. He was behaving like a moonstruck calf. No, worse.
“Till tomorrow then, Miss Illingworth.” He wished he had the right to call her Amaranthe, to roll her name over his tongue. Exotic, yet robust, a name with command and presence, much like the woman.
“Till tomorrow,” she said softly, her gaze holding his. The flickering candlelight brought out violet shadows in her eyes, and all the air left Mal’s body. He wanted to be found worthy of that calm, assessing gaze.
There was no way she would ever find him worthy.
The door shut behind her, and Mal smacked a hand to his head to clear it. They had business to conduct. Problems to solve.
She had secrets he wanted very much to discover.
He had gotten his first good look at Miss Amaranthe Illingworth. He wanted a second. And a third.
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Title: Viscount Overboard
Author: Misty Urban
Genre: Historical romance
Publisher: Oliver Heber Books
Book Blurb
When the war-scarred Viscount Penrydd washes up in 1799 Newport minus his memory, Gwenllian ap Ewyas decides not to tell him he owns, and threatened to sell, the property she’s made a refuge for her and other lost souls.
Gwen found healing from her haunted past by making St. Sefin’s into a sanctuary for the hurt and abandoned, and she’ll do anything to preserve the place—including lie to the English lord who owns it until she can win him to her cause. But making Penrydd her stableboy is a dangerous game, especially when he’s a target for an outside menace moving into Newport. Even more unsettling for Gwen, under the scars and arrogance is a man she can admire and possibly love. But as shadows from both their pasts appear at St. Sefin’s, Gwen risks losing her livelihood, her home, and her heart when Penrydd learns just how far she’s gone to deceive him.
Excerpt
The hoarse whisper from the bed nearly made her shriek and drop her mending.
“Where the devil am I?”
Gwen melted into a puddle of relief. Not dead. She’d been fearing what she must say to his people if Penrydd died. They’d have every reason to think she’d wanted it.
“This is St. Sefin’s.” Perhaps if he looked about, saw the place through her eyes, his heart would soften and he would allow them to stay.
She passed him a wooden cup filled with water from their own well, clear and safe to drink. He tried to raise his right hand, groaned, and let it fall.
“God’s teeth. Every part of me hurts. What happened?”
She slid her hand behind his neck and urged his head forward, bringing the cup to his lips. He drank, coughed, and without thinking she dabbed the corner of his mouth with her sleeve. The man was weak as a newborn lamb, yet she still felt a thrill of terror course through her. She presumed it was terror, at least.
His eyes were a reddish brown, like hazelnuts. The outer corners slanted upward, giving him a devilish look. His nose was straight and aristocratic, his lower lip full, but there was nothing soft about the jut of his chin and the straight, bold jaw, creasing as a muscle clenched.
“Who are you?”
“Gwenllian ap Ewyas.” The false name came easily, though it stung that he couldn’t recall her from mere days ago.
“And who am I?” he asked.
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Title: My Thing With Timothy Kay
Author: Misty Urban
Genre: Contemporary romance
Publisher: Boroughs Publishing Group
Book Blurb
Bruised from a divorce and watching her daughter grow up, Dale’s in New Mexico piecing together a life that has no room for romance. Especially not a tall, dark, very handsome, and famously reserved Hollywood director who’s in town to film his sequel.
Timothy Kay is known for walking the red carpet alone. Dale isn’t going to do something as stupid as fall for him. A guy this delicious, though, she might be tempted into a film-shoot fling. But what happens when a film-shoot fling becomes a thing—and everything Dale can’t bear to lose is on the line if she wants him?
Excerpt
“What are you doing?”
“That’s my line.” My finger twitched as he moved toward me. He wasn’t smelly or repulsive. His scowling eyebrows, thick and dark, were as unruly as his hair. I scowled back.
“I warned you.” I turned on the water.
A gentle spray showered my intruder, droplets that shimmered like a golden halo before settling to earth.
“You—” Water dripped from his chin, and he reached for the hose.
Panicking, I cranked the switch. The gentle plume turned into a hissing jet that plastered his shirt to his chest. Broad chest. Muscles that flexed when he threw up his hands to shield his face.
A hard, wet surface slapped against my back, big arms clamped around mine, and before I could utter a curse, he’d snapped off the water and plucked the hose from my hands as if relieving a child of a toy.
I drew back an elbow to deliver the sequence of jabs I’d learned in my self-defense class. Where would the solar plexus be on a guy this tall? Before I could aim, he stepped away, leaving my back cool and damp.
“I’m a guest here.” His deep voice penetrated the rush of blood in my ears. “I’m registered. I put down a deposit. Or someone did for me.”
“What? We don’t have anyone arriving tonight.” The only reservation was for the Hollywood diva posing with the silly name of—
“Golightly.” He wiped droplets from his thick eyebrows, still knit in a scowl.
“Oh. Whoops.” Bernie was not going to appreciate my reception of her best-paying guest. “Um. Welcome to the Desert Bloom Bed and Breakfast, Mr. Golightly.”
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Title: My Day As Regan Forrester
Author: Misty Urban
Genre: Contemporary fantasy
Publisher: Canty Dames
Book Blurb
Stuck in a rut as wife, teacher, and mom, Beth Barony makes a birthday wish for more excitement in her life—and wakes up as film star Regan Forrester, known for her rebellious smolder and empty head. What could be more fun than playing Hollywood princess for a day?
But Regan’s life is anything but glamorous. While Beth scrambles to protect Regan’s shaky career and crumbling relationships, Regan wins over Beth’s husband, students, kids, and friends—and won’t give them back. And as Beth tries to find answers about the spell that switched them, she learns why Regan ditched her perfect young body: someone is trying to kill her.
If Beth doesn’t save them both—soon—neither woman will have a life to go back to.
Excerpt
The phone rang, then clicked, and a sleepy voice said, “Who is this?”
The voice sounded familiar, but Beth couldn’t place it. “Who is this?”
“Regan. Regan Forrester.” The voice sharpened. “Who are you?”
Beth almost laughed. If she was talking to Regan Forrester on the phone, then she couldn't somehow be in Regan Forrester’s body. It was all some weird sort of delusion.
But she didn’t laugh because something new occurred to her. “This is Beth Barony. What are you doing answering my phone?”
Some muttering followed. Beth heard silence, some rustling, a bang that sounded like a bathroom door closing, and then, in an awed tone, “Holy cow. I didn't think it would actually work.”
Recognition slapped her in the face. It was her voice. She was talking to a woman who was speaking to her in Beth's own voice.
“You didn’t think what would actually work?”
A laugh followed, one that left no doubt in her mind. She had heard that laugh thousands of times, coming from her own mouth. “If you’re Regan Forrester, what are you doing with my phone?”
“I think I’m in your house! What did you say your name was?”
Beth clutched the phone as if she could channel herself through the connection. “Beth Barony.” She closed her eyes. “I’m guessing you’re in my body, Regan Forrester, because I seem to have woken up in yours.”
“I’m really hot, aren’t I?” Regan Forrester said.
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