Virtual Book Tour and Giveaway: Where Your Treasure Is by M.C. Bunn

Welcome to my stop on the virtual book tour for Where Your Treasure Is by M.C. Bunn. This book tour was organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. On my stop, I have an excerpt from the book as well as a great guest post from the author. There's also the tour wide giveaway for a chance to win a $25 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for more content. Enjoy!

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Title: Where Your Treasure Is

Author: M.C. Bunn

Publisher: Bellastoria Press

Publication Date: April 23rd 2021

Print Length: 466 pages

Genre: Historical Romance

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Feisty, independent heiress Winifred de la Coeur has never wanted to live according to someone else’s rules—but even she didn’t plan on falling in love with a bank robber.

Winifred is a wealthy, nontraditional beauty who bridles against the strict rules and conventions of Victorian London society. When she gets caught up in the chaos of a bungled bank robbery, she is thrust unwillingly into an encounter with Court Furor, a reluctant getaway driver and prizefighter. In the bitter cold of a bleak London winter, sparks fly.

Winifred and Court are two misfits in their own circumscribed worlds—the fashionable beau monde with its rigorously upheld rules, and the gritty demimonde, where survival often means life-or-death choices.

Despite their conflicting backgrounds, they fall desperately in love while acknowledging the impossibility of remaining together. Returning to their own worlds, they try to make peace with their lives until a moment of unrestrained honesty and defiance threatens to topple the deceptions they have carefully constructed to protect each other.

A story of the overlapping entanglements of Victorian London’s social classes, the strength of family bonds and true friendship, and the power of love to heal a broken spirit.

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EXCERPT:

Approaching the right turn that would take him to Swift Street and the Royal Empire Bank, Court Furor concentrated on traffic. Cold bit his cheeks and hunger gnawed his belly, but he ignored both through force of habit. The soles of his boots were thin and his gloves pointless…No point worrying about what the day would bring, never mind the next one…He was a man of no prospects and no property but preferred to think of it as freedom from responsibility…It was no secret he fancied himself a bit of a lad though he wasn’t overly tempted by long, romantic entanglements. An hour or two with a willing girl would suit…

He directed the horse to a slow walk, trying to secure a place in the queue for the curb. In the gleaming brougham beside him sat a woman, her face hidden under an enormous, bright green hat trimmed with black ostrich feathers. Her driver signaled, and Court tugged his reins…Though a thick veil covered her face, Court caught a glimpse of golden hair, coiled in heavy masses on her shoulders. The wind lifted the edge of her mantle, and he was briefly amazed by the brilliant green of her dress…She’d obviously never missed a meal in her life.

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Suddenly Geoff and a woman appeared at the bottom of the stairs…Their progress was impeded by the woman’s wildly kicking little boots. Her struggles and the flashes of her bright green and purple silks made her look like an exotic bird thrashing in Geoff’s arms….

Geoff…thrust the woman at him…the woman struggled and kicked…and cried for help. Involuntarily, he clapped his hand over her mouth. She only screamed louder.

“Shut up, you fat sow!” Geoff swatted her across the temple….

The woman’s eyes rolled and she went limp.

Court howled in dismay and caught her… In his arms, she was a mountain of soft cashmere and folds of velvet. Her mantle fell open, and her scent hit him. Lilies and some dark, exotic spice. It was so unexpected and heavenly that the alley and the hackney disappeared. Even his panic was gone.

“…We can’t take ’er!”

Geoff clicked off the safety and waved the pistol under Court’s nose. When Court did not let go of the woman, he pointed the pistol at her head. “I ain’t arguin’! Drive!” He slammed the cab door…

His heart hammering, his head whirling, Court untied the horse, swung up onto the box, and grabbed the reins. As he turned the cab into the street behind the bank, yet another fire truck raced past. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! They were in for it now.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

M. C. Bunn is a writer of Victorian romance and historical romance novels, a singer (in the indie rock band Mister Felix), and a songwriter. She holds an English degree from UNC-Chapel Hill and a master’s in English from North Carolina State University.

"I've always loved writing. It's a joy to do what makes me happy and to share it.

“My father was a great story-teller. He read to us at the dinner table and passed on his love of history. He’d haul me out of bed in the middle of the night if there was a great old movie on the late show, and family trips always included visits to historic sites. His father was born in 1888, and I have Granddaddy's letters to his bride-to-be in my dresser. I'm working on the story of Daddy's first ancestor in America. It's set in Jamestown, 1690. My mother's grandmother was placed in an orphanage after the Civil War because her father died on the way home, so I always felt that connection to and had a curiosity about the past. Both of my parents read to me before I could walk. Daddy gave me Dickens, Twain, and Stevenson. Mama put the dictionary in my hands and let me watch I, Claudius and Shoulder to Shoulder when they first aired on Masterpiece Theatre. She told me I'd be a writer one day.”

Acting was another girlhood passion. “I wanted to play all the characters in the books I'd read, or in the stories I made up, like Dickens and Louisa May Alcott did. I also wanted to be an archaeologist because we knew one who worked on digs in Israel. There was never a time when I wasn't making up a story, and it was always set 'a long time ago.' What I really wished for was the car in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, so I could fly back in time and see what it was actually like for women in Victorian and Edwardian England.”

When she's not writing, she loves reading long old books. "I love Anthony Trollope's series, and Anna Karenina. Of more recent vintage, I really enjoyed The Forsyte Saga and The Raj Quartet."

Her idea of a well-appointed room includes multiple bookshelves, a full pot of coffee, and a place to lie down and read. To feed her soul, she takes a walk or makes music with friends. "I try to remember to look up at the sky and take some time each day to be thankful."

She lives in North Carolina with her husband and their dog. Where Your Treasure Is is her first published novel.

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GUEST POST:

- Which true crime event do you find the most intriguing?

This is a great question even though I’m not a mystery or suspense writer. There’s a lot to learn from reading those genres. I’ve always loved classic mysteries—Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, and Arthur Conan Doyle. These authors were masters of how to create cliff-hangers, or when to reveal and withhold information in dialogue. They used unreliable narrators and controlled point of view to keep readers spinning. Appearance versus reality—watch out for it, just like your freshman English teacher taught! The old adage about crime, that it’s always for love or money, seems to hold true.

Though “love” can take some mighty eccentric forms in real and fictional criminal motivation.

All that being said, my Victorian romance, Where Your Treasure Is (Bellastoria Press, release date April 23 2021), does contain multiple illegal actions, some of them quite serious.

The novel opens in November, 1892. Fans of the Miss Scarlet and the Duke series or Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies will recognize a similar, gritty London, though Scarlet’s production is set a decade prior. Treasure is a Victorian romance with all the familiar tropes, so readers can look forward to country houses, dances, and beautiful clothes, but it’s also a love story with some edginess.

In the first chapter Treasure’s heroine, spinster and heiress Winifred de la Coeur visits the Royal Empire Bank to withdraw her mother’s fabulous Moghul diamond necklace. Down the hall from where she meets with her banker are two men—one of whom is a full-fledged gang member. The fellows are drunk, reckless, and intent on collecting a card debt from a bank employer who carried an extra ace to their last game. It was an era when cheating at cards could get a man ousted from his club and banned from joining another. Edward VII was even involved in such a case. Gentlemen took it very seriously.

This was also a time when anarchists across Europe were pitching homemade bombs to make their statements. Not that our debt-collectors have any interest in politics, but matches and alcohol don’t mix. No spoilers!

The morning’s events land Winifred, literally, in the arms of Court Furor, the duo’s getaway driver. He’s a man whose body is his greatest weapon, and he has every reason to do his worst to her. Oh yes, and she’s hiding her mother’s necklace in her cloak.

Before Treasure is over, the lives of Winifred and her family are irrevocably entangled with those of Court, his half-siblings, and their friends. In Where Your Treasure Is, London has two faces—and so do a couple of its major characters. Just outside the door of the glittering beau monde is an underworld of policemen and prostitutes, pornography, murder and extortion, horse racing, gambling, fixed prizefighting, and traveling circuses.

None of that gets in the way of true love, or Winifred and Court’s romance!

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GIVEAWAY:

M. C. Bunn will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter. To increase your chance of winning, leave a comment at another stop on the tour each day. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway