The Velvet Clover

<p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Ava Hawthorne's life is perfectly curated-career-driven fiercely independent and resolutely unromantic-until a breakup eight days before Christmas leaves her unexpectedly single and craving change. So she does what any self-respecting woman would: books a ticket to New York dodges her family's pity and chases a shiny new job at a centuries-old Irish atelier.</strong></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>During her stay at the historic Fitzgerald Hotel with its overdone Irish charm a too-jolly mysterious bartender points her toward a velvet curtain. The catch? When Ava steps through she finds herself in a speakeasy one hundred years in the past-in 1925 to be exact. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Ava swore never to give her power away to love or let a man derail her ambitions again. But drawn back to the speakeasy night after night she finds herself pulled into a connection with the enigmatic owner Cillian whose piercing eyes and infuriating calm make her want to both kiss him and throw a drink in his face. Their connection is as magnetic as it is impossible: </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Cillian belongs to 1925; she belongs to 2025.</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>As the Christmas lights of the city glow around her Ava must face the fear she's carried since childhood-that love only leads to loss. Because falling for Cillian means risking everything: her career her control and her heart on a love that-by all logic-was never supposed to happen.</span></p><p></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Will Ava uncover the truth lurking within The Velvet Clover? Can she resist the allure of a past that threatens to consume her? When the lines between her reality and this shadowy world begin to blur will she find the courage to choose her own path-or be lost to the secrets that bind her?</strong></p>