Jeanette Cooper Novels

Drama, Passion, Romance, Mystery/Suspense

Impending Danger

Beautiful Gabrielle Hampshire is driven by the single-minded goal of discovering who she is after she witnesses a brutal murder, suffers from traumatic-shock amnesia and is abandoned to a convent. Later, secular life presents Gabrielle with dangerous challenges when she crosses paths with the killers who try to kill her, fearing she will identify them.

Dashing Jonathan Briercliff--who rescues the lovely Gabrielle from a near fatal attempt on her life and later wins her heart and hand in marriage--deceives her with a growing web of lies to keep her from learning the truth about his terrible secret, which could drive her away from him. When Gabrielle finds herself in a life and death battle of wits with Jonathan's vindictive old  flame, wanton storms come crashing down around her in the most desperate fight of her life.

Impending Danger is a tale of danger, romance and passion in a suspenseful love story.


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To read Jeantte Cooper's poetry go to:
http://www.authorsden.com/jeanettecooper

 

 

 


EXCERPT

A Pastiche

 

Memories in a Silent Grave

Gabrielle was young, beautiful, and angelic
With no memory of the first ten years of her life.
When she stepped into her parents’ room
It was like walking back into the past,
Of empty memories determined to escape her.

Her eyes raked her father’s things with love,
Her lips quivered with the threat of tears.
She touched personal items somehow familiar
Them stirring a strong sense of déjà vu
Cavorting with deep melancholy in her chest.

Everything in the room was strange to her;
Yet, she did not feel like a stranger here.
She felt a sense of connectivity to this room,
Visualizing herself as a child waking in the mornings
Running to this room to crawl beneath warm sheets
With loving parents.

A swelling pang pushed at the walls of her chest,
All the years of wondering who she was
Suddenly congealing like a heavy lump in her throat.
She felt her knees weaken and lowered herself
Next to an old shirt once worn by her late father.

She clutched it to her face, smelling his lingering scent,
She hugged it in her empty arms,
Wondering where the early years had taken her,
Years buried in the deep grave of her memory.
Would she ever know who she was?
Would her memory ever return?

Half a soul, she thought.
I only have half a soul.

Excerpt
(The Seducton)

Pulling a door shut behind her, Gabrielle paused, and turned to face Jonathan. His stare had her blood boiling up into her face. An odd moment hung suspended between them, and then exploded into a burst of shared intimacy felt by each. Gabrielle found her inner control floundering with confusion. Old rules of habit were no longer effective for dealing with these new feelings cropping up all too frequently.

      Like a shot of electricity, his penetrating gaze played havoc with her involuntary nervous system, causing her heart to react violently, her hands to sweat, and her breathing to become so short she nearly had to gasp for air.

      If she had not lowered her chin causing her long lashes to cover her blue eyes, she might have seen the tiny grin that sped across Jonathan’s lips and then disappeared. He had an uncanny aptitude of reading behavior, and what he read in Gabrielle’s behavior was a boon for him. He believed it would be easy to break down her armored defenses.

      “M’sieu Jonathan," she said slightly breathless, "there's a matter I feel you need to know.” They strolled leisurely down the hallway.

      At first, Jonathan guessed she might remind him she was a nun and not prone to more worldly pursuits as he surely was. “Feel free to tell me anything you like, my lady,” he invited cordially, mentally preparing for a reprimand of sorts.

      Gabrielle cocked her head and glanced up at a handsome face cast in bronze. The set of his strong jaw hinted at a ruthless determination, and depicted a man used to getting what he wanted. He showed no inhibitions by a lack of confidence, while she struggled constantly with shyness, and being predisposed toward a humble nature too trusting to recognize the danger zones of her interaction with Jonathan. 
 

Excerpt

At first, when the turnkey shoved him into that tiny cell of disease, filth and corruption, he gagged and vomited up everything in his stomach for days. The stench was unbearable, human manure, vomit, urine, dead rats, and pure filthy slime merging and festering all together in one of the foulest, most putrid odors imaginable. Eating was impossible at first, and he lost weight quickly, living off the water Ross and Gabrielle provided him. He knew he had to eat, no matter how much it nauseated him. He finally did, shoving his mouth full, grinding it with his teeth as quickly as possible—holding his breath as long as he could—washing it down with water, and dreading the next meal when he’d have to do it again.

Roaches crawled freely, having established their domain long before Jonathan’s tenancy. At night, they bit into his flesh, sucking blood, and he found his sleep disturbed by the minute while he slapped them away from him. After a time, slapping them away wasn’t enough. They simply came back. In defense, when he felt a bite on his skin, he grabbed the interloper in his hand and squashed it in his palm with his fingers, flinging it away, and then wiping his hands on a rag he kept handy.

As bad as the roaches were, they weren’t nearly as bad as the rats. They were everywhere it seemed, their feet pitter patterning over the floor, their sounds echoing throughout day and night as they searched for food. Unlike the roaches that made a small pin prick on his skin, the rats tore into his flesh with teeth that could tear the meat right from his bones. There was no dashing them away as he first did the roaches. He caught them, threw them against the wall, smashing them to smithereens, while their blood, guts and tissue scattered on the wall and floor to become stinking rot. This became an ordeal every time he lay on the cot.

Then there were the screams, the caterwauling, day and night. Pain, fear, lost hope, despair, and sickness boiling from the chest and mouth of gaunt bodies, from persons turned more animalistic than human. Decay and filth could do that to a man, or woman, when time seemed a drawn-out eternity of unyielding despair where minds had nothing to dwell on but the horror of a wretched existence and nothing to look forward to except more of the same.

Jonathan wasn’t entirely optimistic about his own fate. He knew, given time, he would fall to the mentally deranged level of the other inmates. Only a few prisoners, jailed more recently than most, managed to maintain a fraction of sanity. Yet, it only caused the despair and lost hopes to give death greater appeal.

 

Reviewed by Richard Orey 4/24/2007
A Riveting Thriller of Unbridled Passion and Suspense

One day you wake up in your tiny cell-like room with four cold bare walls and realize you’re twenty-one years old and have no memory of the first eleven years of your life. Confused by the dreams that keep haunting you, you cry out in despair, “Oh, my God, why am I here? Why was I brought here? Will I have to spend the rest of my life here? Do I have a family? Who am I?”

Beautiful young Gabrielle Hampshire struggles to find answers. Try as she may, she remembers only that an unknown man delivered her to the austere convent on the outskirts of Paris when she was but eleven years old, and she has been tormented ever since by dreams and visions of frightening red flashes that terrify her. The answers to where she came from, who she is, and why she is in a French convent are a total mystery—until one day when the unexpected occurs. A letter arrives from England from a man describing himself as Solicitor Collinswood and informing her of her father’s death. “Since you are the only surviving kin of Lord Hampshire,” he writes, “it is imperative that you decide what to do about your father’s estate.”

Gabrielle is ecstatic. For the first time in years, she feels a connection to her unremembered past. Excited and prepared to travel to England, she desperately hopes that in returning to the environment of her childhood days, she will regain the memory of her early life and discover her identity. With the willing assistance of Mother Superior, Gabrielle sets sail across the English Channel to Dover, where she meets Jonathan Briercliff.

Fortune smiles on handsome, debonair Jonathan Briercliff, future Duke of Falkhurst, who finds the perfect candidate for the wife he seeks when he rescues a beautiful young woman from an overturned coach. In the aftermath of awakening feelings between them, he discovers Gabrielle is the daughter of the man he defensively killed in a card game after winning title to Hampshire Manor, which Gabrielle believes she now owns. He concocts a growing web of lies to keep her from learning the truth, which he fears will drive her away. Then setting his course of enticement, he expertly seduces her to a state of passionate desire and follows with a proposal of marriage.

What ensues is unrelenting action in a wildly convoluted story of unbridled passion, outrageous deceit and shocking injustice, a story of mystery, intrigue and life-changing conflicts, a riveting story of spellbinding suspense and swashbuckling adventure. In Jeanette Cooper’s thrilling new novel, the action is fast-paced, exciting, and will keep you on the edge of your seat late into the night to the very end of its wonderfully satisfying resolution.

Impending Danger is meticulously researched and masterfully written. What a romance! What an adventure! If you miss reading this enthralling novel, you will miss one of the best literary offerings of a lifetime!


Reviewed by:
Richard Lee Orey, Author
The Paradise of Revenge