The Sea Between - #TeaserTuesday and #FirstChapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

Australia and New Zealand are at the top of my must-visit list. Through the pages of The Sea Between, Margaret Sutherland took me to those countries as they existed in the early 1900s. What a trip! The book follows Dot from childhood to motherhood and shows daily life and social mores during the Roaring Twenties, First World War, and Great Depression. If you like family sagas, you'll enjoy this "Trans-Tasman Story" too.

FYI: I've featured another book by this author previously. Link here: Saving Shelby Summers 
Margaret's latest release is Her Valentine Romance: Link here.

Here's the First Paragraph from the Prologue:
Auckland, 1919
   It was here - the day she was leaving the world - and, even now, life was asking Dot to reconsider. As she stepped down from the tram and began to walk, the clean scent of rain steamed from the drying road. Bright flowers in front gardens lifted sodden faces to the sun. The grass was as green as a Granny Smith. Sparrows hopped, pecking, sipping; and, somewhere in the canopy that overhung the convent wall, hidden birds opened their small throats in a pure and rapturous singing.

Teaser (from 7% on my Kindle):
   Writers were grand people. He wouldn't mind being one, except that he had nothing to write about. 

Genre: Historical Fiction
Book Length: 344 Pages
Amazon Link: The Sea Between
Author Website: Margaret Sutherland

Synopsis (from Amazon):

     Growing up in New Zealand during the unsettled years of the First World War, Dot Butler is deserted by her father when she is eleven. Shattered, unable to hate and blame him as her mother and siblings do, she decides his going must be her fault.     

     At the age of eighteen, seeking safe and lasting love, she decides to leave the provincial Irish-Catholic life of Wellington and enters the convent. Her health breaks down and she finds herself, a misfit, back in the changing world of the twenties.

     Moving to Sydney, she tries various careers and samples the flapper’s fun-loving life. Working as a nurse at St. Vincent’s hospital, she meets Chas, an English seaman. Serious, resourceful and handsome, he is a complete contrast to the juvenile men who have partnered Dot to dances, parties and the beach. Opposites in nature, Dot and Chas fall in love, and their impulsive courtship becomes a headlong marriage.

     Six years on, in 1933, it is the depths of the Depression. Restless as ever, and hating country life, Dot persuades Chas to take the family home to New Zealand and her fantasy of secure love. Instead she meets conflict of every kind. Her brother is in jail, her mother is ill, and her worldly sister is making eyes at Chas. Dot must face her worst fear and meet the father who left without a goodbye. When she finds he isn’t the villain she has come to believe in, their reconciliation frees her to examine her life and see that her options for happiness lie in her own hands.

     With a wide cast and significant background of war, epidemic and Depression, this trans-Tasman story follows the Butler men and women in their pursuit of love. God, romance, money and sex lure them on, across oceans and into the answers of the heart.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.
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In Too Deep - First Paragraph / First Chapter and Teaser Tuesday

In Too Deep, Book 1 of 4 in the Due South Series, takes place in a small town on New Zealand's Stewart Island. After her father's drowning death, Piper Harland fled to NZ's South Island and trained to become a member of the elite Police National Dive Squad. But more than sadness over her father's death had driven her away from her family and friends. When she returns to Stewart Island temporarily to help save her brother from financial ruin, she is confronted by all the conflict she thought she'd escaped, including Ryan "West" Westlake, a man who was once her best friend and lover. Can Piper come to terms with her guilt and the uncertainty of her relationship with West? She's a strong woman, but there are good reasons why she left and why she might choose to run away again. 

First Paragraphs:
      When death revealed a pale hand to Piper Harland she didn't turn away, but kicked toward it and grabbed hold.
      Sixty-five feet below Lake Tikitapu's crystal blue water, she found the seventeen-year-old water-skier who'd disappeared yesterday evening. Now that they had pinpointed his location, Piper would return the boy to his grief-stricken family, huddled above on the shore of one of New Zealand's most picturesque lakes.

Teaser from 77% on my Kindle:
      She'd know him blind, deaf, or in a straitjacket. West was part of her DNA. It took extraordinary willpower to keep her arms tucked under his jacket, when she wanted to rip off his fancy shirt so she could taste him from stomach to sternum.

FYI: The ebook version of In Too Deep is FREE on Amazon right now. Although it's part of a series, it stands alone.

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Length:  316 Pages
Amazon Link: In Too Deep
Other Books by This Author: Tracey Alvarez Website

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