Novels

Romantic comedies, a touch of spice, a bit of fantasy... Unforgettable characters and the beautiful chaos of life.

What do the peppers mean?

Romantic comedies

Series ongoing · 1 of 4 books

The Jerries Go Off-Piste

Each book can be read on its own.

Six childhood friends, four different love stories. Mostly set in Colorado.

Book #1 · The Jerries Go Off-Piste Seeking a publisher

All that Sky Holds

(A Funeral Gone Off-Piste)

When pro skier and lifelong friend Jett falls to his death in the French Alps, eighteen-year-old Skylar is left to weather both the blizzard outside and the turmoil inside.

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Flying overseas to help the surviving twin Isaac bring Jett’s body home is not how she pictured spending spring break, and between the cultural mishaps, the bureaucratic headaches, and Skylar’s less-than-stellar French, things get messy fast. Messier still? The gendarmes are convinced Isaac died, not Jett. Skylar has to find a way to carry the ache of losing Jett with the confusing comfort of being closer than ever to Isaac, the boy she’s been in love with since approximately forever.

Somewhere between the wrong identity, the right boy, and a country that insists on conjugating verbs she can’t pronounce, Skylar has to figure out if this disaster might finally get her where she’s always wanted to be: at Isaac’s side. There’s no graver affair than Jett’s wake, and surely now isn’t the time to redefine what they want from life—or from each other.

Or is it? An ill-thought-out tribute leading them to be buried under an avalanche may beg to differ.

Spice level 🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶

  • 1st-person POV
  • Dual POV
  • HEA
  • Childhood friends
  • Friends to lovers
  • Young Adult
Content warnings

Death of a character (off-page) · Grief

Standalone Seeking a publisher

The Love Bug and Other Incurable Conditions

Fresh off exposing her cheating fiancé, Leah called off the engagement, licked her wounds, and plowed on. Or so she claims while secretly planning to rekindle things with her ex. Armed with intel on his holiday plans, Leah sets a getaway in motion with her best friend, Jade. But when Leah literally skids into Colin, a former flame from college, it stings like a snowball to the face. Worse, he doesn’t even remember her. Well, she’s not about to defrost and unearth his cringe-worthy breakup text.

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Colin goes about life tearing through one-night stands the way some rip sheets off a 365-day calendar, and his upcoming DJ gig provides just enough free time to snuggle up with a snow bunny or two. But when he finds himself sharing Leah and Jade’s chalet, he doubts it’s a booking mix-up. And Leah has amnesia now? Hell will freeze over before he has to jog her memory. Yet, amid the myriad of winter activities, teasing her soon becomes his favorite sport.

Before long, Leah catches the love bug while Colin grapples with his incurable conditions, both of them drawn into the fringes of an avalanche of past emotions and present secrets threatening to sweep them away.

Spice level 🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶

  • Over 30 romance
  • 3rd-person POV
  • Dual POV
  • HEA
  • Banter
  • Forced proximity
  • Ticking clock
  • Second chance
Content warnings

Serious illness

Fantasy

Standalone Seeking a publisher

When Red Snow Fell

Nineteen-year-old Aerin didn’t inherit a power; she forged it. She united the mountain clans against the Empire that once tried to buy peace with her childhood.

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But as she holds a pass against imperial swords again, she’s captured. Dragged back to Oldham in chains, Aerin is paraded through the capital like propaganda—displayed before jeering citizens, collared to a pillar, and forced to her knees as proof that rebellion breaks.

She won’t kneel, though, certainly not to Rhydan, the twenty-three-year-old heir raised to believe the Empire is civilization itself. In the four years since he last saw her, he has convinced himself she’s nothing more than barbarism in human form.

He sees the girl who fled the palace in the heartbeat after blood spurted across white marble.
She sees the boy who stood inside the bargain that cost her everything while calling it diplomacy.
Neither of them knows the whole truth, but they both carry it like a blade.

As punishments turn into psychological warfare and war gathers on the horizon, Aerin and Rhydan must decide what matters more: vengeance, loyalty, or the fragile chance at a future they were never meant to share.

Spice level 🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶

  • Warrior heroine
  • Low fantasy
  • Psychological warfare
  • Captive/captor
  • 1st-person POV
  • Dual POV
  • HEA
  • New Adult
  • Enemies to lovers

Series ongoing · 1 of 3 books · 2 of 2 novellas / companion books

The Dragonward Prophecy Series

Book #1 · The Dragonward Prophecy Series Seeking a publisher

The Shadowborn Princess

In Luthyia, magic is watched, love is regulated, and prophecies tied to fire and blood are the sort of inconvenient things villagers pretend not to believe in. Until they begin to unfold far too close to home.

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Mahaut has spent the sixteen years of her orphaned life skirting rules, collecting trouble, and asking questions she’s not supposed to ask. But when an ancient sigil awakens beneath her hands, shadows stir, secrets surface, and the fragile balance between Luthyia and the Salendellan crown threatens to crack once and for all. Suddenly, the disappearance of Prince Malric, which happened decades ago, is no longer a closed chapter.

The arrest of her brother puts Mahaut on a collision course with Xanther, a young man who's disciplined, guarded, and shaped by a past that has trained him to survive rather than trust. Soon, their fates are tangled in secrets that reach from orphanages to thrones, from forgotten heirs to dragons thought long gone and safely confined to history books.

The Dragonward Prophecy is an epic fantasy series rooted in immersive worldbuilding and character-driven stakes, with hidden bloodlines, awakening magic, and slow-burning romance.

Spice level 🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶

  • Badass heroine
  • 1st-person POV
  • Cliffhanger ending
  • Young Adult
  • Enemies to lovers
  • Dragons
  • Magic

Book #0.2 · The Dragonward Prophecy Series Seeking a publisher Best read after Book #1 Novella

The Lost Heir

Taken from his cradle and raised in the shadows, Prince Malric grows up under another name: Wilkin Dawnbreaker.

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Now a teenager hiding among the Luthyians who are punished in his stead, the Lost Heir watches his kingdom bleed for his disappearance while his father’s grief hardens into cruelty. Wilkin carries magic that answers to darkness, a face marked by fire, and a true name powerful enough to either end a war or ignite a worse one. He saves where he can. He stays hidden where he must.

And every choice he makes asks the same question: how long can a ghost protect the living without becoming the thing that haunts them?

Spice level 🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶

Book #0.5 · The Dragonward Prophecy Series Seeking a publisher Best read after Book #1 Companion book

The Stolen Boy

Ambassador Kenelm Midelton arrives in Luthyia with a mission that should make him the crown’s most loyal weapon: find the Lost Heir, uncover the truth about Prince Malric, and report everything to a king who once turned this very village into a graveyard.

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What the king doesn’t know is that Midelton is a survivor of that very crime; Luthyian magic runs through his blood and his heart carries a past that was erased by force.

Publicly, he hunts Prince Malric. Privately, he works to find his long-lost family and protect Luthyia from becoming another sacrifice to royal revenge. His careful balance begins to shift when his path crosses that of Mahaut, a child already brushing against powers and consequences far beyond her age. In her, he recognizes the first signs of a story that could end in tragedy—or in resistance. She is becoming what he once was: collateral in a war she never chose.

Spice level 🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶

Psychological thrillers

Cover of 24 Hours of the Phoenix
  • NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE® AWARDS (NIEA)Finalist · Thriller · 2019

Standalone 2018 Also available in French

24 Hours of the Phoenix

Published under the name Caroline Bertaud

Can you start your life over again the day you learn you’re dying?

Until yesterday, twenty-one-year-old Phoenix Collins had it all figured out: she was going to live forever. Not literally of course; nobody lives forever—she knows that, she’s learned it the hard way—but bearing a mythical name had convinced her that someday she’d have a fresh start, her life back on track.

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Therefore, when she wakes up in a hospital bed to learn that she has twenty-four hours to live, she’s utterly confused, if not in complete denial. A big scar stretches across her stomach, but she has no recollection of the previous days’ events.

As she races against the clock, anger and frustration threatening to overtake everything in their way, Phoenix crosses paths with Gabriel, a young widower. Meeting him completely upends her plans to figure out why she’s dying, for the more she gets to know him, the more she remembers what it really means to live for the day…even if this is the only one she has left.

"Through Bertaud’s articulate, edgy prose, Phoenix shines as the charming narrator of her own madcap journey—funny, sarcastic, frightened, tough, and tender." — KIRKUS Reviews.

Spice level 🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶

  • 1st-person POV
  • New Adult
  • Ticking clock
  • Family
  • Second chance
Content warnings

Sexual content · Explicit language · Grief · Alcohol use · Drug use

Reviews on Goodreads Kirkus Reviews

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