Sweet Dreams Boxed Set by Brenda Novak & Allison Brennan & Cynthia Eden & Jt Ellison & Heather Graham & Liliana Hart & Alex Kava & Cj Lyons & Carla Neggers & Theresa Ragan & Erica Spindler & Jo Robertson & Tiffany Snow & Lee Child
Dear Reader
Thank you for purchasing this limited-edition digital box set filled with wonderful novels and novellas from some of today’s most popular authors. I hope you will have a wonderful reading experience and discover many authors you might not have read before.
All the proceeds from the sale of these stories will be going to fund important research at the University of Miami’s Diabetes Research Institute—because I feel as if they are currently our best bet for a practical cure. I have been involved in raising money for research for more than a decade. Usually, I run an annual online auction each May (so far, we’ve raised $2.4 million), but this “boxed set” effort is replacing the auction this year. I appreciate your support, and all those people who have supported me in the past. For more information about my efforts, please visit http://brendanovakforthecure.org
In addition to this boxed set, I’m offering two more this year—SWEET TALK (filled with 11 contemporary romances, including my own WHEN WE TOUCH, the kick-off to my popular Whiskey Creek series as a bonus story) and SWEET SEDUCTION (filled with 13 “hot” romances a la Fifty Shades of Grey). In addition, Lauren Hawkeye, a fellow writer who also has a son with Type 1, is contributing the proceeds of the sale of her contemporary romance, SAFE HAVEN, to the cause.
And don’t miss my very first cookbook! LOVE THAT! BRENDA NOVAK’S EVERY OCCASION COOKBOOK contains all of my healthiest recipes—the ones I used to raise my five kids, not recipes I hired someone to create—along with some recipes contributed by my friend and co-author Jan Coad, who once owned a restaurant and has published other cookbooks. It’s available in both digital and print, so order yours now.
Here’s to making a difference!
Brenda Novak
Dedication:
To all those who are fighting the same battle as my son, Thad. May we find a cure for diabetes soon! And to everyone who purchased this box set. Thanks for being part of the solution.
Foreword
I’m a thriller writer, and a thriller reader, and hence a sucker for the classic thriller plot, where an ordinary man or an ordinary woman slowly becomes aware of a looming threat: someone or something is out there, close by, infinitely dangerous; or perhaps an intruder is already in the house, mocking, violating a sanctuary, or perhaps – really creepy – he’s been living in the attic for a couple of weeks already, camping out, undetected, silent, leaving odd nighttime disturbances … who moved that chair?
Or perhaps, for added anguish, it’s not the ordinary man or woman under threat: it’s his or her son or daughter, their child, their responsibility, the intended victim, a helpless target. What mother or father wouldn’t fight to the death? And they do … 400 pages later, an investigation has been conducted, the bad guy has been identified, close scrapes have been survived, and finally the family is sitting together on the bottom stair, stunned but finally safe, as the bad guy is put in the cop car and driven away. The end.
Diabetes starts like that. But it doesn’t finish like that.
It’s a mysterious malfunction. No one knows the cause. Researchers suspect an element of genetic susceptibility, and in those susceptible it’s possible the Coxsackie B4 virus kicks things off. Then a tiny balance among the human body’s billion moving parts goes slightly out of whack, and the beta cells in the islets of Langerhans (such an innocent name) inside the pancreas shut down and stop producing insulin, so the body can no longer deal with the kind of sugars we crave.
The intruder is now in the house.
Untreated, all kinds of complications will follow. Cardiovascular disease, and stroke, and damage to the eyes, kidneys, and nerves. And more. Including death. All in store, unbelievably, for the ordinary parent’s beautiful and vulnerable child. No one’s fault. Type 1 diabetes is unrelated to lifestyle. Most victims are thin or normal, healthy, well fed, well loved.
The fight back begins with maintenance. Sometimes diet is enough; more often, insulin must be provided. An endless round begins: testing and injecting, testing and injecting. Most sufferers do OK for a long time, but only OK. Quite apart from the social and organizational burdens of diet and injection, they can feel under the weather a lot of the time. But in thriller terms, we can at least get them barricaded in a safe house, at least temporarily, doors and windows locked, guns drawn, with the bad guy lurking outside in the yard.