Product Description

In eloquent and lush language, Sharon Bowers paints a dazzling portrait of a woman driven to the darkest extremes of the human condition--and the journey she makes to cross to the other side.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #576854 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 326 pages

From the Back Cover
Lucifer Rising is a novel about love and fear. It is the story of fallen DEA angel Jude Lucien and the Miami Herald reporter determined to unearth Jude's secrets. When an apparently happenstance meeting introduces Jude to reporter Liz Gardener, the dark ex-agent is both intrigued and aroused by the young woman. A sniper shot intended for Jude strikes Liz, and the two women are thrown together in a race to discover who is intent on killing her. As their lives become more and more intertwined, Jude finds herself unexpected falling for the reporter, and Liz discovers that the agent-turned-drug-dealer is both more and less than she seems.

In eloquent and spare language, author Sharon Bowers paints a dazzling portrait of a woman driven to the darkest extremes of the human condition-and the journey she makes to cross to the other side.

About the Author
Sharon Bowers lives, breathes, and sweats in the Deep South. Aided and abetted by a small brown dog, she is currently at work on her second novel.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
There was one advantage to wearing the black hat in the government's modern dress version of cowboys and Indians, Jude Lucien thought as she smoothly shifted her new Porsche Boxster and slid easily out of the congested Miami traffic. You get all the cool toys. The car was right off the lot, paid for with the hard-earned dollars of some Colombian drug dealers that she had shanghaied a few weeks ago. They were amateurs anyway, a group of yahoos just off the plane, trying to hustle their way into the business with a few kilos of blow and some Glock 9mms. Obviously they didn't understand the organized part of organized crime. Jude snorted in memory of the men who first thought they could bluster their way through a meeting with her, and then- when that didn't work- bully her into making a deal with them by waving their guns around. One man choked to death after she crushed his larynx with a well-placed jab; the other had fallen to his knees in appeal when he saw his friend's fate. A swift bullet to the head had ended his pleas for mercy. Fortunately for him, the Colombians' supplier was a man of greater vision who had smoothly transferred his allegiance- and his product- to Jude's operation.

It's some bizarre Darwinian mutation, she mused as she hit the long stretch of ocean highway on her way home. Survival of the most ruthless. Worthiness no longer has a place... it all comes down to ability to do what has to be done. And those bastards weren't able to. Her roiling thoughts were at odds with the panoramic vista to her right- long stretches of exotic houses bordering an impossibly blue ocean- and more in line with the bloody demise of the sun on her left. Jagged, red-gold tendrils streaked the twilight sky, giving way on the evening's stage to the unnatural vibrancy of the Neon City. Her Miami only really came alive once the night had ascended, when people seemed mistakenly to believe that their transgressions were, if not invalid, then at least invisible. In a way, Jude was like the gatekeeper of their debauchery. Certainly whenever she entered a room, her presence evoked primal memories of the seven deadly sins in those who watched her.

Jude Lucien was barely past her thirtieth birthday, but there was a timeless sense of assurance in the way she moved. She was tall and sleek, with a polished veneer of civility that still couldn't conceal the truculent energy that was her essence. Confronted with the hard planes of her cheekbones, the inky fullness of her black hair, and the seductive indigo of her eyes; most people were generally rendered speechless. The smart ones, however, never forgot about the cunning mind that whirred incessantly behind those baby blues.

"Presentation is everything..." Jude vaguely remembered her mother once saying. Although time had rendered both her mother and most of her pronouncements meaningless, whenever Jude rose to a social occasion, she was inevitably reminded of her mother's incessant harangues on the subject. Shalimar, incense, and the relentless cadence of her mother's voice raised in anger or prayer were pretty much the only remembrances remaining from Jude's childhood. They were also the very things that she left far behind when she had last walked out of the ramshackle slum her mother called a boardinghouse. Fifteen years later, the lectures on manners, breeding, and appearance that she had done her best to ignore now served the dark woman well. Jude could sit a table with royal elegance, discuss fine art and literature knowledgeably, and wear couture gowns so well it would make a model weep with jealousy. Unfortunately it was all in the service of a bloody and dark business that would have chilled her mother's unknowing soul.

To call Jude just a drug dealer would be about as accurate and all-encompassing as calling da Vinci just a painter. Her long fingers reached all over the world, and they were dipped not just in the honey pots of the drug trade, but also in gun running and gambling as well as assorted other legitimate businesses. For reasons baffling to her competitors, Jude drew the line at peddling human flesh. "I don't begrudge anyone his or her pleasures," she said on the subject. "But quite frankly the idea of my people providing a girl to some fat, old man so he can shove his dick up her ass does not appeal to me."

Once the dark, golden prodigy of the Drug Enforcement Agency, Jude was now biting with a vengeance the hand that used to feed her. They had plucked her from the streets, where she was a wild child rapidly making a name for herself in murky corridors, and submerged her in a world of liquid decadence and powdered highs. They had changed her name and given her a badge that wouldn't protect her in the circles where she traveled. However, the unique skills that Jude brought to her new life could not be taught in any academy. Something in her had always responded to the maleficent call of those she was obligated to hunt, making her the perfect undercover agent. In a world where one misstep meant an instant and irreversible retribution, she had thrived- snaring increasingly larger prizes and turning them obediently over to her DEA masters. Somewhere along the line, something went complexly-horrifically-wrong.

Customer Reviews

Gripping story, three-dimensional characters, a great read
'Lucifer Rising' has got it all: Characters with depth andedge; Plot with intriguing twists and turns; and Writing withbrilliant, real descriptions. Sharon Bower's greatest strength is her ability to weave a multi-layerered story around very real characters. Her prose is complex yet stark and often paints a picture full of rich details and interesting phrasing. She gives her characters very real and human qualities, whether that be the capacity to love or hate or both at the same time. These are not people who are simplistic or easily labeled as 'good' or 'bad'. What is intriguing about her two main characters is that they elicit the gamut of emotions from the reader: emphathy, frustration, admiration, confusion, happiness, sadness, and everything in between. Behind the backdrop of drug lords, violence, and journalistic opportunity, you find a developing relationship full of faltering trust, seductive desire, and ultimate discovery and redemption. It's a love story and so much more. I found myself amazingly engaged during this story and entirely interested in how it would turn out in the end. It's one of the better books I've read in a long time and I would definitely read whatever Ms. Bower's chose to write next. She's that good.

Intense, sexy, fast-paced, and so eloquently written....
It reignited my passion for dark, sexy, espionage stories... the characters are delicious, the action is hot and heavy, and above all, the excellent writing allows effortless navigation through the intricate plot twists... do a friend a favour... give them a copy as a gift...

I could not put this one down.
I took this novel on a fishing vacation and had a difficult time putting it down so I could get on with my fishing. That's some stiff competition. Full of rich characterizations, suspense, sex and danger. The main character's dark and dangerous personallity is not played down here. Her volatility lends a nerve racking edge to the action while you are just waiting for the next shoe to drop. The sex is realistic, beautifull and passionate. And there's plenty of it. These are not just your obligatory bedroom scenes that appear in so many other lesbian novels. I found the two main characters believable and I cared about what happened to them. A good read and worthy of your dollars.