Living over the garage on a remote estate will never fulfill Emily Kane’s dreams. No mother and no friends, the chauffeur’s daughter has one joy in life, the martial arts, which she’s studied for as long as she can remember… though she never really thought she’d have to use them. But when covert operatives attack the estate, Emily is forced to confront the past her father has hidden from her. With her “family” dead or scattered, Emily embraces shotokan karate’s principle of go no sen: counter-attack. Now she takes the fight to her enemies, and discovers a growing talent for mayhem. The only thing more terrifying than the men hunting her is what she may discover about herself.
Books 2 – 5 in the Emily Kane Adventures are available now:
Girl Punches Out – a kidnapping, and the trail leads to Kamchatka
Girl Takes Up Her Sword – when the swords come out, things get nasty, and there may not be a way to stop the violence
Girl Spins A Blade – a trip to Nepal to find inner peace, but trouble follows
Girl Takes The Oath – Emily finds a calling in the Navy, trailing danger in her wake.
And look for Book 6 in May 2015 – Girl Rides The Wind – Emily’s Marine unit tracks terrorists in the Celebes Sea, but she finds something much more profound in the windward islands, and something much more menacing finds her.
An excerpt from Chapter 5:
One of them seemed to have had some karate training, and swung a roundhouse kick at her head. She leaned out of the way, and when he tried to his leg back and down she hooked his ankle with her left foot and pulled him towards her. As she expected, he spread his arms in a vain attempt to regain his balance, and when she pulled his foot even further forward, forcing him into a perfect hurdler’s split, he shrieked in pain. A sharp chop across the throat quieted him, and she let him fall forward onto his face. He gasped for breath, and the thought occurred to her that she might have crushed his windpipe. “This isn’t the dojo,” she muttered.
The last man grabbed her ponytail from behind, no doubt thinking to control her with his other arm, and expecting her to pull away so he could yank her head back. Naturally, she pivoted into him, wrapping an arm over his elbow and under to force the joint out at the same time as she pulled his shoulder down. The pressure on his arm left him no way extricate himself from her grip, and she was so close to his chest he couldn’t even grab her with his free hand. The heel of her left palm smashed his chin, and she heard his teeth crack through his tongue just as his elbow snapped. He crumpled to the ground in tears, and looked up at her, not quite able to focus as she slammed her knee into his head.
She turned to the first two men, her cheeks warm from the rush of ferocity she had just unleashed. The one with the broken face, groggy but still more or less conscious, moved to pick himself up until he saw her eyes and shuddered. With a finger pressed to her lips, she pushed him down until he lay flat on his back on the pavement.
Crouching next to him, she said, “Don’t make me hurt you,” and flashed him a crooked smile, her head tilted to one side.