RayeMurphy

A 90's Friday Night Lights meets Fifty Shades, only the town is the sadomasochist and the two young lovers their pawns.July Elizabeth Edwards is stuck in the existence her pretentious, rural East Texas town has allotted her. A shift in social status junior year provokes unlikely ride or die friendships, others' secrets she's not allowed to tell, and an unexpected crush on the ambitious Adrian Reed. The result is far more insatiable than anyone anticipated.July has known and competed with Adrian her entire life. He was conceited and arrogant. She was treading water to survive Pure Pines High. When circumstances strip them of cheerleading and football, the odds throw a replacement neither of them expects, and something the halls of Pure Pines High are certain to reject. One touch, an out of ordinary lingering stare, and something ignites that won't die down, only does it count if it's a secret? How long will it stay behind closed doors? When love is denied, lust becomes unapologetic.Set figuratively to a Soundtrack of Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Counting Crows, R.E.M., The Cranberries and Radiohead. #1- lusttoloveTRIGGERS: sexual situations, eating disorder, rape, drugs…

RayeMurphy

BOOK 2: July starts senior year with no Adrian in sight. So much has changed for the once close- knit group that encompassed the two lovers. The elephant in the room used to be July and Adrian's "will they or won't they," has quickly been replaced with Adrian's absence and the circumstances that caused it. As the distance grows well into the New Year, and college applications become the focus, July wonders if she's not being put on the back burner by Adrian just as before. Having to grow up and face challenges no teenager should have to consider, Adrian adopts bad boy vices he's never been known to have, instead of turning to friendships or the girl who has yet to let him down. As the four separate to leave for college, counting on friendship to survive that amount of pressure would not be a safe bet. However, "I wouldn't bet against this girl." July finds a way to thrive in her first two years of college and makes her move to NYC as planned.Crucial friendships, university tuitions, scholarships, and scandal are all on the line as the year 2000 approaches. Adrian has overcome major obstacles to reap both the benefits and pitfalls of fraternity life at Rice University, only to feel the absence of the one obstacle he could never overcome, July. Will their Pure Pines "education" keep their heads above water, or will July take Manhattan by storm and leave Adrian in the past?…

RayeMurphy

Riding The Blue is a New Adult, Historical Fiction, Romance by Raye Murphy coming your way in January 2024.It's 1945, just after WWII has ended, and four women in their twenties unknowingly originate the role of the flight attendant as we came to know it. Their endurance, friendship, and personal lives are put to the test as they step into a lime light they had not anticipated.In the midst of mayhem in both the clouds as well as below, love threatens to expose one of them, neglect another, and it comes hard for our leading lady Jane, forcing her to trust in a way she never has before.Just when you thought the 1960's women's lib brought us "the mile high club" along with Pan Am and the pencil skirt... this journey in the sky takes a look at the women who wore one first. They've been called 'The Greatest Generation," those who grew up during the great depression, then battled World War II. These for women survived it all and came out lighting cigars, pouring martinis and spending thirty thousand feet in the air on display for elite male passengers. "The line must have wrapped around two Manhattan blocks. I'd never seen so many girls...well, women. There were actresses and dancers sent from casting. Several of the Rockettes were there. University and sorority gals, baby nurses and young women from the Red Cross. There must have been girls from all fifty states. At that time, with the war just ending, if you weren't married, a school teacher, a secretary or had a job at the telephone company, what else could you do but get in a line like that? Like what precisely, we weren't certain. Anything I knew about it was written on a sign when I got near the front of the line. It said: NO SQUEAKY VOICES, NO THICK ANKLES, NO GUMMY SMILES... Oh, and at the bottom it said you can't ever have been married before. That, and something about an age limit that was per their discretion." --- the last surviving Stewardess…

RayeMurphy

Quincy Adams is a beautiful, driven, workaholic with a heart of gold, one that pulls her in the direction of home this New Year's Eve. Only, home is in a remote Texas town, two thousand miles away from her Manhattan high rise office. As a television writer for a very scripted "Unscripted" show, Quincy worked straight through the Christmas Holidays to meet deadline to be met with another episode deadline for the approaching New Year. Her dad put in a plea to have his only daughter home to ring in the New Year with him. She's missed every holiday for the last two years. He's a firm believer in the superstition of whatever you find yourself doing on New Year's Eve, and whomever you find yourself with... is who and what you will be doing the rest of the year. When Quincy's boss waits too long to give her the okay to take off, she finds it impossible to get a last-minute flight. Thus, a laptop in the passenger seat of a rent a car with no four-wheel drive , and a very poorly planned two thousand mile road trip is underway. Quincy makes it seven hours before snow flurries fall, guiding her into the only open diner in a small town somewhere outside of Roanoke, Virginia. Right remote town, wrong state. Quincy is still nineteen hours from home, and every inch of snow takes another hour away from the countdown to New years Eve. The Sidecar doesn't look too terrible to be stranded in. Apart from the geriatric ward of sparce customers and waitstaff, they at least have internet. Quincy is more concerned over her deadline than she is the storm keeping her from her destination, so she's actually fine to stay put... that is if The Sidecar plans to stay open through the New Year's storm. Before Quincy can beg, "Keep the coffee coming," and "Where's the nearest outlet," She'll come face to face with a not so geriatric chef. Enter Ryan Craddock, the unexpectedly good-looking, brooding force behind the infamous last stop diner.…