More Heat Than the Sun

This bundle contains the first three novels in the best-selling More Heat than the Sun M/M thriller series: Love Is a Stranger, Conscious Decisions of the Heart, and The Bridge of Silver Wings. Ex-SAS soldier Ben Rider falls in love with his enigmatic married boss, Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen, but Nikolas is living a lie. A lie so profound that when the shadows are lifted, Ben realises he's in love with a very dangerous stranger. Ben has to choose between Nikolas and safety, but sometimes danger comes in a very seductive package.

Start your journey with Nik and Ben in the best-selling More Heat than the Sun M/M thriller series. Before you listen to this box set, buy the individual audiobooks or box set for Volume One, and continue with Volume Two. The complete series consists of nine thrilling, addictive audiobooks.

Ex-SAS soldier Ben Rider falls in love with his enigmatic married boss Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen, but Nikolas is living a lie. A lie so profound that when the shadows are lifted, Ben realises he's in love with a very dangerous stranger. Ben has to choose between Nikolas and safety, but sometimes danger comes in a very seductive package. 

Ben Rider and Nikolas Mikkelsen learn that danger comes in all shapes and sizes and often in places you least expect it. Nikolas' dark past calls to him, inexorably dragging him back into its seductive embrace. While he goes on an errand of mercy to Russia, Ben travels to Denmark to learn Nikolas's language. Convinced Russia's vastness will swallow Nikolas, Ben doesn't see the enemy much closer to home. Thinking he has lost Nikolas, Ben then makes a terrible decision that threatens to destroy everything they have together. 

Nikolas and Ben discover that bonds aren't forged with blood or scars, but in the hearts of men strong enough to love. Siberia in winter isn't a place for good men. There is nothing Nikolas won't do to keep Ben alive. Nikolas has exorcised his demons, but when they end up stranded in Russia, the monster inside needs to be let loose. Ben discovers the truth of the adage, "be careful what you wish for"! 

Nikolas Mikkelsen could make a very long list of unpleasant things he's endured in his life. Then order it from "nearly killed me" to "extremely horrific and don't want to do again". And what does it say about his 45 years, that being hit by a tsunami would be considerably way down on this list? But nothing - not torture, imprisonment, or starvation - has prepared him for what he now has to endure for Ben Rider's sake - attendance on a residential gay-therapy course.

Ben usually overlooks Nikolas' occasionally jarring dissonance. Not this time. A deep rift, a terrible lie, separates them. Eleven thousand miles from Nikolas, in New Zealand, it's bitter winter as Ben films the tragic story of a post-apocalyptic gladiator, a victim of his own personal darkness. But on receiving a death threat, Ben suspects the truth of actor Oliver Whitestone's suicide. Someone doesn't want this movie made.

It takes a certain kind of courage to live as if favoured by the Gods, ignoring the ever-present ghosts of your past - or perhaps not bravery, but arrogance. And maybe not even that. Ben genuinely believes that the past is behind them - that they deserve to enjoy the life they have created. So it's not hubris that leads him to overlook the signs that Nikolas does not share his faith, it's love. But Nikolas knows something is coming. He can't stop it; he can only decide how he will choose to face it. And without Ben's support, he is entirely alone.

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. Nikolas has always liked art. You'd have thought that Ben and Nikolas would have learned that their romantic holidays inevitably end up as disasters. A short break on the polar ice sees them trapped in a nightmare of murder and deceit. Neither of them, however, foresees the long-term impact that endless winter has on their relationship. They return with a metaphorical darkness that threatens everything they have created together.

Only a few months from his 50th year, Nikolas is feeling a distinct wobble in his formidable certainties. Aleksey Primakov appears to have become irrelevant. All he needs, therefore, is to be dragged into an adventure with Devon's answer to the three musketeers. How many times can he tell Ben and his moronic friends that a mutilated body buried on Dartmoor has nothing to do with them? But not only does this desecration slowly become their business, it cuts to the heart of the life they have created together. It's just as well, perhaps, that generals never do actually retire.

Ben and Nikolas know that if they were to compare recollections of their life together, they’d remember things very differently. Ben never asks about their time together in the Department because he doesn’t want to hear Nikolas lie. Nikolas never talks about those early years because he can’t afford for Ben to know the truth. For the first time, since their strange meeting in Whitehall 14 years ago, Ben is forced to rethink his claim that nothing Nikolas could ever do would make him stop loving him.