If you live LONG enough... love (and danger) will find you.Meet Charity and Link...Charity (aka Emily) is struggling with the reality that her two lives are coming closer to each other with each passing day.Link will soon find himself wrapped in a supernatural world that he never knew existed – and discover that mortals are not the only beings that walk this earth.A new family has just arrived in the isolated mountain town of Telluride, Colorado. Welcome the Johnstons – Jason (a doctor), Rachel (a designer), and their niece Emily (a current High School Senior).Emily has lived the life of a quiet loner in the past, trying to go unnoticed. But with Telluride being such a small and welcoming town, she finds a group of friends at school almost immediately. When Emily meets Link (another new transplant in town) her world turns upside down. She doesn’t understand why she feels a magnetic pull toward him, or why she unknowingly lets her guard down around him. Link is just as confused by his own need to be with her.Emily knows she is playing with fire. She should be doing whatever she can to keep herself isolated, to keep Link from getting too close. Danger has a way of finding Emily’s family – that is what keeps them on the move. They arrive in a new town every few years – it is safer that way.Because… Emily isn’t really Emily… her real name is Charity – and Charity has an even bigger secret. Charity and her family are not like other people, they have “skills” that mere mortals cannot begin to comprehend.Before long, Charity is struggling with the reality that her two lives are coming closer to each other with each passing day. Soon Link will find himself wrapped in a supernatural world that he never knew existed – and discover that mortals are not the only beings that walk this earth.

Bluebell has spent the last twelve years of her life at Training Tech, the government-run boarding school all children are required to attend. Now she's 17, and fully prepared for Incorporation; a time when females & males are allowed to mingle again, for the first time since they were toddlers. It is also the day she must endure Citizen Branding - the mandatory searing of a mark into her flesh.Bluebell has spent the last twelve years of her life at Training Tech, the government-run boarding school all children are required to attend. Now that she's seventeen she is fully prepared for Incorporation; a time when females and males are allowed to mingle again, for the first time since they were toddlers. It is also the day she must endure Citizen Branding - the mandatory searing of a mark into the flesh of the left wrist of all new Citizens. O for fertile, X for infertile. The fate of every Citizen, male or female, is determined by the results. Bluebell knows that a Citizen’s duty is to live for the glory of Concord, just as she was taught. But the frantic dreams and hazy memories that haunt her make her different, and the questions she cannot deny threaten to turn her world upside down. LUSH is the first novel in the LUSH Trilogy... as the beginning novel, it sets you up in the LUSH world and asks a lot of questions; many that are not immediately answered. The story continues in HUSH, and concludes with CRUSH.Also by S.L. Baum - The Immortal Ones series - YA ParanormalThe first novel - A Chance for Charity (The Immortal Ones) - is a FREE download!