title: Beauty's Songbook
author:  R.J. Vickers 
description: R.J. Vickers has been writing since the age of 7, when she penned a story about her cat, Shadow, getting lost in an ice cave in Alaska. A year later she wrote about two unicorns who went questing through a cave, and shortly after that, about a girl who got transported into a magical realm through--you guessed it!--a cave. Things are different now that she's an adult. Her current teen fantasy series, The Natural Order, is set in a *very fancy* cave. With marble floors and secret tunnels and glowing patterns on the walls. Maybe it was her secret obsession with caves (what would a psychologist say about that?) which led her to New Zealand, the land of hobbits and hobbit-holes. But the country comes with more than one benefit! When she's not exploring caves (literally or literature-ly), she loves crocheting, baking, and hiking with her husband. R.J. Vickers is hard at work on the second book in the Natural Order series, titled Rogue Magic, along with a set of novels set in an alternate fantasy world. You can learn more about her writing and travels at www.rjvickers.com
zlib_text: Begin Reading
  Table of Contents
  A Preview of Last Chance Beauty Queen
  Copyright Page
  
  For my husband, Bryan, whose love of stock
  car racing is everywhere in this book.
  
  Acknowledgments
  Thank you to my fabulous critique partners: Robin Kaye, Carla Kempert,
  and Lavinia Kent for their continuing help, guidance, and inspiration. I’d
  also like to acknowledge my wonderful editor, Alex Logan, for making me
  dig deeper and go further with this story than I thought possible. Many
  thanks also to Jan Nash for sharing her lovely story about prayer blankets. I
  am also indebted to Camomile Hixon for losing her unicorn and making me
  think about the nature of magic. And finally, I’d like to acknowledge the
  music of singer-songwriter David Wilcox. His song “Language of the
  Heart” was a touchstone for this book.
  
  CHAPTER
  1
  Tulane Rhodes leaned forward in his seat and scowled at Sarah Murray out
  of a pair of greeny-gray eyes. “You painted my car sissy pink and put a
  bunny on its hood. How do you expect me