Cover Reveal: Colorless by Rita Stradling
Colorless
Rita Stradling
Publication date: August 2017
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
In Domengrad, there are rules all must live by: Fear the Gods. Worship the Magicians. Forsake the Iconoclasts.
To Annabelle Klein, the rules laid down by the Magicians are the mere ramblings of stuffy old men. As far as she’s concerned, the historic Iconoclasts, heretics who nearly destroyed the Magicians so long ago, are nothing but myth. She has much more important matters to worry about.
Heiress to a manor mortgaged down to its candlesticks and betrothed to her loathsome, lecherous cousin, sixteen-year-old Annabelle doubts the gods could forsake her more.
Then Annabelle is informed of her parents’ sudden and simultaneous deaths, and all of the pigment drips out of her skin and hair, leaving her colorless. Within moments, Annabelle is invisible and forgotten by all who know her.
Living like a wraith in her own home, Annabelle discovers that to regain her color she must solve the mystery behind her parents’ murders and her strange transformation.
Meanwhile, hundreds of the Magicians’ monks, with their all-black eyes and conjoined minds, have usurped control of Annabelle’s family manor. An Iconoclast is rumored to be about—a person who they claim goes unseen, unheard, and lost to memory, yet is the greatest threat to all of Domengrad. For the first time in a hundred years, the monks plan to unleash the dire wolves of old.
Their only target: Annabelle.
Author Bio:
Rita Stradling is the author of The Deception Dance series, the Dakota Kekoa series and The Fourteen Day Soul Detox Novella Serial. She has a BA in Art History and a particular love for modern and medieval art.
Rita lives with her husband and son in Northern California.
She has an insatiable novel addiction and mostly reads young adult and adult: romance, paranormal, urban fantasy and high fantasy.
Mason Dixon – Monster Hunter by Eric R. Asher blitz with giveaway
Mason Dixon – Monster Hunter Episode 1
Eric R. Asher
Publication date: April 21st 2017
Genres: Adult, Urban Fantasy
They are the first line of defense against the things that go bump in the night.
They are the keepers of a centuries-old legacy of The Church defending the world against the forces of darkness.
They are a bunch of highly armed rednecks, internet video celebrities, soccer moms, and assorted broken nutjobs.
They are the new Templars, and things are about to get weird.
From the pages of Bubba the Monster Hunter comes a new series featuring the Hunters from around the United States hunting down monsters, fighting off supernatural baddies, and making life really, really bad for the things that hunt people.
He’s Mason Dixon, and he’s a bona fide internet celebrity. He has his own video series, a pistol that deserves its own area code, and a high definition video camera, and he’s not afraid to use any of them.
In this introductory urban fantasy novella, we meet Mason, his right hand Emma, his “handler” Noah, his anime-styled hacker friend Himari, and more monsters than you can shake a stick at. Unless it’s a really big stick.
With Mason, it’s always a big stick. This first novella in the series follows Mason through the wilds of Missouri as he hunts down monsters that hunt men, monsters that eat chewing tobacco, and monsters that make pancakes. And there’s moonshine.
And then Bubba the Monster Hunter shows up.
The New Templars novella series is a new series of short novels, similar to BookShots. Mason Dixon – Monster Hunter is the first in the series by popular urban fantasy and steampunk author Eric R. Asher.
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EXCERPT:
“Out,” I said. “Get out of the pit. Safeties off.” I raised the stock to my shoulder and swept the area around us again.
Emma slipped and crashed into the pit, sending a cascade of stained white bones over the edge to clatter down into the limestone depression. We waited, and I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
Boom.
We both froze. I don’t care how many times you’ve encountered something in the wild, you still freeze for a split second.
Boom.
“Move!” I hissed, backpedaling while keeping my tranquilizer aimed around Emma. She was almost out. We could get back on the ATVs and come back with bigger guns. 10cc darts? I should have brought the 50cc cannon. This was a mistake. The old man wasn’t crazy at all.
Boom. Boom. Boom. BoomBoomBoom.
The gowrow erupted from its lair like it had been spit forth by an angry god. Its stubby, bulbous body might have been humorous paired with its long scaly neck if not for the tusks fit for a mammoth gleaming in the dying sun. It would take that creature zero effort to kill us in one charge.
Its movements seemed awkward, but its attacks were practiced. The gowrow swiped at Emma with a four-toed webbed foot, a lethal claw extending from each digit. She fell backwards and rolled away, barely avoiding the attack.
Any doubt this gowrow was a maneater fled in a heartbeat.
I cranked the air pressure as high as it would go on the tranquilizer gun and fired. The dart rose slightly in a wind disturbance created by the massive creature and pinged harmlessly off the field of spiky scales lining its back. I cursed, flipped the butt of the rifle open, and loaded another dart.
Author Bio:
Eric is a former bookseller, cellist, and comic seller currently living in Saint Louis, Missouri. A lifelong enthusiast of books, music, toys, and games, he discovered a love for the written word after being dragged to the library by his parents at a young age. When he is not writing, you can usually find him reading, gaming, or buried beneath a small avalanche of Transformers.
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The Darkest Lies by Barbara Copperthwaite
The Darkest Lies by Barbara Copperthwaite
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Melanie Oak is a mother that gets the news that every parent out there dreads the most, that her little girl Beth has been hurt and is in the hospital hanging onto life. Melanie had walked her daughter most of the way to a friends house but as typical of a young teen Beth convinced her mother she could make it on her own but the next morning they find the girl had never arrived having lied to her parents her plans for the night.
Melanie being the distraught mother makes it her mission to make sure that the truth is revealed about what really happened to her daughter that night. Being a small community someone somewhere must have seen something and knows how her daughter ended up broken and beaten alone in the marshes and Melanie is determined she will get to the truth no matter the cost.
The Darkest Lies is a psychological thriller that takes a reader on quite a journey to get to just what happened to a young girl who is now hanging onto life. A lot of the story is told from the point of view of Melanie, the mother, who is doing a lot of internal talking to her injured daughter Beth about how she is going to find what happened that night. Now I’ve read books of this nature before but for some reason at times in this story Melanie would irritate me a bit with her internal monologue to Beth, perhaps because I questioned that her child is still alive why isn’t she spending time with her?
However, putting aside my doubts of Melanie and her character I found the story within this book quite compelling. There were a lot of twists and turns to keep a reader’s interest along the way in the story. I had my different guesses at the outcome in here and one of my suspicions happened to be true but then the author throws another twists at the reader and completely adds more to the story I don’t think anyone would expect. In the end I thought this one was a pretty good read even with questioning my liking the main character in parts of the book.
I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.
Cover Reveal: Keeping Claudia by Suzanne McKenna Link
Keeping Claudia
Suzanne McKenna Link
(Toby & Claudia #2)
Publication date: May 2017
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Back home in a town she once fled, headstrong Claudia Chiametti returns to the arms of the only guy ever to awaken her heart. Everything about Toby Faye contradicts her family’s traditions and values, but she’s ready to take a chance on love.
Toby finally has the girl he’s long dreamed of within his reach. But, it’s only a matter of time before light will be cast on the dark corners of a secreted past.
Can Claudia love him unconditionally …or will the truth cost Toby what he wants most?
Falling in love is easy. Staying in love is hard.
Author Bio:
Suzanne McKenna Link works for a family of newspapers that cover events in and around the South Shore of Long Island, New York. She lives in the town of Sayville with her husband and two children.
SAVING TOBY is her debut novel. The literary love story follows the moving journey of a damaged young man and his love for a girl who might just save him. An avid interest in psychology has Suzanne digging deep into the reasons for her characters’ behaviors. The native Long Islander is fascinated by the how and why of people’s actions. As a result, her characters come to life on the pages.
Shopping for a CEO’s Wife by Julia Kent blitz with giveaway
Shopping for a CEO’s Wife
Julia Kent
(Shopping for a Billionaire, #12)
Publication date: April 25th 2017
Genres: Adult, Romance
Snowbound. Sounds so romantic, with visions of cuddling before a roaring fire, hot chocolate spiked with brandy, and a secret elopement.
Wait. What?
My fiancé’s father won’t stop trying to turn our pending wedding into a three-ring media circus so he can get free publicity for his family’s Fortune 500 company. My mother has decided she’s done with All Things Wedding and asks her teacup Chihuahua for mother-of-the-bride advice.
They’ve all gone certifiably mad.
Then the stress from the wedding puts my mother in the hospital, I scream at my future father-in-law in front of a camera crew and the video goes viral, and the romantic wedding that started with Andrew’s grand Pride and Prejudice proposal looks less like Jane Austen and more like Dostoyevsky.
So what do you do when you’re a fixer and you can’t fix something?
You give up on it.
Not on Andrew, silly.
The wedding.
Shopping for a CEO’s Wife is the 12th book in Julia Kent’s New York Times bestselling Shopping series. As Shannon and Declan enjoy their newlywed bliss, Andrew’s father wants to exploit Amanda and Andrew’s nuptials, much to Amanda’s chagrin. Can she learn to stand up to her future father-in-law and fight for what’s right? But the real question is: will Spritzy the teacup Chihuahua end up being a flower girl?
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EXCERPT:
“You have a remarkable capacity for imagining the strangest worst-case scenarios, Amanda.”
“I have to. I’m in love with you.”
“Hey!”
“Did I or did I not walk miles in an 1800s Regency-era costume after you lost your car keys AND a three-carat diamond ring in Walden Pond?”
“Yes, but — ”
“Did you or did you not have to rescue me, half clothed, from a pool at your brother’s wedding?”
“I am sensing a trend.”
“And did you, or did you not, wake up with me in a Vegas hotel room, thinking for a few hours that somehow we’d both married more than one man?”
Now he just sighs.
Ah.
Victory.
Author Bio:
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Julia Kent writes romantic comedy with an edge. From billionaires to BBWs to new adult rock stars, Julia finds a sensual, goofy joy in every contemporary romance she writes. Unlike Shannon from Shopping for a Billionaire, she did not meet her husband after dropping her phone in a men’s room toilet (and he isn’t a billionaire). She lives in New England with her husband and three sons in a household where the toilet seat is never, ever, down.
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