Break My Bones by Rachael Tamayo blitz with giveaway
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Break My Bones
Rachael Tamayo
(Deadly Sins, #1)
Publication date: June 6th 2024
Genres: Adult, Thriller
Three years ago Brooklyn James ran for her life with her toddler in tow. Now, her estranged husband, Cain, is back. Brooklyn will be forced to decide, will she run once again, or stand her ground and face the devil himself?
Brook is the manager of a popular Dallas Nightclub, mother, and wife. Three years later she and her daughter are back on their feet and things for her are going better than she imagined when she was forced to run for her life from her husband Cain and ended up homeless with a toddler to protect. Despite her current success, spending every waking moment watching for his inevitable return has taken its toll on the young mother.
Cain James has been released from a three-year stint in prison, and has hooked back up with his lifelong best friend, Donovan. With money in hand due to a substantial inheritance after his father’s death, and the support of the man that has always helped him when he needed it most, he’s got a plan to win back his wife, by any means necessary.
As Cain becomes a man undone by obsession and descents slowly into madness, Brook must watch virtually helplessly and decide, will she run from him again, or stand this time, risking everything?
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EXCERPT:
After dropping off my daughter and parking my car, I walk into the empty, closed club, pulling the ringing cell out of my purse to answer.
“Hello.”
“Is this Brooklyn James?”
“Who is this?”
I can’t make out the noise in the background on the line, wondering if it’s just a bad connection or if she’s really somewhere that loud. “My name is Mary, and I’m with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. I’m calling to advise you that your husband has been released from custody.”
The world sways around me, and I wonder if I heard her correctly. I swallow even though my mouth is dry and grip the rail on the bar next to me, steadying myself as I choke out, “What?”
“He was released three days ago.” She says it as if it’s nothing. As if she might not have just destroyed my life.
He’s been out for three days?
But why is she calling? It doesn’t even make sense.
“Why are you notifying me? He wasn’t arrested for assaulting me. You guys don’t do that for DWI, do you?”
“Yes, I understand that, and no ma’am, we don’t. When his file was being processed, there was a request that you be notified. I apologize for the delay, but we’ve been short-staffed here due to budget cuts.”
I sit on a barstool, glancing around to make sure no one else is here. What if a vendor is walking around? Or the bartender came in early, and I didn’t notice his car in the parking lot? I’ve worked hard to keep this part of my life in the shadows, away from almost everyone. “Can you tell me who made the request?”
“I’m afraid not. We can’t release that information. I’m sorry.”
I blow out a breath, having figured as much. But you never know when you’ll get that one person who will bend the rules, or simply doesn’t know the rules. “Um, okay then. Thanks, Mary.” What else do I say? Thanks for destroying my life?
“You’re welcome, ma’am. Have a nice evening.”
The conversation ends, and I put the phone back in my purse without thinking. I’ve told myself that I would know what to do when this happened. I’ve had a mental checklist for close to two years now.
Call Ashley and let her know.
Call the school.
Consider changing my name, my daughter’s name. Why didn’t I leave Dallas? Why did I stay here and make it so simple to find me?
I should take the money, turn around now, and go. Fetch my child, pack, and never look back. His mother knows how to find me. My heart beats too fast in my chest. I close my eyes, considering every choice I’ve made in all these years, making no move to hide from him. No move to run once I had the means to get away.
What was I thinking? Fuck.
No, scratch that. I won’t run. I won’t hide. I’ve been training, and I’ve been shooting; I know how to handle the gun, and myself. I’m strong now. I can do this. I have to. Because he will show up. He will find me.
I have no doubt.
Author Bio:
Rachael Tamayo is the bestselling author of the award-winning Deadly Sins Series, and award-winning thriller, Crazy Love, among several other titles. Before she started her writing career, she was a highly awarded 911 emergency services dispatcher with twelve years of experience and many commendations under her belt. Upon exiting law enforcement, she focused her writing career on the dark, suspenseful, and psychological after beginning as a romance author. Now Rachael uses her dark thriller as a sort of self-therapy after all those years answering 911 calls and works all that she knows and was exposed to into the frighteningly realistic and layered characters her readers know and love her for. Rachael lives on the Texas Gulf Coast in Houston, Texas with her husband and their two children.
GIVEAWAY!
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One Deadly Eye by Randy Wayne White Blog Tour
**This post contains Amazon affiliate links which will allow me as an associate to earn a small commission on any purchase made through the link of the products I share. This commission in no way changes the pricing of any items for the buyer.**
Title: One Deadly Eye
Author: Randy Wayne White
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Publication Date: June 4, 2024
Page Count: 340
About the book:
From New York Times bestselling author Randy Wayne White, after the deadliest hurricane to hit Florida’s Gulf Coast in a century, Doc Ford must stop a gang of thieves—and worse—during the twelve hours of chaos that follow the passing of a storm’s eye.
A Russian diplomat disappears while Doc is tagging great white sharks in South Africa, and members of a criminal brotherhood, Bratva, don’t think it’s a coincidence. They track the biologist to Dinkin’s Bay Marina on the west coast of Florida, where Brotherhood mercenaries have already deployed, prepared to pillage and kill in the wake of an approaching hurricane.
No one, however, is prepared for a cataclysmic event that will forever change the island and leaves Doc to deal with escapees from Russia’s most dangerous prison, including a serial killer—the Vulture Monk—who has a taste for blood. His only ally is an enigmatic British inventor whose decision to ride out the storm might have more to do with revenge than protecting a priceless art collection.
Doc has a lot at stake—the lives of his fiancée, Hannah Smith, and their son, plus the fate of his hipster pal, Tomlinson, whose sailboat has disappeared in the Gulf of Mexico. The greatest threat of all, though, is a force that cannot be escaped—a Category Five hurricane that, minute by minute, melds sins of the past with Florida’s precarious future.
Find this book online:
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Excerpt:
1
I returned an arcane Station Six pistol to the US Consulate in Cape Town, South Africa, unaware a storm that would forever change Florida had gathered to the north, fueled by a mirror that is the Sahara Desert.
In a world of electronic intrusions, I’m too often deafened to the silence of atmospheric tides, saltwater and sunlight—dynamics that can ignite a cataclysm six thousand miles away.
“Has this weapon been fired?” the consulate armorer asked.
The strange bolt action pistol lay on a table. Its bulbous barrel (an integrated sound suppressor) had the utilitarian aspect of a ball-peen hammer.
“At the range a few days ago. Five rounds,” I said.
“But not in the field.”
“Nope.”
“A few practice rounds. That’s all?” He sounded disappointed.
“With a bolt action single-shot, five rounds was four too many.”
A Cold War assassin’s tool was an ironic weapon to issue me, a marine biologist in Africa under the guise of tagging great white sharks.
He noticed the bandage on my knuckles. Blood had wicked through the gauze.
“Tough on your shooting hand. Too bad, Dr. Ford.”
“Tougher to explain if I’d been stopped at the border,” I said. “Shouldn’t I get some sort of receipt?”
When I was at the door, the armorer spoke again. “Afrikaners call the stretch of water off Dyers Island ‘Shark Alley.’ I heard a Russian diplomat went missing there yesterday.” There was a pause. “Or defected. Depends, I guess, on who you ask.”
It was a question without a question mark.
Dyers Island, one hundred twenty kilometers southeast. It brought back the stench of thousands of fur seals and penguins fighting, breeding, dying, birthing pups on a rock the size of a parking lot. Blood, the ammonia stink of urine, verified that monster great whites cruised the island’s rim.
I replied, “Can’t say I’ve been there before. Maybe next visit.”
“After your wedding, perhaps. An interesting honeymoon that would make. A few weeks away, isn’t it?”
In state department/intel circles, there are no personal secrets, only classified obligations.
“Maybe,” I said again. I tapped my wrist. “The COS wants a word before I take off.”
He buzzed me out.
The US Consulate in Cape Town is a geometry of white concrete on acres of landscaped grounds. Tiers of bulletproof windows, three stories high, are dwarfed by the enormity of Table Mountain, a slower geologic cataclysm eight kilometers north.
Across the commons, marines in BDUs were getting in a morning run. Kids with tattoos, jarhead buzz cuts, rocking to a navy cadence call.
Let ’em blow, let ’em blow,
Let those trade winds blow,
From the east, from the west…
Let those nukes, the new kids glow…
A foreboding message cheerfully voiced this spring morning in September, half a globe away from my lab and home at Dinkin’s Bay Marina, west coast Florida.
Building A, through security, up three flights of granite steps. The Chief of Station slid an envelope across her desk, an encrypted IronKey memory drive inside.
After some distancing pleasantries, she said, “Don’t download the files until you’re over international waters. Are you familiar with Black Dolphin Prison on the Kazakhstan border?”
I might have smiled if I didn’t know the place was real. Russia sends its twisted worst to Black Dolphin—terrorists, pedophiles, serial killers, the criminally insane. Cannibals.
“Named for a stone dolphin carved by inmates,” I said. “No prisoner has ever left there alive from what I’ve heard.”
Chief of Station indicated the envelope. “Until two years ago. There was an earthquake, the facility flooded. Guards evacuated and left seven hundred prisoners behind. We don’t know how many drowned, but at least six escaped according to the few villagers they didn’t murder.” Again, a glance at the envelope. “It’s all in there.”
I started to explain, respectfully, that I was a poor choice to send to Russia.
Chief of Station surprised me by agreeing. “Of course. Not at your age, Dr. Ford.” She was bemused. “And your skill set isn’t up to…well. Let me ask you something. This morning, were you aware of the van shadowing you?”
I answered, “Until it missed the curve at Killig Bay. Was anyone hurt?”
Her flat gaze told me the subject was not to be discussed. “Our concern is, they know who you are. Don’t worry, we’ll look into the matter. Besides, you’re getting married in a few weeks, aren’t you?”
Not if a certain agency didn’t stop leveraging me with extradition threats.
I responded, “That’s the plan.”
As I went out the door, she said something about the weather—“Keep an eye on it,” possibly, which I took as a reference to my flight. Or marriage. Or both.
At Wingfield Airbase, a chill breeze was siphoning toward the Sahara—another silent dynamic. At 36,000 feet, I opened the IronKey while our pilots rode the North Equatorial Jetstream across the Atlantic.
I read. I summarized. Four, maybe six of Russia’s most violent criminals had left a blood trail crossing to the Caspian Sea and might have entered the US via Venezuela or Mexico.
Might. But it made sense. Bratva, a Russian criminal brotherhood, and Wagner mercenaries had established crime syndicates in major US cities, including Miami.
Thus the courtesy of briefing me, a biologist whose skill set was doubted, but who could at least pick up a phone and dial for help.
So why bother with the second, unopened folder on my laptop screen?
Why, indeed.
Sixteen hours in the air. I dozed, awoke when the pilot warned of turbulence. Somewhere off Brazil, the plane pitched, banged down hard into thermal clouds that mimicked tentacles. We landed and took off again at sunset. Below revolved a familiar green mosaic of seaward borders. South America. The coastline tracked my past and the passage of time.
To port, a monoxide haze flagged Caracas. The largest tarpon in the Americas had been landed there long before Lake Maracaibo became a swill of petroleum, plastics, and industrial offal.
After that, there were only small pockets of light: jungle villages, fires burning, night islands of humanity linked by darkness, aglow like pearls, bright and solitary from four miles high.
We crossed the flight corridor of Western Cuba, Pinar Del Rio. More solitary lights. Somewhere down there was a farm town, Vinales, a baseball diamond, wooden bleachers, fields where oxen grazed.
I winced away fun memories of villagers and playing ball with barnstorming friends.
Nostalgia is a waste of time. The present is our only tenuous reality. It’s all a rational person has. But there was something grating about the Chief of Station’s smirk regarding my skills and age. And her reference to the impending wedding had the ring of sterile dismissal.
My betrothed—Hannah Summerlin Smith. Captain Hannah to fly-fishing aficionados from Ketchum to Key West. And the mother of our toddler son, Izaak.
In the Everglades, in the middle of nowhere, is a jet port that never got off the ground for environmental reasons. But its ten-thousand-foot runway is still used clandestinely and for commercial touch-and-goes.
Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport is the official name.
They dropped me off in the wee hours of the morning, the air heat-laden, wet, ripe with sulfur. By 4:00 a.m. I was in my new truck, a gray Ford, crossing the Causeway bridges a few miles from the marina and home.
I reminded myself, If you don’t stop lying to Hannah, there won’t be a wedding.
Most of us have a nagging, destructive voice that second-guesses even the best of decisions.
Is that such a bad thing? mine argued.
Excerpted from One Deadly Eye by Randy Wayne White. Copyright © 2024 by Randy Wayne White. Published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
About the Author:
Randy Wayne White is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Doc Ford series. In 2011, White was named a Florida Literary Legend by the Florida Heritage Society. A fishing and nature enthusiast, he has also written extensively for National Geographic Adventure, Men’s Journal, Playboy and Men’s Health. He lives on Sanibel Island, Florida, where he was a light-tackle fishing guide for many years, and spends much of his free time windsurfing, playing baseball, and hanging out at Doc Ford’s Rum Bar & Grille. Sharks Incorporated is his middle grade series, including Fins and Stingers.
Author Website / Facebook / Instagram
Clowders by Vanessa Morgan blitz with giveaway
**This post contains Amazon affiliate links which will allow me as an associate to earn a small commission on any purchase made through the link of the products I share. This commission in no way changes the pricing of any items for the buyer.**
Clowders
Vanessa Morgan
Publication date: March 1st 2018
Genres: Adult, Supernatural, Thriller
Clervaux, Luxembourg. This secluded, picturesque town in the middle of Europe is home to more cats than people. For years, tourists have flocked to this place – also known as “cat haven” – to meet the cats and buy cat-related souvenirs.
When Aidan, Jess and their five-year-old daughter, Eleonore, move from America to Clervaux, it seems as if they’ve arrived in paradise. It soon becomes evident, though, that the inhabitants ’adoration of their cats is unhealthy. According to a local legend, each time a cat dies, nine human lives are taken as a punishment. To tourists, these tales are supernatural folklore, created to frighten children on cold winter nights. But for the inhabitants of Clervaux, the danger is horrifyingly real.
Initially, Aidan and Jess regard this as local superstition, but when Jess runs over a cat after a night on the town, people start dying, one by one, and each time it happens, a clowder of cats can be seen roaming the premises.
Are they falling victim to the collective paranoia infecting the entire town? Or is something unspeakably evil waiting for them?
Their move to Europe may just have been the worst decision they ever made.
Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble
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FREE for a limited time only!
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EXCERPT:
“Who is she?” Eleonore asked when Jess drove her to school Friday morning.
“Who’s who?” Jess countered, not sure what her daughter was talking about.
“The girl. The one who’s always watching us.”
“No one’s watching us,” Jess said.
“Yes, there is. All the girls in my baking class say the same.”
Normally, Jess wouldn’t have put much thought into such a remark – children can say weird things sometimes. But now it seemed Eleonore might be right. Jess felt like there was indeed someone watching them, no matter what they were doing.
She felt it everywhere she went. When she took Eleonore to baking class, when she was lying in bed at night, even in the shops. But not all the time.
Some of the time.
More often than not, everything seemed normal, and then all of a sudden, she felt as if someone was checking up on her. Sometimes it was only briefly, like a minute or so, but at other times, she could feel it for several hours.
Sometimes she could feel it on the streets.
But mostly at home.
And never outside Clervaux.
You’re imagining things, she told herself.
In fact, every day since she’d arrived in Europe, it had gotten worse. More and more, she’d get that tingly feeling, and know that someone behind her was watching her. She’d try to ignore it, tried to resist the urge to look over her shoulder, but eventually the hair on the back of her neck would stand up, and the tingling would turn into a chill, and finally, she’d turn around.
And nobody would be there.
Nobody, except for the cats. The sight of cats waddling along the pavement had never seemed eerie to her, but the fact that they were always there, no matter where she was – on the sidewalk, at the main square, in a café, in the forest – made her skin crawl.
Whenever she was running errands in Clervaux, she kept looking into store windows, but it wasn’t the merchandise she was looking at; it was the reflection in the glass.
The reflection of something sinister watching her.
Sometimes she could have sworn she saw something. The reflection of a small, squatting figure. But then she glanced over her shoulder and all she could see once more were the cats of Clervaux staring back at her.
She decided to not let her imagination get to her, to resist the urge to glance over her shoulder every few seconds.
And then her daughter muttered the words, “Who is she? The girl. The one who’s always watching us,” and the paranoia tightened its grip on her once more.
Author Bio:
Vanessa Morgan is the editor of the movie reference guides When Animals Attack: The 70 Best Horror Movies with Killer Animals, Strange Blood: 71 Essays on Offbeat and Underrated Vampire Movies, and Evil Seeds: The Ultimate Movie Guide to Villainous Children. She also has had one cat book (Avalon) and four supernatural thrillers (Drowned Sorrow, The Strangers Outside, A Good Man, and Clowders) published. Three of her stories have been turned into movies. She has written for myriad Belgian magazines and newspapers and introduces movie screenings at several European film festivals. She is also a programmer for the Offscreen Film Festival in Belgium. When she’s not working on her latest book, you can find her reading, watching movies, eating out, or photographing felines for her blog Traveling Cats.
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Cover Reveal: Dangerous Allure: A Dark Romance Anthology
Dangerous Allure: A Dark Romance Anthology
Cole Denton, Dani René, Eden Bradley, Sara Fields
Published by: GTB Publishing LLC
Publication date: September 10th 2024
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Two’s company. Three’s a dangerously good time.
This deliciously dark collection of stories is flying all the red flags – these men will hunt, stalk, and conquer their prey
And leave them begging for more.
Whether working together to claim their prize, or fighting to be the last man standing, it’s only when you find yourself trapped between them that you realize: there’s no way out.
And maybe…that’s exactly the way you like it.
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The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center #bookreview #contemporary #romance
**This post contains Amazon affiliate links which will allow me as an associate to earn a small commission on any purchase made through the link of the products I share. This commission in no way changes the pricing of any items for the buyer.**
Title: The Rom-Commers
Author: Katherine Center
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: June 11, 2024
Page Count: 325
My rating: 5 stars
About the book:
She’s rewriting his love story. But can she rewrite her own?
Emma Wheeler desperately longs to be a screenwriter. She’s spent her life studying, obsessing over, and writing romantic comedies—good ones! That win contests! But she’s also been the sole caretaker for her kind-hearted dad, who needs full-time care. Now, when she gets a chance to re-write a script for famous screenwriter Charlie Yates—The Charlie Yates! Her personal writing god!—it’s a break too big to pass up.
Emma’s younger sister steps in for caretaking duties, and Emma moves to L.A. for six weeks for the writing gig of a lifetime. But what is it they say? Don’t meet your heroes? Charlie Yates doesn’t want to write with anyone—much less “a failed, nobody screenwriter.” Worse, the romantic comedy he’s written is so terrible it might actually bring on the apocalypse. Plus! He doesn’t even care about the script—it’s just a means to get a different one green-lit. Oh, and he thinks love is an emotional Ponzi scheme.
But Emma’s not going down without a fight. She will stand up for herself, and for rom-coms, and for love itself. She will convince him that love stories matter—even if she has to kiss him senseless to do it. But . . . what if that kiss is accidentally amazing? What if real life turns out to be so much . . . more real than fiction? What if the love story they’re writing breaks all Emma’s rules—and comes true?
The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center is a new contemporary romance novel. The story in The Rom-Commers begins as a grumpy meets sunshine type of enemies to lovers romance but eventually grows into a friends to lovers from the forced proximity between the characters.
Emma Wheeler has always dreamed of becoming a screenwriter full time but life took a turn for Emma years before when she lost her mother and her father was permanently injured with Emma becoming his full time caretaker. Emma’s writing has won awards but as well as she knows her chosen genre of rom-coms writing them full time has continued to be a dream.
That dream may be turning into a reality though with one phone call from Emma’s old friend, Logan. Logan is now the agent for the famous screenwriter Charlie Yates, one of Emma’s long time idols. It seems Charlie needs help diving into the unknown genre for him of rom-coms and Logan thought Emma would be the perfect person who could help Charlie re-write the worst rom-com script that ever existed!
Katherine Center is one of those authors that whenever I pick up a new books for her I am completely certain I’m going to enjoy it and thus far she hasn’t made me wrong yet. From the very first of pages of this new book I was drawn in and knew I was going to enjoy these characters and rooting them along the way. There is of course a roller coaster of emotions over the course of the book but what it all keeps coming back to is the laughter and light that I hope to always find. Definitely an author I recommend checking out!
I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.
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About the author:
BookPage calls Katherine Center “the reigning queen of comfort reads.” She’s the New York Times bestselling author of ten novels, including How to Walk Away, Things You Save in a Fire, The Bodyguard, and her newest, Hello Stranger. Katherine writes laugh-and-cry books about how life knocks us down—and how we get back up. She’s been compared to both Jane Austen and Nora Ephron, and the Dallas Morning News calls her stories, “satisfying in the most soul-nourishing way.” The movie adaptation of her novel The Lost Husband (starring Josh Duhamel) hit #1 on Netflix, and the movie of her novel Happiness for Beginners, starring Ellie Kemper and Luke Grimes, opens July 27 on Netflix. Katherine’s summer 2022 book, The Bodyguard, was an instant New York Times bestseller, a People Best New Books pick, and nominated for Book of the Year by Book of the Month Club. Bestselling author Emily Henry calls The Bodyguard “a shot of pure joy,” and bestselling author Helen Hoang calls it “a perfect feel-good rom-com.” Katherine lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas, with her husband, two kids, and their fluffy-but-fierce dog.
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