#BookReview: The Walls of Orion (The Walls of Orion #1) by T.D. Fox

Synopsis: Orion City has been on lockdown for ten years. Courtney Spencer, a disillusioned barista doomed to live a “normal” life in a quarantined fishbowl, is certain she’ll never see over the Wall again.
Until one rainy evening, Courtney unintentionally befriends W, an eccentric customer who leaves a switchblade in the tip jar. The unexpected acquaintance soon opens the door to a frightening string of questions that flips everything she knows upside down. Stumbling into a world of secrets, lies, and disturbing truths, Courtney grapples with a burning temptation to look again at the Wall. Surrounded by citizens trained to ignore its looming shadow, she no longer can.
Intrigued and terrified to expand her world, Courtney finds herself toeing a knife’s edge between the law and justice, learning quickly that the two are not always compatible.
She wants to cling to her morals. She also wants to stay alive. But most of all, she wants to see a certain customer again, despite everything in her whispering W is dangerous. 
In a gritty urban clash of hope and fear, passion and survival, The Walls of Orion explores the edges of light, dark, and the gray in between.

#BookReview: Angel Flight by @rdkardonauthor @PublishingAcorn

Synopsis: Two women. The men they love. One desperate plan.

Pilot Tris Miles is finally getting the recognition she deserves. She is a trusted captain and confidante to her boss at Westin Charter Company, and mentor to her young, ambitious co-pilot Bruce. Tris is offered a coveted promotion and the opportunity of a lifetime—to fly a prestigious “angel flight,” transporting a critically ill woman from a remote town in northern Canada to the US for medical treatment.

But Tris needs more than professional success. Still alone almost three years after her lover Bron’s death, Tris meets Mike, a local pilot with a secret past he refuses to discuss. Their budding relationship stumbles when Mike gets hired by Westin Charter to compete for the promotion Tris was promised. 

As Tris & Mike’s professional battle intensifies, their personal relationship deepens. Life is getting a whole lot more complicated for Tris, and it’s about to get worse as the angel flight embarks. No one could imagine what awaits them in Canada, and how each will have to fight for their lives on this mission of mercy.

#CoverReveal: Chokecherry Girl by Barbara Meyer Link @PublishingAcorn @RABTBookTours

Young Adult, Coming of Age, Multi-Cultural Fiction

Date Published: 2/16/21

Publisher Acorn Publishing

It’s 1958. Racial tension and class disparities have everyone on edge in a small Montana town. Despite their differences, three women of the community become the unlikeliest of friends.

BOBBI VERNON is a quirky teen, who will do whatever it takes to drive her teacher’s new Chevy convertible. Adding to the already volatile mix, she meets Pretty Weasel, an Indian basketball player, who calls her Chokecherry Girl. She dreams of dating him and wearing his class ring.

PATSY OLSON, after two failed marriages, is desperate to get her life back. After opening a beauty shop with a shaky bank loan, she watches Coach Vernon, Bobbi’s father, arriving for school each day. Attracted yet wary, she needs the business of the town ladies, including the Coach’s wife, Lois.

MARY AGNES LONE HILL, an alcoholic Crow Indian who was sent far away to a brutal Indian school as a child, now cleans houses for the town ladies and longs to end her estrangement with her son, Pretty Weasel.

These three women are drawn together through an illicit love affair, a stolen car, and a shooting that changes their lives forever.

#BookReview: Taking Time: a Tale of Physics, Lust and Greed by @BooksMurphey @PublishingAcorn

Synopsis: The year is 2044. Housed in a secret complex beneath the eastern Arizona desert, a consortium of governments and corporations have undertaken a program on the scale of the Manhattan Project to bludgeon the laws of physics into submission and make time travel a reality. Fraught with insecurities, Marshall Grissom has spent his whole life trying not to call attention to himself, so he can’t imagine he would be remotely suited for the role of time travel pioneer. He’s even less enthusiastic about this corporate time-travel adventure when he learns that nudity is a job requirement. The task would better match the talents of candidates like the smart and beautiful Sheila Schuler, or the bristle-tough and rattlesnake-mean Marta Hamilton. As the project evolves into a clash between science and corporate greed, conflicts escalate. Those contributing the funding are mostly interested in manipulating time travel for profit, and will stop at nothing, including murder, to achieve their goals. 

#BookTour: First Second Coming by Jeff Pollak @PublishingAcorn @RABTBookTours

Book One In The New God Series

Supernatural Suspense, Romantic Suspense

Date Published: August 1

Publisher: Acorn Publishing

In 2027 the deity known as NTG – short for New Testament God – retires after more than two thousand years of minding the store for his employer, Milky Way Galaxy, Inc. The new god, a planetary turnaround specialist, must decide whether Earth’s dominant species should or should not be included in his plan to bring the planet back into full compliance with Milky Way Galaxy, Inc.’s planetary operation standards.

Earth’s new God introduces himself to humanity by unexpectedly appearing on the Ram Forrester Hour talk show. Ram, an atheist, and co-host Brendali Santamaria, a devout Catholic, are stunned. God's interview, beamed worldwide, shocks and infuriates viewers. They learn that a sixty-day conference will take place in Los Angeles to determine whether humans are capable of helping him implement his planetary turnaround plan. All mankind must do to earn a coveted spot in this God’s good graces is eliminate religious violence forever, without his heavenly help. Failure means extinction.

God designates Ram and Bren as the conference’s only authorized media reporters. This assignment, fraught with peril, ignites their romance. Not only must the harried couple attend the conference meetings by day and do their show at night, they must also outwit a fanatical religious group bent on killing them. When rising conflicts within the conference intensify, it’s up to Ram and Bren to do whatever it takes to protect their budding romance and mankind’s very survival.

#BookReview: The Diseased Ones (The Hollis Timewire Series, #1) by Danielle Harrington

Synopsis: Life is easy in 2647, unless you're a Diseased One...

On the morning of her 16th birthday, Hollis Timewire receives the worst possible news. She can't become a citizen of the world. She's a Diseased One.

Born with a biomarker that bestows dangerous, brain-altering powers, Hollis is forced to hide underground with other Diseased Ones, who believe that the government falsified history to cover up their genocide.

Now Hollis must discover the truth, and is willing to risk anything, including her powers, to go back home. 

#BookTour: The Wingless Angel by Fabrice Wilfong @RABTBookTours

Dark Fantasy

Date Published: 2/22/20

Publisher: Acorn Publishing

The Wingless Angel

Ex-Army Medic, Silton, has had a rough go of late. Soon after being discharged from the military his wife suffered a tragic accident, then slipped into a coma and died. Now alone, drinking fills his days, and restless sleep plagues his nights.

He feels that God is finished with him, that he has no purpose in life, so he ends it all.

He falls. Naked and confused, he falls.

Silton awakens on a taught expanse of warm Skin Land. Acrid air stings his lungs, tiny hairs jut up like grass under his feet, and the pale blue eye of Heaven stares down on him.

In the distance he hears a scream, and as he bounds towards it, finds a fetid swamp of others who have fallen, sinking into the soupy flesh. Quick to his training Silton pulls a woman out of the mess, only to find her legs ravaged with breaks. Using his medical skills and the flesh around him, he binds her injuries, easing her pain.

Far off in the distance, on their huge moving home called the Sled, a group of demons set off on a journey out into the Skin Land to harvest those lucky enough to survive the fall. Those like Silton.

Silton drags his newfound friend to a distant shelter of bone as they share the reflections of life that have brought them here. With each step the mystery of this place unfolds revealing its true beauty, and its terrifying reality.

As the demons draw near, and the pale blue eye of Heaven watches above, it becomes clear that God is not finished with Silton. God has a new purpose for him, a purpose for him in Hell.

#BookReview: Queen of Chaos (The Fourth Element #3) by @katrossauthor

Synopsis: Persepolae has fallen.

Karnopolis has burned.

As the dark forces of the Undead sweep across what remains of the empire, Nazafareen must obey the summons of a demon queen to save Darius's father, Victor. Burdened with a power she doesn't understand and can barely control, Nazafareen embarks on a perilous journey through the shadowlands to the House-Behind-the-Veil. But what awaits her there is worse than she ever imagined…

A thousand leagues away, Tijah leads a group of children on a desperate mission to rescue the prisoners at Gorgon-e Gaz, the stronghold where the oldest daēvas are kept. To get there, they must cross the Great Salt Plain, a parched ruin occupied by the armies of the night. A chance encounter adds a ghost from the past to their number. But will they arrive in time to avert a massacre?

And in the House-Behind-the-Veil, Balthazar and the Prophet Zarathustra discover that they have more in common than meets the eye. But is it enough to redeem the necromancer's bloodstained soul and thwart his mistress's plans?

As a final showdown looms with Queen Neblis, the truth of the daēvas' origins is revealed and three worlds collide in this thrilling conclusion to the Fourth Element series.

#BookReview: Blood of the Prophet (The Fourth Element #2) by @katrossauthor

Synopsis: Visionary. Alchemist. Savior. Saint.

The Prophet Zarathustra has been called many things. Now he spends his time drawing pictures of weird-looking goats. That's what happens when you've been stuck in a prison cell for two hundred years. But the man who might be mad, and is definitely supposed to be dead, has suddenly become very valuable again…

It's only been a few weeks since Nazafareen escaped the King's dungeons with her daēva, Darius. She hoped never to set foot in the empire again, but the search for the Prophet has led them to the ancient city of Karnopolis. They have to find him before Alexander of Macydon burns Persepolae, and Darius's mother with it. But they're not the only ones looking.

The necromancer Balthazar has his own plans for the Prophet, and so does the sinister spymaster of the Numerators. As Nazafareen is drawn in to a dangerous game of cat and mouse, her newfound powers take a decidedly dark turn. Only the Prophet understands the secret of her gift, but the price of that knowledge may turn out to be more than Nazafareen is willing to pay… 

#BookReview: The Midnight Sea (The Fourth Element #1) by @katrossauthor @PublishingAcorn

Synopsis: They are the light against the darkness. 

The steel against the necromancy of the Druj. 

And they use demons to hunt demons…. 

Nazafareen lives for revenge. A girl of the isolated Four-Legs Clan, all she knows about the King's elite Water Dogs is that they bind wicked creatures called daevas to protect the empire from the Undead. But when scouts arrive to recruit young people with the gift, she leaps at the chance to join their ranks. To hunt the monsters that killed her sister. 

Scarred by grief, she's willing to pay any price, even if it requires linking with a daeva named Darius. Human in body, he's possessed of a terrifying power, one that Nazafareen controls. But the golden cuffs that join them have an unwanted side effect. Each experiences the other's emotions, and human and daeva start to grow dangerously close. 

As they pursue a deadly foe across the arid waste of the Great Salt Plain to the glittering capital of Persepolae, unearthing the secrets of Darius's past along the way, Nazafareen is forced to question his slavery—and her own loyalty to the empire. But with an ancient evil stirring in the north, and a young conqueror sweeping in from the west, the fate of an entire civilization may be at stake… 

#BookReview: The Winner's Circle (Faith! Family! Frenzy!) by PJ Colando

Synopsis: FAITH… FAMILY… FRENZY! 

Life in rural small town can dull the senses. 

A trio of gal pals—mired in middle age, Middle America, and other people’s problems—long to escape. 

When Bonnie wins the Boffo Lotto, her circle of friends urge her to lawyer up, invest, and sequester herself. 

But secrets are inconceivable in small towns, so Bonnie and Carl invite close friends to witness their Vegas wedding and honeymoon in Hawaii with endless vagabond beyond. 

The sky’s the limit! 

The allure of travel is fun for a while—hilarious, in fact. But when the husbands are jailed, wanderlust is no longer a romp and things get complicated when you’re halfway 'round the world, untethered from all you know and love. 

Life has its consequences… and there’s no place like home.