#BookReview: A Storm of Infinite Beauty by @JulianneMacLean @AmazonPub

Synopsis: From the bestselling author of Beyond the Moonlit Sea comes an atmospheric tale of how one woman’s search for the truth uncovers long-hidden secrets and rocks the very foundation of her world.

Scarlett Fontaine is a true Hollywood legend—a singer, actress, and beloved fashion icon. But Scarlett dies tragically at just thirty-six years old, leaving behind no children. Or so the story goes…

Gwen Hollingsworth is the curator at a museum dedicated to Scarlett’s life. She’s also sole heir to Scarlett’s fortune as a descendant of the star. But all is not well in Gwen’s world. She’s dealing with a messy marital separation and is struggling to move forward. So when Peter Miller, a biographer and photojournalist, comes to the museum with shocking claims about Scarlett—a life of exile in Alaska, a baby born in secret—Gwen’s whole world is turned upside down.Again.

Determined to uncover the truth, Gwen and Peter set out for Alaska together but soon find themselves on a path toward something far deeper and more meaningful than either of them ever expected.

A Storm of Infinite Beauty takes readers on a breathtaking journey from a lush vineyard in Nova Scotia to a rustic lodge in Alaska where old family secrets are revealed and the quest for true happiness begins.

#ReleaseBlitz for Ignite My Heart by @KatBaxter9 and @GiveMeBooksPR

Title: Ignite My Heart

Series: Saddle Creek TX: The Whitmores #2

Author: Kat Baxter

Genre: Steamy Romantic Comedy

Tropes: Enemies to Lovers/Reverse Grumpy Sunshine

Release Date: October 23, 2023

BLURB

Garrett

When Felicity Greer moves back to town, I have one plan: woo her, win her, wed her. It sounds simple enough, but she’s not making it easy. For one, she keeps going out with other guys. Men, I know she has zero interest in. Thankfully we live in a small town and news travels fast, so I’m able to find her before the date goes too far. Yes, you could call it stalking, but I’m just staking my claim. Because this woman has been mine for years, it’s just time for her to recognize it.

Felicity

Garrett Whitmore was the bane of my existence, long before he made it his life’s mission to ruin my dating life. For a while there in high school, he was my friend and my secret crush. Then he started dating my best friend and I found out that he’d only been using me to get to her. Yeah, he’s too nice a guy to ever say it to my face, but it still hurt finding out I was just the Designated Ugly Fat Friend. I fell for his easy charm once before. I don’t know what he’s playing at, but there’s no way I’m making the same mistake twice ...

#ChapterReveal for The Deal with the Playboy by J.M. Stoneback @GiveMeBooksPR

Title: The Deal with the Playboy

Series: A New York Night #3

Author: J.M. Stoneback

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Tropes: Marriage of Convenience/Billionaire

Release Date: November 20, 2023

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Guess who gets cut off from her family's inheritance because she decided to dump her cheating ex?

Me.

Which led me to be on the lookout for a fake fiancé who is filthy rich so he can impress my mother.

Luckily for me, I attended an exclusive masquerade ball hosted by the infamous American Billionaire Club and landed hot-as-sin billionaire mogul Jasper Barrett.

He buys me as his date for the night and offers me a deal I can’t refuse.

Be his wife in order for him to inherit his uncle’s business.

But he has two rules for our marriage of convenience to work:

Look pretty on his arm.

Play the happy wife in public.

We both get to use each other—sounds easy, right?

But every kiss sends a shiver down my spine, and every touch ignites passion inside of me.

We should stop this before I fall in love.

The only problem is… I can’t stop, no matter how hard I try.

My heart is on the line, and I’m afraid he’ll smash it into pieces.

This book is a complete STANDALONE and part of The New York Night Series. Every book in the series will be different characters in the same world.

#PreorderBlitz for Daring Enough by Kelly Elliott @GiveMeBooksPR

Title: Daring Enough

Series: Love in Montana #4

Author: Kelly Elliott

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Tropes: Friends to Lovers/Small Town/Sports Romance

Release Date: November 21, 2023

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Rose Shaw has no idea what she wants. She put aside passion for practicality, earning her degree in a subject she likes, but doesn’t love. Same for her job as a junior architect. And don’t even get started on her personal life…been there, done that, got betrayed for her effort. So when sparks fly after meeting a renowned MLB player while on vacation, she takes him for what he is—a homerun in the sack, but nothing more. The next day, she sneaks back to Montana, leaving Bryson behind…but the memories of their night together refuse to disappear so easily.

Bryson Robinson knows exactly what he wants. His parents are a love-at-first-sight success story, so he recognizes what he felt with Rose Shaw during their night together could be the real deal. She has no interest in long-distance dating…so when the league’s best pitcher gets devastating news that could be the third strike for his career, he turns it into a win, going all in to get the girl. Starting with a home in Montana—and hiring Rose to design it.

Now he just has to convince her that not all men, including MLB superstars, are players…if she’s daring enough to take the risk.

#ReleaseBlitz for The Craving by Karen Deen @GiveMeBooksPR

Title: The Craving

Author: Karen Deen

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Tropes: Enemies to Lovers/Age Gap/Workplace Romance

Release Date: October 22, 2023

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My new client’s a nightmare.

Older, arrogant, and totally off limits.

Until one passionate night when he wasn’t…

His touch left me craving,

the one man I know I can’t have.

Nicholas Darby.

He’s successful, rich, and the most sought-after bachelor in London.

I’m sure the universe has put him in my life just to tantalize me,

because there is no way I would choose to want such a jerk.

I would walk away tomorrow if I didn’t need this job.

Fighting with him is sizzling foreplay.

Chemistry that can’t be ignored, and believe me, we try.

If we can’t get this fire that’s burning between us under control,

then we’ll both be walking away aching

for the one thing we both fear the most… love.

#CoverReveal: The Curse of Morgana by Mystee Ryann @XpressoTours

 

The Curse of Morgana
Mystee Ryann
(Homeschool Heroes Series, #2)
Publication date: November 11th 2023
Genres: Fantasy, Middle-Grade

Mia, Tom, and Lily have returned to their world after discovering the magical world of Willowwood. However, after their encounter with Morgana, strange things begin to happen in their hometown, including crop failures and strange weather patterns. The trio soon realizes that Morgana has cast a curse over their town and they must return to the magical world to stop her once and for all.

Pre-order

#BookReview: Let Us Descend by @jesmimi @ScribnerBooks @BloomsburyPub

Synopsis: From Jesmyn Ward—the two-time National Book Award winner, youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for Fiction, and MacArthur Fellow—comes a haunting masterpiece, sure to be an instant classic, about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.

“‘Let us descend,’ the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’” — Inferno, Dante Alighieri

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.

Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.

From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages.

This title will be released on October 24, 2023.

#BookReview: The Search for Us by @susanazimboyer @WednesdayBooks

Synopsis: “A sharp-witted and illuminating, impressive sophomore novel.” - Isaac Blum, author of the award-nominated The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen

Two half-siblings who have never met embark on a search together for the Iranian immigrant and U.S. Army veteran father they never knew.

Samira Murphy will do anything to keep her fractured family from falling apart, including caring for her widowed grandmother and getting her older brother into recovery for alcohol addiction. With attendance at her dream college on the line, she takes a long shot DNA test to find the support she so desperately needs from a father she hasn’t seen since she was a baby.

Henry Owen is torn between his well-meaning but unreliable bio-mom and his overly strict aunt and uncle, who stepped in to raise him but don’t seem to see him for who he is. Looking to forge a stronger connection to his own identity, he takes a DNA test to find the one person who might love him for exactly who he is―the biological father he never knew.

Instead of a DNA match with their father, Samira and Henry are matched with each other. They begin to search for their father together and slowly unravel the difficult truth of their shared past, forming a connection that only siblings can have and recovering precious parts of their past that have been lost. Brimming with emotional resonance, Susan Azim Boyer's The Search for Us beautifully renders what it means to find your place in the world through the deep and abiding power of family.

This title will be released on October 24, 2023.

#ReleaseBlitz: Vicar Brekonridge by Richard Helms @RABTBookTours #Giveaway

 Historical Mystery

Date Published: 10-23-2023

Publisher: Level Best Books' Historia Imprint

 

A historical mystery based on Helms' Derringer Award-nominated EQMM short story "The Cripplegate Apprehension". 

 In 1843 London, a Scottish woodturner named Daniel M'Naghten gunned down Edward Drummond, the private secretary to Prime Minister Robert Peel, while Drummond strolled the streets of Whitehall. M'Naghten believed he shot the Prime Minister and, after being informed otherwise and making a brief statement at his arraignment, he never spoke in public about the crime again. M'Naghten was represented at trial by firebrand Queen's Counsel Alexander Cockburn, who intended to plead insanity and rewrite four hundred years of English Common Law in the process. In this fictional retelling of the famous historical event, Cockburn recruits legendary London thief-taker Vicar Brekonridge to travel to Glasgow, M'Naghten's home, and find witnesses who can bolster the insanity defense. What Brekonridge finds instead suggests that M'Naghten was part of a frightening conspiracy to bring down the British government. 

#ReleaseBlitz for Ignite My Heart by @KatBaxter9 and @GiveMeBooksPR

Title: Ignite My Heart

Series: Saddle Creek TX: The Whitmores #2

Author: Kat Baxter

Genre: Steamy Romantic Comedy

Tropes: Enemies to Lovers/Reverse Grumpy Sunshine

Release Date: October 20, 2023

BLURB

Garrett

When Felicity Greer moves back to town, I have one plan: woo her, win her, wed her. It sounds simple enough, but she’s not making it easy. For one, she keeps going out with other guys. Men, I know she has zero interest in. Thankfully we live in a small town and news travels fast, so I’m able to find her before the date goes too far. Yes, you could call it stalking, but I’m just staking my claim. Because this woman has been mine for years, it’s just time for her to recognize it.

Felicity

Garrett Whitmore was the bane of my existence, long before he made it his life’s mission to ruin my dating life. For a while there in high school, he was my friend and my secret crush. Then he started dating my best friend and I found out that he’d only been using me to get to her. Yeah, he’s too nice a guy to ever say it to my face, but it still hurt finding out I was just the Designated Ugly Fat Friend. I fell for his easy charm once before. I don’t know what he’s playing at, but there’s no way I’m making the same mistake twice ...

#BookReview: Salt Kiss (Lyonesse #1) by Sierra Simone

Synopsis: Tristan Thomas is lost. After leaving the Army, the young former soldier is in limbo. Until, that is, he’s hired by Mark Trevena, the owner of Lyonesse—DC’s ultra-secret club—to be Mark’s new bodyguard. He’s drawn into Mark’s dark, seductive world of power and desire, and slowly drawn to Mark himself, even though Mark is everything Tristan knows he shouldn’t want: cruel and wicked and shamelessly amoral.

But protecting Mark isn’t Tristan’s only duty: soon, Mark asks him to guard his soon-to-be bride as she travels home from Ireland on Mark’s yacht. Tristan is jealous—and hurt to learn that the object of his obsession is engaged—but the soldier in him is made to obey orders, and he goes to fetch Mark’s bride for him.

Isolde Laurence is nothing like Tristan expected, however. Young, quiet, and sharp, she’s being pushed into this marriage by her family, and as the two travel back to America, Tristan finds himself fascinated with Isolde and the glimpses he gets of the lonely but determined woman behind her reserve. And the fascination is mutual: one night, while sailing under the cold stars, they share a searing kiss.

From there, it’s a fast fall into the forbidden. But in Mark Trevena’s world, the fall is only the beginning…

The Lyonesse trilogy is a queer, kinky contemporary retelling of the legend of Tristan and Isolde, set in the same world as the New Camelot series. Readers will not have to read New Camelot to enjoy Lyonesse, although readers who enjoyed New Camelot will find all the things they loved about the trilogy here: MMF ménage, plenty of the angsty forbidden, and a sweeping retelling of a familiar story.