#TeaserTuesday: The Third Gambit by @e_ardell @RABTBookTours #Giveaway

 

Order's Last Play, #2

YA Science Fiction

Date Published: 11-02-2021

Publisher: 48Fourteen

Lines about 'prophecy' and 'destiny' are best used in epic fantasies about heroes who like to wear capes. Too bad the living gods rolling the dice in this game forgot to include those characters.

After saving their older brother, Evan, and being forced to leave the lives they knew on Earth, Devon, Lyle, and Lawrence train to become the leaders of Rema—a planet they've never even heard of. And if that isn’t enough, they also have to rebuild a relationship with the brother they haven't seen in over a decade as they struggle to control powers they didn't hone on Earth. All so they can become the prophesied Four of Rema—whose choices will decide the outcome of an intergalactic war.

Separated and sent on quests to find power-magnifying gifts from a goddess, the Lauduethe brothers uncover devastating truths behind the war that lock the existence of everything they love in a deadly game of divine jeopardy. As they watch entire planets and their populations get eradicated, Devon, Lyle, Lawrence, and Evan must choose to either play the roles assigned to them by Order or be erased from existence with everything else.

#BookReview: Don't Tell a Soul Kirsten Miller

Synopsis: A story about a new girl in an old town filled with dark secrets . . . that might just kill her.

People say the house is cursed.
It preys on the weakest, and young women are its favorite victims.
In Louth, they're called the Dead Girls.

All Bram wanted was to disappear—from her old life, her family's past, and from the scandal that continues to haunt her. The only place left to go is Louth, the tiny town on the Hudson River where her uncle, James, has been renovating an old mansion.

But James is haunted by his own ghosts. Months earlier, his beloved wife died in a fire that people say was set by her daughter. The tragedy left James a shell of the man Bram knew—and destroyed half the house he'd so lovingly restored.

The manor is creepy, and so are the locals. The people of Louth don't want outsiders like Bram in their town, and with each passing day she's discovering that the rumors they spread are just as disturbing as the secrets they hide. Most frightening of all are the legends they tell about the Dead Girls. Girls whose lives were cut short in the very house Bram now calls home.

The terrifying reality is that the Dead Girls may have never left the manor. And if Bram looks too hard into the town's haunted past, she might not either. 

#BookReview: The Chrysalis Key by Ektaa Bali

Synopsis: "The Breakfast Club meets Harry Potter but Darker" 

In the summer of 1999 in the unassuming Brisbane town of Breakfast Creek, five teenagers find themselves up against a demonic General of Darkness. 
Henry, Mel, Julia, Hugh and Aiden never expected their detention to result in the execution of their school principal. 
All of a sudden they are on the run from a demonic General with a penchant for collecting children. 
Chrysalis school has slept for 50 years. But now she’s ready to awaken. 
The course of their lives has is going to change forever. 

Five teenagers. Three magical schools. A secret family curse. A tale of epic proportions that you’ll never forget.

#BookBlitz: Become by @hpmueller242 @RABTBookTours #Giveaway

 

Self-Help Journal

Date Published: August 24, 2021

Publisher: Hunter Street Press

Goal setting is not the answer to all life’s complications and hardships. It is a process to define what you want your life to look like, to be. Goal setting allows you to reflect, to be conscious about your choices, and helps prioritize your time and attention. The beauty is you do not have to wait for New Year’s Eve to begin! You can start any day, anywhere, any time. Become is a 24-week inspirational, goal setting, journal, which reminds you of your awesomeness and helps you focus on the good things in your life.

#ReleaseBoost for Founded on Temptation by Kat Singleton @GiveMeBooksPR

Title: Founded on Temptation

Series: Mixtape #2

Author: Kat Singleton

Genre: Contemporary New Adult Romance

Release Date: October 19, 2021

BLURB

This means nothing.

That sentence would become the biggest lie I’ve ever told myself after spending an unforgettable night with Sebastian Compton.

Because he has rules—one night, no strings attached.

It’s easier that way. He travels the world as a bodyguard for his best friend and one of the most famous pop icons alive. I’m merely a glorified coffee-runner, still trying to get noticed by my boss. It would never work between us.

It should have meant nothing.

After all, my best friend schemed to hurt the very man Sebastian was hired to protect—and I knew about it. He shouldn’t want to be near me. We shouldn’t be sneaking around, hiding our feelings from those closest to us.

I shouldn’t want him. He’s arrogant, jealous, and possessive—breaking his rules and my boundaries, claiming me for another night only to leave again.

But now, it means everything.

I never expected more than a single night with him. I didn’t foresee being thrust back together by the product of our lust. It didn’t occur to me that while fighting our feelings, we may have built something worth fighting for.

Most of all, I never thought something so perfect could grow from a relationship that had always been founded on temptation.

#BookReview: Crown of Bones (Amassia #1) by A.K. Wilder

Synopsis: Raise. Your. Phantom.

For fans of epic fantasies and sweeping adventures, this ensemble cast will immerse you in a world of unique magic, breathtaking action and unforgettable characters.

In a world on the brink of the next Great Dying, no amount of training can prepare us for what is to come …

A young heir will raise the most powerful phantom in all of Baiseen.

A dangerous High Savant will do anything to control the nine realms.

A mysterious and deadly Mar race will steal children into the sea.

And a handsome guide with far too many secrets will make me fall in love.

My name is Ash. A lowly scribe meant to observe and record. And yet I think I’m destined to surprise us all.

#BookReview: Lore by Alexandra Bracken

Synopsis: From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Darkest Minds comes a sweepingly ambitious, high-octane tale of power, destiny, love and redemption.

Every seven years, the Agon begins. As punishment for a past rebellion, nine Greek gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals, hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines, all eager to kill a god and seize their divine power and immortality.
Long ago, Lore Perseous fled that brutal world in the wake of her family's sadistic murder by a rival line, turning her back on the hunt's promises of eternal glory. For years she's pushed away any thought of revenge against the man--now a god--responsible for their deaths.

Yet as the next hunt dawns over New York City, two participants seek out her help: Castor, a childhood friend of Lore believed long dead, and a gravely wounded Athena, among the last of the original gods.

The goddess offers an alliance against their mutual enemy and, at last, a way for Lore to leave the Agon behind forever. But Lore's decision to bind her fate to Athena's and rejoin the hunt will come at a deadly cost--and still may not be enough to stop the rise of a new god with the power to bring humanity to its knees.

#BookReview: Stalking Shadows by Cyla Panin

Synopsis: A gothic YA fantasy debut about a young woman striving to break her sister’s curse and stop the killing in her small French town

Seventeen-year-old Marie mixes perfumes to sell on market day in her small eighteenth-century French town. She wants to make enough to save a dowry for her sister, Ama, in hopes of Ama marrying well and Marie living in the level of freedom afforded only to spinster aunts. But her perfumes are more than sweet scents in cheap, cut-glass bottles: A certain few are laced with death. Marie laces the perfume delicately—not with poison but with a hint of honeysuckle she’s trained her sister to respond to. Marie marks her victim, and Ama attacks. But she doesn’t attack as a girl. She kills as a beast.

Marking Ama’s victims controls the damage to keep suspicion at bay. But when a young boy turns up dead one morning, Marie is forced to acknowledge she might be losing control of Ama. And if she can’t control her, she’ll have to cure her. Marie knows the only place she’ll find the cure is in the mansion where Ama was cursed in the first place, home of Lord Sebastien LeClaire. But once she gets into the mansion, she discovers dark secrets hidden away—secrets of the curse, of Lord Sebastien . . . and of herself. 

#BookReview: The Burning Swift (Shadow Skye #3) by @joseph_elliott

Synopsis: Agatha, Jaime, and Sigrid must unite the people of Scotia and beyond as war comes to the Isle of Skye. But will betrayal and secrecy be their undoing? The epic final installment of the Shadow Skye trilogy.

With the deadly phantom sgàilean defeated, Jaime and Agatha prepare to help their clan reclaim their compound from the treacherous Raasay people. But Sigrid, sent at the behest of Queen Beatrice, arrives with a warning: the kings of Norveg and Ingland have joined forces and plan to march north to annihilate the people of Scotia. The clan quickly turns to the Badhbh and his powerful blood magic. But instead of aiding them, the mage kidnaps Agatha, seemingly as an offering to the kings. Now Sigrid and Jaime must rally unlikely allies to face a common enemy, even as Jaime finds himself drawn to a boy from another clan. Meanwhile, Agatha garners unexpected support among the Inglish as well as from an animal of Scotian legend, and discovers the extraordinary secrets of her past. Three remarkable heroes unite for the grand conclusion of this rich and exciting series.

This title will be released on January 4, 2022.

#BookReview: The Broken Raven (Shadow Skye #2) by Joseph Elliott

Synopsis: In the heart-pounding second book in the Shadow Skye trilogy, unlikely heroes Agatha and Jaime must fight for their clan’s home when a new danger comes to the Isle of Skye.

After their escape from Norveg, Agatha and Jaime return with their clan to the Isle of Skye to find that their enclave is now in the hands of the treacherous people of Raasay. They find tenuous shelter with another clan, but disaster soon strikes when the terrifying shadow creatures known as sgàilean escape their magical prison and wreak havoc across the island. Now Agatha and Jaime must call on old and new allies to fight this threat. In the meantime, a ship from Norveg sails for the court of King Edmund of Ingland, where a dangerous alliance is forming, and Sigrid, a girl with an extraordinary memory, works to free herself from the clutches of a cruel king. All three protagonists must summon their particular powers to save the island from the horde of dark creatures and foil the plans of two vengeful monarchs.

Kirkus Reviews called The Good Hawk “a page-turning adventure” and Agatha an “original protagonist.” This second book in the Shadow Skye trilogy continues to expand the definition of hero as its neurodiverse heroine tackles ever greater challenges in a thrilling middle act to the battle over the fate of Scotia.

#BookReview: The Other Me by Sarah Zachrich Jeng

Synopsis: Two lives. The one you wanted. The one that wanted you.

Her birthday should be like any other night.

One minute Kelly’s a free-spirited artist in Chicago going to her best friend’s art show. The next, she opens a door and mysteriously emerges in her Michigan hometown. Suddenly her life is unrecognizable: She's got twelve years of the wrong memories in her head and she's married to Eric, a man she barely knew in high school.

Racing to get back to her old life, Kelly's search leads only to more questions. In this life, she loves Eric and wants to trust him, but everything she discovers about him—including a connection to a mysterious tech startup—tells her she shouldn't. And strange things keep happening. The tattoos she had when she was an artist briefly reappear on her skin, she remembers fights with Eric that he says never happened, and her relationships with loved ones both new and familiar seem to change without warning.

But the closer Kelly gets to putting the pieces together, the more her reality seems to shift. And if she can't figure out what happened on her birthday, the next change could cost her everything...

#BookReview: The Good Hawk (Shadow Skye #1) by Joseph Elliott

Synopsis: In a mythic Scotland, two unlikely heroes must make a dangerous journey to save their people.

Agatha is a Hawk, brave and fierce, who protects her people by patrolling the high walls of their island home. She is proud of her job, though some in her clan whisper that it is meant to keep her out of the way because of the condition she was born with. Jaime, thoughtful and anxious, is an Angler, but he hates the sea. Worse, he’s been chosen for a duty that the clan hasn’t required for generations: to marry. The elders won’t say why they have promised him to a girl in a neighboring clan, but there are rumors of approaching danger. When disaster strikes and the clan is kidnapped, it is up to Agatha and Jaime to travel across the haunted mainland of Scotia to Norveg, with help along the way from a clan of nomadic Highland bull riders and the many animals who are drawn to Agatha’s extraordinary gift of communication.

#BookReview: Gilded Serpent (Dark Shores #3) by @dljensen_

Synopsis: From bestselling author Danielle L. Jensen comes a thrilling new novel in the Dark Shores world, a series that Sarah J. Maas called "everything I look for in a fantasy novel."

THEIR BATTLES ENDED IN VICTORY

Lydia returns to Mudaire to enter training at the healing temple. But instead of fighting to save lives, she’s convinced she is doing more harm than good. She delves into the history of the gods only to discover a truth that will change her life forever.

His birthright as commander of the Royal Army is finally in his grasp, but Killian feels anything but victorious. Burdened by his past, he embraces the darker side of his mark—and in doing so, risks starting a war.

BUT THE WAR HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN

Having defeated the tyrant Urcon, Marcus struggles to form a lasting alliance with the Arinoquians. But he is plagued by the knowledge that there is a traitor among his friends, and it could cost him everything that he’s fought for.

Torn between her growing allegiance to the Thirty-Seventh legion and her need to liberate her people, Teriana finds herself mired in a web of secrets. She embarks upon a path that will either save everyone she loves—or put them all in their graves.

#BookTour: Hearts Set Free by Jess Lederman @RABTBookTours #Giveaway

Inspirational Literary/Historical Fiction

Date Published: March, 2019

Publisher: Azure Star, LLC

 

Seven Lives Inexorably Intertwined. Over Eighty-Six Years. That Will Bring a Revelation Beyond What Any of Them Could Imagine.

An award-winning work of Christian-themed literary fiction

 

The Alaska Territory, 1925. When Yura Noongwook’s husband abandons her and her thirteen-year-old son, she vows to win him back and destroy the woman who stole his heart. They embark on an epic cross-country quest that leads them to the Nevada desert, where they meet a man who has turned into the last thing anyone expected him to become …

 

David Gold. Reno, 1930. A Bible-school dropout known as the Pummelin’ Preacher. His boxing career is fading, just like his faith. But then a former call girl shows up, tells him about the rag-tag congregation she’s part of; how their pastor was murdered. And that the Spirit is moving and David’s destiny is to lead their tiny flock.

 

Las Vegas, 2011. Cable TV star Tim Faber is an atheist bent on proving God is only alive in people’s imaginations. But Joan Reed, his producer, is trying to recapture the faith of her youth. And both of them are driven to unravel a mystery surrounding the Big Bang theory, never dreaming the answer will forever change their lives.

To do that, they have to meet with the now 99-year-old Luke Noongwook and David Gold’s grandson, Daniel.

The veil is being pulled back, but none of them are prepared for what they’ll find on the other side.

#BookReview: This Is Not a Ghost Story by @andrea_portes

Synopsis: I am not welcome. Somehow I know that. Something doesn’t want me here.

Daffodil Franklin has plans for a quiet summer before her freshman year at college, and luckily, she’s found the job that can give her just that: housesitting a mansion for a wealthy couple.

But as the summer progresses and shadows lengthen, Daffodil comes to realize the house is more than it appears. The spacious home seems to close in on her, and as she takes the long road into town, she feels eyes on her the entire way, and something tugging her back.

What Daffodil doesn’t yet realize is that her job comes with a steep price. The house has a long-ago grudge it needs to settle . . . and Daffodil is the key to settling it.

#BookReview: Soulswift by Megan Bannen

Synopsis: Gelya is a Vessel, a girl who channels the word of the One True God through song. Cloistered with the other Vessels of her faith, she believes—as all Ovinists do—that a saint imprisoned Elath the Great Demon centuries ago, saving humanity from earthly temptation.

When Gelya stumbles into a deadly cover-up by the Ovinists’ military, she reluctantly teams up with Tavik, an enemy soldier, to survive. Tavik believes that Elath is actually a mother goddess who must be set free, but while he succeeds in opening Her prison, he inadvertently turns Gelya into Elath’s unwilling human vessel.

Now the church that raised Gelya considers her a threat. In a race against the clock, she and Tavik must find a way to exorcise Elath’s presence from her body. But will this release stop the countdown to the end of the world, or will it be the cause of the earth’s destruction? And as Tavik and Gelya grow closer, another question lingers between them: What will become of Gelya?

A dark, epic fantasy about a girl who must reevaluate everything she believes after she is betrayed and hunted by the religion that raised her—from Megan Bannen, author of The Bird and the Blade. Perfect for fans of The Winner’s Curse and The Girl of Fire and Thorns.

#BookTour: Primeval Waters by William Burke @RABTBookTour #Giveaway

Horror

Date Published: 08-04-2021

Publisher: Severed Press

Planetary geologist Dr. Micah Clarke, his nine-year-old daughter Faye and his assistant Catalina Abril are abducted at gunpoint; forced to join a megalomaniac’s paramilitary expedition down an Amazon tributary ruled by murderous pirates and cannibal tribes. The goal—recover a meteorite capable of providing clean energy for the world. But prehistoric terrors lurk around every bend in the river. Swarms of six-inch titan ants and a seventy-foot Titanoboa tear a bloody swath through the flotilla. Micah is convinced that some unknown intelligence is manifesting these primeval horrors to protect the meteorite’s secrets. To defend his daughter, Micah must battle monsters, pirates and cannibals, all leading to his ultimate confrontation with an ancient force possessing the power of creation, or total destruction… and the doomsday clock is chiming midnight.

#Interview with Evelyn Rainey author of Caleb's Crop

Synopsis: Giles thinks his big brother Caleb can do anything. He knows how to say just the right things to make their mother smile. He knows how to milk cows and build chicken coops. Most importantly, Caleb knows how to read, and taught Giles how to read, too. Now Giles and Caleb have immigrated with their mother to a farming planet where no one else knows how to read!

#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: Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan #ReleaseDay!

Synopsis: From Patti Callahan, the bestselling author of Becoming Mrs. Lewis, comes another enchanting story that pulls back the curtain on the early life of C. S. Lewis.

“Where did Narnia come from?” 

The answer will change everything. 

Megs Devonshire is brilliant with numbers and equations, on a scholarship at Oxford, and dreams of solving the greatest mysteries of physics.

She prefers the dependability of facts—except for one: the younger brother she loves with all her heart doesn’t have long to live. When George becomes captivated by a copy of a brand-new book called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and begs her to find out where Narnia came from, there’s no way she can refuse.

Despite her timidity about approaching the famous author, Megs soon finds herself taking tea with the Oxford don and his own brother, imploring them for answers. What she receives instead are more stories . . . stories of Jack Lewis’s life, which she takes home to George.

Why won’t Mr. Lewis just tell her plainly what George wants to know? The answer will reveal to Meg many truths that science and math cannot, and the gift she thought she was giving to her brother—the story behind Narnia—turns out to be his gift to her, instead: hope.