#BookBlitz: A Bite at the Cherry by @stradling_rita @XpressoTours #Giveaway

A Bite at the Cherry
Rita Stradling
(Bite Me, #1)
Publication date: July 1st 2019
Genres: Fantasy, New Adult
Three things about Justin Roberts:
1. He’s a bully.
2. Our relationship is toxic.
3. He’s the only one who knows my secret. 
A year ago, I woke in the morgue with a note in my hand telling me that I’m a vampire. I need blood or I’ll start killing people. Lucky for me, Justin has been sneaking into my bedroom and feeding me blood for a year, and the only price I have to pay for it is putting up with his cruel snipes and my unwanted feelings for him.
I just can’t figure out why he keeps coming back.
But all that changes when I’m offered a full-ride scholarship to Justin’s mysterious school, the elite Blackburn Academy, where I might finally learn about vampires. About myself. All I have to do is pass the grueling entrance trials, and the scholarship will be mine. Problem is, Justin doesn’t want me anywhere near his elite school and rich friends. He’s vowed to sabotage me.
Justin may have been feeding me blood for a year, but he doesn’t know who he’s up against.
But, Blackburn Academy is more than it seems. I’ll be facing more than what Justin Roberts alone can dish out.
Will competing in the trials be the new beginning I’m hoping for, or will it end my undead existence?
This is a full length 80,000 word novel. Recommended for 16+.

#BookBlitz: The Chocolate Shop by J. J. Spring @RABTBookTours

Women's Fiction

Date Published: June 2019

Publisher: Riverpoint Press

Laura Beckman’s comfortable suburban life would be perfect but for her daughter. Four years earlier, Brooke abandoned her husband and her own young daughter to run off with a musician. Now back home with her tail between her legs, Brooke’s self-loathing boils over in the face of her mother’s unrelenting condemnation.

Laura’s world is turned upside down after witnessing the long, painful death of her husband. In the search for a better version of herself, she creates the Chocolate Shop which grants terminally ill patients one last wish (e.g returning to the Rockette stage, having sex one last time, even skydiving). Laura then lovingly helps her clients slip away to a peaceful death. Laura must dodge the police who suspect she's committing second-degree murder, and an ex-wife of a client consumed with collecting on an insurance policy. Her relationship with her daughter flips as Brooke becomes the one doing the condemning: “I may have made many mistakes in my life but there’s one thing I can say. I never murdered anybody.”

As Laura comes to grips with the ethical, moral, and legal dimensions of what she's doing, she worries that her strained relationship with her daughter will never be repaired and wonders whether she can ever find love again. She meets Arlo Massey--brash, flamboyant, someone who couldn't care less about what other people think--the complete opposite of the always appropriate Laura Beckman. Arlo disrupts Laura's already tumultuous life. She finds him despicable.

And yet . . .

#BookReview: Beyond the Pale (A World of Spies Mystery #1) by @clare_odonohue @midnightinkbook

Synopsis: Married college professors agree to help Interpol in Ireland, but a simple errand leads them into a deadly criminal enterprise

It's a simple, twenty-minute job. At least, that's the pitch from Interpol to married college professors Hollis and Finn Larsson. 

Going undercover to procure a priceless rare book manuscript means an all-expenses paid trip abroad. 

A little danger thrown into the mix may even spice things up.

Soon after landing in the Emerald Isle, they realize the job is anything but simple. Their contact is a no show and they're left with fifty thousand euros, some serious questions, and a possible death threat. 

Ducking and dodging their way across Ireland, Hollis and Finn must hunt down the priceless manuscript and a missing agent while trying to stay one step ahead of a dangerous and unknown enemy.

#BookReview: Even the Darkest Stars (Even the Darkest Stars #1) by @heathermfawcett #Giveaway

Synopsis: Kamzin has always dreamed of becoming one of the Emperor’s royal explorers, the elite climbers tasked with mapping the wintry, mountainous Empire and spying on its enemies. She knows she could be the best in the world, if only someone would give her a chance.

But everything changes when the mysterious and eccentric River Shara, the greatest explorer ever known, arrives in her village and demands to hire Kamzin—not her older sister Lusha, as everyone had expected—for his next expedition. This is Kamzin’s chance to prove herself—even though River’s mission to retrieve a rare talisman for the emperor means climbing Raksha, the tallest and deadliest mountain in the Aryas. Then Lusha sets off on her own mission to Raksha with a rival explorer who is determined to best River, and Kamzin must decide what’s most important to her: protecting her sister from the countless perils of the climb or beating her to the summit.

The challenges of climbing Raksha are unlike anything Kamzin expected—or prepared for—with avalanches, ice chasms, ghosts, and even worse at every turn. And as dark secrets are revealed, Kamzin must unravel the truth of their mission and of her companions—while surviving the deadliest climb she has ever faced.

#BookReview: The Last Word Samantha Hastings

Synopsis: 1861. Miss Lucinda Leavitt is shocked when she learns the author of her favorite serialized novel has died before completing the story. 

Determined to learn how it ends, Lucinda reluctantly enlists the help of her father’s young business partner, Mr. David Randall, to track down the reclusive author’s former whereabouts.

David is a successful young businessman, but is overwhelmed by his workload. 

He wants to prove himself to his late father, as well as to himself. 

He doesn’t have the time, nor the interest, for this endeavor, but Lucinda is not the type to take no for an answer.

Their search for the elusive Mrs. Smith and the rightful ending to her novel leads Lucinda and David around the country, but the truths they discover about themselves—and each other—are anything but fictional.

This title will be released on July 9, 2019.

#BookReview: An Impossible Distance to Fall by Miriam McNamara

Synopsis: A story about falling―falling from grace, falling in love―as well as soaring to heights you wouldn’t know were possible if you never stepped out into thin air.

It’s 1930, and Birdie William’s life has crashed along with the stock market. Her father’s bank has failed, and worse, he’s disappeared along with his Jenny biplane.

When Birdie sees a leaflet for a barnstorming circus with a picture of Dad’s plane on it, she goes to Coney Island in search of answers.

The barnstorming circus has lady pilots, daredevil stuntmen, fire-spinners, and wing walkers, and Birdie is instantly enchanted―especially with a girl pilot named June. Birdie doesn’t find her father, but after stumbling across clues that suggest he’s gone to Chicago, she figures she’ll hitch a ride with the traveling circus doing what she does best: putting on a convincing act and insisting on being star of the show.

But the overconfidence that made her belle of the ball during her enchanted youth turns out to be far too reckless without the safety net of her charmed childhood, and a couple of impulsive missteps sends her and her newfound community spinning into freefall.

#BookBlitz: Returned and Reborn by Therese Park @RABTBookTours

A Tale of a Korean Orphan Boy

Historical Fiction

Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers

Published: March 2019

More than 200,000 South Korean infants and toddlers left their motherlands in the arms of strangers from the postwar era. "Returned and Reborn: a Tale of A Korean Orphan Boy" is the first novel about such an orphan--a boy fathered by a missionary priest who established the first Catholic Adult Institute in South Korea. This fiction is based on a true story, mixed with Korea's modern history--Vietnam War in which 300,000 South Korean troops fought (5001 were killed); the unintentional harm the American military caused to the Korean people by disposing millions of gallons of toxic chemicals called "Agent Orange" in the Korean water ways and soil; and the Korean society's contempt against children of mixed blood, children born of unwed mothers, and those born with birth defects. It's the story of a young man's journey of self discovery from an aimless American with no knowledge of himself or his roots who returns to his birth country, reunite with his Korean birth mother dying from cancer caused by consuming toxic water over time, but unexpected accident separate them permanently. Yet, through her and his deceased father's former co-workers, he learns of his father's greatness as well as his weakness, as an ambitious American Jesuit who fulfilled his big dreams but caused his birth and troublesome journey as an orphan forced to leave his mother who couldn't raise him. Still, in a mysterious way, he finds his own path--the path to a mission trip to North Korea.