Friday, November 29, 2013

SHE READS BOOK CLUB-NOVEMBER: Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson

Title: Someone Else's Love Story
Author: Joshilyn Jackson
Genre: Adult Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: William Morrow
Release Date: November 19/2013
Adquired: Print copy provided by publisher
Goodreads: ADD

At twenty-one, Shandi Pierce is juggling finishing college, raising her delightful three-year-old genius son Natty, and keeping the peace between her eternally warring, long-divorced Catholic mother and Jewish father. She’s got enough complications without getting caught in the middle of a stick-up in a gas station mini-mart and falling in love with a great wall of a man named William Ashe, who willingly steps between the armed robber and her son.

Shandi doesn’t know that her blond god Thor has his own complications. When he looked down the barrel of that gun he believed it was destiny: It’s been one year to the day since a tragic act of physics shattered his universe. But William doesn’t define destiny the way other people do. A brilliant geneticist who believes in science and numbers, destiny to him is about choice.

Now, he and Shandi are about to meet their so-called destinies head on, in a funny, charming, and poignant novel about science and miracles, secrets and truths, faith and forgiveness,; about a virgin birth, a sacrifice, and a resurrection; about falling in love, and learning that things aren’t always what they seem—or what we hope they will be. It’s a novel about discovering what we want and ultimately finding what we need.


Tuesday, November 19, 2013

BLOG TOUR: The House Girl by Tara Conklin

Title: The House Girl
Author: Tara Conklin
Genre: Historical/Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: William Morrow
Release Date: Oct 24/2013
Adquired: Print copy provided by publisher
Goodreads: ADD

Virginia, 1852. Seventeen-year-old Josephine Bell decides to run from the failing tobacco farm where she is a slave and nurse to her ailing mistress, the aspiring artist Lu Anne Bell. New York City, 2004. Lina Sparrow, an ambitious first-year associate in an elite law firm, is given a difficult, highly sensitive assignment that could make her career: she must find the “perfect plaintiff” to lead a historic class-action lawsuit worth trillions of dollars in reparations for descendants of American slaves.

It is through her father, the renowned artist Oscar Sparrow, that Lina discovers Josephine Bell and a controversy roiling the art world: are the iconic paintings long ascribed to Lu Anne Bell really the work of her house slave, Josephine? A descendant of Josephine’s would be the perfect face for the reparations lawsuit—if Lina can find one. While following the runaway girl’s faint trail through old letters and plantation records, Lina finds herself questioning her own family history and the secrets that her father has never revealed: How did Lina’s mother die? And why will he never speak about her?

Moving between antebellum Virginia and modern-day New York, this searing, suspenseful and heartbreaking tale of art and history, love and secrets, explores what it means to repair a wrong and asks whether truth is sometimes more important than justice.


Saturday, November 16, 2013

REVIEW: Amulet of Elusion by Katie Lynn Johnson


Alexa Costa has a life-altering secret…only she doesn’t know it yet.

Confined by law to the kingdom of Alvair until the age of eighteen, Alexa Costa has lived a sheltered existence under the watchful eye of her sword-wielding guardian, Ivy. Her love interest, Caleb Whitman, is exactly the opposite. A merchant sailor and seeker of rare artifacts, Caleb has lived a life of adventure in nearby San Lucero, the long-time rival of Alvair.

After her eighteenth birthday, Alexa’s quiet existence becomes tumultuous, and she realizes she does not need to seek to find adventure. Myths become real, legend becomes fact, and Alexa discovers that she possesses rare abilities which make her a target for both sides in a centuries-old struggle for power. She must use every resource available to her—including her talents with the supernatural Amulets— to help her friends, rekindle her romance with Caleb, and save her island home from destruction.


Friday, November 15, 2013

DOUBLE COVER REVEAL: PT McHugh and Linda Foster Novellas!

Hey guys! Today is a joint cover reveal of three authors from Glass House Press, PT. McHugh, Linda Foster and Mary Fan.


Thursday, November 14, 2013

INTERVIEW: For the Preservationist Justin Kramon (GREAT NaNoWriMo Advice!)

1) What/who was your main inspiration for The Preservationist?

I spent a year reading a lot of thrillers, suspense fiction, mysteries, crime novels -- all kinds of books that focused on or orbited around violence.  I think it probably concerned my wife a lot.She must have wondered if I was planning something strange. Then when she found out I was planning a novel, it probably worried her even more.

A few of the books I loved included: The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, The Collector by John Fowles, Felicia's Journey by William Trevor, In the Forest by Edna O'Brien, Misery by Stephen King. In general, I liked the thrillers that examined characters, relationships, and psychology, instead of spending a huge amount of time on solving a crime or creating a very elaborate plot. I also loved when thrillers got inside the heads of several different characters, including the criminals, and didn't try to tell you who was the "good guy" or the "bad guy." To me, one of the gifts of fiction is that it allows you to sympathize with people you normally wouldn't get within a mile of in everyday life.


Tuesday, November 12, 2013

BLOG TOUR: Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope

Title: Sense & Sensibility (The Austen Project)
Author: Joanna Trollope
Genre: Classic Lit Fiction Retelling
Publisher: Harper Collins
Release Date: Oct 24/2013
Adquired: Print copy provided by publisher
Goodreads: ADD

From one of the most insightful chroniclers of family life working in fiction today comes a contemporary retelling of Jane Austen's classic novel of love, money, and two very different sisters.

John Dashwood promised his dying father that he would take care of his half sisters. But his wife, Fanny, has no desire to share their newly inherited estate with Belle Dashwood's daughters. When she descends upon Norland Park with her Romanian nanny and her mood boards, the three Dashwood girls-Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret-are suddenly faced with the cruelties of life without their father, their home, or their money.

As they come to terms with life without the status of their country house, the protection of the family name, or the comfort of an inheritance, Elinor and Marianne are confronted by the cold hard reality of a world where people's attitudes can change as drastically as their circumstances.

With her sparkling wit, Joanna Trollope casts a clever, satirical eye on the tales of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Reimagining Sense and Sensibility in a fresh, modern new light, she spins the novel's romance, bonnets, and betrothals into a wonderfully witty coming-of-age story about the stuff that really makes the world go around. For when it comes to money, some things never change. . . .


Tuesday, November 5, 2013

BLOG TOUR: We Are Water by Wally Lamb

Title: We Are Water
Author: Wally Lamb
Genre: Adult Contemporary/Literary Fiction
Publisher: Harper Collins
Release Date: Oct 22/2013
Adquired: Print copy provided by publisher
Goodreads: ADD

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Hour I First Believed and I Know This Much Is True, a disquieting and ultimately uplifting novel about a marriage, a family, and human resilience in the face of tragedy.

In middle age, Anna Oh-wife, mother, outsider artist-has shaken her family to its core. After twenty-seven years of marriage and three children, Anna has fallen in love with Viveca, the wealthy, cultured, confident Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her professional success.

Anna and Viveca plan to wed in the Oh family's hometown of Three Rivers in Connecticut, where gay marriage has recently been legalized. But the impending wedding provokes some very mixed reactions and opens a Pandora's Box of toxic secrets-dark and painful truths that have festered below the surface of the Ohs' lives.

We Are Water is an intricate and layered portrait of marriage, family, and the inexorable need for understanding and connection, told in the alternating voices of the Ohs-nonconformist Annie; her ex-husband, Orion, a psychologist; Ariane, the do-gooder daughter, and her twin, Andrew, the rebellious only son; and free-spirited Marissa, the youngest Oh. Set in New England and New York during the first years of the Obama presidency, it is also a portrait of modern America, exploring issues of class, changing social mores, the legacy of racial violence, and the nature of creativity and art.

With humor and breathtaking compassion, Wally Lamb brilliantly captures the essence of human experience in vivid and unforgettable characters struggling to find hope and redemption in the aftermath of trauma and loss. We Are Water is vintage Wally Lamb-a compulsively readable, generous, and uplifting masterpiece that digs deep into the complexities of the human heart to explore the ways in which we search for love and meaning in our lives.


Friday, November 1, 2013

BLOG TOUR: The Prodigal by Michael C. Hurley

Title: The Prodigal
Author: Michael C. Hurley
Genre: Adult Contemporary/Literary Fiction
Publisher: Ragbagger Press
Release Date: June 1/2013
Adquired: Print copy provided by author
Goodreads: ADD

Pride, betrayal, forgiveness . . . and the eternal sea. The Prodigal tells the mystical tale of four people on Ocracoke Island whose destiny is tied to an abandoned schooner, thought to have been lost at sea more than a century ago, that one day drifts ashore. Marcus O’Reilly, a renegade Catholic priest, must confront his inner demons. Ibrahim Joseph, a Bahamian fugitive, must face his past. Aidan Sharpe, a fallen lawyer, struggles with self-doubt and his growing affection for Molly McGregor, a fearless towboat captain who cannot find the courage to love. They will all be drawn into a 2,000-year-old mystery that unfolds with the reappearance of the ship.