blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Family Home – L.H. Stacey


Nothing is as perfect as it seems…

Hattie Gilby has not been back to her family home since the devastating events that took place there years ago. Events that changed Hattie and which continue to haunt her today. But one phone call changes everything.

Now Hattie is going back to her family home to face her brothers, Adam and Luke and to hear the last words of her dying mother.

Imogen Gilby hasn’t spoken a word since the night she was beaten almost to death and her husband was murdered. But now it’s time to reveal the truth about what happened that night and the secrets
that almost destroyed her.

Hattie isn’t sure she wants to know the truth. And it seems someone close to them will do anything to make sure the secrets stay hidden forever…

Another chilling read from bestselling author L H Stacey guaranteed to keep you up all night!

Perfect for fans of Valerie Keogh, J.A. Baker and Diana Wilkinson.

Purchase


L. H. Stacey is the bestselling psychological suspense author of over seven novels. Alongside her writing she is a full-time sales director for an office furniture company and has been a nurse, an emergency first response instructor and a PADI Staff Instructor. She lives near Doncaster with her husband.

Facebook: @LHStaceyAuthor
Twitter: @LyndaStacey
Instagram: @lynda.stacey
Newsletter

My thoughts: Hattie doesn’t return to her parents’ house, she can’t move on from the terrible events of the night her father was killed and her mother brutally beaten. They still don’t know who did it, and Hattie worries she might have been responsible. She and her cousin Louisa were involved in something that went awry and she’s always wondered if that was what led to the tragedy.

But now, as her mother is dying, she has returned and as she and her brothers Luke and Adam look through all the paperwork in their mother’s old office, a terrible, truly shocking secret emerges. It seems their parents were involved in something very dark, and that certainly led to their father’s death.

I was genuinely shocked, the secrets that the house holds are horrific and terrible. Somehow Hattie manages not to completely spin out, I’m not sure I could be as cool as she is. As the siblings unearth their parents’ past, we’re shown the events that led to the assault and murder.

It seems there was a lot more to what happened that night than any of the siblings are aware. And someone close to them knows a lot more than they’ve ever said.

Full of shocking moments and twists, this was utterly gripping and a compelling read.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Coffee House Murders – Ellis Blackwood

In London, 1666, drinking coffee can get you killed…

The case of Samuel Pepys’s missing pocket watch escalates rapidly when Eustace Blount, writer and wit, is found murdered in Rose’s Coffee House on The Strand.

Blount was a prig, a poseur and a parliamentarian – nobody liked him, not even his friends – and Pepys’s intrepid personal inquisitors, Abby Harcourt and Jacob Standish, find themselves with a suspect list as unwieldy as it is perplexing.

When their investigation leads to the nearby Gilded Bean coffee house, frequented by fervently royalist members of parliament, it becomes clear that a dangerous political game is afoot. Abby and Jacob face their most audacious challenge yet:

To break into Westminster Palace, at the very heart of English politics. The penalty, if discovered – is death.

Goodreads Purchase

Ellis Blackwood fell in love with the writings of Samuel Pepys, and the 17th-century England he inhabited, through the great man’s published diaries. The Samuel Pepys Mysteries are the result of that literary love affair.

Facebook  Instagram

My thoughts: I really like this series, it’s a lot of fun and brings the hubbub of 17th Century London to vivid life.

The coffee shops were a new concept and where the great and good (and not so good) would meet to talk, boast and scheme. They were male only spaces much of the time and Pepys would have been very familiar with them.

When Pepys asks his two inquisitors to locate his missing pocket watch, which he thinks may be in one of those very coffee shops, they stumble into murder and intrigue, just round the corner from Jacob’s house.

Abby as always, is quicker off the mark and starts to untangle the relationships between the coffee house denizens, the wits who spend their days writing pretty terrible poetry and the politicians who pontificate and squabble just round the corner.

The plot the pair discover threatens the King himself, Charles II, and the heart of government, much like the Gunpowder Plot that almost killed his grandfather.

Clever, entertaining and enjoyable, each installment of this series gets better and better.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Reunion – M.A. Hunter


Never underestimate how much people can change…

It’s been years since Zoe last saw them – since they graduated, drifted apart, and lost touch.

Years since Zoe ended things with Dan because the memories were too painful to bear.

Years since that night – the night an unexpected death shattered their close-knit group of friends.

Now, Zoe is invited to Scotland for a wedding – a grand affair at a manor house on a remote island.
Apprehensive about the reunion, she hopes the long drive with Lily will help ease her nerves.
But things are far from simple. Lily has also agreed to give Dan a lift, and Rod, not wanting to be left  out, is joining them as well, along with his fiancée.
And when they come into trouble on a cold, dark, desolated Highland road, it sets off a chain of  events which will leave them all shaken to their very core, and questioning everything they thought
they knew…

An unsettling and unputdownable edge-of-your-seat thriller set in the eerie mists of Scotland, perfect for fans of The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

Purchase


M. A. Hunter is the alter ego of Stephen Edger, the bestselling author of psychological and crime thrillers, including the Kate Matthews series. Most recently published by One More Chapter, his new thriller, Adrift, will be published by Boldwood in May 2023.

Facebook: @AnAutieAuthor
Twitter: @AnAutieAuthor
Instagram: @AnAutieAuthor
Newsletter
Bookbub profile: @M_A_Hunter

My thoughts: this was a good one, clever, twisting and  suspenseful. Reuniting with a group of old friends, with history between them and secrets makes everything a little tense when they’re in Lily’s dad’s old car.

Zoe is a lawyer and dealing with a workplace fling gone horribly wrong, Lily is her high school best friend, with a little secret of her own, Dan was her teenage boyfriend, Rod another friend, who’s getting married and has invited them all along. But between them is the accidental death of their friend Saul, an incident that has bound them together but also driven a wedge between them all.

Bella, Rod’s fiancée, doesn’t really fit in with the group and things about her don’t quite add up. As they drive up to the Highlands to catch the ferry to Jura for the wedding events take a nasty turn.

With events bringing the past crashing into the present, and secrets spilling out of everyone, will their friendships survive? 

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Twelth Floor – Michelle Kidd

DETECTIVE JACK MACINTOSH IS BACK — ON THE TRAIL OF A BRUTAL KILLER.

A punch in the face. A painful visit to the dentist. A summons from his boss. Detective Jack is having a very bad day.

It’s then he gets the call. ‘We’ve got ourselves a murder.’

Jack races to the crime an empty flat on the twelfth floor of a rundown tower block. To be met with a truly shocking sight.

On the kitchen floor are two dismembered human legs. On the shabby sofa in the living room lie three severed arms.

In the bathroom, there’s something even worse . . .

The following day, on a derelict industrial estate, two holdalls are found containing more human limbs.

Then an early morning passenger makes a horrifying discovery on the top deck of the Number 42 bus.

Someone is leaving body parts all over town. But who are the victims — and why have they been targeted? Jack and his team must piece together the parts of the puzzle before more people die.

Goodreads Purchase

Michelle Kidd is a crime fiction author best known for the DI Jack MacIntosh and DI Nicki Hardcastle series. Michelle qualified as a legal executive in the early 1990s, spending ten years practising civil and criminal litigation.

But the dream to write was never far from her mind and in 2008 she began writing the first book in what would later become the DI Jack MacIntosh series. 

Michelle now works full time for the NHS and lives in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. 

She enjoys reading, wine and cats — not necessarily in that order.

Michelle’s Social Media

Facebook Twitter Instagram Website

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Joffe Books’ Social Media

Facebook Twitter Instagram Website

My thoughts: this was a gruesome and gory tale, opening with dismembered body parts found in an empty flat, someone has been abducting sex workers, murdering them and chopping them up. Leaving limbs and other body parts all over the place, including on a bus.

As DI MacIntosh and his team investigate and more vulnerable women go missing, they soon have several suspects, each one more dodgy than the previous. The caretaker of the block of flats, the former resident’s son, they’ve both got links to the building and are acting evasively. But could it be someone closer to the team?

Then there’s the gangster who’s trying to either get Jack to work for him or somehow manipulate him, and now he’s broken a dangerous man out of prison with connections to Jack. Can he keep his bosses off his back and get these two men under arrest?

There’s a lot going on, and the longer the case continues, with more women missing, the harder it is to solve. The press are salivating at the story, with its echoes of Jack the Ripper and an apparently ineffective police force. But Jack knows his team are good, and they’ll get the right man given a chance. But it could come at a cost.

Gripping, dark and compelling, with conflicted protagonist Jack, his team and ruthless criminals. Good stuff.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: A Deadly Legacy – E.V. Hunter


A tragic accident or an untimely death?

When Drew Hopgood’s brother, Frank dies whilst out climbing, it’s initially thought his death was simply a tragic accident. But when Frank’s much younger wife, Stella arrives at Hopgood Hall  demanding half of Frank’s inheritance the Hopgoods and Alexi Ellis begin to suspect foul play…

Stella has no claim to Frank’s legacy, but she isn’t giving up easily. And with the reputation of  Hopgood Hall still fragile, Alexi can’t afford to lose any more money because of Stella’s greed.
So Alexi, her partner Jack, and Cosmo of course, decide to dig deeper into Stella’s background. Just how did she meet Frank and were they really as in love as she claims?

As the trio investigate, they discover Stella has her own reasons for being back at Hopgood Hall. And rather than console the grieving widow, Alexi and Jack think they might need to look again at Frank’s
tragic death – because rather than an accident this could have been a deadly fall – planned by his own wife!

A boutique hotel. A feral cat. A recipe for murder!

A gripping murder mystery, perfect for fans of Faith Martin, Frances Evesham and Emma Davies.

Purchase


Evie Hunter has written a great many successful regency romances as Wendy Soliman and is now redirecting her talents to produce dark gritty thrillers for Boldwood. For the past twenty years she
has lived the life of a nomad, roaming the world on interesting forms of transport, but has now settled back in the UK.

Facebook: @wendysolimanauthor
Twitter: @wendyswriter
Newsletter

My thoughts: This time the case Alexi and Jack take on is close to home. Drew and his brother might have been estranged but it still hurts that he’s died in a horrible climbing accident, especially as he was such a good climber. And then there’s his horrid wife Stella, who turns up demanding money she thinks Frank is owed. Was his death really an accident? And why hasn’t Stella gone back to Australia?

As the ask questions and learn more about the gold digger with a heart of stone, as well as Frank’s past misdemeanours with women and other people’s money, motives emerge. Alexi is put in danger, but Cosmo and his newest canine chum Silgo are there to save the day!

Another interesting case for the Hopgood Detectives, full of grudges held far too long and secrets. All they really want to do is help their friend, but as always they end up catching plenty of bad people along the way!

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: A Perilous Premiere – Gail Meath

Solving their own murders is the least of their problems…and the beginning of Stone & Steele, a reluctant yet surprisingly skilled investigative team.

The Golden Age of Hollywood, 1938. Vivian Steele moved to California to start a new life. She opened a fashion boutique in Beverly Hills, befriended Carole Lombard, the actress, and married a successful banker. But when her husband is murdered, Vivian discovers she isn’t the only one hiding a few secrets.

An anonymous phone call lures Vivian to a plush hotel room where she stumbles upon the dead body of a beautiful young actress – her husband’s mistress. To add fuel to the fire, she’s not alone.

Preston Stone, her adversary and Hollywood’s notorious playboy, is standing beside her. Suspiciously, they part ways only to find themselves alone again at a movie premiere two days later, and the message becomes brutally clear. They’re both the next targets of a cold-blooded killer.

Together, Vivian and Preston are thrown into a deadly race to find a missing collection of valuable coins and stop a vicious killer before they become the next murder victims. But first, they need to stop pointing their fingers at each other.

A Perilous Premiere is the first book in this exciting new 1930s Stone & Steele mystery series starring a great cast of characters ranging from the rich and famous to Bella, a Boston Terrier, her new friend, Boris, a Saint Bernard, and a few other endearing folks. (A pretty clean read)

Goodreads Purchase

Award-winning author Gail Meath writes historical romance novels that will whisk you away to another time and place in history where you will meet fascinating characters, both fictional and real, who will capture your heart and soul. Meath loves writing about little or unknown people, places and events in history, rather than relying on the typical stories and settings.

Facebook Twitter Instagram Website

My thoughts: brand new series set in 1930s Hollywood, where our lead character is best friends with Carole Lombard (actress and wife of Clark Gable), and has an adorable canine sidekick? Yes please!

And bonus, it’s from the always enjoyable Gail Meath.

I loved Perilous Permiere, the setting, the characters, the investigation, the bickering between our two protagonists, the secrets and mystery that swirls round them. It was delicious.

I love classic Hollywood movies (Bringing Up Baby is my favourite) so this era is perfect for me. It’s a time of huge change, the Great Depression is finally drawing to an end, in Europe rumblings of war, and women are starting to be more independent. Just like our girl here, Vivian owns a high end fashion boutique and dresses film stars and the wealthy alike, aided by her assistant Nora and cute pooch Bella.

When her husband is tragically shot dead during what appears to be a robbery gone wrong, she hires a PI to do what the corrupt LAPD haven’t, and find the killer. But there seems to be more to it than she first thought.

Preston Stone, playboy and scion of a wealthy family, although he too appears to have plenty of secrets, crosses paths with her and the pair team up to solve the case and prevent more people being killed.

They bicker in the best screwball cinematic way, there’s another (enormous) dog called Boris, who helps save the day, because of course he does. Such a good boy.

I cannot wait for more!

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

blog tour, books

Blog Tour: Vice and Void – Sadie Hewitt

The day has finally arrived! Vice and Void by Sadie Hewitt is now available! Read on for more details!

Vice and Void (The Savage Wolves Brotherhood Book 1)

Publication Date: November 19, 2024

Genre: Adult Fantasy/ Motorcycle Club Romance

✨Second chance romance
🖤Vigilante motorcycle club
✨Stolen blood magic
🖤Banished gods
✨Science vs. alchemy
🖤Touch her and 💀
✨He has her name tattooed on him

Dakota Montgomery knew she should have steered clear of The Savage Wolves Brotherhood. Now with a promising start to her career, the vow she made twelve years ago to keep her distance remains stronger than ever. But when her best friend suspiciously disappears, and her father dismisses her concerns, Dakota is forced to seek help from the vigilante motorcycle club and its second-in-command: her former flame, Callum Reynolds.

Callum Reynolds, still bearing the scars of nine wrongful years in prison, has his own reasons to assist Dakota Montgomery. A feud for territory with the club’s rival has caused a severe setback: the loss of their distillation warehouse. With Dakota’s Alchemist skills, there’s a chance to restore the stock before the Vanguard Syndicate comes to collect. In return, Callum pledges to use his network to investigate the disappearance of her best friend. However, any connection with Dakota or her Iron Guard father could jeopardize his hard-earned freedom.

The agreement with the Brotherhood thrusts Dakota into a treacherous underworld, where illicit alchemy and experimental magic fuels a dangerous game of depravity and addiction. Dakota must race against time to unravel the mystery of her best friend’s disappearance before it consumes her entirely–or worse, entangles her with Callum Reynolds and the Brotherhood for good.

Set in a modern-day world where the blood of extinct mythical creatures advances the creation of distillations, Sons of Anarchy meets occult science in this second-chance adult fantasy romance.

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

BOOK TOUR ORGANIZED BY:

R&R BOOK TOURS

blog tour, books

Blog Tour: Sins of Light – Melissa Curtis

Sins of Light is the first in a New Adult Romantasy series. This debut novel has a prophecy deadline, unique magic, fated mates, spice, and a dual POV featuring a badass female main character and a hot mess male main character.

Sins of Light

Publication Date: September 2, 2024

Genre: NA Romantic Fantasy

Vera Valdara knows how to hide, tucked away in a chemistry career with her magic sealed up tight. The blades she carries were sharpened the day she was born, her head taught to be on a constant swivel. Because normal doesn’t exist when mercenaries hunt for your treasonous family, not when their employer has no concept of forget.

But living and breathing defense only take her so far when a birthday surprise goes horribly wrong. The walls she worked so carefully to build are torn apart, and she is thrust into a conflict that has the continent divided. Hidden factions come to light, and each of them are racing against the same deadline, chasing the same prophesied blood. But they all want differing outcomes. Spilling that fated crimson will reopen the portals to her realm, but five centuries of propaganda blur what waits on the other side – and why it was sealed to begin with.

Beakers and burners won’t solve the mysteries of the gods, but Vera’s ex and some unlikely allies might.

The countdown tolls. The lies unravel. The prophecy awaits.

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

BOOK TOUR ORGANIZED

R&R BOOK TOURS

blog tour, books

Blog Tour: Inked in Blood and Memory- Allison Ivy

Welcome to the tour for upcoming sapphic horror, Inked in Blood and Memory by Allison Ivy!

Inked in Blood and Memory

Expected Publication Date: December 3, 2024

Genre: Sapphic Horror

  • Eat the rich
  • “Family is complicated”
  • Sapphic (f/f) romance
  • 2/5 spice level
  • Multi-POV
  • Vietnamese FMC
  • Plus size FMC
  • Mixed race FMC
  • FMC who wears glasses
  • New Year’s Eve Horror
  • Dark Academia
  • Estranged friends to lovers
  • Grownup “The Pagemaster” vibes

Recluse Sophie Vanguard’s winter cabin retreat turns ominous when blue flowers mysteriously appear. They’re everywhere. On her front porch, in kitchen cabinets, and even on her pillow. It isn’t long before chilling whispers echo in the halls, and her journal repeats seven unsettling entries.

Enter the bloodied and beautifully eccentric Ly Thi Ren. Though Ren seems familiar, Sophie refuses to believe the girl’s insistence that they are trapped inside a book.

In a land of fiction, truth and lies blur together, clear decisions are marred by doubt, and shared family trauma lurks just below the surface.

Can Ren and Sophie make it out alive? Or will they end up nothing more than words inked in blood and memory?

With elements of gothic horror, splatterpunk, romance, and fantasy, Inked in Blood and Memory is a self-aware LGBTQ+ horror that wraps its clutches around the reader and doesn’t let go.

PRE-ORDER HERE

Triggers:

Swearing (Not overboard. Three or four F-words and three or four other words.)
Gore/violence/body horror (not gratuitous and nothing sexual)
one scene of main character drug use (joint)
Brief suicidal ideation
Child endangerment
Self-deprecation in terms of weight (one paragraph).

ARC TOUR ORGANIZED BY:

R&R BOOK TOURS

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: City of Silk – Glennis Virgo

Bologna, 1575.

A talented seamstress

A powerful merchant

A fierce battle of wills

Elena Morandi has gained a fragile foothold in the workshop of a master tailor, despite the profession being officially barred to her as a woman. But then a powerful man from her past crosses her path and threatens everything she has worked for. Antonio della Fontana has every corner of the city in his pocket and, as Elena knows all too well, he abused his position of power at the Baraccano orphanage. Driven to fight for justice against a man seemingly above the law, Elena hatches a plan to get retribution for herself, a lost friend and those still prey to Fontana’s abuses.

With sumptuous detail that brings the sights, sounds and textures of Renaissance Italy to vivid life, City of Silk is a breathtaking historical fiction debut.

My thoughts: I loved this, I’m a huge fan of historical fiction, history and Italy. So this was directly up my street. Inspired by art hanging in the National Gallery, both by 16th Century Italian artists, and of ordinary people from that time.

Elena just wants to be a tailor like her father was, and having been through the trauma of losing both her parents and being sent to an abusive orphanage, where the benefactor would choose girls to sexually assault, with essentially the blessing of the staff, and where her best friend Laura chose to end her life rather than be forced to continue to submit to this monster, I felt like Elena deserved to find some happiness.

She was working for a seamstress, making clothes for the wives of Bologna’s great and good, but on hearing a marriage contract was being drawn up, she flees into the city and makes her way to the tailors’ quarter, hoping to find a master who might take pity on her.

In many ways Elena is very lucky in her friends, in the bonds she forms as she works for the Maestro alongside his teasing journeymen. She’s talented and capable and they see that. She and her friend Sofia (properly called Suhailah), kidnapped and enslaved, find freedom in their friendships with the artist family, the Carraccis, who invite them into their studio.

It is with these friends that she plots an audacious scheme, to expose Antonio della Fontana as a rapist, molester and monster. On his daughter’s wedding day, in front of the whole city. Revenge will be sweet but she doesn’t reckon with the city’s short attention span. 

Some of her friends, like Maestro Rondinelli are outsiders as much as she and Sofia are, he’s gay, in a time where there could get you killed, and even Elena struggles to understand why he would risk everything, until she realises the importance of love. Something she doesn’t really see in the marriages around her, arranged as they are to maintain wealth and status. I think the outsider status of the characters is important, Fontana is the ultimate insider, wealthy and influential. Until he isn’t. But there’s nowhere for him amidst those he disregards.

The only off note was that Elena never explained why she wanted to be a tailor and dress the city’s men instead of dressing the women. If I remember correctly from history books, men did tend to dress more sumptuously at this time, displaying their wealth through their clothes, while women were required to be more muted and demure. Think peacocks and peahens. But it would have been nice to see her thinking. I know there’s an emotional connection to her father, but as she could never work under her own name, and he doesn’t appear to have been well known, it was a little confusing.

Overall this is a splendid tale of outsiders, friendship, revenge and taking back power from those who would exploit it. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.