Happy publication day to author Bri Eberhart, and congratulations on the release of Strangers in Our Hearts!
Strangers in Our Hearts
Release date: October 22, 2024
Genre: YA Contemporary Fantasy/YA Science Fantasy
Audience: Upper YA 16+
Discovering special powers
Found family
Power and technology
Pre-dystopian setting
Social and political turmoil
Theo Goodwin is used to running, while Gemma Roberts wants nothing more than to find somewhere to call home—someplace to belong. With the threat of the Authorities looming, despite their strange connection and a shared desire to protect their family, a compromise between fight or flight is no easy feat. As they traverse a new shared life together, they must learn to understand one another for the survival of not only themselves but also those they hold dear.
When a new group swoops in with their own unique powers and motivations that threaten to ruin everything Theo and Gemma have worked toward, the invitation into their broader community has its appeals but equal drawbacks. Tension simmers within their crew, testing their bonds and questioning their unity. As they navigate this delicate balance, they’ll discover the world isn’t what it seems and finally put a word to what they are—mutants. More are found every day, with abilities far beyond what they thought possible. And the Authorities are doing more than hunting them down.
With mutants on the precipice of war with the government, will they decide to join the cause and fight or continue to run and hide?
Happy release week to Alli Temple! Only Mostly Dead is the perfect ghostly tale for the spooky season!Only Mostly Dead (Afterlife Incorporated Book 1) Publication Date: October 21, 2024 Genre: Urban Fantasy/ LGBTQ+
Urban fantasy
Ghost & reaper
Odd couple
Sloooooooow burn
No one tells you how much paperwork there is after you die.
I expected to wake up on a cloud where angels played harps and fed me grapes. Instead, I’m a ghost stuck in suburban Toronto. The only one who can see me is an unemployed grim reaper who’d rather play video games.
Turns out the business of dying is a train wreck. But if there was ever a girl boss who could get it back on track, it’s me. All I need is a little help from my new undead roommate, whether they want to be involved or not.
Nothing at Afterlife Incorporated moves quickly and if I don’t find a way out soon there won’t be anything left of me to cross over. They say death can be easy, but being only mostly dead sucks.
Only Mostly Dead is the first installment in the Afterlife Incorporated urban fantasy trilogy. It features a slow—so slow—burn romance that may take several books to resolve. Be patient. Death is coming…eventually. AVAILABLE ON AMAZON
My thoughts: this was a lot of fun, probably more than death really is. After dying and not being “collected” and taken to the Afterlife, anyone would be a bit frustrated. But when your life’s work was helping others get their lives sorted out – well maybe the Afterlife needs your help.
Funny, reminiscent of Dead Like Me (that was a good show) with delightful characters and a rather magnificent cat (always a good addition), there’s a lot more to the life after death! Can’t wait for book 2!
I’ve spent my entire life trying to make up for what happened that day. I was barely fifteen when I killed my mom.
Twenty years later.
I’ve turned my life around. I have a handsome, wealthy husband; two daughters who are everything to me; a stunning Connecticut beachfront home. I’m grateful for every minute that we have together.
Today I came home to find a silver-and-blue gift-wrapped box on the porch. The note inside says: Who killed Midge Lester? Midge Lester was my mom. Someone knows.
An Amazon Charts/Best Selling Author, many of McGarvey Black’s novels are also available in audiobooks and have been translated into other languages.
“I love writing twisty thrillers that keep readers guessing and hanging at the end of each chapter. Nothing makes me happier than when one of my readers tells me I kept them up all night.” —McGarvey Black
Born in New York City and raised on Long Island, McGarvey Black is married with two children and lives and writes in Florida. She loves dogs of any kind and eating ice cream with demitasse spoons to make it last longer.
My thoughts: Imagine spending years believing that only two people in the world know about the terrible thing you did, hearing that one of them was dead and knowing the other can’t tell anyone. And then finding out that that isn’t true.
Abigail doesn’t remember the death of her mother, only that she woke up holding the gun that killed her. Her boyfriend took the gun when he left town and she confessed to the local priest, which under the seal of the confessional he cannot share.
All these years later, her life is very different, but she carries her secret and her grief with her. Then a familiar face appears, one who shouldn’t be alive anymore and then another person she never thought she’d see again resurfaces in her life.
Suddenly the secret that she has kept for so long is at risk of being exposed and everything she’s built could fall apart.
Full of twists, with a likeable and sympathetic protagonist in Abigail, this was an enjoyable and intelligent thriller.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Harriet White is no stranger to odd correspondence. Ensconced in the basement of the Baker Street building society, her job is to reply to the mail they receive on behalf of Sherlock Holmes. But while letters to the fictional sleuth may be plentiful, telegrams are rare, and so when she receives one describing the grave situation of celebrated author Philip St John, her interest is piqued. The writer describes St John as being consumed by terror, seeing ghostly apparitions on the fens, and only at ease in the company of his loyal wolfhound.
Before long, Harry finds herself in Cambridgeshire under the guise of being Holmes’ assistant. The residents of Thurmwell Manor believe their master is cursed. Harry is sure there must be a logical explanation, but inside the echoey halls of the grand gothic house, her confidence in science and reason begin to crumble…
Can Harry solve the mystery before the fens claim their next victim?
Join Harriet White in 1930’s London for another glorious Sherlock Holmes-inspired mystery, for fans of Nita Prose and Janice Hallett.
Holly Hepburn writes escapist, swoonsome fiction that sweeps her readers into idyllic locations, from her native Cornwall to the windswept beauty of Orkney. She has turned her hand to cosy crime inspired by Sherlock Holmes himself. Holly lives in leafy Hertfordshire with her adorable partner in crime, Luna the Labrador.
My thoughts: This series is so much fun, and this story, inspired by The Hound of the Baskervilles, is another excellent edition. I think Harry makes a fantastic sleuth, and Oliver a great Watson. The pair of them head off to the Cambridgeshire Fens under the guise of assisting a very old Sherlock (if he was a detective in the Victorian period, still going in the 1930s, he’d be quite an old man) who has retired to Sussex to keep bees (per Conan Doyle).
I know that people do still write to Holmes, the museum in Baker Street has them on display in his office, but I don’t know that anyone there carries out investigations, I imagine they pass anything of real concern onto the police. But Harry is willing to help where perhaps the police and in this case, doctors, cannot.
The author Philip St John lives in a manor house out in the Fens with a few staff and his nephew, who is the one who writes to Holmes. His uncle appears to be haunted by some strange apparition and is terribly ill. His huge dog is his only comfort. Harry knows there’s a logical explanation and is willing to brave unknown dangers to get to the bottom of it. And go to the library to do some research too.
She might not have Holmes’ legendary powers of deduction but she’s smart and resourceful and nothing, not even her creep of a former boss, can get in her way.
Lots of fun, a clever conundrum and a very real solution to a strange problem. Really enjoyable and I can’t 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.
Kate thought she knew her neighbors. But they’ve been keeping secrets…
Kate’s quiet evening at home is shattered when a car crashes into a neighbor’s fence. The police and emergency services are quickly on the scene.
Kate saw the crash. The neighbors saw it too. So why is everyone saying it never happened? And how is it possible that the neighbor’s fence doesn’t have a scratch?
Is Kate going crazy or is everyone lying?
Strange things start happening in Kate’s life. A man follows her home after work. An intruder tries to break into her house in the middle of the night.
Kate is convinced these events are connected to the crash. Someone wants to silence her. But why? Who was in that car on Saturday night?
And what is the deadly secret that everyone is trying to hide?
Mark Gillespie writes psychological thriller and suspense novels. He’s a former professional musician (bass player) from Glasgow, Scotland who spent ten years touring the UK and Ireland, playing sessions and having the time of his life. Don’t ask though. What happened on the road stays on the road.
He now lives in Auckland, New Zealand with his wife and a small menagerie of rescue creatures. If he’s not writing, he’s jamming with other musicians, running on the beach, watching mixed martial arts and boxing. Or devouring horror and thriller movies.
This is his third psychological thriller with Inkubator Books.
My thoughts: This is a book that will completely wrong foot you in a really good way. Reading the first section, Kate’s story makes you think one thing is happening and then that gets completely thrown up in the air and becomes a very, very different story and without spoiling it, a very interesting story.
I was totally hooked, at first I thought I knew what it was going to be about, but then, bam, it went off in another direction and it was so good, such an interesting, clever, almost a discussion about right and wrong, punishment and revenge. Absolutely cracking 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.
Welcome to the tour for newly released charmer, Until the Last Page by Chantal Gadoury!
Until the Last Page
Publication Date: October 1, 2024
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Portal Fantasy
Fairytale Retellings
Witty Banter
Enemies to Friends to Lovers
For Fans of Princess Bride & Once Upon a Time
One Bed (A pillow, and a bowl of soup)
Discover what happens when a young woman unexpectedly finds herself inside a book of fairytales where she is charged with breaking a frog prince’s curse and searching for a way home.
Every good fairytale begins with “Once Upon a Time,” or they’re supposed to at least. But for twenty-five year old Josephine Hart, her “Once Upon a Time” began with her literally crash landing inside a book of fairy tales and nearly crushing a frog—who is actually a prince. An annoying, snarky frog prince named Aneurin, seeking the kiss of true love to break his curse. He vows that if Jo agrees to help him find his princess, he will get her home.
With every turn of the page, their adventure leads them deeper into fairytales familiar to Jo. Through their journey, they discover that despite their initial clashing, they’re both exactly what each other needs. It is only when they encounter a devious man with a talent for spinning straw into gold that they realize just how quickly their plot can take an unexpected twist.
Now in paperback, just in time for Halloween, I’m re-posting my review of this book from last year.
Original and engrossing, The Fortunes of Olivia Richmondis a gothic period drama set in late 19th century Norfolk thatcentres around the “Mistcoate Witch” – the teenage mistress of Mistcoate House who is rumoured to speak with the dead. When young governess Miss Julia Pearlie takes a job as companion to the aristocratic Olivia Richmond, with strict instructions to put an end to such “teenage nonsense,” Miss Pearlie is soon inducted into the chilling world of tarot, fortune telling and the “other side.” As the winter chill wraps around the dark woods surrounding Mistcoate, and the behaviour or Olivia becomes more and more terrifying, Julia must uncover the truth and save herself – before it’s too late.
The perfect read for a dark autumn night, with chapter headings and illustrations that correspond to specific Tarot Cards, from “The Hanged Man” to “The Stuck Tower,” this atmospheric gothic page turner deftly explores Victorian attitudes to the supernatural alongside the lot of women living and working in Victorian England.
For fans of Stacey Halls and Michelle Paver.
Born in 1988, Louise Davidson grew up in Belfast during the troubles with a Catholic mother and a Protestant father. The Catholic side of her family lived on Mountcollyer Street – the street featured in Kenneth Branagh’s Oscar winning film Belfast, that was badly affected by violent protests.
Louise’s earliest memory is of her parents deciding whether they should drive past a car that was on fire in the streets of Belfast. It was only when she left Belfast to study Creative Writing at University in the UK that Louise realised it was not normal to live in a permanent state of fear and anxiety. She says the sense of dread she has had from a young age drew her to Gothic fiction and is something she has tried to channel into The Fortunes of Olivia Richmond.
Louise was introduced to the idea of tarot, mediums and fortune telling from a young age as her Aunt Pat is an intuitive, with the ability to receive messages from the dead and to predict dreams. Louise grew up watching her aunt predict dreams and pass messages from the dead to bereaved families and this helped her to create the character of Olivia Richmond.
After a career working in theatre production with theatres including Tinder Box and Ransome Theatre in Northern Ireland and Intemission,RSC and the Lyric Hammersmith in London. Louise now teaches English and drama to A-Level students and lives in West London with her husband and stepson. The Fortunes of Olivia Richmond is her first novel.
My thoughts: Set in a suitably Gothic and somewhat sinister house, buried in the woods, this is a perfect Halloween read. Unreliable narrators, characters with buckets of secrets, ghosts, a violent figure hiding in the forest, suspicious locals, and a young woman who says she can see spirits, and reads the tarot to some of the townspeople, causing friction.
Julia must make her own way in the world, having inherited nothing useful from her mother, and with a brother who doesn’t want to help. So she was working as a governess, but after a terrible incident at her last post she’s floundering.
Hired as a companion to doctor’s daughter Olivia Richmond, at Mistcoate in Norfolk, she’s fully aware this is her last chance to get a good reference and earn some money. Her employer wants her to prepare his troubled daughter for the Season in London, where he hopes to find her a husband.
But things are not right at Mistcoate, Olivia is known locally as a witch, claiming to see the dead and be able to divine the future. She’s been looked after by the housekeeper since her mother died when she was very young. But the housekeeper, Mrs Hayes, isn’t all she seems, and is bitterly jealous of Julia’s relationship with Olivia.
As events unfold and take a dark turn, Julia becomes afraid of the household, apart from old Captain Reynolds and the maid of all work Marian. She also becomes close to the local vicar Ed and his sister Alice. These friendships keep her sane as things get stranger and more volatile. Her employer, Dr Reynolds, insists on holding “examinations” of his daughter, assisted only by the housekeeper, and threatens Julia with the sack.
The book amps up the tension and you really feel for Julia, although she also has secrets and the ghosts seem to cling to her, symbols of her guilt, perhaps.
The ending is ambiguous, will Olivia be alright in her new life in London and will Julia and Ed make a go of it? Have they truly escaped the ghosts and demons of their pasts?
In the photograph Martha Benn has kept for two decades, three girls lounge on the grass during a school field trip. Beside Martha, there’s Liv, petite and wickedly funny, and Juliet, their unofficial leader, brave, kind, and effortlessly beautiful. Back then, they meant the world to each other. But when Juliet disappeared, the bond between Martha and Liv unravelled too.
Martha was the last known person to see Juliet alive, and she still has no idea what happened after the two said goodnight on a towpath beside London’s Regent’s Canal. The next day, Juliet’s abandoned bicycle was discovered, but no sign of Juliet. Without witnesses or clues, the investigation fell apart.
Martha, now a TV celebrity preparing to host a show investigating cold cases, finally has a chance to get answers. As Martha tries to piece together what happened to Juliet, she realizes that her memories of those long-ago bonds may not tell the whole story. And someone else may know more about Juliet’s fate, and their friendship, than she could ever have imagined . . .
My thoughts: Friendship is a weird thing, it changes over time, sometimes getting stronger, sometimes it just falls away. But we never forget, not really.
Martha is trying to put the pieces together about the disappearance of her friend Juliet, years after the fact. The third member of their group, Liv, might have some idea but it’s been tricky getting in touch, she’s vague over email, and Martha is desperate to meet up and compare notes.
But there seems to be more to all this, and maybe one of the few witnesses, someone always on the sidelines, in the background, knows the truth.
It’s a bit creepy, with a stalker’s perspective on the events around Juliet’s disappearance and on Martha’s attempts to figure it all out. I imagine we don’t notice those people, the ones on the fringes of our lives, very often, and that’s certainly the case here, with a controlling and manipulative person who seems incredibly innocent as well.
Isabel’s books just get better, and more sinister, this is definitely the darkest one yet I reckon. I really enjoyed reading it, she has a brilliant knack at getting you to understand the characters and their strange minds without being put off or disturbed. I felt for Martha, and for Casey, both held in place by something that happened so long ago that many people have forgotten.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Have you read The Red Woman and the White Bear yet? We highly recommend you add this beauty to the top of your reading list! You won’t regret it!
The Red Woman and the White Bear
Publication Date: September 24, 2024
Genre: Romantic Fantasy
✨️Fae courts
✨️Enemies to lovers
✨️Hurt/comfort
✨️Shadow magic
✨️Court politics
✨️Opposing religions/religion is magic
✨️Slow burn forbidden love
✨️Hidden identity
✨️Morally grey characters
✨️Reluctant chosen one
✨️Soul-deep connection
It is both the fate and the burden of the Red Woman to bring peace.
The Fae are real—this is a fact that Aisling Morrow has believed with varying degrees of certainty since she was a child. Her late mother’s accounts of their beauty still linger in her mind, but always with the caveat: Do not involve yourself uninvited with matters of the Fae. Aisling has no plans to do so—until she discovers an arcane prophecy which names her the Red Woman, destined to turn the tides of war in the realm of Wyldraíocht by ensuring the fall of the Unseelie Court.
On a quest to understand her role, Aisling ventures into Wyldraíocht. Except Fae prophecies aren’t so easily interpreted, and she is soon ensnared in a dangerous web of political machinations, opposing religions, and dark magic—at the center of which stands the fierce and vengeful Unseelie King.
King Kael Ardhen, a vessel for raw power bestowed upon him by an eldritch god, is consumed by his own unbridled rage—a rage which he would not hesitate to turn on the human woman prophesied to destroy his court. Yet something about the way Aisling calls to his shadows draws him in, at once both granting him control over his violent magic and inviting him to relinquish control over his guarded heart.
As unsettling truths about the world her mother so loved challenge Aisling’s convictions and call into question the true purpose of the Red Woman, the Veil between realms grows ever weaker with the echoes of war. Soon, the crueler sorts of Fae will no longer be confined to Wyldraíocht. With time running out to protect those she loves, Aisling finds herself at the crossroads of fate and choice—and the ultimate price of peace may demand more than she is willing to pay.
“Invocation is a brilliantly crafted, action-packed romantasy thriller you won’t be able to put down.” – Erin Michelle Sky, Author
SAMANTHA
I never thought I’d willingly walk into Hell again, but I did.
I survived and am back where I belong—at home. But Gabe, my demon-dead friend, is still missing. And the guilt is crippling me.
While I’m laughing and happy with my boyfriend, Gabe is suffering. While I’m resting and healing, Gabe is being endlessly tortured. But every plan I come up with is a suicide mission. And despite what it sometimes looks like, I’m not ready to die.
So, when my werewolf friends ask me to help their pack with a problem, there’s no way I can say no—even if I’m not ready to jump into another fight. There’s a mysterious evil the werewolves can’t track, and they need me to help them kill it.
It’s the perfect distraction. The only problem? Phoenix, a mortal, wants to go with me.
Even though he’s proven he can handle the supernatural, I can’t help but think nothing good can come from him getting an even better glimpse of how not normal my work life is. But I can’t say no to him; all I can do is pray Phoenix is still by my side when this is over.
PHOENIX
My life pre-Samantha was turmoil. Soccer career, over. Family life, devastated after the loss of my grandmother. Dating? Laughable. Every relationship fell apart because the door in my heart had been shut tight. I was unknowingly holding out for the one girl who had completely changed my world.
Samantha is it for me; my heart knew it before I did. I’d go anywhere as long as it’s with her.
But her guardian angel, Eli, said something to me that makes me think something truly terrible will happen to Samantha. And I’m not about to let that happen. I’ll do anything to keep her safe.
“I absolutely loved this book, it blew my mind…I laughed, I cried, I swooned…it’s a heartfelt epic adventure! – Sheila Kay, Author
AUTHOR NOTE: The Days of Iron & Clay is a spin-off the Alpha Girls Series, but can be fully enjoyed alone and is best enjoyed in order! Infestation picks up right where Invocation left off. Be sure to read Invocation first!
Happy release week to Alli Temple! Only Mostly Dead is the perfect ghostly tale for the spooky season!
Only Mostly Dead (Afterlife Incorporated Book 1)
ramblingmads 