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Blog Tour: Where David Threw Stones – Elyse Hoffman

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Welcome to the tour for Where David Threw Stones by Elyse Hoffman. Perfect for fans of The Book Thief.

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Where David Threw Stones

Publication Date: September 27th, 2022

Genre: Historical Fantasy/ Historical Fiction/ WW2

“Welcome to the Brennenbach of Midnight! The Curse Hours have begun.”

West Germany, 1968

When ten-year-old David Saidel’s parents are murdered, he is sent to live with his grandfather in the anti-Semitic village of Brennenbach. Miserable and lonely, David finds solace in his kindly Grandpa Ernst, who has one strict rule: never go out after midnight.

When David breaks curfew to search for his missing dog, he discovers why Ernst is so serious about his curfew: Brennenbach is cursed. When midnight strikes, the town is thrown back to 1943, the height of Hitler’s reign.

The Nazi ghosts that infest Brennenbach are just as dangerous as they were in life. They’re hunting for David, thinking he is the last member of a family they’ve been ordered to destroy.

Through the help of a little girl named Maria Rahm, David sets out to end the Curse before it claims more victims.

Award-winning author Elyse Hoffman has crafted an expertly woven tale of World War II’s horrors – perfect for readers of Marcus Zusak’s “The Book Thief,” or Michael Reit’s “Beyond the Tracks.”

Check out the wonderful reviews on Goodreads and grab a copy today!

Available on Amazon

About the Author

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Elyse Hoffman is an award-winning author who strives to tell historical tales with new twists. She loves to meld WWII and Jewish history with fantasy, folklore, and the paranormal. She has written six works of Holocaust historical fiction: The Barracks of the Holocaust five-book series and The Book of Uriel. Elyse’s books are the way to go if you love history and want to read some unique stories.

Elyse Hoffman

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Cover Reveal: The Captain’s Revenge – Jessica S. Taylor

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We are thrilled to present the GORGEOUS cover for the next highly anticipated novel in Jessica S. Taylor’s dark fantasy series, The Captain’s Revenge! Read on for more details and pre-order a copy today!

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The Captain’s Revenge

Expected Publication Date: April 18, 2023

Genre: Dark Fantasy/ Sirens/ Pirates

“Not all treasure is silver and gold.”

Caelum stopped his father, but at what cost? Brigid was gone, taken by the very woman she once owed her life to, and Caelum was now wanted for his father’s murder. Now, he has to deal with the aftermath of his decisions, and with the other syrens who only seem determined to make his life more difficult. 

Brigid, torn from the new life she had begun to make for herself, must now endure the wrath of the goddess who had saved her. To survive, she shuts herself down, silently hoping that Caelum will rescue her and silently resigning herself to the fact that he won’t make it in time before her body succumbs to Cliodhna’s torture. 

When whisperings of a mysterious witch in the South reach Caelum, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get Brigid back, including giving up that which he holds most dear. But will he be able to save her in time? And will what remains of his father’s crew really give up that easily? 

CW:

This book contains dark and adult themes. Possible trigger warnings include: violence, descriptive torture, blood, death, dismemberment, non-explicit flashbacks of physical abuse, brief and non-explicit references to child kidnapping and deaths, mentions of past domestic violence, moderate sexual content, depictions of anxiety and depression, and mentions of past arranged marriages. 

PRE-ORDER HERE

Cover

The Syren’s Mutiny

Publication Date: November 9th, 2022

Genre: Dark Fantasy/ Pirates/ Mythology

“It’s frightful bad luck to have a woman aboard.”

Brigid knew the superstition, but when her father tried to marry her off, she had no choice but to stowaway on a ship bound for Bhodheas. When she’s discovered and discarded, her fate seems sealed…until she’s saved by the ocean and its queen.

Transformed into a syren and given new life, Brigid now has the power to seek revenge on those who wronged her.

Caelum has spent his entire life trying to help those who couldn’t help themselves. After years suffering the cruelty of his pirate father, saving others from a similar fate was ingrained in him. But when he’s unable to save a young girl from being thrown overboard for hiding away, he’s devastated.

Until one day, when he’s thrown into the water by unforeseen forces, he comes face to face with the past, and maybe, with his future.

But there’s a darkness lurking on the seas they both call home. And Caelum and Brigid have no idea just how intertwined their stories really are.

Content Warning:

This book contains dark and adult themes. Possible trigger warnings include: violence, drowning, death, dismemberment, torture, brief/non-explicit references to child kidnapping and deaths, mentions of past domestic violence, mild sexual content, and mentions of arranged marriages. 

PURCHASE HERE

About the Author

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Jessica was born and raised in Kentucky, but has been moving with the waves and is currently residing in southern Maine with her husband and cat, Nebula. Jessica’s love of reading and writing began at a young age with the help of her grandmother and her local library, and she hasn’t looked back since. Similarly, her love for pirates, mermaids, and all things fantasy have only grown more intense with time.

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Blog Tour: Case Files – Rachel Amphlett

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Discover twelve dark and twisted mysteries from USA Today bestselling author Rachel Amphlett.

This page-turning collection features The Man Cave in which Darren regains consciousness in a dank basement where escape turns out to be the least of his worries; in All Night Long Zoe soon wishes she wasn’t working the late shift; and in Nowhere to Run a rookie detective encounters her first serial killer… but will she survive?

My thoughts: this was a really enjoyable collection of short crime stories. Some were very brief and others felt like the beginning of a novel. All were clever and a couple made me laugh out loud. If you like crime fiction and short stories, you could do a lot worse than starting with these.

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

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Blog Tour: Local Girl Missing – J.A. Baker

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Missing without trace…
When local woman Deborah goes missing, her colleagues Adrian, Yvonne and Merriel are all left in shock. Gossip around the office begins to swirl – what could have happened to Deborah? Is she dead or alive? And who could be responsible for her disappearance?
Everyone is terrified that they could be next…except the one person who has all the answers. The last person people expect.
Because Deborah is being held captive by a monster, a psychopath. But not a stranger… it’s someone she knows all too well…
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J. A. Baker is a successful psychological thriller writer of numerous books, previously published by Bloodhound. Born and brought up in Middlesbrough, she still lives in the North East, which inspires
the settings for her books. Her first title for Boldwood will be published in December 2022.

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My thoughts: I enjoyed this, I liked the switching between different characters so you see what they think about each other and recent events. You don’t know who to trust because they all seem to be hiding something. Even Deborah, who ask the kidnapped victim, you’d think would be the most honest.

I had no idea who the kidnapper was. There were too many suspects, too many messed up families. So it was a huge surprise and yet there were definitely questions at the end that still needed answers.

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

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Blog Tour: The Secrets of Rochester Place – Iris Costello

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Spring 1937: Teresa, a young Basque girl, is evacuated to London in the wake of the Guernica bombing. She thinks she has reached safety in the lofty halls of Rochester Place and the soothing arms of Mary Davidson, but trouble seeks her out wherever she goes…

Autumn 2020: Corrine, an emergency services operator, receives a call from a distressed woman called Mary. But when the ambulance arrives at Rochester Place – the address the woman gave them – she is nowhere to be found. No matter how hard she tries to forget, memories of Mary’s raw fear haunt Corinne and secrets, long-hidden in Corinne’s family tree, begin to surface.

Is Mary calling from beyond the grave? And what actually happened at Rochester Place all those years ago?

Set between the dusty halls of Rochester Place and the bustling streets of modern-day Tooting, this emotive, intricately layered mystery tells the spellbinding story of two people, separated by time, yet mysteriously connected through an enchanting Georgian house and the secrets within its walls. The perfect escapist read for fans of Kate Morton, Eve Chase and Lulu Taylor.

My thoughts: inspired by the author’s family, this is a moving and clever timeslip book, set between now and events in the Spanish Civil War and Second World War.

Sadly Spain’s horrific 1930s War is not taught much here, and what little I know I’ve learnt as an adult. But it was the precursor to the horrendous events of WW2, especially the massacre of Guernica. Which is where little Theresa is fleeing from.

Sent to safety in England by her elder sister, Theresa travels by sea with other refugee children. Offered a home by the kind and intriguing Mary, an Irish woman who speaks Basque and lives with her English husband in Rochester Place, she finds herself in a world unlike that she’s known. But Mary has secrets and a past too.

How these two are connected to Corinne, who works as an emergency services call handler, while her wife and sister-in-law run a family restaurant, selling the delicious food their mum used to make. After a strange phone call shakes her, Corinne and her historian uncle Robin look into Rochester Place and its occupants. Then she’s called to Ireland, where her grandmother is ill. And secrets are about to be revealed.

Moving and rather lovely, with several love stories mixed into the history, this is a heartwarming tale of found family, survival and love.

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

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Blog Tour: A Deadly Covenant – Michael Stanley

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While building a pipeline near the Okavango Delta, a contractor unearths the remains of a long-dead Bushman. Rookie Detective David ‘Kubu’ Bengu of Botswana CID and Scottish pathologist, Ian MacGregor, are sent to investigate, and MacGregor discovers the skeletons of eight more men.

Shortly after the gruesome discoveries, the elder of a nearby village is murdered in his home. The local police are convinced it was a robbery, but Kubu isn’t so sure … and neither is the strange woman who claims that an angry river spirit caused the elder’s death.

As accusations of corruption are levelled and international outrage builds over the massacre of the Bushman families, Kubu and his colleagues uncover a deadly covenant, and begin to fear that their own lives may be in mortal danger…

Michael Stanley is the writing team of South African authors Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip. On a flying trip to Botswana, they watched a pack of hyenas hunt, kill and devour a wildebeest, eating both flesh and bones. That gave them the premise for their first mystery, A Carrion Death, which introduced Detective ‘Kubu’ Bengu of the Botswana CID. It was a finalist for five awards, including the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger. The third in the series, Death of the Mantis, won the Barry Award for Best Paperback Original mystery and was a finalist for an Edgar award. Deadly Harvest was a finalist for an International Thriller Writers’ award. A Death in the Family and Dying to Live are the latest in the Detective Kubu series, published by Orenda Books. A prequel to the Detective Kubu series, Facets of Death, was published in 2021 and A Deadly Covenant follows Kubu’s second case.

My thoughts: Detective Kubu returns in a case of murder, secrets and promises. Sent out to a remote village to investigate human remains found while digging for new water pipes, Kubu encounters people who won’t speak up, closing ranks against the outsiders. As more bones are found and pathologist Dr McGregor thinks they’re the massacred remains of a group of Bushmen, discriminated against widely, and some may be children, Kubu becomes more determined to find the truth. Then new murders occur.

As Assistant Commissioner Mabuku comes out to help with this new spate of crime, the local police think it’s a newcomer – a Bushman who says he’s come at the behest of his ancestors, because of the bodies they’ve found.

Digging into local history, rumours and friendships, the team find a terrible pact made between a group of friends years before. Could this hold the answers?

Gripping, trawling through the worst things humans can do, but with a lightness of touch, finding moments of humour, and with such intriguing characters. I loved the last Kubu I read and this was also very good. Enjoyable and thought provoking.

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

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Blog Tour: Alone With You in the Ether – Olivie Blake

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Chicago, sometime. Two people meet in the Art Institute, in the armoury section, quite by chance. Prior to their encounter, he is a doctoral student who manages his destructive thoughts with compulsive calculations about time travel; she is a bipolar counterfeit artist undergoing court-ordered psychotherapy. After their meeting, those things do not change.

Everything else, however, is slightly different.

Both obsessive, eccentric personalities, Aldo Damiani and Charlotte Regan struggle to be without each other from the moment they meet. The truth – that he is a clinically depressed, anti-social theoretician and she is a manipulative liar with a history of self-sabotage – means the deeper they fall in love, the more troubling their reliance on each other becomes.

Alone with you in the Ether, is a glimpse into the nature of love, what it means to be unwell, and how to face the fractures of yourself and still love as if you’re not broken.

My thoughts: as someone living with mental illness, I do understand Regan’s ambivalence towards medication – I take mine because without it I can’t realistically function but I do wonder what parts of me it silences. For Regan it’s her art, she can’t draw or paint while medicated.

For Aldo perhaps it’s his brilliance with numbers, she calls him a genius. Constantly working on complex calculations in his head, contemplating hexagons and bees. The number six repeats throughout the book. The six conversations Regan agrees to have with him.

This isn’t an easy to read, simple love story. It’s complex and messy, much like life. Similarly to the author’s Atlas books there is a fascination with time travel – Aldo is trying to solve it with maths, the Atlas scholars with magic.

Regan and Aldo are interesting figures, trying to solve their place in the world, to understand themselves as well as the bigger questions in the universe – love being one of them.

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

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Blog Tour: The Weekend Alone – Jacqueline Grima

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Bella has the perfect life with her husband Jack and their two children – until the ex who stalked her years ago is released from prison.

A tragic past that haunts her
Now Bella is convinced he’s back to hurt her, and sees him everywhere – but no one else can see that anything is wrong.

One last chance to put it behind her
With her family away for the weekend, Bella determines to leave the past in the past – but she’s about to discover the danger is closer to home than she ever imagined…

My thoughts: traumatised and haunted by a terrible experience with a stalker, Bella is reliving it and seeing him everywhere after he’s released from prison. Her husband Jack is worried about her, more so when she insists on spending the weekend alone while the kids are away.

But all is not as it seems, and this time the monster terrorising Bella is a lot closer to home. I was genuinely thrown when their identity was revealed, as it chucks the preceding narrative up in the air and you have to reevaluate everything that’s gone before.

I was really glad that Bella had a true friend in Jazz, someone who had her back even when Bella didn’t realise it. And that her stalker got to redeem himself along the way. Clever and twisted, this stays with you.

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

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Blog Tour: The Missing Wife – Kerry Barrett

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1933. Hannah Snow is fleeing her unhappy marriage when she finds herself in a small hotel on the banks of Loch Ness. But when a monster is spotted in the depths of the waters, the press descends – and Hannah finds her hiding place is discovered. Someone has been looking for Hannah, and when they find her events will take a devastating turn…

Present day. True crime podcaster Scarlett finds herself intrigued by the mystery of Hannah Snow, wife of a promising government minister who disappeared in 1933 – just months before her husband also went missing, presumed dead. As Scarlett works to uncover the truth, she discovers a tragic family secret, and a story as murky as the depths of the loch where Hannah and her husband were last seen…

My thoughts: I really enjoyed this, Hannah flees her unfortunate marriage for a new life in Scotland on the banks of the Loch Ness, just as monster fever sweeps the land. Can she stay hidden or will someone from her past show up?

True crime podcaster Scarlett is on Hannah’s trail years later. Did she and MP husband Laurie end up in the Loch or did they manage to disappear to new lives back in the 1930s, before the internet and social media would make that impossible?

As Scarlett digs through the archives and talks to locals, falling for a monster hunter and fellow podder along the way, she learns not just some secrets from the past but ones from the present that might make her horrible ex Charlie finally go away.

Fun and cheering, I loved Hannah, a very modern woman who wants to be a journalist and not a trophy wife and certainly not in a sham marriage. Her adventures in Scotland lead to a whole new life and I cheered her, and Scarlett, who also needed a new start, on.

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

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Book Blitz: Cracked Coffins – Beronika Keres

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We are so excited to share Cracked Coffins with you! Especially since the second book, Blinding Blood is out now! Read on for more details and a chance to enter a fantastic giveaway at the end!

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Cracked Coffins (Cracked Coffins Series #1)

Publication Date: October 2020

Genre: New Adult Paranormal Thriller/ Vampires

Run. Fight. Survive.

A life of violence and drugs leaves Marianna Cortez desperate for normality. For a brief instant, she thinks she has found that with Denendrius. But he can’t maintain his sweet facade for long. Soon, he reveals himself for what he is… a deranged vampire longing to ensnare her in a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Plan. Plot. Pray.

Forced to play a part in Denendrius’s twisted fantasies, Marianna hunts for a way to escape. But he’s stronger than her, and capable of unimaginable cruelty.

With her only hope of survival being to study her captor and learn his weaknesses, can Marianna uncover secrets from Denendrius’s dark past she can use to destroy him? Or will this monster, who clawed his way through her history, slaughter her chance at a future?

CW: Cracked Coffins is a new adult dark paranormal thriller that explores the horrors of abusive relationships with a vampiric twist. Expect profanity, mature themes, sexual violence, and general violence. 

Purchase Here

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Binding Blood (Cracked Coffins #2)

After being used as bait to capture Denendrius, Marianna had no choice but to save the loathsome vampire to ensure her own survival. But not before Denendrius was fed the cure for vampirism. Now, awakened as a human, he has no memories beyond his mortal life in Ancient Rome.

He can’t recall the people he tortured.
The countless lives he took.
Or why vampires far and wide are hunting him.

How long he’ll stay like this, Marianna doesn’t know, but she has no intention of wasting the opportunity. Dodging vampire attacks, she searches for a way to turn him over to the vampire king before he can retrieve his memories and escape.

Yet the more time she spends with Denendrius, the further she becomes entangled in his web of lies and secrets. Soon, she finds herself questioning those who claim to be allies while fighting to regain a piece of the life he stole from her.

Purchase Here

About the Author

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Beronika Keres is a fantasy, thriller, and horror writer. After deciding in the second grade that she was destined to be an author, she has spent her life honing her craft and pursuing her dream. Fueled by coffee, she can often be found chasing plot bunnies and writing books.

When she isn’t writing, she can be found spending time with her family and enjoying the forests, mountains, and lakes of where she resides in British Columbia, Canada.

Beronika Keres | Facebook | Instagram

International Giveaway: Paperback copy, swag pack with signed bookplates (with bookmarks, sticker, and postcards)

Giveaway runs from December 10th to the 13th!

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