Blood for the Dancer by Dallas Mullican

Join an adventure through Heaven and Hell in the first thrilling volume of Dallas Mullican’s fantasy epic- The Horde and the Host Trilogy.

BLOOD FOR THE DANCER

Dying and trapped in pain, Dustan Wheaton cries out to Heaven… but it’s a demon who answers.

Salvation comes at a price. Dustan must become the demons’ most deadly assassin, slaying angels on earth before they can recruit mortal souls into a war that has raged for eons.

With the demons fanning his hatred, Dustan is eager to kill those he blames for ignoring his prayers and allowing his parents to die. He travels the world destroying his angelic enemies until sent to face a mysterious woman.

The Dancer is unlike any foe Dustan has encountered. He finds himself inexplicably drawn to her, and for the first time, he questions his orders. Her claim that his entire life has been a lie threatens to shatter lifelong beliefs and sows doubts about his demon family.

Trusting this woman will mean turning his back on those who saved him and gave his life purpose, not to mention place a target on his back for angels and demons alike. Doubting her could mean the end of all humankind.

Angels and Demons and Wolf Dragons Oh My!
Blood For The Dancer blurs the line between good and evil in a most magnificent way.
This dark fantasy travels through time and mystical realms as we see Dustan grow from a sickly boy to something much more than a man as he trains to fight in a world where demons are not entirely evil and angels are not as virtuous as expected.
As a child, close to death, Dustan's mom prays for a miracle to save her child but what answers is no heavenly being. Dustan possesses an ability to recognize Angels as they hide in plain sight in human form. This is a most useful gift to the demons who want to utilize it and Dustan in their war against the angels.
5 out of 5 stars
I received an advance copy for review.

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About the author
After spending twenty years as the lead singer of a progressive metal band, Dallas Mullican turned his creative impulses toward writing. Raised on King, Barker, and McCammon, he moved on to Poe and Lovecraft, enamored with the macabre. During his time at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he received degrees in English and Philosophy, Dallas developed a love for the Existentialists, Shakespeare, Faulkner, and many more great authors and thinkers. Incorporating this wide array of influences, he entices the reader to fear the bump in the night, think about the nature of reality, and question the motives of their fellow humans.

A pariah of the Deep South, Dallas doesn't understand NASCAR, hates Southern rock and country music, and believes the great outdoors consists of walking to the mailbox and back. He remains a metalhead at heart, and can be easily recognized by his bald head and Iron Maiden t-shirt.

Montauk by Nicola Harrison

Description

An epic and cinematic novel by debut author Nicola Harrison, Montauk captures the glamour and extravagance of a summer by the sea with the story of a woman torn between the life she chose and the life she desires.

Montauk, Long Island, 1938.

For three months, this humble fishing village will serve as the playground for New York City’s wealthy elite. Beatrice Bordeaux was looking forward to a summer of reigniting the passion between her and her husband, Harry. Instead, tasked with furthering his investment interest in Montauk as a resort destination, she learns she’ll be spending twelve weeks sequestered with the high society wives at The Montauk Manor—a two-hundred room seaside hotel—while Harry pursues other interests in the city.
College educated, but raised a modest country girl in Pennsylvania, Bea has never felt fully comfortable among these privileged women, whose days are devoted not to their children but to leisure activities and charities that seemingly benefit no one but themselves. She longs to be a mother herself, as well as a loving wife, but after five years of marriage she remains childless while Harry is increasingly remote and distracted. Despite lavish parties at the Manor and the Yacht Club, Bea is lost and lonely and befriends the manor’s laundress whose work ethic and family life stir memories of who she once was.
As she drifts further from the society women and their preoccupations and closer toward Montauk’s natural beauty and community spirit, Bea finds herself drawn to a man nothing like her husband –stoic, plain spoken and enigmatic. Inspiring a strength and courage she had almost forgotten, his presence forces her to face a haunting tragedy of her past and question her future.
Desperate to embrace moments of happiness, no matter how fleeting, she soon discovers that such moments may be all she has, when fates conspire to tear her world apart…

There are two sides to Montauk, and the author portrays them in mesmerizing detail. There are the humble hard working families who struggle to make ends meet all year long, and the wealthy summer tourists who come to while away the summer days in The Montauk Manor, a swanky upscale seaside hotel. Most people will see one side or the other, but Beatrice Bordeax will see both. Never quite fitting in with the other wives and their trivial interests Bea finds herself befriending the laundry lady as her lonely days drag on. Her summer at the hotel was meant to rekindle her marriage, but with her husband away on "business" more days than not she begins to accompany Elizabeth the laundry lady into the village and discovers she feels more at home there than with the snobs at the hotel. It is through Elizabeth that she meets a man who seems oddly familiar and begins to imagine a more fulfilling life for herself. I could almost smell the salt air and feel the breeze off the ocean as I was swept into the story.
5 out of 5 stars
I received an advance copy for review.

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Mine by Courtney Cole

Tessa was prepared for the hurricane. Lindsey was the storm she didn’t see coming.

When Tessa Taylor unlocked her husband Ethan’s iPad to discover nude photos from a twenty-six-year-old bombshell named Lindsey, her seemingly perfect life came to a screeching halt.

With a hurricane barreling toward Florida and Ethan stuck on a business trip, Tessa finds herself imprisoned in her own home with a choice to make: Does she ride out the storm until she can confront Ethan in person, or does she take matters into her own hands?

Increasingly restless and desperate for revenge, Tessa resolves to act. And when she lures Lindsey over a few hours later, there’s no turning back.

What ensues is a battle of wills between two well-matched opponents, blinded by love for the same man but driven by demons of their own. Like storm-ravaged Florida, neither woman will be the same when the skies clear.

OH MY GOODNESS!
Tessa arrives home alone just as the hurricane hits. Her oldest child is off at school and the younger kids are safe with the grandparents. She's rushed home to spend the weekend with her husband who blows her off at the last second, allegedly for work. She believes him as she has always believed in him, because if you can't trust your own husband who can you trust? Then she sees the messages. Dozens of them, from the woman he's been having an affair with. She is crushed. She wants answers, and she wants to confront him, but he's not there and the cell service is dying from storm damage. Suddenly she knows just what to do, she'll get her answers from the mistress instead.
My thoughts are all over the place. I just finished this book and now see why the cover is so very perfect. I tore through this novel as quick as the hurricane force winds that descended on Tessa's life.
This is a powerful story, rich with betrayal and steeped in rage, or maybe the rage is my own, I can't even tell anymore if I am feeling my own emotions or those of Tessa. You will want to hug your husband after reading this, if he is trustworthy. You may want to smack him if he isn't. Either way you will feel something. This is not the kind of book that you can just put down and go about your day. You wont forget this one so easily.
5 out of 5 stars
I received an advance copy for review.


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About the author
Courtney Cole is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist who would eat mythology for breakfast if she could.

She loves giving advice, loving on her kids, red lipstick and blonde hair dye.

Courtney was born and raised in rural Kansas, but has since migrated south. She now lives in Florida and writes beneath palm trees.

Learn more about Courtney and her books at www.courtneycolewrites.com

Find her on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/#!/courtneyc...

Tinfoil Butterfly by Rachel Eve Moulton

The Shining meets About a Boy in this electrifying debut about a troubled young woman and a lonely boy facing their demons in the frozen Black Hills.

Emma is hitchhiking across the United States, trying to outrun a violent, tragic past, when she meets Lowell, the hot-but-dumb driver she hopes will take her as far as the Badlands. But Lowell is not as harmless as he seems, and a vicious scuffle leaves Emma bloody and stranded in an abandoned town in the Black Hills with an out-of-gas van, a loaded gun, and a snowstorm on the way.

The town is eerily quiet and Emma takes shelter in a diner, where she stumbles across Earl, a strange little boy in a tinfoil mask who steals her gun before begging her to help him get rid of "George." As she is pulled deeper into Earl's bizarre, menacing world, the horrors of Emma's past creep closer, and she realizes she can't run forever.

Tinfoil Butterfly is a seductively scary, chilling exploration of evil--how it sneaks in under your skin, flaring up when you least expect it, how it throttles you and won't let go. The beauty of Rachel Eve Moulton's ferocious, harrowing, and surprisingly moving debut is that it teaches us that love can do that, too.


This was an intriguing novel that was not exactly what I was expecting from the description, but by the time I realized that, the story had already sucked me in and I had to find out more about Emma and why she seemed to be on her own with a horrid scar on her stomach from pulling out her own stitches. It's not clear at first why Emma so desperately wants to get to the Badlands or what it has to do with her past, but she is obviously willing to risk her life to make it there. When she ends up having to run from the man who promised to take her there, she finds herself in a deserted ghost town where she meets a troubled child with a past even more tragic than her own. With a blizzard on the way and a deranged man after her, Emma's desire to live awakens in ways she never thought possible.
4 out of 5 stars
I received an advance copy for review.
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Never Cry Again by Jim Cole

 

Drew is conceived in abuse, born into neglect, and raised in hatred. The story tells how the rural boy survives a life of extreme poverty, living in the poorest part of a southern Arkansas town and whose prostitute mother entertains numerous 'uncles'. When one of those uncles becomes abusive toward Drew, and then later attempts male rape, which was encouraged by his mother. Drew has no other choice. He must leave home.

The ten-year old boy climbs into a rail boxcar, and the train takes him away not only from the abuse but also from his friends, carrying him to an unknown future. Just as things seem their worst, Drew, realizing that his childhood is now over, vows that he will never cry again, but instead face life on his own terms.

Praised by one critic as Huckleberry Finn meets Forrest Gump, Drew's adventures on the way to responsible and compassionate manhood, set against the backdrop of America's Great Depression and the following turbulent years of World War II, are a story that is relevant to the upheavals and turbulence in society today.  

 

Some women are not cut out to be mothers. Drew's mom Edith  is one of them. Edith was only 13 the first time her father raped her and it wasn't much longer until the day she decided to go for a walk and never return. Having no place to stay and no way to earn money she ends up in a hotel with a married man. When he tells her that he is going back to his wife she is once again on her own. Edith ends up giving birth in a brothel and becomes a prostitute. She seems to enjoy this lifestyle as there is no shortage of other prostitutes to take care of her son, who she wants nothing to do with. This becomes a problem as Drew grows up and begins attending church, the only white boy in the all black congregation. The brothel owner feels she is already at risk having a child on the premises but the Klan may make trouble as well so Edith is sold off to one of her customers and she is not happy that she is expected to take her son with her and be a mother to him. By this point Edith is already a raging alcoholic with no maternal skills and Drew must basically fend for himself. He follows in his mother's footsteps of becoming a runaway after an attempted rape and is homeless and alone at 10 years old. Drew meets a multitude of people in his travels, some good and others who mean him harm though he never seems to give up hope of living a decent life.

This is usually my favorite time period for historical fiction and while I understand that racial tensions ran hot in the south it still seemed a bit heavier on the N word than was required and the (phonetically correct?) spellings of the way black people are portrayed as pronouncing certain words seemed over done and unnecessary. I'm not as in love with this book as I'd hoped to be.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

 

I received an complimentary copy for review.

I Know You by Erik Therme

Sisters Bree and Alissa Walker share a special bond. Neglected by their parents, they have always looked out for one another. But one day, sixteen-year-old Alissa goes missing. When Bree discovers her green backpack with all her belongings, abandoned on the steps of their run-down trailer, she knows that something bad has happened …

Then she receives a chilling text message. Someone has Alissa. But Bree will have to give up something very precious in exchange.

Desperate to save Alissa, Bree looks at everyone close to their family. She’s sure that Alissa’s best friend is keeping something back about her little sister and a boy at school, and why has their estranged uncle, who they’ve not seen in years, been hanging around again?

It soon becomes clear that the person behind the message knows a lot about the dark truths within the Walker family and will go to any lengths to get revenge. And as the search for Alissa continues, Bree discovers something about her brother Tyler that she wishes she hadn’t, a dangerous secret, which is also the key to bringing her little sister back home


Bree Walker is a young woman who always had to be the adult in the family. Growing up in less than ideal circumstances, it always fell to Bree to look after her younger siblings while her mother worked long hours to make up for the money her father drank away, or otherwise wasted. Before their marriage crumbled Bree's father was already mostly absent, other than to dole out abuse. Now that he is gone you would think it would be more peaceful but frequent family squabbles have little sister Alissa constantly running away from home, and middle brother Tyler only making an appearance when he wants something. After this latest argument, Alissa doesn't return home but her back pack is left at the door. She doesn't answer her phone and she has not been staying at her friend's house. Bree doesn't want to panic her mother, but she is getting sinister and threatening texts from someone who may have taken Alissa for revenge against her family so Bree sets off alone to confront this threat and rescue her sister.
This was a fast paced suspenseful read.

I received a complimentary copy for review.

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About the author
Erik Therme has thrashed in garage bands, inadvertently harbored runaways, and met Darth Vader. When he’s not at his computer, he can be found cheering on his youngest daughter’s volleyball team, or watching horror movies with his oldest. He currently resides in Iowa City, Iowa—one of only twenty-eight places in the world that UNESCO has certified as a City of Literature. Join Erik’s mailing list to be notified of new releases and author giveaways: http://eepurl.com/cD1F8L

The Widow of Pale Harbor by Hester Fox

From the author of the buzzed-about THE WITCH OF WILLOW HALL comes an atmospheric follow-up novel set in historic New England, about a minister who takes a position in a small Maine town plagued by strange occurences that resemble the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, and the woman--rumored to be a witch and a murderer--presumed to be behind them. October 2019 marks the 170th death date of Poe and this is a novel that both compliments the season and the times.

A town gripped by fear. A woman accused of witchcraft. Who can save Pale Harbor from itself?

Maine, 1846. Gabriel Stone is desperate to escape the ghosts that haunt him in Massachusetts after his wife’s death, so he moves to Maine, taking a position as a minister in the remote village of Pale Harbor.

But not all is as it seems in the sleepy town. Strange, unsettling things have been happening, and the townspeople claim that only one person can be responsible: Sophronia Carver, a reclusive widow who lives with a spinster maid in the eerie Castle Carver. Sophronia must be a witch, and she almost certainly killed her husband.
As the incidents escalate, one thing becomes clear: they are the work of a twisted person inspired by the wildly popular stories of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. And Gabriel must find answers, or Pale Harbor will suffer a fate worthy of Poe’s darkest tales.


I enjoyed The Witch Of Willow Hall by this author so I was excited to get an advance copy of her latest work. This was a historical fiction/mystery with a bit of romance thrown in for good measure.
Sophronia Carver was never made to feel particularly welcome by the people of Pale Harbor Maine after settling there with her cold and cruel husband. Upon his death, the locals began to speculate and gossip that she may have murdered him, either by her own hand or some sort of witchery. Some even claim she has a tail. When strange occurrences begin, and dead animals are found the town gossips blame Sophronia even though she rarely leaves her home and spends her lonely days reading story submissions to her late husband's magazine which she now owns. Its a very solitary existence except for her one true friend and servant Helen.
When Gabriel Stone arrives to take over the church the villagers can't wait to give him on earful of rumors about the Widow, but what they don't know is that he has come to Pale Harbor under false pretenses and has his own secrets as tragic as the one Sophronia keeps.

4 out of 5 stars
I received an advance copy for review.

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About the author
Hester comes to writing from a background in museum work and historical archaeology. She loves the Gothic, the lurid, the dark...so long as the ending is a happy one. She has never seen a ghost, though she remains hopeful.

Hester lives outside of Boston with her husband. THE WITCH OF WILLOW HALL is her first novel.

Website

http://www.hesterfox.com/

Little Whispers by Glen Krisch

It's a time to say goodbye.

Krista Forrester and her family return to her childhood lake house to say goodbye to her dying grandfather. His last wish is to spend his final days surrounded by family. It's a time to reminisce, a time for togetherness and love. But the family's return awakens both forgotten memories and the unsettled spirits tied to the land.

Sometimes memories are better left buried.

Krista never wanted to return to the lake house. She hasn't been back since Breann, her childhood friend, disappeared from the sandy beach right outside her back door. Her disappearance left behind both lingering sorrow and many unanswered questions. Was Breann a victim of a now-convicted serial killer? Will Krista and her family succumb to the evil bound to the lake house? Is Breann still somewhere close, waiting to be discovered? What are those melancholic little whispers Krista hears in the middle of the night?

Only by confronting the tragedies of the past can Krista guarantee her family's future.


A family reunion stirs up more than memories when Krista, her siblings, and their children arrive at the lake house to be with their grandfather in his final days. Years ago, Krista's best friend went missing from this area after they had an argument, never to be found. A convicted murderer may know her whereabouts, but Krista's grandfather may know more than he's admitted to all these years. Part family drama, part mysterious ghost story, this novel hit all the right notes for a captivating read.

I received an advance copy for review.
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