Promo and Giveaway: The Progeny by Tosca Lee

Book Details:

Book Title: The Progeny: A Novel by Tosca Lee
Series: Descendants of the House of Bathory (Book #1)
Category: YA Fiction, 352 pages
Genre: Thriller, (YA-leaning), Slight paranormal
Publisher: Howard Books
Release date: May 2016
Tour dates: March 26 to April 13, 2018
Content Rating: PG

Book Description:

From New York Times bestselling author Tosca Lee comes a story of love, ancient secrets, and survival. Book 1 in the House of Bathory duology.
When you wake up, you remember nothing. Not your name, or where you were born, or the faces of the people you knew. Just a single warning written to yourself before you forgot it all:

"Emily, it’s me. You.

Don’t ask about the last two years… Don’t try to remember and don’t go digging. Your life depends on it. Other lives depend on it.

By the way, Emily isn’t your real name. You died in an accident. You paid extra for that."

You start over in a remote place with a new name, a fresh life. Until the day a stranger tells you you’re being hunted for the sins of a royal ancestor who died centuries before you were born.

You don’t believe him, until they come for you. Now you’re on the run.

Every answer you need lies in a past you chose to erase. The only thing you know for sure is that others are about to die and you need those memories back.

But first, you have to stay alive.

Praise for The Progeny:

"Be warned: once you start this book, it’s impossible to put down!”
- Maria V. Snyder, New York Times bestselling author of Poison Study

“Intriguing and romantic, I literally couldn’t put it down.”
- Jennifer L. Armentrout # 1 New York Times bestselling author

"Irresistible..."
- Publishers Weekly

"[A] complex thriller with various turns and twists...A great choice for readers who enjoy their psychological thrillers with a historical twist."
- Library Journal

"Exciting...action-packed…intriguing.”
- Romantic Times Book Reviews

"Filled with intrigue, romance, and reversals fans are sure to love."
- Family Fiction

"The Progeny has risen to the top of my favorites list…I devoured every word of it.”
- Book Reporter

Buy the Book:

Amazon ~ Author's Website

Add to Goodreads

Begin Reading Now!

EXCERPT:

The Center

No one speaks when you enter the Center for the last time. There’s no need. You’ve gone through the counseling, tests, and a checklist of preparations to get the plastic bracelet you wear the day of treatment. The one that saves a life. They don’t need to know why you’re doing it any more. Or that you lied about it all. Just the scratch of the stylus as you sign your name on the screen one last time.

A nurse takes me into a room and I lie down on the table. I give her the sealed packet—the only thing I brought with me. There’s cash, meds, and an address inside, the one for “after.” It’s a thousand miles away. She’ll pass it to the companion assigned to me. No point meeting her now.

I’m 21 years old and my name doesn’t matter because it’s about to be erased forever. I’m choosing to forget the ones I love, and myself, in the process.

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die. But they don’t tell you that every detail comes screaming back to life. That you taste each bite of every meal you savored, feel the shower of every rain you walked in… smell the hair against your cheek before that last, parting kiss. That you will fight to hold on to every memory like a drowning person gasping for poisoned air.

Then everything you knew is gone. And you are still alive.

For now.

Continue reading the first four chapters FREE.

Meet the Author:

"Superior storytelling." - Publishers Weekly

"One of the most gifted novelists writing today." -Steven James, bestselling author

Tosca Lee is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of the House of Bathory Duology (The Progeny and Firstborn, currently in development for television),Iscariot, The Legend of Sheba, Demon: A Memoir, Havah: The Story of Eve, and the Books of Mortals series with New York Times bestseller Ted Dekker (Forbidden, Mortal, Sovereign). A notorious night-owl, she loves watching TV, eating bacon, playing video games and football with her kids, and sending cheesy texts to her husband.

You can find Tosca at ToscaLee.com, on social media, or hanging around the snack table. (And be sure to check out Ismeni, the free e-short prequel to The Legend of Sheba!)

Get your copy of The Progeny here: http://toscalee.com/product/the-progeny/ (Kindle readers: now you can enjoy special insights in the author’s highlighted comments!)

Connect with the Author: Website ~ Twitter ~ Facebook ~ Instagram ~ Pinterest

Enter the Giveaway!

Ends April 21, 2018

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Book Tour, Guest Post, and Giveaway: The Space Between by Susan Rooke

Book Details:

Book Title: The Space Between: The Prophesy of Faeries by Susan Rooke
Category: Adult Fiction, 452 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Fairy Tale
Publisher: Holynok Press
Release date: September 12, 2017
Format available for review: ebook (mobi, ePub, PDF)
Tour dates: Oct 23 to Nov 17, 2017
Content Rating: PG-13 (For some violence. There is no sex or bad language)

Book Description:

Mellis, a courageous and resourceful young woman, is kidnapped from the human world and taken to the Space Between by a tribe of faeries called the Penitents. Because of guilt over an ancient sin committed by their angel ancestors against the Maker, the Penitents have cursed themselves with grotesque physical disfigurements. Mellis can help them reunite with the Maker and find their way back to redemption, but she would need to give up the life she's always known to remain in the Space Between.

As she struggles with this heart-wrenching decision, one of the Penitents, bent on revenge, commits a gruesome attack against the tribe, and they learn he has taken Satan--the Maker's greatest enemy--as his ally. All in the Space Between are facing grave danger. Will a long-awaited act of vengeance save them?

Susan Rooke builds a rich and fantastical world of angels and demons, monsters, faeries and dragons. Abounding with spirituality and humanity, this faery tale for adults has a cast of vivid characters you won't soon forget.

To follow the blog tour and read reviews, please visit Susan Rooke's page on iRead Book Tours.

Buy the Book:

Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble

Add to Goodreads

Witching for Water

Water—specifically, having enough of it—is a big deal in much of Texas. So much so that people often resort to using supernatural means to locate it underground.

Dowsing: to search for water, minerals, or other buried/hidden substances with the aid of a divining rod. Call it bunkum, hooey, or pseudoscience. I call it witching, because that’s what my father called it. And I’ve done it.

When I was a child, my parents decided to dig a fishing pond in our San Antonio backyard because we loved to fish. That required a well, but how to pinpoint the best spot to drill? My father—an engineer with a deep belief in mysticism—didn’t want to leave that crucial question to a well drilling service. Too chancy; he wanted guaranteed results. So he did what he’d always done when he needed water: he witched for it. And it was as if there’d been a big red arrow reading DRILL HERE pointing to the spot.

I was only 7, but I remember him inspecting a young fruit tree in the yard and cutting off a slender, Y-shaped branch. He trimmed it with his razor-sharp pocketknife so that the arms of the Y were longer than the stem. Then, holding the divining rod by the arms with the stem pointing forward, he paced across the yard as the family watched.

I was awestruck when the stem tilted sharply toward the ground, as if tugged by a fish at the end of an invisible line. I never thought he might be causing the movement himself. My father was so straightforward and uncompromising he sometimes called himself “Iron Pants.” Then he let me try it. 

It was an unforgettable sensation. I was the sorcerer’s apprentice, holding tight to the magic wand as the water yanked and jerked at it. That branch tried its best to wrench free of my grip and plunge stem-first into the earth. We had found water in abundance. And a few weeks later (it felt like forever), we were fishing in our backyard.

The pond was big enough for a short dock and a rowboat. My father, with long experience on the bays of South Texas, taught me how to row. The first fish we stocked? A pet store goldfish, released with great ceremony to the cool, green waves. Over the next couple of years it became an enormous golden carp. Every so often we’d see brilliant flashes of gold 20 feet down as we rowed across, as if an open treasure chest rested on the bottom. I’d swim out to the middle and dive down in pursuit of that goldfish, but I never found it.

Every so often I wonder what would happen if I tried witching again. Would I find water? Maybe not. Some days I feel I’ve lost my faith. My father never did, though. Magic swirled about him all his life.   

Meet the Author:

Susan Rooke is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author of the forthcoming The Space Between Series. Her short stories and poems have appeared in publications such as The Christian Science Monitor and The Twilight Zone Magazine, among many others. She resides on a square of green, peaceful country not far from Austin, Texas, with her husband Glen, who runs a small cattle operation while Rooke writes fiction about angels and demons, monsters, faeries and dragons. Look for her fantasy novel, The Space Between: The Prophecy of Faeries on Amazon.

Connect with the Author: Website ~ Twitter ~ facebook

Enter the Giveaway!

Ends Nov 25

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Book Blog, Review, Interview, and Giveaway: Awoke; The Want Series by KT. Conte

Book Details:

Book Title: Awoke (The Want Series) by K.T. Conte
Category: YA Fiction; 324 pages
Genre: Fantasy/Paranormal Romance
Publisher: SugarCane Publishing
Release date: October 2017
Format available for review: print & ebook (mobi, ePub, PDF)
Will ship print books to: Internationally
Tour dates: Sept 25 to Oct 27, 2017
Content Rating: PG-13 (mainly bad language)

Book Description:

Katya leads a normal life any teenager would be envious of – popular, pretty and dating the high school elite. Not she enjoys the spotlight, mind you. She wants everyone to believe she is normal.

But when Katya sees the real reason behind the earthquakes plaguing everyone in Boston, the truth rattles and shatters the perfect normal illusion Katya created for herself. An ability to see unearthly creatures and manipulate waves of life energy labels her as anything but normal. And it’s an ability that attracts unwanted and dangerous attention.

She reluctantly finds herself in the company of Gregor, a handsome member of an international spirit military team called the Kyrios. Her simple decision to help thrusts Katya in a world of the undead spirits, betrayal and a perpetual battle between undead monsters and the wardens that keep them in their place.

Katya must decide whether she values the simple and easy life she created for herself over the complex and difficult world now asking her to stand and fight.

Interview:

What made you write a book about the Grim Reaper?

-          Everyone has a fascination with death – normally the response to death is great fear but for some it’s curiosity. The idea of the Grim Reaper has been depicted as the scary being hiding behind a gray cloak and a scythe to just a black void. Isn’t it more fun to think of them as handsome and beautiful men and women taking you into the light?

Where do you get inspiration for your stories?

-          I absorb anime, other sci-fi/fantasy books and stories (including fanfiction) along with tv shows (read: Doctor Who & Torchwood). Add that with my imagination always moving and jumping around at almost every waking moment and something usually comes to be me.

Do you have another profession besides writing?

-          I’m an attorney by day – in healthcare. But writing is a lot more fun.

What is the last great book you’ve read?

-          I’m going to include an entire series for this question: The Lunar Chronicles series – reimagining the Cinderella story and uses an Asian protagonist. They also use one of my favorite animes “Sailor Moon” as an influence.

Do you write every day? What is writing schedule?

-          I would be lying if I said every day. I have to schedule free time for writing in the same manner I would for any meeting.

 I 

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

-          I always find this question to be funny only because there isn’t much wiggle room for me to travel back to due to the whole slavery thing or reconstruction or Jim Crow laws. So I’d prefer to go a hundred years in the future to see how my descendants are doing.

Review:

I don't normally read a lot of YA but the blurb for this one intrigued me so I signed up to receive an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. I want to say the world building for this series was very different than anything that I've read. I am at a loss as to quite how to describe it. It was that different but I really liked that about this series. This book starts out a fast pace and keeps the action coming through out.  Out of all the characters in this story Katra was my favorite. She was caring, brave, and funny. She's what my granny would call spunky. A bit naive to me but that could be me since I am considerably older that her lol

The bad guys in this book most of them were known from the get go. But as in real life there was a snake in the grass. Or more apt a serpent in the garden. I figured out who it was because it was very apparent who one of them was but one fooled me. Though he did turn out to be a good guy again in the end. This story does contain a love story between Gregor and Katra. There is no sex in this book. Plenty of violence but no sex.

I give this book four stars and will reading the next book in this series.

Buy the Book:

Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ IndieBound

iTunes ~ Kobo ~ Bookshout

Add to Goodreads

Meet the Author:

K.T. Conte is a lover of books, people and all things wild and crazy. She received her B.A. in English from Boston College and her law degree from Suffolk University Law School. While she has and continues to be a licensed attorney, her first love has always been books from the tender age of 2. Originally from Massachusetts, K.T. currently lives in New York City with the monsters in the closet, her husband Everett, a couple of building fairies and her dog, Champ.

Connect with the Author: Website ~ Facebook ~ Twitter

Enter the Giveaway!

Ends Nov 4

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Blog Tour, Guest Post, and Giveaway: A Year in the Company of Freaks by Teresa Neumann

Book Details:

Book Title:  A Year in the Company of Freaks by Teresa Neumann

Category:  Adult Fiction,   515 pages

Genre:  Historical Fiction

Publisher:   All's Well House

Release date:  Dec 21, 2015

Tour dates: Sept 11 to 29, 2017

Content Rating: PG + M (Little violence and profanity, no f-words, no sex, but some drug use)

Book Description:

It's 1972 and a seismic clash-of-cultures is rattling northern California. In the redneck town of Trinity Springs, rumors of hippies migrating up from San Francisco have residents bracing for an invasion. When Italian-American hometown boy and Berkeley graduate Sid Jackson is busted for growing pot on his deceased parents' farm, locals suspect the assault has begun. Will a crazy deferral program devised by the sheriff keep Sid out of prison? Or will a house full of eccentric strangers, a passionate love interest, and demons from his past be his undoing?

A "disarmingly appealing" tale of discrimination, transformation and restoration, Freaks is bursting with intrigue, drama, comic relief and romance. Reviewers agree this five-star, coming-of-age classic "very much reflects the attitude and mood of the times."

A Year in the Company of Freaks: A Marriage of Reality and Romance

True confession: At heart, I’m a romantic; an “old-school romance” sort of girl. What that means exactly is open to interpretation, but for me “old-school romance” is Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, Humphrey Bogart and all his leading ladies – strong men and equally strong-willed women, magnetically attracted to each other even as they lunge and parry and spar towards a final, inevitable tango.

In other words, as a romantic, I cheered when Anne Shirley ended up with Gilbert Blythe and wilted when Jo March married the staid Professor Bhaer instead of her ardent beau, “Laurie!”

That said, none of my three books, including A Year in the Company of Freaks, are what you’d call “romance novels.” Still, deep relationships – especially love – are at the core of all them. Without that key element, a great story can only go so far. Why not have comedy AND love? Drama AND love? Sci-fi AND love?

For me, the best stories are a heady combination of all the universals of real life: a cast of diverse characters, love, loss, angst, humor, desperate challenges, dangerous choices and sometimes dire consequences, family and friends we can’t live with but can’t live without. In fact, it’s the tension of opposites who, though they may often drive us crazy, give balance to our own weaknesses.

But what I absolutely desire most in a story – what I need most – is hope: hope that flaws are redeemable; hope that love prevails; hope that justice is served. It’s hope that carries us through the toughest times of life and, on a much smaller scale, through a book (or movie) that has us desperately longing – please, God! -- for a “good” ending.

It’s why I hated the movie The Perfect Storm but loved Life is Beautiful. Both films were based on true stories and featured hopeless story arcs. The difference was that, despite its sad ending, Life is Beautiful left me with an inexplicable sense of hope for humanity whereas The Perfect Storm left me never wanting to step foot on a boat again and wondering why in the world ANYONE would want to be a commercial fisherman for a living.

Life is distressful enough as it is without investing precious hours, nay days, into a book that leaves a reader more depressed than when they started.

I always write with this philosophy – the marriage of reality and romance -- in mind. So readers beware and enjoy!

Praise for A Year in the Company of Freaks:

“This coming of age story will draw the reader right in. Teresa Neumann demonstrates how much she values relationships in her writing … a precious skill. I held my breath all the way through to the final few pages. Five stars!” — The San Francisco Book Review

“As it relates to the complicated clash of culture and counterculture, Freaks acts as an authentic, strongly Seventies book. Northern California works as a strong presence in the novel that is vivid and omnipresent, but never overwhelming. Sure to intrigue and entertain, Freaks will have its digs in you before you realize how involved you’ve become.” — The Manhattan Book Review

To read more reviews, please visit Teresa Neumann's page in iRead Book Tours.

​

Buy the Book:

Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble

Add to Goodreads

About the Author:

Author of highly-acclaimed "A Year in the Company of Freaks," Teresa was raised in a large Midwest family and now lives in Oregon. She is also the author of "Bianca's Vineyard," and its sequel, "Domenico's Table." Both books are based on the true stories of her husband's Italian family in Tuscany. In addition to enjoying family, writing, reading, meeting her readers, wine tasting, traveling, and all things Italian, Teresa loves playing the fiddle with other musicians.

​

Connect with the Author:  Website  ~  Facebook  ~  Twitter

Enter the Giveaway!

Ends Oct 7

a Rafflecopter giveaway