Saturday, April 29, 2017

Cover reveal: Red Days



Blurb:

Keiko never set out to be an activist, but when she’s sent on an assignment to Taiji, Japan, the ball is set in motion. Reporting on the brutal yearly slaughter of hundreds of dolphins, the sight changes the course of her life, because even when she returns home to England she can’t get it out of her head.  

Over the course of ten years Keiko grows and falls in love, all the while following the highs and lows of the campaign to stop the slaughter of dolphins in Japan. Through her articles, she examines the reasons behind it and the moral soundness of the supposed tradition in the hopes of bringing it to an end.


Bio - 

M L Sparrow is currently the author of four full length novels, a novella and a slew of short stories published in various anthologies. She will write pretty much anything that pops into her head, no matter the genre, and enjoys keeping her readers guessing as to what she will write next, though you can pretty much guarantee that there will be some degree of romance! 

As well as writing, she enjoys travelling and has been to some amazing countries, where she never fails to gather inspiration and has an endless supply of ideas for future novels…













Thursday, April 27, 2017

Spotlight: Road to Yesterday

Book Blurb:
Would you travel through time to save your brother’s life? How much would you be willing to sacrifice for the good of your family?

Two brothers fight for their lives in two hospitals, one in 2007 and the other in 2017. Meanwhile their younger sisters, Kim and Violet, find themselves traveling a road where time is no longer constant. The four of them are hurtling toward an unknown future, or an unknown past. Determined to save the lives of both their brothers, Kim and Violet seek the help of a mysterious man who seems to hold the key to everything. Can they find the answers they need before time runs out?








Author Bio:
Greta Cribbs has worn many hats over the years, from mom to schoolteacher to church choir director. She constantly seeks out opportunities to indulge her many interests, but writing is the passion that has been with her the longest. She wrote her first poem at the age of nine and has been creating stories ever since. She published her first book, Amelia’s Children, in 2015, followed by Primogénito in 2016. Road to Yesterday is her third published work. You can follow her on TwitterFacebook, or her website for the latest information about her writing and other projects she is working on.

Preorder on Amazon!





Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases.  

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Spotlight: Double Lightning

About the Book:
In an attempt to find her missing brother, 22-year-old Lily goes undercover to a criminals’ lair. Every federal agent who went undercover to bring down Pharaoh – the criminal boss – has gone missing, and Lily’s big brother is one of them. The Director of the FBI knows possible reasons for that – Pharaoh and his closest friends have supernatural powers. He knows only their nicknames and a list of their abilities: telepathy, supermemory, healing, clairvoyance, etc. To be able to save her brother, Lily has to match extra-abilities with Pharaoh’s henchman, drag out their real names and, what’s harder, find out who Pharaoh is and what superpowers he has. The rumor is that he can kill with a simple glance, so if he learns who Lily is, a quick death would be the best option she would have…




About the Author:
Margaret Mal is a Russian novelist. 'Crimson Hills' is her first book in English. Before starting to write books in English, she had 7 detective novels published through the biggest Russian publishing house (as Margarita Malinina). She wrote her first book at the age of 16, and her first poem even earlier - at the age of 5.
She says that 'Crimson Hills' means the world to her.

You can follow Margaret Mal on Instagram @Margaret_Mal 
or Facebook www.facebook.com/writer.margarita.malinina 
or Twitter @MalininaMM


Author's Amazon Page
Amazon















Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases.  

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Cover Reveal: Blue Bottle Tree

Blurb: 
There’s no such thing as Voodoo. At least, that’s what most of the Baptists in Bellin tell themselves. But Seven LaVey knows better. 
In a small rural town just outside of Nashville, Voodoo conjures and curses simmer and seethe under the noses of the many who will never know. Seventeen-year-old Seven romanticizes about the meaning of life while held captive as a zombie under the shell of a kiddie pool. He's counting on the strength - and maybe even love - of a certain redheaded clarinet player to save him. But will she?
Filled with betrayal and revenge, two families struggle with a curse that stretches back to Queen of the Voodoos Marie Laveau in this contemporary Southern Gothic adventure. Prepare for a wildly original twist on the paranormal. 

The book comes out October 24th

Author Bio:

Beaird Glover grew up on a farm in rural Tennessee. He graduated from The Evergreen State College of Olympia, Washington, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in creative writing. He then moved to Southern California and wrote Secret Ciphers of the 1876 Presidential Election (Aegean Park Press). He has traveled extensively and lived in eleven of the United Sates, and Taipei and Buenos Aires. His poems have been published in the New York Quarterly and his chapbook of poetry was selected by the Austin Chronicle as one of the Top 10 Best of 1994. More recently, he acquired a Bachelor of Science degree from Long Island University in Brooklyn and has worked as a physician assistant. Beaird now lives in New Orleans with his wife Kim and their cats.



PRE-ORDER LINKS:




Monday, April 24, 2017

World Weaver Press Acquires English Rights to Brazilian Anthology

World Weaver Press Acquires English Rights to Brazilian Solarpunk Anthology

Albuquerque, NM (April 24, 2017) — World Weaver Press (Sarena Ulibarri, Editor-in-Chief), an independent publishing house currently located in Albuquerque, New Mexico (USA), has acquired the rights to publish an English translation of the science fiction anthology Solarpunk – Histórias Ecológicas e Fantásticas em um Mundo Sustentável, originally published in 2012 by Editora Draco in São Paulo, Brazil. Solarpunk is an anthology of optimistic science fiction stories compiled by Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro, which envision a world run on renewable energies, featuring nine authors from Brazil and Portugal including Carlos Orsi, Telmo Marçal, Romeu Martins, Antonio Luiz M. Costa, Gabriel Cantareira, Daniel I. Dutra, André S. Silva, Roberta Spindler, and Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro. The anthology will be translated from Portuguese to English by Fábio Fernandes, and publication is expected in the first half of 2018. A Kickstarter campaign will run during the summer of 2017 to assist with translation costs.

Anthologist Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro had two novelettes published in Brazilian Asimov’s: hard SF “Mythic Aliens” and “The Ethics of Treason”; the latter was the first alternative history story in Brazilian and Portuguese science fiction. His alternative history novelette “The Vampire of New Holland” won the Nova Award in 1996, while his SF novelette “The Daughter of the Predator” won the Nautilus in 1999. His main short fiction collections are: Other Histories…The Vampire of New HollandOther BrazilsTaikodom: Chronicles and The Best of Carla Cristina Pereira. Gerson has published four novels so far: Xochiquetzal: An Aztec Princess Among the IncasThe Guardian of MemoryThe Adventures of the Vampire of Palmares and Strsangers in Paradise. He has edited eight short fiction anthologies so far: Phantastica BrasilianaHow Lustful my Alien Girl Was!VaporpunkDieselpunkSolarpunkFantastic Erotica 1Super-Heroes, and Dinosaurs.  Beyond the science fiction borders, he published Vita Vinum Est!: History of Wine in the Roman World.

Translator Fábio Fernandes lives in São Paulo, Brazil. He has published two books so far, an essay on William Gibson’s fiction, A Construção do Imaginário Cyber, and a cyberpunk novel, Os Dias da Peste (both in Portuguese). Also a translator, he is responsible for the translation to Brazilian Portuguese of several SF novels, including NeuromancerSnow Crash, and A Clockwork Orange. His short stories have been published online in Brazil, Portugal, Romania, the UK, New Zealand, and the USA, and also in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded and Southern Fried Weirdness: Reconstruction (2011), The Apex Book of World SF, Vol 2Stories for Chip. He co-edited (with Djibril al-Ayad) the postcolonialist anthology We See a Different Frontier. He is a graduate of Clarion West, class of 2013, and a slush reader for Clarkesworld Magazine.
The original cover for the 2012 Brazilian edition of Solarpunk.
Editora Draco is a Brazilian publisher specializing in national authors of fantastic literature, science fiction, speculative fiction, and comic books.
World Weaver Press is an independently owned publisher of fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction. Established in 2012, we publish approximately 8 to 10 books per year. We believe that publishing speculative fiction isn’t just printing words on the page — it’s the act of weaving brand new worlds.

Saturday, April 22, 2017

Spotlight: Ahe'ey

About the Book:
Morgan’s feminist books didn’t prepare her to deal with the dashing Gabriel and the land of Ahe’ey . . .

Ahe'ey: The Complete Collection

Morgan is a dreamer, change maker and art lover. She is a feisty, slightly preachy, romantic feminist full of contradictions and insecurities. Morgan uncovers a world where women have the power, and where magic is no longer just a figment of her wild imagination. Sounds like a dream, but it may, in fact, turn into a nightmare. 

The world of the Ahe'ey challenges and subverts her views about gender, genes, and nature versus nurture.

The strong and uninvited chemistry between her and the dashing Gabriel makes matters even more complicated. His stunning looks keep short-circuiting her rational mind. 


About the Author:
Jamie is an accomplished writer and speaker that focuses mainly on topics related to girlhood, feminism, gender equality, and the misrepresentation of minorities in media and marketing.

Links to all Book Sellers

Amazon
Website
Goodreads
Twitter

Friday, April 21, 2017

Review: Tell the Wind and Fire

Title: Tell the Wind and Fire
Author: Sarah Rees Brennan
Page Count: 360
My Rating: 3.5 TURTLES: A very enjoyable read, I recommend you check it out.
Amazon
*I was given this book in exchange for an honest review

Book Blurb:
In a city divided between opulent luxury in the Light and fierce privations in the Dark, a determined young woman survives by guarding her secrets. 

Lucie Manette was born in the Dark half of the city, but careful manipulations won her a home in the Light, celebrity status, and a rich, loving boyfriend. Now she just wants to keep her head down, but her boyfriend has a dark secret of his own—one involving an apparent stranger who is destitute and despised.

Lucie alone knows of the deadly connection the young men share, and even as the knowledge leads her to make a grave mistake, she can trust no one with the truth.

Blood and secrets alike spill out when revolution erupts. With both halves of the city burning, and mercy nowhere to be found, can Lucie save either boy—or herself?

Celebrated author Sarah Rees Brennan tells a magical tale of romance and revolution, love and loss.

Review:
It is really hard for me to figure out how I feel about this book. When I first requested it on Netgalley I was drawn to the beautiful cover, the intriguing premise, and the excitement of a chance to read an ARC from a somewhat famous Young Adult author. I really enjoyed the vivid descriptions of this magical version of New York and the characters were interesting and complex, but everything felt just a little too familiar…

It didn’t take me long to catch on the similarities to “Tell the Wind and Fire” and “A Tale of Two Cities,” the main character’s name is Lucie Manette for crying out loud. Except, unlike in Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunter world where she has a character named Lucie who is named after Dickens’ Lucie Manette, Brennan’s Lucie is the Lucie Manette of “A Tale of Two Cities.” “Tell the Wind and Fire” is fanfiction, essentially. Like, if ATTC wasn’t public domain it wouldn’t be allowed to be published fanfiction. It may be set in a Light/Dark magic, New York alternate universe, but I have read things on fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own that were more canon divergent than “Tell the Wind and Fire.”

That is why it is so hard for me to figure out how I feel about this book. Reading it sort of turned into a game of “spot the similarities.” It starts out with things like Lucie’s name, the fact that Ethan and Carwyn look so similar (Carwyn/Sydney Carton anyone?) and that this similarity saves Ethan’s life early in the book. This is just the first of the similar plot points. To list too many more would spoil both books, but there are certainly more. Even things like Brennan comparing a mob to waves in the sea or using the image of blood running in the streets or the ‘golden thread’ brought me back to my sophomore high school English when we studied literary devices in ATTC.

So yes, I enjoyed this story, and the end made me emotional, but I couldn’t distinguish how much of that was purely from “Tell the Wind and Fire” and how much of that emotion was from “A Tale of Two Cities.” The reason I read fanfiction is to bring the emotion and love for a story and/or characters from one setting to another, but it is not the same thing as establishing new bonds with new characters in new works.


Overall, I would recommend this book. Fans of YA looking for a new novel to sink their teeth into will really enjoy this, I think. However, for people who have read “A Tale of Two Cities” or are familiar with the plot, I recommend going into this treating it as fanfiction, and it will save you the trouble of wondering why the book sounds so familiar.



Disclosure: this post contains links to an affiliate program (Amazon), for which I receive a few cents if you make purchases. 

Spotlight: Radiant Shadows

Book Blurb:
Say there is an official organization to control how vampires and humans interact. What would happen to violators of its 'laws'? How would the breaking of its rules be fixed? What could even be the motivation for members of this alliance?












About the Author:
I live in Salado, Texas, on a donkey ranch.
I've always been a fan of Science fiction, and I write Sci-fi/Fantasy.
I've done little more than read and write for most of my adult life.
You can read the book reviews I've written at: http://sarahsreadings.wordpress.com/