I'm A Voracious Reader : May 2024

Friday, May 31, 2024

Friday Featured Spotlight ~ BBNYA2023 Blog Tours: Finalists 9 & 8

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AVR Weekly News ~ 544th Edition

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by
Kimberly @ Caffeinated Reviewer.
~ Recap the past week ~
~ Show what's upcoming ~
~ Share news ~
~ Display book hauls ~

Saturday Spotlight ~ TWR Blog Tour: Never Closer

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Apple | Kobo | Blackwell's

BBNYA2023 Blog Tour ~ 7th Place Finalist ~ Ghosts of Mars

How would you feel if you were born on Mars, were the most famous person in the Solar System, but could never leave the Red Planet?

Mars. 2045.

My name's Eva, and I’m a Martian.

Well, technically the first Martianborn human - I’m not, like, green or anything.

So listen, we’re in trouble here; I need to steal a rover to rescue Dad, who’s stuck in a mining vent, in a planet-wide dust-storm, far from our base, or he'll die. He may even be already dead.

Oh, and I’m Type 1 Diabetic with no insulin. Wish me luck.

Ordeal by Innocence

Recovering from amnesia, Dr. Arthur Calgary discovers that he alone could have provided an alibi in a scandalous murder trial. It ended in the conviction of Jacko Argyle. The victim was Jacko's own mother, and to make matters worse, he died in prison. But the young man's innocence means that someone else killed the Argyle matriarch, and would certainly kill again to remain in the shadows.

Shaded in the moral ambiguity of murder, the provocative psychological puzzler of guilt, vengeance, and blood secrets is among Agatha Christie's personal favorites.

Daddy-Long-Legs ~ Audiobook

When Jerusha Abbott, an eighteen-year-old girl living in an orphan asylum, was told that a mysterious millionaire had agreed to pay for her education, it was like a dream come true. For the first time in her life, she had someone she could pretend was "family." But everything was not perfect, for he chose to remain anonymous and asked that she only write him concerning her progress in school. Who was this mysterious gentleman and would Jerusha ever meet him?

AVR Weekly News ~ 543rd Edition

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by
Kimberly @ Caffeinated Reviewer.
~ Recap the past week ~
~ Show what's upcoming ~
~ Share news ~
~ Display book hauls ~

Saturday Spotlight ~ TWR Blog Tour: Guns & Almond Milk

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Friday Featured Spotlight ~ TWR Blog Tour: Time-Marked Warlock

Buy Links

(will be updated as soon as available)

Beowulf ~ Audiobook

In this epic poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of the king of the Danes whose great hall is plagued by the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills Grendel bare-handed and goes on to kill Grendel's mother with a giant’s sword that he recovers from her lair. Later, as king of the Geats, Beowulf confronts a dragon that terrorizes his kingdom. J.R.R. Tolkien said of Beowulf that it is in fact so interesting as poetry, in places poetry so powerful, that this quite overshadows the historical content.

BBNYA2320 Blog Tour ~ 8th Place Finalist ~ The Only Way Out Is Death

Twelve powerful people are kidnapped and imprisoned in an empty hotel.

Each one of them has three choices:

Live out the rest of their days peacefully in the hotel,
Die by suicide so the rest of their companions can go free,
Or murder one of their companions so they alone can go free.

The Only Way Out is Death follows the story of these twelve people from the perspective of a young lawyer, Kiriaki, told as the events unfold. She has to forge messy alliances, navigate complex relationships and feuds, and, above all, try to stay alive. Meanwhile, the mastermind of this death game is lurking just out of view, watching them closely, making sure they are primed for murder.

Will Kiriaki find the mastermind before it's too late for her?
Will she outmaneouvre the cutthroats before they cut her throat?
There are twelve selfish lives in the hotel.
Will it end in twelve selfish deaths?

AVR Weekly News ~ 542nd Edition

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by
Kimberly @ Caffeinated Reviewer.
~ Recap the past week ~
~ Show what's upcoming ~
~ Share news ~
~ Display book hauls ~

Saturday Spotlight ~ TWR Ultimate Blog Tour: Looking For Lucie

Amazon US

Pre-order ~ pubs 10/1/2024

Amazon UK | Other Buy Links

Never Closer

On an ordinary day in 2017, Jo receives a phone call about her 18-year-old daughter, Jessie. It is the call that every parent dreads. In 1940, 17-year-old Alice ties on her facemask and enters a laboratory to harvest a potential new miracle drug called penicillin. The lives of these women become entwined when Jo finds Alice’s diary in a vintage handbag. Past and present overlap and merge as life-changing events resonate for them all across the gulf of time.

This is a story about a diary opening a door on the past, chronicling a young woman’s determination to succeed against all odds, while unknowingly inspiring others to step into a better life. Set against the backdrop of the Second World War, the infancy of antibiotics and a modern medical emergency and its consequences, it not only reminds us how fortunate we are to live now, but also serves as a stark warning about the fragility of life and the dangers of complacency.

The Snow Goose

Classic storytelling from a bestselling author. Gallico's most famous story, THE SNOW GOOSE, is set in the wild, desolate Essex marshes and is an intense and moving tale about the relationship between a hunchback and a young girl.

Out of the Dark ~ Audiobook

Taken from a group home at age twelve, Evan Smoak was raised and trained as part of the Orphan Program, an off-the-books operation designed to create deniable intelligence assets―i.e. assassins. Evan was Orphan X. He broke with the Program, using everything he learned to disappear and reinvent himself as the Nowhere Man, a man who helps the truly desperate when no one else can. But now Evan's past in the Orphan Program is reaching out to him.

Someone at the very highest level of government has been trying to eliminate every trace of the Orphan Program by killing all the remaining Orphans and their trainers. After Evan's mentor and the only father he ever knew was killed, he decided to strike back. His target is the man who started the program and who is now the most heavily guarded person in the world: the President of the United States.

But President Bennett knows that Orphan X is after him and, using weapons of his own, he's decided to counter-attack. Bennett activates the one man who has the skills and experience to track down and take out Orphan X―the first recruit of the program, Orphan A.

With Evan devoting all his skills, resources, and intelligence to find a way through the layers of security that surround the President, suddenly he also has to protect himself against the deadliest of opponents. It's Orphan vs. Orphan with the future of the country―even the world―on the line.

AVR Weekly News ~ 541st Edition

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by
Kimberly @ Caffeinated Reviewer.
~ Recap the past week ~
~ Show what's upcoming ~
~ Share news ~
~ Display book hauls ~

BBNYA2023 Blog Tour ~ 9th Place Finalist ~ Into the Lion's Mouth

In 1498, an orphan can’t expect much out of life. But the Renaissance is burgeoning, and Venice ripe with infinite possibilities. Nico is a child of the city, and his veins run with canal water.

He’s determined to use his wit and wile to become something more than another errand boy. But his hopes come crashing down when he witnesses a crime that puts a target on his back.

To escape the vengeance of the corrupt Lord Foscari, Nico travels half a world away to safety. But danger follows him to the streets of Constantinople where he discovers a peril looms over Venice. Now he’s forced to make a choice: stay safe in a foreign land and let his beloved birthplace fall or risk his life to save everything he loves.

Guns & Almond Milk

Meet Luke Archer, a British Egyptian doctor who struggles to be from two worlds at the same time. He's working in one of the world's most dangerous hospitals in Yemen. When rebel forces take over the city, a group of Western mercenaries take refuge inside the hospital and Luke and his team find themselves in the middle of a deadly clash. To make matters worse, leading the mercenaries is an unwelcome figure from Luke's past. After years saving the lives of others, Luke needs to face the demons of his past in order to save his own.

Set in the UK and Yemen, Guns & Almond Milk is a literary thriller that deals with identity, diversity and old coins of arguable value. It's The Sympathizer mixed with M.A.S.H by the way of Ramy.

Takeout Sushi

Takeout Sushi is a collection of 17 illustrated short stories set mostly in contemporary Japan that explore feelings of belonging, displacement, and the strangeness of everyday human interaction.

In an innovative, fast-paced company, a man’s job comes under threat when a team of robots are brought in to replace the HR department. A husband’s search for shortcuts to his domestic tasks goes painfully wrong. Overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of Tokyo, a foreigner takes a weekend break and discovers something other than solitude in the mountains.

Marking Christopher Green’s debut adult fiction and inspired by his own experiences, these whimsical slice-of-life tales are full of heart and humour—perfect for fans of Convenience Store Woman and Before the Coffee Gets Cold