I'm A Voracious Reader : dark

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Tuesday, July 14, 2026

The Write Reads Blog Tour Spotlight: The Wraith Returns by Paul G. Zareith

Alien vampires, trapped in a time warp, find themselves being hunted by an immortal assassin of their own creation.

Guided by the will of the erased tree god, a warrior who should have never existed emerges in a world he no longer recognizes.

A Centurion races against time to save her brother from a dying world, but the only man who could unlock the cosmic prison was buried alive two hundred years ago.

An exiled alien prince plots to reclaim his throne, but in his path stands an enemy whose actions threaten the future of the entire Sultenate.

An ambitious researcher is willing to stake the lives of millions to become the next great power.

A celestial reconciler is ready to wipe out entire civilizations to restore space-time continuity.

Who will survive? And at what cost...

Discover in this grimdark epic saga.

Friday Featured Spotlight ~ The Write Reads Blog Tour: The First Sin by Cheyenne Brammah

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The Write Reads Blog Tour Spotlight ~ The First Sin by Cheyenne Brammah

In the sweeping expanse of the Årdrakin Empire, the people fight and die for honor as elite warriors of the galaxy. But long ago, a prophecy was spoken that presaged the apocalypse. Everyone knows and fears the truth: one day, the empire will fall.
Tårik is a guard for small, independent Clan Tsinna. Instead of pondering the end of his civilization, Tårik’s greatest concern is maintaining his honor while escorting a group of impertinent dignitaries across the treacherous Barren Gale. When the Mother Goddess speaks a passage from the prophecy to him, he has the good sense to be frightened, but he doesn’t heed the significance of Her visit.
Then disaster strikes, and Tårik is branded as an exile, leaving him with no home, no honor, and no future. Forced into a desperate struggle for survival, all Tårik can focus on is living just one more day until luck—or maybe fate—gives him the opportunity to join a new clan. But even this is fraught with danger and uncertainty, and it takes him to an inhospitable world far from the empire where survival seems all but impossible.
Faced with new challenges, including trying to navigate first contact with the low-tech locals, Tårik believes the prophecy can’t reach him. Yet it continues to loom, signaling that his fate and the fate of the empire are irrevocably entwined.
This is a dark, spicy, adult science fantasy set in a world that includes war, violence, and other mature themes that some readers may find disturbing. Reading guidance can be found at the beginning of the book or on the author's website.

TWR Ultimate Blog Tour Book Review: Eerie Exhibits by Victoria Williamson

Five unnerving tales of the weird and uncanny from award-winning author Victoria Williamson.

A room full of screaming butterflies.
An unsettling smile on the face of a carved sarcophagus.
A painting that draws its viewer into the disturbing past.
A stuffed bear that growls in the dead of night.
And a shell that whispers more sinister sounds than the sigh of the sea…

Dare you cross the threshold of the old Museum and view its eerie exhibits?

The Sea-Wolf ~ Audiobook Review

The Sea-Wolf is a 1904 psychological adventure novel by Jack London about a literary critic Humphrey van Weyden. The story starts with him aboard a San Francisco ferry, called Martinez, which collides with another ship in the fog and sinks. He is set adrift in the Bay, eventually being picked up by Wolf Larsen. Larsen is the captain of a seal-hunting schooner, the Ghost. Brutal and cynical, yet also highly intelligent and intellectual, he rules over his ship and terrorizes the crew with the aid of his exceptionally great physical strength.

Dead To Me ~ Audiobook Review

Seeing dead people and solving their murders is Darby Adler's bread and butter.

What's not on the menu?

A nosy Fed poking around her crime scenes who seems to know a hell of a lot more than he's saying--especially about the ghosts surrounding Darby and the murderer who's desperate for her attention.

Friday Featured Spotlight ~ BBNYA2023 Blog Tours ~ Finalists 13 & 12

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Friday Featured Spotlight ~ BBNYA2023 Blog Tours: Finalists 15 & 14

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BBNYA2023 Blog Tour ~ 15th Place Finalist ~ Sorrow's Forest

At twelve years old, Mackie King had done something no one had ever done before: he had snuck into the forest, where Queen Sorrow reigned and had unintentionally stolen one of her devils while she slept in a death-like sleep.

In as little as an hour, the devil named himself Blue, fit almost seamlessly into the Kings’ life, and the Township of Lakeview.

Now, Mackie and Blue are grown, Queen Sorrow has awakened, and she wants her devil back.

In a fit of uncontrolled rage and desperateness, she snatches any that match Blue’s likeness. When their identities are revealed, she ruthlessly casts the bodies aside. Each murder is met with the town’s hopeless ignorance. A dark enchantment is sweeping over the land, dulling the minds of the townspeople to the supernatural violence.

Mackie has always been resourceful, but it will take every bit of ingenuity he and Blue have to thwart Queen Sorrow and her minions, save the town, and free themselves from the shadow of the bittering forest.

BBNYA2022 Blog Tour ~ The Reaper's Quota

Meet Grim Reaper #2497. Behind on his work, he must complete his quota of thirty Random Deaths or face termination in the worst way. Faced with an insurmountable task and very little time to complete it, Reaper #2497 struggles to hang on to the one thing he's not supposed to have - his humanity.

Whispers of Innocence

The baby is quiet. Too quiet.

When Madeline checks on her seven-month-old daughter, she discovers the reason for the baby’s silence. Abigail is dead. Madeline is soon living every mother’s worst nightmare amid a cacophony of sirens and police interrogations.

Accusations and old resentments can’t stay contained under the pressure of guilt, tears, and the horror of picking out a baby-sized coffin. A line is drawn through Madeline and Brian’s marriage, and a battle begins.

But defining heroes and villains is as difficult as untangling the truth from the web Madeline and Brian have created to protect themselves. Abigail’s killer isn’t the only monster hiding in the shadows. And among the dark secrets, everyone will crumble under the consequences.

The Dark Matter of Natasha

Natasha stalks the quiet streets of dead-end Lunar Bay like doom in a denim jacket. She’s a grim reminder that some teenagers can never escape the ever-tightening noose of their lives. Burned out and benumbed by a traumatic past, dogged by scurrilous small-town gossip, she finds solace in drugs, sex and Slayer.

What horrors have her flat eyes witnessed? And how far will she go in pursuit of the one tiny spark of hope that still flickers in her haunted heart?

When a naïve transplant crosses her path, he's drawn into shadow and doubt. With his girlfriend ghosting him, Natasha’s fresh introduction to her half-lit world is darkly appealing. Now faced with confusing quandaries—connection or convenience, relationship or exploitation—can he help any of the women in his life? Or is he just helping himself?

The untold tragedies of Natasha's lonely life may be more than he can handle. And in a town whose history is littered with dead girls, there may be no happy ending for anyone.

2021 BBNYA Book Tour Round Up

These books were the Winner and Finalists that had BBNYA Blog Tours this year, but because my start of 2022 was all kinds of crazy I didn't have a chance to read them all. Yet. Reviews will be coming as soon as I can manage them.

In the Garden of Spite

Belle Sorensen loves men.

She loves them to death . . .

Early in life Belle Sorensen discovers the world is made only for men. They own everything: jobs, property, wives. But Belle understands what few others do: where women are concerned, men are weak.

A woman unhampered by scruples can take from them what she wants. And so Belle sets out to prove to the world that a woman can be just as ruthless, black-hearted and single-minded as any man.

Starting with her long suffering husband Mads, Belle embarks on a killing spree the like of which has never been seen before nor since.

And through it all her kind, older sister Nellie can only watch in horror as Belle's schemes to enrich herself and cut down the male population come to a glorious, dreadful fruition . . .