Sunday 31 July 2016

COVER REVEAL
for
All She Ever Wished For
by
Claudia Carroll



What a gorgeous cover this is, gives you a Christmassy, wintery feel. Bring on the mulled wine!.........



A gorgeous story of chance meetings and unexpected friendships. Because sometimes what you’ve always wished for isn’t necessarily what life has in store . . .

Marriage. It’s a dream come true. Isn’t it?

One wet winter night, two women meet on a bridge. One is Tess Taylor, a personal trainer on the way to meet her boyfriend for date night. The other is Kate King, a celebrity married to a handsome billionaire who just happens to make her cry. In the cold dark evening, there is nothing to link them together but the bridge they shiver on. Little do they know they’ll both hold the key to each other’s future marriage…

All She Ever Wished For tells the story of what happens when your dream is about to come true. And what happens when that dream turns into a bit of a nightmare…

Claudia Carroll brings you a Christmas gift filled with second chances, fateful encounters and a lesson in what true love means.




There is Always More To Say
by
Lynda Spiro




Today I would like to welcome Lynda Young Spiro to the blog. I have an extract for you, but hope to have a review for you soon.



Extract

“We are made wise, not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.”  – George Bernard Shaw 

MONDAY 1 SEPTEMBER, 2014 
Sensitive, gentle and thoughtful soul. I want and need to know more about you and I want to tell you more about myself. I haven’t wanted to tell you anything that might put a blot on the excitement of your first visit in twenty years. I haven’t told you what happened after your last visit. But I will. When we meet. I haven’t told you where I had been in 2004. I want to tell you all these things now when we meet. Tomorrow. I also want to tell you my reasons for not having told you before now. But I’m not so sure I know what these reasons are any longer. I have so much to tell you. So much has happened in my life. And there is so much I want to hear about you and your life. I have so much more I want to share with you, I think to myself. 

My feelings for you have grown more intense over the last few weeks, as you have begun to hover on the edge of my day-to-day life. You have become more real to me. 

The advancement and development of communication has benefited us no end. Or has it? You have entered my life. But you are from my other life. The elation I feel when I hear from you. The disappointment when I don’t. You are my drug. Not my raison d'ĂȘtre. Now is better than never and maybe.

I should have said something before. I don’t know why but suddenly I am overwhelmed with the idea that now is the time to tell you what I should have told you some twenty years ago. I am your secret. Perhaps it was time to tell you one of mine. Now was as good a time as ever. To tell you. To tell you the truth. To tell you what happened. To apologise. I don’t know. I must be careful. What the outcome would be I didn’t know. But I had to tell you. Well, the truth is I wanted you to know. Because of your imminent arrival. The thought of looking you in the eye and not telling you after all these years was an impossibility. You would see it on my face before the words came out. I knew that you would still have the ability to read me like a book. 

You read about people like us all the time. They all have their own reasons for why they can’t be together. What were our reasons then? I can remember. What are our reasons now? I can’t answer that one. Always so many questions. And so few answers. We are surely not isolated in our situation? 

Sleep doesn’t come easily to me and there have been a few long dark nights over the last couple of months, but then there is plenty of time to sleep when I get to the other side. I can’t believe that tomorrow we will meet. After twenty years. The last time I saw you was when I dropped you off at East Finchley tube station in 1994. After you had come to stay for one night. You had taken a chance by coming to London on
your way back from a convention in France. The last time I had seen you we had shared a lingering kiss. In my car. On the forecourt of my local tube station. I had been nervous that we would be seen. That our kiss would be spotted. I was not nervous that we would be seen at Shepherd’s Bush tube station. Where we are meeting tomorrow. I cannot wait. I am beyond excited. 

“Though sleep is called our best friend, it is a friend who often keeps us waiting!”  – Jules Verne


Saturday 30 July 2016

Spirit of Lost Angels
by
Liza Perrat

I would like to welcome to Boon's Bookcase today Liza Perrat. I have an extract of Spirit of Lost Angels for you.



Empowered by the strength of our numbers, I felt my anguish fade for a brief moment, as we marched into the overcast morning of July 14th.
By six o’clock, our seething arms-hungry crowd had reached Les Invalides, and I was relieved when the French Guards peacefully seized the guns, pikes and sabres, and several pieces of cannon from the arsenal within the old veterans’ hospital. Nobody was hurt.
‘There is no ammunition!’ Aurore shouted, along with several others.
la Bastille!’ people began chanting. ‘la Bastille!’
Aurore’s eyes gleamed with that potent combination of resentment, patriotism and the desire for change, as the excited mob propelled us down the rue Saint-Antoine.
‘We want the Bastille!’
While their shouts fuelled and thrilled me, they sent bolts of terror through me too, as I moved with the crowd, like some carousel abandoned to centrifugal force, towards the old fortress.
‘Surrender the prison!’ the people shouted, gathering before the Bastille as early daggers of sunlight sheared the dirty brown underbellies of clouds.
‘Remove the cannons!’
‘Release the gunpowder!’
‘Get the Governor to withdraw the cannons!’
Two men chosen to represent the mob entered the fortress to negotiate.
By mid-afternoon, when nothing had happened and people were pawing the ground like restless horses, the crowd hacked down the drawbridge chains and streamed, unimpeded, into the undefended outer courtyard.

 

I heard shouts from the roof. The panic rose in my chest.
‘They’re going to fire on us, quick run!’ I grabbed Aurore and tried to push our way back through the crowd, away from the prison, but we were trapped, unable to move any which way.
The garrison began firing. I shut my eyes and held my breath.
I expected, any second, the hot burn of a bullet would throw me to the ground. Flambeaux blazed, fanning the shrieks of terror and pain as more and more bloodied bodies crumpled around us. Clouds of gunpowder smoke burned my eyes, almost blinding me. I clutched Aurore’s dress, whimpering like a child as we crouched and cowered in what were the most terrifying moments of my life.
As much as I had yearned for things to change––for an improvement to the commoners’ lot––never had I wished for that change to wash in on such vast rivers of human blood.
It was over quickly. Our brave French Guards massacred the garrison and the Governor of the Bastille, de Launay surrendered, his face an ivory-pale mask of terror. The crowd tore and spat at de Launay in his grey frock-coat, clubbing and kicking him to the ground.
Faint with horror, my mouth dropped open as a man stepped forward and drove his bayonet into de Launay’s stomach. He withdrew the bayonet and the Governor staggered upright, only to stumble onto the point of another weapon. 


Someone hammered at the back of his head with a lump of wood, another dragged him into the gutter. I glanced around wildly, helpless to stop the grisly attack. I grabbed Aurore’s arm again as a third man fired shots into the Governor’s smashed body, and when he finally stopped twitching, a wild-looking man flicked open his knife, strained the corpse’s head back, and began hacking at his throat. I turned from the gruesome scene, clutching my heaving belly.
I tried again to find a way through the crowd; away from the sickening butchery. It was impossible, and besides, I was certain Aurore would never agree to flee. Her eyes shining, she seemed bewitched, energised, by the bloodthirsty recklessness.
‘The Bastille, symbol of our intolerable regime, has fallen!’ the people shouted, parading the Governor’s head around on a pike.
Our revolution had received its baptism in blood, and I felt too shocked to cry; too stunned to feel anything. I did not even know what I should feel––joy, triumph, sadness? Perhaps a mixture of all of those.

If you would like a copy of Spirit of Lost Angels at this discount price, it is available at the following retailers:


e-Book at all Amazon stores, KoboBarnes & Noble and Smashwords

  


Sunday 24 July 2016

** COVER REVEAL **


The Christmas Promise
by
Sue Moorcroft



As it's only 5 months until Christmas Eve, I thought I would give you a little teaser of what's to come! This is the first Christmas cover of the year so far, (yes, I know it's still July!!), but i'm sure there will be many more over the coming weeks! I just love the Christmas season and this cover is certainly getting me in the Christmassy mood!!




Publishing in eBook: 6th October 2016
Publishing in paperback: 1st December 2016

For Ava Bliss, it’s going to be a Christmas to remember …

On a snowy December evening, Sam Jermyn steps into the life of bespoke hat maker Ava Blissham. Sparks fly, and not necessarily the good ones…

When Sam commissions Ava to make a hat for someone special to him she makes a promise that will change her life. She just doesn’t know it yet.

Ava needs this job – she’s struggling to make ends meet, her ex-boyfriend is a bully, and she’s desperate for distraction because no one dreads Christmas like Ava does.

But soon Ava finds herself reluctantly needing something from Sam. He’s quick to help, but she’s in for a nasty shock… Will she be able to keep her promise? And if she does, might this be the Christmas her dreams come true?

Curl up with this gorgeous, festive read – the perfect treat for fans of Katie Fforde, Carole Matthews and Trisha Ashley.

Thursday 21 July 2016

House of Secrets
by
Lynda Stacey
Blog Tour





A woman on the run, a broken man and a house with a shocking secret …
Madeleine Frost has to get away. Her partner Liam has become increasingly controlling to the point that Maddie fears for her safety, and that of her young daughter Poppy.
Desperation leads Maddie to the hotel owned by her estranged father – the extraordinarily beautiful Wrea Head Hall in Yorkshire. There, she meets Christopher ‘Bandit’ Lawless, an ex-marine and the gamekeeper of the hall, whose brusque manner conceals a painful past.
After discovering a diary belonging to a previous owner, Maddie and Bandit find themselves immersed in the history of the old house, uncovering its secrets, scandals, tragedies – and, all the while, becoming closer.
But Liam still won’t let go, he wants Maddie back, and when Liam wants something he gets it, no matter who he hurts …
Winner of Choc Lit & Whole Story Audiobooks 2015 Search for a Star competition.


Review

Madeleine Frost thinks things are turning out for the better when she is asked to move in with Liam, a smooth talker and charmer. After losing her husband in an accident and having to bring up her young daughter Poppy alone, Madeline thinks her luck is on the up. Little does she know that the house she moves into with Liam belongs to his parents and is a shrine to them with all their belongings in the rooms and her being unable to touch them.

Little did she know that Liam has a darker side to him, so unable to live with his mood swings and worrying for her and Poppy’s safety, she decides to leave him. The problem is, where will she go? Her sister only has a one bedroom flat and she hasn’t spoken to her father for many years.

After a lot of soul searching and conversations with her sister Jess, Madeleine decides to visit her father to ask if he can help her out with somewhere to live. Her father owns  Wrea Head hall which is a hotel. Her father is over the moon to be reunited with his daughter and Grandaughter and insists they go and stay with them.

Once Madeleine turns up at the hotel with all her wordly goods, she bumps into (literally!) the handyman nicknamed Bandit. After getting off to an awkward start they get to know one another and find a diary in the hotel. It reveals secrets and hidden tunnels and as their curiosity gets the better of them they decide to find out more about the people in the diary and the secrets they hold.

Of course, you don’t think that Liam is going to just let Madeline go do you? Not after all the effort it took for years to get her to be with him in the first place!! You will just have to read it yourself to find out what happens.

I loved the cover of this book which I think gives a great sense of mystery and draws you in! 


This is Lynda Stacey’s first novell and I look forward to reading more from her.


Author Bio




Lynda, is a wife, step-mother and grandmother, she grew up in the mining village of Bentley, Doncaster, in South Yorkshire.

She is currently the Sales Director of a stationery, office supplies and office furniture company in Doncaster, where she has worked for the past 25 years. Prior to this she’d also been a nurse, a model, an emergency first response instructor and a PADI Scuba Diving Instructor … and yes, she was crazy enough to dive in the sea with sharks, without a cage.
Following a car accident in 2008, Lynda was left with limited mobility in her right arm.


Unable to dive or teach anymore, she turned to her love of writing, a hobby she’d followed avidly since being a teenager.
Her own life story, along with varied career choices helps Lynda to create stories of romantic suspense, with challenging and unpredictable plots, along with (as in all romances) very happy endings.

Lynda joined the Romantic Novelist Association in 2014 under the umbrella of the New Writers Scheme and in 2015, her debut novel House of Secrets won the Choc Lit & Whole Story Audiobooks Search for a Star competition.

She lives in a small rural hamlet near Doncaster, with her ‘hero at home husband’, Haydn, whom she’s been happily married to for over 20 years.


Link to Choc Lit

Link to Amazon

Facebook

Twitter
@Lyndastacey

Website

Wednesday 20 July 2016

Falling Suns
by
J A Corrigan
Blog Tour




Blurb:

A psychological thriller for fans of Belinda Bauer, Mark Edwards, Clare Mackintosh – a dark and brooding tale about the horrors that can lurk within a family.

Ex-DI Rachel Dune’s small son is missing. Then his body is discovered. Her cousin Michael is found guilty of his murder and incarcerated in a secure psychiatric unit.

Four years later, now divorced and back in the police force, Rachel discovers that Michael is being released to a less secure step-down unit, with his freedom a likely eventuality. Unable to cope with this, she decides upon revenge, assuming a new identity to hunt him down. However, as she closes in on her target, her friend Jonathan, a journalist, uncovers unnerving information about her mother and others in her family. Jonathan begins to suspect that Rachel’s perception of the truth might not be as accurate as she thinks.




Extract

It had been a long while since I’d sat in Tom Gillespie’s office. The last time I’d seen him, on the day Joe went missing, we’d met informally in the pub to talk about me returning to work. In the years since giving up my job, after having Joe, we nearly always met in this pub, near to the police station, or sometimes at his home where Rosie Gillespie cooked Liam, Joe and me the most amazing Sunday roasts.
Liam was sitting on the corner of Tom’s desk. Tom sat behind, perched on the edge of his chair. Liam had combed his hair but looked tired, and agonised.
I walked towards Liam and he held his arms out like a blue-eyed bear. It was the first proper embrace we’d shared for weeks.
‘You should have called me,’ I said.

‘I wanted you to sleep,’ Liam replied.

‘How are you?’ Tom said.

‘Crap,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry, Rachel, but I haven’t got the results back from the lab yet. They’re still working on it. I think that we’ll find something, though,’ Tom said.
‘Something I don’t know about?’
‘Yes – only came to light this afternoon.’ Tom threw a look towards Liam.
‘You can tell me, you know, I am Joe’s mother.’
‘Calm down,’ Tom said, ‘I am going to tell you. Sit down.’ He chewed his thumbnail. Rosie was always telling him off about it. Liam and I used to laugh at her scolding. ‘Someone’s come forward.’
‘Who?’
‘The day Joe disappeared, Rachel, was he upset? We’ve spoken to Melanie on three occasions and she said Joe was fine when she dropped him at home.’
‘We’ve been arguing a lot recently,’ Liam said, looking at me. ‘Joe heard. He could have been upset.’ Liam’s eyes dropped downwards towards the carpet.
I looked at Tom pleadingly. ‘Liam and I are ... were having a few problems. Tell me what you know about Joe. Please.’
‘The man who’s come forward, he’s a regular “punter” on the field near your house. There most weekends, trawling for sex. He didn’t come forward before, for obvious reasons. But in fairness, he’s been out of the country since this all broke – got back yesterday. He’s a businessman.’ Tom allowed himself a skinny smile. ‘He had a positive sighting of Joe. Described what he was wearing, everything. Petrol blue jumper, jeans, black trainers. He said the boy was upset. The man, Gareth Summers, isn’t normally on the field, or should I say in the bushes, on a weekday. But that Wednesday he’d arranged to meet a “newie” in the area. He met the “newie” and they did have sex.’
‘Did Summers speak to Joe? See anyone with Joe?’
‘Yes, as weird as it seems, Summers, our only witness, asked Joe if he was all right. Apparently, so Summers tells us, Joe wasn’t crying then, but it was obvious that he had been. Summers told Joe to go home ... Joe didn’t, and carried on across the field; it would have been getting dark at that time of day. Summers began to follow Joe, to encourage him to go home, but then he saw someone in the distance, and Joe run towards that someone. Joe seemed okay to go with the someone.’ Tom paused. ‘Summers later said the someone was the same man he’d had sex with earlier in the evening.’
‘Do we know the name of the man Summers had sex with?’
Tom nodded. Liam was watching me closely.
‘The guy told Summers, after the sex, that he lives up north. Chester.’
And then my heart plunged downwards.
‘Michael Hemmings?’ I said quietly.
Tom nodded.
‘Have you sent anyone up there?’ The strange hunger returned. Tom knew about my cousin, Michael Hemmings, and his criminal record.
‘Yes, I have.’ Tom put his arm around my shoulder. ‘He’s not at his flat in Chester, hasn’t been seen for over two weeks.’
I tasted sick in the back of my mouth, and felt contractions inside my stomach. I rushed over to where Tom kept his wastepaper bin and emptied the small amount of food that was in my gut into it; and then felt Liam’s hand on my back.
An hour later and still cocooned inside Tom’s office the results for the DNA analysis came through.
The evidence was conclusive, placing Hemmings on the field where Joe was last seen.
I didn’t sleep that night. Distorted images travelled in infinite circles inside my head. Mostly the images were of Michael Hemmings: mosaic, kaleidoscopic-flash depictions of him in our house, always about to leave, when I got home from school.
Sweat saturated my side of the bed. I’d put a T-shirt on to sleep in; it had been freezing in the night. The drop in temperature mirrored the feeling inside my body. Nothing mattered anymore. Only Joe.
When I got up and made my way to the bathroom I saw a razor blade sitting awkwardly on the sink. It would be so easy. I thought about taking the pills that were nestled in the bathroom cabinet, knowing that swallowing the whole packet would stop my breathing. Yet the part of me who was Rachel, the mother, Rachel, the police officer, realised that suicide wasn’t an option. Not yet.
Standing in the cold bathroom I knew. I felt it. A visceral knowledge to which only a mother has access.
It was the first time I’d smelt toffee popcorn since my son had gone. And I knew Joe was dead.
As I opened the cabinet a silent scream came from my lips and I emptied several of the pills into the palm of my hand hoping they would quieten the deadened howl that would not leave me.


JA Corrigan – Bio



JA Corrigan is originally from Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, but now lives in Berkshire and shares her life with a husband, a teenage daughter and a cute cockapoo.
When not writing she is either walking the dog, reading, or cooking. She also likes to run, and drink white wine infused with hints of vanilla or gooseberries.






Guest post from Julie-Ann Corrigan on her journey to publication.




Tuesday 19 July 2016

A Jersey Bombshell
by
Georgina Troy
Blog Tour
Plus Giveaway




Genre: Chicklit

Release Date: 17 June 2016

Publisher: Accent Press

Book 4 of The Jersey Scene series (can be read as a standalone)

Gabriel has returned to the island of Jersey after ten years abroad to help his aging showbiz parents revive their failing Art Deco hotel. This proves to be something of a challenge, especially as his singer father and actress mother are more concerned with staying in the limelight than keeping track of the cash-flow. Gabriel isn’t going anywhere fast … 

Meanwhile, he’s stunned to find that the hotel’s new receptionist is the girl he fell in love with years earlier in Vietnam, and someone who is tied to Jersey is the last thing she needs …



BUY LINKS



About the Author


Georgina Troy lives in Jersey, an island fifteen miles off the coast of France. She's a hopeless romantic and enjoys spending time day-dreaming about heroes on one of the nearby beaches with her three rescue dogs. When Georgina realised that no one else was writing books about the beautiful wind-swept beaches and intriguing inhabitants of her island home, she decided she had to provide some.


Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GeorginaTroyAuthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/georginatroy

Goodreads Author Page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7224225.Georgina_Troy

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deborahcarr9/

Google+ https://plus.google.com/u/1/107875573365392188870/posts

LinkedIn: https://je.linkedin.com/in/deborah-carr-2b086015

Blog: http://georginatroy.blogspot.com/

Website: http://www.georginatroy.co.uk/






Friday 15 July 2016

My Husband's Wives
by
Faith Hogan
Blog Hop


Today i'm delighted to be a part of the Blog Hop for My Husband's Wives by Faith Hogan.  It was published on 1st May by Aria and is available on Amazon 





Better to have loved and lost, than never loved.
Paul Starr, Irelands leading cardiologist dies in a car crash with a pregnant young women by his side.
United in their grief and the love of one man, four women are thrown together in an attempt to come to terms with life after Paul. They soon realise they never really knew him at all.
The love they shared for Paul in his life and which incensed a feeling of mistrust and dislike for each other, in his death turns into the very thing that bonds them and their children to each other forever.

As they begin to form unlikely friendships, Paul's death proves to be the catalyst that enables them to become the people they always wanted to be.







About the Author


Faith Hogan was born in Ireland.  She gained an Honours Degree in English Literature and Psychology from Dublin City University and a Postgraduate Degree from University College, Galway.  She has worked as a fashion model, an event’s organiser and in the intellectual disability and mental health sector.
She was a winner in the 2014 Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair – an international competition for emerging writers.
Her debut novel, ‘My Husband’s Wives,’ is a contemporary women’s fiction novel set in Dublin. It will be published by Aria, (Head of Zeus) on 1st of May 2016.   She is currently working on her next novel.