The Moment She Left

by

Susan Lewis

Blog Tour

Kesterly-on-Sea is full of secrets. 

Some are darker than others; many are shameful. One is even deadly.

Andee is an ex-detective whose marriage is breaking up. So when a young female student disappears without trace, she throws herself into the search.

Meanwhile, the town’s beloved Rowzee Cayne has just discovered that she is terminally ill, and doesn’t want to burden her family and friends with the news.

Andee and Rowzee don't know it yet, but their journeys are going to help them uncover a secret. One that is going to affect them more than they could ever imagine.

Review

When I was asked if I would like a copy of this book and to be a part of a blog tour, I jumped at the chance. I have to say, I have not read any of the author’s previous books and have always wanted to, so decided now was the time!

This book starts with the disappearance of a young woman called Jessica and the devastating effect it has on her family.  Her father Blake is beside himself and her twin Matt is also trying to come to terms with his sister’s disappearance. Her poor mother is so distraught she has to get away and disappears to Devon.

Andee Lawrence is the local ex police detective in Kesterly-on-Sea and is having problems of her own. Having decided to separate from her husband Martin, she never thought she would have to deal with the hostility of her two children because of the separation.

Rowzee Cayne is the local retired teacher, who is battling a terminal brain tumour, but doesn’t want her family to know. This is becoming increasingly difficult as her condition deteriorates quickly and she is becoming ever more forgetful and clumsy.

Andee is asked if she would look into the disappearance of Blake’s daughter Jess to see if anything was overlooked at the time. It doesn’t take her long to discover that something was missed two years previously......

Although there were quite a lot of characters in this book, the way the author brings them all together is very clever.  The chapters revert from one character to the other and then meet with a clever ending! I will admit, I had a tear or two towards the end as well!!

I have had a major loss of reading mojo recently, but this book brought me out of it (thank goodness, was getting a bit worried there for a minute!).

Thank you to Louise Page for sending me a copy to review and for inviting me to be a part of the blog tour. This may be the first Susan Lewis book I have read, but it certainly won’t be the last!

Q & A with Susan Lewis

Where does the inspiration for your books come from?

I often write about difficult issues, as you well know. I don’t necessarily write from experience in these cases but I rely on listening and seeking the experience of others who might have witnessed or been through challenging situations. It’s important as a writer to imagine how you’d feel if it happened to you. I enjoy doing it but sometimes it can be quite distressing – sometimes I cry, which tells me it’s working. This is how I really bring my characters to life.

Do you have any peculiar writing rituals or habits? 

Nothing too peculiar! I’m very strict about the hours I write, starting at 10 in the morning and going through until 5pm or 6pm, usually six days a week. Then,  I love to have a glass of wine at the end of the day as I read back over what has happened in ‘my fictional world’ over the last seven or eight hours, socialising with the characters and often wanting to gossip about them with someone else.

What advice would you offer to aspiring writers?

Remember to listen: listen to the way people speak, to the rhythm of the words you are writing  (you're most likely to do this in your head), and always give your characters room to be themselves. They'll have plenty to say if you just let them chatter on to one another, often giving you ideas you hadn't even thought of!

What is the last book you bought someone as a gift?

A variety of children's books for the recipients of the Special Recognition Award that I'm sponsoring for the local secondary school. They've chosen the titles themselves and what a fascinating selection they've made - from The Diary of a Wimpy Kid to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time at one end and a knife at the other…I could give Bear Grylls a sure run for his money! (one of my own favourites).

Beneath the Apple Blossom

by

Kate Frost

Blog Tour
Plus
Giveaway

I'm delighted to share an extract of Beneath the Apple Blossom by Kate Frost on the Blog Tour today.

Genre: Contemporary women’s fiction

Release Date: 04/08/16

Publisher: Lemon Tree Press.

Four women, linked by blood ties, friendship, betrayal, loss and hope, struggle with the choices they’ve made and the hand that life’s dealt them.

All Pippa’s ever wanted is marriage and kids, but at thirty-four and about to embark on IVF, her dream of having a family is far from certain. Her younger sister Georgie has the opposite problem, juggling her career, her lover, a young daughter and a husband who wants baby number two.

Pippa’s best friend Sienna has a successful career in the film world, and despite her boyfriend pressurising her to settle down, a baby is the last thing she wants. Happily married Connie shares the trauma of fertility treatment with Pippa, but underestimates the impact being unable to conceive will have on her and her marriage.

As their lives collide in a way they could never have predicted, will any of them get to see their hopes realised?

EXTRACT

Connie stopped and looked around. She had wandered a little way off the path and was in a small grassy clearing surrounded by trees heavy with spring leaves and blossom. Not in the mood for making small talk with a stranger, she chose a spot in semi-shade out of sight of the path, leant back against the slender tree trunk and closed her eyes. A slight breeze caressed her face and every so often she got the wonderful sensation of sunlight on her. She took a deep breath and drank in the scent of damp grass and spring flowers – fresh, sweet and alive – then opened her eyes to the canopy of white against the blue sky. The apple tree was bursting with blossom like masses of white teardrops.

She had everything to live for even if it didn’t feel like it right now. Life was a journey, and the best journeys were the ones that couldn’t be predicted before setting off, or that weren’t an easy ride to reach the destination. Right then, on    a perfect spring day beneath the apple blossom, she made a pact with herself to keep loving life whatever was thrown at her. She may have suffered yet more disappointment but she could still see beauty in the world and feel at peace.

BUY LINKS

AMAZON UK

AMAZON US

ABOUT KATE FROST

Kate Frost is a writer and author with a MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University where she has also taught the lifewriting course to Creative Writing undergraduates. Alongside writing articles and short stories for magazines such as New Welsh Review, The London Magazine and QWF, Kate has worked in a bookshop, a cinema, as ground staff at Edgebaston Tennis Tournament and as a Supporting Artist in the films Vanity Fair, King Arthur and The Duchess.

Kate’s debut novel, The Butterfly Storm, was published in 2013 and featured on Amazon’s Movers and Shakers chart. Beneath the Apple Blossom is the first book in a series and Kate also plans to release the first in a time travel adventure trilogy for children by the end of 2016. 

Kate lives in Bristol with her husband, her young son and their Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, and fits in writing and publishing books around looking after – and being amused by – an energetic toddler. 

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Kactus77

Goodreads Author Page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7131734.Kate_Frost

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

Google+ https://plus.google.com/u/0/104783514144778238847/about/p/pub

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-frost-29976041?trk=hp-identity-name

Blog: http://kate-frost.co.uk/index.php/blog/

Website: http://kate-frost.co.uk/

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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'être. 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

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 14^th.

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.

‘A la Bastille!’ people began chanting. ‘A 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, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. 
  

** 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: 6^th October 2016

Publishing in paperback: 1^st 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.

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

http://www.choc-lit.com/dd-product/house-of-secrets/

Link to Amazon

https://www.amazon.co.uk/House-Secrets-Choc-Lynda-Stacey-ebook/dp/B01H9961XY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466448741&sr=8-1&keywords=Lynda+stacey

Facebook

www.facebook.com/lyndastaceyauthor

Twitter

@Lyndastacey

Website

www.Lyndastacey.co.uk