Category Archives: Blog Tour

Ghost and Ragman Roll by Pete Adams

by in Blog Tour, Book Review, Damp Pebbles Book Tour and tagged , , | 1 Comment

4 Stars from me

I’ve committed the worst of crimes and read this book without having read books 1-3 of the Kind Hearts and Martinets series, however I am relieved to say that it works really well on it’s own.

Being new to the series, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect and was therefore surprised by the level of humour within the book as we follow main character DCI Jack Austin being virtually Clouseau-esque during his Paris escapades while he is meant to be off duty on his honeymoon.

This unusual take on a crime thriller with entertainment throughout from DCI Jack (Jane) Austin made for a dollop of light relief in my usual dank murder-filled to be read pile!

My thanks to Damp Pebbles blog tours for letting me take part.

#GhostandRagmanRoll #KindHeartsandMartinets @Peteadams8 @nextchapterpb @damppebbles @DamppebblesBTs #damppebblesblogtours

Synopsis: Ghost and Ragman Roll is Book 4 in the bestselling Kind Hearts and Martinets crime series, featuring the eponymous Portsmouth detective DCI Jack (Jane) Austin. DCI Jack Austin is trying to enjoy his honeymoon with Detective Superintendent Amanda Bruce. But it soon becomes a busman’s holiday (or the crime busting equivalent) with news of a turf war in Portsmouth, a missing obese gangster who turns up skinny, and the seemingly unconnected murder of a banker in Paris. When an ambitious new detective arrives on Jack’s patch and starts making waves, he knows the time has come to get back to Southsea and protect not just his rather tarnished reputation, but those who truly matter to him. Ghost and Ragman Roll is another criminally funny romp with the world’s greatest – or is that worst? – police detective, DI Jack (Jane) Austin.

 

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Justice Gone by N Lombardi Jr

by in #amreading, Blog Tour, Book Review, Damp Pebbles Book Tour and tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

5 Stars from me

I am honoured to be opening the blog tour for Justice Gone by N Lombardi Jr for it feels like an ‘important’ book which contains a stark tale about humanity wrapped up inside an engrossing legal thriller. It is truly shameful that our war veterans return home to job instability, often homelessness and a lack of regard for their mental health.

After a phone call from a hot and bothered businessman draws the police to speak with a homeless veteran on the streets of Bruntfield, New Jersey – purely because he doesn’t like the man being near his business – a terrible crime is committed. Despite the best efforts of the war hero ‘Jay’ to cooperate and reason with the police, he is mercilessly beaten to death by six police officers who not only kill him in broad daylight with no cause, but also have the wherewithal to speak phrases into their recording equipment suggesting that the man is resisting arrest.

Dr Tessa Thorpe dedicates her life to counselling war veterans and Jay was one of her clients. When she hears about his death she immediately fears for another veteran ‘Donald’ who she knows is extremely close to Jay and in fact feels he owes him his life.

An initial court case, in which Tessa is called upon to provide evidence, sees the 6 police officers walk free.

The initial act of sheer police brutality is caught on video and shared and before long a sniper kills the guilty police officers. Focus then turns to missing veteran Danny who is soon found and arrested.

Like most people, I have seen/heard similar claims of police brutality but have to say I’ve always thought there were ‘two sides to every story’ however now I am not so sure! Justice Gone offers a glimpse into the American legal system and some gripping courtroom scenes. I’ve no intention of spoiling the ending, the only way for you to find out is to pick up this book and find out for yourself!

Worth adding too, this book is written with real imagery – you can visualise the streets, the trees, the opulence or not of rooms – it is more like reading a film and I am sure Justice Gone would make for a great one.

My thanks to Damp Pebbles blog tours for letting me be a part of this tour.

Synopsis: When a homeless war veteran is beaten to death by the police, stormy protests ensue, engulfing a small New Jersey town. Soon after, three cops are gunned down. A multi-state manhunt is underway for a cop killer on the loose. And Dr. Tessa Thorpe, a veteran’s counselor, is caught up in the chase. Donald Darfield, an African-American Iraqi war vet, war-time buddy of the beaten man, and one of Tessa’s patients, is holed up in a mountain cabin. Tessa, acting on instinct, sets off to find him, but the swarm of law enforcement officers get there first, leading to Darfield’s dramatic capture. Now, the only people separating him from the lethal needle of state justice are Tessa and ageing blind lawyer, Nathaniel Bodine. Can they untangle the web tightening around Darfield in time, when the press and the justice system are baying for revenge? Justice Gone is the first in a series of psychological thrillers involving Dr Tessa Thorpe, wrapped in the divisive issues of modern American society including police brutality and disenfranchised returning war veterans. N Lombardi Jr. is the author of compelling and heartfelt novel The Plain of Jars.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nick.lombardi.9400
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6982373.N_Lombardi_Jr_
Website: http://author-n-lombardi-jr.com/

Purchase Links:
Amazon UK:

The Moonlight Pegasus by C S Johnson #giveaway

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The Moonlight Pegasus

Welcome to the blog tour for The Moonlight Pegasus, by C.S. Johnson. Perfect for Fantasy lovers!

Enter to win a copy of this epic fantasy HERE!

The+Moonlight+Pegasus+cover+ebookThe Moonlight Pegasus

Genre: High Fantasy

Sapphira is a desert world with little plant life, where the people live in the shadows of gray sunlight, sickened by the Dark Plague. To cure the people, the Guardian of Dreams sends the Spirit of Truth to bring the light back into his darkened world. In the form of Pegasus, he enters the world through the pure, innocent dreams of Selene, the reluctant princess and heir-apparent to the throne. Now, with her brother Dorian as king, another rebellion is stirring. All eyes are turning to Selene to bring peace through an arranged marriage. However, Selene only has eyes for her true love—her protector, Etoileon. As the rebellion unleashes its fury upon the kingdom of Sapphira and the supernatural forces collide, Selene is caught in the middle of all conflicts—the battle for her world, the battle for her love, and the battle for her very soul.

Add to Goodreads

Enter to win a copy of this epic fantasy HERE!

Excerpt

Etoileon smiled as he pulled out his special gift for Selene—having taken Ronal’s earlier advice, he had a tiny bouquet of deep red ekedlets, small minuscule flowers that smelled like sweet fruit. The ekedlets were tied together with a small yellow ribbon. He’d thought that the small gift would be perfect for her. It had taken him a while to get them, too. He was only allowed into the city, along with the other members of the Palace crew, only twice a month. Etoileon was lucky that he’d known the streets well enough to know where to go so he could get back in time to escort Selene down to the ballroom entrance.

The city was crowded for the opening of the reception. Etoileon had run into more than one person trying to reach his destination, Madame Flora’s Shop. Though he had meant to hurry up, Etoileon slowed down to look around, amazed to see just how the streets had changed to him in so short a time.

He’d been raised on the streets, mostly all alone.

It had been a miracle that he had survived there, let alone to manage to get a job in the Diamond City Palace, considering a job at the palace was a highly coveted position in society. Middle class children often took jobs in the palace, using their connections to be introduced into the flashy world of riches and wealth. After a number of years, they were able to use their earned capital to be educated in the way of society. Using the skills they would acquire from training and teaching of their instructors and parents, the now young adults would be able to be placed in a position where it was likely for a marriage to be arranged or sought after.

Etoileon had none of this.

He had no parents, no real family, few allies … there were plenty of untrustworthy people, enemies, and dangers around every corner. All he had were survival skills, and the good fortune to happen to be in the right place at the right time. As Etoileon leaned back on the tower wall, he thought about the night that he’d met Selene. He did not get too lost in his memories. The Palace was beginning to feel more like home to him as time went on, and his memories of the darker times of his life were beginning to fade.

It was a moment later that the door opened and Selene walked into the Tower room as well.

“Etoileon,” she greeted him, her eyes quickly losing their flicker of surprise and replacing it with an expression of warmth. “I did not think you would be up here this early.”

“You are,” he pointed out, a small smile forming on his face.

“Well,” Selene blushed, “There was something I wanted to do before later.”

“You mean before I came?” Etoileon asked. “What was it?”

“Well … ” Her face had turned even redder, and she looked away as she reached behind her and pulled out a small bag. “I wanted to give this to you later, but I have no objections to giving it to you a little early.”

Etoileon looked down at the bag she placed delicately in his hand. It had been carefully prepared for him, he could tell. The bag was all dressed up, tiny curls of ribbons surrounding the drawstrings of the sack, and made from cheerfully colored fabric.

Selene nodded. “Open it, Etoileon. It’s for you.”

Inside the bag, he found a small silver-framed photograph of Selene and him from a few years ago. It was when he had first undergone his training for the Fighter squad. Selene was sitting in front of him in the picture, while he was standing behind her. He could tell that his eyes had been focused on her; Etoileon figured that he must have missed the camera. His eyes examined the picture closely, running over Selene’s face again and again.

“I don’t remember this picture,” he said slowly.

“It’s from the time that you came storming out of the Fighter’s training room, remember? You were not too happy, I recall. My memory of the reason has faded, but I remember thinking you needed me there,” she said in a hushed voice. “I still come to watch, sometimes.”

I still need you there, he thought. But he could not say that. So instead, he looked over at her intently, and said, “Thank you.”

“So you like it?” Her smile seemed to brighten up the entire evening sky.

“Very much,” he nodded. “That must’ve been the day that Master Norio told me in front of everyone that I had been poorly trained and it would be a miracle if I amounted to anything.”

Selene’s sad smile flitted to her lips. “Poor Master Norio. That has to be the most incorrect he’s ever been.”

Amazon

Enter to win a copy of this epic fantasy HERE!

About the Author

author-pic

C. S. Johnson is the award-winning, genre-hopping author of several novels, including young adult sci-fi and fantasy adventures such as the Starlight Chronicles, the Once Upon a Princess saga, and the Divine Space Pirates trilogy. With a gift for sarcasm and an apologetic heart, she currently lives in Atlanta with her family. Find out more at http://www.csjohnson.me

CS Johnson | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest

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R&R Book Tours

The Good Neighbor by Cathryn Grant

by in #amreading, Blog Tour, Book Review, Damp Pebbles Book Tour and tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

4 Stars from me

Wow! To say this book ‘packs a punch’ is such an understatement – it more ‘smacks you around the head with a 9 iron!’

The Good Neighbor starts off softly, albeit with a traumatic and shocking event – 14 year old Brittany has disappeared during the night, seemingly snatched from her bed. I have to confess I was lulled into thinking it would jog along nicely so boy was I taken by surprise!

The pace accelerates and accelerates before plunging you into free fall as more and more of the story is revealed. There were twists and turns around every corner all neatly packaged within this highly readable tale.

Be warned though, there are several moral questions hidden within these pages… Would you? Could you? How far would you go if you were in Taylor’s shoes, Moira’s shoes, Crystal’s shoes, Brittany’s shoes?

I haven’t read anything by Cathryn Grant before but she is certainly an author I will look out for now!

My thanks to @CathrynGrant and @damppebbles for letting me be a part of #damppebblesblogtours

Synopsis: Sometimes the past just won’t stay buried.

When 14 year old Brittany Cushing disappears one night, her parents are devastated, certain she has been taken.

They can’t bear to think about who has done this and why, about what might be happening to their precious daughter.

Their neighbor, Taylor, is a rock, doing everything she can to help – organizing search parties, setting up a Facebook page, …

As this affluent California community becomes focused on the hunt for the missing girl, it slowly becomes clear that her disappearance is linked to terrible secrets from the past.

Secrets that must be kept hidden at all costs….

The Good Neighbor is a gripping psychological thriller that twists and turns as it races towards its nerve-shredding climax. Perfect for fans of K. L. Slater, Teresa Driscoll and Mark Edwards.

About Cathryn Grant:

Cathryn’s fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazines, The Shroud Quarterly Journal, and The Best of Every Day Fiction. Her story “I Was Young Once” received an honorable mention in the 2007 Zoetrope Fiction contest.

She’s the author of the Alexandra Mallory Psychological Suspense series, Psychological Thrillers, Suburban Noir novels, The Haunted Ship Trilogy, and the Madison Keith Ghost Story series.

When she’s not writing, Cathryn reads fiction, eavesdrops, and tries to play golf without hitting her ball into the sand or the water. She lives on the Central California coast with her husband and two cats.

Social Media:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CathrynGrant

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CathrynGrant.Writer/

Website: https://www.cathryngrant.com/

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

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cathryn-Grant/e/B004G1I484?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_3&qid=1566901527&sr=8-3

Lost Solace by Karl Drinkwater

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4 Stars from me (for sci-fi fans)

The phrase ‘less is more‘ is thrown about sometimes, losing its meaning. But here, Karl Drinkwater manages to remind us just how powerful this can be by crafting an atmosphere for us that is genuinely unsettling. And I love it!

We follow our of protagonist, who is accompanied by a vastly powerful AI, as she ventures into a decaying ‘lost ship’.  What then follows is a mix of fast paced action scenes with a militaristic hunter / dangerous prey dynamic, and some slower and more horrifying parts.

Don’t be put off by me saying slower parts as these are where I find this book really shines. The sense of dread and uneasiness I got while reading this was enjoyably real, and I would have loved for there to be more of it – scare me, make me feel uneasy! Also, our story exists in what feels to be a super interesting world, and it’s unfortunate we get to see and hear very little of it throughout the book as I would have loved to read more about it… I wonder if that develops in the future?

My thanks to Anne Cater #RandomThingsTours and Karl Drinkwater for letting me be a part of this blog tour.

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Synopsis: Sometimes spaceships disappear with everyone on board – the Lost Ships. But sometimes they come back, strangely altered, derelict, and rumoured to be full of horrors.

Opal is on a mission. She’s been seeking something her whole life. Something she is willing to die for. And she thinks it might be on a Lost Ship.

Opal has stolen Clarissa, an experimental AI-controlled spaceship, from the military. Together they have tracked down a Lost Ship, in a lonely nebula far from colonised space.

The Lost Ship is falling into the gravity well of a neutron star, and will soon be truly lost … forever. Legends say the ships harbour death, but there’s no time for indecision.

Opal gears up to board it. She’s just one woman, entering an alien and lethal environment. But perhaps with the aid of Clarissa’s intelligence – and an armoured spacesuit – Opal may stand a chance.

Can she face her demons and survive?

A Cruel Deception by Kim Booth

by in #amreading, Blog Tour, Book Review, BOTBS Blog Tour and tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

3.5 stars from me

It has been quite an hour to read A Cruel Deception knowing that it is the first hand account of the policeman who cracked the case. Truly a privilege to follow his thought processes and procedures as he closes in on the perpetrator.

The crime within A Cruel Deception (well, the main one as there are several little side stories and anecdotes which beautifully enhance and flesh out the pages, I can image an afternoon with tea and cake with Kim Booth is a meandering and uniquely fascinating experience) is one of a brazen fraud, carried out with breathtaking audacity over a period of many years. It is artfully captured within A Cruel Deception and the dogged and determined approach taken by the police to capture such a criminal without the use of modern day technology is to be admired.

As, begrudgingly, is Barbara Hendry who manages to pull of repeated cons against unsuspecting people without all the clever frippery of social media, computers and mobile phones – dreadful woman, obviously, but also clearly very devious.

As a fan of crime thrillers, it took me a little while to adjust to the slower pace of this – after all real – account. I only say that so that others can mentally adjust and expect this change of pace rather than be caught out by it.

Overall, an interesting and rare opportunity to witness some old-school policing first hand.

Book Description: ‘No one knows this horrifying true crime case better than the detective who cracked it. Kim Booth will take you on an unforgettable journey into lies, deceit, cunning and malice.’ Nick Louth
For Joan and Ted Warner, an innocent and trusting couple, a chance encounter with Barbara Hendry, a cunning con-woman who turned their settled lives into a living nightmare.
The Warners were not victims of a remote scam, carried out over the internet by fraudsters from afar. For six years, faking a friendship face-to-face, this plausible woman carried off the impersonation of a member of the nobility fallen on hard times, manipulating the emotions of her victims, deceitfully draining them of every penny they had set aside for their retirement, and plunging them into debt.
Hendrys intention was to slip away, having sucked the Warners dry of all their hard-earned savings. But for some dogged investigative work by a determined detective she would have succeeded- and remained free to prey on other vulnerable victims.
Follow this journey of fraud and depravity in the company of the one man who knows the full story – the British detective who cracked the case and brought Barbara Hendry to justice.
A Cruel Deception is an insightful and gripping work of true crime, which illustrates the depth of wickedness and the possibility that we can all be deceived.
The author retired from the Lincolnshire Police as Detective Inspector in charge of the Lincolnshire Police Economic Crime Unit. He now provides anti-fraud advice and fraud investigation on a consultancy basis together with assisting authors with police procedural issues and story lines.
Author Bio:
Prior to joining the police I had numerous jobs, Worked in a chicken factory for next to nothing, In a Bakery, Royal Mail as a Postman, With my dad who was a civil engineer construction roads and sewerage works and finally in a hotel. Had dealings with the CID and thought “I can do that” and joined the police with the sole intention of being a CID man! Joined Lincolnshire Police in July 1975.

A Killing Fire by Faye Snowdon

by in #amreading, Blog Tour, Book Review, net galley and tagged , | 1 Comment

4 Stars from me

A very solid 4 stars for this epic tale. A Killing Fire is a slow burn (no pun intended) but slow as in melting molasses or as in a perfectly slow cooked chilli.

This book is atmospheric and reading it I could almost taste the dry dusty air and feel the sticky plastic in the diner when little Raven and her daddy went in for dinner. Deliciously descriptive.

The story itself is good and complex, Raven Burns is a truly tortured cop who suffered years of torment at the hands of her serial killer father – so much so that she still feels him and hears him every single day, as though her thoughts and emotions aren’t really her own.

As the plot thickens and the story unravels it becomes clear that Raven is entwined deeply within the tale – but how far did the apple fall from the tree…?

No spoilers from me! A Killing Fire is the perfect book for those who enjoy getting drawn into a story rather than reading a ‘wham bam thank you mam’ thriller.

My thanks to Random Things blog tours for letting me take part.

 

Synopsis: The first time Raven Burns saw her father kill, the victim was her mother. Afterwards, Floyd “FIRE” Burns set the house on fire, making Raven watch as the flames slithered across the yard like some unknowable language. Then he took her on a multi-state killing spree. She could’ve told or killed him in his sleep. But there were his constant whispers, his wet lips close to her ear saying that little girls who told were sent to hell, and their mothers were called down from heaven to take care of them.

By the time he is executed, Raven has become a cop with the sole purpose of putting men like him away. But she can’t escape Floyd’s terrorizing voice in her head, somehow guiding her steps while reminding her of the horrors he had forced her to witness. And she can’t escape the questions that continue to haunt her: Did witnessing make her complicit? Had the same evil that lived in her father taken residence in her soul?

The town of Byrd’s Landing, Louisiana appears to have made up its mind. The community accepts that Raven had nothing to do with Floyd’s crimes. But when Raven shoots a teenager who points what turns out to be an unloaded weapon at her, stories about Floyd resurface. The whispers begin. No voice is louder than wealthy socialite Hazel Westcott. When Westcott turns up dead in the backyard of her Big Bayou Lake estate, the doubting voices reach a deafening crescendo, and the ghosts of her past rise up to greet her. To catch Westcott’s killer, Raven must come to terms once and for all with who she is. And who she is not.