Take a romcom and through in some action and adventure and you get an engaging new read from Gail Koger! Check out an excerpt from SWAT for Dummies and then download your own copy! Check out the rest of the tour for even more fun. Best of luck entering the great giveaway!
Enter the adventurous fantasy world of Ryu Zhong's Prince of Blue Flowers with this excerpt and insight into writing about immortal gods. Be sure to check out the tour for even more fun. Best of luck entering the giveaway!
Go on a fantasy adventure with this excerpt from The Wielder Diaries: My Crystal by Ashley Scheller. Follow the tour for more and let her know your thoughts in the comments. Best of luck entering the giveaway!
It's time for some action and adventure at Andi's Book Reviews! Today we have an excerpt from The Berlin Device, a Xander Berlin Adventure by Tammy Wunsch. Be sure to let her know what you think in the comments section and then download your own copy. Follow the tour for even more! Best of luck in the giveaway!
Stolen treasure ... ruthless killers ... and more awaits you in this thriller by James Peyton. Read an excerpt from The Royal Fifth and then download your own copy. Follow the tour for more as well as bonus chances to enter the giveaway. Good luck!
SANTA FE IN PRESENT TIME
Three months before he approached the international bridge, Martín Cortés drove through the gates of his parents’ home in Tesuque, just outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. Invariably that caused something powerful to stir inside him. That particular day, as the rambling adobe came into view, what stirred inside Martín was a witch’s brew of emotions. The last time he was summoned to a business meeting by his father had been three years ago. It concerned his decision to pursue a career as an artist rather than take over the family bank. That had ended badly—for everyone.
As he turned into the driveway, Martín slowed. He scanned the wooded, thirty-acre site at the base of the piñon-covered hill and then moved his gaze to the house. His eyes traced the rounded corners of the traditional two-story adobe. Irregular roof lines dipped gradually, almost whimsically, on both sides to meandering one-story additions. The structure was pinkish-tan and looked like it had been fashioned by a sculptor, which in effect it had.
Stubby piñon trees and patches of snow dotted the edge of the gravel drive and parking area. Still cold in early March, smoke curled from one of several chimneys, caressing the bare branches of tall trees flanking the driveway. Although the sky gleamed clear and blue through the clutter of spidery branches, Martín felt like a small plane flying into a thunderhead.
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If you're looking for a new thriller, check out Turbulent Skies by Ronald A. Fabick! I have an exclusive excerpt for you to enjoy before you download your copy. Then check out other stops on the tour for even more! Best of luck entering the giveaway!
He felt bad for being judgmental. The odds were against him too, but here he was, alive and well and living in America. He could just as easily be nothing but bones in a jungle somewhere.
Jack noticed a familiar face approaching him from out of the crowd. “Mr. Hussan. How are you?”
“Very well my friend.”
Jack wasn’t sure how he felt about this sketchy guy calling him his ‘friend’—and it was hard to keep his prejudice about Arabs and their ties to terrorism in check—but he kept telling himself, the money’s good. Besides, it had been a simple assignment.
“What have you got for me,” Mr. Hussan asked. “Do you have the rest of my money?”
“Ah yes, right to the point. Here you go.” He handed Jack an envelope. Jack opened it and counted the bills inside.
All there, he thought to himself and then he handed over the large manila envelope full of photos and documentation on Giti Roshtti and her family.
“Thank you,” Hussan said. “It was good to see you at the funeral the other day. Clearly you have covered every base in your investigation.” He watched Jack’s face for some kind of reaction, though Jack wasn’t sure what he expected to see. He didn’t care. Jack was master of the poker-face. He gave the man nothing.
“It was good to see you as well,” he said—then he went fishing. “We got some good shots of the crowd. Your friend is a handsome man.” He wanted to see how this sat with Hussan and was rewarded when he saw a slight hint of surprise and … could that be fear?
“Ah, yes!” Mr. Hussan said hastily. Then he quickly rose from his seat. Jack knew he’d struck a nerve, though he didn’t understand what it was about. To Hussan, all he said was, “Keep me in mind if I can be of further service.”
“Of course,” Hussan responded, quickly shaking Jack’s hand before beating a hasty retreat.
It was as he had expected; there was more to this than met the eye.
Jack watched as Hussan made his way through the crowded casino and when there was a large enough gap between them so he could discreetly follow, he did. It was not difficult. The casino was full of people of every size and description, but he was easy to spot. He was not tall—several inches shy of six feet—but he was undeniably round; he probably tipped the scales at over three hundred pounds and a full beard made his face look as round as a soccer ball.
Jack’s pursuit did not last long. Hussan passed the gaming the tables and roulette wheels and headed straight into the Oasis Lounge. Jack watched from a discreet distance as Hussan sat down at a table, joining an Arab man who waited for him there. It was the man in the picture! Jack inched as close as he could. He didn’t want to miss this discussion.
Hussan slid the envelope across the table. “Here you are, Excellency,” Jack heard him say. “I hope you find it useful.”
He watched as an ethereal figure emerged from the mist, hovering over the water’s surface and meandering closer to him. It was a man, hunched and cloaked, his eyes hidden by greying bandages stained with blood—familiar, but only from his dreams. His face seemed to twist and change from night to night, growing darker and more haggard, though Daemus knew it was the same man each time. He always seemed unable to sense Daemus and was certainly unable to see him. Yet when the man was near, Daemus never felt safe. He looked like terror and death and emptiness. It was all Daemus could do not to scream.
As though tied to the same puppeteer’s strings, both Daemus and the man grew still at the same moment. Distantly, Daemus registered that something new was coming. His dream had never taken him this far, and that knowledge was terrifying. He didn’t want to know what would happen next.
His mind moved sluggishly, as though he was being slowly trapped in hardening amber. Perhaps the fog itself had clouded his mind when he was breathing it while desperately seeking his way. Panic crept up his spine, his eyes diluting as the fight-or-flight response kicked in. The man was so close that Daemus could smell the tracks of fresh blood crawling down his cheeks. It smelled of rusted swords and the bile of ruptured organs.
The man raised his head, his bloody countenance impassive, his robed arm reaching out for Daemus. It weaved through the air mere inches in front of him, as though the blinded man was looking for a stitch in the fabric of reality. Somehow, he seemed to be unaware of Daemus’s presence, though his gnarled finger was so close to the young man’s face that Daemus could see the dirt caked beneath the beds of the nails.
Daemus tried to move again, but his body refused to obey his mind’s desperate commands. He swallowed, his dry throat savoring the precious saliva, and fought back the tears that threatened to overwhelm him.
He opened his mouth and screamed.
The shrill sound ripped through the silence like a bell ringing in a sleepy village. Daemus’s hands flew up to his face as though to force the sound back in, but it was too late. Daemus knew in that moment that he’d made a fatal mistake. The figure had been unaware of him... until then.
The stranger turned.
“Finally,” he said with an evil cackle. “You’ve come for me, Daemus Alaric.”
Daemus opened his mouth to scream again, but the mist was sweeping back down from the mountains and swallowing up everything around them. Even the blinded man was no exception, and he melted away from Daemus along with everything else. Darkness overcame him, swirling into the blackness of unconsciousness as the stranger’s harsh laughter continued to echo in his ears.
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Micah Pober is the only child of the Pober family. The heir, as one could call it. He has everything a parent could want from their next heir.
He is smart, kind, resourceful, and blind, with an aversion to the sun or any kind of heat after what happened with his parents. It does not help that he is quite sickly either.
But, like all protagonists, he holds a secret. A secret he has no intention of revealing to anyone.
And no, it is not that he can see the souls of people or that he can absorb those souls into himself. Those everyone, well, almost everyone, already knows about that.
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Still, she had to get across the road, so she took her first tentative steps. She was on a mission to reach the wardrobe mercer’s shop to buy cloth and notions, one of the reasons she and her brothers had come to this awful city. Horses, wagons, and people heading in all directions at a fast pace, none of them looking out for the others, darted around her in some sort of confusing dance unknown to Leena.
She was nearly to the shop when disaster struck.
Two young girls, herding a gaggle of geese across the muddy, rut-riddled street, arrived at the same spot as three men carrying bales of fleece coming from the opposite direction…. A chaotic mess of feathers, fleece, shouting men, and squawking geese surrounded her. Stumbling, she fell facedown over a bale of fleece now sitting ruined in the mud. She righted herself just as the geese tangled in her legs again, honking and nipping at her. …She closed her eyes and prepared herself to land on her backside.
Suddenly she felt strong arms around her waist, lifting her up. Those arms carried her safely the rest of the way across the street,… pressed against a tall, muscular man wearing a leather apron, she eventually found her footing.
“Oh, my stars,” she said in a breathless voice….Turning around to see her rescuer, she looked up into the most enchanting pair of eyes she had ever seen.
Welcome to the Name Before the Masses Tour for I Can Still Hear You by Nicole Black. Today I have an excerpt for you, as well as my thoughts on the book. You can also get to know the author better in this brief interview. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for even more. Best of luck in the giveaway!
I gazed up at the ceiling in quiet disbelief, as if I’d see my father looking down on me. Carefully, I removed the map from the box. It was yellowing and old, and the paper was as thin as tissue, so I took care in opening it. The map had some faint lines on it, some solid, some dotted, but no place names, no markings at all to tell what exactly it belonged to.
“Great, Dad,” I muttered aloud. “This is super helpful.”
But the second I said it, as had happened a dozen times in my life when I’d been presented with a puzzle, my father’s voice said, I’m not going to give you all the answers. Where’s the fun in that?
“This is one big party,” I muttered again. I had no idea where to even start. The only thing that made sense was to contact my dad’s friend living in Hawaii.
Hawaii.
He couldn’t possibly mean that he wanted me to go to . . .
No. That was impossible.
I read the letter, again and again. The more I did, the more it seemed as if, yes . . . that’s exactly what my father wanted.
Peering in the box again, I hoped that wad of cash would present itself. Or at least the stopwatch. But neither did. The box was empty.
M.T. Bass is an author from my home state who has visited us here before. Today, he shares an excerpt from his new book Jungleland. And one of his characters is telling us what he thinks of him! Share your thoughts in the comments here and as you follow the tour. Plus there's a great giveaway at the end!
“Break left,” I radioed Angel, jammed the throttle forward, and yanked the stick back and to the left in a climbing turn to circle around on the enemy position. I searched back over my shoulder for a road or trail leading out of the area to anticipate their possible direction of movement. There was a small scar coming down off the hill to the southeast.
As we came around three hundred and sixty degrees, lining up on the small section of the jungle where red and green tracer rounds floated up our way, the intensity of the fire began to wane as the rebels understood what was about to come their way.
“Take the trail. Southeast,” I radioed Angel.
He clicked his mike twice to acknowledge the one-two punch plan and throttled back to drift away in trail to follow up my initial attack on the enemy positions with rocket fire as they inevitably fled to melt back into the jungle.
I banked hard and began to dive down on the hilltop. The tracers began to concentrate on my nose. I lit up my guns, spreading the field of fire left and right with a little dance on the rudder pedals. I felt the Texan buck up a bit as rockets left the rails. I followed the plumes of their engines halfway to the target before I had to pull up, but noticed the intensity of the enemy fire had waned considerably.
“Way to go, Batman,” Angel radioed. “Let me just clean up this little mess you made.”
Behind me, Angel strafed the road and fired his rockets in so close that he seemed to clip the top of the fireball from the warhead explosions.
I circled back and took a path coming back up the road, stitching it with .303 caliber fire…
Javier looks over at me from the pilot’s seat. He must have noticed my clenched hands, or my pallor or the way I sit slumped down in the seat. “First flight in a small plane?” he asks.
“First flight, period.”
He laughs. “An American girl like you has never flown?”
I think I hear a hint of sarcasm in his voice when he says, “American girl.”
I am an American girl, but not a privileged one. Mama wasn’t anxious to go any place that might require IDs. There was no extra money for vacations to places that required a plane ticket. At first, our family spent all our holidays with Rogelio and Lupe, but after Antonio died, mama and Lupe drifted apart.
“There’s only one place I’d want to go,” papa always answered when the question of travel came up, “back to Michoacán where mama and I grew up. I’d like to show you the beautiful land we came from.” At that, he always paused, getting a kind of sad-eyed look. “But we can’t go there, my little dove. So, we’ll go to Disneyland or Magic Mountain instead.”
To Javier, I’m an American girl, To Ryan, I’m a Latina. Mama Gorda said I was neither. She said I was lost. Who’s right? Who am I? I feel lost in this airplane. I sit up straighter in the cushy leather seat next to Javier.
“I am American,” I tell him. “I guess I’m a pretty naïve one though, jumping into a small plane with a man I hardly know. You think I’m a fool, don’t you? Or something worse.”
“Not a fool, Teresa — please let me call you that — but perhaps too trusting. That could get you in trouble in Mexico. Here it is better to trust no one.”
“Not even you?” I tease.
“Not even me.”
I hadn’t expected that. “Tell me why?”
“Please call me Javier.” His smile is warm and genuine, but he keeps his eyes straight ahead and his hands on the controls.
I wait for more.
Reluctantly, in little bits and pieces, as the plane flies on, he tells me about himself. He says his family is in the export and distribution business. They’ve done well, and he is benefiting from it. A little embarrassed, he says he hasn’t done much to contribute to the family business since graduating from Stanford.
“So why were you at Mama Gorda’s?” The question has bothered me from the start.
His eyes scan the horizon. It’s several seconds before he answers. “We each have our embarrassments,” he starts. “Sometimes it’s good not to ask too many questions. I won’t ask you about what you were doing at Carmen’s house, and I hope you’ll do the same for me. Suffice it to say my family’s company does some distribution work for her. Most of her business is over the Internet, of course, but we deliver some DVDs to L.A.”
“Smuggling, you mean?”
“As I said, some questions should not be asked or answered.”
We fly on in silence and land in Culiacán to refuel. Javier leads me into the tiny airport restaurant where we eat a quick lunch in silence. Questions ricochet in my head like the bullets that killed Antonio. What kind of danger am I in? Am I in danger with Javier? Who are all these people? Ever since I agreed to cross the border with Knobhead, it feels as if one bad decision after another is plaguing me. My life is out of control.
Sitting at a table in the small airport lounge, Javier breaks the silence as I sip an iced tea. “Look, I’m sorry if I shock you. I thought it was better to be honest with you from the start. You don’t understand life in Mexico so let me try to explain—”
“Explain? What’s to explain? You all but said you are a smuggler, Javier. what’s to explain?”
