Release Day: Hook & Crown by Nicole Knapp

Hook & Crown by Nicole Knapp

This blog tour includes a giveaway and book playlist.

You've heard of Neverland and its inhabitants... Fairies, pirates, mermaids and a boy who didn't want to grow up. But you can't always believe the stories.

Elena Hart arrives in London, bound for a new boarding school operated by her estranged uncle. A fresh start is exactly what she needs. But when strange things begin happening, things she can't explain, she begins to wonder if she has lost her mind. 
Until the night a strange girl appears in her room, claiming to be a fairy from Neverland, come to take her to the fantasy world at the request of its ruler. 
Skeptical, Elena refuses. But the following night, a young man with strange green eyes appears, and though she tries to resist his charms, something about him draws her in and Elena is whisked away from the world she knows, to a world she always thought was make believe. 
But when she arrives in Neverland, it is nothing like the stories and Elena realizes that she must figure out for herself who the true heroes and villains are.

Book Tour: She's Powerful Trouble by Taylor Hartley

She's Powerful Trouble by Taylor Hartley

This blog tour has a giveaway and book playlist.

The Mothers of Mariah Stark’s Coven insist she possesses an evil power. Mariah’s attempts to pull flowers from the Earth or heal injuries result in killing fields of crops and scorching flesh instead. Called away by a prophecy, the young witch learns she must cloak her magic to protect her Sisters and their secret. But despite her best efforts, Mariah fails at maintaining a low profile in Wicker Creek, North Carolina. Now, as Mariah navigates her senior year of high school, vicious town darling Shelley Stallings and her minions seek to reveal Mariah for the witch they believe her to be. Such exposure could ruin the magical world—if Mariah doesn’t destroy it first.

While Finn Shepherd may not have magical powers, he’s on his own path to self-destruction. Struggling to cope with his father’s death, he abandons his passions for swimming and sketching and seeks solace in drugs, pissing away his chances at graphic design school as he lashes out at the people who love him most. His tunnel-vision blinds him—so he never sees Mariah coming.

What follows is a cycle of fated encounters. Mariah’s powers soften as she grows closer to Finn, and she wonders: is he destined to save her from her ravenous inner darkness? And Mariah reminds Finn of who he used to be and the future he might pursue. But as Shelley relentlessly taunts Mariah, the dark side of her magic takes on a mind of its own…threatening anyone in its wake and driving Mariah to a choice that might unleash a force strong enough to shatter both the magical and ordinary worlds…

Book Tour: Stolen by Marlena Frank

Stolen by Marlena Frank

This blog tour includes a giveaway and an excerpt.

It’s difficult taking care of a delusional father by yourself. Sixteen-year-old Shaleigh Mallet would rather explore and photograph dilapidated buildings than cater to her father’s dark episodes. But when she’s kidnapped by a creature who carries her atop a flying bicycle into another world, she realizes this wasn’t the escape she wanted.

In a kingdom known as the Garden, where minotaurs pull carriages and parties are held in hot air balloons, Madam Cloom and her faerie servant, Teagan, rule over the land with incredible but terrifying magic. Shaleigh must prove that she is the reincarnation of a long-dead ruler, not because she believes it, but because it’s her only chance to survive. With the help of a trespassing faerie, a stoatling, and a living statue, Shaleigh hopes to outwit everyone. She aims to break the bonds of servitude and finally make her way home. What she doesn’t realize, however, is that she’s playing right into the hands of a far worse enemy...

Book Review: Alice in Zombieland by Nickolas Cook and Lewis Carroll

Alice in Zombieland by Nickolas Cook and Lewis Carroll

"They were indeed a queer-looking party that assembled on the bank-the birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their fur clinging close to them, and all dripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable. All of them were covered in Alice's now cold and congealed blood, which made them even tastier looking to poor hungry Alice."

When little Alice follows the Black Rat down into the gaping darkness of an open grave, she falls and falls. And soon finds herself in an undead nightmare of rotting flesh and insanity. Venturing further into this land of zombies and monsters, she encounters characters both creepy and madcap along the way. But there's something else troubling poor Alice: her skin is rotting and her hair is falling out. She's cold. And she has the haunting feeling that if she remains in Zombieland any longer, she might never leave.

Can Alice escape Zombieland before the Dead Red Queen catches up to her?

Book Review: The Wild Inside: A Novel by Jamey Bradbury

The Wild Inside: A Novel by Jamey Bradbury

A promising talent makes her electrifying debut with this unforgettable novel, set in the Alaskan wilderness, that is a fusion of psychological thriller and coming-of-age tale in the vein of Jennifer McMahon, Chris Bohjalian, and Mary Kubica.

A natural born trapper and hunter raised in the Alaskan wilderness, Tracy Petrikoff spends her days tracking animals and running with her dogs in the remote forests surrounding her family’s home. Though she feels safe in this untamed land, Tracy still follows her late mother’s rules: Never Lose Sight of the House. Never Come Home with Dirty Hands. And, above all else, Never Make a Person Bleed.

But these precautions aren’t enough to protect Tracy when a stranger attacks her in the woods and knocks her unconscious. The next day, she glimpses an eerily familiar man emerge from the tree line, gravely injured from a vicious knife wound—a wound from a hunting knife similar to the one she carries in her pocket. Was this the man who attacked her and did she almost kill him? With her memories of the events jumbled, Tracy can’t be sure.

Helping her father cope with her mother’s death and prepare for the approaching Iditarod, she doesn’t have time to think about what she may have done. Then a mysterious wanderer appears, looking for a job. Tracy senses that Jesse Goodwin is hiding something, but she can’t warn her father without explaining about the attack—or why she’s kept it to herself.

It soon becomes clear that something dangerous is going on . . . the way Jesse has wormed his way into the family . . . the threatening face of the stranger in a crowd . . . the boot-prints she finds at the forest’s edge.

Her family is in trouble. Will uncovering the truth protect them—or is the threat closer than Tracy suspects?

Book Review: Nevernight by Jay Kristoff

Nevernight by Jay Kristoff

In a land where three suns almost never set, a fledgling killer joins a school of assassins, seeking vengeance against the powers who destroyed her family.

Daughter of an executed traitor, Mia Corvere is barely able to escape her father’s failed rebellion with her life. Alone and friendless, she hides in a city built from the bones of a dead god, hunted by the Senate and her father’s former comrades. But her gift for speaking with the shadows leads her to the door of a retired killer, and a future she never imagined.

Now, Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock of assassins in the entire Republic—the Red Church. If she bests her fellow students in contests of steel, poison and the subtle arts, she’ll be inducted among the Blades of the Lady of Blessed Murder, and one step closer to the vengeance she desires. But a killer is loose within the Church’s halls, the bloody secrets of Mia’s past return to haunt her, and a plot to bring down the entire congregation is unfolding in the shadows she so loves.

Will she even survive to initiation, let alone have her revenge?

Book Review: One Way by Jeff Lane

One Way by Jeff Lane

Barry Griffith doesn’t know it yet, but tonight is the night fate has chosen to be the night of his death… his murder. At a gas station in the middle of nowhere, late at night, his wife Jenny appears… no car… no coat and looking older than when he saw her last. That’s because this is not the woman he received a good-bye kiss from this morning. This woman has been a widow for over four years and has made an impossible journey back in time to try to stop her husband’s murder. Will they be able to escape the killers or does fate only have one plan… one possible outcome… ONE WAY?