Friday, November 29, 2019

Off the Shelf: Testarossa and 4 Days by JD Cary



Good Morning and Happy Black Friday! 

I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving and enjoyed getting to spend time with family and friends. One thing I'm always thankful for is getting a few days off work to squeeze in some extra reading time!

This week, I checked out JD Cary's John Testarossa series. 


 


Testarossa: A John Testarossa Novel is about a police officer with the LAPD. When he and his partner, Alex, are called to investigate an arm that was discovered, followed later by the rest of the body, they are drawn into a web of lies and drugs. Meanwhile, Testarossa must deal with navigating a new and promising relationship with a beautiful doctor, while dealing with the ghosts of his past. If you are looking for an intense, gritty police thriller, look no further! 



The second book in the series is 4 Days. Set about a year after the events of the first book, in 4 Days, John and Alex must stop a serial killer who is leaving a trail of young women's bodies behind. All young women were kidnapped as children, returned to society after being held and tortured for four days. Has their kidnapped returned years later to kill them? Why? Will John and Alex be able to stop the killer before he claims even more lives? For a non-stop thrill, check out 4 Days!


Best of all, both books are available via Kindle Unlimited! I absolutely love my Kindle Unlimited subscription! It gives me instant access to thousands of books for only $9.99 a month. If you haven't signed up for it yet, use this link to get your first month for free! 





Note: This post contains affiliate links, which means a small portion of the proceeds go to support Pines and Peaches, at no additional cost to you. Read my disclosure policy here




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Saturday, November 09, 2019

Off the Shelf: The Blue Devil by Quirah Casey




For this week's edition of Off the Shelf, I read The Blue Devil by Quirah Casey. If you are looking for non-stop action and supernatural creatures, this is your book! Blue (aka The Blue Devil) is an assassin, one of the best in the world. When someone starts leaving bodies with her name carved into them in an attempt to lead the police to her, Blue goes after the killer with a vengeance. With a Jessica Jones meets The Mortal Instruments vibe, this is an unforgettable start to a new series. I can't wait to read the next book! 

Bonus: This book is available on Kindle Unlimited! If you haven't tried Kindle Unlimited yet, click here or on the banner below to get your first month free! 




Note: This post contains affiliate links, which means a small portion of the proceeds go to support Pines and Peaches, at no additional cost to you. Read my disclosure policy here


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Tuesday, November 05, 2019

Books to Watch: Coming Soon in November 2019




Note: This post contains affiliate links, which means a small portion of the proceeds go to support Pines and Peaches, at no additional cost to you. Read my disclosure policy here


November is almost upon us! As we begin the rush of the holiday season, squeezing reading time into our already busy lives is a little harder. Here are some upcoming books that look like they will be perfect for long car rides, waiting for the turkey to cook, or just to add to our Christmas wish lists. ;)

Available on November 5th 

 

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Night Circus, a timeless love story set in a secret underground world—a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues—a bee, a key, and a sword—that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians—it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction. Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose—in both the mysterious book and in his own life.



Available on November 5th



From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Raven Boys, a mesmerizing story of dreams and desires, death and destiny.
The dreamers walk among us . . . and so do the dreamed. Those who dream cannot stop dreaming - they can only try to control it. Those who are dreamed cannot have their own lives - they will sleep forever if their dreamers die.
And then there are those who are drawn to the dreamers. To use them. To trap them. To kill them before their dreams destroy us all.

Ronan Lynch is a dreamer. He can pull both curiosities and catastrophes out of his dreams and into his compromised reality.

Jordan Hennessy is a thief. The closer she comes to the dream object she is after, the more inextricably she becomes tied to it.

Carmen Farooq-Lane is a hunter. Her brother was a dreamer . . . and a killer. She has seen what dreaming can do to a person. And she has seen the damage that dreamers can do. But that is nothing compared to the destruction that is about to be unleashed. . . . 




Available on November 5th


From the acclaimed author of Defy, Sara B. Larson, Sisters of Shadow and Light is a timeless and fantastical tale of sisterly love and powerful magic
The night my sister was born, the stars died and were reborn in her eyes….
Zuhra and Inara have grown up in the Citadel of the Paladins, an abandoned fortress where legendary, magical warriors once lived before disappearing from the world―including their Paladin father the night Inara was born.
On that same night, a massive, magical hedge grew and imprisoned them within the citadel. Inara inherited their father’s Paladin power; her eyes glow blue and she is able to make plants grow at unbelievable rates, but she has been trapped in her own mind because of a “roar” that drowns everything else out―leaving Zuhra virtually alone with their emotionally broken human mother.
For fifteen years they have lived, trapped in the citadel, with little contact from the outside world…until the day a stranger passes through the hedge, and everything changes.


Available on November 5th


A gripping new novel from New York Times bestselling suspense author Terri Blackstock.
One father was murdered. Another was convicted of his death. All because their children fell in love.
Nate Beckett has spent his life fighting wildfires instead of the lies and rumors that drove him from his Colorado hometown. His mother begs him to come back now that his father has been released from prison, but it isn’t until he’s sidelined by an injury that he’s forced to return and face his past. But that means facing Brenna too.
Fourteen years ago, Nate was in love with the preacher’s daughter. When Pastor Strickland discovered Brenna defied him to sneak out with Nate, the fight between Strickland and Nate’s drunken dad was loud—and very public. Strickland was found murdered later that night, and everyone accused Roy Beckett. When the church burned down not long after, people assumed Nate set the fire to get even for his father’s conviction. He let the rumors fly and left town without looking back.
Brenna is stunned to learn that the man convicted of murdering her father has been pardoned. The events of that night set her life on a bad course, and now she’s fighting a brutal custody battle with her ex and his new wife where he’s using lies and his family’s money to sway the judge. Brenna is barely hanging on, and she’s turned to alcohol to cope. Shame and fear consume her.
As Nate and Brenna deal with the present—including new information about that fateful night and a wildfire that’s threatening their town—the past keeps igniting. Nate is the steady force Brenna has so desperately needed. But she’ll have to learn to trust him again first.


Available on November 5th


From the New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone comes another page-turning look inside one family’s past as buried secrets threaten to come to light.

Be careful who you let in.

Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am.

She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them.

Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.

In The Family Upstairs, the master of “bone-chilling suspense” (People) brings us the can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets.


Available on November 5th

A new fantasy series set in the world of Camelot that bestselling author Christina Lauren calls "brilliant," reimagining the Arthurian legend . . . where nothing is as magical and terrifying as a girl.

Princess Guinevere has come to Camelot to wed a stranger: the charismatic King Arthur. With magic clawing at the kingdom's borders, the great wizard Merlin conjured a solution--send in Guinevere to be Arthur's wife . . . and his protector from those who want to see the young king's idyllic city fail. The catch? Guinevere's real name--and her true identity--is a secret. She is a changeling, a girl who has given up everything to protect Camelot.

To keep Arthur safe, Guinevere must navigate a court in which the old--including Arthur's own family--demand things continue as they have been, and the new--those drawn by the dream of Camelot--fight for a better way to live. And always, in the green hearts of forests and the black depths of lakes, magic lies in wait to reclaim the land.

Deadly jousts, duplicitous knights, and forbidden romances are nothing compared to the greatest threat of all: the girl with the long black hair, riding on horseback through the dark woods toward Arthur. Because when your whole existence is a lie, how can you trust even yourself? *THE FIRST BOOK IN THE CAMELOT RISING TRILOGY*




Available on November 5th


From New York Times bestselling author of The Wicked Deep comes a haunting romance perfect for fans of Practical Magic, where dark fairy tales and enchanted folklore collide after a boy, believed to be missing, emerges from the magical woods—and falls in love with the witch determined to unravel his secrets.

Be careful of the dark, dark wood…

Especially the woods surrounding the town of Fir Haven. Some say these woods are magical. Haunted, even.

Rumored to be a witch, only Nora Walker knows the truth. She and the Walker women before her have always shared a special connection with the woods. And it’s this special connection that leads Nora to Oliver Huntsman—the same boy who disappeared from the Camp for Wayward Boys weeks ago—and in the middle of the worst snowstorm in years. He should be dead, but here he is alive, and left in the woods with no memory of the time he’d been missing.

But Nora can feel an uneasy shift in the woods at Oliver’s presence. And it’s not too long after that Nora realizes she has no choice but to unearth the truth behind how the boy she has come to care so deeply about survived his time in the forest, and what led him there in the first place. What Nora doesn’t know, though, is that Oliver has secrets of his own—secrets he’ll do anything to keep buried, because as it turns out, he wasn’t the only one to have gone missing on that fateful night all those weeks ago.

For as long as there have been fairy tales, we have been warned to fear what lies within the dark, dark woods and in Winterwood, New York Times bestselling author Shea Ernshaw, shows us why.



Available on November 19th


In this Journey to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker young adult novel set just before The Force Awakens, a restless teenager sets out to discover what connection his mysterious Force powers have to the fabled Jedi and what the Force has in store for him.


Available on November 19th

From the internationally best-selling author of Fatherland and the Cicero Trilogy--a chilling and dark new thriller unlike anything Robert Harris has done before.

1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote Exmoor village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artefacts--coins, fragments of glass, human bones--which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead to his death?
     Fairfax becomes determined to discover the truth. Over the course of the next six days, everything he believes--about himself, his faith, and the history of his world--will be tested to destruction.


Available on November 26th


The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Year One and Of Blood and Bone concludes her stunning new trilogy praised as “A match for end-of-the-world classics like Stephen King’s The Stand.”
After the sickness known as the Doom destroyed civilization, magick has become commonplace, and Fallon Swift has spent her young years learning its ways. Fallon cannot live in peace until she frees those who have been preyed upon by the government or the fanatical Purity Warriors, endlessly hunted or locked up in laboratories, brutalized for years on end. She is determined to save even those who have been complicit with this evil out of fear or weakness—if, indeed, they can be saved.
Strengthened by the bond she shares with her fellow warrior, Duncan, Fallon has already succeeded in rescuing countless shifters and elves and ordinary humans. Now she must help them heal—and rediscover the light and faith within themselves. For although from the time of her birth, she has been The One, she is still only one. And as she faces down an old nemesis, sets her sights on the enemy’s stronghold, and pursues her destiny—to finally restore the mystical shield that once protected them all—she will need an army behind her…


Hope you found a book or two (or three) to take you through the holiday season. I know I am looking forward to these new books. :) Happy Reading! 

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Monday, November 04, 2019

Monday Motivation-November 3rd, 2019




Good Morning and Happy Monday! 
I absolutely adore this quote by former first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. It's so true. Go out there and take on the world, and when you are discouraged, just remind yourself of this fantastic quote. 


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Friday, November 01, 2019

Off the Shelf: Where Acorns Landed





Good Afternoon and Happy Reading! 

On my quest for spooky October reads, I was introduced to Where Acorns Landed by Anne M. Curtis. This book did not disappoint! Part mystery, part fantasy, it was like reading my way through a dream I never wanted to end! The story centers around Lowell and his mysterious 1940's radio, through which he hears the bewitching voice of Nell. Before long, he becomes obsessed with Nell, becoming a hermit, willing to do anything or sacrifice anything, just to hear her voice. Who is Nell? What does she want? You'll have to read this amazing book to find the answers! I promise you will not be disappointed! 

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which means a small portion of the proceeds go to support Pines and Peaches, at no additional cost to you. Read my disclosure policy here



Thank y'all for reading! Be sure to enter your email address to get all the latest updates from Pines and Peaches.