Dark Paradise by Angie Sandro is available for preorder for less than $3 at BN and Kobo! It's also available at All Romance for $3.99. This new adult, paranormal romance will be officially released tomorrow and is the first in a trilogy. Readers who received advranced copies found the voodoo twist refreshing, but some plot points were a little unclear. Anyone taking advantage of this sale?
DARK LEGACY
Mala LaCroix has spent her whole life trying to escape her destiny. As the last in a long line of “witch women,” she rejects the notion of spirits and hoodoo and instead does her best to blend in. But when she finds a dead body floating in the bayou behind her house, Mala taps into powers she never knew she had. She's haunted by visions of the dead girl, demanding justice and vengeance.
DEADLY SECRETS
Landry Prince has always had a crush on Mala, but when Mala discovers his sister, murdered and marked in some sort of Satanic ritual, he wonders if all the rumors about the LaCroix family are true. Yet after Mala uses her connection to the spirit world to identify his sister's killer, he starts to form his own bond to her . . . a very physical one. As they move closer to each other and closer to the truth, Mala and Landry must risk everything—their families, their love, and even their lives.
Never Deal with Dragons by Lorenda Christensen is 99c! Who has time for vampires and shifters when you have tattooed dragons, amirite?! Readers felt that a world where dragons and humans coexist was fresh and inventive, but others felt conflicted on whether this is more of a paranormal romance or if it reads too much like an urban fantasy book. This is also the first in the DRACIM series.
Consoling a sobbing dragon and serving pig buffets are just part of the job for Myrna Banks. Working for a mediation firm, it’s her job to get humans compensated for damages caused by the dragons who now rule. But her “typical” day is interrupted by Trian Chobardan, an old flame who sneaked out of her bed two years ago, taking her heart and a handful of classified documents with him.
Myrna would love to show Trian the door, but he’s been sent by North America’s reigning dragon lord for help negotiating a truce with a powerful rival to avert war. Myrna agrees to help, even though she’ll be stuck with Trian as a partner.
As the two work together, Myrna finds Trian to be surprisingly supportive—and still irresistibly attractive. Though her brain tells her not to forget his betrayal, her body feels differently. When they learn the enemy dragon lord is planning something no one could have imagined, Myrna has to learn who she can trust before she loses not only her heart, but her life.
Drynn by Steve Vera is 99c! Urban fantasy with a buddy cop plot, fans of the Iron Druid Chronicles might enjoy the first book in the Last of the Shardyn series. With a 3.7-star rating on GR, readers enjoyed the protagonists' relationships with each other and the book's secondary characters, but found the action lagging in some spots. Has anyone read this one?
Montana police chief Skip Walkins is hot on the trail of a murder suspect when he witnesses a drifter free the Lord of the Underworld. Seventeen years ago, five knights from Earth's magical twin, Theia, entombed Asmodeous the Pale, Lord of the Drynn, in Skip's town. Now that the dark god is free again, he's anxious to get back home and finish the war he began…to enslave all life. It begins with killing the knights who trapped him.
Deprived of their magic, the knights fight back using whatever they can get their hands on, from samurai swords to assault rifles. Skip gets reluctantly drawn in to their struggle while Donovan Smith, the demi-god murderer whom Skip was after in the first place, plots to find the Lord of the Underworld and butcher him on his own.
Together, these unlikely heroes might just save the world. If they don't kill each other first.
Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Kobo
Journey of Awakening by Shawna Thomas is 99c! This is book one in the Triune Stories series and is described as fantasy with romantic elements. Readers said this was a typical good vs. evil fantasy plot with a magical pendant and an important quest, but the well-written descriptions and details really enhanced the story. It also has a 3.7-star rating on GR.
After her grandfather's death, Sara inherits an ancient pendant and a near-impossible quest—master the mysterious pendant's source of magic. Driven to do so, she must find the other two stones of power, long considered lost, while preventing an unknown enemy from finding her first.
Unprepared and alone, she travels to where the keepers of the stones, the Siobani, were last seen. Along the way she meets Tobar, leader of the nomadic Heleini tribe. As Sara wrestles with feelings for this intriguing man, she is also invigorated with her grandfather's passion to find the ancient Siobani race.
After a rival tribe kidnaps Tobar's son and heir, Sara must harness the stone's healing magic to unite the tribes and save the boy. But as the dark power stalking her gains ground, will she continue on her quest to reach the Siobani or risk everything to save the warring tribes from eliminating each other?
Barely related: Any of y’all read Dealing With Dragons by Patricia C Wrede? I was just thinking the other day what a great book it was for young women, because it’s basically ALL strong female leads. It’s about a princess, Cimorene, who is fed up with the way the palace just wants to marry her off and won’t let her decide what she wants for herself… she’s been bullying the servants into teaching her things like fencing and Latin, but of course those aren’t for young ladies to learn. So she decides to run away… to a dragon, because dragons kidnap princesses all the time, and she manages to convince Kazul (a female dragon) that she could be an excellent assistant, as Kazul has this massive hoard with amazing books and magic and things that need learning and organizing. Naturally they grow to become friends, uncover plots against human and dragonkind, and so forth.
There’s a whole series of books, dealing with the knights that keep trying to rescue Cimorene, how she learns all these amazing skills and works with Kazul to save everyone from various threats, and it’s all a nice mix of light-hearted whimsy and serious fantasy. But what’s great is the emphasis on strong female characters. Not just Cimorene and Kazul, but a witch named Morwen (she has a sign over her door saying “None of This Nonsense, Please”), and it’s all about how different women can be strong in different ways, and that “feminine” is what you make it. There IS a romance in the second book, and that’s great too, because it puts emphasis on loving someone who loves and respects you for who you are, without asking you to compromise yourself.
I read that book when I was ten (the books themselves are aimed at teens), and the whole series still stuck with me. What I like is that Cimorene and Kazul and Morwen are unconventional heroines. I feel as if, awesome though they may be, there’s almost TOO much emphasis in pop culture on the Buffy style heroines… awesome fighters, sassy, sexy, etc, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just one facet of what a strong female character CAN be. I like heroines that show you can be strong AND feminine if you so choose, or imperfect, or alone if that’s what you want, and the books deal with all that in an extremely subtle, wonderful way.
… anyway, check ‘em out if you can find ‘em somewhere!
Would also like to add that Shirlee Busbee’s classic Deceive Not My Heart is currently a free ebook on Amazon. Now I can retire my well-worn paperback.
If you’re up for dragon stories, I highly recommend Katie McAllister’s Aislyn Grey series. they’re funny and very hot as well.
@Dora, those are some of my favourite books ever. When she was here for a Book Club chat a ways back, I might have squeed awfully hard at Ms. Wrede for the dragons books and she was very pleased as she loved them too.
Forget being rescued, I wanted to be Cimorene and friends with dragons!
Also Beverly Jenkins Destiny’s Surrender is $1.99 on Amazon, as is Ella Enchanted.
Fyi for fans of Sherrilyn Kenyon…not sure if this is good for both sides of the border but Kobo in Canada has Born of the Night on sale (daily deal) for $2.99 (reg $8.99)
😛 oops, make that Born of Night
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie is on sale for $1.99 at Barnes and Noble and Google Play. An excellent sci-fi book (no romance, though). I would highly recommend it.
Yay, some of the Carina titles for our fantasy promotion got shoutouts here! ^_^
I’m in on the Carina fantasy 99c promotion—I’ve got a roundup of all the participating titles on my post about Valor of the Healer being on sale, too. I invite members of the Bitchery who are SF/F-inclined to c’mon over here if you’d like to see the full list of Carina titles involved. Check the bottom of my post!