-
Phoenix Unbound
Phoenix Unbound by Grace Draven is $1.99! I gave this one a C-, but I’d still recommend it with large caveats. 1) All of the trigger warnings. 2) It’s dense and the slow burn is quite slow. 3) There’s a magical infertility cure. Draven’s writing is always top notch and I’m curious about the next book, which follows a different couple.
A woman with power over fire and illusion and an enslaved son of a chieftain battle a corrupt empire in this powerful and deeply emotional romantic fantasy from the USA Todaybestselling author of Radiance.
Every year, each village is required to send a young woman to the Empire’s capital–her fate to be burned alive for the entertainment of the masses. For the last five years, one small village’s tithe has been the same woman. Gilene’s sacrifice protects all the other young women of her village, and her secret to staying alive lies with the magic only she possesses.
But this year is different.
Azarion, the Empire’s most famous gladiator, has somehow seen through her illusion–and is set on blackmailing Gilene into using her abilities to help him escape his life of slavery. And unknown to Gilene, he also wants to reclaim the birthright of his clan.
To protect her family and village, she will risk everything to return to the Empire–and burn once more.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
This book is on sale at:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks! -
Too Hot to Handle
Too Hot to Handle by Tessa Bailey is $2.99! I enjoy Bailey’s writing! Her dialogue feels very real and her dirty talk between characters is top notch. I loved the setup of an estranged family’s cross-country road trip. But I will admit the chemistry between the hero and heroine wavered at times.
The first book in a brand new contemporary romance series from New York Times bestselling author Tessa Bailey!
When Rita Clarkson’s Suburban takes its last breath on a New Mexico roadside, rescue roars up on a Harley in the form of smooth-talking honkey tonk owner, Jasper Ellis, a man as mysterious as he is charming. Rita’s cross-country journey to New York City–with her three estranged siblings in tow–is only beginning, but now that Jasper has found Rita, his plans do not include her leaving.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
This book is on sale at:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks! -
The Lady Traveler’s Guide to Scoundrels and Other Gentlemen
The Lady Travelers Guide to Scoundrels and Other Gentlemen by Victoria Alexander is $1.99! This is the first book in the Lady Travelers Society series and it has, you guessed it, lady travelers. Readers say the plot takes a while to pick up, but others say this historical romance is both sweet and funny.
Embark on the breathtaking romantic adventures of The Lady Travelers Society in the brand-new series by #1 New York Times bestselling author Victoria Alexander
Really, it’s too much to expect any normal man to behave like a staid accountant in order to inherit the fortune he deserves to support the lifestyle of an earl. So when Derek Saunders’s favorite elderly aunt and her ill-conceived—and possibly fraudulent—Lady Travelers Society loses one of their members, what’s a man to do but step up to the challenge? Now he’s escorting the world’s most maddening woman to the world’s most romantic city to find her missing relative.
While India Prendergast only suspects his organization defrauds gullible travelers, she’s certain a man with as scandalous a reputation as Derek Saunders cannot be trusted any farther than the distance around his very broad shoulders. As she struggles not to be distracted by his wicked smile and the allure of Paris, instead of finding a lost lady traveler, India just may lose her head, her luggage and her heart.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
This book is on sale at:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks! -
The Five
The Five by Hallie Rubenhold is $2.99! This is part of today’s Kindle Daily Deals, which has some other great options! Elyse was incredibly excited about this one and mentioned is a few times on the site podcast. I swore she wrote a review, but I think I’m confusing this one with another book about Jack the Ripper
Miscast in the media for nearly 130 years, the victims of Jack the Ripper finally get their full stories told in this eye-opening and chilling reminder that life for middle-class women in Victorian London could be full of social pitfalls and peril.
The “canonical five” women murdered by Jack the Ripper have always been dismissed as society’s waste, their stories passed down to us wrapped in a package of Victorian assumptions and prejudice. But social historian Hallie Rubenhold sets the record straight in The Five. In reality, only two of the victims were prostitutes, and Rubenhold has uncovered entirely new research about them all–in some cases, material no one has ever seen before.
The Five tells for the first time the true stories of these fascinating women. It delves into the Victorian experience of poverty, homelessness, and alcoholism, but also motherhood, childbirth, sexuality, child-rearing, work, and marriage, all against the fascinating, dark, and quickly changing backdrop of nineteenth-century London. From rural Sweden to the wedding of Queen Victoria, from the London of Charles Dickens to the factories of the Industrial Revolution and the high-class brothels of the West End, these women were not just victims but witnesses to the vagaries and vicissitudes of the Victorian age.
Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
This book is on sale at:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!
Don't want to miss an ebook sale? Sign up for our newsletter, and you'll get the week's available deals each Friday.
I liked a lot about the first half of the Draven book (worldbuilding! “you will suffer, and strive, and never succeed”! injuries that lasted beyond the scene in which they occurred!), but by the end, I was hoping the hero had moved on and married somebody else (due to inexplicable communication failures of a spoilery nature), which is obviously not the ideal sentiment toward a romance.
Beard Science by Penny Reid is free on Kindle right now.
I have to say, I loved Phoenix Unbound. Slow burn romances are my personal catnip, along with heroes who will wait for the heroine forever, no matter what. And I love Grace Draven’s writing. There’s a line in the book, admittedly repeated but to good effect, where the hero tells the heroine that he “sees her.” Gives me chills every time. Who doesn’t want to be “seen?”
I am eagerly looking forward to the second book in the series.
Thank you for the head’s up on today’s Kindle Daily Deals! I’ve had Casey Cep’s
_Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee_ on hold at the library for months and I’m so excited to finally get to read it. It’s about a non-fiction book Harper Lee researched in her native Alabama that she ultimately chose not to write that involves greed, murder, and revenge. I can’t wait to dive in!!
@Patsy thank you! Doing the Lord’s work!
Well here’s a final holiday gift for me! I read Phoenix Unbound earlier this year (and liked it a lot), but due to the fact that my GBPL reading history doesn’t store interlibrary loans and, well, life, when I went to update my Goodreads shelf I could not for the life of me remember the title or the writer. Everything else about the story, but not what I needed to find it again. All I could think was that the next book would come out, and I’d never know because my brain could not come up with the author – and I LOVE Grace Draven.
I end the year, as ever, grateful for the site.
The Five was incredibly eye opening. Reading it’s introduction alone was revelatory and heartbreaking. It called on all of us to take a step back from the sensationalism, the legend, the idea of the Ripper and remember the women he murdered. This book calls on us to right the injustice that has been done to these five women. To think of them not as props in some penny-novel grotesque, but as real women. They were daughters, lovers, wives, mothers trying to survive in a society with a deck stacked incredibly high against them.
Ms. Rubenhold has done a deep dive into each of their lives. The depth of her research is literally incredible. She found records from Sweden for Elisabeth Ericsson that I am amazed still exist.
Thank you Ms. Rubenhold, for letting Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Kate and Mary Jane emerge from the shadow cast by their murderer and giving back their individuality and dignity.