-
Slave to Sensation
Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh is $2.99! This is the very first book in the Psy-Changeling series and for many readers, it’s what kicked off their love for Nalini Singh. However, other readers mention that the oomph of the book seemed to wane once the hero and heroine got together. But I personally loved it and the series just gets better and better. Any Psy-Changeling fans out there?
THE FIRST PSY/CHANGELING NOVEL from the New York Times bestselling author of Shards of Hope, Shield of Winter, and Heart of Obsidian…The book that Christine Feehan called “a must-read for all of my fans.”
In a world that denies emotions, where the ruling Psy punish any sign of desire, Sascha Duncan must conceal the feelings that brand her as flawed. To reveal them would be to sentence herself to the horror of “rehabilitation”–the complete psychic erasure of everything she ever was…
Both human and animal, Lucas Hunter is a Changeling hungry for the very sensations the Psy disdain. After centuries of uneasy coexistence, these two races are now on the verge of war over the brutal murders of several Changeling women. Lucas is determined to find the Psy killer who butchered his packmate, and Sascha is his ticket into their closely guarded society. But he soon discovers that this ice-cold Psy is very capable of passion–and that the animal in him is fascinated by her. Caught between their conflicting worlds, Lucas and Sascha must remain bound to their identities–or sacrifice everything for a taste of darkest temptation…
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! -
Ink and Bone
Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine is $2.99! This is a price-matched Kindle Daily Deal. It’s the first book in the Great Library series, which Carrie has enjoyed. It’s about a great, magical library, which I know will perk up some readers’ ears. But while the concept seems awesome, some readers had trouble initially getting into it.
In an exhilarating new series, New York Times bestselling author Rachel Caine rewrites history, creating a dangerous world where the Great Library of Alexandria has survived the test of time.…
Ruthless and supremely powerful, the Great Library is now a presence in every major city, governing the flow of knowledge to the masses. Alchemy allows the Library to deliver the content of the greatest works of history instantly—but the personal ownership of books is expressly forbidden.
Jess Brightwell believes in the value of the Library, but the majority of his knowledge comes from illegal books obtained by his family, who are involved in the thriving black market. Jess has been sent to be his family’s spy, but his loyalties are tested in the final months of his training to enter the Library’s service.
When his friend inadvertently commits heresy by creating a device that could change the world, Jess discovers that those who control the Great Library believe that knowledge is more valuable than any human life—and soon both heretics and books will burn…
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 Girl with Ghost Eyes
RECOMMENDED: The Girl with Ghost Eyes by M.H. Boroson is $1.99 at Amazon! This is a scifi/fantasy novel in a historical setting. Carrie gave this an A- in a Lightning Review:
It’s a great paranormal/fantasy in a historical urban setting that focuses on a group of people too often ignored in history and in non-fiction. And Li-lin is a wonderful heroine: smart, determined, and struggling against all kinds of barriers including her own sense of self. I’m very much hoping that Li-lin and her floating eyeball friend will return in a sequel.
It’s the end of the nineteenth century in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and ghost hunters from the Maoshan traditions of Daoism keep malevolent spiritual forces at bay. Li-lin, the daughter of a renowned Daoshi exorcist, is a young widow burdened with yin eyes—the unique ability to see the spirit world. Her spiritual visions and the death of her husband bring shame to Li-lin and her father—and shame is not something this immigrant family can afford.
When a sorcerer cripples her father, terrible plans are set in motion, and only Li-lin can stop them. To aid her are her martial arts and a peachwood sword, her burning paper talismans, and a wisecracking spirit in the form of a human eyeball tucked away in her pocket. Navigating the dangerous alleys and backrooms of a male-dominated Chinatown, Li-lin must confront evil spirits, gangsters, and soulstealers before the sorcerer’s ritual summons an ancient evil that could burn Chinatown to the ground.
With a rich and inventive historical setting, nonstop martial arts action, authentic Chinese magic, and bizarre monsters from Asian folklore, The Girl with Ghost Eyes is also the poignant story of a young immigrant searching to find her place beside the long shadow of a demanding father and the stigma of widowhood. In a Chinatown caught between tradition and modernity, one woman may be the key to holding everything together.
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 Passenger
The Passenger by Lisa Lutz is $2.99! Elyse picked this for March’s Hide Your Wallet, saying, “A psychological thriller about a woman who goes on the run after her husband dies. Yes please.” She also said the beginning is really good, though some readers on Goodreads wanted more insight into the main character.
From the author of the New York Times bestselling Spellman Files series, Lisa Lutz’s latest blistering thriller is about a woman who creates and sheds new identities as she crisscrosses the country to escape her past: you’ll want to buckle up for the ride!
In case you were wondering, I didn’t do it. I didn’t have anything to do with Frank’s death. I don’t have an alibi, so you’ll have to take my word for it…
Forty-eight hours after leaving her husband’s body at the base of the stairs, Tanya Dubois cashes in her credit cards, dyes her hair brown, demands a new name from a shadowy voice over the phone, and flees town. It’s not the first time.
She meets Blue, a female bartender who recognizes the hunted look in a fugitive’s eyes and offers her a place to stay. With dwindling choices, Tanya-now-Amelia accepts. An uneasy―and dangerous―alliance is born.
It’s almost impossible to live off the grid today, but Amelia-now-Debra and Blue have the courage, the ingenuity, and the desperation, to try. Hopscotching from city to city, Debra especially is chased by a very dark secret…can she outrun her past?
With heart-stopping escapes and devious deceptions, The Passenger is an amazing psychological thriller about defining yourself while you pursue your path to survival. One thing is certain: the ride will leave you breathless.
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.
THE MODEL BAKERY COOKBOOK is $2.99 at multiple sellers. It’s worth that price for the croissants alone, which I made successfully on the first try and have since known no baking fear.
The sequel to Girl with Ghost Eyes is out already: The Girl with No Face. It is also excellent, and I think the author might intend to write more books in the series.
I love the Great Library series. I’m a couple of books behind, but I love that one of the characters in the group is a hijabi Muslim girl who is basically the smartest of the bunch.
I love the premise of “The Girl with Ghost Eyes” but I’m super wary about a book featuring Chinese mythology and an ethnic Chinese woman written by a white guy. Last time I gave a book like this the benefit of the doubt I ended up DNFing it. Anyone read this and be pleasantly surprised?
I love the premise of “The Girl with Ghost Eyes” but I’m super wary about a book featuring Chinese mythology and an ethnic Chinese woman written by a white guy. Last time I gave a book like this the benefit of the doubt I ended up DNFing it. Anyone read this and been pleasantly surprised?
Huge Psy-Changeling fan here! I loved Slave to Sensation and highly recommend the audiobook.
@Leftcoaster I was also wary but was very pleasantly surprised. As an Asian/Pacific Islander woman (who’s part Chinese) I really enjoyed reading the book and catching things that were familiar and relatable in a way that I normally don’t get from historical novels. Strongly recommend The Girl With Ghost Eyes, it was a quick fun read. I’m pumped that this sale reminded me that to pick up the sequel.
@Egged: that’s good to know, because it’s the little things that really put me off novels that touch on anything related to Asia or the AAPI experience. Honestly, the fact that the hero’s name (Li-lin) does not sound at all like what a Chinese name would be in 19th c. San Francisco is still putting me off big time, but I’m glad you thought it was fine 🙂 (“Li-lin” sounds like the author just wanted to smoosh 2 Mandarin sounds together that Western readers could easily pronounce. Happy to be proven wrong if he did indeed put real thought into her name, but even if that’s the case, why is it in Mandarin as opposed to Cantonese, Toisanese, Hokkien, or any of the other languages that southern Chinese immigrants in the US actually spoke?)
We’ve had cover snark before here’s the opposite. I LOVE the new cover to Singh’s Slave to Sensation (a great book by the way). He’s fully dressed and doesn’t need to strip to be really sexy. Wow! Something about his strong hands and intense stare is very appealing.
@Emma, the book notes discuss language: “Most of the people in Chinatown [at the time of the story] came from the Sze Yup region of Canton, now known as Guangdong. Many others, whom the history books tend to neglect, came from other parts of China. Millions of people were displaced from their homes during the politically volatile century; millions fled the violence of the Taiping Uprising and the Dungan Revolt. Millions more left their home regions when year after year of bad crops created famine and economic failure. Still others fought in the Opium Wars and the first Sino-Japanese War and went in search of new opportunities at wars’ end. Li-lin and her father are refugees from rural China, and their native language is closer to what is now called Mandarin.
The story is told through Li-lin’s point of view, so the words she hears are represented as she would think of them but translated into English, and when a term would lose too much of its meaning in translation (linguists refer to this as “semantic invariance”), she uses a Romanized form of Mandarin. Exceptions are when a term is most well-known in another form; she calls tofu “tofu” and not “doufu” because readers probably already know the word tofu, she refers to scary forms of magic as Gong Tau, which is Cantonese, because that Cantonese term is accepted even among Mandarin speakers.
Most of these words are transliterated in the modern mode called Pinyin, but Pinyin contains diacritical marks—imagine accents, umlauts, and other markings—to indicate the tone of a vowel sound. For people who are not trained in Pinyin, the marks are misleading, so the diacriticals have been stripped off. If you wish to learn more about the terms, please visit thegirlwithghosteyes.blogspot.com, where I’ll present both the Pinyin and the Chinese characters, as well as the pronunciations.
Other terms have entered the English language to such a degree that I chose to use the familiar-to-readers spellings rather than a Pinyin transliteration. These terms include tong, Buddhism, mah jongg, and kung fu, among others.”
@Ren
I have checked multiple sellers and I am NOT seeing that cookbook for $2.99. Can you link or give more direction?
Oh, just realized this was posted yesterday; the deal may be gone. Booooo!
@CM: thanks for that, must have taken quite a while to copy! Still feeling conflicted, in that “familiar to readers” implies that his readers are non-Chinese. I actually wish he just went with pinyin for things that don’t directly translate into English and trusted readers to be able to put a little effort in learning Li-lin’s language. (Although, hoo boy, the differences in Mandarin pre-1949 and post-1949 is a dissertation all on its own.) To be 100% honest, I’m sure that a big part of my stubbornness is that as leftcoaster said above, I’m just not that crazy about a white guy writing about Asian people, especially when his notes don’t convince me that he’s centering AAPI readers.
An author I’ve recently read that I think DOES do a great job making white readers put the same amount of effort in as non-white readers with unfamiliar terms is The Weight of Our Sky, by Hanna Alkaf. She talked about not othering the languages of Malaysia in an interview. I’ll try to find the link and put it in the next comment.
Urgh, couldn’t find the exact blog I read with those remarks. But I remember she believed that part of not otherizing her own language was to not italicize Malay terms, which is pretty revolutionary, I think. But here’s a similar idea she said in another interview, when asked about whether she worried that not translating Malay, Cantonese, and Hokkien words would cause too much confusion:
“Not particularly. Like many of us outside of the Western world who read in English growing up, I very quickly grew comfortable and familiar with entire worlds and vocabularies that weren’t mine. I could read tales of tea and crumpets, bluebells and midnight feasts, brownies and pixies, fairy circles and trolls under bridges, and bat not one eye. Is it too much to ask that non-Malaysian readers do the same? If you can read books that tell you to accept Elvish as a language, then surely a sprinkling of Malay is doable?”
Here’s the whole interview, definitely worth a read: https://electricliterature.com/hanna-alkaf-the-weight-of-our-sky-malaysian-history/
@Emma thanks for the rec, going to go hunt down the book. I’m trying really hard to search out #ownvoices books and buy them and have them outnumber by far the books that aren’t. Your rec sounds especially good, my spouse is ethnic Chinese from Singapore and Malay, Cantonese and Hokkien words make up part of our family vocabulary.
@leftcoaster: glad I was useful! I think your wife will be very moved by The Weight of Our Sky. Singapore had been kicked out of Malaysia by then, but my parents’ and grandparents’ generations were all affected one way or another by the riots throughout the peninsula in the ’50s and ’60s. And of course, the legacy of it all lives on in Malaysia and Singapore.
Gah, sorry, for some reason I read it as your wife buying the book XD but you yourself will also be very moved by it! The mother of a kid I tutor was reading it with him, and she, a white American woman, cried at the ending.