Monday, October 30, 2017

TRUTHERS by Geoffrey Girard Official Nerd Blast




Synopsis 

Katie Wallace has never given much thought to 9/11. She was only a year old when terrorists struck American soil. But now her dad has landed in a mental institution after claiming to know what really happened. He insists the attacks were part of a government conspiracy. And he claims that Katie is living proof: the lone survivor of a massive cover-up.

Hoping to free her dad, Katie sets out to investigate his bizarre claims. Soon she's drawn into the strange and secretive world of 9/11 conspiracy theorists known as the "Truthers".

Wading through a dangerous web of fact and fiction, questions and distortion, Katie no longer knows what to believe. But she does know that she's being followed -- and that someone is determined to stop her search for the truth.

A novel for teens, exploring 9/11 & our conspiracy culture...


Praise for TRUTHERS

"In this intense thriller... Girard takes readers down a disturbing, provocative path; both sides start to make sense as information is revealed and theories are debated. It's a fast-paced nail-biter with a resourceful heroine, packed with surprises that force readers to question every revelation and take nothing at face value." ―Publishers Weekly [Starred Review]

"A beautifully written, captivating must-have that will hook readers from beginning to end. Girard has created a well-developed, quirky, tenacious main character for whom teens can't help but root." ―School Library Journal

"[Truthers] moves at a fast clip, and readers will get caught up in both the conspiracy construct (actual Truther theories are explored) and the romance that is as tangled as the web of confusion surrounding September 11." ―Booklist

"A book teens will love. History, mystery, romance, action, and intrigue--all in one!" ―YA Books Central

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Geoffrey Girard writes thrillers, historicals, and dark speculative fiction. His first book, Tales of the Jersey Devil, thirteen original tales based on American folklore, was published by Middle Atlantic Pressin 2005, followed by Tales of the Atlantic Pirates (2006) and Tales of the Eastern Indians (2007). Simon and Schuster published two Girard novels simultaneously in 2013: CAIN'S BLOOD, a techno thriller, and PROJECT CAIN, a companion novel for teen/YA readers which was nominated for a Bram Stoker award for "Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel."

In 2017, Carolrhoda Books published TRUTHERS, a YA novel about the 9/11 conspiracy, and Adaptive Books published MARY ROSE, a psychological thriller/ghost novel.

Girard's short fiction has appeared in several best-selling anthologies and magazines, including Writers of the Future (a 2003 winner), Prime Codex, Aoife's Kiss, The Willows, Murky Depths, Apex Horror & Science Fiction Digest, and the Stoker-nominated Dark Faith anthology. The debut collection of his short fiction, first communions, was published by Apex Books in May, 2016.

Born in Germany and shaped in New Jersey, Geoffrey currently lives in Ohio and is the English Department Chair at a famed private boys' high school. Prior to teaching, he worked as an advertising copywriter, web developer and marketing manager. He has a BA in English literature from Washington College and an MA in creative writing from Miami University, where he is now working on an MFA. He has presented and led workshops on creative writing at schools, bookstores and various writers' conventions/events.

Photo Content from Geoffrey Girard



--Giveaway is open to International. | Must be 13+ to Enter

5 Winners will receive a Copy of THUTHERS by Geoffrey Girard.
- 1Winner will receive a $25.00 Amazon Gift Card.


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Friday, October 27, 2017

The Sacred Knights (The Angel Knights #3) by @MaryTing


You can purchase The Sacred Knights HERE on Amazon.


Synopsis

The Chosen Knights think they’ve found all the clues, but the last one leads them to yet another destination. They astral travel back to the massive destruction of the Knights Templar and find a missing element. As they decipher the final puzzle piece, Cyrus continues to grow his army. 

A powerful volcano in Hawaii erupts, and inhabitants are forced to stay and fight the demons or flee. Many people once believed to be dead rise to help defeat Cyrus, and Venators arrive from Crossroads to help. Time is running out, and the Chosen Knights must decide to finish what they started or leave the battle to find the Snow Queen, who some believe is the only one who can defeat Cyrus.

My Review

A powerful read packed with mystery,  The Sacred Knights continues the series with suspense and action.

Cyrus needs to be defeated...but for that to happen, all the clues need to be solved to discover the weapon left behind by the Knights Templar.  Traveling back in time, the Knights will learn more than they bargained for...making the task more difficult than they could ever imagine.  Time is ticking, with the Knights home of Hawaii threatened by an erupting volcano, more lives are in danger than just their own.

Creative imagination with plot twists that will blow your mind, this story will unravel your emotions. Characters with personality and a true soul, family thicker than blood, you will understand how their bond is unbreakable. With new characters brought in, old characters you pray will make an appearance, THIS is an action packed story that HAS IT ALL.

I have found that when I read Mary's books, it's best to do on my kindle..I can swipe a lot faster with my finger than turn a page.


Thursday, October 26, 2017

New Hobby: Book Folding Art

Book Folding Art

I have seen these books floating around, and always thought they were pretty cool.  So I thought, I wonder if I can do that?  Guess what, I can....It's fun and actually pretty easy and very calming.  So I started a new hobby!  Here are a few of my first creations...they aren't perfect, but I thought they still turned out pretty well.  

If you would like to give it a try, I would recommend this website that i found that offers free patterns.  They have instructions on how to do it too.  I however, decided to do the pattern a little different by doing 90 degree folds, or as close to 90 degree folds as I can.  I think it worked.

Here is an AWESOME website that I recommend.


And the patterns are Free


I downloaded the alphabet patterns to create the READ book.


Harry Potter, just had to do this one.


This is my first try.  Be sure to read the instructions offered.  They are pretty easy to follow.
The first 2 books pictured above, I started using the 90 degree fold option. I  learned that from watching a video.

Try your luck.  Its really fun...and I recommend it to all booknerds.  There are all kinds of patterns to pick, and you can create cool art to give away for gifts!

Let me know if you give it a try. you can tag me on Instagram by @micheleluker or @StalkerMamma on twitter.

Monday, October 23, 2017

BETTER OFF UNDEAD by James Preller Official Nerd Blast and Giveaway



Synopsis 

Liz Szabla at Feiwel and Friends has acquired James Preller's Dead (But Cautiously Optimistic), pitched as The Walking Dead meets The Mysterious Benedict Society. In the “not-too-distant future,” a seventh-grade undead boy has to adjust to middle-school life as a zombie, and with three unlikely friends, he navigates a mystery involving global warming, disappearing bees, and billionaire developers... and more zombies.

It's slated for fall 2016; Rosemary Stimola at Stimola Literary Studio brokered the deal for North American rights.


Praise for BETTER OFF UNDEAD

"Adrian Lazarus is a middle school zombie, the result of an accident that left him “as undead as a toenail and not really thrilled about it.” ...This cautionary tale is more than just a brain-eating gross-out. Set in the not-too-distant future when humanity is suffering from numerous self-inflicted woes, this story’s villains are the Bork Brothers, owners of K & K Industries, “the richest, most powerful corporation on the planet” and also the source of much of the planet’s environmental troubles. ...This uproarious middle grade call to action has considerable kid appeal and a timely message." ―School Library Journal

Praise for THE COURAGE TEST

"Preller stirs doses of American history into a first-rate road trip that does traditional double-duty as plot device and coming-of-age metaphor. . . . Despite the many plot threads, the story never seems overstuffed or weighed down by agendas. . . . Additionally, not only does the author slip cogent historical facts and insights into his simply told narrative without disturbing its flow, he offers more detail, plus sources of information, in an afterword." ―Booklist, starred review

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


James Preller (born 1961) is the children's book author of the Jigsaw Jones Mysteries, which are published by Scholastic Corporation. He grew up in Wantagh, New York and went to college in Oneonta, New York. After graduating from college in 1983, James Preller was employed as a waiter for one year before being hired as a copywriter by Scholastic Corporation, where he was introduced (through their books) to many noatable children's authors. This inspired James Preller to try writing his own books. James Preller published his first book, entitled MAXX TRAX: Avalanche Rescue, in 1986. Since that time, James Preller has written a variety of books, and has written under a number of pen names, including Mitzy Kafka, James Patrick, and Izzy Bonkers. James Preller lives in Delmar, New York with his wife Lisa and their three children.

Photo Content from James Preller



--Giveaway is open to International. | Must be 13+ to Enter

3 Winners will receive a Copy of BETTER OFF UNDEAD by James Preller.


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Thursday, October 19, 2017

LAST CHANCE by Gregg Hurwitz Official Blog Tour, Excerpt and Giveaway





Synopsis 

The Rain brothers fight for the survival of humanity in Last Chance, the thrilling sequel to New York Times bestselling author Gregg Hurwitz's YA debut, The Rains.

The New York Times bestselling author of Orphan X, Gregg Hurwitz, returns to Creek's Cause to follow the Rains brothers as they fight an alien threat that has transformed everyone over the age of 18 into ferocious, zombie-like beings, in this thrilling sequel to The Rains.

Battling an enemy not of this earth, Chance and Patrick become humanity’s only hope for salvation.


Praise for RAINS

“The Rains is one of those all-too-creepy-and-believable stories that leaves you looking in your backyard for the next strange weed to poke through the ground. Chilling!”—Ridley Pearson,New York Times bestselling author


EXCERPT from LAST CHANCE by Gregg Hurwitz
Tor Teen, 2017


I barely had time to pull my gaze north when a meteor streaked down and embedded itself in the parking lot across from the other one. The earth shook. The few remaining cars were knocked onto their sides. The meteor plowed up a wake of asphalt.

It rested there, smoldering, the air around it gone wavy with heat.

Then it cracked open with a popping noise.

The jagged exterior hid the smooth orb of a cockpit inside. As the meteor hinged wide, I saw her inside, a sleek black form, slender legs drawn up to her chest.

The Queen uncoiled from the cockpit.

My guts turned to ice.

We’d risked everything to kill the last Queen, and here was another one, plopped down from the heavens to take her place. How many more were there? What had we even been thinking? The fight suddenly felt pointless. Not that I’d be around much longer to worry about it.

The Queen’s lustrous black suit held a vaguely feminine shape. She walked so gracefully that she practically glided across the ground. The closer she got, the taller she seemed.

At last she loomed over me.

“You are Chance Rain.” Her voice was digitized, feminine and yet seemingly without life. Amplitude bars flickered across her tinted face mask with each syllable. The helmet itself seemed to be translating. “You are one of the two.” She wasn’t asking; she was telling me.

I swallowed hard, managed to move my head up and down.

“Where is Patrick Rain?”

I felt my mouth start to wobble, so I bit down on my cheek. Warmth spilled through my mouth. “He’s dead.”

Copyright 2017 by Gregg Hurwitz




ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Gregg Hurwitz is the New York Times bestselling author of 18 novels, including HELLBENT (2018). His novels have been shortlisted for numerous literary awards, graced top ten lists, and have been published in 30 languages.

He is also a New York Times Bestselling comic book writer, having penned stories for Marvel (Wolverine, Punisher) and DC (Batman, Penguin). Additionally, he’s written screenplays for or sold spec scripts to many of the major studios (including the upcoming THE BOOK OF HENRY), and written, developed, and produced television for various networks. Gregg resides in Los Angeles.

Photo Content from Gregg Hurwitz



--Giveaway is open to International. | Must be 13+ to Enter

- 3 Winners will receive a Set Copy of LAST CHANCE Series (2 Books in Total) THE RAINS and LAST CHANCE by Gregg Hurwitz.

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WEEK ONE:
October 16th Monday Here's to Happy Endings REVIEW
October 17th Tuesday JeanBookNerd REVIEW
October 18th Wednesday Sabrina's Paranormal Palace REVIEW
October 19th Thursday Life Within the Pages REVIEW
October 19th Thursday Insane About Books EXCERPT
October 20th Friday Mythical Books REVIEW
October 20th Friday Casia's Corner REVIEW
 
WEEK TWO:
October 23rd Monday Reading for the Stars and Moon REVIEW
October 24th Tuesday A Dream Within a Dream REVIEW
October 25th Wednesday Wishful Endings EXCERPT
October 26th Thursday Book Lovers Life  REVIEW
October 27th Friday My Passion for Books  REVIEW
October 27th Friday The Avid Reader REVIEW

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

DEADLANDS: BONEYARD by Seanan McGuire Official Nerd Blast, Excerpt & Giveaway




Synopsis 

The newest book based on the hit Weird West RPG franchise Deadlands!

Step right up to see the oddities and marvels of The Blackstone Family Circus and Travelling Wonder Show! Gasp at pit wasps the size of a man’s forearm. Beware the pumpkin-headed corn stalker, lest it plant its roots in you!

Annie Pearl is the keeper of oddities, the mistress of monsters. Her unique collection of creatures is one of the circus’s star attractions, drawing wide-eyed crowds at every small frontier town they visit. But Annie is also a woman running from her past . . . and the mother of a mute young daughter, Adeline, whom she will do anything to protect.

Hoping to fill its coffers before winter sets in, the circus steers its wagons to The Clearing, a remote community deep in the Oregon wilderness, surrounded by an ominous dark wood. Word is that a traveling show can turn a tidy profit at The Clearing, but there are whispers, too, of unexplained disappearances that afflict one out of every four shows that pass through the town.

The Clearing has it secrets, and so does Annie. And it may take everything she has to save her daughter―and the circus―from both.


Praise for DEADLANDS Series

A gripping tale of the Weird West, set on the haunted frontier of DEADLANDS, the award-winning game from Pinnacle Entertainment Group.


EXCERPT from Deadlands: Boneyard

Behind his wagon came the hulking shapes of the equipment wagons, largest in the train, which hauled the upright posts of the various tents, the collapsed game booths, the vast, billowing canopy of the big top. When Nathanial thought of the tent, he always saw it in silken stripes, high enough to beat its banners against the moon. The truth was tamer, fifteen feet at its highest point, patched canvas painted in irregular zigzags, but oh, it was still beautiful when the lights were strung around the edges, when the aerialists put on their spangles and their sequins and learned how to fly. How could something like that be anything but beautiful? And that, in a word, was the power of the circus, and the reason it had been able to pass unscathed through territory he’d been told, time and again, was too dangerous for any man to navigate. No matter how ugly the world outside the tent got, the world inside would always be beautiful, and people would always want beauty. No matter how bad things got, people would always want beauty.

Behind the equipment wagons came a scattering of smaller wagons, most privately owned, some barely worthy of the name. The Visali twins slept in an open cart, on a bed of hay and old carpet, their arms tangled around each other until they seemed like a single body split in two, the long white shapes of their borzoi hounds surrounding them in a hairy curtain. They refused to sleep in a closed wagon unless it was snowing, claiming the heat from their dogs made any enclosure unbearable. Half the show called them “the Russian werewolves,” and untrue as the name was, it played well on the broadsheets they put up to advertise their performances.

Half the wagons were dark, their teams roped to the backs of the wagons ahead of them, trusting the show as a whole to set the path. The wagons where lanterns burned in the windows were still silent, raising the question of whether the light signaled wakefulness or merely superstition. The power of superstition in the circus could not be overlooked by any measure. It was a powerful thing, and some said it was what kept the axles turning without breaking, even when they rode over hard prairie. Say your prayers proper, make your offerings when you can, and the world will pass you by.

Copyright © 2017 by Seanan McGuire


ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Seanan McGuire was born in Martinez, California, and raised in a wide variety of locations, most of which boasted some sort of dangerous native wildlife. Despite her almost magnetic attraction to anything venomous, she somehow managed to survive long enough to acquire a typewriter, a reasonable grasp of the English language, and the desire to combine the two. The fact that she wasn't killed for using her typewriter at three o'clock in the morning is probably more impressive than her lack of death by spider-bite.

Often described as a vortex of the surreal, many of Seanan's anecdotes end with things like "and then we got the anti-venom" or "but it's okay, because it turned out the water wasn't that deep." She has yet to be defeated in a game of "Who here was bitten by the strangest thing?," and can be amused for hours by almost anything. "Almost anything" includes swamps, long walks, long walks in swamps, things that live in swamps, horror movies, strange noises, musical theater, reality TV, comic books, finding pennies on the street, and venomous reptiles. Seanan may be the only person on the planet who admits to using Kenneth Muir's Horror Films of the 1980s as a checklist.

Seanan is the author of the October Daye urban fantasies, the InCryptid urban fantasies, and several other works both stand-alone and in trilogies or duologies. In case that wasn't enough, she also writes under the pseudonym "Mira Grant." For details on her work as Mira, check out MiraGrant.com.

In her spare time, Seanan records CDs of her original filk music (see the Albums page for details). She is also a cartoonist, and draws an irregularly posted autobiographical web comic, "With Friends Like These...", as well as generating a truly ridiculous number of art cards. Surprisingly enough, she finds time to take multi-hour walks, blog regularly, watch a sickening amount of television, maintain her website, and go to pretty much any movie with the words "blood," "night," "terror," or "attack" in the title. Most people believe she doesn't sleep.

Seanan lives in an idiosyncratically designed labyrinth in the Pacific Northwest, which she shares with her cats, Alice and Thomas, a vast collection of creepy dolls and horror movies, and sufficient books to qualify her as a fire hazard. She has strongly-held and oft-expressed beliefs about the origins of the Black Death, the X-Men, and the need for chainsaws in daily life.

Years of writing blurbs for convention program books have fixed Seanan in the habit of writing all her bios in the third person, so as to sound marginally less dorky. Stress is on the "marginally." It probably doesn't help that she has so many hobbies.

Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her novel Feed (as Mira Grant) was named as one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2010. In 2013 she became the first person ever to appear five times on the same Hugo Ballot.

Photo Credit: Beckett Gladney



--Giveaway is open to International. | Must be 13+ to Enter

10 Winners will receive a Set Copy of Deadland Series (3 Books in Total) GHOSTWALKERS by Jonathan Maberry, THUNDER MOON RISING by Jeffrey J. Mariotte  and BONEYARD) by Seanan McGuire.


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