Wednesday, June 26, 2024

A Chocolate is Announced ~ Lone Star Book Blog Tours Book Trailer Spotlight & Giveaway!



A CHOCOLATE IS ANNOUNCED
Bean to Bar Mystery, #7
BY AMBER ROYER

Cozy Mystery / Culinary Mystery / Women Sleuths

Publisher: Golden Tip Press

Pages: 277

Publication Date: June 25, 2024


Scroll down for a giveaway!

SYNOPSIS

Felicity Koerber is finally getting her life together.  She has a fiancé, her bean to bar chocolate shop on Galveston’s historic Strand has become a gathering spot for the community, and she is ready to embrace whatever the future holds.  She’s ready for another launch party – despite the disaster at her grand opening, when she’d first gotten involved with solving a murder.  And this time she’s embracing her status as a sleuth.  She’s hosting a murder mystery weekend to celebrate the new Mystery Flavor line of craft chocolate bars.  She’s held a contest to choose the attendees, who will all stay at her aunt’s flip hotel and enjoy the island.  It’s all supposed to be perfectly random – only, Felicity starts to uncover connections between her guests.  When one of them winds up murdered, Felicity has to keep her aunt from becoming the main suspect.

The killer is very clearly calling Felicity out, leaving clues that mean little to anyone other than her.  But that doesn’t narrow down the suspect pool.  Her guests are there because they love the true crime podcast she’s been featured on.  And she can’t decide whether the killer wants her to catch them – or just wants to taunt her.

Meanwhile, Felicity is also playing host to her future in-laws and discovers that her fiancé’s sister, who is also a cop, is very competitive.  Can Felicity hold her own and make a good impression, while keeping her business together and her aunt out of jail?  And can Felicity solve it in time to protect the people she cares about from becoming additional victims?   

Satchmo the retired police dog turned therapy dog returns to help her sniff out a few clues, and one of the guests brings along a ferret named Cheeseburger, who keeps showing up in the most unexpected places.

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BOOK TRAILER


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amber Royer writes the Chocoverse comic telenovela-style foodie-inspired space opera series, and the Bean to Bar Mysteries. She also teaches creative writing and is an author coach. 

Amber and her husband live in the DFW Area, where you can often find them hiking or taking landscape / architecture / wildlife photographs. 

If you are very nice to Amber, she might make you cupcakes -- chocolate cupcakes, of course! Connect with Amber about creative writing techniques and all things chocolate:

WEBSITEBLOGFACEBOOK

X (TWITTER)INSTAGRAMAMAZON

BOOKBUB  ◆ GOODREADSYOUTUBE


GIVEAWAY!
One winner receives an autographed copy of
A Chocolate is Announced!
(US only; ends midnight, CDT, 07/05/24)

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FOR DIRECT LINKS TO EACH POST ON THIS TOUR, UPDATED DAILY.





Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Sugar on the Bones ~ Lone Star Book Blog Tours Spotlight & Giveaway!

 

While I haven't had a chance to read this book (yet), I just finished devouring Joe Lansdale's fabulously creepy forthcoming short story collection, In the Mad Mountains, and I am hooked on his writing. My curiosity is also piqued about the Dana & Jana stories he co-authored with his daughter, Kasey Lansdale! But for now...
SUGAR ON THE BONES
Hap and Leonard, #13
By Joe R. Lansdale


Private Investigator Mystery / Noir Crime / Hard-Boiled Mystery 
Lawyers and Criminals / Humor
Publisher: Mulholland Books
Pages: 317
Publication Date: July 16, 2024

DON'T MISS THE GIVEAWAY AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST!👀

SYNOPSIS

In this holy mess of a case for the "perpetual bad boy" (New York Times) sleuths in the beloved Hap and Leonard series, PI Duo Hap and Leonard investigate the untimely death of a woman whose family stood much to gain from her passing.

Minnie Polson is dead. Burned to a crisp in a fire so big and bad it had to be deliberate. The only thing worse is that Hap and Leonard could have prevented it. Maybe. Minnie had a feeling she was being targeted, shaken down by some shadowy force. However, when she’d solicited Hap & Leonard, all it took was one off color joke to turn her sour and she’d called them off the investigation. Wracked with a guilty conscience, the two PIs—along with Hap’s fleet-footed wife, Brett—tuck in to the case. As they look closer, they dredge up troublesome facts: for one, Minnie’s daughter, Alice, has recently vanished. She’d been hard up after her pet grooming business went under and was in line to collect a whopping insurance sum should anything happen to her mother. The same was due to Minnie’s estranged husband, Al, whose kryptonite (beautiful, money-grubbing women) had left him with only a run-down mobile home. But did Minnie’s foolish, cash-strapped family really have it in them to commit a crime this grisly? Or is there a larger, far more sinister scheme at work?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of nearly four dozen novels, including Rusty Puppy, the Edgar-award winning The Bottoms, Sunset and Sawdust, and Leather Maiden. He has received nine Bram Stoker Awards, the American Mystery Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature. He lives with his family in Nacogdoches, Texas.






GIVEAWAY!
ENTER TO WIN!
TWO WINNERS
Signed copy of SUGAR ON THE BONES + promotional mug
(US only; ends 06/28/24.)

Sunday, June 16, 2024

This Time Around ~ Lone Star Book Blog Tours Review & Giveaway!

 
THIS TIME AROUND
by
Kimberly Packard

Time Travel Romance / Contemporary Women’s Fiction / Romantic Comedy
Publisher: Abalos Publishing
Date of Publication: June 11, 2024
Number of Pages: 286 pages 


Scroll down for Giveaway!

 

SYNOPSIS

Most of us would jump at a chance for a do-over of our teenage years...but what if our worst mistakes lead to our happily-ever-after?

Josie Gardner’s life revolves around her amazing children and her career. But, when her husband threatens to take her kids in their divorce, and the business she’s put most of her passion, time, and money into building is at risk of failing, a panic attack shatters her grip on reality…and the present.

Josie wakes up in her teenage bedroom, thirty years in the past. She’s forced to relive her emotionally devastating senior year of high school — the year she cut her father out of her life, caused one of her best friends to sever ties, and turned away the boy she loved.

Determined to get back to her children in her own time, Josie tries to fix the mistakes she made, in the hope that righting wrongs will send her back to the present. But when tempted by her high school crush, Josie faces the real possibility of losing her future for good.

Would you take a second chance for love…even if it meant losing everything?

CLICK TO PURCHASE

HALL WAYS REVIEW
Oh, how I needed to read a book like this right now! THIS TIME AROUND was so entertaining and such a page-turner that I almost missed a doctor's appointment and then nearly died because I sat reading in my turned-off car, windows up, in my garage (in June, in Texas) for an hour to finish the book.

Okay, that last part's a little dramatic because it was an overcast day and we'd had rain and it was only about 80 degrees in the garage, BUT, I had been catapulted back into the '90s via Kimberly Packard's tale -- and there was drama in spades there. Sometimes it was hilarious, sometimes it was heartbreaking, and as the story began to wind to a close, I was distressed by main character Josie's precarious position and decision before her. Seriously distressed! Between some of the chapters, I might have texted the kids to tell them I loved them.
"Are the words of my story fading? Is the great author of the universe furiously backspacing to rewrite my story?"
This is not my *official* book review; or maybe it is? In either case, this is me needing to say how much I adored this book and that despite my being vocal about how I REALLY DON'T LIKE ROMANCES, I now have a book boyfriend named Daniel. We'll say it's the forty-seven-year-old Daniel, though, so it's not creepy.

Well done, Kimberly Packard. Well done.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kimberly Packard is an award-winning author of women’s fiction.

When she isn’t writing, she can be found planning her next trip, asking her dog what’s in his mouth, or curled up with a book. She resides in Texas with her husband Colby, a clever cat named Oliver, and a precocious black lab named Tully.

Her debut novel, Phoenix, was awarded as Best General Fiction of 2013 by the Texas Association of Authors. She is also the author of a Christmas novella, The Crazy Yates, and the sequels to Phoenix, Pardon Falls, and Prospera Pass, and her stand-alone titles Vortex, Dire’s Club, and This Time Around. She was honored as one of the Top 10 Haute Young Authors by Southern Methodist University in 2019. Vortex was the 2019 winner of the Pencraft award in Women’s Fiction, and Dire’s Club, was awarded the 2021 General Fiction of the Year by the North Texas Book Festival.



ENTER TO WIN!
Two Winners: signed copies of This Time Around
One Winner: eBook copy
(ends midnight, CDT, 6/21/2024)