July 2020 – Page 3 – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Cover Reveal:Eucalyptus Street: Green Curse, by Sherrill Joseph

I’m delighted to present a cover reveal for a new blog tour organiser, R&R Book Tours.

Eucalyptus Street: Green Curse

*Each book is a standalone installment

Expected Publication Date: Fall 2020

Genre: MG Mystery/ Middle Grade – 9 to 12 years old (For fans of Nancy Drew type mysteries)

In 1945, Isabela de Cordoba’s great-grandfather, the famous silent movie actor Lorenzo de Cordoba, mysteriously hid a legendary, multimillion-dollar emerald somewhere on the family’s sprawling Eucalyptus Street estate. Seventy years later, the gem remains concealed. Nicknamed the “Green Curse,” the emerald is blamed for the Southern California familia’s numerous, untimely deaths.

On her twenty-first birthday, Isabela receives a secret letter with a cryptic poem. These documents from the long-deceased Lorenzo invite her to hunt for the gemstone. But first, she must decipher the poem’s eight stanzas for clues.

To assist, Isabela hires her thirteen-year-old neighbors, the four Botanic Hill Detectives—twins Lanny and Lexi Wyatt, and their best friends, Moki Kalani and Rani Kumar. Eerie footsteps inside the mansion, unexplained occurrences in the adjacent cemetery, and the mysterious tenant in the backyard casita challenge them. But they ingeniously make progress on the poem’s meaning with startling discoveries. Sliding wall panels, a secret room, and hidden passages reveal much. The detectives aren’t the only ones looking for the emerald. The perilous race for the de Cordoba treasure is on!

Cover Reveal: Buried Treasure, by Gilli Allen

Jane thinks he sees her as shallow and ill-educated. Theo thinks she sees him as a snob, stuffy and out of touch.
Within the ancient precincts of the university the first encounter between the conference planner and the academic is accidental and unpromising. Just as well there’s no reason for them ever to meet again. But behind the armour they’ve each constructed from old scars, they’ve more in common than divides them. Both have an archaeological puzzle they are driven to solve. As their stories intertwine, their quest to uncover the past unearths more than expected.

Treasure is not always what it seems.

Blog tour calendar: Buried Treasure, by Gilli Allan

Tomorrow we (that’s the people on the tour) will be revealing the cover for Gilli Allan’s new book, Buried Treasure.

Blog Blitz: Billy Tapper Zillionaire by Gary Finnan

This colourful novel of adventure, family, and courage shows young Billy McTaggart coming of age as a tapper in a British railyard during the bitter years following World War II. Bullied for his small stature but endowed with a sharp mind, the fierce ambition of his sweetheart Meg, and the love of his Mam, Billy navigates a rapidly changing world where steam engines give way to rock and roll, Elvis, and the Beatles. Everything changes for Billy in one breathtaking moment when he uncovers an amazing secret hidden inside a rail car. Romance, loss, pain, and elation follow his path up and out of England’s rigid class system. Through it all, Billy maintains his generous spirit and sense of what is right. Billy Tapper Zillionaire captures the humanity of simple relationships for an accidental bystander to history growing up in the 1950s and 60s.

Buy Link https://amzn.to/384KhZj

Author Bio

Born in Scotland and raised in Zimbabwe and South Africa, Gary Finnan splits his time between Sonoma Wine country in California and his farm in Aiken South Carolina, along with his wife Eva and two daughters. Gary is an award-winning inspirational author.

Review: Phoenix Extravagant, by Yoon Ha Lee

Dragons. Art. Revolution.

Gyen Jebi isn’t a fighter or a subversive. They just want to paint.

One day they’re jobless and desperate; the next, Jebi finds themself recruited by the Ministry of Armor to paint the mystical sigils that animate the occupying government’s automaton soldiers.

But when Jebi discovers the depths of the Razanei government’s horrifying crimes—and the awful source of the magical pigments they use—they find they can no longer stay out of politics.

What they can do is steal Arazi, the ministry’s mighty dragon automaton, and find a way to fight…

Hardcover, Signed and lettered, 346 pages

Published May 2020 by Solaris Books in association with Goldsboro Books

This was my May Goldsboro Books SFF Fellowship book. It is gorgeous

The Rosie Synopsis

Jebi is an artist. Their sister Bongsunga does whatever she can to keep them both alive. They both have secrets. Jebi has taken the exams for the Ministry of Art but gets co-opted by the Ministry of Armor, Bongsunga is a commander in the Hwagugin resistance to the Razanei invaders who n ow govern Hwagun – or District Fourteen as the Razan call the country.

Jebi discovers something in their time at the Ministry that forces them to make a decision. WIth the help of Vei, their lover and the Duelist Prime of Armor, and the automaton dragon Arazi they must escape, protect art and fight the Razanei. Bit of a tall order for an artist who just wants to paint.

The Good

I love it.

I really enjoyed this book, I took me far too long to realise it was a allegory for the Japanese invasion and occupation of Korea in the late 19th century. But with magic and automata. The Westerners – threat and boogie men held over the Hwagugin bu the Razanei – should have tipped me off.

The writing was really immersive, the story engaging and I am so happy about the Queer representation. A non-binary character is amazing, and so many different relationships. It makes such a change from the heteronormative relationships in a lot of fantasy.

The ending left me wanting to know what happened next (although obviously I have some idea of what happened in the real world) in this magical version of Korea. What did Jebi, Vei and Arazi find on the moon?

The Not-So-Good

I got nothing.

The Verdict

Add this to your fantasy TBR list immediately.

Book promo: Sunrise on the Coast, by Lilac Mills

It’s publication day for the shiny new book from Lilac Mills. Sunrise on the Coast is out now – download your copy today and transport yourself to a sub-tropical island.

When a holiday becomes something more…

Struggling to come to terms with the loss of her mother, Sophie needs to get away from it all. On a much-needed break to Tenerife, she stumbles across a Help Wanted sign for local pensioner, Hugo, and on a leap of faith she accepts the job.

But life on the island isn’t all sun, sea and siestas…

Hugo’s beautiful villa is under threat and, to complicate matters, his brooding (but handsome) nephew, Alex, has shown up full of suspicion towards Sophie.

Her hands full dealing with difficult men and a clearly unreciprocated attraction towards Alex, Sophie needs to decide if her future lies in Tenerife or if her holiday is officially over.

Escape to a Spanish island with this gorgeously uplifting romance, perfect for fans of Holly Martin, Sue Moorcroft and Mandy Baggot.

Available from Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and Google https://books2read.com/SunriseOnTheCoast

Blog tour calendar: Empire’s Reckoning, by Marian L Thorpe

Review: Operation Jihadi Bride, by John Carney with Clifford Thurlow

Blurb

Would you turn your back on a teenage Jihadi bride and her innocent children?

‘Jihad isn’t a war. It’s an objective. An aberration. If there are young women with children, lost boys… If they are trapped in that hell and we can get them out, don’t we have a duty to do so? Every person we can bring back is living proof that Islamic State is a failure.’

Ex-British Army Soldier, John Carney, ran a close protection operation in Iraq for oil executives when he was asked by the family of a young Dutch woman to extract her from the collapsing Islamic State in Syria. Hearing first-hand of the shocking living hell of tricked naive young girls, many from the West, trapped, sexually abused and enslaved by ISIS, he knew only one thing – he had to get them out.

Armed with AK-47s and 9mm Glocks, he launched a daring, dangerous and deadly operation to free as many as he could. With a small band of committed Kurdish freedom fighters, backed by humanitarian NGOs, and feeding intel to MI6, Carney and his men went behind enemy lines in the heart of the Syrian lead storm, risking their lives to deliver the women and their children to the authorities, to de-radicalisation programmes and fair trials.

Gripping, shocking and thought-provoking, Operation Jihadi Bride takes the complex issue of the Jihadi brides head-on – a vital read for our troubled times.