VBB Weekly - 10.05.2015 - Vilma Iris | Lifestyle Blogger

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VBB Weekly – 10.05.2015

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This week is such a great release week, heck, this entire month is epic! I read and finished A Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis (out tomorrow). I loved that book!!! It’s a historical fiction which was dark, suspenseful and beautifully written (read my review here). I also read and loved Madame X by Jasinda Wilder, which was edgy, provocative and full of surprises. It’s also out tomorrow and you can read an excerpt here, on USA Today’s HEA blog. Tomorrow, I’ll have the second part of that narrative, so make sure to check back in!

Also, I’ve got a new feature up today, all about the Rising Storm series—which is a soap-opera-like series full of scandal, passion, secrets and suspense! You can read the first couple chapters here, and get all the details on these books too.

RISING STORM BANNER FINAL

Lastly, I’ve got an exclusive excerpt from Art In The Blood: A Sherlock Holmes Adventure by Bonnie MacBird (out tomorrow) and you can read about Holmes and Watson’s latest adventure here!

Have a great week and happy reading! ♥

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Release Recap

(Click cover to order)

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Releasing This Week

Ms. Manwhore by Katy Evans (Available Now)

Katy Evans returns with a sexy novella, the final installment of the unforgettable love story that began in Manwhore.

What lies ahead for Chicago’s most envied couple, Malcolm Saint and Rachel Livingston?

Sparks flew between them in Manwhore. Separated by deception, they felt the intensity and heat of their attraction turn up in Manwhore +1.

Will Chicago’s wealthiest and most notorious player finally settle down, or will one woman never be enough? Find out in Ms. Manwhore, the ultimate conclusion to their electric, breathtaking story.

Reading Order: Manwhore | Manwhore +1 | Ms. Manwhore

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We’ll Never Be Apart by Emiko Jean (Oct 06)

Murder.

Fire.

Revenge.

That’s all seventeen-year-old Alice Monroe thinks about. Committed to a mental ward at Savage Isle, Alice is haunted by memories of the fire that killed her boyfriend, Jason. A blaze her twin sister Cellie set. But when Chase, a mysterious, charismatic patient, agrees to help her seek vengeance, Alice begins to rethink everything. Writing out the story of her troubled past in a journal, she must confront hidden truths. Is the one person she trusts only telling her half the story? Nothing is as it seems in this edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller from the debut author Emiko Jean.

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All I Want (Animal Magnetism) by Jill Shalvis (Oct 06)Read my review

All I Want ShalvisFrom the “awesomely, incredibly talented”* New York Times bestselling author of Still the One, comes a sexy new Animal Magnetism novel set in Sunshine, Idaho, where the sky is the limit when it comes to love.

Pilot-for-hire Zoe Stone is happy to call Sunshine, Idaho, her home base. But her quiet life is thrown for a loop when her brother’s friend Parker comes to stay with her for a week. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife special agent is a handsome flirt with a gift for getting under her skin. And the situation only escalates when Parker hires her to fly him around the area while he collects evidence on a suspected smuggler.

Now she has to live and work with the guy. But when they’re in the air, she sees another side of him. He’s driven, focused, and sharp. And while he enjoys giving commentary on her blind dates, she quickly realizes with a shock that it’s Parker who gets her engines going…

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Dreamstrider by Lindsay Smith (Oct 06) 

A high-concept, fantastical espionage novel set in a world where dreams are the ultimate form of political intelligence.

Livia is a dreamstrider. She can inhabit a subject’s body while they are sleeping and, for a short time, move around in their skin. She uses her talent to work as a spy for the Barstadt Empire. But her partner, Brandt, has lately become distant, and when Marez comes to join their team from a neighboring kingdom, he offers Livia the option of a life she had never dared to imagine. Livia knows of no other dreamstriders who have survived the pull of Nightmare. So only she understands the stakes when a plot against the Empire emerges that threatens to consume both the dreaming world and the waking one with misery and rage.

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The House by Christina Lauren (Oct 06) Read an excerpt

Oct-06

Delilah and Gavin’s new love is threatened by a force uncomfortably close to home in this haunting novel from New York Times bestselling duo Christina Lauren, authors of Beautiful Bastard.

His shirt is black, jeans are black, and shaggy black hair falls into his eyes. And when Gavin looks up at Delilah, the dark eyes shadowed with bluish circles seem to flicker to life.

He lives in that house, the one at the edge of town. Spooky and maybe haunted. Something worse than haunted. And Gavin is trapped by its secrets.

Delilah and Gavin can’t resist each other. But staying together will exact a price beyond their imagining.

Standalone YA horror novel.

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Claimed by Elle Kennedy (Oct 06)

Oct-06

The bestselling author of the Killer Instincts novels “knows how to write scorching sexual tension.” Now she really sets it on fire in a new series about men and women living on the edge of violence, sex, and life and death.

After a devastating war decimated most of the world, Hudson Lane has only known the oppressive life under her own father’s tyranny. She finally escapes, branding herself an outlaw and hunted by the Enforcers. Her best chance at survival is Connor Mackenzie, an aggressively sensual fugitive who opens her eyes to the wicked possibilities of a world without rules.

As the leader of a band of outlaw fighters, Connor can’t resist the beautiful stranger who asks for his protection. Despite his reservations, he agrees to introduce her to a whole new way of life. But when Connor discovers Hudson’s connection to the enemies of liberty, he wonders how far he can trust the woman who has abandoned all inhibitions to challenge every forbidden desire.

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A Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis (Oct 06) Read my review
Top Recommendation

Mindy McGinnis, the acclaimed author of Not a Drop to Drink and In a Handful of Dust, combines murder, madness, and mystery in a beautifully twisted gothic historical thriller perfect for fans of novels such as Asylum and The Diviners as well as television’s True Detective and American Horror Story.

Grace Mae is already familiar with madness when family secrets and the bulge in her belly send her to an insane asylum—but it is in the darkness that she finds a new lease on life. When a visiting doctor interested in criminal psychology recognizes Grace’s brilliant mind beneath her rage, he recruits her as his assistant. Continuing to operate under the cloak of madness at crime scenes allows her to gather clues from bystanders who believe her less than human. Now comfortable in an ethical asylum, Grace finds friends—and hope. But gruesome nights bring Grace and the doctor into the circle of a killer who will bring her shaky sanity and the demons in her past dangerously close to the surface.

Standalone historical fiction/thriller.

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Madame X by Jasinda Wilder (Oct 06) Read an excerpt
Top Recommendation

Oct-06

Madame X invites you to test the limits of desire in this provocative new novel from New York Times bestselling author Jasinda Wilder.

My name is Madame X.
I’m the best at what I do…

Hired to transform the uncultured, inept sons of the wealthy and powerful into decisive, confident men, Madame X wields culture and wit like a knife. But behind her sophisticated facade X is a woman adrift, trapped between a dangerous past she can’t remember and the protection of a seductive man who claims her body—and her soul.

Undone time and again by his exquisite dominance, X craves and fears his desire in equal measure. And while she longs for the safety of her tower penthouse, she also yearns to escape. But X has never known anything or anyone else—until he came along.

First in a series.

Reading OrderMadame X | Exposed

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The White Rose (#2, Jewel series) by Amy Ewing (Oct 06)

Oct-06

The compelling and gripping sequel to Amy Ewing’s debut, The Jewel, which BCCB said “Will have fans of Oliver’s Delirium, Cass’s The Selection, and DeStefano’s Witherbreathless.”

Violet is on the run—away from the Jewel, away from a lifetime of servitude, away from the Duchess of the Lake, who bought her at auction. With Ash and Raven traveling with her, Violet will need all of her powers to get her friends, and herself, out of the Jewel alive.

But no matter how far Violet runs, she can’t escape the rebellion brewing just beneath the Jewel’s glittering surface, and her role in it. Violet must decide if she is strong enough to rise against the Jewel and everything she has ever known.

Reading Order: The Jewel | The White Rose

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A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston (Oct 06)

Oct-06

Lo-Melkhiin killed three hundred girls before he came to her village, looking for a wife. When she sees the dust cloud on the horizon she knows he has arrived. She knows he will want the loveliest girl: her sister. She vows she will not let her be next. And so she is taken in her sister’s place, and she believes death will soon follow. But back in their village her sister is mourning. Through her pain, she calls upon the desert winds, conjuring a subtle unseen magic, and something besides death stirs the air in it’s place. Lo-Melkhiin’s court is a dangerous palace filled with pretty things: intricate statues with wretched eyes, exquisite threads to weave the most beautiful garments. She sees everything as if for the last time.

But the first sun sets and rises, and she is not dead. Night after night Lo-Melkhiin comes to her, and listens to the stories she tells and day after day she is awoken by the sunrise. Exploring the palace, she begins to unlock years of fear that have tormented and silenced a kingdom. Lo-Melkhiin was not always a cruel ruler. Something went wrong. The words she speaks to him every night are given strange life of their own. She makes things appear. Little things, at first: a dress from home, a vision of her sister. With each tale she spins, her power grows. Soon she dreams of bigger, more terrible magic: power enough to save a king, if she can put an end to rule of a monster.

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Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (Oct 06) 

Oct-06

Simon Snow is the worst Chosen One who’s ever been chosen.

That’s what his roommate, Baz, says. And Baz might be evil and a vampire and acomplete git, but he’s probably right.

Half the time, Simon can’t even make his wand work, and the other half, he starts something on fire. His mentor’s avoiding him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and there’s a magic-eating monster running around, wearing Simon’s face. Baz would be having a field day with all this, if he were here — it’s their last year at the Watford School of Magicks, and Simon’s infuriating nemesis didn’t even bother to show up.

Carry On – The Rise and Fall of Simon Snow is a ghost story, a love story and a mystery. It has just as much kissing and talking as you’d expect from a Rainbow Rowell story – but far, far more monsters.

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Art in the Blood: A Sherlock Holmes Adventure by Bonnie MacBird (Oct 06) Read an excerpt

Oct-06

London. A snowy December, 1888. Sherlock Holmes, 34, is languishing and back on cocaine after a disastrous Ripper investigation. Watson can neither comfort nor rouse his friend – until a strangely encoded letter arrives from Paris.

Mlle La Victoire, a beautiful French cabaret star writes that her illegitimate son by an English lord has disappeared, and she has been attacked in the streets of Montmartre.

Racing to Paris with Watson at his side, Holmes discovers the missing child is only the tip of the iceberg of a much larger problem. The most valuable statue since the Winged Victory has been violently stolen in Marseilles, and several children from a silk mill in Lancashire have been found murdered. The clues in all three cases point to a single, untouchable man.

Will Holmes recover in time to find the missing boy and stop a rising tide of murders? To do so he must stay one step ahead of a dangerous French rival and the threatening interference of his own brother, Mycroft.

This latest adventure, in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, sends the iconic duo from London to Paris and the icy wilds of Lancashire in a case which tests Watson’s friendship and the fragility and gifts of Sherlock Holmes’ own artistic nature to the limits.

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Confessions of a Kleptomaniac by Jessica Sorensen (Oct 06)

Oct-06

Everyone thinks Luna Harvey is a good girl, but she has a dark secret. She’s a kleptomaniac. For years, Luna has managed to keep her secret from everyone, until one day she slips up and almost gets caught. Fortunately, Grey Sawyer steps in and saves her from getting into trouble.

Grey Sawyer is one of the most popular guys in school and hasn’t always been nice to Luna. While she’s grateful he helped her out, Luna worries he’ll tell everyone her secret and her good girl reputation will be ruined.

Grey understands Luna’s situation more than she realizes, though, because he has a secret of his own. One he desperately wants to tell Luna. But with their rocky past, he knows he’ll have to get her to trust him first and show Luna he’s not the guy he used to be.

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Redemption Road (Vicious Cycle) by Katie Ashley (Oct 06)

Oct-06

The New York Times bestselling author of Vicious Cycle plunges readers into a world of danger and desire in her newest in the Vicious Cycle motorcycle club romance series. 

Looking for a walk on the wild side, Annabel Percy, the daughter of a powerful politician, gives in to an attraction to a sexy biker she meets one night. But she finds herself living a nightmare when she’s kidnapped and transported into a hell on earth she never could have imagined.

Born and bred into the Hells Raiders MC, Nathaniel “Reverend” Malloy lives and dies for his brothers. But when he becomes the unexpected savior of a rival club’s captive, Rev makes it his personal mission to nurse Annabel back to health—and to shelter her from the nightmares that torment her.

Once Annabel heals, she’s stunned to realize she is falling for the seductive man who saved her. Faced with their impossible attraction, can she accept the life he leads, or will Rev walk away from the only life he’s ever known for the woman he was never supposed to love?

Reading OrderVicious CycleRedemption Road

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Rock Redemption (#3 Rock Kiss) by Nalini Singh (Oct 06)

Oct-06

From New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh comes the next contemporary romance in the Rock Kiss series…

Kit Devigny could have loved rock guitarist Noah St. John. Their friendship burned with the promise of intense passion and searing tenderness…until the night Noah deliberately shattered her heart.

Noah knows he destroyed something precious the night he chose to betray Kit, but he’d rather she hate him than learn his darkest secret. All he has left is his music. It’s his saving grace, but it doesn’t silence the voices that keep him up at night. Chasing oblivion through endless one-night-stands, he earns a few hours’ sleep and his bad boy reputation.

When a media error sees Noah and Kit dubbed the new “it” couple, Kit discovers her chance at the role of a lifetime hinges on riding the media wave. Wanting—needing—to give Kit this, even if he can’t give her everything, Noah agrees to play the adoring boyfriend. Only the illusion is suddenly too real, too painful, too beautiful…and it may be too late for the redemption of Noah St. John.

Reading Order: Rock Addiction | Rock Courtship (novella) | Rock HardRock Redemption

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Fated To Be Mine (#2 Fated) by Jodi Larson (Oct 06)

Fated to be MineI’ve made a mistake. Can we find our way back?

They say that distance makes the heart grow fonder, or that time heals all wounds. What they don’t tell you is that it doesn’t lessen the pain. I don’t think those people have experienced a loss like this.

I left my heart in London, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get it back.

But fate has a plan of her own. She keeps me guessing and hoping that not everything is as it seems.

Hearts can be shattered but can also be put back together. Especially when love doesn’t give up on you, even if you think it has.

Reading OrderFated To Be Yours  99¢ Fated To Be Mine

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A Step Toward Falling by Cammi McGovern (Oct 06)

Oct-06

Cammie McGovern follows up her breakout young adult debut, Say What You Will, with this powerful and unforgettable novel about learning from your mistakes, and learning to forgive. Told in alternating points of view, A Step Toward Falling is a poignant, hopeful, and altogether stunning work that will appeal to fans of Jennifer Nevin, Robyn Schneider, and Jandy Nelson.

Emily has always been the kind of girl who tries to do the right thing—until one night when she does the worst thing possible. She sees Belinda, a classmate with developmental disabilities, being attacked. Inexplicably, she does nothing at all.

Belinda, however, manages to save herself. When their high school finds out what happened, Emily and Lucas, a football player who was also there that night, are required to perform community service at a center for disabled people. Soon, Lucas and Emily begin to feel like maybe they’re starting to make a real difference. Like they would be able to do the right thing if they could do that night all over again. But can they do anything that will actually help the one person they hurt the most?

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Through the Dark (A Darkest Mind Collection) by Alexandra Bracken (Oct 06) 

Oct-06

Don’t miss this breathtaking collection of stories set in the world of the best-selling Darkest Minds trilogy. Featuring ebook original novellas In Time and Sparks Rise, available in print for the first time, and a gripping, brand-new novella, Through the Dark is a must-have for fans of the Darkest Minds.

IN TIME
A desperate young man is forced to make a terrible choice between his own survival and the future of a little girl who won’t speak, but who changes his life in ways he could never imagine.
SPARKS RISE
A spark of light brightens a brutal world when a girl named Sam encounters her childhood best friend at the government-run “rehabilitation” camp, Thurmond. Lucas and Sam form a risky escape plan, but sometimes even love isn’t powerful enough to overcome unspeakable cruelty.
BEYOND THE NIGHT
The camps are closed. A tyrant president has been deposed. But for many Psi kids living rough, there is no home to return to, no place for them in a country devastated by the past and anxious about the future. Every day is a struggle for Sam, who knew all the rules at Thurmond and has been thrown into a terrifying and uncertain new life. But there’s more at stake than Sam’s own survival. She once made a promise to someone she loves, and the time has come to fulfill it.
From New York Times best-selling author Alexandra Bracken comes a collection of three hauntingly beautiful novellas set in the world of the Darkest Minds series. In the most harrowing of times, it takes a ferocious strength not only to survive, but to stand up for those who cannot fight their own battles. The characters in these stories-some new, some familiar-face impossible missions, and the hardest of all may be protecting the last flicker of hope in a seemingly endless night.

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Spinning Starlight by R.C. Lewis (Oct 06)

Oct-06

Sixteen-year-old heiress and paparazzi darling Liddi Jantzen hates the spotlight. But as the only daughter in the most powerful tech family in the galaxy, it’s hard to escape it. So when a group of men shows up at her house uninvited, she assumes it’s just the usual media-grubs. That is, until shots are fired.

Liddi escapes, only to be pulled into an interplanetary conspiracy more complex than she ever could have imagined. Her older brothers have been caught as well, trapped in the conduits between the planets. And when their captor implants a device in Liddi’s vocal cords to monitor her speech, their lives are in her hands: One word, and her brothers are dead.
Desperate to save her family from a desolate future, Liddi travels to another world, where she meets the one person who might have the skills to help her bring her eight brothers home-a handsome dignitary named Tiav. But without her voice, Liddi must use every bit of her strength and wit to convince Tiav that her mission is true. With the tenuous balance of the planets deeply intertwined with her brothers’ survival, just how much is Liddi willing to sacrifice to bring them back?
Haunting and mesmerizing, this retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Wild Swansfuses all the heart of the classic tale with a stunning, imaginative world in which a star-crossed family fights for its very survival.

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The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness (Oct 06)

Oct-06

A new YA novel from novelist Patrick Ness, author of the Carnegie Medal- and Kate Greenaway Medal-winning A Monster Calls and the critically acclaimed Chaos Walking trilogy, The Rest of Us Just Live Here is a bold and irreverent novel that powerfully reminds us that there are many different types of remarkable.

What if you aren’t the Chosen One? The one who’s supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death?

What if you’re like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again.

Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world, and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life.

Even if your best friend is worshipped by mountain lions.

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Crosswinds: Episode 3 (Rising Storm) by Elisabeth Naughton (Oct 08) Read an excerpt
Spotlight Feature

Oct-08

Secrets, Sex and Scandals …

Welcome to Storm, Texas, where passion runs hot, desire runs deep, and secrets have the power to destroy… Get ready. The storm is coming.

Lacey Salt’s world shattered with the death of her brother, and now the usually sweet-tempered girl is determined to take back some control—even if that means sabotaging her best friend, Mallory, and Mallory’s new boyfriend, Luis.

Reading Order: Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | Episode 5 | Episode 6 | Episode 7 | Episode 8

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Repentance: The Story of Kace Haywood by Meghan Quinn (Oct 08)

Repentance Kace HaywoodEvery choice you make in life comes with a consequence, which dictates the outcome of your future.

I was once on top, I was living the life I dreamt of, I had everything I could possibly hope for. I was happy, satisfied, content…until one night.

One off day.

One moment in time I wish I could take back. My biggest regret.

The once bright future I possessed vanished and in its place a dark world of self-hatred and loathing encompassed me.

People like to celebrate the day they were born, I like to celebrate the day my soul died.

This is my story of repentance.

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Collision by Kate Sterritt (Oct 08) 

CollisionTheir lives were destined to collide.

Juliette Salinger lives her life entirely on her mother’s terms. Everything from what she wears to who she dates is determined by what is deemed appropriate for their social standing.

Look a little closer.

Juliette isn’t cut out for that life. She lives for moments of reckless abandon to escape the crushing pressure of never being good enough.

Leo Ashlar appears to live his life entirely on his own terms. He’s a bartending bachelor and undefeated fight club champion.

Look a little closer.

He’s haunted by a tragic past and hides his demons even from those he loves.

When Juliette’s duplicit worlds collide with the handsome and untouchable Leo, both are impacted in ways they couldn’t foresee. Juliette’s life begins to unravel. Can Leo help her build a new one, or will his past be their ultimate demise?

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Pre-Orders

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★ Visit THIS PAGE for the full list of releases ★

RISING STORM EP 1

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Current sales list for Amazon U.S. Click on image to purchase; click here to search my reviews.

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Bargain Books. Always 50-90% Off

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