Blog Tour Review And Giveaway of Meet Your Baker by Ellie Alexander

Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Series: A Bakeshop Mystery #1
Format Read: eGalley
Source: from the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Reading Challenges: Cruisin' Through the Cozies 2015, NetGalley & Edelweiss Reading Challenge 2015
Release Date: December 30, 2014
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | OmniLit* | Barnes & Noble |
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Welcome to Torte—a friendly, small-town family bake shop where the treats are so good that, sometimes, it’s criminal…


After graduating from culinary school, Juliet Capshaw returns to her quaint hometown of Ashland, Oregon, to heal a broken heart and help her mom at the family bakery. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is bringing in lots of tourists looking for some crumpets to go with their heroic couplets. But when one of Torte’s customers turns up dead, there’s much ado about murder…


"Sure to satisfy both dedicated foodies and ardent mystery lovers alike."

--Jessie Crockett, author of Drizzled with Death

Cat Thursday - Don't Mess with Warrior Cat!

 Welcome to the weekly meme hosted by The True Book Addict that celebrates cats; their foibles and humorousness and the joy they bring. You can join in by posting a favorite LOL cat pic you made or came across, cat art or share with us pics of your own felines, then post your link up at The True Book Addict.

I found on this facebook; it's from I Can Haz Cheeseburger. He looks so grand and regal and menacing. He also looks awfully warm; I bet winter doesn't bother him at all. But I am awfully glad not to be brushing him! Imagine the knots and tangles that coat must get.

Bea Reviews The Novel Cure: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You by Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin

Publisher: Penguin Books 
Format Read: paperback
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: December 30, 2014
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | ARe*/OmniLit | Barnes & Noble |
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Publisher's Weekly
"Delightful... elegant prose and discussions that span the history of 2,000 years of literature."

A novel is a story transmitted from the novelist to the reader. It offers distraction, entertainment, and an opportunity to unwind or focus. But it can also be something more powerful—a way to learn about how to live. Read at the right moment in your life, a novel can—quite literally—change it.

The Novel Cure is a reminder of that power. To create this apothecary, the authors have trawled two thousand years of literature for novels that effectively promote happiness, health, and sanity, written by brilliant minds who knew what it meant to be human and wrote their life lessons into their fiction. Structured like a reference book, readers simply look up their ailment, be it agoraphobia, boredom, or a midlife crisis, and are given a novel to read as the antidote. Bibliotherapy does not discriminate between pains of the body and pains of the head (or heart). Aware that you’ve been cowardly? Pick up To Kill a Mockingbird for an injection of courage. Experiencing a sudden, acute fear of death? Read One Hundred Years of Solitude for some perspective on the larger cycle of life. Nervous about throwing a dinner party? Ali Smith’s There but for The will convince you that yours could never go that wrong. Whatever your condition, the prescription is simple: a novel (or two), to be read at regular intervals and in nice long chunks until you finish. Some treatments will lead to a complete cure. Others will offer solace, showing that you’re not the first to experience these emotions. The Novel Cure is also peppered with useful lists and sidebars recommending the best novels to read when you’re stuck in traffic or can’t fall asleep, the most important novels to read during every decade of life, and many more.

Brilliant in concept and deeply satisfying in execution, The Novel Cure belongs on everyone’s bookshelf and in every medicine cabinet. It will make even the most well-read fiction aficionado pick up a novel he’s never heard of, and see familiar ones with new eyes. Mostly, it will reaffirm literature’s ability to distract and transport, to resonate and reassure, to change the way we see the world and our place in it.

Library Journal
"This appealing and helpful read is guaranteed to double the length of a to-read list and become a go-to reference for those unsure of their reading identities or who are overwhelmed by the sheer number of books in the world. "

EXCERPT: Reining Men by Em Petrova

Today I'm welcoming my former co-worker Em Petrova back to the blog. She's sharing an excerpt from her new erotic romance, Reining Men. Em Petrova lives in Backwoods, Pennsylvania, where she raises four kids and a Labradoodle named Daisy Hasselhoff. Her dream is to buy an old pickup and travel small-town USA meeting people and hearing their stories. Her heroes are hardworking—in bed and out—and she is known for panty-scorching erotic romance.

Find Em Online:
 
 Website
 Goodreads
Amazon Author Page
Blog
FB Fan Page
Twitter

Bea Reviews Low Midnight by Carrie Vaughn

Publisher: Tor Books
Series: Kitty Norville #13
Format Read: eGalley
Source: publicist in exchange for an honest review 
Release Date: December 30, 2014
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | OmniLit* | Barnes & Noble |
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Low Midnight spins out of the series on the wave of popularity surrounding Kitty's most popular supporting character, Cormac Bennett, a two-minded assassin of the paranormal who specializes in killing lycanthropes.

In his first solo adventure, Cormac, struggling with a foreign consciousness trapped inside him, investigates a century-old crime in a Colorado mining town which could be the key to translating a mysterious coded diary… a tome with secrets that could shatter Kitty's world and all who inhabit it.

With a framing sequence that features Kitty Norville herself, Low Midnight not only pushes the Kitty saga forward, but also illuminates Cormac's past and lays the groundwork for Kitty's future.

Blog Tour Review and Giveaway - Kill 'Em with Cayenne by Gail Oust

Publisher: Minotaur Books
Series: Spice Shop Mystery #2
Format Read: print ARC
Reading Challenges: Cruisin' Through the Cozies 2015, goodreads 2015
Source: the author in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: December 16, 2014
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | OmniLit* | Barnes & Noble |
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Kill 'Em with Cayenne, a brand new finger-lickin’ good mystery from Gail Oust, featuring small-town Georgia spice shop owner Piper Prescott, a smart and spunky amateur sleuth.

Spices are flying off the shelves of Spice It Up!, and Piper Prescott couldn’t be happier. It’s that time of year again—time for the annual Brandywine Creek Barbecue Festival. Soon contestants and BBQ aficionados from all over the Southeast will converge on the town. Many of Brandywine Creek’s citizens plan to participate in the week-long festivities and are busily concocting savory rubs and sassy sauces. Among the locals vying for the grand prize are Becca Dapkins and Maybelle Humphries. The women have been arch enemies ever since Buzz Oliver dumped Maybelle after a thirteen-year courtship and started seeing Becca.

When Becca’s body is found near one of the festival booths, bludgeoned by a brisket, Maybelle becomes one of Chief Wyatt McBride’s top suspects. Determined to help clear her friend’s name, Piper begins her own investigation, much to McBride’s consternation. As the festival draws closer, will Piper and Reba Mae be able to find the real killer and clear Maybelle’s name? Will Piper make it to the annual shag contest with Doug Winters, the mild-mannered vet she’s been seeing? And, who will win the BBQ cook-off?

Quote-Tastic: Against the Dark by Carolyn Crane

Join us every Monday and share a favorite quote that's grabbed you for one reason or another. Everyone's welcome to join in - authors, bloggers, readers. The more the merrier! Just grab the button and put up your post :) Don't have a blog? No worries, just leave your favorites in the comment section.  Quote-tastic is hosted by Herding Cats & Burning Soup.

I won this book a few months ago after it had been on my wish list for several years. It's a romantic suspense with a hero both brainy and skilled in fighting. The heroine is a semi-reformed criminal who is also smart, skilled and spunky. This scene occurs when they first notice each other and Angel is ruminating about her luck with men.

"Dangerously self-destructive man at oh-four-hundred hours. Angel, start your engine."
"It's not funny. At all."
They used to joke about it back in the day - if they wanted to know if a guy was troubled or self-destructive in some way, they just needed to check if Angel thought he was hot. 
Bad boyfriend radar, they called it.
Because if Angel was attracted to a guy, it meant he was probably wounded or feral, a doomed thug with a hurricane for a heart. It meant that she could love him, but never save him.
Which was why she didn't date men she was attracted to anymore, a policy that made for a shitty sex life, but the new and reformed Angel was all about avoiding trouble.