Bea Reviews Spawning Ground by Kevin Cockle

Publisher: Tyche Books Ltd
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: September 27th, 2016 
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | Indigo | Barnes & Noble | Tyche Books
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Genetically enhanced workers are the future of companies competing in the global marketplace. People need to be more intelligent, more capable . . . more.

Genetic perfection has a price: a brutal Darwinian contest of strength and cunning to determine which bloodlines will continue, and dominate.

When Sarah Wheeler’s Spawning Contest is rigged, her breeding and training will be put to the ultimate test—by an adversary who knows her every flaw and weakness, by a father whose dynastic ambitions know no bounds, and by a world that is ruthlessly selecting against human agency itself. 

Blog Tour Review & Giveaway: The Emerald Key by Mark Frederickson and Melora Pineda

Publisher: Blue Tulip Publishing
Format Read: E-book
Source: From the pr firm in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: December 20,2015
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | Smashwords*  | Barnes & Noble


Blurb from goodreads:

Penny and Laci are headed for a mundane summer vacation until a mysterious journal unlocks a portal to another world and they find themselves face to face with a baby dragon.

In an attempt to send their new acquisition back to its home, the girls, along with two neighborhood friends, get sucked through to a mythical world. In this land, they must battle foes seen and unseen, pushing them to both their physical and mental limits. If they fail to stop the powers they’ve unleashed, it could not only destroy this strange world, but also annihilate their home.

Bea Reviews Triple Crown by Felix Francis

Series: Jefferson Hinkley #3
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: October 11th, 2016
Challenges: Finishing the Series Reading Challenge
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | OmniLit* | iTunes* | Barnes & Noble
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Jeff Hinkley, investigator for the British Horseracing Authority, has been seconded to the US Federal Anti-Corruption in Sports Agency (FACSA) where he has been asked to find a mole in their organization—an informant who is passing on confidential information to those under suspicion in American racing. At the Kentucky Derby, Jeff joins the FACSA team in a raid on a horse trainer’s barn at Churchill Downs, but the bust is a disaster, and someone ends up dead. Then, on the morning of the Derby itself, three of the most favored horses in the field fall sick.

These suspicious events can be no coincidence. In search of answers, Jeff goes undercover as a groom on the backstretch at Belmont Park racetrack in New York. But he discovers far more than he was bargaining for: corrupt individuals who will stop at nothing—including murder—to capture the most elusive prize in world sport, the Triple Crown.

Bea Reviews Do NOT Bring Your Dragon to the Library by Julie Gassman & Andy Elkerton

Publisher: Capstone
Source: egalley - publisher in exchange for an honest review; hard cover - local library
Release Date: August 1st, 2016
Challenges: I Love Libraries | I Love Picture Books
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | OmniLit* | Smashwords*  | iTunes | Barnes & Noble
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Have you ever thought about bringing your dragon to the library? Don't do it! You might have the best intentions, but that dragon will cause nothing but trouble. Using rhyming text and a diverse cast of characters, this charming picture book will provide some important and some not so important library etiquette in a very entertaining way."

Excerpt, Giveaway & Review: Christmas at Eden Manor by Noelle Adams

Publisher: Noelle Adams
Source: pr firm in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: October 5th, 2016 
Buying Links: Amazon* | Kobo | iTunes* | Barnes & Noble
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Brie Graves might be jobless, living with her brother, and recovering from a painful break-up, but she's determined to enjoy the holidays. Until the end of the year, she's going to do anything she wants to do, no matter how crazy it might be. Soon, she discovers exactly what she wants--to spend a week with a fascinating, sophisticated stranger. It doesn't matter that she only knows his first name or that he's more than twenty years older than her. After this one week, she'll never see him again.

Cyrus Damon has spent his life making money and holding himself to impossibly high standards. Pressured into taking a vacation in Savannah, he's alone and at loose ends, so he lets himself do something he never would have considered otherwise. He gives in to his attraction to a beautiful, free-spirited, and much-too-young woman. But, after the week is over, he'll once more be the man he's always been, left with nothing but the memory of a woman who made him happier than he's ever been.

He has no idea that when he visits his nephew in a charming bed and breakfast called Eden Manor, he'll find the woman he thought he'd left for good.

Christmas at Eden Manor is a short holiday romance with an old-fashioned hero in his fifties and a lot of swoony romance. It concludes a sequence of three series (Heirs of Damon, Beaufort Brides, and Eden Manor), but it can easily be read as a standalone.

Bea Reviews Stalking Ground by Margaret Mizushima

Series: Timber Creek K-9 Mystery #2
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Source: pr firm in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: September 13th, 2016
Challenges: NetGalley & Edelweiss Reading Challenge
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | OmniLit*  | iTunes | Barnes & Noble
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

When Deputy Ken Brody's sweetheart goes missing in the mountains outside Timber Creek, Mattie Cobb and Robo are called to search. But it's mid-October and a dark snow storm is brewing over the high country--and they're already too late. By the time they find her body, the storm has broken and the snow is coming down hard.

While Brody hikes down to bring back the forensics team and veterinarian Cole Walker gathers supplies to protect them from the storm, Mattie and Robo find themselves alone, guarding the gravesite overnight in the dead of the early winter. And that's only the first long, dark night in a series of them, because as their investigation develops, Mattie, Robo, Brody, and Cole find themselves in the middle of the killer's stalking ground--with no way out unless they can catch a predator more deadly than any natural threat.

An effortlessly engrossing read filled with tension, excitement, and heart, Stalking Ground, the second in Margaret Mizushima's lauded debut series, will send a chill down every reader's spine.

Bea Reviews Death of a Toy Soldier by Barbara Early

Series: Vintage Toyshop Mystery #1
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Source: pr firm in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: October 11th 2016
Challenges: NetGalley & Edelweiss Reading Challenge
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | OmniLit* | iTunes* | Barnes & Noble
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Liz McCall grew up in a playful winter wonderland but it was never her dream to manage her father’s vintage toyshop. However, after he sank his entire police pension into the business, someone needed to help him turn his dreams into reality—and keep him from sneaking off to patrol the not-so-mean streets of East Aurora, NY.

The mood goes from nice to naughty when a nervous man, who was trying to have his antique toys appraised, is found in the shop with a lawn dart through his chest. Suddenly, Liz’s business plan is plunged into deep freeze, while she and her father find themselves toying with a cold-blooded killer who’s playing for keeps.

Now, it looks like Christmas might be cancelled for the neighborhood kids if Liz can't wrap up the case in Barbara Early's delightful debut Death of a Toy Soldier.

Sophia Rose Reviews Burning Bright by Melissa McShane

Series: #1 The Extraordinaires
Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press
Source: publisher in exchange for an honest review
Format: eARC
Pages:  318
Release Date: August 15th, 2016 
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | Barnes & Noble
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

In 1812, Elinor Pembroke wakes to find her bedchamber in flames—and extinguishes them with a thought. At 21, she is old to manifest magical talent, but the evidence is unmistakable: she not only has the ability to start fires, but the far more powerful ability to control and extinguish them. She is an Extraordinary, and the only one in England capable of wielding fire in over one hundred years.

As an Extraordinary, she is respected and feared, but to her father, she represents power and prestige for himself. Mr. Pembroke, having spent his life studying magic, is determined to control Elinor and her talent by forcing her to marry where he chooses, a marriage that will produce even more powerful offspring. Trapped between the choices of a loveless marriage or living penniless and dependent on her parents, Elinor takes a third path: she defies tradition and society to join the Royal Navy.

Assigned to serve under Captain Miles Ramsay aboard the frigate Athena, she turns her fiery talent on England’s enemies, French privateers and vicious pirates preying on English ships in the Caribbean. At first feared by her shipmates, a growing number of victories make her truly part of Athena’s crew and bring her joy in her fire. But as her power grows and changes in unexpected ways, Elinor’s ability to control it is challenged. She may have the power to destroy her enemies utterly—but could it be at the cost of her own life?