Bookish Delights – Page 4 – M J Mallon YA Author and Poet

Trees of Reverie Readathon

I’m joining in the Trees of Reverie Readathon, hosted by Sarah on Tumblr, here’s a link to her post about this: http://treesofreverie.com/post/131283792785/trees-of-reverie-october-read-a-thon

This runs from 12am on Saturday, October 17th and runs through to 11.59pm on Sunday, November 1st, so fingers slapped I’m a bit behind, it’s already October 18th and I’m just starting! Still my excuse is I’m still participating in the #redeyereadalong and I wanted to devote some time to reading something slightly different for the Trees of Reverie read-a-thon…..

So I will be reading Creeping Shadow by Caroline Peckham.

The title Creeping Shadow sounds in keeping with my theme of creepy, stuff and nonsense leading up to Halloween.

The hashtags for the Trees of Reverie event are:

| #treesofreveriereadathon | #treesofreveriebookishchallenge |

I received an ARC of Creeping Shadow from Caroline Peckham, more details of that here if you’re interested in receiving an ARC for an honest review: http://carolinepeckham.com/2015/10/13/arcs-for-honest-reviews-creeping-shadow-a-ya-fantasy/

Here is the Goodreads Synopsis:

A man waits in Vale, a world void of humanity.

A mother vanishes, her disappearance concealed by the police.

A girl collapses, black magic invading her blood.

And a boy linked to them all must fight to save his family.

Earth is just one of seven worlds. Gateways divide the realms and those who pass through must earn keys, participating in challenges that will separate the fearful from the brave, the weak from the strong, and the witless from the cunning.

Sixteen year old Oliver Knight knows nothing of the other worlds or his family’s dark past. But when his adopted sister succumbs to a deadly curse the truth is revealed and he is plunged into an unknown land in a desperate bid to save her. However, a sinister enemy is on the rise and the danger they face at every turn throws those around them under suspicion. In order to survive, Oliver must figure out who to trust, who to believe and, ultimately, who to fear…

Creeping Shadow will be released 10th December 2015 on Amazon Kindle.

As well as this I have the following in mind to read next on my TBR’S, a Fantasy contemporary by fellow blogger, author pal Helen Jones : Oak And Mist (The Ambeth Chronicles #1)

Helen Jones blogs at Journey To Ambeth : http://journeytoambeth.com/

Goodreads Synopsis:

‘The end of everything? Great, no pressure then.’

Alma Bevan didn’t mean to go on a quest.
But when she disappears between two trees at her local park and reappears in Ambeth, she finds they’ve been expecting her.

And now she has to find a lost sword or the consequences for humanity will be dire. With no idea where to look, despite help from her new friend Caleb, things become even more complicated when a handsome prince of the Dark expresses an interest in her.

All this plus homework too?

Travelling between worlds is hard enough without having to manage a suspicious best friend, complicated love interests and concerned parents. Add in some time-twisting, a mysterious bracelet and a group of immortal beings all vying for control of a lost sword, and it’s enough to make any fifteen year old girl want to give up. But then she wouldn’t see Caleb any more. Or Deryck…

Oak and Mist is book one of The Ambeth Chronicles. Book two, No Quarter, is coming soon.

And if my eyes go a bit squiffy reading off readers I have one of these in mind as a diversion, my kitty is guarding them and it’s a secret at the moment which one I might chose!

Hope you like the sound of my TBR’s for the Tree of Reverie Read-a-thon.

Bye for now,

Marje @ Kyrosmagica xx

ARCs for Honest Reviews! Creeping Shadow – A YA Fantasy

Exciting News: Caroline Peckham is releasing her YA fantasy Creeping Shadow on 10th December and is looking for Advanced Readers to read and review. I’m looking forward to Creeping Shadow, sounds very appropriate for my theme this month which is creepy stuff and nonsense leading up to Halloween.

Caroline Peckham

So I’m releasing my baby to the world at last! Two years and a lot of hardwork, sweat and tears have got me here and now I’m looking for reviews on Goodreads and (when the time comes) Amazon! ☺️

So if you love YA fantasy and would like to read and review Creeping Shadow (The Rise of Isaac, #1) before anyone else please comment below with your email address and prefered file format (epub / pdf) or email me directly at caroline_peckham@hotmail.co.uk

Creeping Shadow will be released 10th December 2015 on Amazon Kindle.

Here’s the cover and blurb:

A man waits in Vale, a world void of humanity.
A mother vanishes, her disappearance concealed by the police.
A girl collapses, black magic invading her blood.
And a boy linked to them all must fight to save his family.
Earth is just one of seven worlds. Gateways divide the realms and…

View original post 121 more words

#RedEye Readalong: Flesh and Blood, by Simon Cheshire

As you’ll know if you saw my previous post re: Sleepless, I’m joining in the #readeyereadalong: The Red Eye series of books from Stripes Publishing, this event runs from September 28th to October 31st and is hosted on Goodreads.

There are five scary titles to get you in the mood for Halloween! Frozen Charlotte, Sleepless, Flesh and Blood, Bad Bones, and Dark Room.

The next scary book I’ll be reading for the #RedEye readalong next week from 12th October 2015 – 18th October 2015 is Flesh and Blood by Simon Cheshire.

Well, no messing about with the title, this one spells it out straight away, Flesh and Blood….. Yikes, let’s hope I don’t have nightmares…..

Here’s the Goodreads Synopsis:

Sam Hunter’s neighbours are pillars of the community, the most influential people in town. But they’re liars too. The Greehills are hiding something and Sam’s determined to find out what it is. As his investigation unfolds, he realizes the lies reach further than he ever imagined is there anyone he can trust? Uncovering the horror is one thing … escaping is another.

A fellow WordPress blogger Heather is running the goodreads readalong with Michelle Toy from Tales of Yesterday blog. There are lots of fun activities on their blogs so do check them out.

http://talesofyesterday.co.uk/2015/09/tales-post-red-eye-read-along-october-2015/

https://heatherreviews.wordpress.com/2015/10/06/redeyereadalong-qa-with-lou-morgan/

https://heatherreviews.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/redeyereadalong-qa-with-alex-bell/

Author link:

http://simoncheshire.co.uk/

There will be tweets about the readalong using the hash tag: #RedEyeReadAlong

This month as I mentioned before I will be focusing on a bit of scary fun to get me in the mood for Halloween, so any posts that I do will be spooky or linked to Halloween !!! I promise…

Let me know what you think about Flesh and Blood, have you read it, do you dare? !!

Bye for now. I hate bats.. ugh…

Marje @ Kyrosmagica xx

#Redeyereadalong Sleepless by Lou Morgan

My blog theme this month is spooky, scary, creepy stuff and nonsense in the lead up to Halloween, so with this in mind I joined the #redeyereadalong on Goodreads. I’ve already acquainted you with Frozen Charlotte, and now from 5th October 2015 – 11th October 2015, I’m reading the second book in the #redeyereadalong, Sleepless by Lou Morgan.

I’ve started it and believe me it is compelling reading….

Goodreads Synopsis:

Young, rich and good-looking, Izzy and her friends lead seemingly perfect lives. But exams are looming and at a school like Clerkenwell, failure is not an option. Luckily, Tigs has a solution. A small pill that will make revision a breeze and help them get the results they need. Desperate to succeed, the group begin taking the study drug. It doesn’t take long before they realize there are far worse things than failing a few exams.
Here are links to the two bloggers organising the Goodreads readalong:

Chelle at Tales of Yesterday:

http://talesofyesterday.co.uk/2015/09/tales-post-red-eye-read-along-october-2015/

http://talesofyesterday.co.uk/2015/10/spotlight-red-eye-read-along-sleepless-by-lou-morgan/

and Heather who also blogs about you guessed it, books….. :

https://heatherreviews.wordpress.com/2015/10/06/redeyereadalong-qa-with-lou-morgan/

https://heatherreviews.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/redeyereadalong-qa-with-alex-bell/

What are you reading, have you read any scary stories of late?

Bye for now,

Marje @Kyrosmagica xx

#Red Eye Readalong: Frozen Charlotte

Just to say that I’m joining in the #redeyereadalong: The Red Eye series from Stripes Publishing, this event runs from September 28th to October 31st and is hosted on Goodreads.

There are five scary titles to get you in the mood for Halloween! Frozen Charlotte, Sleepless, Flesh and Blood, Bad Bones, and Dark Room.

We’re starting with Frozen Charlotte by Alex Bell.

Here’s the synopsis on Goodreads to get you in the mood, if you dare!

We’re waiting for you to come and play. Dunvegan School for Girls has been closed for many years. Converted into a family home, the teachers and students are long gone. But they left something behind…Sophie arrives at the old schoolhouse to spend the summer with her cousins. Brooding Cameron with his scarred hand, strange Lilias with a fear of bones and Piper, who seems just a bit too good to be true. And then there’s her other cousin. The girl with a room full of antique dolls. The girl that shouldn’t be there. The girl that died.

Author website:

http://www.alex-bell.co.uk/

A fellow WordPress blogger Heather is running the goodreads readalong with Michelle Toy from Tales of Yesterday blog.

Links to these two bloggers Red Eye posts are below so you can connect with them, and find out more about the readalong:

https://heatherreviews.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/redeyereadalong-qa-with-alex-bell/

http://talesofyesterday.co.uk/2015/09/tales-post-red-eye-read-along-october-2015/

There will be tweets about the readalong using the hash tag: #RedEyeReadAlong

This month I will be focusing on a bit of scary fun to get me in the mood for Halloween, so any posts that I do will be spooky or linked to Halloween !!! I promise…

Bye for now.

Let me know what you think about Frozen Charlotte if you’ve read it, or any of the other titles in the #redeyereadalong. Or have a chat about Halloween, I’d like that too!!

Marje @ Kyrosmagica xx

The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings: The Bees Laline Paull

Last night we had a cracker of a storm here in Cambridge, England. Not kidding, I seriously thought we were going to be flooded. The thunder and rain pounded on our windows waking me up in the early hours, and flashes of wicked lightning lit up my bedroom. I sneaked out into the hallway and saw that violent short bursts of lightning lit up the driveway and revealed a serious developing ~~puddle,~~ pool. Of course I lay there imagining a flood, and all sorts of things. That is one of the downsides of writing you tend to have a vivid imagination that gets out of hand often! Luckily this water gathering had all dispersed by this morning. It is now a fairly decent day, no rain, no wind, nothing, like it never happened!

My chosen book this week is about bees, so my storm inspired thought is this – can you imagine what it must be like for a bee in a storm? Do bees get terrified by all that thunder and lightning like me! Or do they have some kind of sixth sense to safely hide away in their hives when storms come?

Enough chit chat about storms now let’s get started with book beginnings:

BOOK BEGINNINGS

Book Beginnings is hosted by Gilion Dumas at Rose City Reader: http://www.rosecityreader.com/
https://www.facebook.com/RoseCityReader
Her book Beginning’s post link up if you’d like to join in some bookish fun: http://www.rosecityreader.com/2015/07/book-beginning-you-know-your-way-home.html

My Chosen Book Beginning

The cell squeezed her and the air was hot and fetid. All the joints of her body burned from her frantic twisting against the walls, her head was pressed into her chest and her legs shot with cramp, but her struggles had worked – one wall felt weaker. She kicked out with all her strength and felt something crack and break. She forced and tore and bit until there was a jagged hole into fresher air beyond.

Enticing or what? It’s from my current read: The Bees by Laline Paull, a book about Flora 717, a bee! Not just any bee but the lowest class of bee, but does that lowliness hold Flora back? Read the book and find out more!

What about The Friday 56 too? Let’s see what page 56 of The Bees has to offer in terms of quotes.

THE FRIDAY 56 MEME

This is a weekly meme hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, click on the link to her blog, and the rules are pretty simple:
•Grab a book, any book.
•Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader
(If you have to improvise, that’s OK.)
•Find any sentence, (or few, just don’t spoil it).
•Post it.
•Add the url to your post on Freda’s Voice. Add the post url, not your blog url. http://www.fredasvoice.com/2015/07/the-friday-56-with-book-beginnings_16.html

It’s that simple.

The Bees

Flora raised her antennae, searching for information. It made her head hurt and she looked down. Below the landing board in the tangle of grass and nette and dock and trefoil that locked the dense wet earth, disturbing scents wove strong and strange, telling of other creatures that lived there. The green began to seethe.

Goodreads Synopsis:

The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Hunger Games in this brilliantly imagined debut.

Born into the lowest class of her society, Flora 717 is a sanitation bee, only fit to clean her orchard hive. Living to accept, obey and serve, she is prepared to sacrifice everything for her beloved holy mother, the Queen. Yet Flora has talents that are not typical of her kin. And while mutant bees are usually instantly destroyed, Flora is reassigned to feed the newborns, before becoming a forager, collecting pollen on the wing. Then she finds her way into the Queen’s inner sanctum, where she discovers secrets both sublime and ominous. Enemies roam everywhere, from the fearsome fertility police to the high priestesses who jealously guard the Hive Mind. But Flora cannot help but break the most sacred law of all, and her instinct to serve is overshadowed by a desire, as overwhelming as it is forbidden…

Laline Paull’s chilling yet ultimately triumphant novel creates a luminous world both alien and uncannily familiar. Thrilling and imaginative, The Bees is the story of a heroine who changes her destiny and her world.

Hope you like the sound of The Bees. Let me know if you’ve read or are planning to read it.

Marje @ Kyrosmagica xx

Recommended Book Blogs

This is an idea I’ve been toying with to create a list of book blogs but It’s All About Books has beaten me to it! So reblogging this great list for all you book worms out there! Enjoy!

It's All About Books

I do not only love to read books, I also love reading about books. I’ve encountered a lot of great book blogs out there, and decided to make a big list including all the blogs I follow for easy future browsing.

So I present you with the list of the book related blogs I follow in alphabetical order(please contact me if you think one is missing! It’s a big list and it’s easy to overlook a particular name…):

>>>Last updated January 5th 2015<<<

View original post 1,500 more words

My Friday Post: Book Beginnings and The Friday 56

BOOK BEGINNINGS is hosted by Gilion Dumas at Rose City Reader: http://www.rosecityreader.com/

https://www.facebook.com/RoseCityReader

Her book Beginning’s post link up: http://www.rosecityreader.com/2015/06/book-beginning-olivay-by-deborah-reed.html

I’m currently reading:

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey.

Here’s the book beginning from Elizabeth is Missing :

“You know that there was an old woman mugged around here?” Carla says, letting her long black ponytail snake over one shoulder. “Well, actually, it was Weymouth, but it could have been here. So you see, you can’t be too careful.” They found her with half her face smashed in.”

THE FRIDAY 56 MEME

This is a weekly meme hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, click on the link to her blog, and the rules are pretty simple:

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader
(If you have to improvise, that’s OK.)
Find any sentence, (or few, just don’t spoil it).
Post it.
Add the url to your post on Freda’s Voice.

Here’s a few riveting sentences from page 56 of Elizabeth is Missing:

“I heard the screaming,” the woman said. “Sorry about my aunt, she’s got a dread of the unrespectable.” But, look, it’s not what you think. It can’t have been Frank that your sister was afraid of.”

My recommendation:

Read of Shelve?

Most definitely read. Have read about a third of Elizabeth is Missing and it seems really good. A very confident debut novel.

Goodreads synopsis:

In this darkly riveting debut novel—a sophisticated psychological mystery that is also a heartbreakingly honest meditation on memory, identity, and aging—an elderly woman descending into dementia embarks on a desperate quest to find the best friend she believes has disappeared, and her search for the truth will go back decades and have shattering consequences.

Maud, an aging grandmother, is slowly losing her memory—and her grip on everyday life. Yet she refuses to forget her best friend Elizabeth, whom she is convinced is missing and in terrible danger.

But no one will listen to Maud—not her frustrated daughter, Helen, not her caretakers, not the police, and especially not Elizabeth’s mercurial son, Peter. Armed with handwritten notes she leaves for herself and an overwhelming feeling that Elizabeth needs her help, Maud resolves to discover the truth and save her beloved friend.

This singular obsession forms a cornerstone of Maud’s rapidly dissolving present. But the clues she discovers seem only to lead her deeper into her past, to another unsolved disappearance: her sister, Sukey, who vanished shortly after World War II.

As vivid memories of a tragedy that occurred more fifty years ago come flooding back, Maud discovers new momentum in her search for her friend. Could the mystery of Sukey’s disappearance hold the key to finding Elizabeth?

Things on the Internet I’ve Enjoyed Lately

Some excellent writerly, bookish links on this from the writes of woman. Reblogging.

The Writes of Womxn

I suppose this is a very mini version of In the Media with not quite so catchy a title. There are a few things that have caught my attention lately that I thought were worth sharing.

Firstly, The Prime Writers, a group of writers who had their debut novels published at 40+, have joined together and launched their website last week. (No surprise that the majority of the group are female.) There you’ll find everything you need to know about each of the writers and their books. There’s also fantastic content being posted regularly, I particularly enjoyed this conversation between Antonia Honeywell and Claire Fuller about their debuts which are both about fathers and daughters.

Norwich Writers Centre have announced their Brave New Reads for the summer. They include Black Country by Liz Berry, Green Carnation Winner Any Other Mouth by Anneliese Mackintosh and one of my books of…

View original post 378 more words

My Friday post: Book Beginnings and The Friday 56

BOOK BEGINNINGS is hosted by Gilion Dumas at Rose City Reader: http://www.rosecityreader.com/

https://www.facebook.com/RoseCityReader

Here’s the book beginning that captured my interest:

ONE SUMMER NIGHT I FELL ASLEEP, HOPING THE WORLD would be different when I woke. In the morning, when I opened me eyes, the world was the same. I threw off the sheets and lay there as the heat poured through my open window.

CAN YOU GUESS WHICH BOOK THIS IS? OR HAVE YOU READ IT ALREADY?

Watch out for the cover reveal and author’s name at the end of this Book Beginnings and Friday 56 Post.

The Goodreads Synopsis:

A lyrical novel about family and friendship from critically acclaimed author Benjamin Alire Sáenz.

Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.

THE FRIDAY 56 MEME

It is a weekly meme hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, click on the link to her blog, and the rules are pretty simple:

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader
(If you have to improvise, that’s OK.)
Find any sentence, (or few, just don’t spoil it).
Post it.
Add the url to your post on Freda’s Voice.

I felt alone, but not in a bad way. I really liked being alone. Maybe I liked it too much. Maybe my father was like that too.

I thought of Dante and wondered about him.

And it seemed to me that Dante’s face was a map of the world. A world without any darkness.

Wow, a world without darkness. How beautiful was that?

Well, these quotes have certainly made me want to read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of The Universe. What about you? Have you read it? Do you have a copy on your shelf that is waiting to be picked up? This is most definitely on my TBR list. Absolutely.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: