** COVER REVEAL ** #WhoIsIt @KimTheBookworm #SunshineAndSecondChances ** COVER REVEAL **

I am absolutely THRILLED to share this exciting COVER REVEAL with you all today! 

Sunshine and Second Chances

by Kim Nash

Published on 4 June 2020 

Pre Order NOW 

It’s never too late to be offered a second chance at life.
Liv has the perfect life, Debs is newly single, Fiona is caring for her mum and Samantha is grieving.

This year, the life-long friends are each turning fifty, and Liv is determined they will honour their promise to each other, made on a beach at sunrise twenty-nine years ago, to celebrate this milestone together. And what better place than a gorgeous villa where they will be spoiled and enjoy the stunning beaches, picturesque fishing towns and glorious climate of The Algarve.

But time away from home doesn’t always make the heart grow fonder. Sometimes it makes the thought of returning to your life too hard to bear. And then there are gorgeous Portuguese men making hearts flutter a tad more than planned...

It began as a reunion in the sunshine, but little do the four friends know what life-changing decisions they’ll all be making before their flight home.

Kim Nash is an author of uplifting, funny, heartwarming, feel-good, romantic fiction.

She lives in Staffordshire with son Ollie and English Setter Roni, is Head of Publicity for Bookouture and is a book blogger at www.kimthebookworm.co.uk.

Kim won the Romantic Novelists Association's Media Star of the Year in 2016, which she still can't quite believe. She is now quite delighted to be a member of the RNA.

When she's not working or writing, Kim can be found walking her dog, reading, standing on the sidelines of a football pitch cheering on Ollie and binge watching box sets on the TV. She's also quite partial to a spa day and a gin and tonic (not at the same time!) Kim also runs a book club in Cannock, Staffs.

Sign up to be the first to hear about new releases. Your e-mail will not be shared with anyone else and you will only contacted about Kim's books.

https://www.kimthebookworm.co.uk/

Amazing Grace was Kim's debut novel and came out in April 2019.

Escape to Giddywell Grange was Kim's second novel and was published in September 2019.

Sunshine and Second Chances is Kim's third novel and will be published on June 4th 2020.

You can read Kim's Blog here: www.kimthebookworm.co.uk

Connect with Kim on Social Media here:

Twitter: @KimTheBookworm

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KimTheBookWorm/

Instagram: @Kim_the_bookworm

Camelot by Giles Kristian BLOG TOUR @GilesKristian @TransworldBooks #Camelot #TenThingsAboutMe

Britain is a land riven by anarchy, slaughter, famine, filth and darkness. Its armies are destroyed, its heroes dead, or missing. Arthur and Lancelot fell in the last great battle and Merlin has not been seen these past ten years. Now, the Saxons are gathering again, their warbands stalk the land, their king seeks dominion. As for the lords and kings of Britain, they look only to their own survival and will not unite as they once did under Arthur and his legendary sword Excalibur.

But in an isolated monastery in the marshes of Avalon, a novice of the order is preparing to take his vows when the life he has known is suddenly turned upside down in a welter of blood. Two strangers - the wild-spirited, Saxon-killing Iselle and the ageing warrior Gawain - will pluck the young man from the wreckage of his simple existence. Together, they will seek the last druid and the cauldron of a god. And the young man must come to terms with his legacy and fate as the son of the most celebrated yet most infamous of Arthur's warriors: Lancelot.

For this is the story of Galahad, Lancelot’s son – the reluctant warrior who dared to keep the dream of Camelot alive . . .

Camelot by Giles Kristian was published in hardback on 14 May 2020 by Bantam Press / Transworld.
As part of the #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour, I'm delighted to welcome the author today; he's telling us 'Ten Things About Me'.

Ten Things About Me - Giles Kristian

1.     I’m half Norwegian. My mother is from Bergen on Norway’s west coast. We had a family house on a little island called Brimsholmen, on the edge of the fjords, for twenty-two years. We sold it in 2015 and I miss it so very much. The fjords are always calling me.

2.     I had trials for Leicester City as a goalkeeper. Sadly, I didn’t get the job.

3.     I was the first member of my family to go to university and the first to drop out. For the brief time I was there, I studied English Literature/Language, because I knew I wanted to become a writer. I dropped out to form a pop group.

4.     I’ve had four hit records as a singer, made music videos in the Swiss Alps, Miami, Mexico, Prague, Frankfurt and… Bognor Regis. After the band, I toured as a solo artist in Europe before settling down to start writing a novel set during the First Crusade. That story was never published and is still in my drawer.

5.     As a singer I’ve performed on the same bill as Dame Shirley Bassey, Eric Clapton, The Backstreet Boys, Take That, Status Quo, The Spice Girls, U2, Peter Andre, Ant and Dec, Boyzone, Wet Wet Wet, Kylie Minogue, and Pulp, to name but a few.   

6.     To earn money while writing my first novel, Raven: Blood Eye, I did modelling jobs for the likes of Magnum ice creams, Harp Lager, Daniel Hechter and WKD alcopops, as well as TV adverts for DFS sofas. Anything to fund the writing habit! Then I moved to New York where I lived for nearly three years and worked for a movie marketing company, but mostly worked on my first Viking novels, Raven Blood Eye and Sons of Thunder.

7.     I co-wrote a novel with Wilbur Smith called Golden Lion, which was the no. 1 bestseller across three continents. It was quite an experience.

8.     I’m a brand ambassador for Graham London watches and for Norwegian recliner brand Stressless. All I need now is a bourbon company to call.

9.     In 2013 I was lucky enough to row Draken Harald Hårfagre, the largest replica Viking ship ever built, as part of her sea trials off Karmøy on Norway’s west coast. It was then, amongst the row benches, that my oarmates and I discovered a new insult to use in my Viking novels: Arse welt.

10.  I do the narrative design for video games. My latest is a Viking game called NORSE, a turn-based strategy game in which you can take to your longship to launch lighting raids, discover new lands, trade furs for exotic spices, silver and wine, and forge your own legend. The game will be released in 2021. https://www.norsethegame.com/

© Giles Kristian - May 2020 

Family history (he is half Norwegian) and a passion for the fiction of Bernard Cornwell inspired Giles Kristian to write. 
Set in the Viking world, his bestselling Raven and The Rise of Sigurd trilogies have been acclaimed by his peers, reviewers and readers alike. 
In The Bleeding Land and Brothers’ Fury, he tells the story of a family torn apart by the English Civil War. 
He also co-wrote Wilbur Smith’s No.1 bestseller, Golden Lion. 
In his most recent novel, the Sunday Times bestseller Lancelot, Giles plunged into the rich waters of the Arthurian legend. For his next book, he continues his epic reimagining of our greatest island ‘history’.
Giles Kristian lives in Leicestershire. 

Twitter @GilesKristian
Facebook @GilesKristian
Instagram @gileskristian

Stay Mad Sweetheart by Heleen Kist @hkist #StayMadSweetheart @RedDogTweets #BookReview

 

There's a fine line between innocence and guilt. An even finer line between justice and revenge.

Shy and sensible Laura prefers the company of her books to the real world – let alone that cesspit online. But when her best friend Emily becomes the victim of horrific cyberbullying, she makes it her all-engulfing mission to track down the worst culprits using her finely-tuned data skills.

Petite corporate financier Suki is about to outshine the stupid boys at her firm: she's leading the acquisition of Edinburgh's most exciting start-up. If only she could get its brilliant, but distracted, co-founder Laura to engage.

Event planner Claire is left to salvage the start-up's annual conference after her colleague Emily fails to return to work. She's determined to get a promotion out of it, but her boss isn't playing ball.

As the women's paths intertwine, the insidious discrimination they each face comes to light. Emboldened by Emily's tragic experience, they join forces to plot the downfall of all those who've wronged them.

But with emotions running high, will the punishments fit the crimes?

Stay Mad Sweetheart by Heleen Kist was published by Red Dog Press in November last year. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review.

The tagline on my proof copy of Stay Mad Sweetheart reads 'there's a fine line between justice and revenge', this is the perfect sentence to sum up this incredibly intelligent, gripping thriller.

The story is like nothing that I've ever read before, it is set within the science and finance sector in Edinburgh and it is both educating and quite terrifying to read. Many of us will use Social Media regularly in our day to day lives, and I'd bet that the majority of us imagine that we are connecting with people just like us. Ordinary people, with various interests and levels of expertise who explain things that we may not really have thought about.  However, after reading this story, I will never look at my Twitter feed in the same light again. I know about targeted advertising, I know that information is gathered up, but I didn't realise just how intricate and clever it all really is.

Laura is a techie wizard. She and her university friend Justin had a innovative idea whilst studying and from that, have created Empisoft; one of the most exciting start-up businesses in the technical world. Laura is quiet and unassuming, preferring to hide away behind the cover of her current book than to take centre stage, that's what Justin does; he's the face of the company.

Emily was Laura's best friend, but now she's gone. The opening pages of this novel detail Emily's absolute despair after experiencing the horror that is cyber-bullying. She was unable to take it any longer.
Laura is devastated, and angry, and determined that those trolls, hidden away behind the anonymity of their online persona, will pay for what they did to Emily.

Heleen Kist writes beautifully and with such authenticity.  She thrusts her readers into the glamour and power of the business world whilst also taking them deep into the darkest part of the human mind, via the internet.
The story moves quickly and the characters are all really well created; each one of them with their own flaws, their own unique styles. The author really does champion the strength of the woman, and how difficult it can be to attempt to be equal in what remains a man's world.

Whilst the author deals with some very relevant and some very distressing issues within the novel, she does it with a grace and empathy that is both engaging and addictive.

Stay Mad Sweetheart is emotionally taut and very raw. Heleen Kist is certainly a talent to watch.




Throughout her life, Heleen Kist has been fondled, patronised and ordered to smile by random men. So she wrote 'Stay Mad, Sweetheart', a feminist tale of justice, published November 2019.Whilst her professional knowledge of technology start-ups fed the novel's setting, its theme of insidious harassment and discrimination required no research: it is familiar to all women.

Heleen was chosen as an up and coming new author at Bloody Scotland 2018. Her first novel, 'In Servitude' won the silver medal for Best European Fiction at the Independent Publishers Book Awards in the USA and was shortlisted for The Selfies awarded at London Book Fair.

A Dutch strategy consultant living in Glasgow and married to a Scotsman, she's raising their son to be a good man and their daughter to kick ass.

Heleen hopes you enjoy her writing, and would love to hear from you on twitter (@hkist), Faceboook (@heleenkistauthor) 
You can also sign up to her newsletter on www.heleenkist.com.

Dead Wrong by Noelle Holten @nholten40 BLOG TOUR @0neMoreChapter_ @BOTBSPublicity #DeadWrong #BlogTour

DC Maggie Jamieson's past comes back to haunt her in this dark and gripping serial killer thriller.

Three missing women running out of time…

They were abducted years ago. Notorious serial killer Bill Raven admitted to killing them and was sentenced to life.

The case was closed – at least DC Maggie Jamieson thought it was…

But now one of them has been found, dismembered and dumped in a bin bag in town.

Forensics reveal that she died just two days ago, when Raven was behind bars, so Maggie has a second killer to find.

Because even if the other missing women are still alive, one thing’s for certain: they don’t have long left to live…

Dead Wrong by Noelle Holten is published today in paperback by One More Chapter, and is book two in the Maggie Jamieson series. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review,  and to Sarah Hardy from Book On The BrightSide Publicity who invited me to take part on the Blog Tour

I read and reviewed Dead Inside, the first in this series, back in June last year.  I really enjoyed that first book from Noelle, and have been looking forward to this next instalment ever since.

Well, if I were Noelle herself, who is not only a talented author, but a fabulous crime fiction blogger, I'd probably start my review with an exclamation such as BOOM!  OMFG!, because that's how she rolls my friends. Read her reviews, then read her books, she is full of the explosions

So what do I say about this book?  Well, let's just say that I finished it very late at night after being totally hooked and as I turned the last page, I just stared at #TheBloke and shouted 'what on earth??'

I then went to bed, and I then spent the night either tossing or turning, or being visited in my dreams by sneering men waving body parts about.

Whilst the first in this series didn't feature Maggie Jamieson quite so much, she is certainly the star of Dead Wrong. This author has fine tuned her lead character and brings us a woman who is dedicated, yet flawed. Determined, yet sometimes desperate, but always always true to herself, and her team. 

A few years ago Maggie put Bill 'The Chopper' Raven behind bars. A despicable excuse of a man who confessed to killing women. He's been safely rotting away in his prison cell ever since. When body parts are discovered on Maggie's patch, she has no idea that she's going to be thrust right back in the nightmare that is Bill Raven's world, for those body parts belong to one of his alleged victims ...... and they only died a few days before they were found.

So, Raven confessed to killing women that obviously were not dead. Maggie and her boss Nathan, along with Dr Kate Molony are perplexed, but determined to get to the bottom of a case that becomes increasingly dark and murky.

This is a clever and very twisted tale, that keeps the reader firmly on their toes. Not only are we there at the forefront of the police investigation, we are given flashes into the mind of Raven too, along with some fairly brutal images of the victims of some horrendous crime.

Readers also get to know much more about the characters. The author has developed them well, giving them their own interesting and unique stories, and certainly left me wanting to know more about their personal lives. There's one particular character who intrigues me, I don't trust them one little bit and am keen to find out where the author is going to take them, and me!

Once more, Noelle Holten's extensive experience of working within the criminal justice sector herself shines through in her writing. She explains procedure really well, incorporating it into the storyline without it feeling like a text book lesson in how officialdom works. 

I had no idea where this story was leading; it's devilishly clever and very well structured. And then, there's that final page. It floored me, it really stunned me. Speechless. Lost for words. 

Dead Inside was great, Dead Wrong is excellent, where will Noelle Holten take Maggie next? Can't wait for book three.

Noelle Holten is an award-winning blogger at www.crimebookjunkie.co.uk. She is the PR & Social Media Manager for Bookouture, a leading digital publisher in the UK, and was a regular reviewer on the Two Crime Writers and a Microphone podcast. Noelle worked as a Senior Probation Officer for eighteen years, covering a variety of cases including those involving serious domestic abuse. She has three Hons BA’s – Philosophy, Sociology (Crime & Deviance) and Community Justice – and a Masters in Criminology. Noelle’s hobbies include reading, attending as many book festivals as she can afford and sharing the booklove via her blog. 
Dead Inside is her debut novel with One More Chapter/Harper Collins UK and the start of a new series featuring DC Maggie Jamieson. 

Connect with Noelle on Social Media here:
Twitter: (@nholten40) https://twitter.com/nholten40
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/noelleholtenauthor/
Blog FB page: https://www.facebook.com/crimebookjunkie/
Instagram: @crimebookjunkie 
Website: https://www.crimebookjunkie.co.uk
Bookbub Author page : https://bit.ly/2LkT4LB

** COVER REVEAL ** #WhoIsIt @lilja1972 #Betrayal @OrendaBooks Trsl by @graskeggur ** COVER REVEAL **

I am absolutely THRILLED to share this exciting COVER REVEAL with you all today! 

Betrayal 

by Lilja Sigurðardóttir

translated by Quentin Bates

Published by Orenda Books

E book : July 2020

Print : October 2020 

Burnt-out and traumatised by her horrifying experiences around the world, aid worker Úrsula has returned to Iceland. Unable to settle, she accepts a high-profile government role in which she hopes to make a difference again.

But on her first day in the post Úrsula promises to help a mother seeking justice for a daughter raped by a policeman, and life in high office soon becomes much more harrowing than Úrsula bargained for. A homeless man is stalking her – but is he hounding her, or warning her of some danger? And why has the death of her father in police custody so many years ago reared its head again? 

As Úrsula is drawn into the dirty world of politics, and faces increasingly deadly threats, the lives of her stalker, her bodyguard and even a witch-like cleaning lady intertwine. Small betrayals become large ones, and the stakes are raised ever higher… 

Exploring the harsh worlds of politics, police corruption and misogyny, Betrayal is a relevant, powerful, fast-paced thriller that feels just that little bit too close to reality…

Icelandic crime-writer Lilja Sigurdardóttir was born in the town of Akranes in 1972 and raised inMexico, Sweden, Spain and Iceland. 

An award-winning playwright, Lilja has written four crime novels, with Snare, the first in the Reykjavik Noir series, hitting bestseller lists worldwide. 

Trap was published in 2018, and a Book of the Year in Guardian. 

The film rights for the series have been bought by Palomar Pictures in California. 

Lilja lives in Reykjavík with her partner. 

Follow Lilja on Twitter @lilja1972 and on her website liljawriter.com

On The Road Not Taken by Paul Dodgson @pauldodgson BLOG TOUR #GuestReview @jaustenrulesok #RandomThingsTours @unbounders

On the Road Not Taken is a memoir about the transformational power of music. It begins with a boy growing up in a small town on the Kent coast in the 1970s, who learns to play the guitar and dreams of heading out on the open road with a head full of songs. But when the moment comes to make the choice he is not brave enough to try and do it for a living.

Time passes but the desire to explain the world through music never goes away. And as the years go by it gets harder and harder to risk looking like a fool, of doing the very thing he would most like to do, of actually being himself. Eventually, thirty-five years later, when it feels like time is running out, he walks out onto a stage in front of 500 people and begins to sing again.

What follows is an extraordinary period of self-discovery as he plays pubs, clubs, theatres and festivals, overcoming anxiety to experience the joy of performance.

On The Road Not Taken by Paul Dodgson was published in August 2019 by Unbound.

I'm delighted to welcome guest reviewer Louise Wykes to Random Things today, sharing her review of the book for the #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour.


You can find Louise on Twitter @jaustenrulesok

Louise's Review of On The Road Not Taken

On The Road Not Taken by Paul Dodgson was published by Unbound on 22nd August 2019. I would like to thank the publisher for sending me a copy to review and Anne Cater for agreeing to host my review on her blog. 

I was attracted to the blurb of this book as it promised a tale of someone who had left trying to fulfil his lifelong dream until later in life so was interested to read about how a journey like this would be undertaken. The author writes in his introduction that the book was not intended as a full autobiography but rather more of a memoir whereby he is moulding the story he is telling into something that is more palatable to a reader rather than a dry record of facts.. He accepts that the messiness of real life cannot be neatly tied up in the way a conventional novel could be. 

The author alternates his chapters between his young years in the late 1970s where he starts discovering more about music and how much it will consume his life and his current day life in 2016 and 2017. The chapters have song titles as headers and sometimes it becomes clear from what happens in each chapter why the song is chosen but for others it’s a little less obvious (well it was for me anyway). 

As a mum to three children who sometimes finds it hard to fit in reading with everyday life, I have to say I do appreciate short chapters but I felt in this book the chapters were too short to feel as if I was really involved in seeing the worlds that the author wanted me to see. I would have felt more engaged with the story in both timelines if each chapter had been longer and more involved. I know that the author is a songwriter also and maybe it was his intention to have little vignettes into his world but I felt they weren’t enough for me to feel as if I had an emotional connection with what was happening on the page. 

I felt that I engaged far more fully with the chapters dealing with the author’s childhood. There seemed to be more insight in these chapters and they moved me more. I felt in the chapters dealing with his current life that there seemed to be a wall between the author and myself as a reader. Maybe the author was
more conscious that these chapters were closer to him and his real life so maybe was unconsciously editing himself in his reactions. 

On the whole I felt that this book lacked narrative drive. I appreciate that this is a memoir and not a work of fiction, but I felt little compulsion to keep turning the pages to discover what happened in each time period, maybe if I had I may have enjoyed the book more. I also have to confess that I am not a musical person at all so I may not have been the intended audience. The writing is clean and concise and I really felt connected with the author in his childhood chapters and I am pleased that eventually the author succeeded in doing what he wanted, finally, in his life.

Paul Dodgson is a writer, radio producer, teacher and musician. 

Paul joined the BBC as a studio manager and went on to become a producer making programmes for all BBC Radio networks. 

In 2001 Paul left the BBC and has since written 16 plays for BBC Radio 4 and been a member of the Eastenders writing team. 

In the theatre Paul has written several plays for young people and been commissioned to write music and lyrics for five musicals including The Nutcracker at Theatre Royal Bath and Nuffield Southampton. 

Paul has taught creative writing around the world, has been writer-in-residence at Exeter University and a Hawthornden Fellow. 

Paul has a particular interest in teaching techniques of memoir writing and three of his BBC radio plays have told life stories including On The Road Not Taken, which began life on BBC Radio 4.

Twitter @pauldodgson