Books, Giveaway, Reading

Special Feature/Giveaway: TICKETS TO AllSoulsCon (an ALL SOULS TRILOGY exclusive event)

by The Lit Bitch4 Comments on Special Feature/Giveaway: TICKETS TO AllSoulsCon (an ALL SOULS TRILOGY exclusive event)

AllSoulsCon is coming! What is AlSoulsCon you ask? Well it’s a fan-run one-day convention celebrating THE ALL SOULS TRILOGY, taking place September 12th in Los Angeles but available to fans all over the world via livestream. Deborah is attending, as is audiobook reader Jennifer Ikeda, and it’s going to be an outstanding opportunity to meet them and fellow fans, enjoy AST-inspired food, wine, contests, and a lot more! You can see the schedule here, but highlights include:

  • Q&A sessions with Deborah Harkness and Jennifer Ikeda
  • A Renaissance Music Workshop, with performances by University of Southern California musicians and featuring original compositions by Isaias Garcia
  • A fan panel (details to come)
  • There are a lot more events happening so be sure to check out their website for more exciting details!

Thanks to the All Souls publisher, Penguin/Viking and the people at AllSoulsCon, I am able to offer a virtual ticket for giveaway—the winner will be able to attend the Con from anywhere by computer.

So with that bit of exciting news, here is how to enter the giveaway!

Giveaway runs 8/26/15 to 9/1/15

Winners will be announced 9/2/15.

(how to enter)

On this blog you must leave a comment to be entered in the giveaway.  Your comment MUST include your email so I can contact you….if you do not enter an email in the comments your entry will be void. Winners will be notified by email the day after the giveaway closes and have five days to respond, it not another winner will be chosen. 

(GIVEAWAY OPEN TO US ONLY AND NO PO BOX)

Make sure you note if you have done the following for more chances to win: Tweet about the giveaway (+1), share on Facebook (+1), like The Lit Bitch on Facebook (+1), follow The Lit Bitch on Twitter (+1), subscribe to The Lit Bitch’s blog (+1). Tweet/RT about the giveaway (+1). Share about the giveaway (+1).

Book Critic, Book Review, Books, Literary Criticism, Reading

Review: Decompression by Juli Zeh

by The Lit BitchLeave a Comment on Review: Decompression by Juli Zeh

German attorney Sven Fiedler and his girlfriend, Antje, move to the Cayman Islands, where he hopes to escape a culture of materialism. On the Cayman Islands, Sven hopes things will be simpler and more relaxing….less of a rat race, which is exactly what Sven finds. Basically, life couldn’t be better for Sven and Antje.

Sven and Antje open up a diving business and Sven’s approach was simple: take the mechanics of diving seriously, instruct his clients clearly, and stay out of their personal business as best he can. Life is going well for them….until two German tourists–Jola von der Pahlen, a daytime soap star on the verge of cinematic success, and Theo Hast, a stalled novelist–engage Sven for a high-priced, intensive two-week diving experience. The tourists will stay with Sven and Antje in their guest house….but things soon become a little….tense.

Sven is struck by Jola’s beauty, her evident wealth, and her apparently volatile relationship with the much older Theo. Theo quickly leaps to the conclusion that Sven and Jola are having an affair, but, oddly, he seems to facilitate it rather than trying to intervene. Antje, looking on, grows increasingly wary of these particular clients.

A game of delusion, temptation, and manipulation plays out, pointing toward a violent end. But a quiet one, down in the underwater world beneath the waves.

This book was a bit of a chance read for me. I like psychological thrillers but this one just didn’t up and grab me right away as a ‘must read’ for me. But I was between books and looking for something just different….and this sounded like a good option. German writer, modern psychological thriller, about diving, alternating POVs, set in the tropics……sounds about as far from my normal reading as I can get.

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Books, Reading

Spotlight Feature: DECORUM by Kaaren Christopherson

by The Lit BitchLeave a Comment on Spotlight Feature: DECORUM by Kaaren Christopherson

02_DecorumDecorum: A Novel
by Kaaren Christopherson

Publication Date: March 31, 2015
Kensington Publishing Corp.
Foramts: eBook, Paperback, Audio
Pages: 425

Genre: Historical Fiction/Romance

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Kaaren Christopherson’s brilliantly observed novel captures the glamour and grit of one of the world’s most dazzling cities during one of its most tumultuous eras–as seen through the eyes of a singularly captivating heroine…

In 1890s New York, beautiful, wealthy Francesca Lund is an intriguing prospect for worthy suitors and fortune hunters alike. Recently orphaned, she copes by working with the poor in the city’s settlement movement. But a young woman of means can’t shun society for long, and Francesca’s long-standing acquaintance with dashing Edmund Tracey eventually leads to engagement. Yet her sheltered upbringing doesn’t blind her to the indiscretions of the well-to-do…

Among the fashionable circle that gathers around her there are mistresses, scandals, and gentlemen of ruthless ambition. And there is Connor O’Casey–an entirely new kind of New Yorker. A self-made millionaire of Irish stock, Connor wants more than riches. He wants to create a legacy in the form of a luxury Madison Avenue hotel–and he wants Francesca by his side as he does it. In a quest that will take her from impeccable Manhattan salons to the wild Canadian Rockies, Francesca must choose not only between two vastly different men, but between convention and her own emerging self-reliance.

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Books, Reading

Special Feature: THE DISTANCE by Helen Giltrow

by The Lit BitchLeave a Comment on Special Feature: THE DISTANCE by Helen Giltrow

A dark, ultra-contemporary, and relentlessly paced debut thriller about a London society woman trying to put her secret criminal past behind her, and the hit man who comes to her with an impossible job she can’t refuse.

Charlotte Alton is an elegant socialite. But behind the locked doors of her sleek, high-security apartment in London’s Docklands, she becomes Karla. Karla’s business is information. Specifically, making it disappear. She’s the unseen figure who, for a commanding price, will cover a criminal’s tracks. A perfectionist, she’s only made one slip in her career—several years ago she revealed her face to a man named Simon Johanssen, an ex-special forces sniper turned killer-for-hire.

After a mob hit went horrifically wrong, Johanssen needed to disappear, and Karla helped him. He became a regular client, and then, one day, she stepped out of the shadows for reasons unclear to even herself. Now, after a long absence, Johanssen has resurfaced with a job, and he needs Karla’s help again. The job is to take out an inmate—a woman—inside an experimental prison colony. But there’s no record the target ever existed. That’s not the only problem: the criminal boss from whom Johanssen has been hiding is incarcerated there. That doesn’t stop him. It’s Karla’s job to get him out alive, and to do that she must uncover the truth.

Who is this woman? Who wants her dead? Is the job a trap for Johanssen or for her? But every door she opens is a false one, and she’s getting desperate to protect a man—a killer—to whom she’s inexplicably drawn. Written in stylish, sophisticated prose, The Distance is a tense and satisfying debut in which every character, both criminal and law-abiding, wears two faces, and everyone is playing a double game.

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Book Critic, Book Review, Books, Literary Criticism, Reading

Review: At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen

by The Lit Bitch1 Comment on Review: At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen

Maddie has not idea that New Years Eve 1942 is going to be a day where everything in her life changes The belle os the ball and Philadelphia society is married to Ellis and lives a life of shelter and privilege. While there is a war raging across the pond, Maddie and her husband Ellis aren’t really that in touch with it.

Ellis and his best friend Hank should be enlisting in the war like all the other men their age but they both have medical conditions and aren’t allowed to join. Ellis’s father is beyond ashamed of his son’s inability to enlist and reminds Ellis of it on a regular basis.

After an embarrassing episode at the New Years Eve party, Ellis and Maddie are cut off from Ellis’s family and decide to board a supply boat to Scotland where they will search for the infamous Loch Ness monster.

Hank decides to join Ellis and Maddie in hopes that all of them will gain fame, fortune, and above all that Ellis will get back on his father’s good graces.

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