Title: Beauty and the Bridesmaid
Author: Lisa Souza
Received: CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: Could love be a nip/tuck away?
Having endured her mother’s fourthwedding, hypnotized by makeover shows and tempted by a Zvengali-esque image consultant named Kennedy J, über bridesmaid Dot Lindell launches into an odyssey of self improvement, plastic surgery and therapy.
Then new and improved Dot encounters former high school hottie John Miller. She begins a risky deception, convincing both John – and herself! – that she’s a totally different person. Maybe she can pull it off: after all, she’s unrecognizable.
But John introduces Dot to his best friend and that bully from her nightmares Jack Weston. Jack has changed since high school, too. He’s grown more dangerous.
Beauty and the Bridesmaid is a darkly comic tale of transformation and choices, frenemies and friendships, the heroic saga of a nice woman who only wants to look in the mirror and feel beautiful, but may find the price higher than she bargained.
Title: Greater Expectations
Author: Alexander McCabe
Received: CLP Blog Tours
Synopsis: It is said that the course of true love never runs smooth – even for us men. Yet it has never been easier to find love than in this modern digital era where the mighty computer has all but rendered Cupid redundant. Love is now to be found, quite literally, at your fingertips. Although love also seems to have changed with the times. This new love is deceitful and manipulative, cunning and untrustworthy. Love has gotten ugly. Thankfully, not all the answers to life’s mysteries are to be found in the computer and Cupid – battered and bruised as he may be – proves that he still has some game and a few tricks up his sleeve…
Title: That Old Black Magic
Author: Caroline Fardig
Received: Caroline Fardig
Synopsis: Lizzie Hart is back—snooping, lying, and chick-fighting to uncover the truth, hoping not to break any hearts along the way…especially her own. Lizzie hoped her first day back at work after nearly being killed would be uneventful. No such luck. Before she can finish her morning coffee, she and her co-workers find a dead body on the rooftop of their office. Media vultures that they are, the Liberty Chronicle employees are psyched to have first-hand news to report. Lizzie, however, is devastated when she realizes that the victim is her ex-boyfriend’s brother. When evidence begins piling up against one of Lizzie’s friends, she reluctantly dons her detective hat once again, determined to find the real killer. She’s not thrilled about chasing another psychopath around, but she’ll do anything for a friend. Lizzie’s love life is rapidly becoming a hot mess, too. Her latest attempt at sleuthing isn’t leaving much time for her budding romance with town hunk Blake Morgan. Add that to the fact she’s hiding a secret so big it could rock the very core of their relationship, it’s no wonder that Lizzie’s in a tizzy. Poor Lizzie ends up juggling a murder investigation, a wacky Wiccan coven, and two men vying for her attention—all while nursing injuries left over from the last time she decided to play Nancy Drew. It’s a good thing she always has a few tricks up her sleeve.
Title: Risking Ruin
Author: Mae Wood
Received: Mae Wood
Synopsis: Marisa Tanner’s most important client, multi-billion dollar family-owned Brannon Company, has been sued by nine of its employees for sexual harassment. Marisa is a pro at handling sexual harassment allegations, but will she be able to handle the CEO’s prodigal son as well as she can handle the lawsuits?
Clients are off-limits and Marisa could lose her law license and livelihood, but Memphis playboy Trip keeps making strong plays for her.
Their attraction is undeniable and chemistry electric. Can she have her career and Trip, too, or will she have to choose?
A steamy debut novel by Mae Wood, “Risking Ruin” is a standalone novel that blends the worlds of chick-lit and steamy contemporary romance to create a world filled with strong characters in the lush environment of Memphis, Tennessee.
Title: Venus Rising
Author: Celia Kennedy
Received: Celia Kennedy
Synopsis: Akshaya Bertrand is a Professor of Art History at an elite college in New England. The patina of the ivy league campus is the perfect canvas for the exotic beauty from India. It is also an environment that Akshaya can safely navigate. A small world that she has minimized and made manageable.
Dr. Jared Harrison, a journalist who has been based in the Middle East, has accepted a position as a guest lecturer at the college where Akshaya teaches. Arriving just in time to attend a faculty mixer, he catches a glimpse of Akshaya Bertrand. Immediately, he learns from those who have tried and failed, that the beautiful professor, compared to Lakshmi, Venus and Aphrodite, is an enigma, a seductive sculpture behind a wall of glass.
While searching for a way to slip past her armor and into her life, Jared confronts the images and tragedies imprinted on his psyche by those left behind in the war torn world of the Middle East. Akshaya and Jared find themselves drawn to each other, hoping to find compassion, someone they can expose their inner demons to.
Funding from the college provides an opportunity to combine Akshaya’s love of art with Jared’s resources as a war correspondent. Together, they travel to Afghanistan and India, where both finally face the past that has shaped them and the present that defines them.
Amongst beauty and poverty as well as war and friendship they find the answers to their individual truths.
Title: Mercy Snow
Author: Tiffany Baker
Received: She Reads Book Club
Synopsis: In the tiny town of Titan Falls, New Hampshire, the paper mill dictates a quiet, steady rhythm of life. But one day a tragic bus accident sets two families on a course toward destruction, irrevocably altering the lives of everyone in their wake.
June McAllister is the wife of the local mill owner and undisputed first lady in town. But the Snow family, a group of itinerant ne’er-do-wells who live on a decrepit and cursed property, have brought her–and the town–nothing but grief.
June will do anything to cover up a dark secret she discovers after the crash, one that threatens to upend her picture-perfect life, even if it means driving the Snow family out of town. But she has never gone up against a force as fierce as the young Mercy Snow. Mercy is determined to protect her rebellious brother, whom the town blames for the accident, despite his innocence. And she has a secret of her own. When an old skeleton is discovered not far from the crash, it beckons Mercy to solve a mystery buried deep within the town’s past.
