OPPOSITION by Jennifer Armentrout Launch + Giveaway!

The countdown for the highly anticipated 5th book in the Lux series written by Jennifer Armentrout is now over!  To celebrate Opposition's release, I have here an excerpt and a fabulous giveaway for all of you.

   

I still stared at Daemon, completely aware that everyone else except him was watching me. Closely. But why wouldn’t he look at me? A razor-sharp panic clawed at my insides. No. This couldn’t be happening. No way.
 My body was moving before I even knew what I was doing. 
From the corner of my eye, I saw Dee shake her head and one of the Luxen males step forward, but I was propelled by an inherent need to prove that my worst fears were not coming true.

After all, he’d healed me, but then I thought of what Dee had said, of how Dee had behaved with me. What if Daemon was like her? Turned into something so foreign and cold? He would’ve healed me just to make sure he was okay.

I still didn’t stop.
 Please, I thought over and over again. Please. Please. Please. On shaky legs, I crossed the long room, and even though Daemon hadn’t seemed to even acknowledge my existence, I walked right up to him, my hands trembling as I placed them on his chest.

“Daemon?” I whispered, voice thick.

His head whipped around, and he was suddenly staring down at me. Our gazes collided once more, and for a second I saw something so raw, so painful in those beautiful eyes. And then his large hands wrapped around my upper arms. The contact seared through the shirt I wore, branding my skin, and I thought—I expected—that he would pull me against him, that he would embrace me, and even though nothing would be all right, it would be better.

Daemon’s hands spasmed around my arms, and I sucked in an unsteady breath.

His eyes flashed an intense green as he physically lifted me away from him, setting me back down a good foot back. I stared at him, something deep in my chest cracking. “Daemon?”

He said nothing as he let go, one finger at a time, it seemed, and his hands slid off my arms. He stepped back, returning his attention to the man behind the desk.

“So . . . awkward,” murmured the redhead, smirking.

I was rooted to the spot in which I stood, the sting of rejection burning through my skin, shredding my insides like I was nothing more than papier-mâché.

“I think someone was expecting more of a reunion,” the Luxen male behind the desk said, his voice ringing with amusement. “What do you think, Daemon?”

One shoulder rose in a negligent shrug. “I don’t think anything.”

My mouth opened, but there were no words. His voice, his tone, wasn’t like his sister’s, but like it had been when we first met. He used to speak to me with barely leashed annoyance, where a thin veil of tolerance dripped from every word. The rift in my chest deepened.
 For the hundredth time since the Luxen arrived, Sergeant Dasher’s warning came back to me. What side would Daemon and his family stand on? A shudder worked its way down my spine. I wrapped my arms around myself, unable to truly process what had just happened.

“And you?” the man asked. When no one answered, he tried again. “Katy?”

I was forced to look at him, and I wanted to shrink back from his stare. “What?” I was beyond caring that my voice broke on that one word.

The man smiled as he walked around the desk. My gaze flickered over to Daemon as he shifted, drawing the attention of the beautiful redhead. “Were you expecting a more personal greeting?” he asked. “Perhaps something more intimate?” 

I had no idea how to answer. I felt like I’d fallen into the rabbit hole, and warnings were firing off left and right. Something primal inside me recognized that I was surrounded by predators. 

Completely.

Opposition (Lux #5)

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Entangled Teen

Release Date: August 5th 2014

Blurb:

Katy knows the world changed the night the Luxen came.

She can't believe Daemon welcomed his race or stood by as his kind threatened to obliterate every last human and hybrid on Earth. But the lines between good and bad have blurred, and love has become an emotion that could destroy her—could destroy them all.

Daemon will do anything to save those he loves, even if it means betrayal.

They must team with an unlikely enemy if there is any chance of surviving the invasion. But when it quickly becomes impossible to tell friend from foe, and the world is crumbling around them, they may lose everything— even what they cherish most—to ensure the survival of their friends…and mankind.

War has come to Earth. And no matter the outcome, the future will never be the same for those left standing.

You can purchase Opposition at the following retailers:
AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | iTUNES | INDIEBOUND | Others via ENTANGLED

Other books in the Lux series:

  

  

About the Author 

# 1 NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY Bestselling author Jennifer lives in Martinsburg, West Virginia. All the rumors you’ve heard about her state aren’t true. When she’s not hard at work writing. she spends her time reading, working out, watching really bad zombie movies, pretending to write, and hanging out with her husband and her Jack Russell Loki. 

Her dreams of becoming an author started in algebra class, where she spent most of her time writing short stories….which explains her dismal grades in math. Jennifer writes young adult paranormal, science fiction, fantasy, and contemporary romance. She is published with Spencer Hill Press, Entangled Teen and Brazen, Disney/Hyperion and Harlequin Teen. Her book Obsidian has been optioned for a major motion picture and her Covenant Series has been optioned for TV.
She also writes adult and New Adult romance under the name J. Lynn. She is published by Entangled Brazen and HarperCollins.

Follow her on these sites

   

We will be giving away a Lux Series Basket with Lux themed jewelry, a signed set of the Lux Series and a $50 gift card to a retailer of the winner’s choice (Amazon, Barnes&Noble, or Indiebound)

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10 Things About Delilah S. Dawson, Author of Servants of the Storm + Giveaway

Hi everyone! Today we are welcoming August with another visit from a lovely YA debut author. Some of you may know our guest from her adult Steampunk series called Blud and have been aware that she's breaking into YA fiction this month. But for those who don't, we'd like to introduce Delilah S. Dawson and her upcoming Paranormal novel, Servants of the Storm, which will be released on August 5th! I think I speak for all three of us when I say we're very excited about this new addition to the Paranormal genre. :)

And to know more about her, we asked Delilah to share ten things about herself that the literary community has yet to know. We're thrilled that she said yes and wrote this honest-to-goodness guest post for all of us!

by Delilah S. Dawson

For real. I got paid $100 cash to go to kids' birthday parties in character. Sometimes, I was Barney, in the big, sweaty costume. Sometimes, I was Jasmine from Aladdin, although that (too skimpy) costume had a cigarette burn (from someone else) in the leg, and the kids always asked about it, and I always said it was Genie's fault.

I was a straight-A goody-goody, so when I went to Milan for a student exchange trip, I decided I would just play along. The Italian students liked to drink a lot, and it wasn't against the law, so I figured I would try it. Nothing untoward happened; mainly, they asked me to help them talk to the American girls because I was the only one there who was really bilingual. The next day, thoroughly hungover, I got on a bus in Florence and barfed on a priest. I was so embarrassed I jumped off at the next stop and got totally lost.

Maybe the bookish world knows it, but I'm a rape survivor. I dated this guy for a while before the trip, but he was very controlling and volatile, so I dumped him. He called me a goddess, an angel, the perfect girl. When I fell off that pedestal and rebuffed him, he couldn't handle it. He stalked me, once sitting behind me and my date at the movies, which I didn't discover until after the lights went up. He said he wanted to talk privately, and I wanted to be nice, so I went with him. And then he pulled out a knife. That night taught me a lot about trust, about guys who assume they have the right to define girls, about how even when someone thinks they can break me, they can't. To this day, I constantly look behind me when I'm at the movies.

That's “a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.” Which means that each letter and number has a permanent color and a feeling to me. Words have colors and sometimes tastes, and I can't memorize a phone number if the number colors don't “go” together. I think that's one reason why I build very deep worlds in my books: I want to taste them, smell them, feel them. The first time I noticed it was in Kindergarten, when we were studying the letter W. The poster on the wall had a yellow W, and I told the teacher that it was wrong, that W was red. She dinged me on my progress report for being rude and talking back. I didn't know it was a real thing until I was a senior in high school; I thought I was just weird.

When I was a little kid, the lady who ran the art center where I took drawing classes said, “When you're 14, I'll hire you.” I took her at her word, applied for a work permit, and showed up on my 14^th birthday to ask for a job. She gave it to me and became my mentor. My first responsibility? Making her coffee. I worked at that art center all through high school, went back to help out during summer and Christmas holidays during college, and quit my corporate job in 2004 to go back and act as her second in command as she battled cancer. We lost her in 2007, and I miss her every day. My second book is dedicated to her. It was a really great job.

I've swum with sharks, ridden an elephant, and taken flying trapeze lessons 

When I was young, I was scared of almost everything, even rides at Epcot. Now, I yearn to try new things that make my heart flutter.

I was a pudgy, introverted, socially awkward kid who didn't fit in. In elementary school, I just liked reading and drawing horses, so kids called me Horse. One kid used to spit on me on the bus. Middle school was hell. High school got better, once I found my tribe in Drama and Odyssey of the Mind. What finally ended the bullying was when the biggest bully in the school demanded a piece of my birthday cake when I turned 17, and I told him no. He said to meet him behind the church after school so we could fight. I told him that would be awesome and that I would be there to kick his ass. He never showed. And he never spoke a word to me again.

My biggest dream as a kid was to have my own horse, and now I do. She's a Tennessee Walker named Polly, and I love going trail riding with her in the mountains.

When I was eighteen, I was depressed for a lot of reasons, some very real and some a bit imaginary, and I made a very foolish choice. Luckily, I lived through it. When I tell you it gets better, I mean it. I would've missed out on so many wonderful things. I would've never realized how happy I could be, how strong I would become. The best things are waiting on the other side of the hill.

I'm on Twitter (@DelilahSDawson) and Tumblr (www.delilahsdawson.tumblr.com), which means you can ask me stuff in 140 character bursts on via an anonymous Ask. Whether you want to be a writer, want to know things about my books, or just need to share your story, I love hearing from readers.

Thank you so much for such a candid post, Delilah! Your strength and honesty brings inspiration to the three of us, and I'm sure to the other readers who have read this as well. It was amazing having you here to share these genuine experiences to everyone!

Servants of the Storm
by Delilah S. Dawson

Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Simon Pulse

Release Date: August 5th 2014

Blurb:

A year ago Hurricane Josephine swept through Savannah, Georgia, leaving behind nothing but death and destruction — and taking the life of Dovey's best friend, Carly. Since that night, Dovey has been in a medicated haze, numb to everything around her. 

But recently she's started to believe she's seeing things that can't be real ... including Carly at their favorite cafe. Determined to learn the truth, Dovey stops taking her pills. And the world that opens up to her is unlike anything she could have imagined. 

As Dovey slips deeper into the shadowy corners of Savannah — where the dark and horrifying secrets lurk — she learns that the storm that destroyed her city and stole her friend was much more than a force of nature. And now the sinister beings truly responsible are out to finish what they started.

Dovey's running out of time and torn between two paths. Will she trust her childhood friend Baker, who can't see the threatening darkness but promises to never give up on Dovey and Carly? Or will she plot with the sexy stranger, Isaac, who offers all the answers — for a price? Soon Dovey realizes that the danger closing in has little to do with Carly ... and everything to do with Dovey herself.

You can purchase Servants of the Storm at the following Retailers:

    

  

  

About the Author 

Delilah S. Dawson is the award-winning author of the Blud series, including Wicked as They Come, Wicked After Midnight, and Wicked as She Wants, winner of the RT Book Reviews Steampunk Book of the Year and May Seal of Excellence for 2013. Her next book is Servants of the Storm, a YA Southern Gothic Horror set in Savannah, GA, followed in 2015 by a pre-dystopian called HIT about teen assassins in a bank-owned America. Delilah is also the author of several short stories, comics, and a playable world in Storium. She lives in the North Georgia mountains with her family, and she's a major geek.

Follow her on these sites
    

What are you most excited about Servants of the Storm? Any thoughts on Delilah's guest post? Share them in the comments and for those of you in the US and Canada, don't forget to enter the signed giveaway below. Thank you and good luck!

Prize: A SIGNED hardcover copy of Servants of the Storm by Delilah S. Dawson

US/Canada Only
Must be at least 13 years old to enter
Ends 8/15

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Dying for a Living Blog Tour: Author Kory Shrum's 7 Favorite Books Read This Year (w/ a Giveaway!)

A Tale for the Time Being

by Ruth Ozeki

Ruth Ozeki's third novel, shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2013. 
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in a ways she can scarcely imagine.

Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.


Full of Ozeki’s signature humour and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

by Mason Currey

Franz Kafka, frustrated with his living quarters and day job, wrote in a letter to Felice Bauer in 1912, “time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.”

Kafka is one of 161 inspired—and inspiring—minds, among them, novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians, who describe how they subtly maneuver the many (self-inflicted) obstacles and (self-imposed) daily rituals to get done the work they love to do, whether by waking early or staying up late; whether by self-medicating with doughnuts or bathing, drinking vast quantities of coffee, or taking long daily walks. Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up in the kitchen, the top of the refrigerator as his desk, dreamily fondling his “male configurations”. . . Jean-Paul Sartre chewed on Corydrane tablets (a mix of amphetamine and aspirin), ingesting ten times the recommended dose each day . . . Descartes liked to linger in bed, his mind wandering in sleep through woods, gardens, and enchanted palaces where he experienced “every pleasure imaginable.”

Here are: Anthony Trollope, who demanded of himself that each morning he write three thousand words (250 words every fifteen minutes for three hours) before going off to his job at the postal service, which he kept for thirty-three years during the writing of more than two dozen books . . . Karl Marx . . . Woody Allen . . . Agatha Christie . . . George Balanchine, who did most of his work while ironing . . . Leo Tolstoy . . . Charles Dickens . . . Pablo Picasso . . . George Gershwin, who, said his brother Ira, worked for twelve hours a day from late morning to midnight, composing at the piano in pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers . . .

Here also are the daily rituals of Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol, John Updike, Twyla Tharp, Benjamin Franklin, William Faulkner, Jane Austen, Anne Rice, and Igor Stravinsky (he was never able to compose unless he was sure no one could hear him and, when blocked, stood on his head to “clear the brain”).

Brilliantly compiled and edited, and filled with detail and anecdote, Daily Rituals is irresistible, addictive, magically inspiring.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

by Susan Cain

On the morning before her 67th death, it is business as usual for Jesse Sullivan: meet with the mortician, counsel soon-to-be-dead clients, and have coffee while reading the latest regeneration theory. Jesse dies for a living, literally. As a Necronite, she is one of the population’s rare 2% who can serve as a death replacement agent, dying so others don’t have to. Although each death is different, the result is the same: a life is saved, and Jesse resurrects days later with sore muscles, new scars, and another hole in her memory.

But when Jesse is murdered and becomes the sole suspect in a federal investigation, more than her freedom and sanity are at stake. She must catch the killer herself—or die trying.

Here

by Wislawa Szymborska

An exciting collection of poems by Wislawa Szymborska. When Here was published in Poland, reviewers marveled, “How is it that she keeps getting better?” These twenty-seven poems, as rendered by prize-winning translators Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak, are among her greatest ever. Whether writing about her teenage self, microscopic creatures, or the upsides to living on Earth, she remains a virtuoso of form, line, and thought.

The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)

by Robert Galbraith

A brilliant debut mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel's suicide.
After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.

Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this.

Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

Never Fall Down

by Patricia McCormick

This National Book Award nominee from two-time finalist Patricia McCormick is the unforgettable story of Arn Chorn-Pond, who defied the odds to survive the Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979 and the labor camps of the Khmer Rouge.

Based on the true story of Cambodian advocate Arn Chorn-Pond, and authentically told from his point of view as a young boy, this is an achingly raw and powerful historical novel about a child of war who becomes a man of peace. It includes an author's note and acknowledgments from Arn Chorn-Pond himself.

When soldiers arrive in his hometown, Arn is just a normal little boy. But after the soldiers march the entire population into the countryside, his life is changed forever.

Arn is separated from his family and assigned to a labor camp: working in the rice paddies under a blazing sun, he sees the other children dying before his eyes. One day, the soldiers ask if any of the kids can play an instrument. Arn's never played a note in his life, but he volunteers.

This decision will save his life, but it will pull him into the very center of what we know today as the Killing Fields. And just as the country is about to be liberated, Arn is handed a gun and forced to become a soldier.

Supports the Common Core State Standards.

Spin (Spin Saga #1)

by Robert Charles Wilson

One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.

Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.

 Thank you so much for sharing your favorite reads Kory! I haven't heard of most of them, but some of these books definitely pique my interest.

Read on to know more about Kory M. Shrum and her Fantasy/Mystery book, Dying for a Living, and don't forget to enter the giveaway for a chance to win copies and a $25 Amazon GC.

Dying for a Living (Jesse Sullivan #1) by Kory M. Shrum

Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Timberlane Press

Release Date: March 4th 2014

Blurb:

On the morning before her 67th death, it is business as usual for Jesse Sullivan: meet with the mortician, counsel soon-to-be-dead clients, and have coffee while reading the latest regeneration theory. Jesse dies for a living, literally. As a Necronite, she is one of the population’s rare 2% who can serve as a death replacement agent, dying so others don’t have to. Although each death is different, the result is the same: a life is saved, and Jesse resurrects days later with sore muscles, new scars, and another hole in her memory.

But when Jesse is murdered and becomes the sole suspect in a federal investigation, more than her freedom and sanity are at stake. She must catch the killer herself—or die trying.

You can purchase Dying for a Living at the following Retailers:

    

  

Author Bio

Kory M. Shrum lives in Michigan with her partner and a ferocious guard pug. When not writing, she can be found teaching, traveling, and wearing a gi. Her poetry has appeared in North American Review, Bateau and elsewhere. Her first urban fantasy novel Dying for a Living is now available on Amazon, as well as her short story, Dive. She’d love to hear from you on Facebook, G+, her blog, or Twitter.

Follow her on these sites
  

4 Winners will receive an  E-Copy of  Dying For a Living +Signed Bookmarks by Kory M. Shrum.
1 Winner will receive a $25.00 Amazon Gift Card.
Must be 13+ to Enter
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