Junkyard Bargain by Faith Hunter (Spotlight, excerpt, and review) LTP

 

 

Junkyard Bargain

by

Faith Hunter

 

 

Blurb: 

Sometimes before you can face your enemies—you need to confront yourself.



Time is running out for Shining Smith and her crew to gather the weapons they need to rescue one of their own. But will they even make it to the ultimate battle? First, they’ll need to hit the road to Charleston—a hell ride full of bandits, sex slavers, corrupt lawmen, and criminal bike gangs looking to move in on Shining’s territory.



Shining’s human allies will do anything to protect her—because they must. But will victory be worth it if she must compel more and more people to do her bidding? And will her feline warriors, the junkyard cats, remain loyal and risk their lives? Or are they just in it for the kibble?

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Excerpt:

JUNKYARD BARGAIN Part ONE

Buck Harlan—my friend, the closest thing I had left to a father—was dead because of me.

Dead protecting me.

My first thought in the morning, every morning.

Before coffee. Before breakfast. Every. Single. Morning.

His face, half eaten away by a swarm of genetically modified ants. His Outlaw Militia Warrior tattoos left untouched. The note warning me, clutched in his fingers.

I deliberately recalled everything, including tossing a half-empty gallon of Maltodine into the old Tesla fuselage, the vehicle that delivered Harlan. The accelerant burned his body to ash, obliterated the mutated ants that were eating him, and destroyed any evidence that might suggest I had killed my only friend in the world.

I studied his face, the position of his fingers, in my memory. Every detail was seared into my soul like a prayer for vengeance. The memories of death and debts owed.

I stared at the ceiling of my office, the smooth metal alloy reflecting the faint lights. So many secrets to hide. And three things to do: carry on my father’s legacy, keep myself hidden from the people who would try to use me, and take revenge on Harlan’s killers.

The weight of all that was heavy, even this early, still in my bed, and my memory darted back to Pops shouting to get me up in the mornings after Little Mama died and the war still raged. “Get your ass outta bed, Little Girl! We got PRC to kill!” Every morning.

The smell of coffee was fresh and potent in the filtered air, the trickle of water into the pot what awakened me. Coffee meant work, weapons to obtain, weapons that could take down my enemy—the queen who killed Harlan and sent his body to me, then followed it here to Smith’s Junk and Scrap and attacked me and mine.

I had won that first battle, but if I waited until that queen, Clarisse Warhammer, attacked me again, I would end up as dead as Harlan. I needed to go to war against her and her thralls. Soon. As soon as I had possession of the weapons to make victory possible. As soon as I found her nest, I’d go to war. For Harlan.

Amazon link

 

Release date: October 19, 2021

Publisher: Bella Rosa Books

 

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About Faith Hunter:

 

Faith Hunter is the award-winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of several series: Jane Yellowrock, Soulwood, Rogue Mage, and Junkyard Cats. In addition, she has edited multiple anthologies and co-authored the Rogue Mage RPG. She is the coauthor and author of 16 thrillers under pen names Gary Hunter and Gwen Hunter. Altogether she has 40+ books and dozens of short stories in print and is juggling multiple projects.



She sold her first book in 1989 and hasn’t stopped writing since.

Faith collects orchids and animal skulls, loves thunderstorms, and writes. She drinks a lot of tea. She likes to kayak Class II & III whitewater rivers. Some days she’s a lady. Some days she ain't.

Find Faith online at -

Website 

Gwen Hunter 

Facebook (official)

Facebook fan group 

Twitter: @hunterfaith

Yellowrock Securities website  

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My review:

 

3.75 out of 5 stars

 

 

Junkyard Bargain by Faith Hunter is the sequel to “Junkyard Cats,” and continues to showcase Shining Smith. Her quest to save a woman being held hostage and tortured leads her to discover more about her allies and enemies, and forces her to confront some of her deepest fears.

 

 

This gritty urban fantasy/science-fiction story is dark and somewhat depressing but has very vivid imagery. It was a little difficult to understand this world since this is evidently the second in the series, so some of the background setup (hopefully) occurred in the first book. A little confusing to understand who the enemies are and what the end goals are, but the battle scenes are exciting and the interactions with the cats who are part of the heroine’s team are fascinating. I think it would be better to read the first story in the series to orient oneself and learn about the relationships, how the thralldom works, and the threat from alien bugs. I enjoyed elements of the story, but I was a bit overwhelmed by all of the unfamiliar concepts and conflicts.

 

 

A copy of this title was provided for review

Spells for the Dead by Faith Hunter (Spotlight, excerpt, and GIVEAWAY)

Spells for the Dead

by

Faith Hunter

About Spells for the Dead:


Nell Ingram faces a dark craft known as death magic in the newest pulse-pounding paranormal procedural in the New York Times bestselling Soulwood series.

Nell Ingram is a rookie PsyLed agent, using the powers she can channel from deep within the earth to solve paranormal crimes. Together with her team, she's taken on the darkest magic and the direst foes. But she'll need to tap into every ounce of power she has for her newest case.

Nell is called to the Tennessee mansion of a country music star and finds a disturbing scene—dead bodies rapidly decaying before everyone's eyes. The witch on her team, T. Laine, knows this can only be one thing: death magic, a rare type of craft used to steal life forces. PsyLed needs to find this lethal killer fast. But when a paranormal-hating FBI agent tries to derail the investigation, they find themselves under attack from all sides.


****************

EXCERPT THREE

There were a whole lotta possibilities in the little I knew. JoJo’s “Be careful” implied the scene was still potentially dangerous. More significant was that the dead on-site would be transported to the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, which had one of only a handful of forensic pathologists in the United States who also had a secondary certification in paranormal medicine. Para med was a rare specialty, and Nashville, which was much closer to the crime scene, had no such pathologist and no paranormal unit for patients. So, dead bodies, danger, paranormal, all sounded bad, but the bucolic setting was peaceful and the calm, measured body language of the first responders said everything was under control.

Maybe all the bodies were gone by now. That would suit me just fine. Having grown up at a church that practiced a form of communal farm living, I’d seen plenty of dead things, and even knew how to butcher animals for meat if necessary.

Didn’t mean I liked seeing dead people.

My phone vibrated and I looked at the screen. It was my sister Mud, and I let the call go to voicemail, knowing it was trouble I didn’t have time to deal with right now. She’d text me if it was something really urgent, but it had to involve spurting blood, active flames, or dead bodies to fall under that category. Arguments between sisters didn’t count no matter how bad they got. We had tried it the other way around, calling only when urgent, but I used texts for work, and the constant dinging of family texts was distracting, so they were used for true emergencies, calls for minor things. If my sisters killed each other, well, I’d deal with the mess and the cleanup when I got home. I ignored the voice mail too, though I wanted to bang my head on the steering wheel in frustration.

The coroner’s van trundled behind my vehicle, so I got out, made sure my weapon was securely seated in its Kydex shoulder holster, put on a casual jacket, and smoothed the driving wrinkles from my work pants. Opening the trunk, I retrieved my handheld psy-meter 1.0 and did a quick scan of the grounds and the house. Psy-meters picked up paranormal energies known as psions, but there was nothing much beyond normal ambient energies present outside. I put the psy-meter away and lifted out the milk crate that held my faded pink blanket and the potted tree before closing the trunk. “Sorry about the dark on the ride over,” I told the tree. “I’ll try to get something rigged so you can sit in the sunlight while I drive.”

***************************


About Faith Hunter:

Faith Hunter is the award-winning New York Times and USAToday bestselling author of the Jane Yellowrock, Soulwood, Rogue Mage, and Junkyard Cats series. In addition, she has edited several anthologies and co-authored the Rogue Mage RPG. She is the coauthor and author of 16 thrillers under pen names Gary Hunter and Gwen Hunter. Altogether she has 40+ books and dozens of short stories in print and is juggling multiple projects.

She sold her first book in 1989 and hasn’t stopped writing since.

Faith collects orchids and animal skulls, loves thunderstorms, and writes. She likes to cook soup, bake bread, garden, and kayak Class II & III whitewater rivers. She edits the occasional anthology and drinks a lot of tea. Some days she’s a lady. Some days she ain't.


Find Faith online at -


Website

Facebook (official)

Facebook

Twitter: @hunterfaith

Yellowrock Securities website

Gwen Hunter website
 

 

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Tour-wide Giveaway!

Enter to win some fabulous prizes!
Giveaway is open to US residents only.

• $25 Amazon or B&N e-giftcard 
• 3” wide armband
• 1.5” narrow armband
• Tea with Faith! Have tea with author Faith Hunter virtually via Zoom!

 a Rafflecopter giveaway


Check out all the tour stops at LTP

Shattered Bonds by Faith Hunter (Spotlight, excerpt, review, and GIVEAWAY) LTP

Image by GraphicMama-team from Pixabay

Happy Halloween!

********************

 Shattered Bonds

by

Faith Hunter

BLURB

Jane Yellowrock must dig deep and find strength within herself if she is to survive in the latest novel in this New York Times bestselling series.

Jane Yellowrock is vampire-killer-for-hire, but her last battle with an ancient arcane enemy has brought her low. She seeks retreat in the Appalachian Mountains to grieve the loss of her friends, and to heal—or to die—from the disease brought on by her magic.

But malevolent elements in the paranormal community still seek to destroy Jane, and a terrifying foe stalks her, even into the safety of the hills. With nowhere to run and her body failing, the rogue-vampire hunter and her inner Beast must discover a way to defeat this new threat, and find a form that gives her a chance to fight another day.

Mass Market Paperback

400 pages

$7.99

Published by Ace, Oct. 29, 2019

ISBN 9780399587986

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********************

SHATTERED BONDS 
by Faith Hunter
copyright Faith Hunter


Excerpt Eleven

Beast and I sat beside his chair and wrapped her long tail around our feet. The tail was warm with strong blood flow, thick, deeply furred, heavy, and cozy on our paws.

Alex leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. That made us eye-to-eye level, and brought his scent strongly to our nose. He smelled of testosterone and garlic and coffee and after-shave and worry. Beast butted his hands, which were laced and hanging between his knees in a posture that was very Eli-like. Alex’s mouth twisted into a parody of a smile and he scratched Beast behind her ears. “I’ve been in facetime conversation with Grégoire. Things have been happening fast in France, and there’re things Grégoire hasn’t told us, not wanting to worry you.”

Beast snarled. So did I. Blondie knew I was sick. Blondie had been keeping secrets.

“Ed,” Alex said gently, scratching, smoothing our lips back over our teeth. He looked into our eyes as if he was about to break my heart, “was stolen from his lair in France at midday, five days ago.”

My heart stuttered.

Ed? Beast asked.

Eli’s lips twitched. On another man it would have been a scowl like thunderclouds. “We weren’t notified,” Eli said. “Why?”

“There was a fight,” Alex said, even more gently, “in a farmhouse in the wine country of France. Four of Ed’s people were killed. The house where they were laired burned to the ground.”

“Ed?” our lips moved but no sound came out. Our eyes burned. But Alex didn’t appear to be grieved or as if he was about to tell me—

“His surviving people thought Ed had burrowed under the hearth, into a small safe-room lair, with three others. His vamps had been sharing blood and so they knew he was alive, but that was all they knew until they got the safe-room excavated.” Alex sounded so grown up. So adult. So much like Eli in his delivery, but with his own touch, that gentleness I would never have expected when I first met him. His fingers scratched deep and Beast closed our eyes in bliss. “Because of the heat of the fire and the presence of the local law,” he said, “that rescue took place only a few hours past. Ed wasn’t in the safe room. Grégoire now assumes that Ed was taken by the attackers the day of the assault.”

Ed in cage? Beast thought, opening our eyes.

“Once his people started looking, they discovered that Pellissier Clan’s Bombardier Learjet 85 flew out of Paris four days ago with Ed and four other vampires aboard—none of them Ed’s. The aircraft landed in the Bahamas and Ed’s passport was marked. Then he disappeared. They were getting ready to inform us when I called them first.”

Beast hissed deep inside me.

Purchase links

Amazon 

Barnes & Noble

The Book Depository

Indiebound

Audible

************************


Faith's books:


Faith Hunter's Jane Yellowrock series is a dark urban fantasy. Jane is a full blooded Cherokee skinwalker and hunter of rogue-vampires in a world of weres, witches, vampires, and other supernats.

Her Rogue Mage novels—Bloodring, Seraphs, Host, and the RPG Rogue Mage—feature Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage in a post-apocalyptic alternate reality.

The Soulwood series is a dark-urban fantasy / paranormal police procedural /para-thriller series featuring Nell Nicholson Ingram, an earth magic user and Special gent of PsyLED.


Author Bio and links:

Faith writes full-time, tries to keep house, and is a workaholic. She gave up cooking for lent one year and the oven hasn’t been turned on since. Okay – that’s a joke. She does still make cold cereal and sandwiches. Occasionally, she remembers to turn on Roomba (that she named Duma$$ because it fell down the stairs once.)

Faith researches in great detail, and tries most everything her characters do. Research led to her life’s passions – jewelry making, orchids, bones, travel, white-water kayaking, and writing.

Jewelry-making was the occupation of two of her characters: Thorn St. Croix, the Rogue Mage, and the main character of BloodStone, written by her pen name, Gwen Hunter. She fell in love with the art form. Faith makes, wears, and sometimes gives away her jewelry as promo items to fans and as prizes in contests. See her FaceBook Fan Page at http://www.facebook.com/official.faith.hunter for pics. She works with stones, pearls, crystal, and glass, wire wrapping larger, undrilled, focal stones. Labradorite, Amazonite, apatite, aquamarine, and prehnite are her favorite stones.


Faith loves orchids. Her favorite time of year is when several are blooming. Pictures can be seen at her FaceBook page. And yes, she collects bones and skulls. Many of her orchid pics are juxtaposed with bones and skulls —a fox, cat, dog, cow skull, goat, and deer skull, (that is, unfortunately, falling apart) and the jawbone of an ass. She just received a boar skull, and the skull of a mountain lion (legally purchased from a US tannery) killed in the wild.

She and her husband RV, traveling to whitewater rivers all over the Southeast.

And that leads Faith to kayaking – her very favorite sport. Faith discovered whitewater paddling when she was researching her (Gwen Hunter) mystery book, Rapid Descent. She took a lesson and—after a bout of panic attacks from fear of drowning—discovered she loved the sport.

Faith is one of the founders and a participant at the now defunct and archived www.MagicalWords.net, an online writing forum geared to helping writers. And she is a voracious reader.

Under other pen names, notably, Gwen Hunter, she writes action adventure, mysteries, and thrillers. As Gwen, she is a winner of the WH Smith Literary Award for Fresh Talent in 1995 in the UK, and won a Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award in 2008. As Faith, her books have been on the New York Times and USA Today Bestseller lists, been nominated for various awards and won an Audie Award with Khristine Hvam. Under all her pen names, she has more than 40 books, anthologies, and complications in print in 30 countries.


For more, including a list of her books, see www.faithhunter.net, www.gwenhunter.com, and www.magicalwords.net. To keep up with her daily, join her fan pages at Facebook


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GIVEAWAY





a Rafflecopter giveaway



******************


My review:

4.75 out of 5 stars

Shattered Bonds by Faith Hunter is part of the ‘Jane Yellowrock’ paranormal/urban fantasy series. Jane is still dealing with life-threatening complications, but her multiple roles require direct intervention, especially when her enemies strike close to home. She and Beast will have to discern whether some of her allies are friends or foes, and any mistakes may be deadly.

I enjoy books that feature kick-butt heroines, and this series definitely showcases its unique heroine who is not only a take-charge and opinionated female, but whose dual nature adds an entertaining perspective. I think it would be difficult for those who are not familiar with the series to appreciate all of the nuances, particularly given the number of different types of entities who have cameos or pivotal roles, but even if one doesn’t understand the alliances and maneuverings or the events that have led up to the situations Jane is dealing with, I suspect that newbies to the series will be impressed by the depth and vividness of the world-building and the intense connections between Jane and those around her.

There are wonderfully dramatic scenes, fascinating characters, gory fights, and beautiful demonstrations of the loving connections Jane has developed despite herself. Just when emotions seem in danger of overwhelming the reader, Beast provides a pithy comment or observation and lightens things a bit. I am in awe that many of the characters continue to evolve and deepen the reader’s connection to them and I admit to rereading the beautiful ending several times, sorry to see the story end.

The books in this series are enthralling and I always find myself racing through, desperate to discover how things turn out, and then I go back and revisit sections to better appreciate the nuances. This story was no exception, and I’ve read through multiple scenes over and over, especially those that contrast the savage side of this feisty heroine and her loving attachment to the youngsters she’s determined to keep safe, no matter what the cost. Above all, this book highlights faithfulness and faith, and I finished with a delighted, “aww,” even though I immediately wanted to have more of Jane’s adventures. Fans of the series will have fun with this addition; those new to the delights in store will undoubtedly want to start at the beginning (Skinwalker). Enjoy!

A copy of this title was provided to me for review

Circle of the Moon by Faith Hunter (Spotlight, excerpt, and giveaway) LTP

Circle of the Moon 

by

Faith Hunter

Set in the same world as Faith Hunter's New York Times bestselling Jane Yellowrock novels, the fourth Soulwood novel stars Nell Ingram, who channels her power from the earth.


Circle of the Moon, Faith Hunter’s 4th Soulwood Novel, is available February 26th! Keep up with Nell Ingram and the PsyLed bunch by following the tour stops February 11- March 11 to check out the reviews & excerpts, and to enter the giveaway!





Blurb:
 
Nell can draw magic from the land around her, and lately she's been using it to help the Psy-Law Enforcement Division, which solves paranormal crimes. Joining the team at PsyLED has allowed her to learn more about her powers and the world she always shunned--and to find true friends.

Head agent Rick LaFleur shifts into a panther when the moon calls him, but this time, something has gone wrong. Rick calls Nell from a riverbank--he's naked, with no memory of how he came to be there, and there's a dead black cat, sacrificed in a witch circle and killed by black magic, lying next to him.

Then more animals turn up dead, and team rushes to investigate. A blood-witch is out to kill. But when it seems as if their leader is involved in the crime, the bonds that hold the team together could shatter at any moment.


*******************


Excerpt:

Lainie made it to the parking lot in under an hour and a small KPD night-shift team met us in the parking area behind the warehouse-type building on Unnamed Road. Lainie and I went over the psy-meter numbers I had collected, and made an informed guess at the location of whatever or whoever awaited us in the brush near the creek. It hadn’t moved. I mentioned the robberies and the remote possibility that the two were related, based on my theory of a witch under glamour.

The KPD team listened in. There were six of us, the cops looking psyched at going into the wild and kind of freaked too, probably at the combination of an armed, magic-using suspect in the area, though I explained that the readings were wrong for a witch lying in the grass or for a vamp. There were no apparent heroes and no obvious para haters in the cop group, so that was good. Better was the fact that we could all share a single communications channel. After the crazy things that had happened with strange magic in the last year, KPD, KFD, and Knox County Sheriff’s Department had dedicated a single frequency to ops involving paranormal investigations or creatures. Most cops call it the para freq, and laughed.

Together we moved into the brush, every officer except T. Laine with service weapon drawn, tactical flashlight glaring, and wearing a vest. Over a shoulder, I carried a gobag with my pink blanket, tablet, and the psy-meter 2.0. T. Laine was armed with bright yellow number two pencils that R&D at PsyLED central in Virginia had imbued with a null force working to stop magic and magical attack. The null sticks were impossible for a human to activate, and painful for a witch to handle, making it nearly impossible for T. Laine, our moon witch, to carry a gun too, so she wore night-vision gear, both low-light and infrared oculars, and took a track beside me and a little ahead so my flash didn’t interfere with her headgear.

The null sticks were General brand pencils, with the word semi-hex on the side, surely a joke on the part of the witch who had spelled them. T. Laine carried one by the eraser and was ready to toss it at will.

As we moved through the tall grasses and brush, the only sounds were the trickle of water in the creek ahead and the swish of the summer grasses on our clothes. We’d have to do a thorough tick search when we got back to HQ. Maybe Lainie had a tick-search spell. That would be handy. Stupid thoughts to indulge in when there was something magical on the creek shore ahead.

“Halt,” T. Laine said softly into her mic. She turned to her right in small angled degrees. “Two o’clock from my location, twenty paces ahead. No live bodies in infrared, no DBs on low-light, but . . . something. The null sticks just flashed hot.”

“They shouldn’t flash hot unless there’s an active working,” I said. “Let me read the earth.” Which meant, let me put my fingers to the ground.

T. Laine tapped her mic and explained to the others, as she swished through the grass around me, “Ingram will be vulnerable, unable to seek cover in case of attack.”

“Copy,” several voices said.

-->


Buy link:

 Amazon


 **********************

About the author:

Faith Hunter's Jane Yellowrock series is a dark urban fantasy. Jane is a full blooded Cherokee skinwalker and hunter of rogue-vampires in a world of weres, witches, vampires, and other supernats.

Her Rogue Mage novels—Bloodring, Seraphs, Host, and the RPG Rogue Mage—feature Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage in a post-apocalyptic alternate reality.

The Soulwood series is a dark-urban fantasy / paranormal police procedural /para-thriller series featuring Nell Nicholson Ingram, an earth magic user and Special gent of PsyLED.

Faith writes full-time, tries to keep house, and is a workaholic. She gave up cooking for lent one year and the oven hasn’t been turned on since. Okay – that’s a joke. She does still make cold cereal and sandwiches. Occasionally, she remembers to turn on Roomba (that she named Duma$$ because it fell down the stairs once.)

Faith researches in great detail, and tries most everything her characters do. Research led to her life’s passions – jewelry making, orchids, bones, travel, white-water kayaking, and writing.

Jewelry-making was the occupation of two of her characters: Thorn St. Croix, the Rogue Mage, and the main character of BloodStone, written by her pen name, Gwen Hunter. She fell in love with the art form. Faith makes, wears, and sometimes gives away her jewelry as promo items to fans and as prizes in contests. See her FaceBook Fan Page at http://www.facebook.com/official.faith.hunter for pics. She works with stones, pearls, crystal, and glass, wire wrapping larger, undrilled, focal stones. Labradorite, Amazonite, apatite, aquamarine, and prehnite are her favorite stones.

Faith loves orchids. Her favorite time of year is when several are blooming. Pictures can be seen at her FaceBook page. And yes, she collects bones and skulls. Many of her orchid pics are juxtaposed with bones and skulls —a fox, cat, dog, cow skull, goat, and deer skull, (that is, unfortunately, falling apart) and the jawbone of an ass. She just received a boar skull, and the  skull of a mountain lion (legally purchased from a US tannery) killed in the wild.

She and her husband RV, traveling to whitewater rivers all over the Southeast.  

And that leads Faith to kayaking – her very favorite sport. Faith discovered whitewater paddling when she was researching her (Gwen Hunter) mystery book, Rapid Descent. She took a lesson and—after a bout of panic attacks from fear of drowning—discovered she loved the sport.

Faith is one of the founders and a participant at the now defunct and archived www.MagicalWords.net, an online writing forum geared to helping writers. And she is a voracious reader.

Under other pen names, notably, Gwen Hunter, she writes action adventure, mysteries, and thrillers. As Gwen, she is a winner of the WH Smith Literary Award for Fresh Talent in 1995 in the UK, and won a Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award in 2008. As Faith, her books have been on the New York Times and USA Today Bestseller lists, been nominated for various awards and won an Audie Award with Khristine Hvam. Under all her pen names, she has more than 40 books, anthologies, and complications in print in 30 countries.

For more, including a list of her books, see www.faithhunter.net , www.gwenhunter.com , and www.magicalwords.net. To keep up with her daily, join her fan pages at Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/official.faith.hunter

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GIVEAWAY

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TOUR STOPS

• Feb. 11 The Irresponsible Reader (review, excerpt, giveaway)
• Feb. 12 Diane Lynch (review & giveaway), Drops of Ink (excerpt & giveaway)
• Feb. 13 Urban Fantasy Investigations (excerpt)
• Feb. 14 Gizmo’s Reviews (review, excerpt)
• Feb. 15 Angel’s Guilty Pleasures (excerpt, Q&A)
• Feb. 16 The Book Crumb Trail (review, guest post)
• Feb. 18 Tome Tender (review, excerpt)
• Feb. 19 Books of My Heart (review, guest post), www.ken-schrader.com (excerpt, Q&A)
• Feb. 20 Scorching Book Reviews (review, excerpt)
• Feb. 21 Words I Write Crazy (review, excerpt)
• Feb. 22 BTH Reviews (review), musings of a moonlight writer (Q&A), The Reading Addict (excerpt)
• Feb. 25 Quirky Cats Fat Stacks (review, excerpt)
• Feb. 26 The Genre Minx Book Reviews (review, excerpt)
• Feb. 27 Slippery Words (review), Book Junkiez (excerpt)
• Feb. 28 Rantings of a Reading Addict (review, excerpt)
• Mar. 1 Vampire Book Club (excerpt, guest post)

Dark Queen by Faith Hunter (Spotlight, excerpt, review, and GIVEAWAY) LTP

There’s a tour-wide giveaway for 2 complete sets of the Jane Yellowrock series (all 12 books)!!
Open to US residents only; visit the blogs listed below to enter.

Dark Queen 

by

Faith Hunter

About the book:

Jane Yellowrock used to hunt vampires, but now she must fight--and win--beside them.

As Enforcer to the vampire Master of the City of New Orleans, Jane Yellowrock stakes her reputation and her life on keeping her territory safe. But Leo has been issued a blood challenge by the emperor of the European vampires, who seeks to usurp all of his power and possessions. If Leo loses the match to the death, the city will be forfeit, and the people of New Orleans will suffer the consequences. Jane can't let that happen.

Preparing for the duel requires all of Jane's focus, but with so much supernatural power in play, nothing goes according to plan. She has to rely on herself and the very few people she knows she can trust to stand and fight. Only two things are guaranteed: nothing is sacred, and no one is safe.

Excerpt #4:

I Killed the Only U’tlun’ta in NOLA

I gripped Eli’s right arm, pulling him into the time bubble. He stumbled and I caught him, shoving his weapon up and away. “Jane?” he said, almost startled at the time change. Almost but not quite. It was hard to startle one of Uncle Sam’s best, especially as he had been in the Gray Between with me before. He looked at the unwelcome visitor. “Who?”

“Don’t know. Wearing a PsyLED badge.” I held up the badge as proof. “Using the new Glock issued to PsyLED. He speaks some of the language of The People. He called me by my Cherokee name. And then called me u’tlun’ta.”

“He smell like you?”

“No. Floral.” My own scent was a challenge to most vampires, until the team leader accepted me. Then that one’s underlings fell into line and accepted me too. But oral history, things people had told me about a skinwalker who had lived in New Orleans a century and more ago, hinted that at least one other skinwalker had smelled like flowers. At some point soon, I had to track down the vamp who had owned her and ask questions. In my copious free time. Right.

Eli frowned. He checked the altered trajectory of his round, patted my hand, telling me to not let go, which would drop him into normal time. He lifted a thigh rig from the floor and strapped it on to his shower-damp body and seated his weapon in its Kydex holster. He looked me over, seeing too much. “Your head?”

“Bearable.”

Eli grunted. With one free hand, he gripped my arm, making sure we didn’t separate. Together, we pattered down the steps, back to the killer. “We still don’t know if all skinwalkers can bubble time or if it’s unique,” he said, “part of you and Beast. We need to make sure he doesn’t learn that you have that skill.”

“It’s on video footage at HQ,” I said.

“Yeah. But that’s in a time and place where witch magic could be playing tricks. Discussing that with cops is a battle for tomorrow. We play it by ear, wronged, in danger, and innocent.” Eli looked the visitor over as if he was a piece of terrain to be taken from the enemy, staring into the yellow eyes, as if looking for contacts. Eli frowned. “Too bad I can’t get his weapon away without pulling him into time with us. Let me get to the left side of the doorframe, weapon drawn, ready to fire. You get into your previous position, and let me go. Then you take the guy out. I’ll take care that the weapon doesn’t fire again.”

“Okay. Modified kata guruma?” Kata guruma was a dramatic, vicious martial takedown.

“Okay by me. Use his hair. Grab his dumplings and give ’em a twist as you slam him down, but toss him inside. We got gawkers.” He meant the tourists on the sidewalk across the street. “I’ll have his weapon long before he hits.”

I shrugged and put the vamp-killer and the PsyLED badge on the floor, out of the way, then stepped into position, my foot touching Eli’s to keep him in my time bubble, my body and hands almost touching the stranger. Eli positioned his hands just above and beneath the killer’s gun hand. “Now,” I said to my partner.

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About the author:

Faith Hunter is a New York Times and USAToday bestselling author. She writes dark urban fantasy and
 paranormal urban thrillers.

Her long-running, bestselling, Skinwalker series features Jane Yellowrock, a hunter of rogue-vampires.
The Soulwood series features Nell Nicholson Ingram in paranormal crime solving novels. 
Her Rogue Mage novels, a dark, urban fantasy series, features Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage in a
 post-apocalyptic, alternate reality. Two of her fantasy series have been nominated for Audie Awards.

   

Under the pen name Gwen Hunter, she has written action adventure, mysteries, thrillers, 
women’s fiction, a medical thriller series, and even historical religious fiction. 
As Gwen, she is a winner of the WH Smith Literary Award for Fresh Talent in 1995 in the UK, 
and won a Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award in 2008. 

Under all her pen names, she has over 40 books in print in 30 countries.

In real life, Faith once broke a stove by refusing to turn it on for so long that its parts froze and 
the unused stove had to be replaced. Her recent hankering for homemade bread and soup resulted in 
fresh loaves each week and she claims that the newish stove feels loved and well used—because 
Faith talks to her appliances as well as to her plants and dog. 

She collects orchids and animal skulls, loves to sit on the back porch in lightning storms, and is a 
workaholic with a passion for jewelry making, white-water kayaking, and RV travel. 

She likes the shooting range, prefers Class III whitewater rivers with no gorge to climb out of, edits the 
occasional anthology, and drinks a lot of tea. Some days she’s a lady. Some days she ain't. 
Occasionally, she remembers to sleep. 

The jewelry she makes and wears is often given as promo items and is used as prizes in contests.

For more, including a list of her books, see www.faithhunter.net , www.gwenhunter.com  

Visit Faith online at www.faithhunter.net, or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

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GIVEAWAY

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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My review:

5 out of 5 stars

“Dark Queen” by Faith Hunter is the twelfth book in the ‘Jane Yellowrock’ series and continues to explore Jane’s ever-changing position in the hierarchy of power in New Orleans. Juggling her responsibilities as Enforcer, as partner, and as lover, plus the unexpected additions of new titles and therefore new burdens and obligations, Jane tries to help prepare for the world-shaking duel that will determine who rules the American vampire faction. Bloodshed and death are inevitable, but the goal is to make sure most, if not all, is conferred upon the enemies rather than the allies and beloved members of her growing clan.

This urban fantasy tale is part of a series that never fails to enthrall and entertain, even when I don’t like what is taking place, given the complicated personalities and allegiances involved in these stories. What is most amazing to me is how vividly the characters are depicted, so I have no trouble becoming immersed in the complex and well-built world that houses these intriguing folks. The blend of political and personal maneuverings and power plays keep the action moving constantly and the unexpected family drama in this particular book deepens the reader’s emotional investment in one particular character, even as it adds yet another dimension to the struggles going on. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to keep up with the series, so I was a little slow to figure out some of the relationships between various folks, but I still cheered and mourned as various conflicts played out.

I think that what I enjoy most about these books is their ability to take me away from my own problems while making the machinations of these amazing folks so mesmerizing that I am held captive for hours—chuckling at Beast’s pithy observations, hissing at the villains, and cheering for the “good” guys (yes, that term is used advisedly sometimes, especially with bloodsuckers, lol).

Those who are not familiar with the series are advised to start at the beginning for maximum enjoyment, but I think you probably could get sucked into Jane’s orbit even if you didn’t have much of the back story. As usual, the story ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger, but amazingly (for me) it wasn’t as painful as it could be, despite the fact that I still am VERY curious about how certain things are going to turn out. Like Beast, there are some things that have played out to my satisfaction, so I am temporarily content, although I do confess that there are some very emotional sequences in addition to the heart-pounding and violent fight scenes and other dramatic encounters. The creativity, complex world-building, and imagination that are hallmarks of this author continue to keep each story fresh and make her one of my go-to urban fantasy authors. I hope that there are many, many more stories still to come about Jane Yellowrock and her friends.

A copy of this title was provided to me for review

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Tour stops:

4/23: Tome Tender (review, giveaway), Gizmo’s Reviews (review, giveaway), Romance Junkies (review)

4/24: Bad Bird Reads (review), Diane’s Book Blog (review), Love Read Listen (giveaway only*)
4/25: BTH Reviews (review, excerpt, giveaway), Welcome to My Dungeon (review, giveaway), Angel’s Guilty Pleasures (giveaway only*)
4/26: Books of My Heart (review, excerpt), Words I Write Crazy (giveaway only*)
4/27: Untamed Bibliophiles (review, excerpt, giveaway), The Book Crumb Trail (review, giveaway)
4/28: Lisa’s World of Books (review)
4/29: Quirky Cats Fat Stacks (review, giveaway)
4/30: Urban Fantasy Investigations (giveaway only*)
5/1: Scorching Book Reviews (review, excerpt), The Irresponsible Reader (review)
5/2: Book Junkiez (review, excerpt), Bambi Unbridled (review)
5/3: Smexy Books (review)
5/4: The Genre Minx Book Reviews (review)