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Blog tour: The Immigrant Queen

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Welcome to the blog tour for The Immigrant Queen by Peter Taylor-Gooby! More about the book… Hated as a foreigner, despised as a woman, I became First Lady of Athens Aspasia falls passionately in love with Pericles, the leading statesman of Fifth Century Athens. Artists, writers and thinkers frequent her salon. She hides her past as a sex-worker, trafficked to the city, and becomes Pericles’ lover. Her writings attract the attention of Socrates, and she becomes the only woman to join his circle. She is known throughout the city for her beauty and wit and strives to become recognised as an intellectual alongside men. Pericles’ enemies attack him through Aspasia and charge her with blasphemy. As a foreigner she faces execution, but her impassioned address to the jury shames the city and saves her. Pericles is spellbound, they marry, and she becomes First Lady of Athens. Sparta besieges the city; plague breaks out and Pericles is once again in danger. The Immigrant Que...

Blog tour: The Lion Women of Tehran

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Welcome to the blog tour for The Lion Women of Tehran  by Marjan Kamali! More about the book… In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation. Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming 'lion women.' But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls’ high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s pri...

Blog tour: People Collide

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Welcome to the blog tour for People Collide  by Isle McElroy! More about the book… When Eli leaves the cramped Bulgarian apartment he shares with Elizabeth, his more organized and successful wife, he discovers that he now inhabits her body. Not only have he and his wife traded bodies, but Elizabeth, living as Eli, has disappeared without a trace. What follows is Eli’s search across Europe and to America for his missing wife—and a roving, no-holds-barred exploration of gender and embodied experience. As Eli comes closer to finding Elizabeth—while learning to exist in her body—he begins to wonder what effect this metamorphosis will have on their relationship and how long he can maintain the illusion of living as someone he isn’t. Will their new marriage wither completely? Or is this transformation the very thing Eli and Elizabeth need for their marriage to thrive? A rich, rewarding exploration of ambition and sacrifice, desire and loss,  People Collide  is a portr...

Blog tour: Estella's Revenge

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Welcome to the blog tour for Estella’s Revenge by Barbara Havelocke! More about the book… You know Miss Havisham. The world's most famous jilted bride. This is her daughter’s story. Raised in the darkness of Satis House where the clocks never tick, the beautiful Estella is bred to hate men and to keep her heart cold as the grave. She knows she doesn’t feel things quite like other people do but is this just the result of her strange upbringing? As she watches the brutal treatment of women around her, hatred hardens into a core of vengeance and when she finds herself married to the abusive Drummle, she is forced to make a deadly choice: Should she embrace the darkness within her and exact her revenge? More about the author… Barbara is an international bestselling author, whose psychological thrillers have topped Amazon and Kobo. Her writing career started in journalism, interviewing the real victims of crime - and the perpetrators. The realistic, complex characters who populat...

Blog tour: The Booklover's Library

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Welcome to the blog tour for The Booklover's Library by Madeline Martin! More about the book… In Nottingham, England, widow Emma Taylor finds herself in desperate need of a job. She and her beloved daughter Olivia have always managed just fine on their own, but with the legal restrictions prohibiting widows with children from most employment opportunities, she's left with only one option: persuading the manageress at Boots' Booklover's Library to take a chance on her with a job. When the threat of war in England becomes a reality, Olivia must be evacuated to the countryside. In the wake of being separated from her daughter, Emma seeks solace in the unlikely friendships she forms with her neighbours and coworkers, and a renewed sense of purpose through the recommendations she provides to the library's quirky regulars. But the job doesn't come without its difficulties. Books are mysteriously misshelved and disappearing and the work at the lending library forces h...

Blog tour: Earthly Creatures

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Welcome to the blog tour for Earthly Creatures  by Stevie Davies! More about the book… For all her life, idealistic 20-year-old bookworm Magdalena Arber has been split down the middle: veering wildly between fidelity to indoctrinated Nazi beliefs, and her father's humanist values. Then comes the summons–the Nazi War Labour Service is conscripting her into a teaching position in East Prussia. Magda is elated. It's a release from the cosy cage of childhood, and a chance to form young minds. She enters a lush rural world of forests, lakes, and meadows where order prevails. Yet there are monstrous hands out to shape the whole continuum of earthly creatures. The Gestapo are a lurking darkness. There is bombing further East, and news of a moving Russian front. Will Alt Schƶnbek burn as well? Can Magda survive? More about the author… Stevie Davies, who comes from Morriston, Swansea, is a novelist, literary critic, biographer and historian. She is a Fellow of the Royal Socie...

Blog tour: Unravelling

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Welcome to the blog tour for Unravelling by Preethi Nair! More about the book… To the outside world, Bhanu seems to have a perfect life: a beautiful home and a wonderful husband and family... No one knows that each superficial layer has been carefully constructed to hide the dark secrets of her past and to bury the utter disappointment that what was written in the stars did not come to pass. Then, on the eve of her fortieth wedding anniversary and vow renewal ceremony, a chance encounter shatters Bhanu's pretence, when a face from her past reappears. Deep, her first love who was etched into her heart, the man who lingered in her dreams throughout her married life, reappears, asking her to abandon everything for a second chance at love. Forced to confront the consequences of choices made long ago, Bhanu begins to unravel as her life is thrust into chaos. But by reaching for a different future, can she heal the wounds of her past? More about the author… Preethi worked as a management...