Thursday, October 06, 2016

What's Up for the Debut Author Challenge Authors? - Part 3


This is the third in this new series of updates about formerly featured Debut Author Challenge authors and their works published since their last update. The year in parentheses after the author's name is the year that author was featured in the Debut Author Challenge.



Part 1 here Part 11 here Part 21 here Part 31 here Part 41 here
Part 2 here Part 12 here Part 22 here Part 32 here Part 42 here
Part 3 here Part 13 here Part 23 here Part 33 here Part 43 here
Part 4 here Part 14 here Part 24 here Part 34 here Part 44 here
Part 5 here Part 15 here Part 25 here Part 35 here Part 45 here
Part 6 here Part 16 here Part 26 here Part 36 here Part 46 here
Part 7 here Part 17 here Part 27 here Part 37 here Part 47 here
Part 8 here Part 18 here Part 28 here Part 38 here Part 48 here
Part 9 here Part 19 here Part 29 here Part 39 here Part 49 here
Part 10 here Part 20 here Part 30 here Part 40 here Part 50 here



Jacob Bacharach (2014)

The Doorposts of Your House and on Your Gates
Liveright, March 14, 2017
Trade Paperback and eBook, 304 pages

The biblical story of Abraham and Isaac is transposed into a modern world even madder than the ancient Middle East in Jacob Bacharach’s hilarious novel.

Does any family better fit the Anna Karenina principle— that happy families are alike but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way—better than the patriarchs of the Book of Genesis? Is there any worse (or crazier) father than Abraham? These are some of the questions The Doorposts of Your House and on Your Gates asks, replacing the biblical Ur with New York and the land of Canaan with the rugged hills and rusted river valleys of western Pennsylvania. Fleeing a failed relationship, Isabel Giordani leaves New York and moves across the Appalachians to Pittsburgh, where she soon begins to insinuate herself into the lives of Isaac Mayer and his father, Abbie, an architect turned crooked real estate developer. As Isabel learns this family’s weird, often sordid, and occasionally violent history, her own motives for entering their lives are called into question, in Jacob Bacharach’s new novel that considers love, family, God, and, of course, real estate.





Clifford Beal (2013)

The Witch of Torinia
Valdur 2
Solaris, April 11, 2017
Trade Paperback and eBook, 400 pages

Divide... and conquer. The thrilling new epic fantasy continues!

Lady Lucinda della Rovera, the renegade canoness of St Dionei, secret sorceress of the “old gods”, has cleverly split the One Faith into bitter factions and with the help of a pliant Duke of Torinia, launches a war to overthrow the king of Valdur and bring back the old ways. Brother Acquel Galenus, now Magister of the High Temple of Livorna, knows he must stop her, but doubts his own faith and ability. With powerful demons seeking to reenter the world through Lucinda, he must find allies, but how?

Julianus Strykar, now a coronel of the mercenary company of the Black Rose, finds himself thrust into the maelstrom of civil war but false pride leads him into a battle he may not be able to win -- or survive.

Captain Nicolo Danamis may have regained his fleet and command but the return of his long-lost father and lord, Valerian, has complicated his love affair with mer princess Citala. When his former lover -- the queen of Valdur -- demands his help, he and a suspicious Citala find themselves at the centre of palace intrigue as they try to avert an “alliance” with the predatory Silk Empire that will turn Valdur into a puppet kingdom. And then he learns that the crown prince may be his bastard son.

Friendships, loves, and the future of Valdur all hang by a thread….





Michelle Belanger (2015)

Harsh Gods
A Novel of the Shadowside 2
Titan Books, August 30, 2016
Mass Market Paperback and eBook, 480 pages

The last thing Zack Westland expects on a frigid night is to be summoned to an exorcism. Demonic possession, however, proves the least of his problems. Father Frank, a veteran turned priest, knows Zack’s deepest secrets, recognizing him as Anakim, an angel belonging to that hidden tribe. And Halley, the girl they’ve come to save, carries a secret that could unlock a centuries-old evil. She chants an eerie rhyme, and she isn’t alone…

“HANDS TO TAKE AND EYES TO SEE.
A MOUTH TO SPEAK. HE COMES FOR ME.”


As Zack’s secrets spill out, far more than his life is at stake, for Halley is linked to an ancient conspiracy. Yet Zack can’t help her unless he’s willing to risk losing his immortality—and reigniting the Blood Wars.


Mortal Sins
A Novella of the Shadowside
Titan Books, October 25, 2016
eBook

Zack Westland is one of the Anakim—an angel belonging to an ancient tribe trapped on Earth by the cataclysmic event known as the Blood Wars. His true name is Zaquiel, and to speak it unleashes a power beyond the ken of mortal men.

Accompanied by his temperamental ally Liliana—the Lady of Beasts—Zack encounters the ghost of an African-American woman murdered decades ago. She cannot speak, but implores him to help her, launching him along a bloody path that leads to the Strega, an Italian family of witches.

The Strega are led by Mama Tuscanetti, an ancient matriarch who brooks no interference. To cross her is to court death.


Note: Mortal Sins will be free on Amazon at launch and is free at Barnes and Noble now.





R.S. Belcher (2013)

Nightwise
Laytham Ballard 1
Tor Books, September 20, 2016
Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Hardcover and eBook, August 18, 2015

R.S. Belcher, the acclaimed author of The Six-Gun Tarot and The Shotgun Arcana launches a gritty new urban fantasy series set in today's seedy occult underworld in Nightwise.

In the more shadowy corners of the world, frequented by angels and demons and everything in-between, Laytham Ballard is a legend. It's said he raised the dead at the age of ten, stole the Philosopher's Stone in Vegas back in 1999, and survived the bloodsucking kiss of the Mosquito Queen. Wise in the hidden ways of the night, he's also a cynical bastard who stopped thinking of himself as the good guy a long time ago.

Now a promise to a dying friend has Ballard on the trail of an escaped Serbian war criminal with friends in both high and low places-and a sinister history of blood sacrifices. Ballard is hell-bent on making Dusan Slorzack pay for his numerous atrocities, but Slorzack seems to have literally dropped off the face of the Earth, beyond the reach of his enemies, the Illuminati, and maybe even the Devil himself. To find Slorzack, Ballard must follow a winding, treacherous path that stretches from Wall Street and Washington, D.C. to backwoods hollows and truckstops, while risking what's left of his very soul . . . .


The Brotherhood of the Wheel
Tor Books, March 21, 2017
Trade Paperback
Hardcover and eBook, March 1, 2016

R.S. Belcher, the acclaimed author of The Six-Gun Tarot and The Shotgun Arcana launches a gritty new urban fantasy series about the mysterious society of truckers known only as, The Brotherhood of The Wheel.

In 1119 A.D., a group of nine crusaders became known as the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon--a militant monastic order charged with protecting pilgrims and caravans traveling on the roads to and from the Holy Land. In time, the Knights Templar would grow in power and, ultimately, be laid low. But a small offshoot of the Templars endure and have returned to the order's original mission: to defend the roads of the world and guard those who travel on them.

Theirs is a secret line of knights: truckers, bikers, taxi hacks, state troopers, bus drivers, RV gypsies--any of the folks who live and work on the asphalt arteries of America. They call themselves the Brotherhood of the Wheel.

Jimmy Aussapile is one such knight. He's driving a big rig down South when a promise to a ghostly hitchhiker sets him on a quest to find out the terrible truth behind a string of children gone missing all across the country. The road leads him to Lovina Hewitt, a skeptical Louisiana State Police investigator working the same case and, eventually, to a forgotten town that's not on any map--and to the secret behind the eerie Black-Eyed Kids said to prowl the highways.





Jenn Bennett (2011)

The Anatomical Shape of the Heart
Square Fish, January 17, 2017
Trade Paperback, 340 pages
Hardcover and eBook, 11/03/2015

Winner of the Romantic Times Best YA Protagonist Award (2015)

Artist Beatrix Adams knows exactly how she's spending the summer before her senior year. Determined to follow in Da Vinci's footsteps, she's ready to tackle the one thing that will give her an advantage in a museum-sponsored scholarship contest: drawing actual cadavers. But when she tries to sneak her way into the hospital's Willed Body program and misses the last metro train home, she meets a boy who turns her summer plans upside down.

Jack is charming, wildly attractive . . . and possibly one of San Francisco's most notorious graffiti artists. On midnight buses and city rooftops, Beatrix begins to see who Jack really is-and tries to uncover what he's hiding that leaves him so wounded. But will these secrets come back to haunt him? Or will the skeletons in Beatrix's own family's closet tear them apart?

The Anatomical Shape of a Heart by Jenn Bennett is an irresistible, deeply romantic story about a girl and boy who help each other heal and grow.


Alex, Approximately
Simon Pulse, April 4, 2017
Hardcover and eBook, 320 pages

In this delightfully charming teen spin on You’ve Got Mail, the one guy Bailey Rydell can’t stand is actually the boy of her dreams—she just doesn’t know it yet.

Classic movie buff Bailey “Mink” Rydell has spent months crushing on a witty film geek she only knows online by “Alex.” Two coasts separate the teens until Bailey moves in with her dad, who lives in the same California surfing town as her online crush.

Faced with doubts (what if he’s a creep in real life—or worse?), Bailey doesn’t tell Alex she’s moved to his hometown. Or that she’s landed a job at the local tourist-trap museum. Or that she’s being heckled daily by the irritatingly hot museum security guard, Porter Roth—a.k.a. her new arch-nemesis. But life is whole lot messier than the movies, especially when Bailey discovers that tricky fine line between hate, love, and whatever-it-is she’s starting to feel for Porter.

And as the summer months go by, Bailey must choose whether to cling to a dreamy online fantasy in Alex or take a risk on an imperfect reality with Porter. The choice is both simpler and more complicated than she realizes, because Porter Roth is hiding a secret of his own: Porter is Alex…Approximately.

Posted by Qwill at 6:44 AM
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)