DAILY DEALS: I’m back and I bring with me a hockey book
One Dance with a Duke by Tessa Dare $ 1.99
From the Jacket Copy:
In One Dance with a Duke—the first novel in Tessa Dare’s delightful new trilogy—secrets and scandals tempt the irresistible rogues of the Stud Club to gamble everything for love.
A handsome and reclusive horse breeder, Spencer Dumarque, the fourth Duke of Morland, is a member of the exclusive Stud Club, an organization so select it has only ten members—yet membership is attainable to anyone with luck. And Spencer has plenty of it, along with an obsession with a prize horse, a dark secret, and, now, a reputation as the dashing “Duke of Midnight.” Each evening he selects one lady for a breathtaking midnight waltz. But none of the women catch his interest, and nobody ever bests the duke—until Lady Amelia d’Orsay tries her luck.
In a moment of desperation, the unconventional beauty claims the duke’s dance and unwittingly steals his heart. When Amelia demands that Spencer forgive her scapegrace brother’s debts, she never imagines that her game of wits and words will lead to breathless passion and a steamy proposal. Still, Spencer is a man of mystery, perhaps connected to the shocking murder of the Stud Club’s founder. Will Amelia lose her heart in this reckless wager or win everlasting love?
Dare is a clever wordsmith and a good writer, but she often brings in modern colloquialisms. Some readers find this offputting and others think it’s sort of a fun easter egg. There’s a sort of insider feel to the humor in her books so if you feel like you’re in on the jokes, it works well. If not, then the modernism might interfere with the escapism.
Shut Out by Kelly Jamieson $ 0.99
From the Jacket Copy:
The Bayard College hockey team isn’t where Jacob Flass thought he’d be a season ago. He was a rising star in the Canadian major junior league, cruising toward a spot on an NHL roster—until a single disastrous night on the town brought it all crashing down. Now he’s out of options, except for playing well, studying hard, and staying away from girls. He’s not supposed to be flirting with the hottest, sweetest chick he’s ever met. But how could he possibly stay away?
Skylar Lynwood knows that Jacob is out of her league. She’s just trying to go with the flow, which isn’t easy when six feet and four inches of total hockey hunkiness is making a play for her one moment, then giving her the cold shoulder the next. Skylar’s head tells her that this rugged athlete isn’t worth her time, but her body says something altogether different. Risking her heart for Jacob may be the craziest thing she’s ever done . . . but she won’t let him shut her out.
Includes a special message from the editor, as well as an excerpt from another Loveswept title.
As an aside, the Stanley Cup finals took place this past week or so with the finale last night. The ratings for hockey were up from last year by quite a bit, but hockey books are a bit like duke’s in Regency romances. The books are far more popular and numerous than the actual sport itself. At least in the US.
Kraken by China Miéville $ 1.99
From the Jacket Copy:
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from China Miéville’s Embassytown.
With this outrageous new novel, China Miéville has written one of the strangest, funniest, and flat-out scariest books you will read this—or any other—year. The London that comes to life in Kraken is a weird metropolis awash in secret currents of myth and magic, where criminals, police, cultists, and wizards are locked in a war to bring about—or prevent—the End of All Things.
In the Darwin Centre at London’s Natural History Museum, Billy Harrow, a cephalopod specialist, is conducting a tour whose climax is meant to be the Centre’s prize specimen of a rare Architeuthis dux—better known as the Giant Squid. But Billy’s tour takes an unexpected turn when the squid suddenly and impossibly vanishes into thin air.
As Billy soon discovers, this is the precipitating act in a struggle to the death between mysterious but powerful forces in a London whose existence he has been blissfully ignorant of until now, a city whose denizens—human and otherwise—are adept in magic and murder.
There is the Congregation of God Kraken, a sect of squid worshippers whose roots go back to the dawn of humanity—and beyond. There is the criminal mastermind known as the Tattoo, a merciless maniac inked onto the flesh of a hapless victim. There is the FSRC—the Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit—a branch of London’s finest that fights sorcery with sorcery. There is Wati, a spirit from ancient Egypt who leads a ragtag union of magical familiars. There are the Londonmancers, who read the future in the city’s entrails. There is Grisamentum, London’s greatest wizard, whose shadow lingers long after his death. And then there is Goss and Subby, an ageless old man and a cretinous boy who, together, constitute a terrifying—yet darkly charismatic—demonic duo.
All of them—and others—are in pursuit of Billy, who inadvertently holds the key to the missing squid, an embryonic god whose powers, properly harnessed, can destroy all that is, was, and ever shall be.
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham $ 2.99
From the Jacket Copy:
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • Entertainment Weekly • The Seattle Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • Bloomberg Businessweek
In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era. Philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.
Thomas Jefferson hated confrontation, and yet his understanding of power and of human nature enabled him to move men and to marshal ideas, to learn from his mistakes, and to prevail. Passionate about many things—women, his family, books, science, architecture, gardens, friends, Monticello, and Paris—Jefferson loved America most, and he strove over and over again, despite fierce opposition, to realize his vision: the creation, survival, and success of popular government in America. Jon Meacham lets us see Jefferson’s world as Jefferson himself saw it, and to appreciate how Jefferson found the means to endure and win in the face of rife partisan division, economic uncertainty, and external threat. Drawing on archives in the United States, England, and France, as well as unpublished Jefferson presidential papers, Meacham presents Jefferson as the most successful political leader of the early republic, and perhaps in all of American history.
The father of the ideal of individual liberty, of the Louisiana Purchase, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and of the settling of the West, Jefferson recognized that the genius of humanity—and the genius of the new nation—lay in the possibility of progress, of discovering the undiscovered and seeking the unknown. From the writing of the Declaration of Independence to elegant dinners in Paris and in the President’s House; from political maneuverings in the boardinghouses and legislative halls of Philadelphia and New York to the infant capital on the Potomac; from his complicated life at Monticello, his breathtaking house and plantation in Virginia, to the creation of the University of Virginia, Jefferson was central to the age. Here too is the personal Jefferson, a man of appetite, sensuality, and passion.
The Jefferson story resonates today not least because he led his nation through ferocious partisanship and cultural warfare amid economic change and external threats, and also because he embodies an eternal drama, the struggle of the leadership of a nation to achieve greatness in a difficult and confounding world.
I’m glad you’re back. I really liked the Jamieson book. Her hockey books are all pretty good, to be honest.
@Shayera: Yup. Jamieson is my go to person for hockey books. She’s consistent and prolific.
@jane: I like Toni Aleo as well.
Speaking of Jamieson, have you read “Dancing in the Rain”? I was holding back ugly crying on a plane reading it.
Welcome back Jane!
@Shayera: I have Dancing in the Rain on my TBR – she’s an autobuy for me. Jamieson doesn’t always work for me but when she does she really does. I absolutely loved Shut Out.
Welcome back Jane.
I just got an email about an LGBT fantasy story bundle deal – https://storybundle.com/lgbt (from an author newsletter)
It’s not specifically romance. I’ve only read two of the 15 – The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal by KJ Charles and Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnet – and they are both fantastic, and they both include understated mm romances.
I’ve never heard of story bundle before – it looks like you can name your price – a minimum of $5 gets you the bundle of 5 books. A minimum of $15 gets you 7 more bonus books. It looks like a good deal and an interesting promotional concept.
@Kaetrin: I really liked Shut Out as well! I hope you enjoy Dancing in the Rain.
Heh, re One Dance…this was my first Tessa book and I have never found the removal of a pair of gloves hotter. It’s the weirdest thing, but that scene…It, and Ms. Bailey’s home made book trailer using her kids’ toys carved a special place in my heart.