COVER REVEAL: When The Wind Chimes by Mary Ting

Today, we have a Cover Reveal to share for Mary Ting's When The Wind Chimes! Be sure to check out the beautiful cover and add this upcoming release to your TBR list on Goodreads!


Genre:
New Adult
Contemporary Romance
Publish Date:
November 10, 2020
Publisher:
Rosewind Books
(A Division of Vesuvian Media)

Cover Designed by:
Najla Qamber
(Najla Qamber Designs)

Synopsis:
Kaitlyn Summers is heartbroken.

When she receives an invitation to spend Christmas with her family on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, she feels it may be the perfect medicine.

She throws herself into helping her sister’s struggling art gallery, even taking a temporary job for extra money by looking after a little girl from her nephew’s school. She also begins to paint again, something she’s been unable to do since her breakup. It’s tempting to stay on Kauai, but she has obligations back in Los Angeles.

Life gets more complicated when circumstances keep putting her close to Leonardo Medici. Not only is he drop-dead gorgeous, he’s a local celebrity. But Kaitlyn can’t shake the feeling he’s hiding something.

Should she believe the rumors that he’s romancing half the island’s single women?

Or is the random sound of wind chimes when he’s close-by a sign that an angel is near and the secret to her happily ever after?

~~~~~

**About the Author**

Photo Credit; Michelle England Delavara

Mary Ting is an international bestselling, award-winning author. She writes soulful, spellbinding stories that excite the imagination and captivate readers around the world. Her books span a wide range of genres, and her storytelling talents have earned a devoted legion of fans, as well as garnered critical praise.

Becoming an author happened by chance. It was a way to grieve the death of her beloved grandmother, and inspired by a dream she had in high school. After realizing she wanted to become a full-time author, Mary retired from teaching after twenty years. She also had the privilege of touring with the Magic Johnson Foundation to promote literacy and her children’s chapter book: No Bullies Allowed.

Mary resides in Southern California with her husband, two children, and two little dogs, Mochi and Mocha. She enjoys oil painting and making jewelry. Being a huge Twilight fan, Mary was inspired to make book-themed jewelry and occasionally gives it away as prizes to her fans.

Stay connected with Mary Ting

      

  

Cover Reveal Organized by

BLOG TOUR: The Second Star by Alma Alexander

Welcome to the Official Blog Tour for Alma Alexander's The Second Star! Today, on our tour stop, we have a guest post featuring 10 Quotes from The Second Star! Plus, there's a tour-wide giveaway, too! So... Be sure to check it out and pre-order your copy now! Follow the tour, HERE!

Genre:

Young Adult

Science Fiction/Fantasy

Publish Date:

July 1, 2020

Publisher:

Crossroad Press

Synopsis:

The Parada had been lost for almost two hundred years before they recovered the ship, drifting in stygian interstellar darkness, and brought her home again.

But that was not the miracle.

The miracle was that the crew was still alive.

That was also the problem.

Six crew members went out on the Parada, Earth’s first starship. All contact was lost, and the ship vanished for almost two centuries. When the Parada’s successor found the drifting ship and somehow managed to bring it home, the six crew members were not only still alive but barely older, due to the time dilation effects of near-FTL travel. Their return was a miracle – but it could not be revealed to the waiting world. The problem was, six individuals went out to the stars. More than seventy fractured personalities came back.

Psychologist Stella Froud and Jesuit Father Philip Carter were recruited as part of the team assembled to investigate the mystery, and to try and help the Parada’s crew understand their condition and possibly reverse it. What they discovered was a deepening mystery, and very soon they found themselves forced to take sides in a conflict that nobody could have possibly predicted. Their world would never be the same again.

       

*10 Quotes from The Second Star*

(with apologies for them sometimes being on the long side…)

1. The Parada had been lost for almost two hundred years before they recovered the ship, drifting in stygian interstellar darkness, and brought her home again.

But that was not the miracle. The miracle was that the crew was still alive.

That was also the problem.

2. “The Parada had a crew of six. If we are to believe the evidence we have before us, well, six people went out. More than seventy returned.”
3. “But you wanted the stars?” the anchor prodded the twins.
“Always,” Rob said softly. “We lived too close to a big city, and London lights did their best to drown out the stars. We grew up with a washed-out sky.”
“But our uncle took us fishing, in the summers,” Jerry said. “And out there in the country, the stars were different. Closer. More real.”
“And once we had seen them,” Rob said, “we could not forget they were there somewhere, lost in the haze. And the less we saw of them the more we wanted them.”
4. “What would you say was the greatest thing you accomplished out there?”
 “We survived,” Hugh said. “We learned that it was possible to survive the uncanny, the unexpected, the unspeakable. You have to understand that there is a price for that lesson… and that the price may not, indeed, cannot, be the same for any two people. Some of us pay more than others. But what we pay… is not something that is easily shared. Someday, maybe. Not today. There is a promise between us and the stars, and we may not break it.”
5. “I remember this place,” said the Poet in that rich, velvet tone that had raised Stella’s hackles the first time she heard it. “When I was a child, I dwelled in a garden with high walls, and I was safe there, and contented, and protected, and nothing evil could ever happen to me there because this was home, and it was a happy place, full of light. I thought it was the whole world, and I was ready to accept that world, those walls, those boundaries, because they kept me safe and happy. And I was young, and innocent, and I knew only that comfort that surrounded me and gave me value in the context of that place, ignorant of all but the things that were real to me because I could touch and taste and smell them, and happy in that ignorance.
“But I grew up, and I have passed the gates, and I have been beyond the walls. I have seen the shadows that teem on the outside, the shadows with claws and with teeth and with terrible glowing eyes of hunger and covetousness, the shadows that would devour you. I have seen them and I have known the fear of them. But… I have faced them, and I have faced that fear, and I understand now – without those shadows, even just the stories of those shadows, the light in that childhood garden could never have been so beloved and so bright. have left the garden of my childhood and I have walked the wilderness that lies all around it and I have fought its traps and its monsters and sometimes I win and sometimes I lose – but there is one thing that I never knew, before I stepped into that wild desert, and that is that the place is stark, and deadly, and beautiful beyond reason. It isn’t safe. It isn’t protected. But it’s free, and its shadows sing, and the songs are sung with the voices of dark angels, and once you have heard those songs you are lost forever….”
6. “What we saw, no human eye had seen before,” Rob said, and that voice was both whisper-soft and resonant like thunder. “The vast empty sea of stars lay around us, lapping at our ship, surrounding us, present right beside us and yet so far, so endlessly far away. There is a whisper of voices in languages we will never learn and never understand. There is a river of light, and an ocean of darkness, and so much life, and death, and eternity. It is not only bigger than we know, it is bigger than we can ever know, an infinity of mystery and enigma, with something always, always, just out of reach and out of our grasp. It may be unknowable, and it may be that the day we completely understand such a universe we simply cease to be ourselves and become beings made of dust and starlight and clouds of darkness, not understanding the thing that surrounds us so much as being a part of it…”
7. “Well,” Rob said. “Look at us all. To be perfectly honest with you… when we left in the Parada… I almost never expected to come back. At all. Not for the reasons that things eventually went wrong – that was unlooked for, the collision with the Illogon and all that came after. But just. You know. Going out there. I almost looked on it as… a one-way ticket. And then suddenly we were returning, and I thought about Earth again, and I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to happen when we got there.” He paused, mulling over the thoughts that were struggling to come out. “I never really wanted… the adulation,” he said. “The reception you say the Juno people got. I would have probably run away from that, hidden somewhere where they couldn’t find me. If I felt anything at all… it was… there was just a quiet happiness that I was, improbably, unbelievably, against all odds, coming home, home to Earth.”
“And then Earth showed you its teeth,” Stella said quietly.
8. “In the last couple of centuries,” Stella said, “in the middle of the great extinctions, when we lost the last lion and the last polar bear that your God gave us to live in His wild places… when the Doomsday Vault failed, and the hoarded seeds were mostly lost, and the wheat harvest failed, and we had to go back to the humblest basest grains from which to make flour and when all the millions starved… when the bees crashed, and crops failed for lack of pollination… when the oceans began to die and the reefs bleached and we watched the lonely whales who were the last of their kind wandering the empty seas calling for mates who never came… when the winters went away and parts of the planet became an anvil upon which human bodies fried, when part of this God-given world became literally unlivable for His children… after the water wars and the food wars … after all of that, you believe in a just and merciful God… but this – it’s only one way of interpreting what we know about the situation, your way – this is what destroys your faith?”
9. “There is a way I can get you to America,” Philip said, “but I’m very much afraid I’m going to have to get you both ordained to do it.” He nodded at the duffel bag by the door. “There’s a cassock in there for you, Rob, and one of my spare dog collars. And one of the good sisters from a somewhat conservative convent in Rome – one where they still wear habits – has parted with hers, for you, Stella. There’s a chartered flight leaving from Rome for Chicago in four days. We are all going to be on it. You’d better not speak to anybody, though. There’s going to be forty people on that flight, and not a soul on it would believe you to be a professed nun if you opened your mouth to them.”
10. Tell those who need to hear it that it’s safe to send other people out there. Let the Parada become a talisman, a mystery, a legend, an inspiration for the continuance of a dream. Don’t let it end here. None of us deserve that.

~~~~~

Praise for THE SECOND STAR

“Like its cast of returned starfarers, this rich and continually surprising novel is many things at once: a religiously-inflected first contact story; an engaging psychological mystery; a glimpse of the future through the eyes of the past; and a moving tale about the difficulties of homecoming. I highly recommend it. ” —Matt Ruff, author of Set This House in order

"The Second Star is a grandly deep wallow in multiple personality disorder material. Dr. Stella Froud is wonderful as she studies six star-faring humans who come home fractured." —Jennifer Stevenson, author of Walking on Sunshine

~~~~~

**About the Author**

Photo Content from Alma Alexander

Alma Alexander is an author whose books include the internationally acclaimed historical fantasy The Secrets of Jin-shei published in 13 language, and its follow-up, Embers of Heaven, set in a fantasy China.

VOYA suggested that her Worldweavers series (Gift of the Unmage, Spellspam, Cybermage, Dawn of Magic) might be just the thing "for readers suffering Harry Potter withdrawal."

Another series, The Were Chronicles (Random, Wolf, Shifter), which dramatically changes the Were world, is about to be republished,

Other fantasies include her haunting and newly republished Midnight at Spanish Gardens, as well as Changer of Days, Wings of Fire, Empress, and a humorous science fiction novel, AbductiCon. She has edited two anthologies, River and Children of a Different Sky.

More on all her books - and links for buying them - can be found under the pull-down menu BOOKS at the top of the page.

Alma Alexander was born on the banks of the Danube in a country that no longer exists, grew up in Africa, and is married to an American she met online. She lives with him and two cats in the cedar woods of the U,S. Pacific Northwest.

Stay connected with Alma Alexander

     

~~~~~

***The Giveaway***

Giveaway Open Internationally | Must be 13+ to Enter

- ends June 22, 2020

Note: Not Responsible for Lost & Damaged Prizes in Your Mail Box

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Blog Tour Organized by

NERD BLAST: We Are Power: How Nonviolent Activism Changes the World by Todd Hasak-Lowy

Nerd Blast + Giveaway for Todd Hasak-Lowy's We Are Power: How Nonviolent Activism Changes the World! Be sure to check out this enlightening book that discusses relevant issues and the people involved from history to the present and grab your copy now!

Genre:

Middle Grade/Young Adult

Nonfiction

Publish Date:

April 7, 2020

Publisher:

Abrams Books for Young Readers

Synopsis:

A stirring look at nonviolent activism, from American suffragists to Civil Rights to the Climate Change Movement

We Are Power brings to light the incredible individuals who have used nonviolent activism to change the world. The book explores questions such as what is nonviolent resistance and how does it work? In an age when armies are stronger than ever before, when guns seem to be everywhere, how can people confront their adversaries without resorting to violence themselves? Through key international movements as well as people such as Gandhi, Alice Paul, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and Václav Havel, this book discusses the components of nonviolent resistance. It answers the question “Why nonviolence?” by showing how nonviolent movements have succeeded again and again in a variety of ways, in all sorts of places, and always in the face of overwhelming odds. The book includes endnotes, a bibliography, and an index.

       

  

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Praise for WE ARE POWER

"Nonviolence may have been the greatest invention of the twentieth century, more important than nuclear fission or genetic coding. It offers us the chance to build a working twenty-first century, and since young people will have to lead that fight, this book is a crucial gift!" —Bill McKibben, climate activist and author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

"I'm so glad this book exists! From the opening pages where we meet Gandhi, to the closing with Greta Thunburg, and in between with Alice Paul, Martin Luther King, Vaclav Havel, Ceasar Chavez, and others, it is beautifully written, informative, and so moving. Readers young and older will be inspired to rise up peacefully, to act, to change the world--to save the world." —Deborah Heiligman, author of Torpedoed: The True Story of the World War II Sinking of 'The Children'

**STARRED REVIEW**

"Hasak-Lowy's writing gives life to both the people and issues involved, taking time to explain historical backgrounds and the ways the lessons from one movement affected future ones." —Booklist

**STARRED REVIEW**

"Highly recommended for its outstanding treatment of the history of social justice. A good resource for student activists." —School Library Journal

**STARRED REVIEW**

"There has never been a time when a book is more relevant than this one." —School Library Connection

“A striking and very timely conclusion highlights teenage Greta Thunberg’s bold challenge to fight global climate change.” —Publishers Weekly

"This excellent, timely overview will open eyes and deserves a wide readership." —Kirkus

". . .Readers will gain new appreciation for how nonviolent methods, often inspired by other movements for justice, led to victories." —Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

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**About the Author**

Photo Content from Todd Hasak-Lowy

Todd Hasak-Lowy started writing fiction for adults, but now he writes for younger readers, too. He has published two books for adults: a short story collection, The Task of This Translater (2005), and the novel Captives (2008). His first book for younger readers, a middle grade novel called 33 Minutes, was published in 2013. In 2015, Todd published a young adult novel, Me Being Me Is Exactly As Insane As You Being You. That same year, a narrative memoir for ages 10 and up that he co-wrote with and about Holocaust survivor Michael Gruenbaum called Somewhere There Is Still A Sun came out. In early 2018, a young person's history of the women's suffrage movement, Roses & Radicals, which he co-wrote with Susan Zimet, was published. His latest book, We Are Power: How Nonviolent Activism Changes The World, was released April 2020. In addition to writing, he teaches literature at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and translates Hebrew literature into English.

Todd Hasak-Lowy lives in Evanston, Illinois (just outside Chicago), with his wife, two daughters, a dog, and two cats.

Stay connected with Todd Hasak-Lowy

     

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***The Giveaway***

Giveaway Open Internationally | Must be 13+ to Enter

- ends June 22, 2020

Note: Not Responsible for Lost & Damaged Prizes in You Mail Box

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Nerd Blast Organized by