The Best Books Ever

We're pleased to spotlight Sight Unseen, a series of romance novellas -- with a twist! Keep reading to learn more about the book and enter to win an ebook copy of Sight Unseen !   Sight Unseen: A Collection of Five Anonymous Novellas By  Sherry Thomas, Meredith Duran, Emma Barry, J.A. Rock, Erin Satie Published on June 6, 2017 Authors Revealed: September 2017 Published by: Open Ink Press Purchase: Here or here What stories would you tell if you could? Where would your mind take you, if you let it? Five of the top voices in romance dare you to explore the most distant corners of their imaginations as they test the limits of storytelling and break the boundaries of what even they thought possible, teasing and tormenting you shamelessly as they go. But there’s a twist—the author of each story is a secret at the time of release. They’re each plumbing the depths of the human heart and mind in ways they’ve never attempted before. Taking you high, bringing...

Fractured Fairy Tales of the Twilight Zone By  J. Cafesin Published on December 13th 2013 Published by Entropy Press Source: the author Fractured Fairy tales meets The Twilight Zone in this short story collection of four uniquely captivating, edgy, fantastical tales, each with a powerful message that lingers long after the reads... 1. In Finnegus Boggs, Confessions of a Marid, Djinn, the genie grants two Oakland punks a chance to save the other's life. 2. Hawk and Megan learn a valuable life lesson about love in Bird's Eye View. 3. The Activation is a cautionary tale for bickering children, and the parents who fail to silence them. 4. Sylverster McCain travels a sliver of light to reset Faith's path in life in The Morality Police. If you would like to watch my face as I explain how much I did not like this collection, please feel free to watch the video below. The first story in this collection of 4 short stories is Finnegus Boggs.  I hated it.  I h...

A Matter of Souls By  Denise Lewis Patrick Published on April 1st 2014 Published by Carolrhoda Books Source: Netgalley From the shores of Africa to the bowels of a transatlantic ship to a voting booth in Mississippi to the jungles of Vietnam, all human connection is a matter of souls. In this stirring collection of short stories, Denise Lewis Patrick considers the souls of black men and women across centuries and continents. In each, she takes the measure of their dignity, describes their dreams, and catalogs their fears. Brutality, beauty, laughter, rage, and love all take their turns in each story, but the final impression is of indomitable, luminous, and connected souls. I kind of want everyone to read this book.  It's a collection of short stories, so it goes by very quickly, and the focus is exclusively on people of color throughout history.  Aside from a strong theme of equality and civil rights, each story stands alone, so it's a very easy book to read ...

Grim Edited By  Christine Johnson Published on February 25th 2014 Published by: Harlequin Teen Source: Netgalley Inspired by classic fairy tales, but with a dark and sinister twist, Grim contains short stories from some of the best voices in young adult literature today. Grim is a pretty excellent collection of fairy tale-inspired stories from top YA authors.  While the blurb bills them all as dark and sinister, I don't think that's necessarily true.  There are some that are kind of creepy, and a few with sinister plot twists, but I didn't find the collection to be overall quite as, uh, grim as advertised. I do wish that the stories included notes from the authors about their inspirations or what fairy tales they were adapting, since I'm not really familiar with too many fairy tales, but otherwise, I enjoyed a good number of these stories and think this one is definitely worth picking up. Here are my quick thoughts on each of the stories in the coll...

Ham: Slices of a Life By  Sam Harris Published on January 14th 2014 Published by Gallery Books Source: Netgalley For fans of David Sedaris and Chelsea Handler, these stories and essays about friendship, celebrity, growing up and getting sober will have you laughing and crying in equal measure.With a wry style that evokes comparisons to Carrie Fisher, David Rakoff, and Steve Martin, Sam Harris proves that he is a natural humorist. Even The New York Times, in a review of one of his musical performances, called his stories “New Yorker-worthy.” Brilliantly written, these sixteen stories span Harris’s life from growing up gay in the buckle of America’s Bible belt to performing on Oprah’s first show after 9/11. In “I Feel, You Feel” he opens for Aretha Franklin during a blizzard. “Promises” is a front-row account of Liza Minnelli’s infamous wedding to “the man whose name shall go unmentioned.” In the title story, “Ham,” he describes how he was upstaged by a young child actor,...

Open Mic: Riffs on Life Between Cultures in Ten Voices Edited By  Mitali Perkins Published on September 10th 2013 Published by Candlewick Press Source: Netgalley Using humor as the common denominator, a multicultural cast of YA authors steps up to the mic to share stories touching on race. Listen in as ten YA authors -- some familiar, some new -- use their own brand of humor to share their stories about growing up between cultures. Henry Choi Lee discovers that pretending to be a tai chi master or a sought-after wiz at math wins him friends for a while -- until it comically backfires. A biracial girl is amused when her dad clears seats for his family on a crowded subway in under a minute flat, simply by sitting quietly in between two uptight white women. Edited by acclaimed author and speaker Mitali Perkins, this collection of fiction and nonfiction uses a mix of styles as diverse as their authors, from laugh-out-loud funny to wry, ironic, or poingnant, in prose, poetry...

Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales Edited By  Melissa Marr & Tim Pratt Published on October 22nd 2013 Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers Source: Netgalley The best writers of our generation retell the classics. Literature is filled with sexy, deadly, and downright twisted tales. In this collection, award-winning and bestselling authors reimagine their favorite classic stories, ones that have inspired, awed, and enraged them; ones that have become ingrained in modern culture; and ones that have been too long overlooked. They take these stories and boil them down to their bones, and then reassemble them for a new generation of readers. Today's most acclaimed authors use their own unique styles to rebuild twelve timeless stories. This anthology is a collection of short stories that are often retellings of classic stories, both fairy tales and otherwise.  There are some big names in here -- I'm fairly sure I requested this one solely...

Defy the Dark By  Saundra Mitchell, Courtney Summers, Aprilynne Pike, Dia Reeves, Malinda Lo, Rachel Hawkins, Valerie Kemp, Sarah Rees Brennan, Beth Revis, Carrie Ryan, Jon Skovron, Myra McEntire, Christine Johnson, Sarah Ockler, Jackson Pearce, Tessa Gratton Published on June 18th 2013 Published by Harper Teen Source: Publisher Defy the Dark, an all-new anthology edited by Saundra Mitchell. Coming Summer 2013 from HarperTeen! It features 16 stories by critically-acclaimed and bestselling YA authors as they explore things that can only happen in the dark. Authors include Sarah Rees Brennan, Rachel Hawkins, Carrie Ryan, Aprilynne Pike, Malinda Lo, Courtney Summers, Beth Revis, Sarah Ockler, and more. Contemporary, genre, these stories will explore every corner of our world- and so many others. What will be the final story that defies the dark? Who will the author be? Defy the Dark is a collection of sixteen short stories all by different authors. They're all storie...

Thanks to  TLC Book Tours , we're pleased to present a review for  Late Lights , a new collection of short stories by Kara Weiss. Make sure to  check out the rest of the tour stops  to see other reviews! Late Lights By  Kara Weiss Published on June 13th 2013 Published by Colony Collapse Press Source: Blog tour After spending his teens in juvenile detention, Monty is released to find he has nowhere to turn except back to the friends of his youth. But neither BJ nor Erin know how to have him in their lives anymore. As kids, BJ and Monty shared the anguish of being forgotten children, playing basketball and wandering the streets, but BJ has since aged out of her tomboy persona and into a sexually-confused woman in an adult body she doesn't understand, particularly when Monty is the first guy to view her as a woman. Although Erin Broder never gave up on her friendship with Monty, she doesn’t know where he fits into her upward-bound life, which is f...

Extremities: Stories of Death, Murder, and Revenge By  David Lubar Published on July 23rd 2013 Published by Tor Teen Source: Netgalley Master of the macabre David Lubar turns his attention to dark and twisted tales for teens with Extremities: Stories of Death, Murder, and Revenge A group of high school girls takes revenge on their sadistic gym teacher in the most fitting way possible. Two stowaways find themselves on a ship for the dead. An ancient predator stalks the wrong victim. Here are thirteen tales of death, murder, and revenge from the fertile and febrile imagination of master storyteller David Lubar—his first story collection for the teen audience. This book was okay.  Not great, not terrible.  It was a very quick read -- I finished it in maybe a couple of brief commutes around town and one lounging-on-couch-eating-pizza session.  All of the stories are incredibly short, with some clocking in at just a few pages long, so it is easy to just dev...

Thanks to  TLC Book Tours , we're pleased to present a review for Our Love Could Light the World, a collection of short stories by Anne Leigh Parrish. Make sure to  check out the rest of the tour stops  to see other reviews! Our Love Could Light The World By  Anne Leigh Parrish Published on June 3rd 2013 Published by She Writes Press Source: Blog Tour You know the Dugans. They're that scrappy family that lives down the street. Their yard is overgrown, they don't pick up after their dog, their five children run free - leaving chaos in their wake - and the father hasn't earned a cent in years. The wife holds them together on her income alone. You wouldn't want them for neighbors - but from a distance, their quite entertaining. Of course, alcohol is an issue. You can tell from the empty bottles lying under the bush out front. You can hardly blame the wife for leaving one day. Without her at the helm, the rest carry on the best they can. Their strong...

Thanks to TLC Book Tours , we're pleased to present a review for Half as Happy, a new collection of short stories by Gregory Spatz.. Make sure to check out the rest of the tour stops for more reviews, and keep scrolling down to enter to win a copy of this book for yourself! Half as Happy By  Gregory Spatz Published on April 16th 2013 Published by Engine Books Source: ARC for blog tour A grieving couple rents a desperate landlord's house in an effort to recover lost intimacy. Twins are irrevocably separated by events both beyond and within their control. A nighttime prank and its gruesome aftermath forge human connections no one could have anticipated. The eight stories in Half as Happy reveal with startling clarity their characters' secrets, losses, and desires. Each with the depth of a novel, these insightful portraits of the darkness and light within us reverberate long after they've ended, like beautiful and disturbing dreams. Author Gregory Spatz ...