Tag: Excerpt

Blog Tour: Find Me by J.S. Monroe

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I’m delighted to be co-hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for Find Me, a tense, suspenseful thriller by J. S. Monroe. You can read an extract from Find Me below.

Plus there’s a chance to win your own copy of Find Me (UK & ROI only). You can enter here.  Entries close on 17th September 2017.

FindMeAbout the Book

Five years ago, Rosa walked to the pier in the dead of night, looked into the swirling water, and jumped. She was a brilliant young Cambridge student who had just lost her father. Her death was tragic, but not unexpected.

Was that what really happened? The coroner says it was suicide. But Rosa’s boyfriend, Jar, can’t let go. He sees Rosa everywhere – a face on the train, a figure on the cliff. He is obsessed with proving that she is still alive.

And then he gets an email. Find me, Jar. Find me, before they do…

 

Format: Paperback (400 pp.)        Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 7th September 2017    Genre: Thriller

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

 

Find Find Me on Goodreads

Extract: Find Me by J S Monroe

After the pub we went for a meal, even though I wasn’t hungry. I don’t know where it was, some place down by the river. I was still pretty drunk – until it was time to pay.

And that’s when I met him. Why now, with so little time left? Why not in my first term?

He was making his way around the table, taking payment from each of us. One bill, split fourteen ways, can you believe it? But this guy never complained, not even when he came round to me and my card didn’t work.

‘The machine’s acting up,’ he said, so quietly I could hardly hear him. ‘We’re out of range. Best you come up to the till now.’

‘Sorry?’ I said, looking up at him. I’m not short, but this guy was tall, a big bear of a man with a clean-shaven chin and a soft Irish brogue.

He leant down, checking that no one else could hear. His breath was warm and he smelt clean. Sandalwood, maybe.

‘So we need to try your card again, nearer the till.’

There was something about the look he gave me, an avuncular, reassuring smile, that made me get up from the table and follow him over to the till. And I liked his big tidy hands, a discreet ring on his thumb. But he wasn’t my type at all. The wide sweep of his jawline came together too sharply at the chin and his mouth was pinched.

It was only when we were out of earshot that he turned to me and said in a louder voice that my card had been rejected.

‘I’ve been advised to take the card from you and cut it up.’ He grinned. His big face brightened and gained better proportions when he did that: the chin softened and his cheekbones rose up.

‘What do we do?’ I asked, pleased that we seemed to be in this together. I’ve been broke since the day I arrived.

He looked down at me, realising for the first time, I think, quite how drunk I was. And then he glanced across at the table.

‘The cast?’ he said.
‘How did you guess?’
‘No tips.’
‘Maybe they’ll leave one in cash,’ I said, suddenly defensive of my new friends.
‘That would be a first.’
‘You’re not an actor yourself then,’ I said.
‘No. I’m not an act-or.’

He made me feel embarrassed by the word, rhyming the second syllable with ‘roar’.

‘So what do you do when you’re not being rude about my friends?’ I asked.
‘I’m a student.’
‘Here? At Cambridge?’
 It was a stupid, patronising question and he spared me an answer. ‘I write a bit, too.’

‘Great.’ But I wasn’t listening. My mind was already wandering back to my contribution to the bill and the fact that I had no means of paying. I don’t want any of the cast to know I’m penniless, even if it goes with the profession. And I can’t tell them that my financial worries – all my worries – will soon be over. I can’t tell anyone.

‘There’s enough money in the tip box, from other diners, for me to cover it,’ he said.

For a moment I was lost for words. ‘And why would you want to do that?’

‘Because I think it’s the first time you’ve hung out with these people and you’re trying to impress them. Not being able to pay might cost you the part. And I’m already looking forward to coming to watch. Ibsen’s all right, you know.’

We looked at each other in silence. He caught me by the elbow as I swayed too much. I was starting to feel very sick.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

‘Can you take me home?’ The tone of my voice – slurred, pleading – sounded all wrong, as if I was listening to some- one else talking.

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J S Monroe_author pic_credit Hilary StockAbout the Author

Jon Stock, now writing as J.S. Monroe, read English at Cambridge University, worked as a freelance journalist in London and was a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4. He was also a foreign correspondent in Delhi for the Daily Telegraph and was on its staff in London as Weekend editor. He left Telegraph in 2010 to finish writing his acclaimed Daniel Marchant spy trilogy and returned in 2013 to oversee the paper’s digital books channel. He became a fulltime author in 2015, writing as J.S. Monroe.

His first novel, The Riot Act, was shortlisted by the Crime Writers’ Association for its best first novel award. The film rights for Dead Spy Running, his third novel, were bought by Warner Bros, who hired Oscar-winner Stephen Gaghan (Traffic, Syriana) to write the screenplay. It is currently in development.

He is the author of five novels and lives in Wiltshire, England, with his wife, a photographer, and their three children.

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Blog Tour: False Lights by K J Whittaker

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False Lights blog tour banner

As regular followers of What Cathy Read Next will know, I’m a huge fan of historical fiction. Add in a ‘What if?’ element and I’m hooked. So I’m thrilled to host today’s stop for False Lights by K J Whittaker which ticks both those boxes.

You can find an extract from False Lights below.

Plus, there’s a chance to win your own copy of False Lights (UK & ROI only). You can enter here. Entries close 15th September 2017.

FalseLightsAbout the Book

What if Napoleon, instead of Wellington, had won the Battle of Waterloo? Wellington is in secret captivity in the Scilly Isles and the Cornish are threatening to join forces with France against the English. Against this tumultuous backdrop, Hester Harewood manages to escape from the French soldiers who have killed her black sea captain father. Her rescuer – Jack ‘Crow’ Crowlas – takes her to shelter with his aristocratic family in London. But soon they are embroiled in a web of treachery and espionage, as plans are laid to free Wellington and lead an uprising against the French occupation. Meanwhile, Crow’s younger brother throws in his lot with the Cornish rebels and threatens to bring Hester and Crow’s elaborate plans crashing down, as this spellbinding story builds towards its violent and gripping endgame.

Format: Hardback (368 pp.)          Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 7th September 2017     Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Publisher
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find False Lights on Goodreads

 

Extract: False Lights by K. J. Whittaker

The wind rose again, and dark clouds crept across the sky from the east. Was that small bay Lamorna Cove? Even if these men could be trusted to reach the great stone quay at the western reach of the bay without drowning them all, where might she be safe? The moment she set foot on land, every last scrap of sand, earth and moorland belonged to the Earl of Lamorna. There was a new earl, too – that scandalous boy who had sailed with Papa on the Belle and then left the navy to join Wellington’s staff in Spain.

Hester forced herself to steady her breathing as she weighed up the options: before Buonaparte had escaped his island, prison and set Europe alight with another war, Papa had gone to London on naval business, and she’d spent the winter of ’14 at Nansmornow, the ancient seat of the Earls of Lamorna. She’d never met the new earl – Papa knew him, of course, but he’d run away to sea at such a young age, afterwards joining the army, that she had never chanced to meet him at Nansmornow. The Lamornas were allies – of a sort. For so many reasons, Hester preferred not to recollect those frostbitten mornings, the sidelong glances of the Lamorna servants, ice on the windowpanes, and the Lamornas’ friends – women in fussy silk gowns not quite daring to meet her eye, or staring when they thought she did not attend.

Lord Lamorna – Mark – had died not long after Waterloo, they said, of a fever contracted as he searched the battlefield for the corpse of his estranged eldest son. But by the grace of God, that son had survived what should have been mortal wounds and was now the earl, a little-known quantity.  Hester had seen his name in The Times in the weeks after Waterloo: he was the messenger who had failed to reach Wellington with news that the allies had changed sides. Typical Wellington, Papa had said, frowning down at the newspaper. Always first to lay the blame at someone else’s door. Shabby of him to let it get out that it was Crowlas who didn’t reach him, poor lad. Lady Lamorna herself would be in London at this season, the great house Nansmornow cloaked in dust-sheets, but in any case, the Lamorna estates were far too close to what Hester had left behind. The French would look for her at Nansmornow, surely.

Even if by some miracle she escaped these soldiers, Papa’s manumission papers and the codicil confirming her own freedom were locked in his desk in the library on the top floor of the tower at Castle Bryher. Papa had never once left home without them. The Abolitionists might refuse as much sugar in their tea as they like, Papa used to say. The whole economy is bound up in the iniquity of it. The truth was, she could be kidnapped by anyone from Land’s End to the Highlands, disappearing without trace into a slave trade that had diminished, but survived underground. Hester pressed her hands to her face in a useless attempt to smooth away rising panic: the men simply ignored her.

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K J Whittaker (1)About the Author

K.J. Whittaker is the Carnegie-nominated author of six YA novels published by Walker Books under the name Katy Moran. She works part-time in a bookshop and lives in Shropshire.

Connect with Katy

Twitter ǀ Goodreads