Tag: thriller

Book Blitz: Carry Me Home by Jessica Therrien

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The spotlight today is on Carry Me Home by Jessica Therrien, an exciting novel inspired by the true story of a teenage girl’s involvement in several Mexican gangs in San Jose and Los Angeles. You can read an extract from the book below.

WinPlus there’s a giveaway (INTL) with a chance to win one of the following prizes:

  • 5 prize bundles of 10 books each (ebooks and at least 1 paperback per bundle)
  • Signed Hardcover of Carry Me Home by Jessica Therrien
  • Signed Hardcover of Oppression (Children of the Gods #1) by Jessica Therrien

To enter the giveaway, click here.

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CarryMeHomeEbookCoverAbout the Book

Lucy and Ruth are country girls from a broken home. When they move to the city with their mother, leaving behind their family ranch and dead-beat father, Lucy unravels. They run to their grandparents’ place, a trailer park mobile home in the barrio of San Jose. Lucy’s barrio friends have changed since her last visit. They’ve joined a gang called VC. They teach her to fight, to shank, to beat a person unconscious and play with guns. When things get too heavy, and lives are at stake, the three girls head for LA seeking a better life. But trouble always follows Lucy. She befriends the wrong people, members of another gang, and every bad choice she makes drags the family into her dangerous world. Told from three points of view, the story follows Lucy down the rabbit hole, along with her mother and sister as they sacrifice dreams and happiness, friendships and futures. Love is waiting for all of them in LA, but pursuing a life without Lucy could mean losing her forever. Ultimately it’s their bond with each other that holds them together, in a true test of love, loss and survival.

Praise for Carry Me Home

‘A riveting page-turner…Jessica Therrien broke my heart into a million pieces – and then put it back together again. This book will haunt and uplift readers long after they turn the last page.’ (Kat Ross, best-selling author of The Midnight Sea)

Format: ebook (356 pp.)                           Publisher: Acorn Publishing
Published: 26th September 2017             Genre: YA, Contemporary, Thriller

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

Find Carry Me Home on Goodreads

 

Extract: Carry Me Home by Jessica Therrien

“You ready for this, Guera?” he asks.

It’s a test, Guera. Only thing I can say is you’re allowed to fight back. Take ‘em out with everything you got.

I’d heard of people being jumped into a gang before, maybe it was Rosa who told me about it. As the girls start to descend from their spots around the room, slowly closing in like encircling wolves, I know what’s about to happen.

The realization takes hold in my chest, a quick plunge of the heart into an icy lake of fear. I back away slowly out of instinct, ready to run, but there’s nowhere to go. The sound of their skittering feet is the first thing I hear before they come at me. Me against all of them. Me against Rose Tattoo and Cigarette Twins. Me against the jealous novias. Ten sets of eyes glinting with the thrill of a fight. I flinch and turn my back to avoid the fists, but they’re all around me. One of them catches me by the shoulders, holding me in place as the other girls hit the back of my skull. My head flies forward, chin to chest.

At first I don’t know whether to swing or cover. I reach up to protect myself, but there are too many points of contact. The rush of adrenaline is intense. It blocks the pain, but there is a fiery need in me to get away. I try and kick or punch, feeling one or two connect, but the girls are everywhere. An elbow slams against my temple. My head splits and my ears ring. I go down.

Every infinite minute of being the enemy feels like it’ll never end.

Someone’s shoe stomps my thigh. Others strike my ribs. I heave and gag until I can’t breathe. But that kind of terror turns me into a resilient kind of crazy. The kind of rabid mad that is born of desperation. I scrape and flail until I’m on my feet, pulling hair and swinging my fists, making contact with whatever I can. I don’t realize I’m screaming until Toño calls them to a stop.

It ceases the moment the girls hear his voice, and I’m left there shaking and crazed, my breath dragging in and out of my lungs in a feverish effort to return to its normal rhythm. I pant and cry, as softly as I can, but it’s hard to deny my body the relief of all-out sobbing. My head hurts. My brain smashes against my skull with the pulse of too much pressure. I taste blood in my mouth, though no one has touched my face. Now that it’s over, the pain of it all rushes to the surface and makes me want to vomit. I feel like I could die.

Why am I here? Why am I doing this?

“She’s in,” Toño says, and the cheers of the group shock my senses and make me tense up.

They all rush me, and at first I’m terrified it’s about to start again, but instead they hug me and pat me on the shoulder all at once. Each hand on my back or squeeze around the shoulders rocks me with pain, but they’re so happy. Their laughter and cheering is contagious, it flows into me, filling me with a strange sense of pride and belonging. I can’t help my smile when I see their encouraging faces. I even start to laugh.

JessicaTherrienAbout the Author

Jessica Therrien is the author of the young adult series Children of the Gods. Book one in the series, Oppression, became a Barnes & Noble best-seller shortly after its release. Her trilogy has been translated and sold through major publishers around the world, such as Editions AdA (Canada), EditionsMilan (France), and SharpPoint Press (China). Aside from her Children of the Gods series, Jessica is the author of a kid’s picture book called The Loneliest Whale. Her award-winning stories can also be found in a published anthology of flash fiction.  Jessica currently lives in Irvine with her husband and two young sons. She is working on a YA suspense thriller series and a middle grade fantasy series.

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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.

Connect with Jon

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