Blog Tour (Excerpt): The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi #yalit #excerpt @GriffinTeen @NotRashKnee

Thank you so much for visiting by Bibliophilia, Please for my stop on The Star-Touched Queen blog tour - which is out as of Tuesday! Today, I'll be featuring an excerpt and my review!



Title: The Star-Touched Queen
Author: Roshani Chokshi
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (Macmillan)
Release Date: April 26, 2016
Fate and fortune. Power and passion. What does it take to be the queen of a kingdom when you're only seventeen?

Maya is cursed. With a horoscope that promises a marriage of Death and Destruction, she has earned only the scorn and fear of her father's kingdom. Content to follow more scholarly pursuits, her whole world is torn apart when her father, the Raja, arranges a wedding of political convenience to quell outside rebellions. Soon Maya becomes the queen of Akaran and wife of Amar. Neither roles are what she expected: As Akaran's queen, she finds her voice and power. As Amar's wife, she finds something else entirely: Compassion. Protection. Desire...

But Akaran has its own secrets -- thousands of locked doors, gardens of glass, and a tree that bears memories instead of fruit. Soon, Maya suspects her life is in danger. Yet who, besides her husband, can she trust? With the fate of the human and Otherworldly realms hanging in the balance, Maya must unravel an ancient mystery that spans reincarnated lives to save those she loves the most. . .including herself.

From an incredibly fresh voice, Roshani Chokski’s The Star-Touched Queen is a beautifully written standalone novel that will enchant young adult and fantasy readers until the last page.


Excerpt

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LESSONS IN SILENCE
The archives were cut like honeycombs and golden light clung to them, dousing every tome, painting, treatise and poem the soft gold of ghee freshly skimmed from boiling butter. I was only allowed to visit once a week—to meet with my weekly tutor before I inevitably scared him away. Every time I left the archival room, my arms brimmed with parchment paper. I loved the feeling of discovery, of not knowing how much I wanted something until I had discovered its absence.

The week before, I had lost myself in the folktales of Bharata. Stories of elephants who spun clouds, shaking tremors loose from ancient trunks gnarled with the rime of lost cyclones, whirlwinds and thunderstorms. Myths of frank-eyed naga women twisting serpentine, flashing smiles full of uncut gemstones. Legends of a world beneath, above, beside the one I knew—where trees bore edible gems and no one would think twice about a girl with dark skin and a darker horoscope. I wanted it to be real so badly that sometimes I thought I could see the Otherworld. Sometimes, if I closed my eyes and pressed my toes into the ground, I could al- most sense them sinking into the loam of some other land, a dream demesne where the sky cleaved in two and the earth was sutured with a magic that could heal hearts, mend bones, change lives.

Interview: Kristen-Paige Madonia, Author of INVISIBLE FAULT LINES #yalit #giveaway @KPMadonia @simonteen

Thank you so much for visiting by Bibliophilia, Please to check out my interview with the very cool Kristen-Paige Madonia about her new book, Invisible Fault Lines!



Title: Invisible Fault Lines
Author: Kristen-Paige Madonia
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Release Date: May 3, 2016
From the author of Fingerprints of You, whom Judy Blume calls “a remarkable young novelist,” comes a compelling and lyrical novel that explores how one teen rebuilds her life after everything seems lost.

My father disappeared on a Tuesday that should’ve been like any Tuesday, but eventually became the Tuesday my father disappeared.

Tired of living in limbo, Callie finally decides to investigate her father’s disappearance for herself. Maybe there was an accident at the construction site that he oversaw? Maybe he doesn’t remember who he is and is lost wandering somewhere? But after seeing a familiar face in a photo from the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, she wonders if the answer is something else entirely.

Interview

Kayla: Hi, Kristen-Paige! Thank you so much for coming back to Bibliophilia, Please and talking to us again! What have you been up to since the last time you were here?

Kristen-Paige Madonia: I made a person! My husband and I welcomed our son into the world in 2013, and it really changed EVERYTHING. Every single cliché you hear about being a parent – about seeing the world through new eyes, about all the ways parenthood shifts your perspective and priorities, about the endless rewards and challenges… it’s all true. So I’ve been working hard at trying to be present and enjoying time with my son. I’ve also been teaching a variety of university and high school courses and workshops and, of course, I wrote another book.

Kayla: Invisible Fault Lines will be releasing next week. What was the most interesting piece of information you found while doing research for the novel?

Blog Tour (Review): Clarina Nichols by Diane Eickhoff #TLCBookTours #nonfiction #kidlit

Title: Clarina Nichols: Frontier Crusader for Women's Rights
Author: Diane Eickhoff
Publisher: Quindaro Press
Tour Organizer: TLC Book Tours
Release Date: March 1, 2016
Everyone knows about the "Votes for Women" campaign that led to the 19th Amendment in 1920. Few know just how long the struggle really was. Decades earlier, brave women began breaking the taboo of remaining silent at gatherings that included men. They began signing their names to petitions, flexing political muscle long before they had the vote. They wrote millions of words and published some of the most influential books and journals of their day. No one represents this early struggle -- the small triumphs and discouraging setbacks -- better than Clarina Howard Nichols (1810-1885), the Vermont newspaper publisher whose speeches made a powerful case for equality.

Nichols, herself the victim of a failed marriage, was a magnet to abused and mistreated women and was their advocate at a time when her sex was just beginning to speak up. And when she felt progress wasn't coming soon enough, she moved west, to Bleeding Kansas, where she would make history and show the world that feminism could thrive on the frontier.

Diane Eickhoff, who first wrote Nichols' biography in 2006 as Revolutionary Heart, has reimagined her story for all ages. Booklist declared, "The name Clarina Nichols deserves to be placed next to those of such luminaries as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton," and readers of this inspiring historical biography will heartily agree.

My Review

Before reading Clarina Nichols: Frontier Crusader for Women's Rights, I had never heard of Clarina Nichols. As a librarian and history major, I'm pretty embarrassed to admit this. Thankfully, after reading the book, I know more about her, the women's rights movement, as well as the fight to abolish slavery in Kansas. It includes lots of pictures, maps, and copies of newspaper articles really showcase that time period.

Blog Tour (Review): The Darkest Night by Gena Showalter #TLCBookTours #Giveaway @genashowalter @HarlequinBooks

Happy Friday! Thank you so much for visiting my stop on the tour promoting Gena Showalter's Lords of the Underworld series! Today I'm reviewing The Darkest Night, the first book in the series. There is also a great giveaway at the end of the post, so be sure to check that out before you leave!



Title: The Darkest Night (Lords of the Underworld #1)
Author: Gena Showalter
Publisher: HQN (Harlequin)
Tour Organizer: TLC Book Tours
Release Date: May 3, 2008
All her life, Ashlyn Darrow has been tormented by voices from the past. To end the nightmare, she has come to Budapest seeking help from men rumored to have supernatural abilities, not knowing she'll be swept into the arms of Maddox, their most dangerous member--a man trapped in a hell of his own.

Neither can resist the instant hunger that calms their torments...and ignites an irresistible passion. But every heated touch and burning kiss will edge them closer to destruction--and a soul-shattering test of love....

My Review

I've never considered myself a romance reader. True, I'll read the occasional historical romance as a palate cleanser, but it's never been my go to genre-of-choice. I haven't read paranormal romance in years, as I tend to prefer high or urban fantasy. However, as I read The Darkest Night, I realized that there might be a romance reader inside me after all.