The Best Ever Summer Blog Tour ~ Week 5

This week we are talking about our favourite summer reads and I'm lucky to have Susan Roebuck visiting my blog today. Don't forget to write your favourite summer book in the comments for a chance to win this weeks prize!

Welcome Susan!

Thank you Corinne for letting me run riot on your blog today. Summer’s here! And that means lots of reading…actually I read in Winter too. And Spring. And Autumn too, now I think about it LOL. Anyway, if you like paranormal books, which I do, here’s what I recommend for summer reading:

1. I only recently discovered Karin Marie Moning’s Fever Series. And it’s number 1 of my list because I devoured these books with a greed that had me looking round for more. MacKayla Lane is the ideal feisty heroine who is tested over and over (too much “over” sometimes) until she comes out of the end of the series completely changed from the little rainbow girl she started out to be. I’ve just finished Shadowfever so I feel like I’ve come to the satisfactory end of a tasty, full-blown dinner. Shadowfever ties up all the loose ends so you know who everyone is. My my only criticism about the final book is, without giving any spoilers away, that MacKayla does spend too much time in introspection, questioning her actions, questioning her thoughts and desires.

2. I’ve also just found (lucky me) Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. I’ve read Storm Front and just recently Fool Moon and I think I’m a little in love with Harry Dresden who, in my mind, looks nothing like the hunky figure on the paperback version of Fool Moon. Much to my delight this hero is deeply flawed. He’s feckless and clumsy but he bravely undergoes such hardship it’s hard not to admire him.

3. Ann Rice’s Vampire Lestat series. I read the books before I saw Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt strut their stuff. Actually I preferred Antonio Banderas as Armand – he made a great vampire.

4. A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness is rather a lengthy novel but it features vampires (pretty scary ones too), witches and daemons who are all against each other. So the sparks fly when a witch and vampire hook up. This is part of a series and I’m anxious for the sequel when there’s going to be all-out war between vampires, witches and daemons. And while all this is going on, humans wander about oblivious (don’t look over your shoulder – and check out the pale guy in the corner).

5. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman. It is supposed to be for children, but the subtle religious undertones are for adult reading. I’m fond of daemons and wouldn’t mind one of my own (it would be an otter).

6. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Leave the light on for this horror story in which figures leap out of shadows and go Boo! They’ll scare the wits out of you. They did me.

7. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.  In Wales, a teenager comes across an orphanage whose occupants are definitely not what they seem. One child speaks to the dead, another has two faces, another levitates. And real photographs from days gone by cleverly illustrate the odd skills. This was a strange read – which is probably why I enjoyed it. I like fiction that’s out of the ordinary.

8. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I’m just on the point of reading this book. Some of the reviews say that the book is stuff that dreams are made of  - just my type of book.

9. Diavolino by Steve Emmett. This is an undiscovered little gem which dodges between sixteenth century and modern day Italy with a horrifying climax. Emmett has been likened to a mix of Stephen King and Dan Browne.

10. The Man Who Rained by Ali Shaw. I’m reading this one at the moment. Elsa moves from New York to a place that is set in the UK somewhere – probably Wales because there are mountains. She falls in love with a guy who turns out to be half man and half weather (he turns into a thunder cloud occasionally and spits lightning). It’s a brilliant concept, written in such a way that I can relate to it – there really might be people like this living amongst us.

Here are the blurbs of Susan’s books:

Hewhay Hall (published April 2012 – a dark fantasy)

An unsung hero's destiny--Slater's house of horrors.

Fire-fighter Jude Elliott loses part of his leg trying to rescue a family held hostage during a terrorist attack. He journeys to mysterious Hewhay Hall, where it is told there are wondrous, magical cures. Little does Jude know that his destination is Slater The Prince of Envy's lair where a demon resides and courageous souls are tormented... Can Jude escape Slater's house of horrors, or will he suffer for all of eternity?

Buy links:

Amazon
Barnes and NobleKobo
OmniLit

Also by Susan Roebuck: Perfect Score (Finalist in the Mainstream Category of the 2012 EPIC E-Book Awards)

 Buy:  Amazon

Publisher

Blurb: Perfect Score is about the rite of passage of two young men, Alex and Sam, from the opposite side of the tracks. Alex lives in his uncle's mansion, and while money and a stable future have been lined up for him by his powerful and withholding uncle, he wants nothing more than to be a song writer and to live happily ever after with Sam -- a boy he met once when he was in his teens. Sam's life is more wretched: he was abused, ran away from the fists of an abusive step-father and unstable foster homes, and lived most of his prepubescent and teen years in the streets, fending for himself and taking on as many jobs as he could to pay for his sister's bills at the hospital for the crippled. Struggling to make sense of the two divergent lives they have been dealt, Alex and Sam find their way to one another through a journey full of boundless love and compassion, growth, and strength.

Find Susan Roebuck:

Blog: http://www.susanroebuck.com/

FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/SuRoebuck

Be sure to continue your tour with my list. :) I'm visiting on Christine London's blog this week. http://christinelondon.blogspot.ca/