Fresh ARCs! Get your fresh, hot ARCs!

NOTE: THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED. And the winners are...Anonymous, who gets FREEMAN; Carla, who gets THE MAN WHO TURNED BOTH CHEEKS; Stacy Michelle, who gets SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST; and Tea, who gets BEAUTIFUL, DIRTY, RICH. Winners, please email me your mailing addresses (carleenbrice AT gmail DOT com).

ARCs are advanced readers' copies, and I've received 4 recently from publishers that I want to pass along. So before 10 p.m. MDT Monday, July 9th leave a comment on this post. Tell us the title of a good book you just read or what you're looking forward to reading next and which of the 4 books (Beautiful, Dirty, Rich; Freeman; South by Southeast; or The Man Who Turned Both Cheeks) that you'd like to win. I'll pick names at random using Random.org.

Beautiful, Dirty, Rich by J.D. Mason. On sale tomorrow, July 2nd! First in a new series about Blink, Texas, a tiny town with lots of secrets. If you're psyched because "Dallas" is back on the air, you should know the Ewings have got nothing on Mason's Gatewood clan! From RT Book Reviews: "This is a captivating story with so many twists and turns that readers may feel dizzy. The clues to Desi's mystery are as intriguing as the characters, who all hide deep secrets. Readers will find this one hard to put down."

Freeman by Leonard Pitts, Jr. In stores now! Django Unchained isn't the only story about a former slave on a search to find the love of his life. See post with a Q&A with Pitts here.

South by Southeast by Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes (presented by Blair Underwood). The fourth in the Tennyson Hardwick mystery series is due out in September. If hearing that it could be could be described "as Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins meets Miami Vice" doesn't make you want to buy the book, just watch the video below. Perhaps something about it will get your attention. :) Remember, Barnes and Due also have their zombie novel The Devil's Wake out at the end of this month!




The Man Who Turned Both Cheeks, second in a series by Gillian Royes. This one isn't out until December. Talk about getting an early sneak peek!
From the publisher: "Jamaica is the picturesque background for this explosive novel about love, fear, and intolerance, the second in Gillian Royes’s mystery series featuring charming and charismatic bartender-turned-detective Shad. Hopes for the impoverished village of Largo Bay come alive with the arrival of Joseph, estranged son of bar owner Eric. Janna, who has returned to the island, falls for Joseph’s good looks and charm, but she isn’t the only one with an eye for this mysterious man. As questions about Joseph’s sexuality arise, Shad struggles with protecting the survival of his beloved birthplace amidst the deeply ingrained culture of intolerance that surrounds him. Questions arise about what it means to be a man and a father, and Shad feels pressure to defend what he knows is right. As in the acclaimed The Goat Woman of Largo Bay, the first book in this series, Gillian Royes paints an indelible picture of a beautiful land where religion is strong but life is cheap, and explores what happens when a village must confront its own darkness or lose a bright future."

A good list of new and upcoming releases from Mala Nunn, Stephen Carter, Susan Fales-Hill and more can be found on the APOOO Book Club site. Thanks to APOOO, I found one I'm especially interested in: Elsewhere, California by Dana Johnson. Danzy Senna, author of one of my favorite novels Caucasia, says "Dana Johnson’s extraordinary novel offers an arresting vision of black female identity that transcends color and class even as it reveals its continuing power in our lives. The main character, Avery, is everything at once: struggling and middle-class, black and not-quite-black-enough, sexually invisible and sexually exoticized. Avery is about as complex and compelling a heroine as I’ve read recently, and Elsewhere, California is a luminous, funny, and poignant tale that speaks directly to a whole generation raised in a state of cultural confusion.”

The Go On Girl Book Club has posted a list of the books they're reading between now and the end of the year. Check it out. Maybe you'll see something you like!

In other news, The Bat Segundo Show has some new author podcasts up you might want to check out, including talks with Samuel R. Delany, author of Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, and Jesymn Ward, author of Salvage the Bones.

Note to readers: Full disclosure: I know J.D. Mason, Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes. Agate Bolden, publisher of Freeman, will also publish a writing book by me tentatively titled The Not So Fearless Writer. However, I never post about books that I don't believe in. Even if a book is not my particular cup of tea, people who like the genre or type of book may like it and I enjoy letting readers know it's out there.

Congratulations and gratitude

Marian is the winner of Panther Baby! Congratulations! You can leave your email in the comments or email me your mailing address through my website.

Thanks so much to everyone for entering! If you didn't win the book you wanted, please consider buying it.

Thanks to authors Bernice McFadden and Trice Hickman for the autographed copies! And thanks to publishers Agate Bolden and Algonquin Books for providing copies.


Next week watch for an interview with Vaunda Nelson, author of No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller.

Giveaway Day 4: Win Panther Baby!

The winner of Keeping Secrets and Telling Lies is As the Page Turns. Congratulations! Thanks everybody for your comments and posts and tweets all week!

We finish up Giveaway Week with Panther Baby by Jamal Joseph, Panther, poet, prisoner, professor and Oscar nominee. (How's that for a curriculum vitae?) It's a memoir about coming of age during the Black Panther movement, which Kirkus called "an inspiring, unapologetic account of his transformation from armed revolutionary to revolutionary artist." For more about the book (supplied by Algonquin), watch the (great!) trailer below.





And read an excerpt here. If you'd like to win a copy, leave a comment below. I'll announce the winner (chosen at random) tomorrow morning...unless power goes out. Denver's getting hit with a monster snowstorm!

Giveaway Day 3: Win Keeping Secrets and Telling Lies!

Congratulations Sidne! You've won Creatures Here Below. Leave your email address in the comments below or email me your snail mail address via my website.

Here's the book trailer for today's giveaway: Keeping Secrets and Telling Lies by Trice Hickman. This one is a re-issue, just out this week. It was self-published and did well enough to garner attention from a traditional publisher. It's a sequel, so if you win it, you might want to pick up Unexpected Interruptions and read it first. Check out this interview with Trice for more about the story.




If you like romance and women's fiction, leave a comment below and you'll have a chance to win! All comments must be left before midnight eastern.

Giveaway Day 2: Win Creatures Here Below!

The winner of Gathering of Waters is Lisa DeNeal. Congratulations! 

Today's book is Creatures Here Below, by O.H. Bennett. The Philadelphia Tribune's review says, "...author O.H. Bennett grabs his readers by the hand and leads them through a house of miscommunication where everybody thinks too much and talks too little. Despite what I thought was a rocky start, Bennett’s characters become likeable in their frailties and failures, and the back-and-forth ripens into a welcome addition. Grab this book, and if you’re willing to be patient for a few pages, you’ll be rewarded by a bold story. In the end, Creatures Here Below is a novel you’ll be talking about."

The publisher is comparing this book to some of Edward P. Jones' work. I think it also bears favorable comparison to another Agate Bolden novel, Before I Forget by Leonard Pitts Jr. From the publisher's synopsis:

This powerful new novel by O.H. Bennett tells the story of a makeshift family struggling to stay together as life wears away at their bonds of blood and love. At the center of the family is Gail Neighbors, the hardworking single mother of two sons, Mason and Tyler. Mason, the older, grew up without knowing his father, Pony Reed, a feckless gambler and womanizer. Tyler, the younger, sings in the church choir and enjoys a close relationship with his father, Dan, who left Gail a few years before but still spends plenty of time at the house. To make ends meet, Gail has taken in two boarders: Annie, an elderly woman with a diminishing grip on reality, and Jackie, the twenty-year-old single mother of baby Cole, who can't fully accept her overwhelming new responsibilities.

To give you a feel for Bennett's writing, this is Mason in the first chapter, after a fight with a boy who made a joke "something about missing fathers and bastards":

"Most of the blood was Mason's. It caused his ripped shirt sleeve to cling to his upper arm. Small drops landed on the white leather toe of his right sneaker. Mason turned the key and pushed the door open. He tried to do everything softly. He held his hand under his elbow to catch the drips and moved silently through the dark house. He slipped into the downstairs bathroom, easing the door shut with his shoulder before pulling the chain on the light over the sink. Instantly a face appeared in front of him, a dark, narrow, and closed face with brooding eyes, and tiny dots of blood sprayed from hairline to chin. That blood would belong to the that brother who grinned too much, who talked too much."

This is Miss Annie, one of the two boarders, in chapter two:

"Miss Annie Gant woke gripped by pain in her left leg. The leg felt as if it was petrifying from her knee, hardening into a crooked column of stone beneath the sheets....She wanted to ask God for relief so she would not wake anyone, but Miss Annie was too afraid even to breathe. She wanted to disturb no one. No one must rush to her in the middle of the night as if she were a baby. Long, tortuous moments passed and she silently struggled in the dark. She could feel blood finally begin to flow back into her limb, feel the relief of veins, once like the twisting hairs through marble, as they swelled again, returning life to her leg. She let out her breath and with lips moving against the fabric of the pillowcase, whispered thanks to God for allowing her to keep quiet. She heard her prayer answered with an inquisitive whine. A wet, black nose shoved toward her face. 'Shh, Sarrie girl, don't wake nobody. I'm all right now Everything's all better. It's going away. I feel it letting go.'"

And Gail, Mason's mother, who runs the boarding house:

"God is elusive. A preacher told Gail when she was still quiet young that to live life right is to search for Him each and every day like a miner in the deepest hold looking for that vein of gold. Gail searches on her knees in her dark closet. She is an old thirty-nine. She has borne three children: the first, the girl, Gail's mother took from her arms right after delivery. Gail could not find God then, though she called for Him. Gail's father, who would not stand for her mother's scheme, came back to help, but he was days late. He patted her hand while she remained bed-ridden and assured her he would find out where the child was sent and bring her back. But two days later he died of a heart attack and no one remained to champion Gail's cause. She called on God then too. But He did not come. A preacher who found Gail in the last pew late one Sunday night told her God would not come when she called, but if she lived a Christian life, she could go to Him and He would always be there for. So Gail began her search for God at every church and every sanctuary she came across. There were sweet, sweet times when she came close or thought she'd found Him, when the music of the choir and the shouted word of the gospel seized her and she swayed and rocked, burned in the divine light. But the moments of communion were brief and rare. Now, when others hopped and flailed in the aisles and professed their love for Jesus, she too clapped hands and gave praise, but eyed them with skepticism."

Right away, you can see this is a story about people in pain and their connection to one another. A connection that may see them through life's pain.

If you'd like a free copy of Creatures Here Below, leave a comment. Winner chosen at random and announced tomorrow. Please leave only one comment per person. Thanks and good luck! Remember, tomorrow, I'm giving away Keeping Secrets and Telling Lies by Trice Hickman.

Giveaway Day 1: Win Gathering of Waters!

Gathering of Waters is the latest from Bernice McFadden. Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River, said of it: "As strange as this may sound, Bernice L. McFadden has created a magical, fantastic novel centered around the notorious tragedy of Emmett Till's murder. This is a startling, beautifully written piece of work."

Bernice has offered to give a signed copy to one lucky blog reader! All you have to do to enter is leave a comment below. Using Random.org, I'll pick a winner. One entry per person. All comments left before midnight Eastern will be eligible to win. The winner will be announced tomorrow. If you don't win, you're free to enter the next day. Good luck! Come back tomorrow to enter for a copy of Creatures Here Below by O.H. Bennett.

Bernice's tour kicks off this week. Check out this video of her reading from the first chapter.