Friday, March 17, 2017

Ascenders Saga by C.L. Gaber


Title: Ascenders Saga
Author: CL Gaber | @CLGaber



Ascenders: High School for the Recently Departed (Ascenders #1)













 Is this Hell or is this High School?

THE ASCENDERS Book Saga Takes You to the In-between Where Teens Who Died Young Go On the Epic Adventure of an After-Lifetime

Walker Callaghan doesn't know what happened to her. One minute she was living her teenage life in suburban Chicago...and the next minute, she was in a strange place and in a brand new school with absolutely no homework, no rules, and no consequences. 

Walker Callaghan, 17, is dead. 

She doesn't go to heaven or hell. She lands at The Academy, a middle realm where teenagers have one thing in common: They were the morning announcement at their high schools because they died young. 

These high school kids are now caught in a strange “in-between” zone where life hasn’t changed very much.  In fact, this special teen limbo looks a lot like life in a quaint Michigan town complete with jocks, popular girls and cliques. "There are even cheerleaders in death," Walker observes.  It's not a coincidence that the music teacher is a guy named Kurt who "used to have this band." The drama teacher, Heath, is crush worthy because back in his life, he starred in some superhero movie.

Principal King explains the rules -- there are none. Why? You can't die twice. 

There is no homework.
No tests.
No SATS.

You're just there to learn because the human brain isn't fully formed until you're 24. 

 By the way, you can't get hurt physically, so race your Harley off that hillside. But falling in love is the most dangerous thing you can do ...because no one knows how long you'll stay in this realm or what's next.

"Losing someone you love would be like dying twice," Walker says. 

                           
Walker Callaghan has just arrived at the Academy after a tragic car accident. “Is this hell or is this high school?” she asks.

She finds out her new life is a bit of both as she falls in love with tat-covered, bad boy Daniel Reid who is about to break the only sacred rule of this place. He's looking for a portal to return back to the living realm.

He needs just one hour to retrieve his younger brother who strangely never arrived at The Academy. Bobby is an Earth Bound Spirit, stuck at a plane crash site that took both of their lives as their rich father piloted his private jet nose-first into a cornfield on Christmas Eve. 

Walker loves Daniel and risks it all to go with him.

Have they learned enough to outsmart dangerous forces while transporting a young child with them? Can their love survive the fragmented evil parts of themselves that are now hunting them down as they try to find a way back to the middle?

At the Academy, you learn the lessons of an after-lifetime. 





Ascenders: Skypunch (Book Two)













In the Midst—a place for those who die young—there are no rules except one. 

And Walker Callaghan, dead at seventeen, just broke it. She briefly revisited her earthly life
and the punishment is eternal. Longing for her rebel love interest, Daniel Reid, Walker finds an ally in Cass, whose attraction to her is as alive as he is. “Life is short,” he tells her. “I’m banking on eternity. With you.”

In the second book of the Ascenders Saga, a realm-jumping journey takes Walker and Daniel back to life again when they search for something buried in history. They team with students from several other schools in the middle realm including a place for teens born with oddities. It’s home to the Claires . . . beautiful, ruthless, and quite dead seventeen-year-old quads who each have a different clairvoyant gift.

Can Walker survive another adventure of an afterlife-time—or will she find herself on the downside of eternity?











 Ascenders
Text Copyright © 2017 CL Gaber
All Rights Reserved

Now that it was absolutely dark, I felt like the world had faded to inky black. I
didn’t have any idea where we were walking, but knew I had to get home before my
mother became frantic and called the cops, which would be mortifying in a new town.

“So, how long have your parents been gone?” I asked, sliding along and breathing
not-so-heavily, while thinking that maybe his mother and father had a time-share in
Miami or Palm Springs during this time of the year and had just snuck away for the
weekend or even dumped the kids on him for a week.

“How long have they been gone?” Daniel pondered out loud. His laugh was
beyond sarcastic; it was vicious. “They’ve been gone years, months, and days. Who cares
about them? I certainly don’t.”

Of course, he was kidding. Parents didn’t take vacations from their four children
for years. It was called child abandonment and there were laws. Wait, maybe his parents
were in jail for breaking the law. Embezzlers? Ponzi scheme? My journalistic mind was
in overdrive. “So, it’s just the four of you kids in the house? For years. Home alone.” I
said with a little laugh. “Obviously, that was a bad joke.”

“No joke. It’s just us four—we’re a family. Intact. For the most part,” said the
David Beckham look-a-like with the short dark hair and steel gray eyes, quickly walking
ahead again. He really didn’t want to get into it now.

Intact? I thought. Now this was really getting interesting. I knew he was the
exacting type, and his choice of words was deliberate.

My next question would have to wait.

 In what seemed like an instant, my back foot caught on a large fallen tree branch
and I fell forward with all my body weight. Crashing hard onto my hands and knees, I
cried out, but I wasn’t in any real pain. Before I could stand up, I slipped again until my
stomach slammed against the surface of the thickly iced-over pond. The cracking sound
was like thunder. Then, in what felt like a sickening surge of broken glass and rushing
water, the ground suddenly ceased to exist. I didn’t have time to scream as I dropped into
the dark, lifeless, icy chill of wintery water.

I braced for the first slap of bitter freeze, instantly calling up some stupid fact
from science class at Kennedy High where we learned that Titanic survivors described
hitting the freezing ocean water as thousands of tiny knives stabbing every inch of their
bodies.

I expected excruciating pain, but there was none. There was just numbness as I
entered the earliest stages of being converted to ice.

Resistance was only natural and I fought hard as my hands flailed through the
water trying to keep my head above the murky freeze, but it was pointless. The water was
hungry that night and my thrashing almost made a game out of its impending conquest. It
only took a second or two of my desperate survival dance for the lake to swallow me
whole.

Daniel must have heard the crack and he stopped in place. Slowly, he turned
around as I struggled to pop up again, but by putting up a fight I only succeeded in
making it worse. As my body was being carried under the heavy sheet of ice in an
involuntary dance, I could see Daniel above, the soles of his black boots carefully
following my route as he calmly watched me drown.

In a way, it was fascinating to watch him ever so gradually shuffle along as my
hands desperately reached from under my new icy roof for the bottom of his boots. The
only thing that separated us was about five solid inches of deadly winter soup. By the
time he found me in an even darker spot where the lake mingled with several dead,
embalmed trees, all he could see from under the thick coating was my face looking up at
him, frozen in horror. He saw my pouty mouth almost kissing the ice and frantically
trying to say one word to him.

“Help!” I mouthed.

I gulped down murky green water, ingesting long tentacles of lifeless leaves and
thick clumps of sludge-dirt, and it all slid easily into my lungs while he just stood there.

He. Stood. There.

Frantically, I maneuvered away from the spot by the trees, which made it worse
because now I was pinned under even thicker ice, my milky-white face pressed up

against eight to ten inches of immovable crystals.

Casually, Daniel walked to where I was wildly waving my arms underneath the
water. When I looked up now, he was a hazy dark blur that made me suddenly dizzy.
That’s when I shut my eyes to wait for the inevitable.

But I didn’t black out. Long minutes passed, my eyes sprung open, and I
continued to push upward again as the water became midnight black. For some reason I
was still alive, but I still couldn’t free myself from this wintry prison.

My mind raced. How much time had passed? How much time could pass before I
would be brain-dead? How much time before I died?

Daniel still stood above the ground and calmly watched me struggle. “To hell
with this,” he finally said, loud enough for me to hear him under the ice. Was he telling
me to stop struggling and just accept that I lost?

After another endless minute passed, he shook his head and, though apparently
talking to himself, said even louder, “Okay, enough . . . but you need to know.”

Kicking through a thinner spot of ice, he made a small hole and then pummeled it
into a bigger passage with those clomping boots. Reaching down into the crack, he
offered me a strong hand and a tat-covered, muscular arm. Somehow through the dark
water, I saw human fingers moving and grabbed them like they were my only lifelines,
which is exactly what they were to me.

All it took was one big hoist and I was in his arms, pressed body-to-body up
against him, soaking wet, freezing cold, and mad as hell.

With my right hand, that had absolutely no feeling in it, I slapped him squarely
across the jaw as hard as possible. When he didn’t budge much, I slapped him again,
which made my hand tired, but it didn’t hurt. When I attempted to punch his face, he
grabbed my hand in a firm way that signaled we weren’t going another nine rounds.

“Easy there, tiger,” he said with a smirk that made those soft eyes twinkle. “I
guess you’re a fan of the Rocky movies.”

“Why . . . you bastard . . . why . . . you didn’t even try to save me,” I sputtered,
but I wasn’t really coughing and certainly my brain was perfectly fine. For a split second,
I counted to five backward. Again, it was amazing that my mind was still functioning.

Maybe the water was cold enough to save me. Is that how it worked?

“I saw you. You were just standing there! Watching! Watching me die!” I
screamed, shoving him again. This time, I took him by surprise and he landed butt-first in

a pile of snow.

Calmly, he stood up, lurched forward, and grabbed both of my arms, holding me
against his rock-hard chest until I stopped struggling and gave up the idea of trying to
knock his block off. He held me tightly like he was protecting me from some danger
worse than what just happened. Tears formed in my eyes and I began to touch my arms
and then tested my breathing, which was perfectly normal. He still refused to let go. Big
white puffs of my breath filled the dark sky and I watched them evaporate slowly like
little clouds. Then I looked up.

“Why aren’t I dead?” I said in an anguished voice.

Daniel took a deep breath, carefully released me, and then answered slowly.

“Because, baby, you can’t die twice,” he said.










C.L. Gaber is the author of the ASCENDERS SAGA including "ASCENDERS: High School of the Recently Departed" (Book One) and a ASCENDER: SKYPUNCH (Book Two). C.L. is also the co-author of JEX MALONE. 

She is an entertainment journalist who interviews Hollywood's A-listers for the New York Times wire and several other publications. Daniel Day-Lewis and Bruce Springsteen are two of her favorites! C.L. lives in Nevada with her husband Ron, daughter Sabrina and two unruly dogs. 







B&B Promotions | @banbpromotions


The Paper Year by Avery Aster


blog tour

Book Title: The Paper Year: A Psychological Thriller With An Ending You'll Never See Coming (Piper Adler Book 1) 
Author: Avery Aster 
Genre: Psychological Thriller 
Release Date: March 16, 2017 
Hosted by: Book Enthusiast Promotions

Goodreads

book blurb

For fans of The Girl on the Train, Before I Go to Sleep, and The Silent Wife, the new psychological thriller from New York Times bestselling author Avery Aster warns readers: the first year of marriage is killer.

Barclay is Manhattan's premiere cooperative—the kind of place everyone who's anyone desires to reside in. That's what psychotherapist Piper Adler believes as she moves into the garden apartment with her new husband, but then she wakes up in a hospital accused of trying to take her own life. Her dreams of being a wife and mother destroyed along with her career as a mental health professional, she sets off on a mind-bending course to discover the truth.

Unraveling a web of deceit forces Piper to second-guess her family, her friends, and even herself. With each terrifying revelation, she must come to terms with the fact that those she thought she knew aren't who they seem, and someone trusted very close to her wants her gone. Will she beat them at their own game or die trying?

Fusing nail-biting suspense with potent storytelling, THE PAPER YEAR will keep you on the edge of your seat with an unforgettable cast of characters who are compelled to do the unthinkable to survive.

excerpt



I shout for help, hoping someone, anyone, hears me.

Everyone is gone. They heeded the warning and left hours ago.

Glancing down at the watch my husband gave me when we first married, I notice the time: ten minutes to eight. I’m fucked.

Any minute now the demolition crew will blow this basement into a gazillion pieces. I imagine my body combusting like an overcooked dinner that had been left in the microwave for far too long on the highest power. My arms would be found somewhere on FDR Drive. My legs would smack the roof of a nearby cab. I thought about my dentist, Dr. Sabbagh, having to identify my skull using dental records. And my mother in Westchester; I can already hear her saying, “I told Piper she should’ve never gotten married to someone as good-looking as Boden Adler.”

My hands, cut and bloody from fighting while trying to defend myself, start to shake uncontrollably. Reaching for the edge of the cage that I’m locked into, I throw myself onto the mesh metal with every ounce of energy left inside me, praying the door comes loose.

Locked from the other side, it doesn’t budge.

Fear pounds in my heart, blood thumps through my ears. The florescent lights that have given me hope like a warm blanket for the last hour fade to darkness.

Exhausted, I surrender, collapsing onto the cold cement floor.

“You got your chance. You should’ve left when I told you,” the voice yells from the top of the stairs. “Goodbye.”

Never in a million years did I think I’d die like this.
meet the author

New York Times bestselling author Avery Aster pens The Manhattanites, a contemporary erotic romance series of full-length, stand-alone novels, and the naughty new adult prequel companion series The Undergrad Years. Join Avery's newsletter eepurl.com/CQ665 and get a FREE ebook!
social media

websitenewsletter signuptwitterFacebookpinterestinstagramGoodreads

buy the book


amazon usamazon UK

giveaway

500x500 BEP Square

Nate Temple Chronicles by Shayne Silvers


Obsidian Son
The Nate Temple Chronicles Book 1
By Shayne Silvers
Genre: Supernatural Thriller

A city that doesn’t believe in magic. Bloodthirsty weredragons. Good thing this reckless playboy has superpowers…
It’s been said that monsters cry when a good man goes to war. But they should run screaming like little school girls when that man is secretly a wizard, and maybe not necessarily good…
Nate Temple’s all-consuming quest to avenge his parents is temporarily put on hold when shape-shifting dragons invade St. Louis. And perhaps cow-tipping the Minotaur for answers might not have been Nate’s smartest opening move, because now every flavor of supernatural thug from our childhood nightmares is gunning for him. Nate learns that the only way to save his city from these creatures is to murder his best friend…
Nate’s choice will throw the world and his own conscience into cataclysmic chaos: avenge his parents or become a murderer to save his city. Because to do either, he’s going to have to show the world that magic is very, very real, and that monsters are very, very hungry… To survive, he might just need to take a page from the book, How to Win Friends and Influence Monsters.
If you like Jim Butcher, Kevin Hearne, or Patrick Rothfuss, you will LOVE the first installment of The Nate Temple Supernatural Thriller series.


Blood Debts
The Nate Temple Chronicles Book 2

A Wizard, an Angel, and a Horseman of the Apocalypse walk into a bar…
The ancient pact between mankind, Heaven, and Hell has been broken. And this upstart wizard’s quest for vengeance may have just kicked off Armageddon. So, time for a drink... or maybe two.
Already plagued with sinister night terrors that could qualify him as a card-carrying psychopathic insomniac, Nate can barely even manage to put his pants on in the morning, let alone pick teams for the Apocalypse.
But when he’s framed as a demon sympathizer, condemned by the Armies of Heaven, and hunted down by both his allies and the Four Horsemen, this wizard doesn’t think it can get any worse…
Then they take away his magic. And a wizard without magic stands no chance against the forces of Heaven and Hell…


Grimm
The Nate Temple Chronicles Book 3

The Brothers Grimm – legendary supernatural assassins – have escaped their prison, and their first day in St. Louis could be Nate Temple’s last…
Sharing a beer with Death – one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – really put a few things into perspective for this foul-mouthed, billionaire wizard. Like finally strapping on the boots to propose to his girlfriend.
But assassination contracts have a way of putting wedding plans on hold. Perhaps permanently. And with the entire wedding party on the bloodthirsty Grimm’s hit-list, and his family fortune in jeopardy, Nate realizes they can’t run and they can’t hide. So, time to do magic and stuff…
But with every flavor of supernatural thug teaming up to help the Grimms, Nate realizes that friends have become enemies and enemies have become friends, and he’s forced to cross lines that are better left uncrossed.
When magic, claws, and teeth dance to the song of war, the only thing left to learn is who lives and who dies. And if Nate can live with the consequences.
No wonder a guy is terrified to propose…


Silver Tongue
The Nate Temple Chronicles Book 4

My resume is pretty full: I’ve cow-tipped the Minotaur, decimated a gang of weredragons, sucker-punched an Angel, and eaten pancakes with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse…
I’ve kidnapped one of the most powerful wizards on the planet, and slaughtered the Brothers Grimm. I’m kind of a big deal.
But I never thought I’d find myself at a crossroads, a pawn in a deadly game that I hadn’t known existed, willing to sell my soul to save the life of someone I loved… That’s when I learned true fear, because the world I thought I knew was all just smoke and mirrors, and I was just a puppy playing amongst wolves…


Beast Master
The NateTemple Chronicles Book 5

What do you do for Thanksgiving Dinner when your guests are Death, an Angel, and a slew of other monsters? You have a nerf gun war, of course… But the Queens of Fae want to crash his party. And the Beast Master is abducting shifter children for a Monster Circus.

Thanksgiving Dinner plans with Death, an Angel, a vampire, Achilles, and a slew of other monsters are cut short because a Monster Circus has come to town. And the Beast Master needs new Monsters for his show…

But the Queens of Fae also want a little deep-fried wizard for the holidays.

Oh, and Nate is losing that last finger-hold on his sanity: hallucinating, and talking to creatures that no one else can see. The ancient demon inside of him is getting stronger, fighting for dominance, and only one of them can survive.

But when a wizard curses Nate, extorting him to rescue a lethal Chimera child from the Beast Master’s Circus, Nate’s only option is to partner with his inner demon, risking his very soul. But his friends begin to doubt and fear this new, darker Nate, taking matters into their own hands – even when that means standing against him.

With allies turned enemies, the Fae breathing down his neck, and a dangerous child’s life on the line, Nate must call upon, bully, and coerce new storybook legends and gods to save his traitorous friends from becoming the Beast Master’s next victims…

Discover what – if anything – Nate is willing to sacrifice to save the friends who betrayed him…



Shayne is a man of mystery and power, whose power is exceeded only by his mystery. In other words, a storyteller.
He currently writes the Nate Temple Supernatural Thriller Series, which features a foul-mouthed young wizard with a chip on his shoulder attempting to protect St. Louis from the various nasties we all know and fear from our childhood bedtime stories. Nate’s been known to suckerpunch an Angel, cow-tip the Minotaur, and steal Death’s horse in order to prove his point. His utter disregard for consequences and self-preservation will have you laughing and cringing on the edge of your seat.
Shayne holds two high-ranking black belts, and enjoys conversing about anything Marvel, Magical, or Mythological. You might find him writing in a coffee shop near you, cackling madly into his computer screen while pounding shots of espresso.
Join my Readers’ Group for your free books and a pile of other goodies when they become available.