Today’s Steals and Deals at AAR…..

You know the holidays are nearing when Christmas books go on sale. We enjoyed RaeAnne Thayne‘s Sleigh Bells Ring. You can read our review here.

RaeAnne Thayne’s Sleigh Bells Ring is charming right from its first few paragraphs, where a snowball fight is compared to a full-on battle scene.  The characters are likable, the prose fun and engaging and the story enjoyable, and a really good way to pass an afternoon.  It’s a bit cheesy, but so goes the genre.

Annelis – Annie – McCade’s life has been managing the Angel View Ranch in Holly Creek, Wyoming since she gave up city living.  Annie’s father ran the place and she grew up on the property, but now he’s gone, and even the ranch – which once belonged to her family – is theirs no longer; Annie’s grandfather sold the property out from underneath them to a billionaire, who hired her to caretake the place during his final months.

Annie was fine with being alone, but now her life revolves around other people – the charities she’s knitting a blanket for, and her brother Wes’ six-year-old twins Alice and Henry, who she’s caring for following her sister-in-law’s sudden passing and after Wes’ grief-fueled drunken spree through their hometown landed him in jail. Annie is the only family they have now.

She finds herself retrofitting her life around the two emotionally-scarred children, which means plotting a dream Christmas for them.  She hopes to hold it at the Angel View, even though all of the other employees are supposed to be long gone for the holidays.

Unfortunately, Tate Sheridan, who owns Angel View, decides to come home and spend the holidays there. Following his grandfather’s death, Tate is next in line to run the family business, something he desperately doesn’t want to do.  Annie’s had a crush on Tate since she was eleven, but she’s got a lot on her plate.  Can Annie, Tate and the kids form a family that includes Wes?  And will the children acclimate to their mother’s death and get on with the business of living?

You likely know the answers to these questions, but Thayne wrings something fun and sweet and touching out of the romance anyway.  Interestingly, this romance is very faith-based, which the publisher isn’t trumpeting and which isn’t mentioned in the book blurb; Wes uses his faith in God to get him through his imprisonment.

It’s on sale for 1.99 here.


I’m pretty sure most of you have already read the marvelous The Paris Apartment (our rave review is here) but, if not, it’s on sale for 1.99.

The Paris Apartment is a compelling story told in dual timelines. The first is 1938 – 1942 during the Nazi occupation of Paris, and the second is 2017 in Paris and England after an apartment, unseen since World War II, is opened and its contents create more questions than answers.

It’s 2017 and Aurelia (Lia) Leclaire has just inherited a Paris apartment from her grandmother, Estelle Allard, an apartment which she – and indeed no-one – knew about before the reading of Estelle’s will. When Lia opens the apartment door, she is stunned to find it untouched and full of art and other treasures. The art is obviously expensive and the gowns of the highest fashion; one of them is draped across the bed, as if the owner just stepped out of it. What is even more disturbing though, is the presence of the photograph of a Nazi officer and a thank you note from Hermann Goring. Lia can’t help but wonder if her grandmother was a Nazi sympathizer. She worries that the art was stolen by the Nazis and contacts Gabriel Seymour, a renowned art restorer and collector, to help her solve the art mystery.

It’s 1940 and Estelle Allard is doing her best to survive in Nazi-occupied France while  surreptitiously helping the Resistance. She sings at the Ritz, now occupied by the Nazis, and quietly listens for information to pass on to the Allies. She has no idea whether her latest find – some sort of machine in a secret chamber off Goring’s room – means anything, but she hopes the little she can do makes a difference.

Sophie Seymour lost her husband during the bombing of Poland. Against the odds, after thirteen months of sneaking through Nazi-occupied territory, she safely returns to England and assists the war effort translating German messages at Bletchley Park. Her skill with languages and her impressive return to England capture the attention of her superiors and soon she is sent to Paris to determine if the machine in the Ritz, casually mentioned in the reports from Paris, is the message coder the Allies have been searching for.

The chapters in The Paris Apartment are narrated by Lia, Gabriel, Estelle, or Sophie. From the first, we are dropped right into the action and the journey continues at a fast pace all the way to the last word. I ended up keeping notes on each chapter so I could easily switch between the time periods and narrators. All of the stories are woven together in brilliant ways and it was riveting to go back and forth between the tales. I felt as though I was exploring a dark passageway, shining a light into the next room, and then noticing a sound further on and following that.

It’s on sale for 1.99 here.


We loved this supernatural thriller by Simone St. James. You can read our review here.

Completely addictive, riveting, and engaging, The Sun Down Motel is the latest supernatural thriller from Simone St. James. A dual timeline tale of two women thirty-five years apart looking for answers to a series of disappearances, it contains the eerie, haunted tone I expect from this author’s work together with an excellent, engrossing mystery which had me finishing the story in a single sitting.

In 1982, a fight with her mother has young Viviane – Viv – Delaney fleeing her small Illinois hometown for New York City. A hitchhiking experience gone wrong lands her in quiet Fell, NY at the Sun Down Motel, a rather shabby roadside inn. The owner is in the office, frustrated that an employee has quit and she will have to work all night after having been there all day. She makes a deal with Viv: Viv can stay for free, if she agrees to take a nap for the next few hours and then cover the graveyard shift. It’s a good bargain for the fiscally challenged girl and she accepts. She finds herself staying in Fell and working at the Sun Down for more than just one night, developing a deep fascination with the history of the place and the creepy events that take place when daylight fades and the Sun Down spooks come out to play. She is especially interested in the years old murder of a young woman whose body was found at the motel’s construction site when it was first being built.

In 2017 Carly Kirk sets out from her Illinois hometown determined to find some answers regarding her Aunt Viv who vanished while working the night shift at a seedy upstate New York motel. It’s as if Fell has been waiting for her. She quickly makes a friend of Heather, a fellow murderino, who wants to help her find out what happened to her aunt and luck results in Carly filling the vacant position of the graveyard shift at the Sun Down, the same job Viv held before her disappearance. Carly begins to retrace Viv’s last days, slowly realizing that it isn’t just the mystery of one young woman she is investigating, but many. It seems Fell had a big problem in the 80s, a killer who had moved carefully, silently among them murdering girls at will. Is he why Viv vanished? Or do the strange occurrences at the spooky hostelry hide something else, something ageless, angry and deadly which is still actively looking for victims?

There is no gradual buildup of suspense with this story. The very first line of the novel is “The night it all ended, Vivian was alone.”  and the tension just ratchets up from there as we become increasingly obsessed with what ended and what happened to the solo Vivian.  The Sun Down, the titular center of our tale, is a large part of what creates the narrative’s aura of apprehension.  It abounds with inexplicable scents, sounds  and spectral apparitions from the moment we first enter. But it’s not just the building. The whole town seems to be under a baffling sense of menace, as if the community is simply waiting for – and willing to accept –  the next weird, incomprehensible event to occur. This dire atmosphere serves as a deliciously ominous backdrop to our rather sinister tale.

The heroines serve as both a calming antidote to the gloomy ambience and as a catalyst for the final, explosive events. Obviously, their interest in the deaths/disappearances of young women are the spark that drives our story, but they  are delightful, funny, quirky young people who serve as a reminder that good can conquer evil. Carly and her friends, especially, add light to this otherwise dark tale. Heather, like Carly, is a woman with an interest in true crime. Unlike Carly, she has no personal connection to it, just a deep fascination with solving real life puzzles. Her idiosyncrasies are endearing and her quiet, thoughtful nature offsets some of the frantic pace of the plot. Carly is an utter joy – humorous but intense, and intelligent.   Early in the story she meets the gorgeous but emotionally damaged Nick, who has his own tragic tie to Fell and his own peculiar penchant for the Sun Down. Their romance adds a sweet note to what could easily have been a horrifying, bitter story. All three of them bring unique skills to the investigation and become deeply involved in seeing the mystery through to its end.

You can buy it here for 2.99.


Anthologies are always a mixed bag, but it’s hard to argue with 2231 pages for free. Here’s the blurb:

A collection from TEN of your favorite Historical Romance Authors.

TEN heros tempted by love

TEN heroines who aren’t easily persuaded

All ten amazing stories will entice you to stay up all night.

This collection is ideal for fans of sexy noblemen with secrets, second chance romance, and readers who like it steamy.

Don’t miss out on this limited time only collection:

Tempt Me at Midnight by Lauren Royal – New York and USA Today Bestselling Author

Don’t Tell a Duke You Love Him by Tammy Andersen – USA Today Bestselling Author

When an Earl Turns Wicked by Dawn Brower – USA Today Bestselling Author

Wicked Designs by Lauren Smith – USA Today Bestselling Author

Ice Duchess by Tracy Sumner – USA Today Bestselling Author

Trapped With the Duke by Annabelle Anders

What the Scot Hears by Amy Quinton

Revealing a Rogue by Rachel Ann Smith

Bedeviling Lord Coxford by Tabetha Waite

One Kiss from Ruin by Nancy Yeager

It’s free here.


 

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