Book Extract: Battle Mountain by C.J. Box
I’m so pleased to be welcoming C.J. Box to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for his book, Battle Mountain.
Can Joe Pickett stop an old friend throwing his life away in order to gain revenge? The gripping new novel from #1 New York Times bestseller C.J. Box.
The campaign of hate and vengeance that a pair of violent criminals wreaked on Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett and his friend, falconer Nate Romanowski, left both men in tatters, but it was Nate who came closest to losing everything.
Facing his lowest ebb, Nate decided the only option was to drop out of society. Taking only his birds, he went off-grid to rediscover his true self… and prepare for his own revenge.
When Joe is called on to help the governor, whose son-in-law is missing in the Sierra Madre mountains, the investigation takes a darker turn when Joe and Nate’s very different journeys unexpectedly converge.
All will come to a head at Battle Mountain, but in a struggle neither of them would ever have seen coming, can both Joe and Nate survive?
C.J. Box has kindly shared an extract from Battle Mountain with us today. We hope you enjoy.
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PART ONE
“He mounted like a rocket, curved over in splendid parabola, dived down through cumulus of pigeons. One bird fell back, gashed dead, looking astonished, like a man falling out of a tree. The ground came up and crushed it.”
—J. A. Baker, The Peregrine
CHAPTER ONE
Seven Months Before
Nate Romanowski was thigh-high in the icy water of North Piney Creek under the craggy profile of the snow-covered Wyoming Range. He was there to kill a man named Axel Soledad,
whom he’d pursued in a state of unhinged fury for months.
Soledad had left a trail of death and destruction behind him in his hunger for revenge against Nate and Joe Pickett. The cost had been catastrophic.
Liv. The blood, the body.
Nate blamed himself for his wife’s death. He blamed Axel Soledad more.
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Book Extract: North Country by Sarah Branson
I’m so pleased to be welcoming Sarah Branson to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her book, North Country.
Four women, each with a secret. None will return from the North Country unchanged.
North Country takes place in the year 2372, a time when Earth is recovering from floods, fires, pandemics, and war. Amidst this post-apocalyptic world, the pirate nation of Bosch is thriving—but not without its complications. The focus is on four fierce women who must navigate their way through both external dangers and their own personal demons.
- Master Commander Kat Wallace, haunted by a past filled with violence, takes on a dangerous mission to the North Country in search of peace.
- Carisa Morton, struggling with her failing body and independence slipping away, embarks on one last adventure before it’s too late.
- Sergeant Flossie Porter hides a hidden family fortune and a deep infatuation with her commanding officer, putting everything on the line for the chance to be by her side.
- Master Sergeant Diamond Miata, driven by ambition and beauty, will stop at nothing to advance her own agenda—even if it means testing her loyalty in the process.
As they trek through the barren land, each woman faces betrayal, desire, and the harsh truths of their own hearts. North Country is an exploration of strength, vulnerability, and the bonds that form between women in even the toughest circumstances.
Sarah has shared an extract with us today. We hope you enjoy.
(Trigger Warnings: Language, sexual content, references to sexual abuse, some violence).
*****beginning of extract*****
Kat, February 8 1100
The four of us tramp along for three-quarters of a bell through the snow from where the Whydah is parked and camouflaged, following the old, wooded, water path. Our footsteps are muffled and our voices silent in the dim dawn. The cold stings my cheeks, and in my gloves, I pull my fingers from their assigned places to rub against my warm palms. The horizon, when the trees are clear enough to be seen, has the thin, chill, morning light of winter filtering about the soaring, craggy mountains that jut up and keep the villages near the lake isolated from the coastal folk and, let’s be honest, almost everyone else.
by Book Extract: The Immigrant Queen by Peter Taylor-Gooby
I’m delighted to be welcoming Peter Taylor-Gooby to Novel Kicks. We are shining a light on his latest book, The Immigrant Queen.
Hated as a foreigner, despised as a woman, I became First Lady of Athens
Aspasia falls passionately in love with Pericles, the leading statesman of Fifth Century Athens. Artists, writers and thinkers frequent her salon. She hides her past as a sex-worker, trafficked to the city, and becomes Pericles’ lover. Her writings attract the attention of Socrates, and she becomes the only woman to join his circle. She is known throughout the city for her beauty and wit and strives to become recognised as an intellectual alongside men.
Pericles’ enemies attack him through Aspasia and charge her with blasphemy. As a foreigner she faces execution, but her impassioned address to the jury shames the city and saves her. Pericles is spellbound, they marry, and she becomes First Lady of Athens.
Sparta besieges the city; plague breaks out and Pericles is once again in danger.
The Immigrant Queen tells the true story of how Aspasia rose to become the First Lady of Athens and triumphed against all the odds.
Peter has kindly shared an extract from The Immigrant Queen with us all today. We hope you enjoy.
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Limander, a slave and bard to Aspasia, meets a young nobleman and falls for him. Love between slave and noble carries the death penalty.
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The young scribe was last to leave and I waited, head bowed, for him to go so that I could carry out the screens. A gold band circled the neck of his tunic – he was of high standing in Athens, from one of the five noble families of the city. He dropped the stylus into his satchel but the tablet slipped from his fingers and fell face down on the floor and I heard the crack as the wax split across. He stared at it as if terrified, dropped to all fours and put out a hand to touch it. A leader of the people does not behave like this. After a moment I went over and stood beside him.
‘Sir. May I help you?’
He looked up at me, his eyes moist with tears. He seemed so young.
‘The musician! None of them appreciated you, you sang so beautifully of love and all they want to do is talk about politics and speech-making.’
‘Thank you. But, if I may ask, sir, is there anything I can do for you?’
‘It’s Lord Pericles, no-one will understand. He wants to publish these conversations for the glory of Athens and he insists on checking everything. I am late already and now I’ve broken the tablet and he will be angry.’
by Book Extract: Casa Paradiso – 300 Years in the Life of a House by Francesca Scanacapra
It’s a pleasure to be welcoming Francesca Scanacapra back to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her book, Casa Paradiso – 300 Years in the Life of a House which is book four in the Paradiso series.
Lombardy, Northern Italy, 1637
Cristó Lovetta, a skilled stonemason, arrives in the rural village of Pieve Santa Clara to work on a nobleman’s house.
Haunted by a tragic past, Cristó wonders if he will ever find happiness again. However, as he immerses himself in his work, the warmth of the community and the beauty of the landscape convince him to begin a new life there.
Cristó designs and builds his own house, which he names Casa Paradiso. Over the centuries, Casa Paradiso becomes home to many generations, standing testament to lives beginning and ending, and witnessing the everyday challenges and triumphs of its inhabitants – from love lost and found, to the tragedies of war, the far-reaching consequences of political decisions made by powerful men and the evolving role of women in Italian society.
Casa Paradiso – the fourth instalment of the Paradiso Novels – is a shining, evocative saga spanning three hundred years in the life of a very special house, and a book that explores the enduring strength of the human spirit, contrasted with the transient nature of life itself.
Francesca has shared an extract with us today. We hope you enjoy it.
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This is the start of the third story in the book, beginning in 1680. Carolina Lovetta has inherited Paradiso and the house’s colourful and rich history is being formed bit by bit, as fascination people visit this strong, independent woman in her home.
1680
CAROLINA LOVETTA
Casa Paradiso was a respectable establishment of excellent reputation, catering for select paying guests. It was both owned and run by Carolina Lovetta, now in the thirty-sixth year of her life. She was a woman of many talents – resourceful, industrious and highly-esteemed within the community.
Carolina had written signboards placed along the Via Postumia advertising rooms to let, which worked well to attract the right calibre of clientele, because only those who were able to read could follow them. Her lodgers included merchants, members of the clergy, men of law and men of letters, as well as a regular traffic of artisans, particularly those associated with the luthiery crafts. With Pieve Santa Clara being situated not quite twenty miles from Cremona – a city world-renowned for the manufacture of the finest stringed instruments – Casa Paradiso was perfectly positioned as a rest-stop. Even Maestro Antonio Stradivari himself, the most famed of Cremona’s violin-makers, had stayed with Carolina on numerous occasions. His employees and fellow luthiers were frequent guests, and Maestro Stradivari even recommended Casa Paradiso to his clients.
That crisp late autumn morning Carolina was seeing off Signor Zucca, a cordaro by profession, procurer and spinner of strings for musical instruments. He always overnighted at Casa Paradiso to rest both himself and his horses on his way to and from the sheep pastures of Colazzo. Sheep gut made for the most prized strings, not just for the bowed instruments, such as violins, violas and cellos; but also for lutes, guitars and mandolins, all of which were produced in Cremona.
by Book Extract: The Revenge Pact by Liz Mistry
I’m pleased to be welcoming Liz Mistry to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her book, The Revenge Pact.
TWO DEATHS
Tommy and Markie Jones are found dead at the side of a main road in Scotland.
TWO RIVALS
Detectives Jazzy Solanki and Annie McQueen are on the scene where the bodies are identified as the nephews of Jimmy Nails, head of a notable gang in Glasgow. The turf war between the gangs of Glasgow and Edinburgh has existed for years, but these murders are seen as an escalation in violence.
ONE UNFORGIVABLE BETRAYAL
As the investigation unfolds, there’s suspicion about a leak within the police force, and to her dismay Jazzy is asked to keep a watchful eye on someone close to her.
With distrust mounting on all sides, can the pair uncover the truth before someone else is killed?
Liz has shared an extract from The Revenge Pact with us today. We hope you enjoy it.
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The Turf Wars Begin
This is an extract from Chapter 1 of The Revenge Pact which sets the scene for the violence that the turf wars between Edinburgh and Glasgow organised criminal gangs are perpetrating in West Lothian.
It also reintroduces us to my two wonderfully unique and formidable, yet very different female detectives, Scottish Indian DS Jazzy Solanki who is in her mid-twenties and because of past trauma is more reserved and finds it hard to trust. DC Queenie (Annie) McQueen is in her early fifties and despite her own share of past trauma, she’s loud, brash, verging on obnoxious, but absolutely hilarious.
Chapter 1
‘As warfare between gangs in Edinburgh and Glasgow peaks, a new report into the extent of criminal gang activity in our cities and proposals to combat it will be published today by the Scottish Government. Later on we’ll have an MSP spokesperson to comment on the impact of the report as well as . . .’ Continue reading
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