New Beginnings at Promise Lodge

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. The author will be awarding a $15 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card via the Rafflecopter at the end of this post. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Recently widowed after twenty years of marriage, Frances Lehman is only just tasting the freedom and opportunity that her Promise Lodge friends enjoy. So she's not about to be pressured into marriage by her widowed brother-in-law, even if she and her daughter have no real means of support. Much more promising is her new friendship with Preacher Marlin Kurtz, though their respective families don't see their relationship as proper . . .



When Frances suffers a serious injury, she's determined to prove she can recover—and remain independent—without burdening Marlin. Now, with his steadfast belief in real love tested, Marlin's hope is that Promise Lodge's irrepressible residents can help him restore Frances's joy—and that faith will show them a way to turn their fragile second chance into a blessed and abiding future together.

And don't miss the first three books in the Promise Lodge series!

Enjoy an excerpt from "New Beginnings at Promise Lodge":


Frances shaded her eyes with her hand, enthralled with what she saw. “It doesn’t seem like you and I have walked such a long distance, yet from here, the lodge and our homes look like part of a toy village.”


“We’ve come a long way,” Marlin remarked softly. “I’m glad you’ve walked with me, Frances. Our community has taken on even more of a glow because I’m seeing it through your eyes.”


The tone of his voice made Frances’s pulse thrum with an unusual sense of energy, as though the preacher had something on his mind besides the view.



We’ve come a long way.


# # #


Allen treasured Phoebe’s rapt expression and the closeness of her slender body as she leaned against him. He’d given her a gift by showing her Promise Lodge from this hilltop vantage point.


“What about that parcel of land behind the Lehman places?” she asked dreamily. “We’d have a beautiful view of the lake. What do you think, Allen? Should I ask Mamm if I can have it?”


Allen’s throat closed with a sudden case of nerves. He eased away from her, pretending to look at something near the lodge so she wouldn’t see how she’d startled him. Their relationship, which had felt so comfortable over the past week, now gave him the sensation that an invisible halter had been fastened around his head—and that Phoebe was holding the lead rope.

About the author: In 1983, Charlotte Hubbard sold her first story to True Story. She wrote around 70 of those confession stories, and she’s sold more than 50 books to traditional or online publishers. A longtime resident of Missouri, she’s currently writing Amish romances set in imaginary Missouri towns for Kensington. She now lives in St. Paul, MN with her husband of 40+ years and their Border collie, Vera.



Website: http://www.charlottehubbard.com

FB: https://www.facebook.com/charlotte.hubbard1



Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MKX3NTT/

Kindle UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07MKX3NTT/

Kindle Canada: http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07MKX3NTT/

Kindle Australia: http://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07MKX3NTT/

iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/new-beginnings-at-promise-lodge/id1448128057?mt=11

iBooks UK: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/new-beginnings-at-promise-lodge/id1448128057?mt=11

iBooks Canada: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/book/new-beginnings-at-promise-lodge/id1448128057?mt=11

iBooks Australia: https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/new-beginnings-at-promise-lodge/id1448128057?mt=11

iBooks New Zealand: https://itunes.apple.com/nz/book/new-beginnings-at-promise-lodge/id1448128057?mt=11

Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/new-beginnings-at-promise-lodge-charlotte-hubbard/1130055278?ean=9781420145137

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/new-beginnings-at-promise-lodge

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Charlotte_Hubbard_New_Beginnings_at_Promise_Lodge?id=bNqBDwAAQBAJ



Order Print

Zebra Books

September 24, 2019

ISBN-13: 9781420145106

ISBN-10: 142014510X

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=142014510X/

Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ISBN=142014510X

Amazon Canada: http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ISBN=142014510X

Barnes and Noble: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=9781420145106

Books-A-Million: http://www.booksamillion.com/product/9781420145106

IndieBound: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781420145106

The Book Depository: http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781420145106

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Blind Walls

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller will be awarding $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. 



See below to read an excerpt and a great Interview. And ...to sign up for the GIVEAWAY

It's a monstrous maze of a mansion, built by a grief-ridden heiress. A tour guide, about to retire, has given his spiel for so many years that he's gone blind. On this last tour, he's slammed with second sight.

He sees the ghosts he's always felt were there: the bedeviled heiress, her servants, and a young carpenter who lands his dream job only to become a lifelong slave to her obsession. The workman's wife makes it to shore, but he's cast adrift.

And the tour guide comes home to his cat.

The pairing of Bishop and Fuller is a magical one. . . . It’s a brilliant opus, melding the past, present, and future with intimate, individual viewpoints from a tightly arrayed cast of believable characters in as eerie a setting as might be dredged out of everyman’s subconscious searching. . . . Blind Walls offers a weird alternative world, featuring a blind man with second sight and an acerbic wit as its charming, empathic hero.

—Feathered Quill

These characters are so well developed that one has to think of them as live people – laughing with them and crying with them, even getting old with them.  This is an amazing story based on the Winchester Mansion and told with such quiet, compelling, raw humanity that the reader simply can’t stop until the entire tale is told.  A wonderful, spooky look into others lives and what may or may not happen on any given day.

—Dog-Eared Reviews

Bishop and Fuller have constructed a story rich with imagined detail and visionary ideas about life’s possibilities. The cast of ghostly characters, servants, workman, and family light up the story with dramatic effect as their actions and choices are observed. . . . The authors’ prose is effortless and moves easily from humorous to weighted seriousness. The dialogue is perceptive, giving voice to compelling characters and particularly to the tour guide whose second sight he confers on the readers. The latter will not want to look away from the myriad rooms of Weatherlee House.

 —US Review of Books

Read an excerpt...

I was surprised at the old woman’s humor—far better than mine. Ghosts are known for their moans and clatters but not for their jokes. She should be the tour guide, I thought, and I the haunted heiress.

We had walked miles from the sealed-off wing. Burrows branched like arteries meandering out from the beast’s dead heart. A blank wall twenty yards ahead would dog-leg toward another blank wall twenty yards ahead. I led, they followed—an odyssey within a hamster wheel. In my bones it was precisely 4:53 p.m. but each minute took years. My ghosts were aging fast.

The corridor bent, doubled back, made a squiggle of jogs, then opened to a hall that stretched like the endless trudge between airport terminals. When had this vast new suburb come into being? Had Weatherlee House consumed orchards, colonized neighbors, licked whole valleys with its thick coated tongue? Or might we be in those underground shadowlands where they store the great bombs for Last Judgment? I could hear the deep whine of missiles rising.

I saw a dim figure, an ambient smudge whom I seemed to be following. It was Chuck, a silhouette in a well-tailored suit. His gait was lumbering, tense, as if pretending calm while pursued by a bear. At intervals he passed through sharp light and I could see his rigid face. A lamp shone at the end of the passage. He paused, entered the room. I came forward with my breathless gaggle of goslings.

Click HERE to read an insightful interview of the authors.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Conrad Bishop & Elizabeth Fuller’s 60+ plays have been produced Off-Broadway, in regional theatres,  and in thousands of their own performances coast to coast. Their two public radio series Family Snapshots and Hitchhiking off the Map have been heard nationally. Their books include two previous novels (Realists and Galahad’s Fool), a memoir (Co-Creation: Fifty Years in the Making), and two anthologies of their plays (Rash Acts: 35 Snapshots for the Stage and Mythic Plays: from Inanna to Frankenstein.)

They host a weekly blog on writing, theatre, and life at www.DamnedFool.com. Their theatre work is chronicled at www.IndependentEye.org. Short videos of their theatre and puppetry work are at www.YouTube.com/indepeye. Bishop has a Stanford Ph.D., Fuller is a college drop-out, but somehow they see eye to eye. They have been working partners and bedmates for 57 years.

Website: http://www.damnedfool.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/indepeye/

Conrad Bishop Amazon Page: https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AConrad+Bishop&s=relevancerank&text=Conrad+Bishop&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1

Elizabeth Fuller Amazon Page: https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AElizabeth+Fuller&s=relevancerank&text=Elizabeth+Fuller&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_2

Conrad Bishop Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4352.Conrad_Bishop

Elizabeth Fuller Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4350.Elizabeth_Fuller

Conrad Bishop Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/conrad.bishop

Elizabeth Fuller Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lizful

YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/user/indepeye/videos

Smashwords:  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/925035

Puzzles and Books

Word puzzle lovers!  

Announcing McLaren and Peak District quarterly puzzle contests you can play and perhaps win!  

All contests are based on information about McLaren and some of the McLaren Mystery novels, or on the Peak District mysteries.  First person to email the correct answers to the puzzle(s) to me gets a choice of an Amazon or B&N gift card -- $15 card for submitting the first correct answers to the crossword puzzle, and $10 card for submitting the first corrected word search puzzle.  Answers must be received by Nov 1, 2018.  

More information and how to enter are under WORD CONTESTS at

www.johiestand.com

Read Jo Hiestand's latest McLaren book...PHOTO SHOOT

MY REVIEW

Once again in Book 9 of the McLaren series, Jo Hiestand has McLaren headed deeper into Scotland to try and renew his relationship with the McLaren clan. After winding up another case, he finds out he has missed an invite to his Uncle’s wedding. When he calls his grandfather and says he’ll still be coming, he has no idea what faith his family has in him. He is only driving towards more challenges and more responsibility.

Anyone who has seen my blogs and reviews or my comments on Jo Hiestand’s Facebook page knows I absolutely love this McLaren character. He’s the epitome of my favorite type of mystery character. He’s a tough ex-cop, he’s moody, smart as a tack and he’s always just a little bit in love. Oh, and I might add, he’s good looking; at least in my mind he is. See? Right there is an example of what Jo Hiestand can do. You obviously know McLaren is a fictitious character in a book and yet not only do I feel I know him personally, I even think I know what he looks like. That’s what you call character development.

Her descriptive writing of the Loches and the lands of Scotland makes you feel as if you are in the middle of this beautiful country, so this turned out to be another great match in the McLaren series. I liked it so much I would tell you it was my favorite, but I like this McLaren guy way too much to have a favorite. I've loved this whole well-written series.


ABOUT JO

In 2001 Jo graduated from Webster University with a BA degree and departmental honors in English.

She lives in the St Louis, MO area, and spends as much time as she can writing mysteries and watching the barges on the river.

Her love of writing, board games and music came together when she and a friend invented a mystery-solving game, P.I.R.A.T.E.S., which uses maps, graphics, song lyrics, and other clues to lead the players to the lost treasure.

Along with fellow mystery author Pam DeVoe, Jo teachs a mystery writing course at St. Louis Community College.

Jo Hiestand has this new puzzle game going and it's FUN. You can win prizes too.

The Speaker

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Andi O'Connor will be
awarding a $20 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Fantasy
The Vaelinel Trilogy continues with this absorbing sequel to Silevethiel! Alone and hunted by the Drulaack, Irewen takes advantage of her only option for survival. Pushing her concerns aside, she lets the dead keep her.

But her refuge doesn't last long. Driven out of their hosts by Laegon, a handful Drulaack have returned to the Spirit World. No longer having the protection of the dead, Irewen is forced to return to Vaelinel.

​Finally reunited with her companions, the burdens placed on them are taking their toll. Thoughts of suicide and mistrust plague the company. Slowly unravelling, they must conquer their personal battles before standing against the evil threatening the land.

​For the Corrupter thirsts for revenge. And he'll stop at nothing to satisfy his hunger.

Read an excerpt

Slipping her arm out from beneath her cloak, Irewen reached for her dagger. Her fingertips met the smooth ivory handle, and she paused before sliding them around the hilt and gripping it tightly in her hand. Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. Silevethiel didn’t need her. No one needed her.

Her breath caught in her throat as reality crashed down upon her.

Oh, but they did.

That was the real cause behind her urge to end her life. They needed her just as much as she needed them. She couldn’t handle the pressure. The fear of failure had consumed her so much she’d rather kill herself than take the risk of not succeeding. This didn’t fall under the adage of ‘if you fail, get up and try again.’ She wasn’t afforded a second chance. She had one opportunity to save her people. If she failed, she didn’t get to try once more.

She squeezed the dagger tighter.

That the world would fall because of her own weakness was the most terrifying thought of all. If she stood against this evil, her chances of victory were slim. She still hadn’t become familiar with her abilities, and she certainly hadn’t mastered anything. So far, she’d been learning as she went. She doubted she’d be able to repeat any magical attacks she’d done in the past.

Luck.

The word continued to resurface like a villain in a nightmare.

Luck.

Everything she’d accomplished since leaving Dargon could be contributed to chance. She wasn’t talented. She wasn’t skilled. She wasn’t strong magically, emotionally, or physically. What she’d contributed thus far had been a fluke—powers bestowed upon her because of her mother’s bloodline. They’d surfaced because of the direness of the situations in which she’d found herself, but she he had no idea how to willingly summon her magic. Even now, months after the chase through Mistwood, she still hadn’t been able to duplicate the spell she’d used when she defied orders and rode to aid Silevethiel and the other Guardians.

Yes, it had saved them all at the time, but the skill couldn’t be relied upon. She couldn’t be relied upon. Yet, everyone was doing just that. Everyone expected her to challenge the Corrupter and emerge victorious. According to Elthad, even the wizard had faith in her capability.

The dagger felt heavy in her hand. It called to her, daring her to drive it into her heart. She lifted her hand slightly, letting it hover above the ground while she battled the urge to give in.

All these people had faith in her. But she didn’t find that at all reassuring.

She had no faith in herself.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Andi O'Connor is the award-winning author of The Dragonath Chronicles, The Vaelinel Trilogy, and The Legacy of Ilvania. Her critically acclaimed novel, Silevethiel, is the 2015 Best Indie Book Award winner for Science Fiction/Fantasy and the 2015 New Apple Official Selection for Young Adult. Silevethiel was also named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2013. The Speaker is the 2018 Independent Press Award Winner for Fantasy and a Finalist

in the 11th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards. Andi’s novel, Awakening, is a 2018 Independent Press Award Distinguished Favorite for Fantasy.

You can frequently find Andi as an exhibitor and guest panelist at Comic Cons throughout the country including the Rhode Island Comic Con, Awesome Con, Philcon, Conclave, WizardWorld, and Chessiecon. You can connect with Andi on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For more information, visit Andi’s website.

Social Media Links:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/oconnor.andi

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/OConnorAndi

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/andi_oconnor

Website: http://www.andioconnor.net

Purchase Links:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Speaker-Andi-OConnor-ebook/dp/B01N98W564/ref=sr_1_2

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-speaker-andi-oconnor/1125195821

Books-A-Million: http://www.booksamillion.com/p/Speaker/Andi-OConnor/9781940417196

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-speaker-19

Author Website: https://www.andioconnor.net/store/p28/The_Speaker_-_Signed_%28The_Vaelinel_Trilogy%2C_Book_2%29.html

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