Ebook Review Central, Samhain Publishing, May 2012

Happy Monday! That means that Ebook Review Central is back. And we’re featuring Samhain Publishing’s May 2012 titles. And what a diverse group of titles they are!

Samhain covers everything imaginable, and this month is no exception. On one side, they have the nostalgic days of yesteryear, with their Retro Romances. And as far on the opposite corners from Retro sweetness as it could possibly get, Samhain has both a Horror imprint on one hand and this month two Science Fiction Romance series; Joely Skye’s Minders series for those who prefer their SFR to be Male/Male Romance, and the anthology series Midnight Justice, for those who prefer Male/Female SFR romantic action. With 35 titles in the list, there was bound to be something for everyone.

Also a few titles that may not have been for anyone. Some things didn’t garner any reviews this month, even on Goodreads and Amazon.

There was one title that seems to have been for just about everyone. At least, a lot of people read it, liked it, and said so. This week’s number one title was easy to pick! Joely Sue Burkhart’s Yours To Take stood out from the very large crowd in the list with 16 reviews, including top ratings on several blogs. Why was Yours To Take so well received? It looks like several factors. This is book three in Burkhart’s Connaghers series, and series books have built-in, or pent-up, demand. Added to that, Yours To Take taps into the ongoing interest in BDSM/Kink stories stirred up by 50 Shades. The Connaghers series should be on a lot of lists for readers interested in stories to read after that, and the whole series (Dear Sir, I’m Yours #1, Take Me #1.5, Hurt Me So Good #2)  gets high marks from reviewers.

The second featured title for this week is Hard Tail by JL Merrow. This Male/Male contemporary romance is a sweet love story that deals with some very hard issues. Tim gets laid off and divorced, at just about the same time. That kind of cosmic kick in the pants makes you re-examine which way your life is going. While his brother recovers from some injuries, Tim steps up and manages his bike shop for him. After all, he has the time. Time to discover that he’s a lot happier managing the bike shop than he ever was in the corporate world. And that part of the reason his marriage died is because he’s never let himself think about how far in the closet he’s been. But Matt, the repair tech at the bike shop, reminds him of why. But Matt has some problems of his own. An abusive boyfriend that he needs to free himself from before he can be ready to be involved with someone new. Reviewers loved the humor and discovery in this story. And also Tim’s cat clearly owns the bike shop and everyone in it.

The third and final featured title is the Midnight Justice anthology. This is a superhero romance containing three separate books, Blade of Moonlight by Kimberly Dean (#1), Superlovin’ by Vivi Andrews (#2) and Breaking Bad by Jodi Redford (#3). What you have here is a universe of good versus evil, with secret identities and crime fighters with super powers who fight in masks. Except that unlike the caped crusaders on TV, there’s also a lot of kinky sex involved. There’s also mind-controlling soda. Just in case you ever wondered about the “Secret Formula” for your favorite soft drink. These just read like sexy comic-book style fun to most reviewers.

So there you have this week’s features for Samhain Publishing. Kinky, bike-riding superheroes. Wait a minute, that’s not all in the same book. Maybe someone will have to write that one.

After looking at the Midnight Justice superhero stories, I simply can’t resist the Batman thing. So, we’ll be back next Monday with another exciting episode of Ebook Review Central. Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!

Ebook Review Central, Dreamspinner Press, May 2012

Welcome back to Ebook Review Central. We’ve had two weeks off for the American Library Association, the 4th of July summer slack-off (did anyone really do anything last week?) and the flu, but ERC has returned to cover the Dreamspinner Press titles from May 2012.

This was a “feast or famine” month as far as reviews went.  The titles that were reviewed, were reviewed a LOT. On that proverbial other hand, those that weren’t, really, really weren’t.

But my favorite comment is about the cover of Gambling Men by Amy Lane. The reviewer at Insta-Love quipped that the model on the cover “must spend a LOT of money on manscaping”.  Or the photographer did a fantastic job of airbrushing.

Some months, the eight good to excellent reviews received by Gambling Men would have been enough to earn it a feature spot in addition to my spit-take on that comment, but not this month. This month three titles had more than fifteen reviews each. It’s hard to compete with a new book in the Cut & Run series and anything by Mary Calmes.

So you’re wondering what the third book is, right?

The number one featured title for Dreamspinner in May is One Small Thing by M.J. O’Shea and Piper Vaughn.  Nineteen, count ’em, nineteen reviews, all in the 4/5 or B range, or higher. Everyone loved this book. Why? Because it tugs at the heartstrings. Rue Murray becomes a single dad, after an experimental one-night stand with a woman friend turns into a baby — that she didn’t plan on and doesn’t want. Rue grabs onto his one chance at fatherhood, but managing single-parenthood along with work and school turns out to be more than he can handle. So he gets some help. The only problem is that Erik, the shy and reclusive sci-fi writer he hires fits into his and his daughter’s life in more ways than any of them expected. Baby Alice isn’t the only person in this story who turns out to have a lot of growing up to do.

Mary Calmes’ Acrobat is the number two featured title in this month’s Dreamspinner wrap up. The acrobat in the title is Andreo, a man who is trying to juggle the responsibility of raising his nephew, extracting himself from a very unsavory situation, and starting his own business. He’s also falling in love with Nate, an English professor at the University of Chicago. But while Dreo is trying to convince Nate that he would make a suitable partner, his old connections are looking for ways that he might be vulnerable. That unsavory situation, it’s Family, the underworld kind. Dreo wants out of the mob, and his old connections think there is only one way out of their world. The more Nate is seen with Dreo, the more he becomes a target. Can Dreo juggle things enough to protect the ones he loves.

The final book for Dreamspinner this month is book number 5 in the popular Cut & Run series. The earlier volumes were co-authored by Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux, but this latest book, Armed & Dangerous, is a solo work by Roux. The Cut & Run series is mystery/suspense, with two FBI agents, Ty Grady and Zane Garrett as the heroes/protagonists/lovers/crime solvers. This is action/adventure at its finest according to every single reviewer. When I saw this on the list for Dreamspinner this month, I knew the reviews would be off the chart. But don’t start with this one, this series is meant to be read in order, and Roux & Urban’s Warrior’s Cross is meant to be read between Divide & Conquer and Armed & Dangerous.

And I need to carve out some reading time for this series, because every single review says they are awesome.

That’s a wrap for this week! Ebook Review Central will be back next week with Samhain’s May titles.

 

Ebook Review Central, Carina Press, May 2012

May 2012 may be the one of the quietest months Carina Press has had since I first started reporting with their September titles. Well, unless you count the Christmas anthologies as single titles.

On the other hand, you can definitely see the “Fifty Shades” effect on the coverage in this list.

What do I mean by that? Every publisher, including Carina, is marketing books as being “similar to”, or “just like”, or “what to read next”, for women who loved E. L. James Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. And who can blame them? The story touched a nerve, or should I say, a nerve bundle, and has captured readers’ hearts, minds and dollars. Not to mention the top spots on every bestseller list.

The top featured title for Carina Press in this week’s Ebook Review Central is Let Me In by Callie Croix. Like Fifty Shades, it is an erotic love story that features a BDSM relationship between a dominant male and a submissive female who probably should have known better, especially since she’s a Marine. Also, like Fifty Shades, Let Me In received a ton of reviews, but not all of them were positive. Many readers absolutely adored the story. Some folks thought it was “meh”. But people couldn’t stop talking about it. If you enjoy military romance with a touch of kink, you might want to give this short erotic tale a try. For a taste of the reviews, look to Talk Supe for the big thumbs up and Dear Author for the so/so take.

Feature number two is the third and final book in Ava March’s Brook St. Trilogy, Rogues (personal pet-peeve, the thief is a rogue and not a rouge. Rouge is what you put on your face. Jumping down off soapbox now.) Because Rogues is the final book in this historical male/male romance series, a lot of readers were waiting for it. And the mileage varied. Some folks thought this friends-into-lovers story was the best of the series, some thought it was a little too simple and didn’t have enough angst to make it better than Thief or Fortune Hunter. While readers have different opinions on which book in the series is the best, all agreed that the series on the whole was excellent.

The final featured title this week is Ruined by Rumor by Alyssa Everett. This is a historical romance, and it sounds like a fairly typical plot. The heroine is supposed to marry the man she’s been engaged to for five years. He’s just back from the war. Of course he’s a rake. And he begs off for no good reason. The hero steps in and comforts the heroine, and there’s a witness. They marry to stave off scandal, and their marriage of convenience turns into a real marriage–because the hero has loved the heroine all along. This is apparently one of those romances where the way the characters are written make the story. The reviewers fell in love with the characters as much as those characters fell in love with each other.

This week’s feature certainly shows different shades of romance, even if not quite fifty, all in one week.

Come back for the next Ebook Review Central featuring Dreamspinner Press!

 

Ebook Review Central, Amber Quill, Astraea, Liquid Silver, Red Sage, Riptide, April 2012

Welcome to the Omnibus publisher April wrap-up post for Ebook Review Central. This is always the last post covering the month (in this case, April 2012) and it’s the one covering the most publishers in one swell foop.

This time round, we have five publishers all in one go. The Amber Quill Press coverage includes whichever imprint Amber happens to publish under. Mostly it’s been Amber Allure, their M/M imprint, with the occasional title from either Amber Heat or, this month,  Dear Viking by Lori Soard, a historical/inspirational title from their non-erotic imprint, Amber Quill itself.

The other publishers in the omnibus with new titles in April are Astraea Press, Liquid Silver Books, Red Sage Publishing, and Riptide Publishing. The Curiosity Quills database was also updated this month, but they didn’t publish any new titles in April. Don’t worry, they’ve got new stuff in May. (I peeked ahead. I do that with mysteries, too.)

I’m going to do something different with this week’s featured books. There are five publishers in this week’s edition. I am going to try to spread the feature around more.

Going by sheer number of reviews alone, I could feature all three Riptide titles every time. The only time someone else would get featured would be the months Riptide only published two titles. I say this as an observer of the evidence at hand. It’s either good books, good PR, or good both.

But in order to make sure other books get some play, there have to be some other considerations. And one of the reasons I started ERC was to provide a place for librarians to find reviews of ebook-only titles. Some of the featured books need to be from publishers that libraries can get, if those books did well.

Above all the featured books and this featured article, have to be interesting to readers.

So with those things in mind, this week’s featured books are the following:

The number one book was the Riptide title I couldn’t resist, it’s the Josh of the Damned Triple Feature #1 by Andrea Speed. All of the Josh of the Damned books (Pretty Monsters, Peek-a-Boo) just sound like an old-school B grade Sunday movie matinee horror feature, as lampooned by Mystery Science Theater 3000, and the description of the Triple Feature short stories goes it one better. A character in one of the stories is nicknamed “Professor Bobo”, a direct nod to MST3K. One of the other short stories is “I Was Cthulhu’s Love Slave”. Really? Too funny. Josh, the damned guy, who is human, works in a convenience store. His boyfriend is a vampire. But most of the weird problems Josh has working the night shift are human. Of course they are. Well, maybe except for the lovesick yeti.

The second feature story is Cinderella. There’s always a Cinderella. There always has been, and always will be. It’s one of those tropes that has been imprinted in our collective DNA. But the version of Cinderella in Sinders and Ash by Tara Lain is quite a bit different from the usual. Like many modern versions, it’s a bit difficult to figure out who rescues whom. Whether Ashton Armitage, the son of the fifth richest man in America rescues Mark “Sinders” Sintorella from a life working as a housekeeper in a ritzy resort–or whether Sinders rescues Ash from a life of not just hiding in the closet but also stultifying boredom. And it’s still a fairy tale, complete with a fairy godfather this time, of course. The mistaken identity part is even still there, helped by a smidgen of cross-dressing.

I picked the third book because it is from a publisher that is available to libraries and because it received a very favorable review from RT Book Reviews. (And yes, I liked it too.) The Watchmaker’s Lady by Heather Massey is the first book in her Clockpunk Trilogy. Clockpunk is steampunk with very small parts, in case you’re wondering about the term. So instead of big steam engines, think very small mechanical devices, doing very wicked things. The Watchmaker’s Lady is about a watchmaker who uses his skills to make an advanced automata, and uses his watchmaking skills to make clockwork devices for ladies’ intimate pleasures, so he can fund his experiments with his automata. Then things get very, very out of hand. So to speak. The twist at the end of the story is quite a surprise.

That’s a wrap for this week’s featured titles. We’ll be back next week with another edition of Ebook Review Central, taking a look at the Carina Press May books.

I’d love to hear from readers. Do you find Ebook Review Central useful? Interesting? Helpful?

Ebook Review Central Samhain Publishing April 2012

And we’re back! Last Monday Ebook Review Central took Memorial Day off to get the calendar back in sync just a little bit.

But this is Monday and not a holiday. And here we are. It’s time for another edition of Ebook Review Central, and it’s Samhain Publishing’s turn at the wheel. Let’s take a look at not just the titles Samhain published in April, but what sort of reviews those books generated.

Before we do that, a couple of brief comments. Most of Samhain’s books receive reviews, usually a lot of reviews. The exception is often the Retro Romance titles, but RT Book Reviews and All About Romance have put up a lot of their backfiles, so sometimes I get lucky. But I think this is the first time I’ve seen a book get an actual “F” review. I’ve seen plenty of DNF (Did Not Finish) reviews, but not “F” as in “I finished and it flunked”. If the book is that bad, or that much not to your taste, stop!

Unlike the last time I looked at Samhain, it was easy to pick the three featured titles. Three books jumped out at me for not just the number of reviews, but also the number of positive and “Top Pick” or “Recommended Read” reviews they received. No DNFs or Fs in this bunch!

(And because of some personal events, it’s almost fitting that two of the books are about cat-shifters, even if the little kitty I’m thinking of would have no clue at all what that meant.)

The third book featured this week is Beneath the Skin by Lauren Dane, the third entry in her De La Vega Cats series. The De La Vega Cats are cat shifters in Ms. Dane’s paranormal romance series, one that started with Trinity and continues with Revelation. In Beneath the Skin the focus is on the possible relationship between Gibson, the enforcer of the clan, and Mia, a woman who saves his life, but whose family was harmed by his long ago. And she is an Iraqi war veteran who has no need to be coddled by the kind of alpha male who winds up as a clan enforcer. The fact that if they let themselves, they’ll become mates doesn’t mean they aren’t both fighting the attraction with everything they have. Sounds pretty hot to me.

The book in the middle position is Cat Scratch Fever by Jodi Redford. And it’s another scorcher about two shapeshifters who should be totally wrong for each other, but instead are so, so right. But in the case of lynx-shifter Lilly and werewolf Dante, they fight like cats and dogs from the opening scenes because, well, they are. Except they also have a couple of problems they can help each other solve. Lilly is in heat, and Dante is, let’s just say, conveniently available. And extremely attractive. And willing. And his uber-alpha father is pressuring him to produce at least a fiance, and Dante wants to honk dad off really, really bad. So Lilly is perfect for that. Meanwhile, Lilly needs to negotiate with Dante to buy back some land from the werewolves for the werelynxes. They make a deal. Fake fiance in return for real land. Until it stops being fake.

And we go from heat to frost for the number one title. A Hint of Frost by Hailey Edwards not only received the most reviews, it was the Reviewer Top Pick for April at Gravetells. A Hint of Frost is a fantasy romance with a wonderfully tortured hero and a sweet couple with a ton of romantic tension. It’s also the start of a series in a beautiful and complex world, the Araneae Nation series. Lourdes becomes ruler of her nation when her parents are killed, and the first thing she has to do is marry a ruthless mercenary so she can get revenge. A dish that will be served very, very cold. By a mercenary she needs to get to warm up to her. Or he might eat her. Wow!

This week’s top picks went from very hot to extremely frosty. Please come back next week for the six-in-one issue covering Amber Quill, Astraea Press, Curiosity Quills, Liquid Silver, Red Sage and Riptide!

 

Ebook Review Central, Dreamspinner Press, April 2012

In the real world, it’s mid May. Which means that Ebook Review Central is looking at the books published in April. This week, the spotlight is turned on Dreamspinner Press, and the titles that they published in April of 2012.

Before I start on the features, I want to talk about book covers for just a second. In spite of the warnings, we do judge a book by its cover. And using the same stock image multiple times can make readers wonder if they’ve read a book before, when they haven’t.

Dreamspinner uses the exact same cover image for their Day Dream series of, I think they would be classed as short stories. The ebooks are very short, and sell for a very low price. If they weren’t ebooks, they probably couldn’t be marketed except in anthologies. Ebooks have created an entirely new channel for short fiction that hasn’t existed since the golden age of magazines.  Using a stock image for the Day Dream series establishes a brand.

On the other hand, repeating a stock image for a novella or novel can give readers a feeling of deja vu. I thought the cover image on Murder at the Rocking R by Catt Ford looked awfully familiar to me. That’s because it’s the same image as the one on the cover on Wilder’s Mate by Moira Rogers, just reversed and further away. Although both Rocking R and On the Trail to Moonlight Gulch are westerns, Moonlight Gulch’s cover looks better because it’s more distinctive. Knowing that Rocking R is stock makes it lose something, at least for me.

But we’re here to talk about reviews.

Book number three this week is First Impressions by Christopher Koehler. They say that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Maybe that’s true, but in this romantic comedy, you can get a second chance at love, if your friends are willing to arrange a lot of painfully funny coincidences. Especially since your friends set you up in the first place and it all went so horribly wrong, when it should have been right. They have to make it better. At a very posh party, Cameron’s friends arrange for him to meet a new man. Unfortunately for him, they also help him dress. First part good, second part bad. They dress him like a bar pickup, and a sleazy one at that. Even worse, poor Henry, the man that Cameron is supposed to meet, is a former, emphasis on former, gay porn actor. Henry left that life behind him, and he wants to make sure it stays behind him. Cameron’s outfit is a reminder of lifestyle Henry left, and Henry spits insults instead of walking away. They trade barbed comments instead of the “meet cute” their friends had planned. The rest of the story is how they past that initial bad first impression, with a lot of help from their friends.

Next up, Frog by Mary Calmes. Frog is a story about city slickers playing cowboys for the weekend. Well, for a lot of weekends. And, it’s a about a lonesome cowboy. Really two lonesome cowboys, but one of them happens to be a city slicker. Brilliant surgeons are often cowboys back in their hospitals (House, anyone), and Cyrus Benning is the city slicker who finds perspective by pretending to be a real cowboy a few times a year. He also finds a real cowboy who, like the desperado in that old Eagles song, had better let somebody love him before it’s too late. Both Cyrus and Weber have been abandoned by fate, and they find what they need in each other.

Final book for Dreamspinner in April is the ebook release of a title that, when it was originally published just a few years ago, won several Rainbow Awards for Gay Fiction including Best Characters, Best Setting, Best Gay Historical and finally, Best Overall Gay Fiction. I’m talking about The Lonely War by Alan Chin.

This is a bittersweet story. It’s a historical story about a gay Asian-American seaman serving with the US Navy in World War II who falls in love with an officer aboard the ship on which he serves. Then his ship is captured by the Japanese and the entire crew become POWs. The final part of the book takes place after the war. No part of this book is an easy journey for the main character. I can’t do this book justice in a brief summary. Read the reviews, especially Leslie’s review at Speak Its Name, and you’ll understand why this book won all the awards.

And why one of the marvelous things about ebooks is the opportunity to bring books like this back and give them new and longer life and a wider audience.

That wraps up Ebook Review Central for this week. And after The Lonely War, a book about World War II, let’s talk about next Monday, Memorial Day in the United States. Although Memorial Day originally commemorated the fallen Union soldiers after the U.S. Civil War (I live in Atlanta now, I’m finding that very interesting) it has come to be a holiday to honor all those who have died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.

It also marks the beginning of summer. And it’s a three-day weekend. Ebook Review Central is going to take next Monday off. I need to get another sort of “leap day” in the calendar, and Memorial Day is a good enough reason.

Ebook Review Central will be back on June 4 with the Samhain April feature.

 

Ebook Review Central, Carina Press, April 2012

The Carina Press April 2012 list proves, as Carina does every month, that there are high-quality titles published in ebook-only.

It also proves that there is something out there for every taste and variation of romance fiction lover, from science fiction romance to paranormal to male/male to historical to retro to contemporary. Even for those who can’t get enough of Spartacus (the recent TV series, not the old movie).

It does seem like there are some trends.

Looking at both Carina and Samhain, I’ve noticed that the Retro romances don’t get a lot of new reviews.  How that translates to sales is something that I’ll freely admit I wonder about. The reviews for Susan Edwards’s White Series are mostly, but not exclusively, from RT Book Reviews and All About Romance‘s backfiles; they are reviews for the original release of the books. This is also true for the Samhain Retro romances.

The Roman Empire period may be making a comeback. Surrender to the Roman is one of several “blood and sandals” romances that’s come out recently. Spartacus may have started (or resurrected) a sub-genre. There’s a post at Book Lovers Inc. that plays with this question.

New/old sub-genre questions aside, this week’s featured titles are from romance sub-genres that are a little more familiar. Which is pretty interesting, considering that not a single one takes place in a here-and-now that’s exactly the one we know!
The third featured title this month is the erotic historical romance Improper Relations by Juliana Ross. Unlike a lot of historicals that take place in England, this is Victorian Era rather than Regency. Equally unusual, this one is not about a noble rake sweeping a complete innocent off her feet. Not that Leo isn’t a rake, well, not exactly. He appears to be one. It’s just that Hannah is only sort of innocent. She’s a widow. She simply doesn’t know what pleasure is. After watching Leo debauch a housemaid in the library (to both parties clear mutual enjoyment!), Hannah finds herself willing to let Leo teach her everything she’s missed about pleasure. They both learn a few other lessons, ones that neither of them expect. This novella is short, erotic, and surprisingly sweet at the end.

The second featured title is the paranormal entry in this week’s list. Darkest Caress by Kaylea Cross. An ancient magical race, the Empowered, is here on Earth to fight on the side of Good in the coming battle against the forces of evil. While they’re waiting for that battle, they need a place to stay. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the realtor that the leader of those good guys, Daegan Blackwell, hires to help him find some property, turns out to be a long-lost member of the Empowered herself. And his destined mate. And she doesn’t believe him until she becomes a target for the evildoers herself. Reviewers compare this one to Kresley Cole, Lara Adrian and even J.R. Ward.

But this week’s big winner was Ava March’s Fortune Hunter, the second book in her Brook St. Trilogy. This is a male/male Regency and did even better in the reviews than the first book, Thief. Readers definitely love this series, and are snapping up each book as it comes out. The biggest complaint I’m seeing is that because these are novellas, the stories are too short! But Fortune Hunter is the story of Oscar and Julian. Julian Parker is from the poor, American branch of the Parker family. His name gives him entry in wealthy English society, but nothing more. He come to England to find a rich wife to support him in style, even though he knows he prefers men. Oscar Woodhaven is rich, exceedingly rich, but all that his wealth has bought him is loneliness and grasping relatives. He needs Julian’s friendship as much as he needs his love. They have found what they need and want in each other, if they can figure out a way to keep what they have. Especially in the face of a society that will more than condemn them.

So this week we have the Regency, the Victorian Age, and an paranormal version of now where the Empowered fight the darkness. The contemporaries just didn’t stand a chance this month. Next month may be different. Come back and see!

And come back next Monday to check out the Dreamspinner Press April features. We’ll be back!

 

Ebook Review Central, Curiosity Quills and Red Sage, Leap Week Edition

Let’s all welcome the new additions to Ebook Review Central, Curiosity Quills and Red Sage Publishing.

When I first started Ebook Review Central, I searched high and low for ebook-only or ebook-mostly publishers whose primary genres were something other than romance. Don’t get me wrong, I do love romances, and I read a lot of them. But I also read a fair number of mysteries, and my personal romance with science fiction and fantasy goes way back.

Not to mention, there’s a certain irony to the fact that it’s hard to find a science fiction ebook-only publisher. Think about it for a minute.

Enter Curiosity Quills. They’re a relatively new ebook-only publisher, and they publish genre-benders on the slightly weird side of the house. Practically every title listed has two genres, and it’s usually two flavors that you don’t always think of together. So not peanut butter and chocolate like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, but Paranormal and Science Fiction. They also published the book with one of the most hilarious titles ever, The Last Condo Board of the Apocalypse.

But I never forget the romance. Red Sage Publishing is one that readers might recall from their long-standing Secrets erotica anthologies, but they have been branching out recently in their ebook titles. They do still publish Secrets in paperback, but in ebook-only they’re exploring some strange new worlds, like steampunk and science fiction romance.

And this seemed like a good time to add these new publishers to the line up in a “Leap Week”. Just like the calendar adds February 29 every four years, Ebook Review Central needs to add an extra week here and there to keep the cycle in sync with the calendar.

Curiosity Quills and Red Sage will be added to the four-in-one post. It will become a six-in-one monthly wrap up. To catch their review data up with the other publishers in that post, all the review data for CQ titles and Red Sage titles is now online at ERC.

And yes, we have featured titles. ERC just wouldn’t be the same without featured titles!

Featured title number three is The Forbidden Claim by Kelly Gendron and it’s from Red Sage Publishing. This tale of romantic suspense is about mistaken identities, misplaced identities, forgotten identities and reclaimed identities. A U.S. Marshall kidnaps a murderer who is about to be hidden inside the Witness Protection Program. The Marshall, a woman named Jinx Collins, believes that the murderer holds the key to the identity of a young woman who haunts her memories. The only problem is that the murderer she just kidnapped is an undercover agent who is trying to infiltrate a human trafficking ring. And there is a young boy in the present who needs their help. In addition to the deep suspense, the reviewers loved this one for the very hot romance.

The number one and two featured titles are both from Curiosity Quills, and it’s fitting that they are the top two featured titles because they are also books one and two in a series. People obviously loved book one, and were chomping at the bit for book two to come out. What am I talking about? Vicki Keire’s Chronicles of Nowhere; book one, Worlds Burn Through and book two, Shadowed Ground. This is one of those genre-bender series I referred to earlier, it’s paranormal science-fiction. There’s also a strong post-apocalyptic flavor. The world has ended in fire, and now one girl is being protected by some very powerful guardians, because she can hopefully keep it from happening again.

And that’s a wrap on the Leap Week Special Edition of Ebook Review Central. We’ll be back next week with the Carina Press April 2012 featured titles.

Ebook Review Central, Amber Quill, Astraea Press, Liquid Silver Books, Riptide Publishing, March 2012

It’s time for the March four-in-one feature at Ebook Review Central. This is the point in the cycle where ERC covers Amber Quill Press, Astraea Press, Liquid Silver Books and Riptide Publishing, and usually wraps up whatever the month is that we’ve been covering.

Well, this is still the four-in-one, but it’s not wrapping the month. Next week ERC will be doing a “leap week” post and adding in some new publishers. It’s both a way of bringing some new titles into this wrap-up, and, pushing out the calendar a bit. I started ERC three weeks after the end of the covered months. Now I’ve caught up to it. I have to push back, and the best way is to add in some fresh material.

All the publishers in ERC are going to stay in.

Meanwhile, back to the March titles for our current four publishing contenders…March was not an all-Riptide month the way February was. Almost, but not quite.

In reverse order this time, just to keep you guessing until the end…

The third place finisher this month was Dark Soul Vol. 5 by Aleksandr Voinov, published, of course, by Riptide. I’ll admit I was expecting this one to make the list, the only question in my mind as I looked at the review sheets for this month was how it would stack up. The built-in audience for this final volume of Voinov’s tale of mafiosi, their enemies and their even more dangerous secret lovers had a lot of pent-up emotion just waiting for this. As one reviewer said, “just beautiful”. These are stories about dark characters who make all their choices in shades of grey, but the ending is very satisfying for those who love watching their heroes struggle with the darkness inside.

From characters who hold their secrets inside, we switch to a character who is forced by circumstance to display at least some of his difficulties where everyone can see them. Permanently Legless by J.L. Merrow (Amber Quill) easily rolled into second place in this week’s tally. Being “legless” usually means drunk, but in this case, it refers to the wounds Chris sustained fighting in Afghanistan. He’s adjusted to the loss of both legs, with his love of life and confidence intact, but when he meets Josh again, the guy he had a one-night stand with just before he left on that last tour of duty, he’s uncertain again. Josh isn’t. Readers loved this story of a wounded warrior finding his HEA with a guy who doesn’t care about his disability.

The number one book this week by an absolute landslide was Frat Boy and Toppy, written by Anne Tenino. From the reviews, it looks like everyone loved it because it made them laugh. The “frat boy” in the title is Brad, and he starts the story as a typical frat boy jock with a lot of frat boy friends. But there’s something different about Brad. In spite of appearances and outward behavior, Brad has a crush on the Teaching Assistant for his History Class. The male Teaching Assistant. Brad’s pretty sure he’s gay. The book is the story of Brad figuring out what to do about it. Especially since that TA doesn’t do relationships. Which is what Brad wants, once he starts figuring out what he wants in general. The one thing the reviews have in common is the phrase “laugh out loud”. Actually, there are two things, the other one seems to be “love Brad”. Romantic comedy fans, take note of this one.

So this week’s features can be summed up as light-hearted (Frat Boy and Toppy), heart-warming (Permanently Legless), and soul-searing (Dark Soul Vol. 5), but not all in the same book!

It’s also notable that, looking back, the last time the featured books in this four-in-one post were not all male/male romances was the December 2011 feature. Will this trend continue? We’ll see in the coming months!

That’s it for this issue. Come back next week to see which publishers will be added to Ebook Review Central in “Leap Week”.

Ebook Review Central, Samhain Publishing, March 2012

Holy Moly but this list was positively ginormous!

I’m not even referring to the number of titles. Since they added the Retro and Horror lines, Samhain has always published about 25 titles, give or take, so Samhain’s March list isn’t exceptional. It just felt long.

Why?

The reviews, of course. There were a couple of books that didn’t find an audience. And a couple of the retro titles that didn’t get reviewed this time around.

Samhain has had some terrific success getting prequel and mid-series novellas from fairly big-name authors where the rest of the series is in print from a more, shall we say, traditional publisher. Those books rack up huge reviews, and I would suspect, big sales.

Natural Evil, by Thea Harrison, is book 4.5 in her very popular Elder Races series. Book 4, the recent Oracle’s Moon, was published by Berkley, a division of “Big 6” publisher Penguin. The ebook novellas, #3.5 True Colors and #4.5 Natural Evil, were published by Samhain. These always get double-digit review numbers in the first month, and more trickle in every month after release. Natural Evil was no exception.

What’s different this month is that there were a lot of titles that went into double-digit review numbers. And they weren’t even all series books. Well, some were the start of a series, but they weren’t books that had the built-in anticipation that book 2 or 3 or 6 in a series has.

Seven books had 10 or more reviews.  This is excellent! But it does make it a lot harder to pick three to feature.

The book that slides into the third feature place for Samhain this time around is The Runaway Countess by Leigh LaValle. Reviewers fell in love with this Regency romance by debut author LaValle. This is the story of a Robin Hood heroine (not hero) and the Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire (of course it’s in Nottingham) who saves her from the punishment she should suffer for being a thief. But she’s not as bad a thief as she’s accused of being. And he wants to do some really naughty things to our heroine, Mazie, who, like Robin Hood, is somewhat more than she appears to be on the surface. The reviewers didn’t just enjoy the story, they all expect great things from Ms. LaValle in the future.

Prowling into the second place in this week’s list is Hunter’s Prey by Moira Rogers. Fittingly enough, this is also book 2 in Rogers’ Bloodhounds series, after Wilder’s Mate and the mid-series teaser novella  Merrick’s Destiny (officially #1.5). The world of the Bloodhounds is an alternate history, steampunk post-Civil War U.S. in which vampires roam the Western night and their ghouls fulfill their orders during the day. The only creatures capable of fighting the vamps on their own terms are the Bloodhounds, formerly broken men turned into were-hellhounds by the mysterious Guild. Hunter’s Prey is the story of one such Bloodhound, and the woman brave enough to become his mate. With each book a little more of the overall tale of the Guild and everything else that is happening is being teased out as well. This series is awesome if you like steampunk, cowpunk (U.S. Western steampunk) vampires, shapeshifters or historic paranormal erotic romance.

The big book of the month for Samhain was Rocky Mountain Desire by Vivian Arend. This is number 3 in her Six Pack Ranch series, and whatever it is she did when she revised and expanded the Six Pack Ranch books from their original publication, it definitely works for readers and reviewers. The first two books in this series, Rocky Mountain Heat and Rocky Mountain Haven, were both featured titles on ERC, and there’s no reason to break the streak for book 3. Guilty Pleasures put Rocky Mountain Desire on their Crème de la Crème list because it’s good! The entire series is about a family of very handsome brothers in a small mountain town who, one after another, each find their perfect match. By book three, you have not just the romance, but family meddling and the fun of seeing how the couples from the first two stories are getting along. Done well, it’s a recipe for a terrific story. And Ms. Arend does it very well indeed.

Are you curious about which other titles had double-digit review numbers? Check out the complete Samhain list for March to see the answer. Wondering why the same book got a 5/5 from one reviewer and 3/5 from another? Read their reviews and see for yourself.

Ebook Review Central will be back next week with the four-in-one issue covering Amber Quill, Astraea Press, Liquid Silver and Riptide.