Stacy Alesi's BookBitch.com™

February is for lovers…of books, at least here! I updated the Win Books page with some wonderful books. This month there are NY Times bestsellers, the latest in some of my favorite series, and a terrific sophomore effort.

First up is Crash & Burn by the #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner, a stand-alone thriller with a cameo by her fan-favorite character, Boston Detective D.D. Warren. Lisa Unger is at the top of her game with her extraordinary new thriller, Crazy Love You, that will keep you guessing until the last page.

Lisa von Biela gives us a BigPharma medical thriller entitled Blockbuster. The “queen of romantic suspense,” Karen Rose, offers up her latest, Closer Than You Think and Kat Martin is back with Against the Sky, the latest entry in The Brodies of Alaska series.

I was delighted to catch up with one of my favorite characters, ex-cop turned inner city school teacher Raymond Donne, in Dead Red by Tim O’Mara, that is filled with the kinds of unexpected twists that make for the best crime fiction.  Merry Jones brings us the latest in her Harper Jennings series, In the Woods.

Little Black Lies by Sandra Block is about madness and memory – and the dangerous, little lies we tell ourselves just to survive. From the acclaimed author of the “ripping good” (The New York Times) debut novel Three Graves Full comes a new thriller, Monday’s Lie, about a woman who digs into her unconventional past to confirm what she suspects: her husband isn’t what she thought he was.

Finally, John Wells has only Twelve Days to stop the United States from being tricked into invading Iran in the new cutting-edge novel of modern suspense from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author Alex Berenson,

You can win autographed copies of all these books! If you are new to the site, each month I run a contest in conjunction with the International Thriller Writers organization. We put together a list of books including bestsellers and debut authors, so you can win some of your favorites and find some new favorites.

What makes this contest really special is that all of the books (except eBooks) are signed by the author!

Don’t forget, if you subscribe to the newsletter or follow this blog, you get an extra entry into every contest you enter. Check out the Win Books  page for more information on all these books and how you to enter this month’s contest.

Thanks for reading, and good luck!

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A new contest!

I am delighted to offer An Appetite for Violets by Martine Bailey, a novel with recipes, to one lucky winner.

“That’s how it is for us servants. No one pays you much heed; mostly you’re invisible as furniture. Yet you overhear a conversation here, and add a little gossip there. Then you find something, something you should not have found.”

Irrepressible Biddy Leigh, under-cook at forbidding Mawton Hall, only wants to marry her childhood sweetheart and set up her own tavern. But when her elderly master marries young Lady Carinna, Biddy is unwittingly swept up in a world of scheming, secrets, and lies. Forced to accompany her new mistress to Italy, she documents her adventures and culinary discoveries in an old household book of recipes, The Cook’s Jewel. Biddy grows intrigued by her fellow travelers, but her secretive and unconventional mistress is the most intriguing of all.

In London, Biddy finds herself attracted to her mistress’s younger brother. In France, she discovers her mistress’s dark secret. At last in Italy, Biddy becomes embroiled in a murderous conspiracy, knowing the secrets she holds could be a key to a better life, or her downfall.

Inspired by eighteenth-century household books of recipes and set at the time of the invention of the first restaurants, An Appetite for Violets is a literary feast for lovers of historical fiction. Martine Bailey’s novel opens a window into the fascinating lives of servants, while also delivering a suspenseful tale of obsession and betrayal.

Martine Bailey¹s An Appetite for Violets is the perfect recipe of a novel. Biddy is an irresistible heroine, and readers will delight in her 18^th century recipes, which are actual, real, researched recipes that Martine transcribed.

 If you would like to win a copy, please send an email to contest@gmail.com with “WIN VIOLETS” as the subject. You must include your snail mail address in your email.

All entries must be received by February 4, 2015. One (1) name will be drawn from all qualified entries and notified via email. This contest is open to all adults over 18 years of age in the United States and Canada only. Your book will be sent by the publisher, Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martins Press.

One entry per email address. Subscribers to the monthly newsletter earn an extra entry into every contest. Follow this blog to earn another entry into every contest. Winners may win only one time per year (365 days) for contests with prizes of more than one book. Your email address will not be shared or sold to anyone.

Happy New Year, dear readers! I updated the Win Books page with some fantastic books. As always, there are NY Times bestsellers, favorite series, and a debut.

First up is Cane and Abe, a spellbinding novel of suspense from New York Times bestselling author (and one of my favorites!) James Grippando, in which Miami’s top prosecutor becomes a prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance, which may have a chilling connection to the woman he can’t forget.

Thomas Perry’s Jane Whitefield is back in A String of Beads, an addictive, fast-paced thriller about how abandoning the past can sometimes be the hardest thing to do, even when your life—and the life of those you love—depends on it.

Bill Loehfelm is a rising star in crime fiction and Doing the Devil’s Work only ups the ante. Maureen Coughlin is the perfect protagonist: complicated, strong-willed, sympathetic (except when she’s not), and as fully realized in Loehfelm’s extraordinary portrayal as the New Orleans she patrols.

On every police force in the country, there’s a SWAT sniper going about his daily life. Grant Jerkins and Jan Thomas’s Done in One pulls back the curtain on their world. Suspenseful, lightning–quick, and endlessly entertaining, Viking Bay is the pitch-perfect new adventure in the Kay Hamilton series from M.K. Lawson, who also writes the terrific Joe DeMarco series as Mike Lawson.

Patricia Gussin’s latest is After the Fall. In a starred review, Booklist said, “Gussin completes her Laura Nelson series with an action-packed medical thriller…Gussin uses her experience as a surgeon and medical researcher to create a complex, realistic story that will appeal to readers with a taste for thrillers centering on science and politics.”

If you love paranormal cozy mysteries, you won’t want to miss Shadow of Doubt, the first book in the Carol Childs Mystery series by Nancy Cole Silverman. In the Alaskan wilderness, love and danger collide in Buried by Elizabeth Goddard.

Jeanne Matthews “makes fine use of Berlin’s turbulent history and the enduring German fascination with Indian culture,” (Publisher’s Weekly) in her latest Dinah Pelerin mystery, Where the Bones are Buried.

Finally, romance and action come crashing together in Susan Adrian’s debut young adult thriller Tunnel Vision, in which a teenage boy with incredible powers is brought to the attention of the government.

You can win autographed copies of all these books! If you are new to the site, each month I run a contest in conjunction with the International Thriller Writers group. We put together a list of books including bestsellers and debut authors, so you can win some of your favorites and find some new favorites.

What makes this contest really special is that all of the books (except eBooks) are signed by the author!

Don’t forget, if you subscribe to the newsletter or follow this blog, you get an extra entry into every contest you enter.

Thanks for reading, and good luck!

December is here! I updated the Win Books page with some fantastic books. As always, there are NY Times bestsellers, favorite series, and debuts.

New addition: Shadow Boys by Harry Hunsicker, the latest in the Jon Cantrell thrillers!

Tess Gerritsen brings back her hugely popular Rizzoli & Isles in Die Again. Charlaine Harris hand picked a team of superb writers to dream up more tales for Sookie Stackhouse in Dead But Not Forgotten. Laura Joh Rowland takes us back to feudal Japan in her latest Sano Ichiro novel, The Iris Fan.

Phillip Margolin stumbled across a haunting photograph in a breakfast eatery in Virginia which inspired his latest, Woman with a Gun. Brad Taylor continues his tremendously exciting Pike Logan series with No Fortunate Son.

Land of Careful Shadows by the award winning author Suzanne Chazin introduces Jimmy Vega, a Latino homicide detective. Reece Hirsch brings us into the secretive world of Big Data in Intrusion. Jeff Markowitz wonders, “did you ever have one of those days,” in his latest, Death and White Diamonds. And Tiffany Snow brings us into an underground British agency in In His Shadow.

I love finding new authors so it is with great pleasure I offer up two smashing debuts, The Monarch by Jack Soren, and How We Fall by Kate Brauning.

If you are new to the site, each month I run a contest in conjunction with the International Thriller Writers group. We put together a list of books including bestsellers and debut authors, so you can win some of your favorites and find some new favorites.

What makes this contest really special is that all of the books (except eBooks) are signed by the author!

Don’t forget, if you subscribe to the newsletter or follow this blog, you get an extra entry into every contest you enter.

Thanks for reading, and good luck!

Big congratulations goes to William Kent Krueger, who in an unusual twist, won both the Barry Award & the Macavity Award for Ordinary Grace (Atria Books.)

The Macavity Awards are nominated and voted on by members and friends of Mystery Readers International and subscribers to Mystery Readers Journal. Nominations are for works published in the U.S. in 2013. Winners were announced last night at Bouchercon, in Long Beach, California.

Best Mystery Novel

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger (Atria Books)

Best First Mystery

A Killing at Cotton Hill by Terry Shames (Seventh Street Books)

Best Mystery Short Story

“The Care and Feeding of Houseplants” by Art Taylor (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March/April 2013)

Best Nonfiction

The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War by Daniel Stashower (Minotaur Books)

Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award

Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell (Little, Brown)