Penguin Random House – The Book Diva's Reads

Book Showcase: HOW I’LL KILL YOU by Ren DeStefano

How I’ll Kill You by Ren DeStefano
ISBN: 9780593438305 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 9780593438329 (eBook)
ISBN: 9780593675236 (Digital audiobook)
ASIN: B0B622M43T (Audible audiobook)
ASIN: B0B4R71G46 (Kindle edition)
Page Count: 352
Release Date: March 21, 2023
Publisher: Berkley Books
Genre: Fiction | Mystery | Thriller

Your next stay-up-all-night thriller, about identical triplets who have a nasty habit of killing their boyfriends, and what happens when the youngest commits their worst crime yet: falling in love with her mark.

Make him want you.
Make him love you.
Make him dead.

Sissy has an…interesting family. Always the careful one, always the cautious one, she has handled the cleanup while her serial killer sisters have carved a path of carnage across the U.S. Now, as they arrive in the Arizona heat, Sissy must step up and embrace the family pastime of making a man fall in love and then murdering him. Her first target? A young widower named Edison–and their mutual attraction is instant. While their relationship progresses, and most couples would be thinking about picking out china patterns and moving in together, Sissy’s family is reminding her to think about picking out burial sites and moving on.

But then something happens that Sissy never anticipated: She begins to feel protective of Edison, and then, before she can help it, she’s fallen in love. But the clock is ticking, and her sisters are growing restless. It becomes clear that the gravesite she chooses will hide a body no matter what happens; but if she betrays her family, will it be hers?

Book Excerpt:

If not for my sisters and the tragic circumstances of our upbringing, I would be living an empty life and bound for heartbreak.

It started when we were nineteen.

Iris called me, frantic, in the middle of the night. She had her own apartment above a laundromat in downtown Clovis. She was so proud of that place—all five hundred square feet of it. She kept it tidy and burned incense at all hours to hide the smell from the dumpster in the alley outside her bedroom window. At night, there was the persistent throb of the bar across the street, the music loud enough to rattle the porcelain angel figurines on the shelves. They’d come with the place, and Iris had decided they made her living room look homey—a word she’d never used before, because we’d never had a home.

“Just come,” she’d sobbed and then hung up. All of my calls went straight to voicemail. I sped the whole way over there, sure that someone had just climbed up the fire escape to murder her. But what I found was a different sort of violence.

Blood, deep and dark, pooled on her oriental rug, and splattered across the angel figurines.

She’d been sleeping with her old high school guidance counselor—a fifty-one-year-old married father of two. He strung her along for months, promising to leave his wife. He broke her heart a hundred times, and then Iris plunged a kebab skewer through his.

“You watch all of those crime shows,” Moody said, emerging from the kitchen with a bottle of bleach she’d found under the sink. “Help us make this go away.”

We moved with a practical calm, the three of us, and when it was through, Iris’s ill-fated lover was resting in six garbage bags, wound tightly with duct tape. If it were only one of us, or even two, I’m sure we would have been caught. We would have missed a detail. But we were a perfect team, the three of us.

After a lifetime of being torn apart, we were finally together, finally able to help one another in all the ways we never could when we were being jostled helplessly by the foster system. All those years of loneliness, of wanting, of being kept apart, had brought us to this desperate moment. Knee-deep in the water of the San Joaquin river in the velvet black night, we weighed the pieces of the man with rocks, and a promise started to form. In the coming days, it slowly became obvious what we needed to do.

We wouldn’t deprive ourselves of love, but our hearts would be weapons. We would love the men we found completely and without inhibition, put a lifetime into our brief time together. Live out every fantasy we desired. And then we would kill them.

There would never be another lover to break one of us. We would break all of them first.

Excerpt from How I’ll Kill You by Ren DeStefano.
Copyright © 2023 by Ren DeStefano.
Published with permission from Berkley Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.
All rights reserved.

Meet the Author

Ren DeStefano lives in Connecticut, where she was born and raised. When she’s not writing thrillers, she’s listening to true crime podcasts and crocheting way too many blankets.

Connect with the author: Instagram | Website

This book excerpt brought to you by Berkley Books

Guest Post: Dorothy St. James – A BOOK CLUB TO DIE FOR

A BOOK CLUB TO DIE FOR tour banner, featuring blue sofa and armchairs, purple pillows, small circular coffee table with a green serving tray with a pitcher of iced tea, two tumblers with ice tea, 1 spilled onto the carpet, and gray tabby cat looking at the spilled tea, small author photo (white female with light reddish-brown shoulder-length hair wearing a blue top) in the upper right corner.

Hello, book people. I’ve had a library card since I was five years old. The first thing I do when I move is to locate the closest library and get a library card. The main branch of my local library was closed for two years due to extensive renovations. Although I hadn’t gone into the physical building much, I missed using the drive-up window during the renovations (I read digitally, i.e., ebooks). Now that the library has re-opened, I go into the building at least once a month for one of my local book clubs. I’ve got to say that I’m loving all of the “new” areas available in the library even though I haven’t truly used much beyond the conference rooms, self-checkout areas (namely used with book club books), and the library cafe. (Again, I primarily check out ebooks for my personal use, but am looking forward to exploring more of my library’s new features.) Today’s guest is Dorothy St. James, author of the Beloved Bookroom Mystery series, including the latest addition, A Book Club to Die For. Ms. St. James will be discussing with us something that is near and dear to me, libraries. Grab a favorite beverage, sit back, and let’s hear what Ms. St. James has to say about this beloved institution. Thank you, Ms. St. James, for visiting with us today, the blog is now all yours.

For the Love of Libraries
by Dorothy St. James

I’d long thought about writing a book series set at a library as my thank you to libraries and what they’ve done for me and my life. Because I write cozy mysteries – which a friend has recently called murder, but with fun – my library series would of course have a few dead bodies peppered here and there.

The idea for writing the series remained just that, an idea until I read an article about a few library branches in the country that had decided to do away with the print book and move to all electronic. Wait. What? No! Are you serious?

That was my knee-jerk reaction the first time I read about what is being called bookless libraries. (The name is misleading. They’re not actually bookless. There are books available in the libraries, just not the print editions.) Will libraries one day become cyber cafés? Will the sweet scent of books be replaced with a metallic smell? No. I don’t like this. Yes, I do enjoy reading ebooks. But losing print books? No, this doesn’t make me happy.

But the truth is public libraries are being asked to do more with tighter budgets. Libraries are becoming community centers often providing a wide range of programs to its patrons. They also have ebooks, audiobooks, and music available for download, DVDs, audiobook CDs, and music CDs, as well as a large selection of books. This collection must continually be updated with new releases and purging older materials that are no longer being checked out. New materials can be costly, especially if they need to be purchased in multiple formats (hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.) New technology equipment must be purchased from time to time too. And librarians have to be trained to use the new systems. Many libraries don’t have the budgets to cover the cost of doing, well, everything. Hard decisions must be made.

When I read about this, my public administration brain lit up. This kernel of an idea along with my lifelong love of libraries is how the Beloved Bookroom Mystery series was born. I challenged myself to explore the tension that naturally occurs whenever new technology changes how things are done. Sort of like when scrolls were replaced by codexes, the precursors of printed books. I started to ask myself what would a librarian who has an emotional attachment to printed books might do if her library was converted to a bookless library. The answer was simple. She’d save the books!

My heroine, Trudell Becket is an assistant librarian in the small town of Cypress, South Carolina. The town leaders, hoping to attract high-tech jobs to their town, decide to convert the library into a high-tech bookless library. Trudell is horrified by the idea. The books on the shelves are her friends. She sneaks into the library one night and takes many of the books that are boxed up to be removed from the library. She then opens a secret bookroom in the library’s basement. While she’s working in the basement library, someone kills the town manager, who is the driving force behind the library’s modernization. Tru cannot tell the police her whereabouts at the time of his death because she doesn’t want to reveal the work she’s been doing in the basement. At the same time, she feels compelled to help the police and make sure her library stays a safe space for everyone. That is why she and her friends decide to investigate on their own. That’s the start of the series and the opening of The Broken Spine, the first book in the mystery series.

Tru is like all book lovers. She is a book warrior. She’s determined to protect the books she loves. Luckily, we’re not called to do the same. For now, most libraries will remain filled with print editions of books. Thank goodness! But one day those books might become as obsolete as the ancient scroll.

So, let’s cherish the printed books at the libraries for as long as we can. While at the same time, we can celebrate that there are also ebooks, audiobooks, and graphic novels for readers who love those too. Let’s love them all.

As TS Elliot once wrote, “The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man.” My wish is that you feel that hope in every book I write in the Beloved Bookroom Mystery series.

I hope you’ll join me in the pages of Tru’s latest adventure in A Book Club To Die For. It might be her most challenging one yet. What looks like an open and shut case to the police will put her boyfriend’s mother in jail for murder. Tru has promised to try and find another answer. The more she looks into the murder of the president of the local book club, the more she worries that she won’t like the answer she’s going to find. ♦

A Book Club to Die For (A Beloved Bookroom)
by Dorothy St. James

About A Book Club to Die For

A Book Club to Die For (A Beloved Bookroom)

When a member of an exclusive book club is checked out, spunky librarian Trudell Becket must sort fact from fiction to solve the murder.

The Cypress Arete Society is one of the town’s oldest and most exclusive clubs. When assistant librarian Trudell Becket is invited to speak to the group about the library, its modernization, and her efforts to bring printed books to the reading public, her friend Flossie invites herself along. Flossie has been on the book club’s waiting list for five years, and she’s determined to find out why she’s never received an invitation to join.

But not long after Tru and Flossie arrive for the meeting, they’re shocked to find the club’s president, Rebecca White, dead in the kitchen. Rebecca was a former TV actress and local celebrity, but was not known for being patient or pleasant. She’d been particularly unkind to the book club’s host for the evening, who also happens to be the mother of Detective Jace Bailey, Tru’s boyfriend. And Rebecca had made it clear that she didn’t think Flossie was book club material.

With her boyfriend and one of her best friends wrapped up in a murder, Tru has to work fast to figure out who cut Rebecca’s story short before the killer takes another victim out of circulation…

Cozy Mystery
3rd in Series
Setting – Cypress, South Carolina
‎Berkley (November 1, 2022)
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN10 ‏ : ‎ 0593098633
ISBN13 ‏ : ‎ 9780593098639
ISBN : 9780593098653 (eBook)
ISBN : 9781666111668 (Audiobook)
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09PZSBCVW (Kindle edition)
ASIN : B0BKP6YWFL (Audible Audiobook)

About Dorothy St. James

Dorothy St. James is a former Folly Beach beach bum. She now lives in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, with her family, slightly (OK, terribly) needy dogs, and the friendliest cat you’ll ever meet. Author of a dozen novels, Dorothy enjoys writing both cozy mysteries and romance.

Follow Dorothy Online:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/dorothy.stjames
Twitter: www.twitter.com/dorothywrites
Instagram: www.instagram.com/dorothymcfalls
Website: www.dorothystjames.com

TOUR PARTICIPANTS

November 1 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
November 1 – I’m Into Books – SPOTLIGHT
November 1 – The Mystery Section – SPOTLIGHT
November 2 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT
November 2 – Reading, Writing & Stitch-Metic – CHARACTER GUEST POST
November 2 – Brooke Blogs – SPOTLIGHT
November 3 – Ascroft, eh? – CHARACTER INTERVIEW
November 3 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – REVIEW
November 3 – Mystery Thrillers and Romantic Suspense Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
November 4 – Celticlady’s Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
November 4 – Cozy Up With Kathy – REVIEW
November 4 – View from the Birdhouse – REVIEW
November 5 – Ruff Drafts – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
November 5 – Maureen’s Musings – SPOTLIGHT
November 5 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
November 6 – The Book Diva’s Reads – AUTHOR GUEST POST
November 6 – Books a Plenty Book Reviews – REVIEW
November 7 – Angel’s Guilty Pleasures – CHARACTER GUEST POST
November 7 – #BRVL Book Review Virginia Lee Blog – SPOTLIGHT
November 8 – Lady Hawkeye – SPOTLIGHT
November 8 – Book Club Librarian – REVIEW
November 9 – Reading Is My SuperPower – REVIEW
November 9 – Nadaness In Motion – SPOTLIGHT
November 10 – Literary Gold – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
November 10 – MJB Reviewers – SPOTLIGHT

Tour Giveaway

This is a giveaway for a library-themed tote bag filled with books and goodies hosted by Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours for Dorothy St. James. Enter using the Rafflecopter link below. Void where prohibited.

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Book Giveaway: THE CHILD by Fiona Barton

Good morning my bookish peeps. There have been a lot of great books released so far this year and today we’re going to celebrate the paperback release on The Child by Fiona Barton. Some of you might recall, I reviewed this book last year upon its hardcover release and it was a recommended read. How are we going to celebrate the paperback release of this recommended read? With a book giveaway courtesy of the publisher, Berkley – Penguin Random House.

The Child by Fiona Barton

An NPR Best Book of the YearA Bustle Best Thriller Novel of the Year

“The Child is a perfect blend of beach read and book club selection. It’s a fascinating and fitting follow-up to [Barton’s] best-selling debut novel, The Widow. . . .[A] page-turning whodunit…A novel that is both fast-paced and thought-provoking, it keeps the reader guessing right to the end.”–USA Today

“Fiona Barton brings back reporter Kate Waters from the best-selling The Widow and delivers another winner with The Child….A truly engaging tale. Those who enjoyed The Widow will discover that Barton has only gotten better.”–The Associated Press

“An engrossing, irresistible story about the coming to light of a long-buried secret and an absolutely fabulous read–I loved it!”–Shari Lapena, New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door

“Tense, tantalizing, and ultimately very satisfying…definitely one of the year’s must-reads.”–Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author

The author of the stunning New York Times bestseller The Widow returns with a brand-new novel of twisting psychological suspense, now in paperback.

As an old house is demolished in a gentrifying section of London, a workman discovers human remains, buried for years. For journalist Kate Waters, it’s a story that deserves attention. She cobbles together a piece for her newspaper, but she’s at a loss for answers. As Kate investigates, she unearths connections to a crime that rocked the city decades earlier. A newborn baby was stolen from the maternity ward in a local hospital and was never found.

But there is more to the story, and Kate is drawn–house by house–into the pasts of the people who once lived in this neighborhood that has given up its greatest mystery. She soon finds herself the keeper of unexpected secrets that erupt in the lives of three women–and torn between what she can and cannot tell…

The author:

Fiona Barton, the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow and The Child, trains and works with journalists all over the world. Previously, she was a senior writer at the Daily Mail, news editor at the Daily Telegraph, and chief reporter at the Mail on Sunday, where she won Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards. Visit her online at fionabartonauthor.com and on Twitter @figbarton. Join the conversation using #TheChild.

Giveaway

To enter this giveaway, use the Rafflecopter form below. This giveaway ends on Friday, March 16, 2018, at 11:59 PM ET and the winner will be announced on Saturday, March 17, 2018, by 10:00 AM ET. Please note that this giveaway is limited to US residents only, all non-US entrants will be disqualified. The book will be shipped to the winner by the publisher, Berkley.