Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from The Places I’ve Cried in Public by Holly Bourne. I picked this up Saturday morning and had it finished by that evening, it was just so good. It’s not an easy read, it’s about an unhealthy relationship, but it’s incredibly well done. Bourne is fast becoming one of my favourite writers.

My Teaser

Love hurts. That’s what they always say, isn’t it? Is it real if it’s not hurting. Can you trust it’s love if it doesn’t punch you in the face?

The Places I’ve Cried In Public by Holly Bourne

Blurb

Amelie loved Reese. And she thought he loved her. But she’s starting to realise love isn’t supposed to hurt like this. So now she’s retracing their story and untangling what happened by revisiting all the places he made her cry.

Because if she works out what went wrong, perhaps she can finally learn to get over him.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from Queen of Nothing by Holly Black, the third and final book in the Folk of the Air trilogy. I was trying this month to stick to galleys but when I spied this in the bookshop I couldn’t resist and started it pretty much immediately. As this is the third book I’ll add a warning here that while I’ve chosen the spoiler free teaser there are mild spoilers in the blurb below.

My Teaser

Maybe she wanted to play the great game. Maybe she thought of all the things he could do for her if he were sitting on the throne.

Pg44 Queen of Nothing by Holly Black

Blurb

He will be destruction of the crown and the ruination of the throne.

Power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold onto. Jude learned this lesson when she released her control over the wicked king, Cardan, in exchange for immeasurable power.

Now as the exiled mortal Queen of Faerie, Jude is powerless and left reeling from Cardan’s betrayal. She bides her time determined to reclaim everything he took from her. Opportunity arrives in the form of her deceptive twin sister, Taryn, whose mortal life is in peril.

Jude must risk venturing back into the treacherous Faerie Court, and confront her lingering feelings for Cardan, if she wishes to save her sister. But Elfhame is not as she left it. War is brewing. As Jude slips deep within enemy lines she becomes ensnared in the conflict’s bloody politics.

And, when a dormant yet powerful curse is unleashed, panic spreads throughout the land, forcing her to choose between her ambition and her humanity…

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from Joe Hill’s short story collection Full Throttle, or if I’m being more accurate from the introduction to Joe Hill’s short story collection where he talks a bit about becoming a writer and his famous parents. I’ve only read a couple of the stories so far but the introduction has been my favourite part of the book I’ve read so far. I think Hill needs to write an autobiography, I have a feeling he has lots of great stories, and advice, to share.

My Teaser

My brain doesn’t move fast enough for conversation, but words on a page will wait for me. Books are patient with slow learners. The rest of the world isn’t.

Loc147 Full Throttle by Joe Hill

Blurb

In this masterful collection of short fiction, Joe Hill dissects timeless human struggles in thirteen relentless tales of supernatural suspense, including “In The Tall Grass,” one of two stories co-written with Stephen King, basis for the terrifying feature film from Netflix.

A little door that opens to a world of fairy tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in “Faun.” A grief-stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique Bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in “Late Returns.” In “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain,” two young friends stumble on the corpse of a plesiosaur at the water’s edge, a discovery that forces them to confront the inescapable truth of their own mortality . . . and other horrors that lurk in the water’s shivery depths. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in “Throttle,” co-written with Stephen King.

Featuring two previously unpublished stories, and a brace of shocking chillers, Full Throttle is a darkly imagined odyssey through the complexities of the human psyche. Hypnotic and disquieting, it mines our tormented secrets, hidden vulnerabilities, and basest fears, and demonstrates this exceptional talent at his very best.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from The Wych Elm by Tana French, a book I received from NetGalley but only got around to starting yesterday. I do love Tana French books but I seem to be having a few issues with this one. Nothing wrong with it (it’s definitely me and not the book) but it starts with a pretty brutal attack on the MC and it’s so vivid and real it kind of freaked me out. Think it may be getting put on the back burner a little longer.

My Teaser

There was something horrifying about being exposed and handled so efficiently and impersonally. He was acting like my body was meat, not attached to a person at all.

8% The Wych Elm by Tana French

Blurb

For me it all goes back to that night, the dark corroded hinge between before and after, the slipped-in sheet of trick glass that tints everything on one side in its own murky colours and leaves everything on the other luminous and untouchable.

One night changes everything for Toby. A brutal attack leaves him traumatised, unsure even of the person he used to be. He seeks refuge at the family’s ancestral home, the Ivy House, filled with cherished memories of wild-strawberry summers and teenage parties with his cousins.

But not long after Toby’s arrival, a discovery is made. A skull, tucked neatly inside the old wych elm in the garden.

As detectives begin to close in, Toby is forced to examine everything he thought he knew about his family, his past, and himself.

A spellbinding standalone from a literary writer who turns the crime genre inside out, The Wych Elm asks what we become, and what we’re capable of, if we no longer know who we are.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from Postscript by Cecelia Ahern, the follow up to PS I Love You. I only started reading it this morning but I love Ahern’s writing so I’m finding it very easy to sink into. It is a little bit of a tearjerker though so I have to be careful not to get too caught up in it while on the train 🙂

My Teaser

In one second, almost two and a half million emails are sent, the universe expands fifteen kilometres and thirty stars explode, a honey bee can flap its wings two hundred times, the fastest snail travels 1.3 centimetres, objects can fall sixteen feet, and ‘Will you marry me?’ can change a life.

Four babies are born. Two people die.

One second can be the difference between life and death.

19% Postscript by Cecelia Ahern

Blurb

It’s been seven years since Holly Kennedy’s husband died – six since she read his final letter, urging Holly to find the courage to forge a new life.

She’s proud of all the ways in which she has grown and evolved. But when a group inspired by Gerry’s letters, calling themselves the PS, I Love You Club, approaches Holly asking for help, she finds herself drawn back into a world that she worked so hard to leave behind.

Reluctantly, Holly begins a relationship with the club, even as their friendship threatens to destroy the peace she believes she has achieved. As each of these people calls upon Holly to help them leave something meaningful behind for their loved ones, Holly will embark on a remarkable journey – one that will challenge her to ask whether embracing the future means betraying the past, and what it means to love someone forever…

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from The Art of Dying by Ambrose Parry, the follow up to the wonderful The Way of All Flesh. My hold for this at the library only came in today so I haven’t had a chance to start yet so I’ve used the first few sentences from the prologue for this week’s teaser.

My Teaser

There is not a woman in this realm who does not understand what it is to be afraid. No, not even she who reigns over us, for she was not born sovereign. She was born a girl, and that is why I can be sure that even she has known the fear and helplessness of being subject to man’s dominion.

Prologue, The Art of Dying by Ambrose Parry

Blurb

Edinburgh, 1850. Despite being at the forefront of modern medicine, hordes of patients are dying all across the city, with doctors finding their remedies powerless. But it is not just the deaths that dismay the esteemed Dr James Simpson – a whispering campaign seeks to blame him for the death of a patient in suspicious circumstances.

Simpson’s protégé Will Raven and former housemaid Sarah Fisher are determined to clear their patron’s name. But with Raven battling against the dark side of his own nature, and Sarah endeavouring to expand her own medical knowledge beyond what society deems acceptable for a woman, the pair struggle to understand the cause of the deaths.

Will and Sarah must unite and plunge into Edinburgh’s deadliest streets to clear Simpson’s name. But soon they discover that the true cause of these deaths has evaded suspicion purely because it is so unthinkable.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from Nevernight by Jay Kristoff. I actually finished this at the weekend and am on to the second book in the series now but I loved it so much I couldn’t resist using it for this weeks teaser. I haven’t stuck strictly to the random page rule as it’s kind of difficult to find two sentences that don’t contain swearing 🙂

My Teaser

Names speak to the namer as much as the named. Maybe I don’t want folks knowing who I am. Maybe I like being underestimated.

pg57 Nevernight by Jay Kristoff

Blurb

Destined to destroy empires, Mia Covere is only ten years old when she is given her first lesson in death.

Six years later, the child raised in shadows takes her first steps towards keeping the promise she made on the day that she lost everything.

But the chance to strike against such powerful enemies will be fleeting, so if she is to have her revenge, Mia must become a weapon without equal. She must prove herself against the deadliest of friends and enemies, and survive the tutelage of murderers, liars and demons at the heart of a murder cult.

The Red Church is no Hogwarts, but Mia is no ordinary student.

The shadows love her. And they drink her fear.

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Purple Booker. If you want to join in grab your current read, flick to a random page, select two sentences (without spoilers) and share them in a blog post or in the comments of The Purple Booker.

This week my teaser comes from The Girl in Red by Christina Henry, a book I’ve been very excited about but haven’t had a chance to start as yet. I do love Henry’s books though, they’re always so dark and different from what I was expecting.

As I haven’t started it yet I have no intention of skimming through for a teaser so here’s one from the second page.

My Teaser

She should have cleaned the blade, though not because she was worried about scaring him. She should have done it because it was her only defense besides her brain, and she ought to take better care of it.

pg10 The Girl in Red by Christina Henry

Blurb

From the national bestselling author of Alice comes a postapocalyptic take on the perennial classic “Little Red Riding Hood”…about a woman who isn’t as defenseless as she seems.

It’s not safe for anyone alone in the woods. There are predators that come out at night: critters and coyotes, snakes and wolves. But the woman in the red jacket has no choice. Not since the Crisis came, decimated the population, and sent those who survived fleeing into quarantine camps that serve as breeding grounds for death, destruction, and disease. She is just a woman trying not to get killed in a world that doesn’t look anything like the one she grew up in, the one that was perfectly sane and normal and boring until three months ago.

There are worse threats in the woods than the things that stalk their prey at night. Sometimes, there are men. Men with dark desires, weak wills, and evil intents. Men in uniform with classified information, deadly secrets, and unforgiving orders. And sometimes, just sometimes, there’s something worse than all of the horrible people and vicious beasts combined.

Red doesn’t like to think of herself as a killer, but she isn’t about to let herself get eaten up just because she is a woman alone in the woods….