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Charlie Hernandez and the Castle of Bones Blog Tour & Giveaway

November 29, 2019 By Heather Leave a Comment

Title: CHARLIE HERNANDEZ AND THE CASTLE OF BONES (Charlie Hernández #2)

About the Book:

Author: Ryan Calejo

Pub. Date: November 12, 2018

Publisher: Aladdin

Formats: Hardcover, eBook, audiobook

Pages: 608

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, TBD

Inspired by Hispanic folklore, legends, and myths from the Iberian Peninsula and Central and South America, this bold sequel to Charlie Hernández & the League of Shadows, which Booklist called “a perfect pick for kids who love Rick Riordan” in a starred review, follows Charlie as he continues on his quest to embrace his morphling identity.

Charlie Hernandez still likes to think of himself as a normal kid. But what’s normal about being a demon-slaying preteen with an encyclopedic knowledge of Hispanic and Latino mythology who can partially manifest nearly any animal trait found in nature? Well, not much. But, Charlie believes he can get used to this new “normal,” because being able to sprout wings or morph fins is pretty cool.

But there is a downside: it means having to constantly watch his back for La Mano Peluda’s sinister schemes. And when the leader of La Liga, the Witch Queen Jo herself, is suddenly kidnapped, Charlie’s sure they’re at it again.

Determined to save the queen and keep La Liga’s alliances intact, Charlie and his good friend Violet Rey embark on a perilous journey to track down her captors. As Charlie and Violet are drawn deeper into a world of monstruos and magia they are soon left with more questions than answers—like, why do they keep hearing rumors of dead men walking, and why is Charlie suddenly having visions of an ancient evil: a necromancer priest who’s been dead for more than five centuries?

Charlie’s abuela once told him that when dead men walk, the living run in fear. And Charlie’s about to learn the truth of that—the hard way. 

About Book 1:

Title: CHARLIE HERNANDEZ AND THE LEAGUE OF SHADOWS (Charlie Hernández #1)

Author: Ryan Calejo

Pub. Date: October 23, 2018

Publisher: Aladdin

Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, eBook, audiobook

Pages: 330

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, TBD

“This is a perfect pick for kids who love Rick Riordan’s many series, particularly for those eager for mythologies beyond Greek and Roman stories.” —Booklist (starred review)


“A winner for all kids, but it will be especially beloved by Latinx and Hispanic families.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) 


The Lightning Thief meets the Story Thieves series in this middle grade fantasy inspired by Hispanic folklore, legends, and myths from the Iberian Peninsula and Central and South America.


Charlie Hernández has always been proud of his Latin American heritage. He loves the culture, the art, and especially the myths. Thanks to his abuela’s stories, Charlie possesses an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the monsters and ghouls who have spent the last five hundred years haunting the imaginations of children all across the Iberian Peninsula, as well as Central and South America. And even though his grandmother sometimes hinted that the tales might be more than mere myth, Charlie’s always been a pragmatist. Even barely out of diapers, he knew the stories were just make-believe—nothing more than intricately woven fables meant to keep little kids from misbehaving.

But when Charlie begins to experience freaky bodily manifestations—ones all too similar to those described by his grandma in his favorite legend—he is suddenly swept up in a world where the mythical beings he’s spent his entire life hearing about seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Hispanic folklore and into his life. And even stranger, they seem to know more about him than he knows about himself.

Soon, Charlie finds himself in the middle of an ancient battle between La Liga, a secret society of legendary mythological beings sworn to protect the Land of the Living, and La Mano Negra (a.k.a. the Black Hand), a cabal of evil spirits determined to rule mankind. With only the help of his lifelong crush, Violet Rey, and his grandmother’s stories to guide him, Charlie must navigate a world where monsters and brujas rule and things he couldn’t possibly imagine go bump in the night. That is, if he has any hope of discovering what’s happening to him and saving his missing parents (oh, and maybe even the world).

No pressure, muchacho.

About Ryan:

Ryan Calejo was born and raised in south Florida. He graduated from the University of Miami with a BA. He’s been invited to join both the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and the Golden Key International Honour Society. He teaches swimming to elementary school students, chess to middle school students, and writing to high school students. Having been born into a family of immigrants and growing up in the so-called “Capital of Latin America,” Ryan knows the importance of diversity in our communities and is passionate about writing books that children of all ethnicities can relate to. His first novel was Charlie Hernández & the League of Shadows.

Simon & Schuster Webpage | Twitter | Goodreads

Charlie Hernandez is a middle grade series reminiscent of Percy Jackson or the Janitors. We enjoyed the Hispanic culture and folklore references woven through out the story. Our boys gravitate more toward the action filled plots with mythology and the cover to book one was a huge hit with our bike riders in the family. Things jump start right into an alternate world within the ordinary and a main character whose life is about to change forever.

Thank you Aladdin and Rockstar book tours for the free review copy and tour stop! Win yours below.

Giveaway Details:

2 winners will win a signed hardcover of CHARLIE HERNANDEZ AND THE CASTLE OF BONES, US ONLY.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:

Week One:

11/15/19 Southern Girl Bookaholic Review

Week Two:

11/18/2019 BookHounds YA Excerpt
11/19/2019 Twirling Book Princess Excerpt
11/20/2019 @___nimraaa Excerpt
11/21/2019 onemused Review
11/22/2019 For the Love of KidLit Excerpt

Week Three:

11/25/2019 HBB Reviews Review
11/26/2019 Cuz I’m a Nerd Review
11/27/2019 @fictitious.fox Review
11/28/2019 Popthebutterfly.wordpress.com Review
11/29/2019 Little Red Reads Review

Week Four:

12/2/2019 DJREADSBOOKS Review
12/3/2019 Do You Dog-ear? Review
12/4/2019 The Reading Corner for All Review
12/5/2019 Hurn Publications Review
12/6/2019 BookishRealmReviews Review

Week Five:

12/9/2019 She Just Loves Books Review
12/10/2019 Life Within The Pages Review
12/11/2019 Books_andPoetrii Excerpt
12/12/2019 Two points of interest Review

Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts Blog Tour and Giveaway

October 24, 2019 By Heather Leave a Comment

Title: TUESDAY MOONEY TALKS TO GHOSTS

Author: Kate Racculia 

Pub. Date: October 8, 2019

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Formats: Hardcover, eBook, audiobook

Pages: 368

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, TBD

A dying billionaire sends one woman and a cast of dreamers and rivals on a citywide treasure hunt in this irresistible novel by the author of Bellweather Rhapsody.

Tuesday Mooney is a loner. She keeps to herself, begrudgingly socializes, and spends much of her time watching old Twin Peaks and X-Files DVDs. But when Vincent Pryce, Boston’s most eccentric billionaire, dies—leaving behind an epic treasure hunt through the city, with clues inspired by his hero, Edgar Allan Poe—Tuesday’s adventure finally begins.

Puzzle-loving Tuesday searches for clue after clue, joined by a ragtag crew: a wisecracking friend, an adoring teen neighbor, and a handsome, cagey young heir. The hunt tests their mettle, and with other teams from around the city also vying for the promised prize—a share of Pryce’s immense wealth—they must move quickly. Pryce’s clues can’t be cracked with sharp wit alone; the searchers must summon the courage to face painful ghosts from their pasts (some more vivid than others) and discover their most guarded desires and dreams.

A deliciously funny ode to imagination, overflowing with love letters to art, from The Westing Game to Madonna to the Knights of the Round Table, Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts is the perfect read for thrill seekers, wanderers, word lovers, and anyone looking for an escape to the extraordinary.

About Kate:

Kate Racculia is a novelist living in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She is the author of the novels This Must Be the Place and Bellweather Rhapsody, winner of the American Library Association’s Alex Award. Her third novel, Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2019.

Kate was a teenage bassoonist in her hometown of Syracuse, and studied illustration, design, Jane Austen, and Canada at the University of Buffalo. She moved to Boston to get her MFA from Emerson College, and stuck around for 11 years. She has been a cartoonist, a planetarium operator, a movie and music reviewer, a coffee jerk, a bookseller, a designer, a finance marketing proposal writer, and a fundraising prospect researcher. She teaches online for Grub Street, works at her local public library, and sings in the oldest Bach choir in America.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Goodreads

Excerpt

Brookline
2006
The Opened Tomb
The Tillerman house was dead. Over a century old, massive and stone, it lay slumped on its corner lot, exposed by the naked December trees and shrubs growing wildly over its corpse. It was ugly, neglected, and, despite its size, withered; a black hole of a house. If the real estate agent were the kind of person who ascribed personalities to properties — he was not — he would have said it was the loneliest house, he had ever sold.
His instincts told him this would be a strange, quick sale, with a giant commission. When he’d told the owner that, out of the blue, they had a buyer for the Tillerman house, some guy named “R. Usher,” the owner said, after a long pause, “Don’t sell it for a penny less than listed.” But the agent was anxious to get this over with. He had been inside the Tillerman house once before, and he hadn’t forgotten how it felt.


A figure appeared on the sidewalk, rounding the corner up the street. The agent shielded his eyes against the white winter sun to get a better look. A man. Wearing a long black coat and a giant black hat, broad and furry, something a Cossack might wear against the Siberian winter. The real estate agent smiled to himself. Yes. This was exactly the buyer you wanted when you were trying to sell a haunted house.


“Hello, young man!” said the figure, waving, ten feet away now. “I assume you’re the young man I’m supposed to meet. You are standing, after all, in front of the house I’d like to purchase.” A bright red and- purple-plaid scarf was looped around his neck, covering the lower half of his face. He pulled the scarf down with a red mitten to reveal a ridiculous curling white mustache. “Young man,” said the buyer, “allow me to introduce myself. Roderick Usher.” And he held out his hand.


The agent, while technically younger than the buyer, resented its being pointed out to him. He was years out of school, up and coming in Boston real estate, and, yes, selling this property for the listed price of $4.3 million would be a coup, but he wasn’t a young man. He was a man. He shook Mr. Usher’s hand and gestured to the property. “Shall we go inside?” he said and pressed the quaver out of his voice.


Dead leaves crackled beneath their shoes as they walked under the portico and up the front steps. The lock to the Tillerman house was newly installed, but the key never wanted to work. The agent turned it to the left gently, then the right, then the left again. “What a beauty she is,” said Mr. Usher, his hands clasped behind his back, head tipped up to take in the carvings around the door, flowers reduced to geometric lines and patterns, a strange mishmash of Arts and Crafts, Nouveau and Deco, that didn’t jibe with what the agent knew about when it was built. It was almost as if the house had continued to build itself long after it was abandoned. “If she’s this lovely on the outside,” said Mr. Usher, “I can’t imagine what —”
The lock turned at last, and the agent pushed the door open.
The first thing that struck him was the smell. Of rot and garbage, of meat gone rancid, of animals that had been dying in the walls for decades. He pressed the back of his suit sleeve to his nose without thinking, then lowered it, eyes watering. The house had no electricity — when it was first built it did, but the wiring hadn’t been up to code since Woodrow Wilson was president — but it did have enormous ground-floor windows on one side of the great hall, which cast light throughout the first floor and down into the vestibule. It was enough to see by. It had been enough, on the agent’s previous showing with a buyer, for the buyer to take one look around and say, “Let’s get out of here now.”


Let’s get out of here now, said the agent’s brain.
“What a glorious — oh — oh my!” said Mr. Usher, and swept past him into the house. He took off his giant furry hat, clutched it in both hands at his chest, and spun back to the agent. Grinning. His front teeth were large and crooked. “My goodness, do you know what you have here? Can you feel it?”
He didn’t wait for the agent to answer, and charged up the steps, through the archway, and into the great hall.


The agent followed, slowly. His feet did not want to move. It was exactly what had happened to him the last time he entered the Tillerman house: his body did not want to be here. An uncontrollable part of his brain — his otherwise rational, adult brain — reacted to this place as though he were six years old. Six years old, and pissing himself on Halloween because his big brother, in a scuffed and stage-blood-spattered hockey mask, leapt out at him from the dark.


He cleared his throat. Took the steps one at a time. Until he was standing in the half-dusk of the great hall. Mr. Usher, who’d been dashing around the room, turned back to him.
“She died here,” he said. “Can you feel her?”
The agent managed something like a smile.


“Long, long ago, you came to Matilda Tillerman’s,” Mr. Usher continued, “she, the last surviving heir of all that Tillerman wealth — you came to her house to drink and to dance, to laugh and to talk, to be alive, together, in this glorious house. They all came here, were well met here, from every corner of this city, every nook and cranny.


But something happened, nobody can say for sure what, and Matilda shut her doors. Shut out the entire world and made of her house a tomb.” He sighed and laid a hand gently on one of the columns supporting the upper gallery. “And a beautiful tomb it is.” Plaster flaked beneath his fingertips.
He tipped his head to the side. “Young man,” he said, “I’m going to buy this house. I won’t keep you in suspense any longer, so you can stop looking so frightened. But I would ask a favor. I make it a point of putting a serious question to a man whenever I meet him. Would you permit me?”


The agent, relieved to the point of tears that this showing was nearly over, would have permitted the buyer anything. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”
“Marvelous.” Mr. Usher dropped his furry hat to the floor. It sent up a puff of ancient dust. “I have lived for a good long while. Enough to have borne the world,” he said. “And sometimes, the world is far too much for me. Too great. Too painful. Too lonely. I expect, if Ms. Tillerman will allow me to interpret her past actions, she may have felt the same. Is it selfish then, or self-preserving, to shut oneself away? At what point does one give up, so to speak, the ghost?”


The agent swallowed. He didn’t know what to say. No one had ever asked him a question like that before. It made him almost as uncomfortable as the house. It was too personal. It was too —
He had, once or twice, imagined it. How it would feel to say, to his bank account and his car and his condo and his girlfriend and his job, Go away. Leave me alone. So he could rest, and listen, and think, and maybe have a chance, one last chance, to remember what he’d been meaning to do before all this life he was living got started.
“I’m not sure,” he told Mr. Usher, “what to say.”
“An honest response,” Mr. Usher replied. “I appreciate that. I —”
A gust of frigid wind howled through the still-open door and lifted clouds of dust and spider webs from the walls and the floor. Delicate debris filled the air. The buyer coughed. Then the breeze caught the door and slammed it home with a crash.
The agent felt his entire body electrify. Mr. Usher jumped, and laughed.
Then: a second crash.
Smaller, closer, nearby in the house, off to the right. The agent’s body twitched violently and he doubled over, hands on kneecaps. He couldn’t stay here. This house was too much for him. He heard Mr. Usher walk across the great hall and pick something up off the floor and mutter to himself. Oh, you clever house, the agent thought he heard. What else are you hiding?
“Come on, dear boy,” said Mr. Usher, suddenly at his side, helping him upright and clapping him gently on the back. “It’s enough to frighten anyone, opening a tomb.” He smiled, the curls of his mustache lifting almost to his eyes. “Makes one feel a bit like Lord Carnarvon.”
The agent didn’t know who that was.
“Best hope there’s not a curse,” said Mr. Usher, walking back down the steps toward the door and the light, “for disturbing her.”

Giveaway Details:

3 winners will receive a finished copy of TUESDAY MOONEY TALKS TO GHOSTS, US Only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:

Week One:

10/14/2019 Southern Girl Bookaholic Excerpt
10/15/2019 BookHounds YA Excerpt
10/16/2019 Lifestyle of Me Review
10/17/2019 Storiesandplottwists Review
10/18/2019 Moonlight Rendezvous Review

Week Two:

10/21/2019 Smada’s Book Smack Review
10/22/2019 Fictitiouswonderland Review
10/23/2019 Jena Brown Writes Review
10/24/2019 Little Red Reads Review
10/25/2019 Geronimo Reads Review

Week Three:

10/28/2019 Fictitious Fox Review
10/29/2019 The Pages In-Between Review
10/30/2019 Books and Sassy Lilacs Review
10/31/2019 The BookWorm Drinketh Review

Week Four:

11/4/2019 bookishrealm Review
11/5/2019 Do You Dog-ear? Review
11/6/2019 Shelf-Rated Review
11/7/2019 The Try Everything Review
11/8/2019 Savings in Seconds Review

Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge: A Crash of Fate Blog Tour

August 16, 2019 By Heather 1 Comment

Title: STAR WARS GALAXY’S EDGE: A CRASH OF FATE

Author: Zoraida Córdova

Pub. Date: August 6, 2019

Publisher: Disney Lucasfilm Press

Formats: Hardcover, eBook, Audiobook

Pages: 352

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, B&N

Izzy and Jules were best friends until Izzy’s family abruptly left Batuu when she was six. But now she’s back, and Jules, the boy who never left, is unsure what to make of her. While on the run from vengeful smugglers and an angry pirate, Jules and Izzy will come to terms with who they are, and what they mean to each other.

About Zoraida:

Zoraida Córdova is the award-winning author of the Brooklyn Brujas series and The Vicious Deep trilogy. Her short fiction has appeared in the New York Times bestselling anthology Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View, and Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women and Witchcraft. She is the co-editor of Vampires Never Get Old, a YA anthology forthcoming from Imprint/Macmillan in fall 2020.  Her upcoming YA novels include Star Wars: A Crash of Fate (Disney/LucasFilm 2019) and Incendiary, book 1 in the Hollow Crown duology (Disney/Hyperion 2020). Zoraida was born in Ecuador and raised in Queens, New York. When she isn’t working on her next novel, she’s planning her next adventure.

Photo credit: Sarah Younger

Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | YouTube | Goodreads

Author Interview

Tell us how you came to know and love Star Wars.


Star Wars has always been part of my life. The movies always seemed to be there in the background. My brother (five years my junior) used to reenact the fight over the sarlacc pit where Luke is like, “Jabba, this is your last chance. Free us or die.” When we were little, my mom’s co-worker gifted us a ton of Star Wars toys, many of which I still have. We used to watch and rewind (YAY VHS TAPES) and play the movies again and again. So, simply put: I’ve always loved Star Wars. It keeps reinventing itself for a new generation. As the world expands, so does our understanding of it. With each iteration, I find something to fall in love with.


What world do readers find themselves in during this installment?


We are on the planet Batuu. Specifically Black Spire Outpost. It’s the only place where Star Wars fans can go and physically visit. Black Spire Outpost is a lawless place. It’s run by criminals. It’s a place where people are passing through, or hiding, or trying to make a new life. It’s a place that is built upon ancient ruins and petrified trees. The past and present co-exist. My favorite part about writing A Crash of Fate was figuring out who the locals where. What are their allegiances? Why have they decided to stay there and call it home? Who are the ones that are passing through? With the First Order displaying their colors in broad daylight, what happens to those who are hiding from the law? It is a complete world, and my characters Izzy and Jules are right in the thick of it.

Who are Izzy & Jules and why are we rooting for their love story?

Izzy is an aspiring smuggler and Jules is a starry-eyed farmboy. My inspiration was Before Sunrise, where a couple falls in love in a day. Adding the usual Star Wars shenanigans and a series of unfortunate mishaps, plus the backdrop of the First Order and Resistance on the planet, and you’ve got the BEST AND WORST time to realize you’re still in love with your best friend whom you haven’t seen in 13 years.

For Izzy and Jules, I took some loose inspiration from Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. I hope that parts of their spirit lives on in these characters. Han’s reluctant golden heart and Luke’s kindness. Even though they haven’t seen each over in over a standard decade, and even though they’ve changed a lot, Izzy and Jules want the same thing: a place to belong. The galaxy is always in turmoil. There are always going to be good guys and bad guys. So their journey is the not just delivering a parcel (no questions asked) their journey is making the decision to choose each other in a time when there is no guarantee that there is going to be a bright tomorrow.


What’s your favorite writing treat?

I don’t snack when I write because I like to give myself complete lunch and dinner breaks. That helps me have time in between my sprints. I do drink coffee and tea the entire day. 

Who are your authors of choice and what are your all time favorite reads?


My auto-buy authors are: Dhonielle Clayton, Tessa Gratton, Natalie C. Parker, Claudia Gray, Holly Black, Leigh Bardugo, V.E. Schwab, Justina Ireland, Julie Murphy, Sierra Simone, Sarah MacLean. There are so many I can just keep going forever. 


Some of my favorite books in the last couple of years have been: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, Done Dirt Cheap by Sarah Nicole Lemon, Don’t Date Rosa Santosby Nina Moreno, Sinner by Sierra Simone, The Wicked King by Holly Black, Lost Stars by Claudia Gray, and They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera. 

Thank you for having me on the blog! 

Giveaway Details: 

3 winners will receive a finished copy of STAR WARS GALAXY’S EDGE: A CRASH OF FATE, US Only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:

Week One:

8/5/2019- Kait Plus Books– Excerpt

8/5/2019- Careful of Books– Spotlight

8/6/2019- Country Road Reviews– Excerpt

8/6/2019- Lifestyle Of Me– Review

8/7/2019- Character Madness and Musings– Interview

8/7/2019- Moonlight Rendezvous– Review

8/8/2019- The BookWorm Drinketh– Excerpt

8/8/2019- A Bookish Dream– Review

8/9/2019- Do You Dog-ear?– Review

8/9/2019- Dani Reviews Things– Excerpt

Week Two:

8/12/2019- Eli to the nth– Review

8/12/2019- What A Nerd Girl Says– Review

8/13/2019- Jena Brown Writes– Review

8/13/2019- A Dream Within A Dream– Excerpt

8/14/2019- Two Chicks on Books– Interview

8/14/2019- Wishful Endings– Review

8/15/2019- FyreKatz Blog– Review

8/15/2019- Novel Novice– Excerpt

8/16/2019- Little Red Reads– Interview

8/16/2019- Book-Keeping– Review

Bookstagram Tour Schedule:

Week One:

8/5/2019- moonlight_rendezvous– Review

8/6/2019- whatanerdgirlsays– Review

8/7/2019- tawney_goodtwin– Review

8/8/2019- wishfulendings– Review

8/9/2019- adreamindream– Review

Week Two:

8/12/2019- Jena Brown Writes– Review

8/13/2019- dwantstoread– Review

8/14/2019- GRgenius– Spotlight

8/15/2019- A Bookish Dream– Review

8/16/2019- Novel Novice– Review

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We are the children's division of Fire and Ice. We review baby board books to middle-grade titles. We also review products and toys for the family. For inquiries on reviews, blog tours, and author interviews contact FireandIce.Heather@gmail.com
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