Books 2 Check Out – April 2015

Looking for something new to read? Here’s a round-up of a few novels you should check out (the titles are linked to Amazon, but most are available for purchase at Barnes & Noble, as well):

All or Nothing – The Pleasure Principle Series (Book 1) by J.L. Dillard
Romance

Being desired by every man and woman she meets had never been a problem for AJ Arenas until her fiancé ended their relationship by cheating. When AJ realizes all is fair in payback and sex, she decides to make up for lost time. Shedding her good girl image behind closed doors, she made her first conquest a scandalous threesome involving a too-close-for-comfort colleague and an All-American football player. Soon AJ is caught up in a tangled web of passion, secrets and betrayal which lead her into the arms of a familiar enemy and the bed of an unexpected love. With everyone hot on her heels, it’s All or Nothing and AJ is ready for anything except falling in love.

Azure BLU: The Royal Saga by Feral Kitty
Romance
Sequel to Royal Blu (read our review)

Royal and Asia’s relationship appeared solid, or so she thought. Sure they had their issues they had to work through in the beginning, but from Asia’s standpoint they were very much in love and in it for the haul. Royal swore she was finished with her reckless playboy lifestyle…

Take another trip into the Royal kingdom and see how an Azure BLU sky will promise you a bright sunny day clear and bone dry, then everything suddenly changes in the blink of an eye. Don’t be deceived by the pretty Azure BLU sky, it looks so clear and inviting but it can be so cunning and sly!!

I Should’ve Cheated by TJ Rose
Romance

Braelyn and her fiancée, Kai, have the perfect relationship with the exception of falling short in one area…quality time. Kai is always on the go for work and often works late, leaving Braelyn feeling less like a fiancée and more like a roommate.

During a girl’s night out with her best friend, Roxy, Braelyn has a chance encounter with a dose of temptation by the name of Sevaughn. Braelyn can’t shake the magnetic draw to this new stranger, and she finds herself increasingly intrigued by Sevaughn, whose job as an undercover narcotic detective threatens to pull Braelyn into a dangerous underworld. After a lot of flirtation, Braelyn shatters her good-girl persona, diving head-first into a pillow-biting affair with Sevaughn, who has a few hidden secrets that make Braelyn a walking target.

Just as Braelyn is enjoying the illusion of Sevaughn, Kai makes a sudden change and starts devoting more time to being home. As a result, Braelyn finds herself in what most would consider a perfect situation: having her cake with Kai and overdosing on the dessert that is Sevaughn. Perfect pictures are bound to be shattered, though, and Braelyn soon finds herself trapped in an intricate web of deception and betrayal that will leave her regretting the day she decided to betray Kai. Things are never fair in love and war, but Braelyn is about to learn the hard truth about trading what she has at home to bask in the delusion of her fantasy…

I Should’ve Cheated chronicles a dangerous love triangle and will tease readers with a glimpse into what can happen when a person is tempted by what appears to be a plush, green lawn thriving just on the other side of the fence.

Jam on the Vine by LaShonda Katrice Barnett
Historical Fiction, Romance

A new American classic: a dynamic tale of triumph against the odds and the compelling story of one woman’s struggle for equality that belongs alongside Jazz by Toni Morrison and The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Ivoe Williams, the precocious daughter of a Muslim cook and a metalsmith from central-east Texas, first ignites her lifelong obsession with journalism when she steals a newspaper from her mother’s white employer. Living in the poor, segregated quarter of Little Tunis, Ivoe immerses herself in printed matter as an escape from her dour surroundings. She earns a scholarship to the prestigious Willetson College in Austin, only to return over-qualified to the menial labor offered by her hometown’s racially-biased employers.

Ivoe eventually flees the Jim Crow South with her family and settles in Kansas City, where she and her former teacher and lover, Ona, found the first female-run African American newspaper, Jam on the Vine. In the throes of the Red Summer—the 1919 outbreak of lynchings and race riots across the Midwest—Ivoe risks her freedom, and her life, to call attention to the atrocities of segregation in the American prison system.

Skillfully interweaving Ivoe’s story with those of her family members, LaShonda Katrice Barnett’s Jam on the Vine is both an epic vision of the hardships and injustices that defined an era and a moving and compelling story of a complicated history we only thought we knew.

Not Otherwise Specified by Hannah Moskowitz
Young Adult

Etta is tired of dealing with all of the labels and categories that seem so important to everyone else in her small Nebraska hometown.

Everywhere she turns, someone feels she’s too fringe for the fringe. Not gay enough for the Dykes, her ex-clique, thanks to a recent relationship with a boy; not tiny and white enough for ballet, her first passion; not sick enough to look anorexic (partially thanks to recovery). Etta doesn’t fit anywhere—until she meets Bianca, the straight, white, Christian, and seriously sick girl in Etta’s therapy group. Both girls are auditioning for Brentwood, a prestigious New York theater academy that is so not Nebraska. Bianca might be Etta’s salvation…but can Etta be saved by a girl who needs saving herself?

The Palace Blues by Brandy T. Wilson
Historical Romance
Lambda Literary Award Finalist in Lesbian Fiction

It is the age of bathtub gin, jazz—and lines. Lines not to be crossed, and certainly not by women.

Ladies sing the blues at The Palace and the rebellious, resourceful Frankie admires the cross-dressing Jean Bailey from afar. Running from her family’s oppressive pressure to marry, Frankie abandons her safe, white life in Chicago and follows the blues singer instead. At first it is merely an adventure of her star struck heart.

But the railroad yards, good times, riverboats and bum times lead Frankie on a remarkable journey between the sterile choices of her family and a reckless, daring life that at least offers a kind of freedom for a girl like her. Or is there another choice, one beyond the blues?

Safe Haven by B. L. Wilson
Romance, Suspense

A runaway ‘wife’ discovers love in the arms of a female doctor who treats her broken bones and bruises then mends her broken heart. Joanna Fairfield AKA Ms. Smith AKA June Davis is on the run from a murderous man who wants more than her love. Vicious killer Vernon Brown wants to take Joanna’s son, adopt him and kill her. Running away for the second time on a dark stormy night, Joanna stops in a place called Eagle View, North Carolina. It’s the small town her grandmother always claimed was a good place to raise any child. Her son, Danny is ill and she needs a doctor. When she meets the town’s one and only family doctor, Dr. Ellie Winston, sparks fly.

Southern Comfort by Skyy
Romance

Willow is at a crossroads. After caring for her father during his final days, she comes home to her flat in London wondering what’s next. Whether it’s traveling to some exotic location or starting her career in fashion, the only thing she is certain of is that she wants to finally experience the love she reads about in books. When a fluke change in the weather brings a sexy stranger into her life, she decides to throw caution to the wind and take her chances on love, which brings her to Memphis, Tennessee.

Seeing her happily ever after in front of her, Willow is thrown for a loop when she finds out she isn’t the only one vying for the woman she knows is the one for her. Now standing in unfamiliar territory, Willow prepares for the fight of her life, the fight to win the heart of the woman she loves from the woman who held the heart to begin with.

Katrina’s stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand she has the woman she loved, who left her high and dry, and on the other hand, an exciting new possibility. When the ultimatum is placed in front of her, does she go for the new beauty from across the pond, or stay with the one who got away?  Does this chef create the perfect dish, or is it a recipe for disaster?