Sunday, March 31, 2019

#BookBlitz :: Physical by Mari.Reiza

~ Book Blitz ~
Physical by Mari.Reiza
 Women's Psychological Fiction

About the Book:



A feminist read that won’t disappoint. 

In a small town in Italy, Kiki feels worthless and angry when her longtime partner finds a new cool girl to ride on another decade of easy existence. Meanwhile in London, Fátima, the wife of Kiki’s best friend, is losing her selfhood after giving birth to twins and being made redundant. Both heroines are determined to rebuild the passion and impunity of their youth, vitalizing desires that will bring them to risk everything.





Book Links:
Goodreads * Amazon


Read an Excerpt:

‘You have to stop calling me!’ I said, answering the phone in a rage.
‘We could maybe go on holiday together for a few days?’ he replied in an appeasing, almost a supplicating voice. ‘If that is what you want.’
‘Have I said that is what I want?’ I was taken aback.
I didn’t remember being delirious enough with pleasure at the time of our last encounter to have said something I would later forget. Where were we going? Somewhere exciting? Five kilometres away to the Montello? By bus? Would his mother come this time too? ‘Is that what you want?’ I finally asked.
‘Of course,’ he said.
‘I’m not sure I could bear it,’ I replied more calmly. I pitied him but I had to come clean, there was no point in lengthening the ordeal and I felt so much more courageous on the phone than I had with him in person.
‘Why not?’ he seemed genuinely surprised. ‘What’s wrong with me?’
‘You want a list?’ I replied quickly, before the opportunity could be lost.
He asked me to take down an address and a time, the old fashioned way, on a piece of paper, and think about it. ‘Maybe you will change your mind…’ He had probably seen the trick done on a novella on TV, his mother sitting next to him. At least he would not call back. Good riddance.
Still. I was really in shit. I knew I was in my deepest ever sexual identity crisis


About the Author:

Mari.Reiza was born in Madrid in 1973. She studied at Oxford University and worked as an investment research writer and management consultant for twenty years in London, before becoming an indie fiction writer. Also by her, Inconceivable Tales, Death in Pisa, Sour Pricks, A Pack of Wolves, STUP, Mum, Watch Me Have Fun!, Marmotte’s Journey, West bEgg, Room 11, Triple Bagger, Caro M, Opera, the Retreat, sells sea shells and aberri (homeland), all available on Amazon.



Author Links:
Website * Twitter * Instagram




Sunday, March 10, 2019

#BookBlitz :: WEST BEGG by Mari.Reiza

~ Book Blitz ~
WEST BEGG by Mari.Reiza
Humour / Satire

About the Book:

A hilarious yet dark novel on how power, and the lack of it, shapes people. 

Luca’s job is being a punch bag, a tea towel, a toilet bowl, to the undeniable and unbreakable king of egg power proud of averaging two hundred flights a year to visit chicken markets around the world. 
Anna moved to Catania to work for caper queen Madame Sicily, fulfilling varied tasks from picking up Céline swimwear before it hits the runways to recovering badly parked Lamborghinis. 
La Revolução dreams through buildings but builds parking spaces, when she’s not helping launder money for her boss’s dad’s dodgy charities. 
And finally, Carolina is out to conspire with Paquita who met their boss the German in a red lit booth, to understand why the man has to drain the passion out of everything. Their fates will inevitably collide. The question is, will their bosses get what they deserve? 

Book Links:
Goodreads * Amazon



The setting:
The headquarters of a poultry business in northern Italy. A family led cucunci-drinks company in Catania. A rail transport pressure-group based in Brussels. A bogus architectural project at a UNESCO World Heritage site in a heavenly island off the Americas. A doomed working village in a made-up dodgy country called Altania and a palatial villa, not too far from it, extravagant in all the wrong places, where it’ll all go BOOM!

Meet Luca
He works in poultry equipment for the most ruthless of the Macco brothers who’s not a scared chicken but a proud cockerel, a real paratrooper. ‘I want to eat them,’ Luca constantly listens to his boss shout about their competition, with eyes like a slot machine hitting the jackpot. He’s expected to nod. Also when his master complains of enemies de-compensating him, even if the man would have to be compensated for it to hold true; when he claims to love his wife effusively despite rumours he keeps a mistress ready at his office in Altania. And through Luca’s loyalty he remains but cannon fodder to his employer, expendable in the face of enemy fire. Constant long business trips leave him with colds from the plane’s air conditioning, and hangovers from the number of gin and tonics he drinks in order to stand hours in his tiny seat. And what of his plane fear? When he thinks of it he just takes another Valium. He has no choice as his own uncle refused him a job in his own company. After that he had told himself he would never come back to Italy, he would never return to his small town, would never work for a family business... Never say never.

Meet Anna
She sticks out like a sore thumb on her bike her red curls to the wind, racing through the streets of Catania running deviant errands for Madame Sicily, the queen of cucunci; her company deals in a special type of caper and hit it rolling with a refreshing carbonated drink a few years back. If Madame wants something she calls Anna and screams at her. And nothing ever starts or stops unless Madame wants it, then it does so very quickly. But something is going on in the company, something big: these are uncertain times. ‘Why am I here? Where am I heading?’ Anna is too busy to stop and think, even if admittedly it’s a fake busy, busy doing stupid things. ‘Why do I work for this mad woman?’ she asks herself. She had followed her husband to Sicily so he could fulfill his dream toying with Indian technology to produce electric cars at a disused Fiat plant outside Palermo, only for her to end on the opposite side of the island. At least, from the rooftop of her little terrace she can see the volcano.

Meet La Revolução
She’s a dreamer, dreams through buildings. For her, it’s all about people. She wants to make buildings that save people. She wants a new world of new buildings. Until she accepts work at a famous studio in Geneva, where her first project is two hundred and fifty garage units, in the underground of a luxury development by the lake. After a small amount of time she has given up. Then she reads about Queen Tinea Foundation; ‘Our yacht Live the Dream will anchor in Fernando for the next three years. We aim to preserve one of the most important eco-regions of our planet.’ She’s in. But when she arrives the boat is empty, the crew have oddly taken over the best hotel in the island which belongs to the father of one of the foundation partners. This is when she first meets Irajá, which means beehive, and Irajá baptizes her La Revolução, calling for a revolution.

Meet Carolina
She’s crying on Paquita’s shoulders, can’t face seeing him again and it’s only Monday. Paquita’s the one who really knows him. He’s a viking, with a raw face like a bad cut of meat, so colourless you would think he lives in a cave. German. Lives to work. ‘Ruthless on the outside but miserable in the inside,’ according to Paquita. Carolina’s his Communications Officer. Her job seemed interesting because it came at a vulnerable time, when she suddenly acquired a surprising number of black fillings in her mouth and ringings in her ears, when her girls were urging her to swap her Mazda, with moss growing on the windows, a thorough cover of dog hair on the seats and a floor of crisp packets. ‘I should have realized we would never get on, him and I,’ she knows now.


About the Author:

Mari.Reiza was born in Madrid in 1973. She studied at Oxford University and worked as an investment research writer and management consultant for twenty years in London, before becoming an indie fiction writer. Also by her, Inconceivable Tales, Death in Pisa, Sour Pricks, A Pack of Wolves, STUP, Mum, Watch Me Have Fun!, Marmotte’s Journey, West bEgg, PHYSICAL, Room 11, Triple Bagger, Opera and the Retreat, all available on Amazon.



Author Links:
Twitter * Instagram





Sunday, March 3, 2019

#BookBlitz :: Caro M, by Mari.Reiza

~ Book Blitz ~
Caro M, by Mari.Reiza
Psychological / Romance / Contemporary

About the Book:



Portraits of unyielding love. A woman, mostly alone in her world but for her dog, shares memories through letters to her old 'tesoro'; a wife trusts her sweetheart psychiatrist blindly through her divorce; a young girl lands a fairy tale wedding soon to turn into a nightmare her cousin yearns to fix. Immersive, witty, tender,

Caro M, explores the hurricane-like devastation love is capable of.





Book Links:
Goodreads * Amazon

The setting
A circus of the grotesque doctor’s office on the Tuscan plain, where an unstable wife feeling a blade of hay in a world of snakes has been pill-fried for over a decade by her school friend become pretend life-ologist. A nearby coastal village, where an angered young woman narrates the recent sham marriage of her innocent cousin to a horny, wealthy ‘old’ man with a relaxed Peroni smile, who clearly plans to get away with anything. A balcony across the Eiffel tower inhabited by a mysterious smoking French lady in constant one-way correspondence with her ex-lover, in a large flat in a lovely historical house where someone else than her once made history.

Meet Elena
A woman ‘with issues’ to settle: physical, social, sexual – all types. Perhaps she’s scarred from living forever under the guidance of some fool: her father, her uncle and Zeno’s father, and then with Mimi, and in Zeno’s psych ward for years now, even if she swears she’s not the mad one despite sounding occasionally inconsistent or devious or both. But then there are plenty of people to blame for it. And there have forever been the pills, so large she can only swallow them down with gin. No wonder it’s unthinkable that she will ever make a single decision on her own!  Why did she marry Mimi? They all thought her sister was the prettiest, cleverest and most desirable one, and she was expected to settle for less. Her father probably pushed her to. But Mimi’s infidelity has given her carte blanche to push back. And Zeno will help her, because they’re made for each other; she’s almost a wife of sorts to him. Does he not believe her?

Meet Isa
She lives in Paris, worked in law but now looks after her dog. She also writes songs and has recently retaken smoking perhaps because she felt at some sort of crossroads; the ‘industry’ of her smoking her husband calls it, even if he’s often away in LA. She has come to resent him, for being a man who would squirm when handed a baby as if it were an octopus, even if this had never bothered her before, even if she knows she’s extremely lucky to have him in her pretty life; for being a man with smelly feet who doesn’t do passion, can’t assess jewellery, and whose best-ever present has been words he doesn’t believe in, engraved on a Zippo he hates: Il n’est rien de réel que le rêve et l’amour. They’ve for some time been two separate people. And when she meets Mimi she lets him lit up every space for her, embarking in a fool’s errand.

Meet Carmela
Her cousin looked beautiful in her wedding dress: a virginal bride, although she knew that she wasn’t a virgin. She did think Laura was marrying too young but hadn’t confronted her about it because she was herself recovering from heartbreak, and Laura may have mistaken her concern for jealousy. The truth was Carmela didn’t like Laura’s groom. For starters, he was over twenty years their senior! Yet, that day at the wedding they both looked marvellous and Carmela thought perhaps she had been right not to stop Laura embracing marriage like a magic portal. Until she saw her cry.

About the Author:


Mari.Reiza was born in Madrid in 1973. She studied at Oxford University and worked as an investment research writer and management consultant for twenty years in London, before becoming an indie fiction writer. Also by her, Inconceivable Tales, Death in Pisa, Sour Pricks, A Pack of Wolves, STUP, Mum, Watch Me Have Fun!, Marmotte’s Journey, West bEgg, PHYSICAL, Room 11, Triple Bagger, Opera and the Retreat, all available on Amazon.



Author Links:
Twitter * Instagram



Thursday, February 21, 2019

February 21, 2019 0

#ReleaseDayBlitz :: Justice Gone by N. Lombardi Jr.

About the Book:
When a homeless war veteran is beaten to death by the police, stormy protests ensue, engulfing a small New Jersey town. Soon after, three cops are gunned down. A multi-state manhunt is underway for a cop killer on the loose. And Dr. Tessa Thorpe, a veteran's counselor, is caught up in the chase. Donald Darfield, an African-American Iraqi war vet, war-time buddy of the beaten man, and one of Tessa's patients, is holed up in a mountain cabin. Tessa, acting on instinct, sets off to find him, but the swarm of law enforcement officers get there first, leading to Darfield's dramatic capture. Now, the only people separating him from the lethal needle of state justice are Tessa and ageing blind lawyer, Nathaniel Bodine. Can they untangle the web tightening around Darfield in time, when the press and the justice system are baying for revenge? Justice Gone is the first in a series of psychological thrillers involving Dr Tessa Thorpe, wrapped in the divisive issues of modern American society including police brutality and disenfranchised returning war veterans.

Book Links:
Goodreads * Amazon

The US justice system -  does it work?

Some facts about the US justice system are often overlooked, such as the fact that more than 90% of criminal cases never go to trial, and trial by jury is the exception rather than the norm. But when they do, does the trial process work?

In the novel, Justice Gone, two steps of a criminal trial are examined. The first is the Grand Jury proceedings. Many of us don't realize the extent of the state's influence in these hearings. The District Attorney decides what evidence can be admitted, selectively issues subpoenas, and basically runs the show, while the defense plays little or no part. Commonly, overzealous prosecutors will make a case for an indictment that might not be warranted, generating criminal trials for those who may very well be innocent of the charges.

On the other hand, if an indictment is sought against law enforcement officers, the shoe may very well be on the other foot. Law enforcement is on the same side of the fence as the DA, and consequently a conflict of interests is difficult to avoid. That is why indictments against police for using excessive force are rare.

The second step of the trial process is trial by jury, which decides whether to convict or not. And this is where the public and the media can play an unwelcome part.

The trial of O.J. Simpson lasted over eight months and was watched by over 100 million television viewers (comparable to the Super Bowl), and was a sign that even in 1995, the people of the United States had yet to bridge the divide over race, as well as raising doubts over the behavior of law enforcement. But most of all, it provided an intimate glimpse into the US justice system, from jury selection to the jury's verdict.

Although we had a celebrity athlete on trial and the finest criminal defense lawyers in the US - the "Dream Team," the real centerpiece was the jury. Although the trial took eleven months of testimony, it took the jury only four hours to acquit.

So, the question is: Was the verdict of 'not guilty' responsible, impartial and correct?

A poll gave the obvious result that most African-Americans felt that Simpson was innocent, while most Caucasians felt the opposite. Was the fact that 80% of the jurors were African-Americans influence the outcome, i.e. did they acquit Simpson solely due to he being the same race as they?

In my view, race didn't matter for this particular case, because the defense succeeded in raising reasonable doubt. Even if the jury believed Simpson murdered those people, according to the principles of American justice, he should not have been convicted.

The strongest piece of evidence the prosecution had was the DNA forensics, but chain of custody became a big issue. In fact, the handling of all the evidence by the police came under scrutiny, and rightly so. Later during the trial, with the jury absent, Mark Furhman, the detective who found the bloody glove and socks, invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination when asked "did you plant or manufacture any evidence in this case?"

Then there was the bloody glove found at the crime scene, which the prosecution challenged Simpson to try on. Simpson could not get his hand in.

In post-trial interviews, a few of the jurors said that they believed Simpson probably did commit the murders, but that the prosecution had failed to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. Three jurors together wrote and published a book called Madam Foreman, in which they described how their perception of police errors, not race, led to their verdict.

Even more controversial was the Casey Anthony case. Equal to the Simpson trial in terms of attention grabbing, the trial of Casey Anthony, who was accused of murdering her two-year-old daughter, was quite different. The big difference was that while the country was divided over Simpson's guilt, the public and the media overwhelmingly assumed Anthony was guilty, which in turn fueled the outcry over the not guilty verdict. One charge, that of first degree murder, was problematic, in that forensics experts could not determine the cause of the little girl's death, but in general the questions of how, why where and when were never answered satisfactorily. According to many legal experts, the not guilty verdict for Casey Anthony can be seen as a victory for the U.S. justice system, despite strong public opinion opposing it, mainly because it upheld the concept of reasonable doubt.

In an ABC News interview, juror Jennifer Ford said that she and the other jurors cried and were "sick to our stomachs" after voting to acquit Casey Anthony of charges that she killed her daughter. "I did not say she was innocent," said Ford,. "I just said there was not enough evidence. If you cannot prove what the crime was, you cannot determine what the punishment should be."

So is the flaw in the system reasonable doubt itself. How can legal experts exclaim victory, even if a guilty person is allowed to be released back into society?

It's because the opposite case, convictions of innocent people are not only possible, but probably occur at a rate that would alarm you.

Let us look inside John Grisham's true crime study, An Innocent Man, a revealing and well documented account of three separate trials, and the wrongful conviction of five men (perhaps the title should have been The Innocent Men). In one case, the police and prosecutor used forced "dream" confessions, unreliable witnesses, and flimsy evidence to convict Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz of murder and rape. After suffering through a conviction and eleven years on death row, Williamson and Fritz were exonerated by DNA evidence and released on April 15, 1999.  Similar narratives apply to the trials of Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot, and the trial of Greg Wilhoit, namely horror stories of persecution, harassment, fraud, lying snitches, and fabricated evidence. If reasonable doubt had been applied, those men would have never been incarcerated on death row (this was in Oklahoma, where the death penalty still exists). Fortunately, these men were exonerated before they could be put to death.

One could surmise that so much of a trial outcome depends on the jury. That is why I dedicated a whole chapter in Justice Gone on the jury deliberations in the trial of Donald Darfield.


Whether it's a blessing or a curse, for court cases in the US, justice is in the hands of ordinary citizens.

About the Author:
N. Lombardi Jr, the N for Nicholas, has spent over half his life in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, working as a groundwater geologist. Nick can speak five languages: Swahili, Thai, Lao, Chinese, and Khmer (Cambodian).

In 1997, while visiting Lao People's Democratic Republic, he witnessed the remnants of a secret war that had been waged for nine years, among which were children wounded from leftover cluster bombs. Driven by what he saw, he worked on The Plain of Jars for the next eight years.

Nick maintains a website with content that spans most aspects of the novel: The Secret War, Laotian culture, Buddhism etc.

His second novel, Journey Towards a Falling Sun, is set in the wild frontier of northern Kenya.

His latest novel, Justice Gone was inspired by the fatal beating of a homeless man by police.
Nick now lives in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Follow the Author:
Website * Goodreads * Amazon



Wednesday, February 13, 2019

February 13, 2019 0

#CoverReveal :: The Heart of You by Aarti V Raman

~ Cover Reveal ~
The Heart of You 
(A Geeks of Caltech Novel)
by Aarti V Raman


Mixed martial arts studio owner Kit Barranos has always been a fighter. He will fight for his family. For his friends. For anyone in need.

What he doesn't know how to do is fight for himself...

... Or the inconvenient and consuming desire he has for single mom Lily Fallahil.

Office manager, Lily has spent the last decade raising her son and proving her independence to her protective and overbearing brother, Drake.

She has no time for romance. Especially with Kit Barranos, who has a body to die for and eyes that rip at her soul.

When Kit reveals his heartbreaking secret to Lily - he has a brother he never knew about, one he considered his closest friend - it brings them closer, creates a bond neither can deny.

And paves the way for a steamy attraction that explodes between them.

But it isn't just Lily that Kit is slowly but surely falling for. It's her adorable son, Bret.

Navigating the holidays, their families and their feelings is no easy task.

Flawed and fiercely loyal, Kit and Lily have fought the odds and survived.

But, survival no longer seems enough.

Can they take a chance on each other, on their hearts... On a love that braves The Heart of You?

The Heart of You is Book Three of The Geeks of Caltech, a unique band of friends bonded by loyalty, brotherhood, and pain. The Geeks of Caltech are to die for and their women all they wish to live for!


COMING SOON!

About the Author:
Aarti V Raman lives in Mumbai, India and has been a commercial editor and business journalist for the better part of a decade.
She is an incurable romantic who has taken up the task of bringing Happily Ever After to life for the characters in her head. She has three traditionally published novels out, all contemporary romances from 2014-2016, with the next one slated for release in 2019.
She currently writes and self-publishes steamy contemporary romance for urban millennials with a global twist. Sometimes, there are guns and car chases too.
Her new contemporary romance series include GEEKS OF CALTECH and ROYALS OF STELLANGARD as well as standalone romances - all of which have become Amazon India and US bestsellers.
She has also appeared as speaker at lit festivals and events around India and also dabbles in poetry, while conducting creative writing workshops.

Contact the Author:
Website * Facebook Page * Twitter * Instagram


This Cover Reveal is powered by b00k r3vi3w Tours


Sunday, February 10, 2019

February 10, 2019 0

#BookBlitz :: The Retreat by Mari.Reiza

~ Book Blitz ~
The Retreat by Mari.Reiza
 Coming of Age / Psychological Thriller 

About the Book:


An uncomfortable but fascinating ripening journey.
Ahmed has abandoned her. Nadia is gone the way Isabelle did before, her two fallen warriors. But Marie can still hear His voice clearly.
A deep call for justice takes hold in an impressionable teenage girl from a recently broken family during a religious retreat; what happens next will mark her life for years to come.
the Retreat is a story of men playing God, of hurt that doesn’t find its way out.







Find it on Amazon

About the Setting
The story moves back and forth in time and place. From Brussel's during Marie's early teenage years with her mother and siblings, to Zermatt where she's sent with the nuns on a fated ski trip. Years later in London, Marie is attempting to find a job and build a life with Ahmed who she met on a plane, when she's lured to a Victorian bathhouse and meets troubled Nadia. But the book begins and ends after Marie's London years, back in her natal Bordeaux. There Marie strikes the final blow in her prodigal daughter's return of sorts.

Meet Marie
Marie is cute with a sexy gap like a secret passage between her upper incisors. She was once a diligent student, before her estranged dad left them or was driven away, or they left and he failed to follow the family to Brussels. But soon after her ski trip trouble, she's labelled a rebel by her conservative single mother whose only hobby is work and only God is sacrifice, accused that her kind of righteousness gets them into trouble. Is God where Marie's fight started? She thinks when people have faith in nothing they're less dangerous. Why can't she marry well like her older sister or build a successful career like her brother? She tries shortly with Ahmed in London, until Nadia lures her back into her old destructive ways, eventually prompting Marie's return to her natal town where nothing has changed. There Marie feels blamed for her younger sister Lucie's depression, her marriage to old peasant Raoul and her recently found fervour to breed donkeys. Marie knows Lucie is angry against her and she's angry back. How many things have happened in Marie's short life! Has Marie inherited them in a way? Who has forced them upon her?

Meet Marie's Teacher and School Friends
Hélène is endowed with breasts big enough that she would still be liked even if she was ever forced iron on her smile. Hélène has been there for ages and is confident in and out of school premises, talking to the school’s staff, with colleagues of every race, sex, colour and nationality. She’s even fun. She is every classmate’s dream and every teacher’s pet, and the section’s headteacher is her father, her surname forever capable of favouring her. She's definitely trouble.

Martine emulates Hélène in every way she can, even if she falls desperately short of her goal: other than for her derrière extraordinaire, she seems a good for nothing girl, hardly a genius.

Monsieur Berger, the religion teacher, wears large Italian spectacles he claims to have bought in Rome whilst on a visit to the Pope and uses a few long strands of white hair to pretend he isn’t bold. His skin, especially around his hands and eyes, is wrinkly, pale and freckly, and his fingers tremble during his impassioned oratories, making him look like a Mayan idol whose touch unleashes visions from dubious gods. Monsieur Berger exclusively wears brown corduroys, paired with pale cashmere turtlenecks and shirts which look far too expensive for anyone vowing poverty like he insists he does. And he often delivers the full lesson with his zip undone. The rumour is Monsieur Berger was not always the religious type but has a florid past. Are clumsy Sister Perline and sour Sister Prudence covering for him?

Isabelle’s a very quiet girl, not as sexy-pretty as Hélène, but still deliciously put together down to every centimetre allocated to her face and body, except for her dark, luscious half-eyebrow. Where’s the other half gone?

Meet Ahmed
Ahmed is on his early twenties with captivating eyelashes, working in a bank in London. The day Marie met him she thought he was it; understood
that much of what she had been missing and actually required was in his love. She temporarily felt locked outside of her misery. But it turns out the man was tormented by the curse of ambition, like a prospector in the Wild West, ready to suppress every good bit of himself for no trouble to come his way. Ahmed had been put there to fill a void. Yet after a year they had been together he had not managed to modify a thing in Marie, nor to impress in her body one lasting imprint: nothing of him had endured.

Meet Nadia
The same thin, long neck as Isabelle. The same straight black mane of hair. The same thick, dark eyebrows; both eyebrows. Her hands, one slightly deformed. In the haze of the baths Marie thinks Nadia's stomach looks so tiny, her belly button so pretty. Her voice is gentle almost that of a ghost. 'Do you believe in God?' Nadia has lost a sister to a fire and her brother is angry. When she extends her sponge, Marie's ready to let the young woman invade her like a peacekeeping force.


If the book interests you, you can request for a REVIEW COPY in exchange for an honest review.

About the Author:
Mari.Reiza was born in Madrid in 1973. She has worked as an investment research writer and management consultant for twenty years in London. She studied at Oxford University and lives off Portobello Road with her husband and child.

Find Mari at:
Twitter * Instagram






Thursday, February 7, 2019

February 07, 2019 0

#BookBlitz :: Prisoner of Yakutsk by Shreyas Bhave

~ Book Blitz ~
Prisoner of Yakutsk by Shreyas Bhave
The Subhash Chandra Bose Mystery
Final Chapter 
8th to 10th February


About the Author:
What exactly happened to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose?

• In 1945, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Leader of the INA leaves Singapore to take a series of flights, and dies in Taiwan after his plane crashes near Formosa. Or so it seems.
• In 1947, Mr Mrs Singh, an illustrious army couple, both veterans of the Indian National Army, are last seen in Delhi, and then never again.
• In 1949, the plane carrying the first deputy Prime Minister of India, Sardar Vallabhai Patel, mysteriously disappears for seven hours.
• In 2012, following the fall of WikiLeaks, a female hacker of the notorious X group is on the run as most wanted by everyone from Interpol to the KGB
• In 2015, the millionaire CEO of a Fortune 500 company suddenly resigns and vanishes from the public eye.

A set of seemingly unconnected disappearances emerge to be woven into a single fabric as the answer to one leads to another… In this riveting narrative, bestselling author Shreyas Bhave, takes the reader on a thrilling adventure to solve the greatest mystery the Indian nation has known. 

Book Links:


Read an Excerpt:

At minus 5 degrees celsius, the cold is refreshing and a light hat and scarf are all that are required to keep you warm. At minus 20, the moisture in your nostrils freezes and it is difficult not to cough. At minus 35, the air is cold enough to numb exposed skin, making frostbite a constant hazard. And at minus 45 degrees, metal sticks to your cheeks and tears off chunks of flesh when you take off your sun goggles. Jay Rasbihari was not wearing any metal, just his fur coat, but the cold was such that even the plastic earphones in his ears felt painful as he tugged at them to listen to his contact from HQ. He waited for the connection to be established. The thermometer attached to his clothes showed minus 40. His ears had begun to sting. Next would be his legs. Nevertheless he stood still and waited.
                          “HQ to Jay.” His contact’s voice filled Jay’s ears. He opened his mouth to acknowledge the call but realized the cold had caused his throat to freeze. “Jay here.” He willed the words to escape his mouth. 
                       “Start the GPS on your phone so I can track you,” the voice from HQ instructed. For a moment Jay felt envious, thinking about his contact sitting somewhere in warm comfort. Such thoughts were dangerous, he knew. They sapped one’s will. He struggled to find his phone and struggled to enter the codes with his numb fingers. “I see you,” the voice from HQ confirmed. “Move forward.” Jay cursed as he lifted his leg and brought it forward. His foot sunk into the snow but he pulled it out and continued. Walking up the slope was a breathless challenge as he climbing at snail’s pace. “Okay, stop!” The voice from the HQ said once he was on the top of the small hill. Jay halted, struggling to catch his breath.
“Should be at your feet,” the voice said. The mist made it hard to see anything. Jay sank to his knees and groped. He could feel nothing but snow, all around him. “I don’t see it.”
                     “Of course you don’t.” Jay thought he heard amusement in the voice. “Mr. Jay, you’re going to have to dig.”


Book Trailer:


About the Author:
Shreyas Bhave's love for history since his childhood prompted him to write his take on the story of Asoka who was one of the towering figures in the history of India, which has been taken up as ‘The Asoka Trilogy’ by Leadstart Publishing. The first part of the trilogy called ‘The Prince of Patliputra’ has been published in January 2016 and the second part called 'Storm From Taxila' was published in 2018.

Connect with the Author:
Website * Facebook * Twitter