Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 27

"My Rock and My Refuge" Launch Goodies and Autographed Copies

My Beauty and the Beast retelling, My Rock and My Refuge, launches TOMORROW!!!
That means you can order paperback and Kindle copies from Amazon starting tomorrow, and I'll have the Nook version up on Barnes and Noble's website by then too, Lord willing and the creek don't rise.

I am excited to announce that anyone who orders MRAMR during the month of November is eligible to receive a package of book launch goodies!  It doesn't matter if you order a paperback or an ebook, or where you order them fr...

"Cranford" by Elizabeth Gaskell

What a lovely, gentle book!  I've seen both seasons of the 2007-10 BBC series based on this, so I felt like I knew the characters already a bit, and that only added to my delight.  I chuckled aloud many times over the foibles of the people in this book, and then the last two chapters brought tears to my eyes.  Happy tears, as I tend to cry over joyful things more than sad ones.
A young woman named Mary Smith visits the small English town of Cranford repeatedly over the course of several years.  T...

Want a Free Book?

I mean, who doesn't want free books, right?  Well, you are in luck!  Because I am offering a free copy of my Sleeping Beauty retelling The Man on the Buckskin Horse to everyone who is signed up for my author newsletter.
If you're already a newsletter subscriber, you should have gotten an email this afternoon with instructions on how and where to access your free copy!
If you're not a newsletter subscriber yet, you can follow this link or use the widget in my blog's sidebar to sign up.  And then yo...

"Among the Shadows" by L. M. Montgomery

This was just the right thing to read the week before Halloween, for me.  A few slightly spooky stories, some eerie ones, and the rest just with a tinge of darkness around the edges.  I do NOT enjoy horror stories, in print or on the screen, but I trusted Montgomery not to scare me, just give me a little thrill here and there.  And she definitely delivered!
This is a collection of her short stories, and I think I had read at least one of them before, possibly in an e-book collection of a dozen or...

"Prince of Thieves" by Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas wrote books about Robin Hood?  Say what now? 
Yes, it is true!  In fact, he wrote more than one.  Prince of Thieves is the first, and it's an origin story for Robin Hood.  It's rather different from the usual Robin Hood origin stories you get from authors like Howard Pyle.  Robin Hood here is the son of a nobleman, yes, but he's taken as an infant and given to a forester to raise because his father is dead and there's someone out to get his inheritance, and so on.  Robin grows up ...

"Bloodlines" by Jan Burke (again)

Did it take me two weeks to read this book?  Yes, it did.  But not because I wasn't enjoying it or couldn't get into it.  I spent two weeks on Bloodlines because I was savoring it.  I didn't want to rush through it, I wanted to soak in it.  And I did, and it was wonderful.
This is the first Irene Kelly book I ever read, back in 2012, and the one that made me want to read the whole series.  Now, ten years later, I'm finally able to fulfill that desire.  I had started reading the rest of the series...

Book Tour Sign-Ups for "My Rock and My Refuge"

Can you believe that launch day for My Rock and My Refuge is only 2 1/2 weeks away?!?  November 8 is coming up fast!
Yes, my Beauty and the Beast retelling is going to be in your hands soon!  (Unless you're an advance reader -- then you have it already, you lucky duck!)  
This means that it's time to get my online book tour organized.  So, here I am, asking you to join it.
The tour will run from November 7 through November 18, so there are plenty of slots to choose from.  And I'm very open as far a...

"The Long Goodbye" by Raymond Chandler

I think this is my other favorite Raymond Chandler novel, besides The Lady in the Lake .  I really love the interactions between Philip Marlowe and Terry Lennox.  Stories that revolve around a friendship often end up being favorites for me.  Two guys who might be considered losers by the world, who understand each other but don't pity each other -- no wonder they wound up friends.
Of course, then Terry had to go get himself into an awful lot of trouble and wind up dead.  And Marlowe had to just ke...

Top Ten Tuesday: Vacation Reads

This week, our prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl is "Books I Read On Vacation," and we get bonus points if we include where we were when we read them.

We went on several small vacations and trips this year, and I read a LOT of books while on them.  Here are the ten I liked best!

At a rented cabin in the Shenandoah Valley in February
Borden Chantry by Louis L'Amour (PG) -- western, mystery, lone hero
Son of a Wanted Man  by Louis L'Amour (PG) -- western, found family
Stoneheart Hunt  by Abby D. Jones, ...

"Song of the Valley" by Britt Howard

Y'all know I don't read a lot of romance-centric books.  I read a lot of books that have some romance in them, but that's not the same thing.  Romance-centric means the romance is the central point of the book, and the plot will hinge on it.  Once in a while, a romance-centric book will interest me enough to pick it up.  Usually, only historical fiction romance will catch my interest -- I can think of two modern-day romancey books I've read before.  Both were Christian fiction, like this -- I sh...