Blog Tour: YOU CAN'T HIDE by Dan Poblocki | Top Ten List + Giveaway!

Welcome everyone to the Official Blog tour for 

 YOU CAN'T HIDE by Dan Poblocki

In this post, you can read all about the book and the author as well as enter a giveaway for copies of the book! Enjoy!

Title: You Can't Hide
Author: Dan Poblocki 
Series: Shadow House (Book 2)
Hardcover: 224 pages
Genre: Middle Grade, Paranormal, Horror
Publisher: Scholastic (December 27, 2016)
ISBN-10: 0545925517
ISBN-13: 978-0545925518

Shadow House will find you . . .

Poppy, Marcus, Dash, Dylan, and Azumi are all trapped within Shadow House, a sinister estate where past and present intertwine. As they fight to find a way out, the kids think the ghosts of the house are the greatest danger they face. Little do the kids know it's the secrets they're each hiding that will prove even more lethal.

They're going to have to come face to face with their fears if they stand any hope of escaping the house alive. Is there anyone or anything in the house they can trust? Or is all hope disappearing, too . 

Enter Shadow House . . . if you dare.

BONUS: Step inside Shadow House with the free app for your tablet or phone! Each image in the book reveals a haunting in the app, where the choices you make determine your fate.

You can purchase You Can't Hide at the following Retailers:

        

Praise for YOU CAN'T HIDE

"Shadow House has everything I love—strange characters, magic and the supernatural, endless danger and adventure—and a mystery I dare any reader to try to solve". -- R.L. Stine, author of Goosebumps

Praise for The Book of Bad Things

"Ghostly... grotesque... eerie..." -- Booklist

"Poblocki's return, full of mystery, monsters and ghosts, is sure to satisfy his fans. Old-school, John Saul-style horror." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Fun and creepy in all the good ways." -- VOYA

Praise for The Haunting of Gabriel Ashe

A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults selection

A Junior Library Guild selection

"The social dramas mesh well with the supernatural elements... Poblocki creates a real sense of suspense." -- Booklist

"Poblocki creates danger by not pulling punches. An atmospheric, creepy ghost story best read at night." -- Kirkus Reviews

Top Ten book classics you'd like to read

To my chagrin, I admit that I still haven’t read:

• 10.  The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster
• 9.  Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
• 8.  Dracula – Bram Stoker
• 7.  The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
• 6.  Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
• 5.  We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
• 4.  Go Tell it on the Mountain – James Baldwin
• 3.  Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
• 2.  Parable of the Sower – Octavia Butler
• 1.  A Wizard of Earthsea – Ursula Le Guin  

Dan Poblocki is an American author of mystery and horror novels for young people. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island. During his pre-teen years, his family moved to Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Dan currently lives in Brooklyn, NY with two scaredy cats. 

Dan graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in theater. Subsequently, he toured the United States playing ultra-challenging roles such as Ichabod Crane in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and the Shoemaker in The Shoemaker and the Elves to packed houses filled with literally thousands of screaming children. (He hopes they weren’t screaming in fear.)

Dan ended his promising acting career to focus on other endeavors. While exploring various artistic options, he held a number of jobs in New York City including: a floral groomer, an audience-wrangler for a popular game show, a computer analyst, a chemotherapy-unit assistant, and a traveling bathing suit sales-dude. 

That’s right. A traveling bathing suit sales-dude.

Dan now writes full time. He's probably working on something new this very minute!

Find Dan @ Website / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads / Instangram

--Giveaway is open to International. | Must be 13+ to Enter

- 7 Winners will receive a Copy of You Can't Hide (Shadow House #2) by Dan Poblocki

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Book Spotlight: Westward To Strange by Ray Litt + Giveaway!

Hello and welcome everyone to the BOOK SPOTLIGHT

for Westward To Strange by Ray Litt!

In this post you can learn all about the book, info about the second book in the series, To Each Their Own and enter to win a giveaway to win ecopies of book #1. 

Enjoy!

Have you ever wondered about the dark water? Talula "Lu" Burke never had, despite being born and raised on the Florida coast. But when dead animals start showing up on the shores of Salerna Beach, and Lu spots a mysterious boy in the shark-infested waters of the cove late at night, she’s forced to search the dark water for answers. 

When a school assignment leads to information about a sea-monster-worshipping cult, Lu can’t help seeing connections to the animals being found on her beach. More disturbing are the links she uncovers between her own family and the violent legend. Soon enough, more about Lu’s world starts to seem unreal: she gets into a knock-down drag-out with her BFF, is plagued by insomnia and chronic exhaustion, and can’t seem to fight the urge to pounce on the new kid in town who is all of a sudden very sexy—and very interested in Lu. Taking cues from her newfound instinct—and a strange alliance with the moon—Lu knows she alone must uncover the truth, or risk becoming part of the legend herself.

 Purchase at: Amazon 

     We come up on two creatures with big circle eyes like Morgan’s, and it’s the first time I feel a chill. What happens next would have taken my breath away, if I were actually breathing.

     Morgan, drawing me in against his shoulder blades, opens his mouth to let loose a high-pitched whine that blurs my vision and makes me feel like my brain’s trying to climb out of my face. The scream wraps around me until I feel I might snap, and when it’s over the pressure of the deep swallows it whole. Trembling, I look over his shoulder at the two creatures. 

     Their mouths are open, also, and though Morgan has shifted us so I’m directly behind him, it’s clear they’re hissing right at me, from black holes that have no teeth and no tongue, and that are surrounded by vibrating skin folds. And then, just like that, they leave, pulling us forward in their slipstream. We watch until they reach the far end of the stadium and slither to the top pew, never making eye contact with one another. 

     But then I look around, wondering if everyone around me is making some sort of contact with each other, just not in any way that’s familiar to me, because they’re all staring in the same general direction. Morgan squeezes my hand before pulling me a bit further, but it’s far less reassuring than I would’ve liked. When we’re close to the other side of the arena he stops, gesturing for me to turn around and look behind me, to where everyone else is facing. 

     I don’t know how I missed it. A huge, breathtaking, golden, glowing tube coral is embedded in the sand in the center of the arena, its many, many arms swaying independently of one another. Tethered to them are dozens of mer-bodies in all different stages of decomposition. 

     Most are bloated, half-deteriorated—some mere skeletons with gaping eyeholes pointed upward into the faraway black. The water handles their bones in a succession of jerks, each vertebra catching the current a second before the next. Long, wispy hair dances in the water above them, seemingly frozen until the final vertebra snaps. 

     The chill inside of me is growing, and I start to wonder if maybe this experience is more real than I think it is. I look up, shivering, at the endless stretch of dark water beyond the globes.

Just when life’s back to normal for Lu and company, Sarah gets a visit from her own mysterious past. Learn where the magic began in To Each Her Own, Book #2 of The Dark Water Series, when Lu and Sarah explore their powers with new spirit sisters.

 Dive into the Dark Water, where youth meets ageless mythology, and friendship is the greatest magic. Get your copy of Westward to Strange on Amazon for $2.99 now.

Join the family on www.raylitt.com, and stay tuned for Book #2 updates. 

Ray Litt is a mom of three and the Conference Director for Speculative Fiction: Southeast, a literary conference for all authors and hobbyists of speculative fiction. She dreamt up Salerna Beach while living in Sunset Beach, Florida, a kickass homebase for curmudgeonly Midwesterners.  

Always late, incapable of returning a call or text, Ray continues to forge relationships with evil mermaids and alien cheerleaders, and maintains she really was, once, a teenage witch.

Website / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads

Author Ray Litt has offered to give away THREE (3) ecopies of book #1, Westward to Strange on my blog!

All you have to do to enter is fill out the form below. 

Open to everyone!

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Book Blast: Asleep by Krystal Wade | Excerpt + Giveaway!

Hello readers!

Are you looking for your next read?

Well, let us help make things easier for you!

Welcome to the Book Blast for

Asleep by Krystal Wade

presented by Blaze Publishing!

Check out the teaser below, and be sure to enter the giveaway found at the end of the post!

As a special treat, we've got another book that may tickle your fancy... What is it? Read on, dear reader, read on!

 Asleep by Krystal Wade 

Publication Date: February 16, 2016 

Publisher: Blaze Publishing

Genre: YA Horror

"To cure fear, you must use fear."Rose Briar claims no responsibility for the act that led to her imprisonment in an asylum. She wants to escape, until terrifying nightmares make her question her sanity and reach out to her doctor. He’s understanding and caring in ways her parents never have been, but as her walls tumble down and Rose admits fault, a fellow patient warns her to stop the medications. Phillip believes the doctor is evil and they’ll never make it out of the facility alive. Trusting him might be just the thing to save her. Or it might prove the asylum is exactly where she needs to be.

Purchase at: BAM | Chapters | Amazon | B&N | TBD

What Readers Are Saying:

"This was hands down one of the best thrillers I've read in a long while." - Martina McAtee, Author

"It's amazing how this book can bring so many emotions out of me and leaves me being a sobbing mess in the end!" - Gina, A Thousand Books

" It is 100% a book that you need to experience completely for yourself." - Lauren, Wonderless Reviews

Closing her eyes, she brought up the image of Phillip on the rooftop, where the moon showered him with its glowing essence, where his expression was sadly stoic as he stared out into the lawn, hands in his pockets, shoulders broad and strong. Rose set her charcoal to the canvas, prepared to draw the moon as a melting clock, Phillip’s face, the tree’s rounded, naked branches as well. But she couldn’t give this up. This image was too beautiful, too personal.

This image belonged to Rose, not to this institution.

“Draw.”

She turned her face toward the ceiling and shouted, “No.”

Something warm and wet splattered onto the canvas, something red. Rose jumped up and backed away from the easel, trembling with each step that brought her closer to the wall. She tripped over the tray of food, scattering bits of eggs and bacon all over the floor, then backed into the door knob. She pulled on it, banging and shouting and screaming for someone to help her.

To get her away from the blood. That had to be blood.

“Please, please help me!”

No one came. Nothing but the sounds of the baseboard heater and the occasional drip of more red fluid reached her ears.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

I’m happily married to the love of my life (don’t gag) and raising three beautiful children in the gorgeous state of Virginia. We live just outside Washington, D.C., and every day I wake up to find myself stuck in traffic trying to get there.The horrid commute gives me plenty of time to zone out and think about my characters in full, brilliant details (I’m a safe driver; don’t worry). Stories give me a way to forget about the sometimes smelly strangers sitting next to me on the fifty mile trek into town (I pick up hitchhikers every day. True story. Check out www.slug-lines.com if you don’t believe me). I’ve been a part of organized hitchhiking for nearly fifteen years, but that’s just one small aspect of my oh-so-large life. When I’m not working, commuting, or chasing after my three children (four if you count the man), you can usually find me outside talking to my chickens like they’re the cutest things in the world (they are), or training my amazing dogs how to herd said chickens (which they love), or curled up on the sofa with a good book (why can’t that be 100% of the time?). I hope you love my stories (or just like them a little; that would be okay, too). And I hope that one day you find your passion, because there’s nothing in life better than doing what you love while surrounded by people you love.

YOU MAY ALSO WANT TO CHECK OUT...

Because I Love You by Tori Rigby Publication Date: May 17, 2016 
Publisher: Blaze Publishing

Eight weeks after sixteen-year-old Andie Hamilton gives her virginity to her best friend, “the stick” says she’s pregnant.

 

Her friends treat her like she’s carrying the plague, her classmates torture and ridicule her, and the boy she thought loved her doesn’t even care. Afraid to experience the next seven months alone, she turns to her ex-boyfriend, Neil Donaghue, a dark-haired, blue-eyed player. With him, she finds comfort and the support she desperately needs to make the hardest decision of her life: whether or not to keep the baby. Then a tragic accident leads Andie to discover Neil’s keeping a secret that could dramatically alter their lives, and she's forced to make a choice. But after hearing her son’s heartbeat for the first time, she doesn’t know how she’ll ever be able to let go.

BAM | Chapters | Indies | Amazon | B&N | Kobo | TBD

Complete the Rafflecopter below for a chance to win!

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Book Review: Nightmares! by Jason Segel & Kirsten Miller

Title: Nightmares!
Author: Jason Segel & Kirsten Miller
Hardcover, 355 pages
Published: September 9th 2014 
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Genre: MG > Fantasy, Horror, Mystery
Source: via publisher (hardcover)

"Coraline meets Monsters, Inc. in this delightfully entertaining offering from actor [Jason] Segel and co-author [Kirsten] Miller."— Publishers Weekly 

The hilariously frightening, middle-grade novel Nightmares! is a Texas Bluebonnet nominee and the first book in a trilogy about a boy named Charlie and a group of kids who must face their fears to save their town. 

Sleeping has never been so scary. And now waking up is even worse!

Charlie Laird has several problems. 

1. His dad married a woman he is sure moonlights as a witch.

2. He had to move into her purple mansion, which is NOT a place you want to find yourself after dark.

3.He can’t remember the last time sleeping wasn’t a nightmarish prospect. Like even a nap. 

What Charlie doesn’t know is that his problems are about to get a whole lot more real. Nightmares can ruin a good night’s sleep, but when they start slipping out of your dreams and into the waking world—that’s a line that should never be crossed.

And when your worst nightmares start to come true . . . well, that’s something only Charlie can face. And he’s going to need all the help he can get, or it might just be lights-out for Charlie Laird. For good.

Purchase at: Amazon | B&N | The Book Depository | Kobo | Indiebound

Before I begin I want to say that one of the main authors of this book is actor, Jason Segel. If you don't know who he is, he played Marshall in How I meet your mother and has been in a ton of other movies, such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Muppets and Knocked Up! I've never actaully read any books that have been written by an actor so I jumped at the offer. Wouldn't you? I was excited to read it simply because of that aspect alone and ended up totally loving this book! But of course, I already knew that...

The story takes place in the small town of Cypress Creek where 12-year-old Charlie Laird, his Father, and his annoying little brother, Jack lives. They live in a purple mansion on DeChant Hill with their new step-mother Charlotte. Ever since moving into the mansion, Charlie has been having horrible nightmares. They sometimes seem so real that he does not want to go back to sleep in fear of another nightmare. Ever since Charlie moved into his step-mother's home he has felt uneasy and just not right. Unhappy in more ways the one, Charlie begins to see odd things happening around the house and his nightmares are getting so bad now he doesn't sleep at all. In these nightmares, he often sees an evil witch who looks an awfully like his new step-mom. Exhausted and angry, Charlie begins picking fights with Jack and sometimes wishes he would just disapear. These dreams that plague him are becoming more and more real, until one night Charlie awakens to see the evil-charlotte-looking witch coming into the real world and steal Jack away....to the place of which all of Charlie's nightmares roam. 

Now Charlie must enter the Neverworld and fight his way to find his little brother and bring him home before it's too late! Facing his fears may be the only way to succeed but when you're living in your own nightmare nothing is ever that simple.

Will Charlie be able to save his brother from the witch before time runs out? Well...you'll have to read the book to find out. 

For a middle-grade book, it totally rocked! I mean I was so surprised but how much I truly enjoyed this story. Charlie was such a fun and interesting character. He would do anything to get his brother back, and I mean anything. All of the people, creatures, and monsters he meet along the way were so outstanding and I love how each of them played such a huge part in helping Charlie throughout the book. The world building was beautifully done, with such a spooky ambiance throughout. The story itself was so much fun to read and the experience of being there alongside Charlie while he faced his fears to save Jack was epic! I can't say enough great things about this book. I knew going into it that the plot sounded like something I would like but I never expected to love it as much as I did. 

Another fun thing that really made this book even better than it already is, are the illustrations that go along with the story, like the ones below. 

These beautifully draw images add so much to the book and really make the story come alive. I am so excited and looking forward to reading what happens next, especially since there was a cliffhanger at the end.

I recommend Nightmares to all of my readers, young and old. 

Props to Jason Segel & Kirsten Miller, you both did an amazing job writing this book. I can't wait to see what happens next!

Totally EPIC! One of the best books I have read. A MUST read!!

Book Review: A Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis

Title: A Madness So Discreet

Author: Mindy McGinnis

Hardcover, 384 pages

Published: October 6th, 2015

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Genre: YA - Historical Fiction - Thriller - Horror

Grace Mae knows madness.

She keeps it locked away, along with her voice, trapped deep inside a brilliant mind that cannot forget horrific family secrets. Those secrets, along with the bulge in her belly, land her in a Boston insane asylum.

When her voice returns in a burst of violence, Grace is banished to the dark cellars, where her mind is discovered by a visiting doctor who dabbles in the new study of criminal psychology. With her keen eyes and sharp memory, Grace will make the perfect assistant at crime scenes. Escaping from Boston to the safety of an ethical Ohio asylum, Grace finds friendship and hope, hints of a life she should have had. But gruesome nights bring Grace and the doctor into the circle of a killer who stalks young women. Grace, continuing to operate under the cloak of madness, must hunt a murderer while she confronts the demons in her own past.

In this beautifully twisted historical thriller, Mindy McGinnis, acclaimed author of Not a Drop to Drink and In a Handful of Dust, explores the fine line between sanity and insanity, good and evil—and the madness that exists in all of us.

Purchase at: Amazon | B&N | TBD | Kobo 

"I think we're all quite mad. Some of us are just more discreet about it"

When I received my OwlCrate and saw A Madness So Discreet, I was very disappointed (although I liked the cover so much, I didn't care if the book was awful)!  The blurb didn't wow me, and, although I don't mind gory details and bloody descriptions, I can't abide books without a little bit of hope shining through the darkness of the story. After reading the synopsis, I thought nothing else than pain and desperation could come from this story. I'm happy to say I was wrong! This book was definitely dark, but it had its lighter moments and, most important, it managed to convey a sense of hope for the future of the characters.

"Nothing you say will be believed. You're insane"

Grace was a fantastic main character, haunted by the demons of her past, and she kept them at bay retreating in herself so much that she couldn't feel anything. This ability was rather intriguing but also frightening, because clearly if you retreat in yourself too much, you risk losing your way out. Grace couldn't speak for most of her day, and it was interesting how this created a chasm between the person she was in the asylum, who had to keep everything bottled up inside, and the person she was when she was free to be herself. They almost seemed like two different people. 

"So are we really that different, the healthy and the ill?" (...) "I would argue there is no difference at all"

Grace walked thin line between madness and sanity, like all the characters of this book: Thornhollow, who looked into the abyss of the criminal mind too much, Grace's father, all the patients in the asylums. Reading the book was like becoming mad yourself, until you were at a point when you couldn't say which character was sane and which was not. You could almost say that the patients were saner than the people outside the asylum. The only really sane character was Grace's sister, but one could argue that she was sane because she kept to the surface and didn't venture down to the depth of the human mind. Along with the exploration of what makes a person mad and if everybody's actually mad but some madness are more discreet than others, the author tackled the idea of morals and whether it's right to follow one's moral system when it clashes with the law. I liked that the book didn't shy away from certain ideas of "eye for an eye" and "the end justifies the means".

The historical fiction aspect of asylums and how patients were treated was deeply fascinating and well-researched. As you may well imagine, the treatments were brutal and lobotomy was largely practiced to tame the most difficult patients. However, I enjoyed the book much more when it delved into the homicide and the study of criminal profiling. Also, the ending was perfect and gave me so much satisfaction!

Overall, this book was riveting and compelling, and I recommend it to anyone who's not afraid of some gory details. I've already read a review comparing this book to Criminal Minds, so I can say that I was not the only one who thought so while reading the book! If you are a fan of this telefilm, this book it's for you!

 Totally Awesome! I loved it, would read again.