📚Time for a 6 book GIVEAWAY geared towards the men in honor of Father’s Day later this month!
Yes, ladies, you can enter the giveaway, too, for yourselves or enter to win these fantastic novels for your father, husband, brother, older sons, grandpa’s, etc. I will even send the books to them wrapped nicely & with a Father’s Day card stating that you thought they would enjoy these books for some summer reading. All of the books are in new condition & some are arc’s, & I have @blackstonepublishing to thank for all of these gifted books! (*Click HERE to see yesterday’s giveaway, too!).

❓Q: Does your husband/boyfriend read books? (And if you’re a male, & following my page, you probably do, so Thank You!) My husband doesn’t read books, but he doesn’t balk at or mind my talking about them all of the time, so I guess that’s good enough for me.

📖’River, Sing Out’ by James Wade not only has a gorgeous cover (I mean, REALLY gorgeous!) but it’s a masterfully written, haunting, dark story w/ such taut, beautiful prose, it will leave you breathless. It’s available this Tues, 6/8. (*See below for full blurb & click on any of the highlighted titles to add them to your Goodreads lists.) Wade’s previous, award winning novel, ‘All Things Left Wild’, is also included in this giveaway.

📚You can enter to win ALL six books pictured for yourself or for another reader by clicking HERE to go to the giveaway on Instagram & doing the following:
1- LIKE this post. 2- Must be following @mom_loves_reading 3- Tag a couple bookish pals (Unlimited entries, 2 tags per comment) Bonus 5 entries: SHARE to your stories & tag me.
**Giveaway is on Instagram, is US residents only, runs 6/5-6/8/21, & isn’t affiliated w/ Instagram. Please don’t UNfollow after or you’ll be excluded from all of my future giveaways, & there’s a LOT. (& it’s rude.)

‘River, Sing Out’ by James Wade: “And through these ages untold, the river did act as the lifeblood of all those things alongside it.”

Jonah Hargrove is celebrating his thirteenth birthday by avoiding his abusive father, when a girl named River stumbles into his yard, injured and alone. The teenager has stolen thousands of dollars’ worth of meth from her murderous, drug-dealing boyfriend, but lost it somewhere in the Neches River bottoms during her escape. Jonah agrees to help her find and sell the drugs so she can flee East Texas.

Chasing after them is John Curtis, a local drug kingpin and dog fighter, as well as River’s boyfriend, the dangerous Dakota Cade.

Each person is keeping secrets from the others—deadly secrets that will be exposed in violent fashion as all are forced to come to terms with their choices, their circumstances, and their own definition of God.

With a colorful cast of supporting characters and an unflinching violence juxtaposed against lyrical prose, River, Sing Out dives deep into the sinister world of the East Texas river bottoms, where oppressive poverty is pitted against the need to believe in something greater than the self.

‘All Things Left Wild’ by James Wade: After an attempted horse theft goes tragically wrong, sixteen-year-old Caleb Bentley is on the run with his mean-spirited older brother across the American Southwest at the turn of the twentieth century. Caleb’s moral compass and inner courage will be tested as they travel the harsh terrain and encounter those who have carved out a life there, for good or ill.

Wealthy and bookish Randall Dawson, out of place in this rugged and violent country, is begrudgingly chasing after the Bentley brothers. With little sense of how to survive, much less how to take his revenge, Randall meets Charlotte, a woman experienced in the deadly ways of life in the West. Together they navigate the murky values of vigilante justice.

Powerful and atmospheric, lyrical and fast-paced, All Things Left Wild is a coming-of-age for one man, a midlife odyssey for the other, and an illustration of the violence and corruption prevalent in our fast-expanding country. It artfully sketches the magnificence of the American West as mirrored in the human soul.

‘The Rebel Nun’ by Marj Charlier: Marj Charlier’s The Rebel Nun is based on the true story of Clotild, the daughter of a sixth-century king and his concubine, who leads a rebellion of nuns against the rising misogyny and patriarchy of the medieval church.

At that time, women are afforded few choices in life: prostitution, motherhood, or the cloister. Only the latter offers them any kind of independence. By the end of the sixth century, even this is eroding as the church begins to eject women from the clergy and declares them too unclean to touch sacramental objects or even their priest-husbands.

Craving the legitimacy thwarted by her bastard status, Clotild seeks to become the next abbess of the female Monastery of the Holy Cross, the most famous of the women’s cloisters of the early Middle Ages. When the bishop of Poitiers blocks her appointment and seeks to control the nunnery himself, Clotild masterminds an escape, leading a group of uncloistered nuns on a dangerous pilgrimage to beg her royal relatives to intercede on their behalf. But the bishop refuses to back down, and a bloody battle ensues. Will Clotild and her sisters succeed with their quest, or will they face excommunication, possibly even death?

In the only historical novel written about the incident, The Rebel Nun is a richly imagined story about a truly remarkable heroine.

‘Felonious Monk’ by William Kotzwinkle: Meet Tommy Martini, the monk with an anger management problem. Since killing somebody with a single punch is not a needed talent in a monastery, he spends his time praying, meditating, and taking his anger management medicine. But his meditations are interrupted by a legacy from his uncle, a crooked priest. Arriving in a New Age Arizona town to claim his inheritance, Brother Tommy meets a charismatic, smoking-hot cult leader who claims that women are being impregnated by alien beings while they sleep. Tommy’s own sleep is disturbed–by cartel hitmen, Mafia bill collectors, and women intrigued by his vow of chastity. He loses his anger management medicine in time to deal with the hitmen, but the women present an uphill battle.

William Kotzwinkle’s quicksilver touch has produced an effervescent piece of entertainment filled with suspense, turns you won’t see coming, and the humor for which he is famous.

‘Pale’ by Edward A. Farmer: “Some things just don’t keep well inside this house …”

The summer of 1966 burned hot across America but nowhere hotter than the cotton fields of Mississippi. Finding herself in a precarious position as a black woman living alone, Bernice accepts her brother Floyd’s invitation to join him as a servant for a white family and she enters the web of hostility and deception that is the Kern plantation household.

The secrets of the house are plentiful yet the silence that has encompassed it for so many years suddenly breaks with the arrival of the harvest and the appearance of Jesse and Fletcher to the plantation as cotton pickers. These two brothers, the sons of the house servant Silva, awaken a vengeful seed within the Missus of the house as she plots to punish not only her husband but Silva’s family as well. When the Missus starts flirting with Jesse, she sets into motion a dangerous game that could get Jesse killed and destroy the lives of the rest of the servants.

Bernice walks the fine line between emissary and accomplice, as she tries her best to draw secrets from the Missus’s heart, while using their closeness to protect the lives of the people around her. Once the Missus’s plans are complete, families will be severed, loyalties will be shattered, and no one will come out unscathed.

With a dazzling voice and rich emotional tension, Pale explores the ties that bind and how quickly humanity can fade and return us to primal ways. 

‘Jungle Up’ by Nick Pirog: “Please find me, Thomas! Please!”

Two years ago, Dr. Gina Brady broke Thomas Prescott’s heart, but now her panic-stricken satellite phone call starts it beating again with a fury. Thugs kidnapped the good doctor from the remote jungle village where she was working, and now the retired homicide detective’s expert skills are desperately needed to save her.

Led by a colorful, but perhaps untrustworthy local guide, Prescott journeys deep into the Bolivian Amazon, plunging into a world where the only thing more dangerous than the gun-toting drug traffickers and the ruthless tribesmen, is the jungle itself.

When Gina’s trail leads to a chance encounter with an archaeological expedition, the search for the missing doctor takes on even deadlier consequences. But Prescott will not relent in this punishing quest until, once again, he holds Gina in his arms.

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💁🏼‍♀️You can click on the highlighted titles above to add any of them to your Goodreads lists & click HERE to go to Mom_Loves_Reading on Instagram & enter to win ALL SIX books for yourself or if you would like, I can wrap them nicely & send them to the person of your choice (US residents only) along with a card & personal note from you.

📖So, what are you reading this weekend or what have you read recently. Please share in the comments. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!😊