Teaser Tuesday–The Never List & The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Since I’m usually reading one book on my Nook and listening to one audiobook, I’m going to start sharing two teasers. Today my first teaser comes from an audiobook that I’m listening to that has recently been released, the second from a NetGalley title that will soon be released. Both published by Pamela Dorman Group/Penguin.

The teaser:

“There were four of us down there for the first thirty-two months and eleven days of our captivity. And then, very suddenly and without warning, there were three. Even though the fourth person hadn't made any noise at all in several months, the room got very quiet when she was gone. For a long time after that, we sat in silence, in the dark, wondering which of us would be next in the box.”

The AudioBook

 

The Never List

By Koethi Zan

Narrated by- Kristen Sieh

Published by – Pamela Dorman Books/Penguin Group

Pub. Date- August 1, 2013

Source- Penguin Audio

Genre – Thriller

Length – 9 Hours

 

 

Amazon | Goodreads

The most relentless, deeply disturbing thriller writer since Jeffery Deaver and Gillian Flynn

For years, best friends Sarah and Jennifer kept what they called the “Never List”:  a list of actions to be avoided, for safety’s sake, at all costs.  But one night, against their best instincts, they accept a cab ride with grave, everlasting consequences. For the next three years, they are held captive with two other girls in a dungeon-like cellar by a connoisseur of sadism.

Ten years later, at thirty-one, Sarah is still struggling to resume a normal life, living as a virtual recluse under a new name, unable to come to grips with the fact that Jennifer didn’t make it out of that cellar. Now, her abductor is up for parole and Sarah can no longer ignore the twisted letters he sends from jail.

Finally, Sarah decides to confront her phobias and the other survivors—who hold their own deep grudges against her. When she goes on a cross-country chase that takes her into the perverse world of BDSM, secret cults, and the arcane study of torture, she begins unraveling a mystery more horrifying than even she could have imagined.

A shocking, blazingly fast read, Koethi Zan’s debut is a must for fans of Karin Slaughter, Laura Lippman, and S.J. Watson

 

---

 

The second teaser

“There were two Noras, one who was about to die, and one who would live and be happy, blissfully happy, because she had surrendered all pain and terror to someone who was stronger. She wanted frantically to be the second woman.”

The Book

 

The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic

By: Emily Croy Barker

Published by – Pamela Dorman Books/Viking/Penguin Group

Pub. Date- August 1, 2013

Source- Net Galley

Genre – Fantasy

 

Amazon | Goodreads

 

An imaginative story of a woman caught in an alternate world—where she will need to learn the skills of magic to survive

Nora Fischer’s dissertation is stalled and her boyfriend is about to marry another woman. During a miserable weekend at a friend’s wedding, Nora wanders off and walks through a portal into a different world where she’s transformed from a drab grad student into a stunning beauty. Before long, she has a set of glamorous new friends and her romance with gorgeous, masterful Raclin is heating up. It’s almost too good to be true.

Then the elegant veneer shatters. Nora’s new fantasy world turns darker, a fairy tale gone incredibly wrong. Making it here will take skills Nora never learned in graduate school. Her only real ally—and a reluctant one at that—is the magician Aruendiel, a grim, reclusive figure with a biting tongue and a shrouded past. And it will take her becoming Aruendiel’s student—and learning magic herself—to survive. When a passage home finally opens, Nora must weigh her "real life" against the dangerous power of love and magic.

For lovers of Lev Grossman's The Magicians series (The Magicians and The Magician King) and Deborah Harkness's All Souls Trilogy (A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night)

 

 

Be sure to leave a link to your teaser in a comment so I can check out what you’re reading!

Guest Post and Giveaway: A.J. Scudiere, author of God’s Eye

I am so thrilled to have bestselling author, A.J. Scudiere, on The Happy Booker today to talk about writing POV. A.J.’s newest book God’s Eye has recently been released and the good news is, the ebook format of God’s Eye will be available for just $2.99 from Amazon and Barnes and Noble beginning on 10/24 and lasting until 10/31!! Unbelievable price for such an incredible book! With such a wickedly scary cover, I couldn’t help but be curious about what’s inside!! God’s Eye is a thrilling novel that includes elements of horror, romance, and the paranormal. I’m so excited that A.J. Scudiere has offered one lucky Happy Booker reader a chance to win a signed copy!

The Thrill of Point of View. Let me start with a resounding ‘Yes! Point of view can be thrilling.’ No, wait . . . it’s always thrilling. Though I would never attribute the overall quality of a thriller to any one particular writing skill, I find that POV is often overlooked as the essential element that it is. We all know must have interesting characters, a suspenseful plot and a writing style that is hopefully great, but at the very least good! POV is something that must exist – it’s truly impossible to tell any story without it – and yet it is so often forgotten about. Maybe that’s because it’s so essential . . . Still, POV is often what makes a thriller . . . well, thrilling. Imagine the book told from the serial killer’s point of view. From the first moment, you know who he is. Likely why he does what he does. Who he’s stalking . . . etc. Now imagine your lead detective knows all this, too. And so do the next three victims. Thrill: gone. It’s what you don’t know that keeps you on the edge of your seat. It’s the fact that you are stuck there with the detective . . . with a profile, a handful of suspects and kill-pattern knowledge. You know someone is going to die – but you don’t know quite who, and you don’t know how to stop it. You only know that you have to. Yes, it’s two AM and you are still reading. And that’s because of the point of view. The author always has to make decisions about characters and their POV. I’d wager a lot of it isn’t done consciously. The writer may just have a feel for what makes a suspenseful read, just like some people feel the beat of music and others have to count it out. Other times, POV decisions are made very conscientiously. What’s revealed and when to reveal it is exactly why you are still up at two in the morning when you have to go to work the next day. And if the POV is played right, it’s worth every minute! In addition to deciding if the reader knows what the police officer knows, or what the victim or killer knows, the author has to decide how much to reveal of what each character knows. So, in addition to singular or changing POVs, there’s an omniscient POV (where you can see inside all the characters’ heads) and there’s also partial POV. At least, that’s what I’m deeming it here, because I haven’t heard it talked about before. Partial POV is this: though the author has put you in the head of one of the characters, you still don’t know everything that character knows. I worked hard at this in my latest book, God’s Eye. Though the demon and the angel both clearly know which they are, the POV doesn’t ever reveal it. So, while you are in Allistair’s head, you see what he sees, and you may examine things along with him, but he isn’t thinking about what species he is. And though he thinks about what his goal is for Katharine – the pawn in this otherworldly tug-of-war – Allistair doesn’t think in terms that reveal what he is, just what he wants. The other benefit of POV is that the reader can know more than the characters know. The reader gets the benefit of sitting in his chair and seeing what’s coming, even when the character doesn’t. With a single POV throughout the whole story, this is limited, but the more eyes we see through, the smarter we get, and the more exciting it is as we put the pieces together. Because of this challenge of POV, the thriller becomes a thinking man’s book. The POV has to reveal the story in a way that gives you enough information, yet hopefully keeps you from putting all the pieces together until the end. In the best cases, you learn the answers along with the characters (or maybe just a moment before they do!) And you find, when you solve one piece of the puzzle, that you had all the clues to put it together already in your hands. POV is the way the author hides those clues. It’s the biggest and most overlooked element of suspense writing. It’s what truly separates books from television and movies and the good writers from the great. So the next time you are up at two in the morning, still turning pages, ask yourself this: whose eyes do you see through and what is the author hiding there?

Wow! Thanks so much A.J. for joining us here at The Happy Booker today!Want to know more about A.J. Scudiere? You can find out more at these websites:

Author homepage: http://www.ajscudiere.com/
Audio Movies: www.AJsAudioMovies.com
Newest title, God's Eye, out October 2011: www.GodsEyeTheBook.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/AJScudiere
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ajscudiere

Goodreads Summary: Katharine Geryon is living the life her family name has dictated, and why not? After all, it has given her a good job in the family company and a fine life with all the things she should want. But all that changes as increasingly disturbing events begin to occur: soot stains on the carpet, glimpses of strange black animals, and cryptic messages written on her bathroom mirror. Baffled and afraid, Katharine begins to doubt her own sanity. At the same time, two charismatic men enter her life: Allistair, her new assistant at work, and Zachary, a well-heeled neighbor who just moved into her building. Katharine soon finds each of them inextricably entangled in her affairs. As her life becomes stranger and her dreams more terrifying, she realizes neither man is what he seems and that she's caught in something far beyond her own comprehension. For the first time, she must reach beyond her own boundaries. There Katharine forges her first true friendship with Margot, a librarian who helps her discover what these men really are, why she's drawn to them, and what they want with her. The answer places Katharine in the middle of a fierce battle that forces her to decide between the two men fighting for her soul. In the end, only one can be saved, but all three will be judged.

Sounds amazing right?? It sounds like an angels & demons paranormal romantic thriller with some kick!! A.J. is generously offering one lucky reader a signed copy of God’s Eye!! For those who don’t want to wait around for a giveaway, remember, the ebook format of God’s Eye will be available for just $2.99 from Amazon and Barnes and Noble beginning on 10/24 until 10/31!!  

GIVEAWAY
To enter:

US only (sorry, I’ll be having another giveaway that will be Intl starting tomorrow)

Simply fill out the form. 
Following my blog is not required but appreciated. 
Extra entries for commenting on this post, tweeting the giveaway, or following the author on Facebook or Twitter.
Last day to enter will be October 31. Winner will be chosen by Random.org and announced on November 1. 
Good luck!!