2012 Mid-Winter's Eve Blog Hop!

I'm baaaaaack. Mostly. More on that later.

For now, I am thrilled once again to be participating in the Mid-Winter's Eve Blog Hop hosted by I am a Reader Not a Writer and Oasis for YA.

Several authors have generously offered to give away copies of their books. This blog hop is open from December 21-27. Hundreds of bloggers are participating, so there's definitely something for everyone!

This time I have two books to offer you.

The first is a book I copy edited by an author who has been featured here in the past. She is the lovely and talented Dakota Franklin (see my introduction to Dakota here), and this newest release in her Ruthless to Win series is NASCAR FIRST. I have three copies of this riveting story to give away.

The second is a new book by André Jute, who has also been featured here in the past. His book IDITAROD A Novel of the Greatest Race on Earth was one of my favourite reads of 2011. Today, I am giving away 3 copies of his book DREAMS, Book 1 of Cold War, Hot Passions.

NASCAR FIRST ~ by Dakota Franklin

"I sniffed the air but the smell of my brother’s burned flesh was long gone. I’ve made my living driving fast cars since before I reached puberty; dying in mangled metal is a thought that after a while numbs itself on its own banality. It no longer bothers me that I am not like other girls."

Flicka Revere is a maximum hard case in the macho pinnacle of stock car racing, NASCAR’s premier series, the Sprint Cup, in which NASCAR trumpets its triumph of making daring rednecks rich.

Flicka already has too many NASCAR firsts. Too often first in the line before the blue trailer of the NASCAR bosses to be punished for overly competitive driving and outspoken comments on television, first woman to finish a Sprint Cup race, first woman to finish in the top ten.

Now Flicka’s lover has outed her as the first lesbian stock car racer. In a series which reveres "family values" that is one first too many. Flicka’s team manager fires her on the spot, live on television.

No one will give a lesbian a ride—except Armitage. Flicka has no faith whatsoever that aristocratic racers like Armitage will succeed in NASCAR, no matter what their successes in grand prix and endurance racing.

But no one else wants Flicka, not even her incestuous, congenitally murderous hillbilly family.

"I don’t want to be the first lesbian redneck hillbilly stock car racer killed by her relatives over a rusted Stearns Toy Tonneau. Most people who’re not into old cars would think I died over a toy, perhaps a hillbilly teddy bear. My sense of humor doesn’t stretch to being an absurd corpse."

Flicka, already a target for being a woman and a lesbian, is legitimized as a victim in the eyes of the good ol’ psychopaths by Armitage’s open contempt for "NASCAR values".

But Flicka isn't planning on being anyone’s victim...

"If I’m to die young, I want it to be a head-on impact to the wall, in which all my internal organs may be squashed to jelly by the deceleration but my corpse will be externally beautiful. That’s a small enough vanity, considering my profession."

Even in Dakota Franklin's series RUTHLESS TO WIN, which has already won awards and enthusiastic reviews for fascinating characters, Flicka is a primo character!

DREAMS, Book 1 of Cold War, Hot Passions ~ by André Jute

The epic saga 
of ten intertwined families
 who live and die by their love of
 their Russian and American motherlands 
and the searing passions they 
arouse in each other

FROM THE STORMING OF THE WINTER PALACE...

In the beginning they were impassioned young revolutionaries risking only their oqn lives for justice. The prince, the soldier, the peasant and the baroness became the founders of three families, steadfast in love and war, whose generations are enfolded in the sweep of humans and inhumans, inquisitors and victims, the betrayals of friends and family, the show trials of colleagues, the psychiatric tortures of dissidents, that was Russia under the Communists, right up to glasnost, when the fourth generation must answer the question, Was the result worth three generations of tragic suffering and sacrifice?

And the Americans who opposed them for liberty, the patrician Adams family, the refugee Hirches, the redneck Remptons who became political powers in the land, the McQueens who did not count the price of rising from smalltown mid-America to the highest levels of the nation, the Drexlers who had always served their country, the implacable Southern Hubbells who could — and did — threaten Presidents, and the clever Talbots whose shy Joanne married the handsome Russian who was the cleverest traitor of them all.

In his first novel for two decades, a storyteller who has always had a knack with the true history of men and women will touch your heart and thrill your mind with the risks these men and women took with their lives and their families for the ideals they were born to — which some betrayed, and some paid too high a price for in love, even with their lives.

...TO THE BITTERSWEET END 
75 YEARS LATER

There are four ways to enter the giveaway. Enter once, or enter multiple times. The winners will be selected randomly once the contest has closed. Please be sure to include your email address so that I may contact you if you won. I do not store email addresses for future use and I do not share them. Good luck!

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And don't forget to visit the hundreds of other bloggers who are hosting giveaways!