#BookReview: Son of Darkness (The Raag of Rta #1) by @MohantyGourav7 @HoZ_Books

Synopsis: Some ballads are inked in blood.

Bled dry by violent confrontations with the Magadhan Empire, the Mathuran Republic simmers on the brink of oblivion. Krishna and Satyabhama have put their plans in motion within and beyond the Republic's blood-soaked borders to protect it from annihilation. But they will soon discover that neither gold nor alliances last forever.

They are however not alone in this game.

Mati, Pirate-Princess of Kalinga, has decided to mend her ways to be a good wife. But old habits die hard, especially when one habitually uses murder to settle old scores. Brooding but beautiful Karna hopes to bury his brutal past but finds that destiny is a miser when it comes to giving second chances. The crippled hero-turned-torturer Shakuni limps through the path of daggers that is politics only to find his foes multiply, leaving little time for vengeance.

Their lives are about to become very difficult for a cast of sinister queens, naive kings, pious assassins and ravenous priests are converging where the Son of Darkness is prophesied to rise, even as forgotten Gods prepare to play their hand.

#BookReview: The Last True Templar (Tales of the Lawless Land #2) by @BoydMorrison, Beth Morrison @HoZ_Books

Synopsis: A Perilous Quest. A Deadly Legacy.
Italy, 1351. English knight Gerard Fox and the resourceful Willa have come through a death-defying journey across war-torn Europe. Now looking towards their future together, they must first find a way to reconcile with their difficult pasts.

In a small village between Florence and Siena, Fox and Willa are caught up in a deadly ambush. After rescuing the enigmatic woman who is the target of the attack, they take refuge in her opulent villa and learn her heartbreaking story – a tale of loss, deception... and a burning desire for freedom.

Soon, Fox and Willa are involved in a perilous quest to save her family's legacy... and to do so, they will have to solve a mystery that points the way to the fabled lost treasure of the Knights Templar.

#BookReview: Quantum Radio by @Riddlist @HoZ_Books

Synopsis: At CERN, a scientist has just made an incredible discovery – a breakthrough that may answer the deepest questions about human existence. 

But what he's found is far more dangerous than he ever imagined. 

Dr. Tyson Klein is a quantum physicist who has dedicated his entire life to his research. At CERN, he analyses data generated by the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest and most powerful particle accelerator. Now, Ty believes he's found a pattern in its output. It looks like an organised data stream, being broadcast over what he calls a quantum radio. 

Could it be a signal from another universe? A message sent from the future? Or something else entirely? 

As Ty peels back the layers of his discovery, he learns that what he's found isn't what he thought it was. The encoded message is far more profound. It may alter our understanding of human existence and the universe. 

But Ty is not the only one looking for it. Someone has been following his research for a long time. And they'll do anything to prevent him from unravelling what is being broadcast by the quantum radio...

Because the first one to discover the truth may well control the future.

#BookReview: Lost in Time by @riddlist @HoZ_Books

Synopsis: When his daughter is falsely accused of murder, a scientist must travel 200 million years into the past to save her. But there are secrets waiting there. And more than her life is at stake. 

From the worldwide bestselling author of Departure and Winter World comes a standalone novel with a twist you’ll never see coming.

Control the Past.
Save the Future.

One morning, Dr. Sam Anderson wakes up to discover that the woman he loves has been murdered.

For Sam, the horror is only beginning. 

He and his daughter are accused of the crime.

The evidence is ironclad. They will be convicted. 
And so, Sam does what he must: he confesses to the crime.

But in the future, murderers aren’t sent to prison.

They’re sent to the past.

Two hundred million years into the past—to the age of the dinosaurs—to live out their lives alone, in exile from the human race.

Sam accepts his fate.

But his daughter doesn’t.

Adeline Anderson has already lost her mother to a deadly and unfair disease. She can’t bear to lose her father.

She sets out on a quest to prove him innocent. And get him back. People around her insist that both are impossible tasks.

But Adeline doesn’t give up. She only works harder. 

She soon learns that impossible tasks are her specialty. And that she is made of tougher stuff that she ever imagined.

As she peels back the layers of the mystery that ripped her father from this world, Adeline finds more questions than answers. Everyone around her is hiding a secret. But which ones are connected to the murder that exiled her father? That mystery stretches across the past, present, and future–and leads to a revelation that will change everything.

This title will be released on September 1, 2022.

#BookReview: The Lawless Land (Tales of the Lawless Land #1) by Boyd Morrison & Beth Morrison

Synopsis: First in a fast-paced Templar Knight adventure series from New York Times-bestselling author Boyd Morrison and expert art historian Beth Morrison.

Canterbury, 1351.

Excommunicated knight Gerard Fox is a battle-hardened warrior whose ancestral home was unjustly taken from him. Now, he roams across the known world of Europe looking for work as a man-at-arms. Equipped with only his Damascus-steel sword and war bow, Fox takes out tyrannical and dishonorable men in a land still blighted by the Black Death.

In his ongoing crusade to deliver justice, Fox comes to the aid of Lady Isabel, who is fleeing from her brutal betrothed. But she hasn't told him the whole story. Isabel is guarding a priceless holy relic. One many men would kill for.

Fox and Isabel soon find they are being chased across the continent and try to evade those who seek the relic. But as more assassins close in, Fox realizes they will stop at nothing to possess the sacred treasure that Isabel has sworn to protect...

#BookReview: The Silence of Scheherazade by @Sumanyoga , Betsy Göksel (Translator)

Synopsis: Set in the ancient city of Smyrna, this powerful novel follows the intertwining fates of four families as their peaceful city is ripped apart by the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

On an orange-tinted evening in September 1905, Scheherazade is born to an opium-dazed mother in the ancient city of Smyrna. At the very same moment, a dashing Indian spy arrives in the harbour with a secret mission from the British Empire. He sails in to golden-hued spires and minarets, scents of fig and sycamore, and the cries of street hawkers selling their wares. When he leaves, seventeen years later, it will be to the heavy smell of kerosene and smoke as the city, and its people, are engulfed in flames.

But let us not rush, for much will happen between then and now. Birth, death, romance and grief are all to come as these peaceful, cosmopolitan streets are used as bargaining chips in the wake of the First World War.

Told through the intertwining fates of a Levantine, a Greek, a Turkish and an Armenian family, this unforgettable novel reveals a city, and a culture, now lost to time.

#BookReview: The Contented Vegan by Peggy Brusseau @HoZ_Books

Synopsis: The one-stop recipe bible for vegan family cooking. 

Looking for delicious, tempting, tasty vegan food to please both you and your fussy family? Look no further.

The Contented Vegan is your essential guide to everyday vegan cooking. With recipes for nutritious breakfasts and school break snacks, lazy weekend lunches and quick weekday suppers, dinner party favorites, and celebratory bakes, this book will provide you with all you need to feed your family.

Peggy Brusseau has been a vegan for over thirty years, raising her two sons on her recipes. In this book she shares her years of wisdom with you, as well as over 200 delicious recipes, helping you make the right choices for you and your family. Includes dual measurements.

#BookReview: A Time for Swords by Matthew Harffy

Synopsis: Lindisfarne, AD793. The life of a novice monk will be changed forever when the Vikings attack in a new historical adventure from Matthew Harffy.

There had been portents – famine, whirlwinds, lightning from clear skies, serpents seen flying through the air. But when the raiders came, no one was prepared.

They came from the North, their dragon-prowed longships gliding out of the dawn mist as they descended on the kingdom's most sacred site.

It is 8th June AD793, and with the pillage of the monastery on Lindisfarne, the Viking Age has begun.

While his fellow monks flee before the Norse onslaught, one young novice stands his ground. He has been taught to turn the other cheek, but faced with the slaughter of his brothers and the pagan desecration of his church, forgiveness is impossible.

Hunlaf soon learns that there is a time for faith and prayer... and there is a time for swords.

#BookReview: Shadow of the Hawk (Master of War, #7) by @davidgilmanuk

Synopsis: Winter, 1364.

The King is dead.

Defeated on the field of Poitiers, Jean Le Bon, King of France, honoured his treaty with England until his death. His son and heir, Charles V, has no intention of doing the same. War is coming and the predators are circling.

Sir Thomas Blackstone, Edward III's Master of War, has been tasked with securing Brittany for England. In the throes of battle, he rescues a young boy, sole witness to the final living breaths of the Queen of Castile. The secret the boy carries is a spark deadly enough to ignite conflict on a new front – a front the English cannot afford to fight on.

So Blackstone is ordered south to Castile, across the mountains to shepherd Don Pedro, King of Castile, to safety. Accompanied only by a small detachment of his men and a band of Moorish cavalrymen loyal to the king, every step takes Blackstone further into uncertain territory, deeper into an unyielding snare.

For the Master of War, the shadow of death is always present.

#BookReview: Shadow of the Hawk (Master of War, #7) by @davidgilmanuk

Synopsis: Winter, 1364.

The King is dead.

Defeated on the field of Poitiers, Jean Le Bon, King of France, honoured his treaty with England until his death. His son and heir, Charles V, has no intention of doing the same. War is coming and the predators are circling.

Sir Thomas Blackstone, Edward III's Master of War, has been tasked with securing Brittany for England. In the throes of battle, he rescues a young boy, sole witness to the final living breaths of the Queen of Castile. The secret the boy carries is a spark deadly enough to ignite conflict on a new front – a front the English cannot afford to fight on.

So Blackstone is ordered south to Castile, across the mountains to shepherd Don Pedro, King of Castile, to safety. Accompanied only by a small detachment of his men and a band of Moorish cavalrymen loyal to the king, every step takes Blackstone further into uncertain territory, deeper into an unyielding snare.

For the Master of War, the shadow of death is always present.

#BookReview: A Time for Swords by Matthew Harffy

Synopsis: Lindisfarne, AD793. The life of a novice monk will be changed forever when the Vikings attack in a new historical adventure from Matthew Harffy.

There had been portents – famine, whirlwinds, lightning from clear skies, serpents seen flying through the air. But when the raiders came, no one was prepared.

They came from the North, their dragon-prowed longships gliding out of the dawn mist as they descended on the kingdom's most sacred site.

It is 8th June AD793, and with the pillage of the monastery on Lindisfarne, the Viking Age has begun.

While his fellow monks flee before the Norse onslaught, one young novice stands his ground. He has been taught to turn the other cheek, but faced with the slaughter of his brothers and the pagan desecration of his church, forgiveness is impossible.

Hunlaf soon learns that there is a time for faith and prayer... and there is a time for swords.

#BookReview: Spoils of the Dead (Liam Campbell #5) by Dana Stabenow

Synopsis: Newenham is an ice-bound bush town with a six-bed jail, a busted ATM and a saloon that does double-duty as a courtroom. It's a wide-enough patch to warrant a state police presence, though, and Trooper Liam Campbell is it. Campbell has been exiled from Anchorage to Newenham in disgrace, busted down from sergeant to trooper in the aftermath of a mistake that cost a family of five their lives, to spend some time in the wilderness. Campbell didn't expect the job to be simple and it hasn't. From the (literally) cutthroat business of commercial fishing, to the paranoid misanthropy of the back-country prospector, to drug dealers, serial killers, and caches of forgotten war gold, he has had his hands full. Now he has a dead archaeologist, murdered at their own dig site, who claimed to be on the verge of a momentous discovery. Fans of the icy frontier, of mystery tinged with a frisson of romance, of laconic lawmen with good intentions, of tai chi and small aircraft piloting take note: Liam Campbell is for you. 

#BookReview: Sons of Rome (Rise of Emperors #1) by Simon Turney, Gordon Doherty

Synopsis: Four Emperors. Two Friends. One Destiny.
As twilight descends on the 3rd century AD, the Roman Empire is but a shadow of its former self. Decades of usurping emperors, splinter kingdoms and savage wars have left the people beleaguered, the armies weary and the future uncertain. And into this chaos Emperor Diocletian steps, reforming the succession to allow for not one emperor to rule the world, but four.

Meanwhile, two boys share a chance meeting in the great city of Treverorum as Diocletian's dream is announced to the imperial court. Throughout the years that follow, they share heartbreak and glory as that dream sours and the empire endures an era of tyranny and dread. Their lives are inextricably linked, their destinies ever-converging as they rise through Rome's savage stations, to the zenith of empire. For Constantine and Maxentius, the purple robes beckon...