AMAZON FIRST READS FOR FEBRUARY

Amazon is showing us some extra love this month by offering us TWO First Reads selections for February! I’ve never really been a big fan of Valentine’s Day, but this news has me excited to share some extra love with some new (free) books this month. Speaking of Valentine’s Day; do you guys have any special traditions or plans? My husband and I don’t usually do anything fancy. Dinner and a movie in, couple glasses of wine, and watching the sunset from our backyard is about as much as we do for the big “V-Day”.

Don’t get me wrong. I love going out, visiting the theater, and attending some snazzy events just like the rest of you; but the stress and pressure of Valentine’s Day expectations are so overwhelming, to the point of it being anything BUT romantic. (Insert image of me frazzled, with tangled up hair, smeared makeup, and a broken high heel rushing in to a classy restaurant to meet my husband for our “romantic” dinner date” that I’m now an hour late for due to traffic.) LOL. Yeah, that’s usually how my luck goes with things like that.

Anyways, regardless of what you all have planned, I hope everyone has a fabulous time no matter how simple or fancy! Oh, and don’t forget to take some extra time to snuggle up with a great book this month too!

 

Amazon First Reads

View this month’s First Reads selections below and then select your FREE Kindle eBook here

Amazon First Reads for February 2002. Family Money by Chad Zunker. The Quarter Storm by Veronica G. Henry. A Train in Moscow by Elena Gorokhova. The Fallen Stones by Diana Marcum. Death in the Sunshine by Steph Broadribb. This is (not) Enough by Anna Kang. The Astronaunt and the Star by Jen Comfort. North to Paradise by Ousman Umar. Like Me by Hayley Phelan.

Synopsis Summary

 


About the Book

Amazon First Reads for February 2022

Family Money

Author: Chad Zunker
Pages: 240
ISBN: B08SLW9ZL1
Genre: Domestic Thriller
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Released: March 1, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

Alex Mahan is married to his high school sweetheart, Taylor. They have two daughters and a beautiful home, and Alex’s startup business is about to explode thanks to massive private funding from his compassionate and supportive father-in-law, Joe. With millions more to come, all is perfect—until Joe is abducted and murdered during a family trip in Mexico.

Alex’s world is about to be turned upside down. He can’t bear to tell his grieving wife why. The man they’ve both idolized has been keeping secrets. The pledged millions are nowhere to be found. The source of the original investment is a mystery, even to Joe’s financial adviser. No one, it seems, has any idea who the man they knew, loved, and trusted really was.

As Alex digs deeper into Joe’s shadowy life, the most shocking surprises are yet to come. Deadly ones, too, because every lie that Alex uncovers in Joe’s dark past puts his family in more danger.


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Amazon First Reads for February 2022

A Train to Moscow

Author: Elena Gorokhova
Pages: 316
ISBN: B0919V4MR9
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Released: March 1, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

In post–World War II Russia, a girl must reconcile a tragic past with her hope for the future in this powerful and poignant novel about family secrets, passion and loss, perseverance and ambition.

In a small, provincial town behind the Iron Curtain, Sasha lives in a house full of secrets, one of which is her own dream of becoming an actress. When she leaves for Moscow to audition for drama school, she defies her mother and grandparents and abandons her first love, Andrei.

Before she leaves, Sasha discovers the hidden war journal of her uncle Kolya, an artist still missing in action years after the war has ended. His pages expose the official lies and the forbidden truth of Stalin’s brutality. Kolya’s revelations and his tragic love story guide Sasha through drama school and cement her determination to live a thousand lives onstage. After graduation, she begins acting in Leningrad, where Andrei, now a Communist Party apparatchik, becomes a censor of her work. As a past secret comes to light, Sasha’s ambitions converge with Andrei’s duties, and Sasha must decide if her dreams are truly worth the necessary sacrifice and if, as her grandmother likes to say, all will indeed be well.


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Amazon First Reads for February 2022

The Quarter Storm

Author: Veronica Henry
Series: Mambo Reina #1
Pages: 287
ISBN: B091PQ96YZ
Publisher: 47North
Released: March 1, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

A practitioner of Vodou must test the boundaries of her powers to solve a ritual murder in New Orleans and protect everything she holds sacred.
Haitian-American Vodou priestess Mambo Reina Dumond runs a healing practice from her New Orleans home. Gifted with water magic since she was a child, Reina is devoted to the benevolent traditions of her ancestors.

After a ritual slaying in the French Quarter, police arrest a fellow vodouisant. Detective Roman Frost, Reina’s ex-boyfriend—a fierce nonbeliever—is eager to tie the crime, and half a dozen others, to the Vodou practitioners of New Orleans. Reina resolves to find the real killer and defend the Vodou practice and customs, but the motives behind the murder are deeper and darker than she imagines.

As Reina delves into the city’s shadows, she untangles more than just the truth behind a devious crime. It’s a conspiracy. As a killer wields dangerous magic to thwart Reina’s investigation, she must tap into the strength of her own power and faith to solve a mystery that threatens to destroy her entire way of life.


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Amazon First Reads for February 2022

Death in the Sunshine

Author: Steph Broadribb
Series: Retired Detectives Club #1
Pages: 319
ISBN: B094JMFJNK
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Released: March 1, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

Four ex-cops in a retirement paradise. Sure they’ll rest…when the killer is caught.
After a long career as a police officer, Moira hopes a move to a luxury retirement community will mean she can finally leave the detective work to the youngsters and focus on a quieter life. But it turns out The Homestead is far from paradise. When she discovers the body of a young woman floating in one of the pools, surrounded by thousands of dollar bills, her crime-fighting instinct kicks back in and she joins up with fellow ex-cops—and new neighbours—Philip, Lizzie and Rick to investigate the murder.

With the case officers dropping ball after ball, Moira and the gang take matters into their own hands, turning undercover homicide investigators. But the killer is desperate to destroy all the evidence and Moira, Philip, Lizzie and Rick soon find themselves getting in the way—of the murderer and the police.
Just when they thought they could finally relax, they discover that someone has infiltrated their ‘safe’ community. Can they hunt down the murderer and get back to retiring in peace? And after all the excitement, will they want to?


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Amazon First Reads for February 2022

North to Paradise

Author: Ousman Umar, Kevin Gerry Dunn
Pages: 159
ISBN: B094JM3PDB
Genre: Biography & Autobiography, Memoir
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Released: March 1, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

The inspiring true story of one man’s treacherous boyhood journey from a rural village in Ghana to the streets of Barcelona—and the path that led him home.

Ousman Umar is a shaman’s son born in a small village in Ghana. Though his mother died giving birth, he spent a contented childhood working the fields, setting traps in the jungle, and living off the land. Still, as strange and wondrous flying machines crisscrossed the skies overhead, Ousman dreamed of a different life. And so, when he was only twelve years old, he left his village and began what would be a five-year journey to Europe.

Every step of the way, as he traveled across the Sahara desert, through the daunting metropolises of Accra, Tripoli, Benghazi, and Casablanca, and over the Mediterranean Sea aboard a packed migrant dinghy, Ousman was handed off like merchandise by a loose network of smugglers and in the constant, foreboding company of “sinkers”: other migrants who found themselves penniless and alone on their way north, unable to continue onward or return home.

But on a path rife with violence, exploitation, and racism, Ousman also encountered friendship, generosity, and hope. North to Paradise is a visceral true story about the stark realities of life along the most dangerous migrant route across Africa; it is also a portrait of extraordinary resilience in the face of unimaginable challenges, the beauty of kindness in strangers, and the power of giving back.


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About the Book

Amazon First Reads for February 2022

The Astronaut and the Star

Author: Jen Comfort
Pages: 347
ISBN: B092VN3C61
Genre: Romance
Publisher: Montlake
Released: March 1, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

An out-of-this-world romantic comedy featuring an astronaut tasked with training a Hollywood actor for a space flick.

Astronaut Regina “Reggie” Hayes wants to be the first woman on the moon—it’s all she’s ever dreamed of. But after a PR disaster, Reggie is off the list for a lunar mission. To rehabilitate her reputation with NASA, she agrees to a different kind of assignment: astronaut “training” with a Hollywood action hero.

Jon Leo is a charmer. With credits that include an underperforming sitcom and a campy action flick called Space Dude, his upcoming role in a prestigious movie could prove he’s a star. But Jon isn’t just big muscles and an otherworldly smile—he’s also a total space nerd. He’s pumped about his own personal space camp…until he meets ice-cold Reggie.

Although Reggie and Jon are polar opposites, their mutual attraction is undeniable, and it only takes a few weeks in close quarters for them to give in to its magnetic force. Jon is set on convincing Reggie this is a match made in the heavens, but her future is in space, and his is among stars of the Hollywood kind. The odds of successfully launching a real relationship outside the confines of the training base are anything but optimal.

Reggie, content with keeping things casual, is forced by a sudden turn of events to confront the possibility of losing Jon forever. Now, she’ll do whatever it takes to win both the man and the moon.


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About the Book

Amazon First Reads for February 2022

Like Me

Author: Hayley Phelan
Pages: 271
ISBN: B097SZHMRN
Genre: Suspense, Thriller
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Released: March 1, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

A propulsive psychological thriller that follows an aspiring model down a social media-fuelled rabbit hole of obsession, narcissism and self-destruction.

For nineteen-year-old Mickey, Instagram offers a tantalizing portal into the world she wishes she inhabited. Though beautiful, cunning and privileged, Mickey finds herself with a stalled modelling career, an escalating drinking problem, few friends and next to nothing in the bank. To numb her growing despair, she spends her days frantically refreshing her Instagram feed, obsessively tracking the movements of Insta-famous model Gemma Anton.

Gemma is a perfected version of Mickey, living a seemingly perfect life: a skyrocketing career, a famous photographer boyfriend and adoring followers--the life Mickey wants more than anything for herself. She studies every detail Gemma offers through the window of her phone, trying to absorb, learn, mimic, become the object of her growing fascination.

Then, a chance encounter thrusts Mickey into a world of opportunity, and she is met with surprising, and immediate, success. But as her online persona begins to take over her life, Mickey finds it increasingly difficult to separate reality from the fa�ade of Instagram.

Engrossing, sharp and astute, Like Me is a shimmering portrait of infatuation, disconnection and identity in the digital age--and a dazzling introduction to a brilliant new voice in contemporary literature.


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Amazon First Reads for February 2022

The Fallen Stones: Chasing Blue Butterflies, Mayan Secrets, and Happily Ever After in Belize

Author: Diana Marcum
Pages: 219
ISBN: B0912FWVW5
Genre: Biography & Autobiography, Memoir
Publisher: Little A
Released: March 1, 2022

Goodreads

Synopsis

A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of the national bestseller The Tenth Island finds hope and personal metamorphosis on a butterfly farm in the Maya Mountains.

Atop a hill in the rainforest of Belize, next to the ruins of a fallen civilization, a butterfly farm raises the brilliant blue morpho.
What starts out as the worst vacation ever turns into a quest to learn more about the first-of-its-kind farm when journalist Diana Marcum inadvertently discovers this wildlife sanctuary, which is supported by an international live-butterfly trade.

She quickly becomes acquainted with Clive, the whimsical British millionaire whose childhood passion created an industry, and Sebastian, the Maya farm manager whose stern expression belies a soft heart. Before long Diana and her partner, Jack Moody—new to being a couple—have moved into a long-empty jungle house, cohabitating with bats, scorpions, toucans, iguanas, and the vulnerable but resilient butterflies. She comes to be obsessed with the array of iridescent creatures.
Just ahead, although they don’t know it, are a hurricane and a global pandemic.

This warm, funny tale of finding a way forward when the world seems to be falling apart is filled with the beauty of the natural world and a heartfelt cry to protect it—beginning with butterflies.


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About the Book

Amazon First Reads for February 2022

This Is (Not) Enough

Author: Anna Kang, Christopher Weyant
Pages: 40
ISBN: 154201851X
Genre: Childrens
Publisher: Two Lions
Released: March 1, 2022

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Synopsis

Finding a gift for your best pal isn’t always easy in this fun tale from an award-winning author and illustrator.

Two friends are excited about getting presents for each other. But when they try to find just the right gift, nothing seems good enough. From skywriting to painting to gardens, each thing they try ends up feeling just a little off. How will they ever find that special gift?

With humor and heart, the purple and orange characters from Theodor Seuss Geisel Award winner You Are (Not) Small discover that what makes a gift special isn’t necessarily what’s inside the box.


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Amazon First Reads offers exclusive early access to select book titles each month. Prime members can select one free Kindle e-Book from each month’s selections absolutely free.
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