This is a sweet, fun contemp. In our review, we wrote:

Annabeth Albert’s  Out of Character, the follow up to last year’s Conventionally Yours, features two guys who were firm friends until high-school, when expectations and peer pressure ended their friendship.  It’s a cute, (former) friends-to-lovers romance featuring two likeable characters who have a lot to learn – and re-learn – about each other as they reconnect through a quest to track down some rare Odyssey game cards….

As I said in my review of the previous book, I know nothing about gaming and it’s not something that has ever really interested me, but Annabeth Albert writes about it here with such affection and authority that she made me care about it because the characters care about it so much.

Milo and Jasper are well-rounded characters, and Milo, in particular, undergoes a tremendous amount of well-written and organic personal growth throughout the story.  Out of Character is a low-angst, feel-good romance about second chances, being brave and being true to yourself and others, and I’m happy to recommend it.

It’s on sale for 1.99 here.

I have spent the past two months reading The Guns of August, one of the most famous books on how WWI began. Tuchman is an astonishingly readable writer. Another of her books is on sale today. Critics and readers adore it. Here’s the blurb:

A “marvelous history”* of medieval Europe, from the bubonic plague and the Papal Schism to the Hundred Years’ War, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Guns of August
 
*Lawrence Wright, author of The End of October, in The Wall Street Journal
 
The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. In this revelatory work, Barbara W. Tuchman examines not only the great rhythms of history but the grain and texture of domestic life: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike. Granting her subjects their loyalties, treacheries, and guilty passions, Tuchman re-creates the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, grocers and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and, dominating all, the knight—in all his valor and “furious follies,” a “terrible worm in an iron cocoon.”

It is on sale for 2.99 here.

My love for Tana French’s novels is immense and Faithful Place is my favorite of her works. Here’s the blurb:

Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was a nineteen-year-old kid with a dream of escaping hisi family’s cramped flat on Faithful Place and running away to London with his girl, Rosie Daly. But on the night they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn’t show. Frank took it for granted that she’d dumped him-probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again. Neither did Rosie. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie’s suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank, now a detective in the Dublin Undercover squad, is going home whether he likes it or not.

It’s on sale for 1.99 here.

A smart historical romance for fifty cents? Woo hoo! Here’s the blurb:

According to society, I, Elise Sutton, haven’t been a lady for quite some time a lady couldn’t possibly run the family company and spend her days on London’s crowded, tar-stained docks. And she most certainly wouldn’t associate herself with the infamous Dorian Rowland privateer, smuggler and the Scourge of Gibraltar himself! 

But I need Rowland and his specialized expertise especially with the wolves circling, waiting for me to fail. I yearn to feel alive, and Rowland, who can kiss like the devil, inflames my senses and makes me dare to break free….

It’s on sale for .50 here.