Title: Paper Souls
Author: Allie Burke
Series: Stand Alone
Genre: Dark Literary Fiction
Publisher: Booktrope
Release Date: Sept 9 2014
Edition/Formats Available In: eBook & Print
Blurb/Synopsis:
From the author of the bestselling genre-defining Enchanters series, comes a
new literary tour de force about Emily, a young woman balancing two worlds
between her fingertips: the one that is real to her and the one that is real to
everyone else…
The question is: which one will she choose?
Never romanticizing what it means to be a
twenty-something schizophrenic in a world broken by normalcy and half-baked
fairytales, Allie Burke’s latest novel unites Emily and her world at large
spanning from the streets of Russia, to the sheets of her bed, to the
idiosyncratic comfort she gets from worlds that don’t exist at all.
Woven with angst and darkness, bursting
with heartache, Paper Souls tells of the irreparably damaged and broken, and
how they survive.
Book Links:
Amazon Kindle
Amazon Print
Barnes and Noble (B&N)
Books A Million (BAM)
Goodreads
~ * ~
Excerpt:
Brendan felt nothing. He saw nothing.
He knew nothing.
But that didn’t matter.
The swollen crowd before the stage was
really of no consequence to him. His music consumed him. Destroyed him. Sealed
him.
He didn’t even really exist.
Until he did.
Brendan breathed sharply, cutting his heart
open. The flaps of his heart spread freely like the wings of a butterfly. His
fingers lost their grip and his pick bounced off the stage with a crash in his
ears. The deep waves from Tom’s Warwick behind him could not compete with the
sound. His knees bent, knocking the wooden planks beneath him. He flattened his
palm at the edge of the stage as he gasped for air. He coughed. Will was at his
side; Brendan felt his touch, heard his voice, but . . .
Brendan opened his eyes and slowly lifted
his head.
She had this walk. She was so reserved
about her physical appearance—Brendan didn’t think he had ever even seen her
feet—but the way she walked, floated, was like she was the sexiest woman in the
world, and she knew it. Her hips swayed like a feather in the wind when she
walked. Brendan was behind her on the stairs once, at his house. And in that
moment, he really didn’t want anything more than to stick his dick in her ass.
Emily stood in a far corner—always backed
into a corner—a dark, empty crevice of the bar free of people, with an expression
that told Brendan—and everyone else—that he was supposed to be intimidated by
her.
He wasn’t.
“Brendan,” Will called beside him, gently
shaking him.
“Will,” Brendan croaked out in a whisper,
“please stop talking.”
Brendan untangled himself from his guitar
and set it gently upon the stage. It probably should have occurred to him
earlier that he had stopped playing in front of a full crowd, but he really
didn’t care.
Will was glaring at Brendan, but Brendan
ignored him.
Brendan stepped over his guitar and leaped
from the stage. Strolling through a cluster of tattoos that a twice-stricken
criminal wouldn’t take credit for, he held Emily’s unwavering glare from across
the bar. The look in her eyes reminded Brendan of a caged animal.
Brendan didn’t stop.
He clutched her tiny hips between his
fingers, lifted her from the barstool, and slammed her against the wall.
The universe didn’t make a sound.
Brendan was so drunk.
He clutched her face in his hands.
“He’s gone. You can be happy now, okay?”
“Brendan—“
“No. I love you, okay? You are so
amazing—you don’t even know the effect you have on people by just walking into
a room, Em. You have every tool at your disposal to dig deep in that huge heart
of yours and find happiness. None of the other shit matters. None of it.”
Brendan let her go. The look she gave him
was one Brendan, in four years of friendship, had never seen on her face.
Before that moment, he hadn’t ever known what she looked like.
She was so fucking beautiful.
~ * ~
Author Information:
An American novelist, book critic, and magazine
editor from Burbank, California, Allie Burke writes books she can’t find in the
bookstore. Having been recognized as writing a “kickass book that defies the
genre it’s in”, Allie writes with a prose that has been labeled poetic and
ethereal.
Her life is a beautiful disaster, flowered with the
harrowing existence of inherited eccentricity, a murderous family history, a
faithful literature addiction, and the intricate darkness of true love. These
are the enchanting experiences that inspire Allie’s fairytales.
From some coffee shop in Los Angeles, she
is working on her next novel.
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