I've started entering a lot of competitions on goodreads and have already had the good fortune to win a few. (Not the one that I really wanted but that's just the way these things go, right?) This was the first one to arrive:
The River of No Return
by Bee Ridgeway
“You are now a member of
the Guild. There is no return.” Two hundred years after he was about to
die on a Napoleonic battlefield, Nick Falcott, soldier and aristocrat,
wakes up in a hospital bed in modern London. The Guild, an entity that
controls time travel, showers him with life's advantages. But Nick
yearns for home and for one brown-eyed girl, lost now down the
centuries. Then the Guild asks him to break its own rule. It needs Nick
to go back to 1815 to fight the Guild’s enemies and to find something
called the Talisman.
In 1815, Julia Percy mourns the death of
her beloved grandfather, an earl who could play with time. On his
deathbed he whispers in her ear: “Pretend!” Pretend what? When Nick
returns home as if from the dead, older than he should be and battle
scarred, Julia begins to suspect that her very life depends upon the
secrets Grandfather never told her. Soon enough Julia and Nick are
caught up in an adventure that stretches up and down the river of time.
As their knowledge of the Guild and their feelings for each other grow,
the fate of the future itself is hanging in the balance.
I didn't realise what a hefty book this would be! I'm still looking forward to it, though. It's going on my list - right after The Traveling Vampire Show by Richard Laymon and Red Glove by Holly Black. (Since the library would like me to return them at some point.) I'll keep you updated on what I thought of my goodreads First Reads freebie!