As summer draws to a close and fall begins its uncertain advance to cooler days, evenings of fireside reading with a hot cup of tea at hand grow more frequent. I’m pleased to share some of the books I’ve read (or re-read) recently. Add them to your TBR List; you’ll be glad you did. Feel free to share some of your favorites in the “comments”.
FREE!! September 7 thru September 11, 2017
The Railroad by Neil Douglas Newton
On Sept. 11, 2001 Mike Dobbs’ life was forever changed. Reeling from his nightmare experience in New York’s subway as the twin towers collapsed he retreats from his high power Wall Street life to his run down country house. Soon he is embroiled in the life of Eileen Benoit and her 7-year old daughter Megan as they flee Eileen’s abusive ex-husband. Suddenly Mike is thrown into a world he knows nothing about and he is forced to answer the question, how far would you go for someone you love?
Xaghra’s Revenge by Geoff Nelder
(Historical Fantasy)
When Reece and Zita become lovers, past and present collide as the spirits of their ancestors force them to relive one of the greatest battles of the 16th century.
Xaghra’s Revenge follows the fate of a sixteenth century abducted family, and of two contemporary lovers thrown together by the ancients. Reece and Zita are unaware that one descends from the pirates, the other from the abducted family. While ancient Gozo spirits seek revenge, so do the Ottoman Corsairs, who intend to roll back history, and this time win the siege of Malta.
The history is real. The places are authentic. The tension and excitement are palpable.
My Review
LOVE The Beat Goes On by Lynda Filler
(Self-Help, Motivational, Spiritual Healing)
When your cardiologist tells you to “Get your affairs in order, your heart condition is incurable,” what do you do?
Lynda shares her personal story in the typical fast-paced, edgy, in-your-face style she’s known for in her writing. She will walk you through her journey to self-love sharing her belief in journals, love, prayer, soul, spirituality and positive mindset.
She’s hard-hitting, but compassionate. She writes about romantic experiences that may shock you, but makes no apologies for her unconventional life style. Nor does she hold back taking responsibility for the things that she believes created her dis-ease.
You will definitely question a woman who walks around in denial; then makes a decision to drive, all alone, from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico to Whistler, Canada with undiagnosed Idiopathic Dilated Cardiomyopathy. Men and women are often self-care-challenged and Lynda was no the exception.
If you are fighting any kind of illness or dis-ease, you are not alone! Lynda has walked her talk, and after an experience in the summer of 2015 relating to Dr. Wayne Dyer, she is now ready to release her story
Lynda knows how it feels to be told you’re not healing or your condition is incurable. At no point will she undermine anything your physicians tell you to do. She is not a medical doctor. She will explain the powerful, yet simple concepts, beliefs, balance, and faith that she believes led to her healing. Most of all, she will show you how she used these simple principles to design and live, the fully healed life she now enjoys in 2017.
You will shake your head in wonder, laugh, and maybe cry too. If you want less pain, worry, and stress about dis-ease and life in general, you will want to read this simple yet powerful story.
My Review
The Munich Girl: A Novel of the Legacies that Outlast War by Phyllis Edgerly Ring
(Historical Fiction)
Anna Dahlberg grew up eating dinner under her father’s war-trophy portrait of Eva Braun.
Fifty years after the war, she discovers what he never did—that her mother and Hitler’s mistress were friends.
The secret surfaces with a mysterious monogrammed handkerchief, and a man, Hannes Ritter, whose Third Reich family history is entwined with Anna’s.
Plunged into the world of the “ordinary” Munich girl who was her mother’s confidante—and a tyrant’s lover—Anna finds her every belief about right and wrong challenged. With Hannes’s help, she retraces the path of two women who met as teenagers, shared a friendship that spanned the years that Eva Braun was Hitler’s mistress, yet never knew that the men they loved had opposing ambitions.
Eva’s story reveals that she never joined the Nazi party, had Jewish friends, and was credited at the Nuremberg Trials with saving 35,000 Allied lives. As Anna’s journey leads back through the treacherous years in wartime Germany, it uncovers long-buried secrets and unknown reaches of her heart to reveal the enduring power of love in the legacies that always outlast war.
My Review
Scorn Kills, The Devil’s Lieutenant, Death Most Wicked (The Devil’s Due Collection) by Suzi Albracht
(Horror – Collection)
Scorn Kills
The Devil’s Due Collection – Side Book 1
Sometimes love sucks.
Scorn Kills opens with Bill Branch, The King of True Crime, locked in another man’s coffin, under someone else’s body. As Bill contemplates how he ended up in the coffin, the whoosh of the crematory firing up rocks his coffin. He prays that his wife, Bianca, is just teaching him a hard lesson for cheating on her and will let him out soon. But he’s afraid that this time she’s actually going to turn him and his coffin mate into crispy critters.
Bill complains to himself that he should never have signed that contract in blood. But back then he had thought the contract was a joke, one his father-in-law never planned to enforce.
But it wasn’t all his fault, he whined into the coffin lining. No, it started with that damn Karina and her sky high red heels and tight black leather pants.
Surely, Bianca will open the lid any minute…
The Devil’s Lieutenant
The Devil’s Due Collection – Book 2
The Devil’s Lieutenant opens with Officer Jake Holyfield investigating a series of grisly serial killings. Each murder scene is missing one thing – a body. Instead, all that remains is a puddle of blood, fatty tissue, bits of bones, and a wickedly offensive odor. The murders are not like any Jake has investigated. There are no clues, no DNA, nothing.
But there is something… an angel, in the form of a young girl named Mary Beth, appears at the scenes to give Jake mysterious clues about the killer and his motives. Mary Beth convinces Jake that he must enter the world of the supernatural to pursue the killer. She says she will help him but he has to believe.
Then Jake gets a mysterious call from a stranger who has insider information on the murders. The caller turns out to be a Washington, D.C. homicide detective named Mikael Ruskoff. And there’s more, Mikael warns that the Devil is coming after a friend of Jake’s and will soon attack his family to get Jake to stop the investigation. Soon, Jake and Mikael join forces to try to stop the Devil’s vengeful rampage.
Death Most Wicked is the story of Mikael Ruskoff, a homicide detective in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. As the story begins, a brutal kidnapper/murder is at work in the D.C. area. Mikael and his partner, Sean Ryan, catch the case and soon are desperate to run down the killer before he grabs another little girl. However, every clue they pursue winds up at a dead end. Then yet another little girl is snatched in broad daylight.
It is enough to send Sean over the edge, and within days, Mikael discovers Sean’s dead body hanging from a door in his home.
While Mikael is reeling from his partner’s suicide and the abduction of two sisters, his long-lost father turns up, wanting back into Mikael’s life, no matter the cost… to Mikael. As it turns out, his father has the key to the killer, but he also has a dark secret that threatens to destroy the world. His father is willing to give Mikael a name, but in return, he wants his son to join him in the dark underbelly of the city. Now decisions must be made.
My Reviews
Evil Always Finds A Way: The Phoenix Series Book 8 by Ted Tayler
(Vigilante Justice, Crime Thriller, Book 8 in the Series)
The drama unfolds over forty days and forty nights across the UK in book eight in this thriller series. A trip to Dublin for Hugo Hanigan closed the first part of The Grid story. It continues here as death becomes a constant companion to Phoenix and his Olympus colleagues.
Can Olympus halt the reign of terror perpetrated by The Grid? Direct actions against gangs in the North and South of the country help Phoenix deliver telling blows.
A prison break brings a further twist in the tale. Will a darker force emerge, one that threatens to become the final opponent for Olympus? So much can change in such a short time.
When this story reaches its conclusion one thing is certain, the next instalment promises to be even more exciting and unpredictable than the last. There are more stories to tell in ‘Revenge Comes In Many Colours’ later in 2017. .
NOTE: This is Book #8 in this series. I highly recommend you start with Book #1 and read them in order. It’s an exciting, action-packed series.
My Review
TWISTED TALES: 15 Literary Lies & Epic Yarns
by
(Anthology)
A unique short story anthology curated by the readers and editorial team of READERS CIRCLE OF AVENUE PARK (#RCAP). It’s a global effort, literally, with contributions from 15 authors across exhausting time zones that extend from Africa, Europe, America and Asia. This is the cryptic one-liner each author gave to describe their twisted tales…
ROBYN CAIN: Consider carefully where you walk the dog.
GLEN BARRERA: A burglar has an unexpected encounter with a very large dog.
JOE BREWER: A young man’s plan for his future takes an unexpected twist.
MICHELLE MEDHAT: Some pasts never let go!
ALEX SHAW: Essex villain Big Chris Cotton wants to leave his life of crime for one of sun, sex and sangria, but will his past let him go?
ANITA KOVACEVIC: A woman goes job-hunting and stumbles upon a mother who is trying to save her son’s life from a bully in a completely unexpected way.
C.A. SANDERS: A group of New York City children play a street game with a mysterious stranger and their souls as the prize.
NEIL NEWTON: A cutting edge linguist launches the definitive study of dialect and finds out there is more to the structure of the universe than he suspects.
LUBNA SENGUL: Battle of two minds, Julian must decide his fate.
J. MAYERSON BROWN: Cheating once is forgivable. But twice?
JEAN GILL: Coming of age is tricky for an unwanted zodiac sign.
CHARLIE FLOWERS & HANNAH HAQ: An English nationalist and a Muslim girl share a long train ride and find that more brings them together than divides them.
GEOFF NELDER: A grape-sized micrometeorite hits John’s house at the same time every day. Help!
ELIZABETH NOREEN-NEWTON: Gaunt Thibideaux was a man of habits. And you know what they say. “Old Habits” die hard.
MARK FINE: An exotic foreigner finds his beautiful bride is now bored with him. Is it the end of their domestic bliss or is there a twist?
Note: I do have a short story in this very twisted collection. However, you will find some great short stories by fine authors here.
Amazon Reviews
A Handful of Fire by Alexis Alvarez
(Contemporary Romance)
A taboo relationship…steamy passion…and secrets that can ruin everything.
Single father Gabriel Baystock is rich and powerful, educated and handsome – and helpless when it comes to ensuring his son Michael recovers fully from a childhood cancer. He’ll do anything, even hire award-winning child therapist Shai Bonaventura.
Shai is drawn to brooding, sexy Gabriel, and while she falls in love with the little boy she’s hired to help, she loses her heart to his father. Their powerful chemistry is off the charts hot, and Shai thinks he might be the one to help heal her own demons, even if it means crossing professional boundaries.
But when old secrets from Shai’s past are revealed, it’s not clear if their fragile relationship can survive the harsh reality of the real world…or whether they have the courage to fight for what they really need?
A Handful of Fire is a full-length stand-alone romance (about 80K words) with an HEA. It’s a contemporary love story with a high heat level and gorgeous, poetic prose.
My Review
Between the Beats 