I actually picked up Itsy Bitsy Spider by Willow Rose on an Amazon free day on 11.22.14. I didn’t read it until 6.8.19, but that’s not the books fault. LOL
I am thoroughly creeped out by spiders, so I do love this cover.
Oh Astrid. My heart is breaking and I’ve only read the Prologue. I am one of those people that love Prologues and Epilogues.
Emma Frost is new to the island due to an inheritance, a house from her grandmother. let’s see what kind of trouble will come her way, seeing I know Willow Rose from other stories of hers I have read and she tends to blow my mind.
There’s a murder next door. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”
Willow has a way of grabbing me by the throat, gaining my full attention as I struggle like the characters to survive the evil.
WTF! Sure led me down a twisted, horrifying path to the killer.
Willow Rose draws me in slowly…I know it’s hard to come up with something new..and BAM, in your face, but Willow seems able to do that many times over!
From past to present an evil secret in Emma’s family is expose.
Blew me away. Saying OMG, Omg, omg…
5 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB
Emma Frost inherits a
house on Fanoe Island when her grandmother dies. She decides to move
there with her family, much to her teenage-daughter’s regret. One
morning a wealthy old woman in her street is found murdered and soon
Emma finds herself wrapped in a mystery uncovering the island’s dark
secrets that not only runs deep within the history of the island but
also within her own family.
From the author of the International
Bestselling books, the Rebekka Franck-series comes a new Scandinavian
Mystery destined to keep you up all night. This is the first book in the
Emma Frost-series and is followed by Miss Polly had a dolly.
ABOUT WILLOW ROSE
TheQueen of Scream aka Willow Rose is a #1 Amazon Best-selling Author
and an Amazon ALL-star Author of more than 60 novels.
She writes Mystery, Thriller, Paranormal, Romance, Suspense, Horror,
Supernatural thrillers, and Fantasy.
Willow’s books are fast-paced, nail-biting pageturners with twists you won’t
see coming. Several of her books have reached the Kindle top 10 of
ALL books in the US, UK, and Canada. She has sold more than three
million books.
Willow lives on Florida’s Space Coast with her husband and two daughters.
When she is not writing or reading, you will find her surfing and
watch the dolphins play in the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.
Website * Facebook * Twitter * Bookbub * Amazon * Goodreads
Happy Monday everyone and welcome back to Music Monday! Let’s share
some songs we’ve been enjoying lately! If you would like to play, and I
really hope you do, please see the rules and link up below.
Rules:
Every Monday share a few songs you’ve been enjoying lately. It
doesn’t have to be a specific genre, new, or one of your favorites –
just something you’d like to share with others. If possible, share a
music or lyric video of the song and your thoughts on the song(s),
artist(s), and/or music video(s).
If you would like to participate in Music Monday, please join the link up by sharing your post’s url HERE
I rarely watch the Grammy’s, but this year, because I only recently found Billy Eilish, I had to watch. She is so distinctive and different and I fell in love with her music. Because of the digital world, so many opportunities abound.
Lil Nas X totally blows my mind. This is sooooo much fun!
Welcome to my stop for Finding Lisa by Sigrid Macdonald. Which fork would you take? I love book covers and often grab a book for that reason alone. Sometimes it works against me. LOL Let’s send out a big welcome to Sigrid Macdonald.
TOPIC: MY BOOK COVER
Dear Sherry:
Thank you for having me on your blog and
for asking about my book cover. It took me a long time to choose this cover
because I wanted it to represent so many things.
Tara, my protagonist, has a dilemma.
Everything is going wrong in her life, with her marriage, on the job, and with
her moody teenage son. And, to top it off, she’s about to turn 40, and the
thought terrifies her. The only thing right in her life is her best friend,
Lisa. One night the two women have a typical night out on the town watching a
flick at the foreign film theater and going for a snack at the deli afterward.
It’s status quo. They do this all the time. But this night is different. This
night Lisa tells Tara that she is pregnant, and her partner, Ryan, may not be
the father. Tara is worried because Ryan has a history of domestic violence and
was incarcerated for assaulting his first wife. Tara doesn’t think Ryan will
handle this news well. But there is no time to find out because right after
that night at the movies, Lisa goes missing. Tara has no idea what to do.
The cover illustrates Tara’s
indecisiveness. A woman is standing, looking out into an empty field. She is at
a crossroads where she could go left, or she could go right, or she could walk
straight across the grass without a path at all. But Tara has no idea what to
do. She’s never been in this situation. It’s possible that Lisa could have
broken her sobriety and gone on a drinking binge. If that’s the case, Tara
doesn’t want to embarrass her by attracting publicity. Or maybe Lisa was too
afraid to tell Ryan about a baby that might not be his. But deep down, Tara
knows that Lisa would never take off without contacting her boss, her parents,
or Tara. She might not tell Ryan where she’s going, but she would let the
others know so they wouldn’t worry. So, now Tara is worried!
Eventually, Tara will make several
decisions, for good or for bad. It’s up to the reader to decide whether Tara
does the right thing in her search for her friend, along with her own shaky
sense of self-identity. As Charles Dickens said in the first line of David Copperfield, “Whether I shall
turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by
anybody else, these pages must show.” The same can be said for Tara.
Thanks so much.
Best,
Sigrid
PS I had a midlife crisis and pretended to
be 39 for several years! It was so much easier for me to turn 60 than 40, so I
wanted to give this particular issue to my character because we live in such a
youth-oriented culture that I think this magic number of 40 affects a lot of
people, especially women who are told that they need to stay young to be
relevant.
Finding Lisa by Sigrid Macdonald
GENRE: Mystery/women’s fiction
BLURB
Finding
Lisa is a character driven story about a quirky Canadian woman named Tara who
is about to turn 40. She dreads the thought. Everything is going wrong in her
life from her stale marriage to her boring job to her hopeless crush on a
24-year-old guy. The only thing right in Tara’s life is her best friend Lisa
who has just confided that she is pregnant and the baby does not belong to her
partner Ryan, who has a history of domestic violence. Then Lisa disappears and
the search is on to find her.
EXCERPT
All the carts were taken at the supermarket on Tuesday. I
found one off to the side of the vegetable aisle. It had a defective wheel,
which resulted in me almost overturning a display of cantaloupes. The cart was
also enormous. No doubt this was a deliberate ploy on the part of the
supermarket to encourage excess shopping.
“I feel as though I’m driving a school bus,” I
announced to the frail, pale orange-haired woman to my left, who was squeezing
the small, unappetizing looking cantaloupes.
She smiled faintly and nodded. I wondered how she had the
strength to push the heavy cart through the long aisles of the grocery store at
her age.
“Mum, I’ll go with you to one of those Women against
Rape meetings if you want?” Devon
said to my astonishment, his voice rising at the end of his sentence.
“There’s only one condition. You have to watch 8 Mile with me.”
“8 Mile? Isn’t that the movie based on the book by
Stephen King?”
“Nah, you’re thinking about The Green Mile,” Devon
replied. “8 Mile is the story of a rapper in Detroit. It’s based on the
life of Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers. Eminem even stars in
it,” he said with increasing enthusiasm.
“I think it’ll give you a better idea of where he’s
coming from. You know, you’re always talking about these girls who’ve been,
like, abused and what horrible lives they’ve had. You even feel bad about boys
who were taken advantage of by priests or their hockey coaches. So why don’t
you have any sympathy for Marshall? His mother was abusive. She was mean to
him, and she did drugs! Also, she, like, gave him something called Munchkins
syndrome,” Devon added uncertainly.
“Munchausen syndrome?” I asked, trying to picture the
tough guy with the tattoos and bad attitude as a small child with a
manipulative and controlling mother.
“Yeah, that sounds right. She made him feel sick when
he was totally healthy. And, Mum, I know you would respect the way Em felt
about his little brother, Nathan. He, like, didn’t wanna leave him alone in the
house with his mother when he finally split from Detroit. He’s also really keen
about his daughter, Hailie Jade. He talks about her all the time in his songs
and on TV.”
I pushed the buttons on the radio. The Steve Miller band was
singing, “Time keeps on slipping, slipping into the future.” I had a
sense of motion. The car was moving forward, and with every traffic light I
passed, I was moving farther away from Lisa and our routine evenings at the
ByTowne Theatre. The rest of us were going ahead, and Lisa had been left
behind. I wanted to go back, not just to last Thursday night, but to my university
days, so I could live my life all over again.
I wanted to be sixteen or twenty-six again, making decisions
based on what I knew now. So many lost opportunities. How had I managed to
completely screw up my life? I’d done everything wrong except that I hadn’t
become a street prostitute or a serial murderer. Too late for the former—who
would want me? But there was still time for the latter.
AUTHOR Bio and Links
Originally from New Jersey, Sigrid Macdonald lived for almost thirty years in Ottawa, Ontario, and currently resides in Weston, Florida. She has been a freelance writer for years. Her works have appeared in TheGlobe and Mail newspaper; the Women’s Freedom NetworkNewsletter; the American magazine Justice Denied; The Toastmaster; and the Anxiety DisordersAssociation of Ontario Newsletter. Her first book, Getting Hip: Recovery from a Total Hip Replacement, was published in 2004. Her second book, Be Your OwnEditor, followed in 2010. Although Finding Lisa is written in first person, Macdonald only resembles her character in the sense that she once had a neurotic fixation on her hair, and she has always been called by the wrong name; instead of being called Sigrid, people have called her Susan, Sharon, Astrid, Ingrid and, her personal favorite, Siri.
Macdonald
is a social activist who has spent decades working on the seemingly disparate
issues of women’s rights and wrongful convictions; she has worked at the
Women’s Center at Ramapo College of New Jersey and Carleton University in
Ottawa, Ontario, and was a member of AIDWYC, The Association in Defense of the
Wrongly Convicted. She owns an editing company called Book Magic. Sigrid is a
public speaker and a member of Mothers against Drunk Driving, Ottawa
Independent Writers, the American Association of University Women, and the
Editors’ Association of Canada. Visit her website at http://bookmagic.ca/ or friend her on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/sigridmac.
Sigrid Macdonald will be awarding a $20 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Follow the tour and comment, the more you comment, the better your chances of winning. Follow the tour HERE.
Zack Daniels grew up in a rundown apartment complex off the Las Vegas Strip. At an early age, he learned to protect and support his mother and sister with determination and grit. After his sister is raped by the son of a local Russian mobster and commits suicide, he joins the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police to seek justice for her and to protect the public.
When a high-profile executive is murdered in his best friend’s hotel, Zack is assigned to track down the killer. The sole witness to the murder is a beautiful high-priced escort. He must let go of his vendetta against his sister’s rapist to work the case.
Sonnet Banks goes to the wrong hotel room and witnesses a murder. She is stunned. She knows the killer. He’s someone from her past. Someone she hoped to never see again.
During her police interview, Sonnet tells Zack she doesn’t recognize the killer, but Zack is convinced she’s lying. Zack needs the lovely, evasive woman to tell him what she knows and is willing to use seduction to get it. Yet, was it still seduction when all he could do was think about her?
Zack Daniels is so hot he makes Sonnet’s knees weak. He checks every box for her. Every box. But even if he wasn’t her protector, she can’t risk getting close to him or anyone. And she can’t tell him the truth.
After a bold attempt on Sonnet’s life, Zack enlists the help of two close friends and someone completely unexpected to protect her. The countdown to an all-out war looms before them. Would they all survive? Time was running out.
Charlene is a Waynesburg, Pennsylvania native. She went to Waynesburg High School and graduated Cum Laude from Waynesburg College with a Bachelor’s Degree in Liberal Arts. Currently lives in Sacramento, California where she spent the last 33 years working at Northrop Grumman.
Books have always been her passion. She started reading at an early age and progressed to full-length books by age nine. The first supernatural book series she read was Dark Shadows, and it sparked her interest in all things paranormal, with a spicy touch of romance mixed in for good measure. She also started writing poetry in grade school and continues to do so today.
Being an avid reader, the consummate daydreamer and an incurable romantic with a Cinderella complex, she started creating her own characters and storylines because she realized she had her own stories to tell.
She is married and has a son, a daughter, and four beautiful grandchildren.
Besides reading and writing, she also enjoys photography, travel, music, and great movies.
When 16-year old Quin’s best friend Harper fails The Beck’s assessment, will she ever see her again?
Regular appraisals are part of life in The Beck, a walled-in community constantly threatened by floodwaters. But when the shocking results of the most recent test are revealed, Quin knows her world is about to change forever.
Wrenched from Agric, where she has lived and worked for years, Quin finds herself thrown into the unfamiliar Patrol Sector. Yearning for her lost friend, struggling to adjust to her new surroundings, she begins to question the society she thought she knew.
And then she meets the mysterious Cam, who seems willing to break the rules for her. Determined to find Harper, Quin enlists his help. But when she discovers the horrifying truth, it might just destroy her.
If you devour fast-paced, addictive stories with compelling characters who inhabit intriguing futures, you’ll love The Flow Series.
It’s been three months since Quin transferred to Patrol and discovered the terrifying truth about the community she lives in. Citizens of The Beck are disposable and those in charge are capable of terrible cruelty. Vowing to protect those around her, Quin has joined the Resistance. But she knows she is risking everything.
Rebellion of any kind must be secretive and clever. Gathering enough people to fight seems like an impossible task. When those closest to her are directly threatened, Quin knows she has to act. But time is running out. Governance will stop at nothing to protect the world it has worked to build. In the end, Quin must decide how far she is prepared to go to rescue the ones she loves.
Break is the second in the Flow series, which follows Quin as she struggles to carve out a future in the harsh regime she was born into.
Quin believed that a life away from The Beck would make her happy. But when a cruel twist of fate forces her to leave sooner than planned, she struggles to come to terms with her new reality. Haunted by memories of the people she left behind, she finds herself wishing she was back in Patrol, with Cam by her side.
Cut off from The Beck, the escapees carve out a new existence on a small island. Tentative bonds are formed, but as disputes surface and rebellion is threatened, Quin quickly realises that their new home isn’t the sanctuary she had imagined. And when one of her fellow citizens is willing to go to desperate measures to save those he loves, he puts the entire community in danger.
As they hatch a daring plan to save themselves, Quin is faced with a terrible choice: protect her friends or follow her heart.
Drift is the third in the Flow series, which follows Quin as she battles to forge a new life in unfamiliar territory without the man she has come to depend on.
Having survived the deadly virus that endangered her new community, Quin is devastated to learn that the same sickness threatens The Beck. With Adams and his Shadow Patrol in charge, Cam and her friends are in mortal danger.
The rebels know they’re not strong enough to take on The Beck’s government alone. The only way to succeed is to join forces with The Ridge. But their alliance is built on tenuous threads: one wrong move could destroy their hopes forever.
As Quin steels herself for the final battle, a shocking revelation leaves her wondering what she is willing to sacrifice in the name of freedom.
Quell is the fourth and final book in the Flow series, which follows Quin and her allies into the ultimate battle to save The Beck.
Clare Littlemore is a young adult dystopian and sci-fi author who thrives on fictionally destroying the world in as many ways as she possibly can.
She was born in Durham, in the UK. Her parents were both teachers, and she grew up in a world surrounded by books. She has worked for most of her life as a teacher of English at various high schools in England, where she has shared her passion for books with hundreds of teenagers. In 2013 she began writing her own fiction, got totally hooked, and hasn’t stopped since.
Clare lives in Warrington in the North West of England with her husband and two children.
