**images are linked to Amazon (I am an affiliate)**
~~~
Hello. Welcome to another edition of Sherry’s Shelves. Spring is in the air, but I wish it would quit raining. I don’t think I have ever seen this many days of no sun and I am sick of it. LOL I know, come August, I’ll probably to asking, “Why doesn’t it rain. Everything is so dry and I don’t want to spend the time watering.” Have you noticed any changes in the weather patterns in your neck of the woods?
I wanted to share the Family Skeleton Mystery Series books I won from Diversion Books in December, but I wasn’t able to get to it. Still…here’s a couple of Leigh Perry’s stories to curl up with on a cold winter’s day.
The covers are amazingly fun and addictive, but I don’t know who created them.
ONE SENTENCE REVIEW FOR THE SKELETON PAINTS A PICTURE
OMG I want to have a dance party with Georgia and Sid in this humorous mystery of theft and murder with dialogue and situations that almost had me rolling around on the floor with laughter and amazement.
4 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB
Georgia Thackery, adjunct
English professor, has a new job teaching at Falstone College of Art
and Design, known as FAD to its students and faculty. Living in a
borrowed bungalow during winter in the snowiest part of Massachusetts,
Georgia feels her isolation weighing as heavily as the weather. Then she
receives a package containing her best friend, Sid, a walking, talking
skeleton who has lived with the Thackery family since Georgia was six.
With Georgia working out of town, Sid was lonely too.
The two of
them make plans for a cozy semester together, and it might have worked
out that way if Sid hadn’t snuck out in the middle of the night to play
in the snow and spotted a crashed car. When he drags Georgia out to
investigate, they find the driver behind the wheel, apparently dead from
the collision.
Initially, police think it’s an accident, so Georgia and Sid think that’s the end of it―until Georgia finds out the body hits closer to home than she’d realized…
ONE SENTENCE REVIEW FOR THE SKELETON MAKES A FRIEND
This creatively written cozy mystery swept me up and carried me away, through lots of danger with plenty of suspects that kept me guessing while I laughed my way through it, step by step, with fabulously funny characters and dialogue.
4 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB
Georgia Thackery is
feeling pretty good about her summer job teaching at prestigious
Cattenhall College, and she’s renting a rustic cabin right by a lake for
herself, her daughter, Madison, and her best friend, Sid the Skeleton.
Together again, the trio are enjoying the quiet when a teenager named
Judy shows up looking for her friend. Georgia doesn’t recognize the
name, but she learns that the person Judy was looking for is actually
Sid.
Sid reveals that he and Judy are part of a regular online gaming group that formed locally, and one of their members has gone missing. Sid admits that he might have bragged about his investigative prowess, enough so that Judy wants him to find their missing player. Given that Sid doesn’t have many friends IRL―none, really, unless you count the Thackery family―Georgia agrees to help him search. They manage to discreetly enlist Judy, who lives in town, and follow the clues to… a dead buddy. Now they’ve got a killer on their hands. Probing the life of Sid’s friend, they realize a lot is wrong both on campus and in the seemingly quaint town, and someone doesn’t want them looking deeper.
ABOUT LEIGH PERRY
I was once asked why I’d chosen to write a mystery about an ambulatory skeleton. I replied that it was because of the old adage: Write what you know. After all, we’re all skeletons under the skin. And flesh, and tendons, and all that other messy stuff. After that, the woman decided not to ask me any more questions.
Seriously, I’m not sure why I decided to write about a walking,
talking skeleton named Sid. All I remember for sure is that I can track
the idea back to May of 2004. I told my husband about Sid–he was always
named Sid–then wrote a few pages and sent to my beta-reading pals to see
if they thought there was a book in it. All three of them seemed to
think it would work, and I did some initial research and planning, but
other projects intervened and I didn’t pick it up again until 2011.
That’s when I was pitching ideas for a new series to my agent and
editor, and I put together a packet of eight. Both the agent and editor
them zoomed in on Sid’s story. I guess they’re skeletons under the skin,
too.
As you might guess from the idea of a walking, talking skeleton, A Skeleton in the Family is a paranormal mystery. I was inspired by old TV shows like Bewitched,I Dream of Jeannie, and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir to write about a world that’s pretty much like the real one, with one key difference. In this case: Sid.
Sid has been part of Georgia Thackery’s family since she was a little
girl, but only she, her sister Deborah, and their parents know about
him. Not even Georgia’s teenaged daughter Madison has met him. But when
Georgia and Madison move to the family home so Georgia can take a job at
the local university, it’s a whole lot tougher to hide him up in the
attic. Then Sid spots a person he recognizes from when he was more
traditionally alive, and old memories start to surface. He wants to know
where he came from. Georgia agrees to help him solve his own murder,
but when they find a much fresher murder victim, it gets a whole lot
more complicated. That’s the story of the first book in the series, A Skeleton in the Family.
The Skeleton Makes a Friend, the fifth in the Family Skeleton series, was released in November 2018.
The Family Skeleton series mysteries are my first mysteries, but not really. Under the name Toni L.P. Kelner
I’ve published eleven novels and twenty-somthing short stories, and
have co-edited six urban fantasy anthologies with New York Times best
seller Charlaine Harris. I’ve adopted a pen name because this is a new
series, and because paranormal novels are a departure for me. But it’s
still me! So if you like Toni L.P. Kelner’s
books, you might like the Family Skeleton series, too. If you don’t
like Kelner’s books, forget I said anything — I never even heard of that
Kelner woman.
Though I was born in Pensacola, FL and raised in Charlotte, NC, I’ve been living north of Boston, MA for 30 years or so and raised both my daughters there. I share the house with my husband, one of the daughters, a guinea pig, and an ever-increasing number of books.
The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice.The
only rules are to grab a book (any book), turn to page 56 or 56% in
your ereader and find any sentence or a few ( no spoilers) that grabs
you and post it.
Please join Rose City Reader every Friday to share the first sentence or so
of the book you are reading along with you initial thoughts about the
sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.
Please include the title of the book and the author’s name.
~~~
Jon Land has been one of my must read authors for a long time now, way before I started blogging, so I am very excited to share his latest Caitlin Strong novel, Strong As Steel.
The liman reisi of the Port of Ordu watched the freighter crest the currents, alerted to its presence by the fact it was gaining speed instead of reducing it as the ship approached its apportioned pier. He stopped short of sounding the alarm because he recognized her as the Dolunay, captained by Aykan Talu, one of the most experienced in the region. No doubt Talu had yet to slow his engines to better negotiate the unusually stiff currents a larger freighter would have sliced through in effortless fashion.
Uh oh. I see a problem.
MY 56
“Ranger, I know this is gonna sound crazy, but he didn’t have a face. It’s like it was somebody else’s face and he was wearing it,” the man continued. “Like he sewed it on in strips. He wore a hat tilted low over his brow to disguise it as best e could. But when he was checking out, the light hit him just right and I thought maybe Halloween came early.
(56% on Kindle)
GOODREADS BLURB
1994: Texas
Ranger Jim Strong investigates a mass murder on a dusty freight train
linked to a mysterious, missing cargo for which no record exists.
The Present:
His daughter, fifth generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong, finds
herself on the trail of that same cargo when skeletal remains are found
near an excavation site in the Texas desert. She’s also dealing with the
aftermath of a massacre that claimed the lives of all the workers at a
private intelligence company on her watch.
These two cases are connected by a long buried secret, one that men have killed and died to protect. Caitlin and her outlaw lover Cort Wesley Masters must prove themselves to be as strong as steel to overcome a bloody tide that has been rising for centuries.
It has only been recently that I have begun to read outside my favorite genres, and it is because of authors like P M Terrell. I first fell in love with her writing when I was reading the Black Swamp Mystery series and I never looked back.
Close your eyes, take a deep breath and let your mind go. Imagine you are a pioneer woman, captured by the Indians, bound hand and foot and taken far from home. Imagine floating in a canoe, smelling the trees, feeling the wind on your face and listening to the boat knife through the water. Around the bend the prairie spreads out in its vastness and a herd of bison grow larger. There is a white buffalo. Have you heard of it?
Songbirds Are Free by P M Terrell is told from two points of view. One is Mary’s, the other is Jim’s. A relative who never gives up in his search for her.
Captured by Indians, Mary chose to live and wait patiently to escape, adopting the life instead of dying and her determination to survive and return to her family is amazing.
Songbirds Are Free is a piece of P M Terrell’s personal history, spiced up with her ability to write a story that will have you white knuckled, sometimes pissed off, sometimes sad, sometimes even spreading a smile or two across my face as I travel with P M Terrell in Mary’s fictional footsteps.
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Songbirds Are Free by P M Terrell.
5 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB
Songbirds are Free is the story of Mary’s years in captivity and her eventual escape. It is a journey that will take her from present-day Nashville deep into Indian Territory–through Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan before she is able to successfully escape her captors. It is the story of courage and determination in the face of overwhelming odds. It is the story of one woman’s effort to survive a brutal existence and travel hundreds of miles alone to be reunited with her family.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
p.m.terrell
is the pen name for Patricia McClelland Terrell, the award-winning,
internationally acclaimed author of more than 21 books in four genres:
contemporary suspense, historical adventure/suspense, computer how-to
and non-fiction.
Prior to writing full-time, she founded
two computer companies in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area. Among
her clients were the Central Intelligence Agency, United States Secret
Service, U.S. Information Agency, and Department of Defense. Her
specialties were in white collar computer crimes and computer
intelligence, themes that have carried forward to her contemporary
suspense.
She has been a full-time author since
2002. Vicki’s Key was a top five finalist in the 2012 International Book
Awards and 2012 USA Book Awards nominee, and The Pendulum Files was a
national finalist for the Best Cover of the Year in 2014. The Tempest
Murders was one of four finalists in the 2013 International Book Awards,
cross-genre category.
Her historical suspense, River Passage,
was a 2010 Best Fiction and Drama Winner. It was determined to be so
historically accurate that a copy of the book resides at the Nashville
Government Metropolitan Archives in Nashville, Tennessee.
She is also the co-founder of The Book
‘Em Foundation, an organization committed to raising public awareness of
the correlation between high crime rates and high illiteracy rates. She
is the organizer and chairperson of Book ‘Em North Carolina, an annual
event held in Lumberton, North Carolina, to raise funds to increase
literacy and reduce crime. For more information on this event and the
literacy campaigns funded by it, visit www.bookemnc.org. She is also the founder of The Novel Business, mentoring authors in the business end and selling of books.
She sits on the board of the Friends of
the Robeson County Public Library. She has also served on the boards of
Robeson County Arts Council, Crime Stoppers and Crime Solvers and became
the first female president of the Chesterfield County-Colonial Heights
Crime Solvers in Virginia.
I haven’t read any Young Adult for a while, so when I was offered a copy of Diamond Moon by Celia Breslin I jumped on it. This may be the 12th book in the series, but I didn’t have any trouble beginning out of order. That being said, I loved it enough to recommend beginning at the beginning so you don’t miss any of the good stuff.
It’s been a while since I have read any Young Adult Werewolf stories, and I was ready for this sweet little novella, Diamond Moon by Celia Breslin.
Darci’s parents had died and all she had left was a map leading to a mystery town. She is half human and half werewolf. Her desire is to be all human, so hopefully whoever is in the mystery town can help her to quit shifting. Last time her heart stopped. How long before it kills her?
Thus, the adventure begins.
She’s going solo. She is creeped out by the forest, which usually brings her comfort and puts her at ease. Maybe that is a sign. Is someone or something out there?
We meet Ross. He is all wolfy male, wanting to escape the city and find more meaning for his life. He walks away from his computer job to build houses, though he still keeps his hand in technology.
Okay, I think we all know where this is going, but I am having a great time getting there.
I quickly fell in love with Mister Sun God Sexy. I love his Big Bad Wolf attitude and his pet attack cat.
A lot is packed into this short story and I loved it.
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Diamond Moon by Celia Breslin.
4 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB
Human-wolf hybrid Darci Diamond spends every full moon locked in auntie’s basement in Southern Oregon. Her excruciating shifts terrify her, the last one causing her heart to stop beating. Seeking a cure, she journeys to Los Lobos.
Ross
Luparell returns to the struggling Tao pack, using his millions made in
the tech industry to build homes for pack families in need. He never
imagined he would also find his one true mate. But when a hybrid with
the biggest green eyes he’s ever seen lands on his doorstep in the
middle of a wicked summer storm, there’s no denying it. She’s the one.
She wants a normal human life, free from pain-filled shifts. He won’t give up on her Wolf, and will do whatever it takes to help her accept her true nature. But can he convince her to trust him with her heart?
ABOUT CELIA BRESLIN
Writer, urban fantasy and paranormal romance. Mega Joss Whedon fan. Lover of dark chocolate and exercise (no kidding). I write about the sexy and mysterious creatures of the Otherworld. Vampires, werewolves and all manner of Fae hold an extra special place in my heart.
Sir Geoffrey…no conscience, no morals, self preservation, not someone I would want in my circle of friends. But I do love a good bad guy. LOL
Is there an honest person in government? Is there anyone that doesn’t have their own devious agenda, willing to go to any lengths to get what they want? I do love conspiracies, so I was looking forward to diving into this one.
B P Smythe has created some despicable characters, but to counter the bad, we need to have the good. There is tons of action and characters that have their individual stories, and they come together the story becomes clear.
Though it didn’t rate high on my thriller list, The Expired by B P Smythe was an interesting and enjoyable read that fed my conspiracy reading need.
3 Star
GOODREADS BLURB
‘The Expired’ is a
psychological thriller masterpiece showing how vulnerable people can be
brainwashed to become sleepers (Manchurian Candidates) and used by
corrupt politicians to further their own ends. ‘The Expired’ shadows
true accounts of government sleeper programmes set up during the Korean
War and the East West Cold War.
Commander Gregory Potting is a
former head of MI6 Intelligence and the governments most trusted Senior
Adviser for Internal Affairs.
His position is put to the test in
1973 when a bizarre psychological plot unfolds that is inextricably
linked to a London terrorist attack, a cocaine drug scam, a homosexual
called Francis Hodder who suffers from schizophrenia and changes from
time to time to Roxanne – a transvestite prostitute who robs and murders
his clients.
Francis Hodder is a transsexual who preys on gay men. As a child he is abused by his father who is head of government security. Francis becomes an embarrassment to MI6 because of his gender leaning. He is brainwashed to become a Sleeper assassin triggered by code words to kill personnel who threaten government security. Francis becomes a manipulated pawn, who by mistake during a sexual encounter with a Black September terrorist, uncovers plans for a deadly attack on a densely crowded popular sports event to kill thousands of people to further the cause of EL Fatah and Black September.
ABOUT B P SMYTHE
I studied engineering at Carshalton College and eventually became a member of the Institute of Quality Assurance.
My engineering career took on many roles including toolmaking and being a technical writer for an artificial limb manufacturer. However, I’ve always enjoyed putting pen to paper while raising quality manuals and writing reports. I also write tennis articles for my local county magazine and relax reading crime and horror fiction. This, coupled with my technical writing career, partly influenced my transition into creative writing.
Wanting to expand my writing knowledge, I obtained a Level 3 / NCFE Certificate / PI410 creative writing diploma.
Sow
And You Shall Reap – http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/145677171X is my first
self- published novel. However, I have submitted numerous short stories
for internet competitions including, winning £100 as first prize for my A
Rose Without a Thorn for the www.spinetinglerspublishing online
magazine and winning £50 first prize for my We’ll Meet Again in the
http://dark-places.co.uk online magazine.
Two of my other short
stories, Love Me Do and My Secret Place, have also been published in the
printed Litro Magazine – Issue 140 – ISBN 978-0-9554245-5-7
http://www.litro.co.uk/2015/02/litro-140-diaries/
Near the end of
2015 I fortunately obtained a three book deal contract with Bloodhound
Books www.bloodhoundbooks.com to publish a trilogy of macabre/thriller
collected short stories. My first book titled – ‘From a Poison Pen’ is
the first book of the trilogy and highlights from the stories – What
happens when a member of the Hitler youth ends up in a concentration
camp? How does a beach side cocktail get in the way the way of one
woman’s scheming? What leads a teenage girl to reign down fire and
brimstone? When a doctor buries his mistake, can he get away with it?
This collection of dark, humorous and macabre tales explores the disturbing side of human nature.
When I read The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon, I was fascinated while exploring true accounts of government sleeper programmes set up during the Korean war and the east west cold war. This inspired me to write ‘The Expired’, a psychological thriller showing how prospective candidates can be brainwashed to become sleepers and used by corrupt politicians to further their own ends.
Aurora’s brother had been murdered, but only after being tortured.
I love that she is alone…in the middle of the night…
Thump. What’s that? Is it the cat? Thump. Uh-oh. I know Jane…and that is no cat!
Hide? Run? Too late. Merry Christmas to her. 🙁
Brady…Okay, I didn’t see that coming. Instalove…Instalust…The scenario is pretty far fetched, but it is fiction and I do love to forget the logical and set my mind free to follow where the author wants to take me.
Do you want a short, easy read, with thrills, chills and a happy ever after? You might want to give this a try.
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of The Diamond Star by Jane Blythe.
4 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB
~ Part of the Heart of a Hunk multi-author box set ~
It’s
Christmas Eve, and Aurora Kinsley is grieving her brother who was
recently murdered. That quickly becomes the least of her concerns when
she wakes in the middle of the night to find four men trashing the
house. To survive the mess her brother left behind, she’ll have to put
her trust in one of the men who killed her only sibling.
** Warning: Graphic violence and themes of sexual assault/abuse **
**images are linked to Amazon (I am an affiliate)**
~~~
Hello. Welcome to another edition of Sherry’s Shelves. Spring is in the air and so was love…Hope everyone enjoyed their Valentine…s Day. Mr Wonderful was his usual wonderful self. He got me some delicious chocolate covered strawberries and a beautiful, wonderfully fragrant bouquet of roses.
So… I have been having issues with my arm and I do believe I have biceps tendonitis. Mr Wonderful has it in his elbow. You may probably be able to guess why….one of the drawbacks of technology…computeritis. We both love our computers and when we aren’t out and about doing things, we spend a lot of time on them. How about you? Any side affects come your way? What do you do to correct them?
The sun is shining and I feel good. I love the feet of it on my skin, warming me, lulling me into a trance, igniting my imagination, transporting me to another place…kind of like when I read a good book.
It is a lazy summer day in the Appalachian foothills of Tennessee; much
like the day before, and the day before that. Everything seems normal
– at least on the surface; like an idyllic, pastoral painting; the
sky dyed with pastels of blue and white, the ground carpeted with
dark green fescue and bluegrass, a clapboard farmhouse resting on top
of a hill, sugar maples, oaks and Eastern red cedars providing
welcome shade from the heat of a Tennessee summer sun. You can almost
see moving images of little children running barefoot through the
grass; an era before tweeting and texting and the triumph of
technology over all.
Alas, appearances lie.
Behind the clapboard farmhouse sits a red barn, all bright and new looking;
fresh enough to lull a casual observer into believing it the benign
keeper of hey for cattle and shelter for goats. A closer look reveals
the color to be not barn red, but blood red.
Locals tend to close their eyes when passing by that barn. Something is just
not right about it. Some say it is unnatural. Some say it’s obscene
and evil. But they don’t say such things out loud, for the owner of
the barn is Sheldon Sprigg, a well-respected man of the cloth, the
preacher at Hare’s Corner Church of God Incarnate. Sheldon is the
most upright man in these parts. He keeps the law religiously, and
makes sure his wife and teenaged daughter do too. After all, to obey
is better than sacrifice.
Still, there’s just something that not right about that barn.
Michael Potts grew up near Smyrna, Tennessee and is currently Professor of
Philosophy at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
His undergraduate degree (in Biblical languages) is from David
Lipscomb University. He also holds the Master of Theology from
Harding University Graduate School of Religion, the Master of Arts
(in Religion) from Vanderbilt University, and the Ph.D. in philosophy
from The University of Georgia. Michael has twenty articles in
scholarly journals, nine book chapters, six encyclopedia articles,
six book reviews, and he co-edited the book, “Beyond Brain
Death: The Case Against Brain Based Criteria for Human Death,”
which was published in 2000 by Kluwer Academic Publishers. He also
has over fifty scholarly presentations, including one presented at
the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at The Vatican in 2005. Michael is
a 2007 graduate of The Writers Loft at Middle Tennessee State
University and a 2007 graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop at St.
Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. His poetry has been
published in Journal of the American Medical Association, Iodine
Poetry Journal, Poems & Plays, and other literary journals. His
poetry chapbook, “From Field to Thicket,” won the 2006 Mary
Belle Campbell Poetry Book Award of the North Carolina Writers
Network. His creative nonfiction essay, “Haunted,” won the
Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Award, also sponsored by the North
Carolina Writers Network. Besides reading and writing, he enjoys
vegetable gardening, canning, and ghost investigations. He and his
wife, Karen, live with their three cats, Frodo, Rosie, and Pippin, in
Linden, North Carolina.
Elias Zanbaka reached out to me through Goodreads offering his short story, Environmentally Friendly, to me for review. I’m glad I took him up on the offer. At the time of posting, it was free (be sure and check for the “0”) and you can grab it HERE.
I’m so glad I grabbed this original, intense, wild rollercoaster ride of a short story that had me zipping through the pages, following a cop trying to do a good thing, giving more than taking and leaving me wanting more of this wonderful character.
4 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB
Out of seven billion people, one man has declared war on Mother Nature and plans to bring it to its knees.
Out of all the criminals in Los Angeles, he’s the number one target being hunted by the LAPD tonight.
And out of the entire LAPD, one officer is hell-bent on helping him complete his mission.
