Heather Graham is a must read author for me and she did not let me down in this short hair raising story of monsters and terror, that unfolded like a movie in my mind, with Prince Charming coming to the rescue and don’t we all want that?
5 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB:For special-effects artist Ali MacGregor, it can be hard to tell fantasy from reality. Especially when her coworker Victor leaves her alone in the studio one night, surrounded by scary creations—zombies, werewolves and mangled corpses. And then she hears footsteps…. Footsteps that shouldn’t be there.
Nearby, Ali’s ex, cop Greg Austin, is called to the graveyard set of a horror movie after a real corpse appears. But the dead man isn’t who his ID says he is. And Victor isn’t who he seems to be, either. Greg quickly realizes that Ali, the woman he’s never stopped loving, is in grave danger….
. 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.
~~~
Black Water by T Jefferson Parker
I am a huge fan of T Jefferson Parker. I used to go to the library, pick an author and clear the shelf, bringing home huge piles of books. Picking up T Jefferson Parker is a no brainer.
This is the fabulous cover I have for my 1st edition hardcover published in 2002. I love the bubbling water.
She imagined touching him and being touched. Wondered how his cleanly shaven cheek would feel against her neck. Wondered how his wiry arms would feel around her, what his flat boxer’s chest would feel like against hers. Sometimes she’d picture him and herself together and she’d smile inwardly because he was two inches shorter than she was. This amused her and made her think of the famous actors she’s heard about who were shot from heightening angles. In particular Yul Brynner standing on a box in The kIng and I, according to her mother, who saw the movie something like twenty times.
(Page 56 in 1st edition hardcover published in 2002)
Book Beginnings
Archie pushed the gearshift into third and set his hand on her knee. Coast Highway, southbound. Man in the moon big and close, like he was tilting his head for a peek down into the convertible. Archie glanced up, couldn’t tell if the guy was smiling of frowning. didn’t care because Gwen’s skin was warm through the dress, a few degrees warmer than the breeze gusting through the car.
GOODREADS BLURB:Archie Wildcraft, a cop with a great career ahead of him, is found with a bullet in his brain, lying beside his murdered wife, Gwen. It looks like a botched murder-suicide, but Sergeant Merci Rayborn’s gut instincts tell her differently. As Archie holds on by a thread, Merci is drawn further into the Wildcrafts’ private lives and comes to believe that the young couple were deeply in love and that Archie’s been framed. When Archie vanishes from the hospital, it appears he’s on a vendetta, and it’s up to Merci to cover for him until she has a chance to solve the case on her own. Eventually, she’s led to the Russian mob and discovers awful secrets that she isn’t sure she wants to hand over to the heartless district attorney.
The Roma Series continues in Turning To Stone by Gabriel Valjan and starts out with a BANG!
I am on familiar ground with Turning To Stone…The Mob. I have read a lot of organized crime novels, and Turning To Stone has everything I look for…corruption, betrayal, brutality, wholesale slaughter and assassins, female, no less. I love that twist and, for me, it doesn’t happen often enough.
But this is not the organized crime of Al Capone’s day. They are going legit and manipulating events through money, so be careful about investing in the stock market. LOL
Gabriel Valjan’s series keeps getting better and better. The writing flows smoother for me, the pacing and suspense picking up to a level that makes it hard to put the book down.
Some surprising turns at the end make me realize how strong and determined Bianca and her cohorts are. They have questions and WILL NOT stop until they have the answers, no matter the cost to themselves.
I enjoyed Turning To Stone the most…so far…and I am so glad I stuck with the series!
Action packed with OMG moments. The brutal, tragic ending left me feeling very sad and I can hardly wait to see where we go from here.
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Threading The Needle from Gabriel Valjan.
4 Stars
SYNOPSIS
Alabaster Black aka Bianca Nerini returns as an investigation into a public official’s assassination pits Bianca and her friends against a backdrop of financial speculation, female assassins on motorcycles, and the Camorra—the most ruthless of Italian organized crime gangs—in Gabriel Valjan’s TURNING TO STONE, the fourth book of the highly praised Roma series (Winter Goose Publishing; June 2015; softcover $15.99; Kindle / Nook, $5.99).
En route to a secret meeting, Aldo Giurlani—the regional commissioner of Lombardy in northern Italy and a specialist on organized crime—is assassinated in the middle of a public square.
More mysterious is the package sent to Giurlani’s hand-picked team of five top investigators within the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), the Italian law enforcement agency that investigates illegal financial transactions, from money laundering to drug trafficking. Within the package are five copies of a book entitled Man of Smoke written by Aldo Palazzeschi.
Then there is Bianca’s tenuous online contact with a mysterious online contact known as Loki, who delivers a cryptic message to her, takes on a new twist with the appearance of a brilliant young obsessive-compulsive man who joins her team.
Complicating matters even further, old enemies and, more problematically, Alabaster’s former employer—Rendition, a murky covert U.S. government agency that does more than just investigate financial crimes—still have grudges to bear against her.
As new mysteries unfold, Bianca’s group quickly discovers that Naples might just be the most dangerous city in Italy.
ABOUT GABRIEL VALJAN
Gabriel Valjan lives in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the author of the Roma Series, available from Winter Goose Publishing. Gabriel has also written numerous short stories and essays found online and in print.
I was offered a chance to read For the Love of Grace by Andy Blackman and I am so happy I jumped on it. This suspense thriller quickly captured my attention and held it throughout.
Thanks Rachel at Authoright Marketing & Publicity and Andy Blackman for the chance to read and review this fantastic novel of love, loss and revenge.
Thank goodness I had a sixth sense about For the Love of Grace by Andy Blackman, because neither the cover or the blurb made me anticipate what was to come. I was quickly captured, wondering how Tom will unravel his complicated life and find a happy ending.
Tom grew up poor and hungry, with a thirst for knowledge that was aided by a photographic memory. He is a gentle, loving boy, devoted to his mother, until…
His entire life changed in the blink of an eye. Circumstances beyond our control can cause our lives to take a turn we never could have anticipated and this is just what happened to Tom.
I feel so much sympathy for Grace, his mother, that deserves sainthood in my book. She is a selfless, loving person, giving to others just because of their need. How much pain is such a wonderful person supposed to endure? I feel *** is not doing right by her.
I am halfway in and my heart is breaking for Tom. He is a good guy caught up in bad situations through no fault of his own, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Life deals him some bad breaks, but this 30 minutes was the worst of his life and nothing would stop him from exacting his revenge. And I am with him! I want to pick up a gun and hunt them down like the brutal savages they are.
I love when a man is bad and good at the same time. Know what I mean? Where do you draw the line? I sympathize with Tom, I feel his pain through Andy Blackman’s words. Andy does a fantastic job of taking me sky high only to drop me, splatting my feelings all over the ground.
I knew from the beginning that something really bad, tragic, would have to happen to take him down the road of an assassin and I kept waiting for it to happen. The suspense never let me rest. The writing created a sense of impending doom.
The peripheral characters are not written just for support. They all play an important part in his life, whether they are his friends or on the receiving end of his wrath, but this is Tom’s story.
I don’t know why I didn’t see the ending coming. I should have seen it. I guess I was so wrapped up in Tom, that I really didn’t want it to end, because I just could not find a way for it to end the way I wanted.
My only complaint…the book is too short. I would have loved to be with Tom through his training to become such a proficient killer. I would have loved a few other parts of the story to be fleshed out more, giving me more details. Maybe this is just because I didn’t want the story to end. BUT…it doesn’t.
I definitely want to check out Book II, The Second Son!!!!
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of For The Love of Grace from Andy Blackman.
4 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB:Grace Backer had a life full of tragedy. But despite everything, she raised her son, Tom, with her secret intact. Tom is a prodigal child, destined to escape the slums of the East End of London for a better life; circumstances will make him flee his loving mother and their home much sooner than expected.
Tom starts a new life in Odessa, Russia, and with the help of new-found friends starts a business. At last, he is finally accepted into a new and loving family, but one which holds its own dark secrets. A chance meeting with the son of a duke of the realm leads to close friendship and a new business partnership. When Tom decides to move his company to London and have his regal new friend run it, the firm thrives. However, not everything is as it seems, and Tom’s business soon conceals dangerous secrets of its own.
Years later, when Tom finally decides to return to London, he is a wanted man, one hunted by the intelligence agencies. If he is finally to be reunited with his beloved mother and his best friend, he must fight to put the past behind him. But keeping secrets is never easy.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of booksandabeat.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current read. Open to a random page. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!) Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
~~~~~~
I was offered a chance to read For the Love of Grace by Andy Blackman and I am so happy I jumped on it. This suspense thriller quickly captured my attention and held it throughout.
Thanks Rachel at Authoright Marketing & Publicity and Andy Blackman for the chance to read and review this fantastic novel of love, loss and revenge.
Eventually Grace let out a sigh, and said, “Well better get it over with,”and lifted the brown envelope and ripped the top off.
Grace read the short telegram; finally, after staring at the letter what seemed like an eternity, Grace passed it to Julie.
(page 32 in paperback)
The title and cover does not convey how wonderful the story inside really is!
GOODREADS BLURB:Grace Backer had a life full of tragedy. But despite everything, she raised her son, Tom, with her secret intact. Tom is a prodigal child, destined to escape the slums of the East End of London for a better life; circumstances will make him flee his loving mother and their home much sooner than expected.
Tom starts a new life in Odessa, Russia, and with the help of new-found friends starts a business. At last, he is finally accepted into a new and loving family, but one which holds its own dark secrets. A chance meeting with the son of a duke of the realm leads to close friendship and a new business partnership. When Tom decides to move his company to London and have his regal new friend run it, the firm thrives. However, not everything is as it seems, and Tom’s business soon conceals dangerous secrets of its own.
Years later, when Tom finally decides to return to London, he is a wanted man, one hunted by the intelligence agencies. If he is finally to be reunited with his beloved mother and his best friend, he must fight to put the past behind him. But keeping secrets is never easy.
Harassment…oh, it is so much more than that…and I wonder if Brutus will go all Cujo on her as the past comes back to haunt her with characters that are so far out there, entitled, mean, cruel, deadly, and the mystery of Slenderman seems to come out of the computer and walk in real life…
3 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB: An engrossing thriller from an Amazon bestselling author! Ever heard of Slender Man?
They say he is always there. They say he is always watching. A tall guy in a suit and tie, with no face, and arms like tentacles.
Some say he is an online myth; others will go very far to prove he is real, so far that they might even kill for him.
Fanoe Island is busy with the mayoral election coming up, when suddenly, the sitting mayor is found killed. Rumors tell that a faceless man dressed in a suit and tie did it.
In Emma Frost’s house that she inherited from her grandmother, a box of letters is found that tells a story from a long time ago. A terrifying story revealing a painful chapter in the life of her own family half a century ago.
– Slender Man is a spine-chilling mystery from the bestselling author Willow Rose. It is the ninth in her Emma Frost-series.
. 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.
~~~
The Cabin by Carla Neggers is a thriller that will keep you warm on those cold winter nights.
When he came home that evening and told her about Alice’s arrest and never mentioned the tape, Susanna assumed the tape was no good, completely irrelevant – and that Alice hadn’t mentioned it to him. Why should she? She was on her way to prison, her career ruined. If there’s been anything useful on the tape, she’d have turned it over, if only to nail Beau McCarrity and prove herself right.
(Page 56 in paperback)
Book Beginnings
Susann Galway sipped her margarita and watched the countdown to midnight on the television above the bar at Jim’s Place, the small, dark pub just down the street from where she lived with her grandmother and twin teenage daughters. It had been a fixture in the neighborhood for as long as Susanna could remember.
GOODREADS BLURB: Vengeance, money and murder are menacing companions when they meet in the quiet stillness of an Adirondack winter.
Texas Ranger Jack Galway knows his wife Susanna loves him, so when their marriage hits a rough patch, he supports her decision to take their teenaged daughters to Boston for a break. But now a couple of weeks has turned into several months and Jack has had enough. He wants his family back.
Ex-convict Alice Parker left a mess back in Texas, and she’ll never forgive Jack Galway for killing her dream of ever becoming a Texas Ranger herself. Now, guided by greed and vengeance, she’s got her sights set on his family.
Packing up the girls and her grandmother, Susanna heads to a cabin in the Adirondacks, trying to escape her fears, her secrets . . . and maybe even the man she loves. Little does she realize they are being followed, only this time by her husband . . . and a murderer.
She Bites by Roger Arsht & Caitlin Hawker has such a cool cover and fantastic blurb, there is no way I could pass on this vigilante thriller novel. I would like to thank Roger, Caitlin and Archway Publishing for the opportunity to read and review She Bites.
She Bites has a bit of a twist, so keep reading to find out why.
Does this cover talk to you as loud as it talks to me?
She Bites by Roger Arsht & Caitlin Hawker is my kind of thriller. I am always on the lookout for a new twist to a familiar story and they supply a fantastic one.
She Bites is action packed from the get-go and I love it. Dog fighting is a cruel ‘sport’ and I do not understand how anyone can get any enjoyment from treating an animal that only wants to please with such cruelty.
Want to take a walk on the dark side…read on.
Dr Robyn Sparks is not only a veterinarian, but a vigilante, doling out punishment to animal abusers. Having critters in a book adds a special little something for me and increases my enjoyment.
I love that Robyn Sparks cares so much for animals that she will stand up for them when others don’t. She is a strong, determined woman, and after my own heart.
She wants them to feel the pain and she dishes it out with a vengeance. She is a female Dexter.
Would I go that far? Would you?
Have you pissed her off? Wellllll, if you have, she will be paying you a visit and She Bites. It WILL be hazardous to your health!
When Jack Williams, a detective with his own issues, comes into her life, it becomes even more complicated.
Two damaged souls are drawn together…by a dog. Their terrors may be different, but their motives are the same.
Is one bad and the other good? Yin and yang?
When dealing with vigilantism, moral questions are raised.
Justice…is it legal…illegal? What would happen if everyone took the law into their own hands?
I don’t see how this can end well, but I want it to.
The writing makes the story flow smoothly and the suspense is a nail biter. How can he not figure out what is really going on with her? How can she keep her secret? Will the authors be able to put their thinking caps on and come up with an ending that I will be happy with, yet find ‘believable?’ That you will find ‘believable? All I can say is…you will have to read it for yourself to find out.
I love it, will highly recommend it, and I will be looking for more of their work.
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of She Bites from Roger Arsht, Caitlin Hawker and Archway Publishing.
4 Stars
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GOODREADS BLURB: Dr. Robyn Sparks is a veterinarian with a dark secret: she moonlights as a self-appointed vigilante, who deals her own brand of justice to animal abusers by murdering them. If you do bad things to dogs, Robyn does bad things to you.
She Bites tells the story of a talented veterinarian who dispenses brutal judgment. Her work with sick and injured animals provides Robyn with a view of life’s most tender moments as well as a view of man’s most brutal behaviors.
Robyn’s regular habit of sending bad people to the pet crematorium is interrupted when she meets Jack Williams, a damaged detective who is fighting his own demons. Their relationship is a roller coaster ride of tangled emotions and legal close calls.
Ultimately, Robyn has to make a choice: whether to continue down her destructive path and kill a twisted psychopath turned professional dog fight promoter, or to pursue a romance with a cop who believes morality is best served by the hand of the law.
By our estimate, there are tens of thousands of dog fighters in the U.S., forcing hundreds of thousands of dogs to train, fight, and suffer every year. – The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), 2016
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
About Roger Arsht
Roger Arsht is a mild-mannered high school English teacher by day, but dons his writerly cloak after class and pens the darker side of life. His noir thrillers ask some hard questions about corruption and violence in the world, and what to do about it.
Roger wrote his first novel A Slam Dunk, when, while watching sports, it became illogical to him that a man could don a uniform on Sunday and be a hero, then the rest of the week engage in illegal activities or violence. Knowing his book needed a darker element of writing, he contacted a former student of his, who was loaded with talent, but also horrified him with her scary stories. Caitlin Hawker stepped up to the job and a collaboration was born.
When he’s not writing or hanging out in high school (his favorite place to be,) Roger loves to fish, golf, travel and cook, not necessarily in that order. He and his wife have two grown sons, and live in Park City, Utah with their Golden Retriever rescue dog, Pumpkin.
About Caitlin Hawker
Caitlin Hawker is a self-described “dark” person who loves horror movies and the study of humanity’s darker side. It took her awhile to learn to read and write, until her dad described to her that letters were pictures, and then suddenly it all made sense. Now a prolific writer, she began penning noir fiction in high school, in typical dark, brooding teenager fashion, which scared her teachers. What was a hobby later turned into a career when Roger Arsht walked into the college bookstore where she was working and asked her to help him write a book.
When she isn’t writing, she makes costumes and dabbles in art. Caitlin is a connoisseur of all things weird, and loves to collect facts. Her latest discovery is that the last duel in France was with hot air balloons and shotguns, which ended up setting a field full of sheep on fire.
She and her husband live in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Caitlin is planning for the day when she can get a dog.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of booksandabeat.
Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current read. Open to a random page. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!) Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
~~~~~~
She Bites by Roger Arsht & Caitlin Hawker has such a cool cover and fantastic blurb, there is no way I could pass on this vigilante thriller novel. I would like to thank Roger, Caitlin and Archway Publishing for the opportunity to read and review She Bites.
She Bites has a bit of a twist, so keep reading to find out why.
I will be reviewing this tomorrow. Be sure and come check it out!
Does this cover talk to you as loud as it talks to me?
“Could I…um, I know the date didn’t go that well tonight. Maybe I could come in for coffee, and we could see if we could slavage it?” He smiles, his eyes leveled at her breats.
Something shifted inside her, and she grinned maliciously. “Sure. Come on in.”
(page 8 in paperback)
I’m thinking he will regret that. 👿
She Bites covers a brutal topic – dogfighting.
GOODREADS BLURB: Dr. Robyn Sparks is a veterinarian with a dark secret: she moonlights as a self-appointed vigilante, who deals her own brand of justice to animal abusers by murdering them. If you do bad things to dogs, Robyn does bad things to you.
She Bites tells the story of a talented veterinarian who dispenses brutal judgment. Her work with sick and injured animals provides Robyn with a view of life’s most tender moments as well as a view of man’s most brutal behaviors.
Robyn’s regular habit of sending bad people to the pet crematorium is interrupted when she meets Jack Williams, a damaged detective who is fighting his own demons. Their relationship is a roller coaster ride of tangled emotions and legal close calls.
Ultimately, Robyn has to make a choice: whether to continue down her destructive path and kill a twisted psychopath turned professional dog fight promoter, or to pursue a romance with a cop who believes morality is best served by the hand of the law.
By our estimate, there are tens of thousands of dog fighters in the U.S., forcing hundreds of thousands of dogs to train, fight, and suffer every year. – The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), 2016
I was drawn into the Roma Series because of the fabulous covers and the storyline.
It made me think of Kathy Reichs and the the TV series, Bones, with her forensic anthropology, only for a character that specializes in forensic accounting.
We continue our adventure in Milan, Italy and bullets will fly.
The Roma Series continues in Threading The Needle by Gabriel Valjan. I am excited to see what Bianca and her band of cohorts will encounter next in Milan, Italy.
We are back with some familiar characters and the stakes are higher than ever. Conspiracy is alive and well.
The infighting between the police for territory and jurisdiction and the political machinations dog down their investigation into the murders and mystery. Politics is a dirty business and heads will fall, bodies too.
Gotta be pretty sharp to run the gauntlet and find the answers.
A little manipulation can be in order, and it does keep me on the hook as I try to figure out why they do what they do sometimes..
As the mystery unfolds, I think Bianca, a forensic accounting cyber nerd, has the answers, but…
Sometimes there is so much going on, I lose track of where I’m going. Am I purposely being mislead so I can’t find the answers?
Is it just me that I feel like I am being schooled rather than on a journey for my own entertainment? If you enjoy step by step police procedurals and some a glimpse into Italy’s history, this is for you.
I love the concept of this series so much, I wonder why I am having such difficulty with it. Is it because of the location…Italy and all that entails, their customs and history?
I took a little time and read other things between the books, but to see if it makes a difference, I will be diving right into Turning To Stone, Book IV. I believe these books can stand alone, but if you want to know all the details of the continuing characters, start at the beginning.
I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Threading The Needle from Gabriel Valjan.
Milan, Italy. Bianca’s curiosity gets a young university student murdered, but not before he gives her a file that details a secret weapon under development with defense contractor Adastra. Guilt may drive her to find justice for the slain Charlie Brooks, but she is warned by the mysterious Loki to stay away from this case that runs deep with conspiracy. Bianca must find a way to uncover government secrets and corporate alliances without returning Italy to one of its darkest hours, the decades of daily terrorism known as the “Years of Lead.”
ABOUT GABRIEL VALJAN
Gabriel Valjan lives in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the author of the Roma Series, available from Winter Goose Publishing. Gabriel has also written numerous short stories and essays found online and in print.
5 Stars
Look on the right sidebar and let’ talk.
The Friday 56 is hosted by 
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.
