Synopsis:

On board the moletrain Medes, Sham Yes ap Soorap watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt: the giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting in one’s death and the other’s glory. But no matter how spectacular it is, Sham can’t shake the sense that there is more to life than traveling the endless rails of the railsea–even if his captain can think only of the hunt for the ivory-coloured mole she’s been chasing since it took her arm all those years ago. When they come across a wrecked train, at first it’s a welcome distraction. But what Sham finds in the derelict—a series of pictures hinting at something, somewhere, that should be impossible—leads to considerably more than he’d bargained for. Soon he’s hunted on all sides, by pirates, trainsfolk, monsters and salvage-scrabblers. And it might not be just Sham’s life that’s about to change. It could be the whole of the railsea.

Excerpt:

Prologue

“This is the story of a bloodstained boy.

There he stands, swaying as utterly as any windblown sapling. He is quite, quite red. If only that were paint! Around each of his feet the red puddles; his clothes, whatever colour they were once, are now a thickening scarlet; his hair is stiff & drenched.

Only his eyes stand out. The white of each almost glows against the gore, lightbulbs in a dark room. He stares with great fervour at nothing.

The situation is not as macabre as it sounds. The boy isn’t the only bloody person there: he’s surrounded by others as red & sodden as he. & they are cheerfully singing.

The boy is lost. Nothing has been solved. He thought it might be. He had hoped that this moment might bring clarity. Yet his head is still full of nothing, or he knows not what.

We’re here too soon. Of course we can start anywhere: that’s the beauty of the tangle, that’s its very point. But where we do & don’t begin has its ramifications, & this right now is not best chosen. Into reverse: let this engine go back. Just to before the boy was bloodied, there to pause & go forward again to see how we got here, to red, to music, to chaos, to a big question mark in a young man’s head.

 

Chapter One

 

A meat island!

No. Back a bit.

A looming carcase?

Bit more.

Here. Weeks out, back when it was colder. The last several days spent fruitlessly pootling through rock passes & in the blue shadows of ice cliffs, late afternoon under a flinty sky. The boy, not yet bloodstained, was watching penguins. He stared at little rock islands furred in huddled birds plumping their oily feathers & shuffling together for comfort & warmth. He’d been giving them his attention for hours. When at last there came a sound from the speakers above, it made him start. It was the alarm for which he & the rest of the crew of the Medes had been waiting. A crackling blare. Then from the intercom came the exclamation: “There she blows!”

An instant frantic readiness. Mops were abandoned, spanners dropped, letters half-written & carvings half-whittled were thrust into pockets, never mind their wet ink, their sawdusty unfinishedness. To windows, to guardrails! Everyone leaned into the whipping air.

The crew squinted into the frigid wind, stared past big slate teeth. They swayed with the Medes’s motion. Birds gusted nearby in hope, but no one was throwing scraps now.

Way off where perspective made the line of old rails meet, soil seethed. Rocks jostled. The ground violently rearranged. From beneath came a dust-muffled howl.

Amid strange landforms & stubs of antique plastic, black earth coned into a sudden hill. & up something clawed. Such a great & dark beast.

Soaring from its burrow in a clod-cloud & explosion it came. A monster. It roared, it soared, into the air. It hung a crazy moment at the apex of its leap. As if surveying. As if to draw attention to its very size. Crashed at last back down through the topsoil & disappeared into the below.

The moldywarpe had breached.

 

Of all the gapers on the Medes none gaped harder than Sham. Shamus Yes ap Soorap. Big lumpy young man. Thickset, not always unclumsy, his brown hair kept short & out of trouble. Gripping a porthole, penguins forgotten, face like a light-hungry sunflower poking out of the cabin. In the distance the mole was racing through shallow earth, a yard below the surface. Sham watched the buckle in the tundra, his heart clattering like wheels on tracks.

No, this was not the first moldywarpe he’d seen. Labours, as their playful groups were called, of dog-sized specimens constantly dug in Streggeye Bay. The earth between the iron & ties of the harbour was always studded with their mounds & backs. He’d seen pups of bigger species, too, miserable in earthtanks, brought back by hunters for Stonefacemas Eve; baby bottletop moldywarpes & moonpanther moldywarpes & wriggly tarfoot moldywarpes. But the great, really great, the greatest animals, Sham ap Soorap had seen only in pictures, during Hunt Studies.

He had been made to memorise a poemlike list of the moldywarpe’s other names—underminer, talpa, muldvarp, mole. Had seen ill-exposed flatographs & etchings of the grandest animals. Stick-figure humans were drawn to scale cowering by the killer, the star-nosed, the ridged moldywarpe. & on one last much-fingered page, a page that concertinaed out to make its point about size, had been a leviathan, dwarfing the specklike person-scribble by it. The great southern moldywarpe, Talpa ferox rex. That was the ploughing animal ahead. Sham shivered.

The ground & rails were grey as the sky. Near the horizon, a nose bigger than him broke earth again. It made its molehill by what for a moment Sham thought a dead tree, then realised was some rust-furred metal strut toppled in long-gone ages, uppoking like the leg of a dead beetle god. Even so deep in the chill & wastes, there was salvage.

Trainspeople hung from the Medes’s caboose, swayed between carriages & from viewing platforms, tamping out footstep urgency over Sham’s head. “Yes yes yes, Captain . . .”: the voice of Sunder Nabby, lookout, blurted from the speakers. Captain must have walkie-talkied a question & Nabby must have forgotten to switch to private. He broadcast his answer to the train, through chattering teeth & a thick Pittman accent. “Big boar, Captain. Lots of meat, fat, fur. Look at the speed on him . . .”

The track angled, the Medes veered, the wind fed Sham a mouthful of diesely air. He spat into railside scrub. “Eh? Well . . . it’s black, Captain,” Nabby said in answer to some unheard query. “Of course. Good dark moldywarpe black.”

A pause. The whole train seemed embarrassed. Then: “Right.” That was a new voice. Captain Abacat Naphi had patched in. “Attention. Moldywarpe. You’ve seen it. Brakers, switchers: to stations. Harpoonists: ready. Stand by to launch carts. Increase speed.”

The Medes accelerated. Sham tried to listen through his feet, as he’d been taught. A shift, he decided, from shrashshaa to drag’ndragun. He was learning the clatternames.

“How goes treatment?”

Sham spun. Dr. Lish Fremlo stared at him from the cabin threshold. Thin, ageing, energetic, gnarled as the windblown rocks, the doctor watched Sham from beneath a shag of guncoloured hair. Oh Stonefaces preserve me, Sham thought, how bleeding long have you been there? Fremlo eyed a spread of wooden-&-cloth innards that Sham had lifted from the hollow belly of a manikin, that he should by now certainly have labelled & replaced, & that were still all over the floor.

“I’m doing it, Doctor,” Sham said. “I got a little . . . there was . . .” He stuffed bits back within the model.

“Oh.” Fremlo winced at the fresh cuts Sham had doodled with his penknife in the model’s skin. “What unholy condition are you giving that poor thing, Sham ap Soorap? I should perhaps intervene.” The doctor put up a peremptory finger. Spoke not unkindly, in that distinct sonorous voice. “Student life is not scintillating, I know. Two things you’d best learn. One is to—” Fremlo made a gentle motion. “—to calm down. & another is what you can get away with. This is the first great southern of this trip, & that means your first ever. No one, including me, gives a trainmonkey’s gonads if you’re practicing right now.”

Sham’s heart accelerated.

“Go,” the doctor said. “Just stay out of the way.”

Sham gasped at the cold. Most of the crew wore furs. Even Rye Shossunder, passing him with a peremptory glance, had a decent rabbitskin jerkin. Rye was younger &, as cabin boy, technically even lower in the Medes order than Sham, but he had been at rail once before, which in the rugged meritocracy of the moletrain gave him the edge. Sham huddled in his cheap wombatskin jacket.

Crews scrambled on walkways & all the carriagetop decks, worked windlasses, sharpened things, oiled the wheels of jollycarts in harnesses. Way above, Nabby bobbed in his basket below the crow’s-nest balloon.

Boyza Go Mbenday, first mate, stood on the viewing dais of the rearmost cartop. He was scrawny & dark & nervily energetic, his red hair flattened by the gusts of their passage. He traced their progress on charts, & muttered to the woman beside him. Captain Naphi.

Naphi watched the moldywarpe through a huge telescope. She held it quite steadily to her eye, despite its bulk & despite the fact that she hefted it one-handed in a strong right arm. She was not tall but she drew the eyes. Her legs were braced in what might have been a fighting stance. Her long grey hair was ribboned back. She stood quite still while her age-mottled brown overcoat wind-shimmied around her. Lights winked & exhaust settled in her bulky, composite left arm. Its metal & ivory clicked & twitched.

The Medes rattled through snow-flecked plainland. It sped out of drag’ndragun into another rhythm. By rock, crack & shallow chasm, past scuffed patches of arcane salvage.

Sham was awed at the light. He looked up into the two or more miles of good air, through it into the ugly moiling border of bad cloud that marked the upsky. Bushes stubby & black as iron tore past, & bits of real iron jagging from buried antique times did, too. Atangle across the whole vista, to & past the horizon in all directions, were endless, countless rails.

The railsea.

Long straights, tight curves; metal runs on wooden ties; overlapping, spiralling, crossing at metalwork junctions; splitting off temporary sidings that abutted & rejoined main lines. Here the train tracks spread out to leave yards of unbroken earth between them; there they came close enough together that Sham could have jumped from one to the next, though that idea shivered him worse than the cold. Where they cleaved, at twenty thousand angles of track-meets-track, were mechanisms, points of every kind: wye switches; interlaced turnouts; stubs; crossovers; single & double slips. & on the approaches to them all were signals, switches, receivers, or ground frames.

The mole dove under the dense soil or stone on which sat those rails, & the ridge of its passage disappeared till it rose again to kink the ground between metal. Its earthwork wake was a broken line.

The captain raised a mic & gave crackling instructions. “Switchers; stations.” Sham got another whiff of diesel & liked it this time. The switchers leaned from the walkway that sided the front engine, from the platforms of the second & fourth cars, brandishing controllers & switchhooks.

“Star’d,” broadcast the captain, watching the mole alter course, & a lead switcher aimed his remote at an incoming transponder. Points snapped sideways; the signal changed. The Medes reached the juncture & swerved onto the new line, back on the trail.

“Star’d . . . port . . . second port . . .” Amplified instructions lurched the Medes deep into Arctic wastes, tacking zigzag across wood-&-metal from rail to railsea rail, rattling over connections, closing on the mole’s fast-moving turbulent earth.

“Port,” came an order & a switchwoman obliged. But Mbenday yelled, “Belay that!” The captain shouted, “Star’d!” The switcher thumbed her button again but too late; the signal rushed past gleefully, it seemed to Sham, as if it knew it would cause havoc & relished the fact. Sham couldn’t breathe. His fingers tightened on the handrail. The Medes hurtled on for the points now sending them to whatever it was that had Mbenday frantic—

—& here, Zaro Gunst, riding the coupling between fifth & sixth cars, leaned out with a switchhook & with swagger & a jouster’s precision swiped the lever as it went by.

The impact sent his pole shattered & clattering across the railsea but the points slammed sideways as they disappeared below the figurehead, & the Medes’ front wheels hit the junction. The train continued, back on a safe line.

“Well done, that man,” said the captain. “It was an ill-marked change of gauge.”

Sham exhaled. With a few hours, industrial lifting & no choice you might change a vehicle’s wheel-width. But hit a transition full on? They’d have been wrecked.

“So,” Captain Naphi said. “He’s a tricksy one. Leading us into trouble. Well grubbed, old mole.”

The crew applauded. A traditional response to that traditional praise for such quarry cunning.

Into dense railsea.

The moldywarpe slowed. The Medes switched & circled, braked, kept a distance as the buried predator sniff-hunted for huge tundra earthworms, wary of pursuers. It wasn’t only trainsfolk who could read vehicles in their vibrations. Some beasts could feel the drum & pulse of train motion from miles off. Cautiously, the traintop cranes lowered jollycarts onto nearby lines.

The cart-crews gunned their little engines, switched points gently. They closed slowly in.

“Off he goes.”

Sham looked up, startled. Next to him, Hob Vurinam, the young trainswain, leaned out enthusiastically. He snapped up the collar of his battered finery with practiced cockiness, his thirdor fourth-hand coat. “The old velvet gent can hear them.”

A molehill rose. Whiskers, a prow of dark head emerged. It was big. The snout went side to side & sprayed dust & spittle. Its mouth opened, very full of teeth. The talpa had good ears but the double switch-rattling confused it. It growled dustily.

With sudden violent percussion, a missile slammed down next to it. Kiragabo Luck—Sham’s compatriot, Streggeye native, truculent harpoonist—had shot, & she had missed.

Instantly the moldywarpe upended. It dug at speed. Cart Two’s harpoonist, Danjamin Benightly, moon-grey yellowhaired hulk from the woods of Gulflask, yelled in his barbarous accent, & his crew accelerated through the scattering soil. Benightly pulled the trigger.

Nothing. The harpoon gun was jammed.

“Damn!” said Vurinam. He hissed like a spectator at a puntball match. “Lost it!”

But Benightly the big forestman had learned javelin hunting dangling upside down from vines. He had proved himself adult by spearing a meerkat at 50 feet & reeling it in so quick its family had not noticed. Benightly grabbed the harpoon from its housing. Lifted it heavy as it was, his muscles bunched like bricks under his skin, as the cart rolled closer to the digging behemoth. Leaned back, waited—then hurled the missile right into the mole.

The moldywarpe reared, the moldywarpe roared. The spear juddered. The harpoon rope whip-unwound as the animal thrashed, blood on the soil. Rails buckled & the cart careered, tugged behind the animal. Quick—they knotted a soil-anchor to the line & threw it overboard.

The other cart was back in the game, & Kiragabo didn’t miss twice. Now more anchors scraped the ground behind a bellowing hole & furious earth. The Medes juddered to a start & followed the molecarts.

The drags kept the burrower from going deep. It was half-in half-out of the ground. Carrion birds circled. Bolshy ones flew in to peck & the moldywarpe shook its shag.

Until at last in a lagoon of stony steppe, a dirt space in the infinite rails, it stopped. It quivered, then settled. When next the greedy railgulls landed on the furred knoll of its body, it did not dislodge them.

The world silenced. A last exhalation. Twilight was coming. The crew of the moletrain Medes readied knives. The devout thanked the Stonefaces or Mary Ann or the Squabbling Gods or Lizard or That Apt Ohm or whatever they believed in. Freethinkers had their own awe.

The great southern moldywarpe was dead.”

 

Railsea © China Miéville 2012

There’s An App For That!

“Do you hate turning your neck sideways to read book titles at libraries and bookstores? Or scrunching down as well to view lower shelves?” If you answered yes to those questions, the ShelfLook iPhone app may be just what you’re looking for. It is designed to allow users to hold an iPhone horizontally and read titles on the screen.

A Childhood Hero Passes

Maurice Sendak: 1928-2012

Most of you have heard by now that beloved author Maurice Sendak passed away. Today I found a beautiful article written about him and wanted to share —

“We’re sorry to note that Maurice Sendak, one of our favorite children’s book authors, died this morning at age 83. His wonderful works included Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen. In a long obituary, the New York Times said Sendak “wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche.” (Shelf Awareness)

 

What Are You Watching?

In anticipation of the film’s debut at Cannes later this month, a brief clip of The Paperboy has been released. The project, based on Pete Dexter’s novel and directed by Lee Daniels (Precious), stars Matthew McConaughey, Nicole Kidman, John Cusack and Zac Efron.

Indiewire noted that “we’re still yet to be convinced that this has the heft to compete with the rest of the Cannes line-up. But it’s a promising enough start for a film we certainly hope to see more of (and given that the clip is labelled #4, we imagine more footage will be revealed in the next few days).”

—

The first official image has been released of Scarlett Johansson starring in the film adaptation of Michael Faber’s novel Under the Skin, directed by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Birth). Indiewire reported called the project a “film we’ve been keeping an eye on, and hoping it will pop up somewhere on the 2012 calendar…. Well, the good news is two fold. Cineuropa has tweeted that the film is officially in post-production in London after shooting last fall, and they’ve included the first official image from the movie…. Whatever it turns out to be, our ticket is already sold.”

—

CW has picked up the pilot episode of The Carrie Diaries for a series, the Hollywood Reporter noted. The project, based on Candace Bushnell’s's Sex and the City prequel, stars AnnaSophia Robb as a young Carrie Bradshaw. She leads a cast that also includes Austin Butler, Brendan Dooling, Freema Agyeman, Stefania Owen, Katie Findlay, Ellen Wong, Matt Letscher and Chloe Bridges.

Need A Vampire Fix?

HBO has FINALLY released a trailer for the fifth season of True Blood, the series based on the Sookie Stackhouse vampire series by Charlaine Harris. Entertainment Weekly called the “the bloody, fantastical” trailer for the new season–which premieres June 10. Heads up…it’s spoilery!

Who’s Suing Who?

Seventeen states have joined the class-action lawsuit over e-book pricing against Apple, Macmillan and Penguin, bringing the total of plaintiffs to 31 states, including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, paidcontent wrote. The group’s amended complaint includes more details on the allegation that Apple and five of the six major U.S. publishers conspired to create the agency model for e-books and thereby fix prices. The new material includes an e-mail from the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs; more correspondence from the heads of Macmillan and Penguin; and material that the states say shows the publishers succeeded in pressuring Barnes & Noble not to promote or advertise Random House titles during the period that publisher had not instituted the agency plan.

Featured Book Trailer

The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi

 Synopsis: THE DROWNED CITIES is the thrilling companion to Paolo Bacigalupi’s SHIP BREAKER, the Printz Award winner and National Book Award finalist.

In a dark future America where violence, terror, and grief touch everyone, young refugees Mahlia and Mouse have managed to leave behind the war-torn lands of the Drowned Cities by escaping into the jungle outskirts. But when they discover a wounded half-man–a bioengineered war beast named Tool–who is being hunted by a vengeful band of soldiers, their fragile existence quickly collapses. One is taken prisoner by merciless soldier boys, and the other is faced with an impossible decision: Risk everything to save a friend, or flee to a place where freedom might finally be possible.

Paolo Bacigalupi is the author of Ship Breaker, a Michael L. Printz Award winner and National Book Award finalist. He is also the author of The Windup Girl and Pump Six and Other Stories, and is a Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, John W. Campbell Memorial, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner. He lives in western Colorado with his wife and son.

Of all the trials and tribulations that life can throw at you love is one of the most difficult.  It can make you, break you, confine you or define you. It’s what we all search for, and most certainly what we all need. Whether it be the selfless love of your parents, or the understanding love of a best-friend; it remains the most challenging of circumstances to accept, and more importantly the hardest to let go of.

A few years ago I had a bit of a hiccup in the love department. This hiccup (and by hiccup I mean nuclear bomb) included every member of my family (mom, dad, hubs, brother… etc.) I had lost faith in them, and even sadder, I no longer trusted them.  Then one day, while looking through a few of my old journals (yes..I’m that girl.) I ran across a quote I had written down the last time love had stabbed me in the back.

“Love me without fear. Trust me without questioning. Need me without demanding.  Want me without restrictions. Accept me without change. Desire me without inhibitions.” – Dick Sutphen

Finding this (and re-reading it a hundred or so times) helped me to understand something.  If you want love, you can’t be afraid of love. A pretty important message (if I do say so myself,) AND one that Loni Flowers explores in her contemporary romance “Taking Chances.”

“At age twenty-three, Alex has had a hard life. His parents died when he was quite young, leaving his grandparents to raise him. Right before his high school graduation, his grandparents passed on too, leaving him all alone. After losing everyone he’s ever loved, Alex turns to the streets in a self-destructive pattern until he finally ends up in Springhill, where he tries to make a new life for himself.

Clair’s childhood was normal until age thirteen, when her father left the family and she never heard from him again. Consequently, her mother went into a deep depression, forcing Clair to grow up quickly. After finishing high school, Clair’s heartache over her father’s absence as well as her unbearable mother drive her to strike out on her own. But having nowhere to go and no family to speak of, Clair wanders aimlessly from town to town, homeless, and without purpose. Looking for work wherever she goes and living hand to mouth on the streets is tough, Clair discovers, but living with her mother is worse.

Now twenty-one years old, Clair has found her way to the last place she and her family took their final vacation as a family–Springhill. While in town, she crosses paths with Alex and their ensuing relationship grows faster than expected. Soon Clair wonders if coming back to Springhill and meeting Alex was the best decision or the worst decision she ever made.”

For those of you out there (in the land of the literary Gods) that tend to lean towards Contemporary Romance (ala Roberts, Garwood, Wiggs) as your genre of preference you probably know (better than most) that romance novels often follow a formula.

Guy meets girl/they want each-other/they don’t want each-other/mayhem issues/the need each-other….yada yada. The end.

This formula is a good one.  It’s worked for YEARS (without fail) and I’ll be damned if I stand in it’s way. (I happen to enjoy the predictability of it…I’m assured a happy ending.) BUT, sometimes it’s important for authors to shake it up.

“Taking Chances” is a very formulaic book, and for 90% of the readers that will purchase this novel, that is going to be just fine by them.  Me? I was a little disappointed. (cue dramatic music.) Flowers is clearly a writer. And because I saw her spark shimmering right below the surface of the first several chapters of this novel I expected more from her. (Not fair, I know. Boo me.) I expected her to write outside of the box.  To dig deeper than she did and splay her characters out for the whole world to see. Open those wounds up baby and let your characters bleed! But instead she bottled Alex and Clair up and only allowed them to express emotion through tears and hand gestures. I understood the characters, (there’s no doubt about that) and in some parts their interactions were expertly written, (for example all of those lovely “sexy time” scenes) but the intensity I felt radiating from the characters (specifically from Clair) in the beginning of the book (as Alex was “saving her”) felt almost like and supernatural entity for the remainder of the book.

Clair didn’t want to “take a chance” on love.  She had her reasons, I respect them, hell…I even understood them. But after a few smoldering glances and 1 heavy petting session she cast her misgivings aside and says “let me have it?” This is where I think Flowers faltered.  Clair’s emotions were very high-strung in the opening of this novel, and she should have kept them that way for a tad longer to increase the intensity the reader would feel once Alex finally “convinced” Clair that he wasn’t just in it for the booty. (wow…that was very un-eloquently said.) In short…there needed to be a tad more push and pull for the the “mini mine fields” to have more of an impact later in the story.

So what about the “story?”

It was fine.  It wasn’t anything I’d phone home about, but it was a quick read that kept me entertained (in spite of my unreasonable expectations) and would make a very nice beach read for those of you gearing up for a summer in the sun.

Could it have been better? Yes…I think Flowers has a lot more to her than she let us see this time. That said…I look forward to seeing what she puts out in the future.

A solid start for a new author.  A cheap (not cheesy) read for romance fans, and it taught an important lesson.  I guess it’s what you would call average, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Happy reading my fellow Kindle-ites and remember:

“There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.” – Sarah Dessen

Click image for additional details

***~~ (3/5)

Meet The Author

Loni Flowers lives in Elm City, North Carolina with her video-gaming husband, who makes her laugh every day; two wild toddlers, who never slow down for a second; and three couch-potato dogs, who only raise an eye when foods around. She works a full-time professional job and when she’s not playing on the internet or chatting on Twitter, she spends her free time with friends and family waiting for the next big idea strike. Taking Chances is her first novel.

 Website

Blog

The Giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

*Disclosure of Material Connection: I am a member of Reading Addiction Blog Tours and a copy of this book was provided to me by the author. Although payment may have been received by Reading Addiction Blog Tours, no payment was received by me in exchange for this review. There was no obligation to write a positive review. All opinions expressed are entirely my own and may not necessarily agree with those of the author, publisher, publicist, or readers of this review. This disclosure is in accordance with the Federal Trade Commision’s 16 CFR, Part 255, Guides Concerning Use of Endorcements and Testimonials in Advertising*

Evening Kindle-ites! Here is this weeks edition of Teaser Tuesday! What? You’ve never heard of it? Well.. let me fill you in. Teaser Tuesday is a fantastic way to get a sneak peak at book you may or may not have ever considered reading before PLUS… you get a chance to see what everyone else has to offer.

All you have to do is:

- Grab your current read
- Open to a random page
- Share (in the comments) 2 “teaser” sentences (or a paragraph…I’m not picky) from somewhere on that page (BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! you don’t want to give too much away!)
- And then tell us where you got it! (Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!)

The Dead Do Not Improve – Jay Caspian Kang

Synopsis:

Hailed as The Awl’s 2012’s novel to anticipate, this glorious debut stars hippie detectives, a singular city, and an MFA student on the run.

On a residential Bay Area block struggling with the collision of gentrifier condos and longtime residents, stymied recent MFA grad Philip Kim is sleeping the night away when bullets fly through a window in his apartment building and end up killing one of his neighbors. Philip only learns about the murder the next day when bored and Googling himself. But when he gets caught up in the investigation and becomes the focus of an elaborate, violent scheme, he will learn far more than he ever wanted to about his former four-eggs-at-a-time borrowing neighbor Dolores Stone, aka “The Grey Beaver,” and her shocking connections to an underworld only a city like this one could create.

Siddhartha “Sid” Finch, a homicide detective bitter about everything except his gorgeous wife, and his phlegmatic, pock-marked partner Jim Kim, land the case. Sid and Jim race after Philip through a menacing, unknowable San Francisco fending off militant surfers, vaguely European cafes, and aggressive Advanced Creative Writing students as they all try to figure out just who’s causing trouble in this city they love to hate.

Exceedingly unique, pulsing with vigor and heart, and loaded with fierce, fresh language, The Dead Do Not Improve confirms Jay Caspian Kang as a true American original as obsessed with surfing and surviving as with the power of unforgettable storytelling.

My Teaser – Page 101

“When he came to, Sid Finch was in what looked to be a utility closet. A bucket of sudsy water sat between his feet, which, he noticed, were bare and, somehow, scaly.  On a nail above the rickety, shabbily painted white door hung his pants.  He allowed himself to look around and realized that he must have been drugged because the light from the bare bulb that hung over his head was refracting out all across the walls.”

Click images for additional details

Short Story – 26 Pages

Synopsis:

A random encounter leads to deception, love and murder. While vacationing at a ski resort, professional hitman Robert Prescott meets a strange and beautiful woman.

They discover passion and embark into a dangerous game hiding their relationship from her powerful husband. Then a further twist of fate makes Robert’s occupation collide with his new found love.

My Take:

Being in the reviewing business for a while now I’ve come to expect certain things.  1: People really don’t like bad reviews. 2: The more I dislike a book the wordier I become. 3: Subject matter and length tend to come in waves.

2 years ago when I first starting I couldn’t go more than 2 hours without getting a request containing vampires.  Last year it was Dystopian or Apocalyptic lit.  This year… it’s short stories.

Why?

I have no idea. Maybe it’s because life is really busy, and settling down with a 600 page book about WWII  doesn’t sound all that appealing when your trying to unwind from you 60 hour work week.  Maybe reading at work has become extremely popular and knowing that you can read an entire story while chomping down your fast food lunch in the Mc Donald’s parking lot leaves you giddy. Hell…maybe it’s because authors finally realized that I’m not biased to short reads. Whatever the case, short stories are increasing in demand, and I…being the total sheep (aka follower) that I am, am here to tell you about another one.

The thing about short stories is that they have to hold the same intrigue that a full length novel does.  Yes, the author only has 30 or so pages to work it all out, but without proper set up and character development (similar to full length novels) the story can quickly become predictable and flat.

This (unfortunately) is the case with JH Bogran’s short “The Assassin’s Mistress.” While the “conceptual” aspects for the story were interesting, the way it was presented left little to be desired.

How so?

It was unbelievably predictable and by page 3 I had everything worked out in my head.

“Hey Misty…maybe you’re just super smart!”

Why thanks! And no. While my literary muscles may be stronger than most (due to a heavy work out schedule.) the reason the story was so predictable was mostly due to its very flat writing.  For a story that was supposed to be laced with deception (insert finger quotes around the word supposed) there were no twists and turns, (besides the obvious, which was…obvious) even the ending held very little surprise and IT (I’m sure) was supposed to be the kicker, the piece de resistance, the cherry on top.

So what does this mean for Bogran as a writer? It means he needs to pay closer attention to his building strategy (and character development) if he decides to continue down the murder mystery route. Cause this little ditty was a flop.

Sorry Bogran.

Happy Reading my fellow Kindle-ites and remember: Never go to the pool without sunscreen! (sorry…it’s really hot outside and that’s all of the wisdom I could muster for one day.)

*~~~~ (1/5)

All, future astronomer, Memphis Holland wanted was to quit smoking. The pressure to complete her dissertation on Ophiuchus the lost astrological sign and receive her PhD in Astrophysics has been high. She visits a hypnotherapist to rid her of her cravings and instead is given the ability to see the future and to teleport. To anyone else this would be a wonderful trade, but she doesn’t see it that way. These strange new powers and the fact that there is a serial killer piercing women in their Third Eye chakras and leaving their bodies all over New York City has her highly stressed.

Yoga doesn’t help and neither does her new position at Sign of The Times, a New Age newspaper run by her best friend Jill. Her mysterious coworker Lawrence, the reporter covering the murders, puts her even more on edge. He is nothing but kind yet there is just something about him; he has this uncanny ability to know exactly what she’s thinking.

Her astrological predictions for the newspaper are well received. But the eerily accurate personal horoscopes that are sent to her by an anonymous astrogirl88 are not. As the secrets and predictions from astrogirl88 unfold Memphis is led down a dangerous path to find out who she really is and the unsettling truth that her destiny may have already been written for her.

The debut novel from “American Pie” series screenwriter David H. Steinberg. It’s the last weekend before high school graduation, and as they prepare to go their separate ways, four life-long friends spend a wild and raucous night in New York City that forces them to face their fear of growing up… and growing apart.

West Hartford, Connecticut. Growing up in the suburbs is a mind-numbingly boring experience for most teenagers, and high school seniors Dylan, Noah, Pike, and Walker are no exception. They spend their days testing how fast they can drive on the local residential streets, bribing homeless dudes to buy them beer, and attending crappy house parties. So when Dylan proposes that they spend their last weekend of high school in New York City attending an underground rave, the guys are ready to make some serious memories.

In New York, though, the guys have run-ins with a drug dealer with a penchant for fire extinguishers, a Chinese restaurant owner with a score to settle, an Albanian street gang, con men, hookers, performance artists, and a gaggle of hot, degenerate, rich girls. Over the course of one incredible night, their outrageous journey gives the guys a bonding experience they’ll never forget, as they learn that part of growing up means they’re going to have to face their futures on their own.

(Parental advisory: This book contains strong language, drinking, drugs, and sexual situations, all involving teens.)

Texas, 1874. Years ago, Will McMillan had fought in the open, next to his Captain, Clayton Proffitt. Now he’s waging another war undercover, pretending to be a member of the notorious Walton Gang.

But when a hostage situation goes awry and an innocent woman is in the middle of the fray, Will knows he must protect her no matter what happens. Even if his cover is blown. Even if they risk being killed by his gang or by the lawmen on their trail. Even if the woman he’s risking everything for will never love him back.

Hannah Sunderland felt content in her embrace of the Quaker faith…until her twin brother joined the Colonial cause and ended up in jail. She longs to bring some measure of comfort to him in the squalid prison, but her faith forbids it. The Friends believe that they are not to take sides, not to take up arms. She is not allowed to visit him, even if she were able to secure a pass.

Jeremiah Jones, a Colonial spy, needs access to the jail to help rescue men important to the cause. Upon meeting Hannah, a plan begins to develop. Who would suspect a pious Quaker visiting a loved one?

But Jeremiah is unprepared for Hannah, for her determination to do right, to not lie. How can one be a spy and not lie? Hannah, in turn, is surprised by Jeremiah…for the way he forces her to confront her own beliefs, for the sensitivity and concern that he shows her despite the wounds he still carries.

In a time of war, can two unlikely heroes find the courage to act?

An abduction is just the beginning in a case of betrayal and revenge that will ultimately strike at the soul of the St. Paul Police Department.The ruggedly handsome Mac McRyan, a fourth-generation cop, is faced with a complicated brazen daytime kidnapping, a media storm surrounding the case, and political scrutiny. It is a case of betrayal and revenge that will ultimately strike at the soul of the St. Paul Police Department. From the searing streets of St. Paul to the murky waters of the St. Croix River, DEADLY STILLWATER is a book you won’t be able to put down until its last gripping minute.

A mother’s worst nightmare – can her son be guilty of murder?

Sarah Newby, who left school at 15, and was living as a teenage single parent on an inner-city estate, has worked her way up to begin a career as a criminal barrister. Then in a terrible irony her own son, Simon, is arrested and charged with a series of brutal rapes and murders. The evidence against him appears so strong that his QC advises a guilty plea, but Simon swears he is innocent and begs his mother take on his defence. There is no law against a mother representing her son, so Sarah agrees. The only other obvious suspect for the murders, however, is a man who has already been acquitted once – with Sarah acting as his defence lawyer …

Has Sarah, in her single-minded determination to create a career for herself, neglected her son so much that she no longer knows him? Since he has often lied to her in the past, how can she trust him when he says he is innocent this time? And what should she do when she herself uncovers evidence that seems to suggest his guilt?

It seems that telling the whole truth must be weighed in the balance against keeping certain information well hidden …

Niki Slobodian sees things — things that aren’t supposed to be there. Labeled an Abnormal by New Government, her name is tacked onto the Registry, which seems to be getting longer these days. Now she can’t work or she’ll end up the same place as her father: in prison. But with no money coming in, Niki’s getting desperate.

So when a mysterious client offers to get her off the Registry in exchange for taking his case, Niki jumps at the chance. All she has to do is round up a homicidal Dark that’s escaped from Hell and is cruising around the city in borrowed bodies. The murders are piling up, with Niki’s notorious father somehow involved, and Niki’s running out of time. And it seems the Dark isn’t the only thing that escaped…

When a narrator opens her tale by declaring, I lost my sanity buying frozen apple juice, the reader knows she’s in for a witty ride. The narrator is Leah Thornton, a 27-year-old Southerner, English teacher, and middle-stage alcoholic. She’s got her reasons: her only child died of SIDS and her sexual relationship with her husband, Carl, is so troubled their marriage is devolving into a standoff between hostility and frigidity. Leah is steered into rehab by her BFF Molly, which kicks off transformation through growing honesty, self-awareness, and large doses of wry humor. Allan draws many strong, quirky minor characters: Leah’s rehab roomie, Theresa, one of a rehab unit’s worth of addicts of all manner of substances; Leah’s wry obstetrician, Dr. Nolan. A few supporting characters—Carl’s wealthy parents—feel more caricatured than characterized, and the largely unsympathetic portrait of Carl makes the reader wonder why the marriage is worth saving at all. A few major developments toward the book’s end cry out for greater resolution. But Leah is fascinating, complicated, and above all funny. This nonformulaic look at the spiritual redemption of a life is a bright start; debut novelist Allan is one to watch.

Racehorse trainer, Kurt MacKinnon, resents being yanked into undercover police work. But when his ex-partner is murdered, Kurt is determined to find the killer and moves his third-string Thoroughbreds to the backwater track where his partner was last seen alive.

Julie West, a struggling and dedicated jockey, pins her dreams of an elusive win on the new trainer in town, never suspecting she’s a person of interest–and not because of her riding skills.

Kurt didn’t expect his contrary colt to flourish under Julie’s feminine touch nor for his own rusty heart to soften. However, his deceit sucks them both into the cross hairs of a killer, and suddenly much more than their love is in danger.

Within the course of a week, Natalie is dumped by her husband, receives an urgent call home from her father, and discovers her estranged sister is pregnant.

A road trip on Route 66 may not help, but it sure couldn’t hurt. Or so Natalie thinks, until Lindsay’s boyfriend starts stalking them. Will their trip down the Mother Road bring the two sisters closer together or turn out to be the biggest wrong turn yet?

They started out seeking a pastor. But what they found was each other. When a small-town southern church throws a hodgepodge of wildly different personalities together in a van and sends them out to look for a new pastor, the dust gets kicked up in more ways than one. There’s Travis, a young husband whose ambiguity about becoming a father is threatening his marriage. Dot, a middle-aged busybody whose strong opinions set everyone’s teeth on edge. Susie, an attractive single mom coping with a troubled teenage son. Bill, an older man who centers his entire life on caring for his fragile wife. Joyce, a transplanted Yankee who feels like an outsider. Matt, highly educated but socially awkward. And Frankie, who just tries to keep the peace. Jostling along bumpy back roads, they squabble about practically everything, from which pastoral candidates show promise to where to stop for lunch. But gradually the facades fall away, revealing seven lonely souls drawn together in a search for healing and grace.

In All the Dark Places, J.W. Bouchard slams down the accelerator and takes us on a joyride into the darker recesses of our lives; a parallel universe which resides just below the surface of our own…

In this collection of 10 short stories, a blue collar man wages war against an unrelenting army of pests (“Hatchlings”); a bar-hopping vampire falls for the wrong man (“Jealousy”); an aging detective struggles to adapt to a future where a virus is his prime suspect (“Open Window”); a couple explores the complications of love and marriage H.P. Lovecraft-style (“Lover’s Spat”); and more…

Patrick MacCahan just became the new Laird of the O’Malley clan. His new position is met with many obstacles; including a tempestuous new wife, a two-decade long war with a neighboring village, a missing foster child and a pagan witch who overpowers the clan at every turn.

Parkin MacCahan’s life just got a lot more exciting. His older brother Patrick has married the eldest daughter of the O’Malley clan. His father is building a shipping empire off the coast of Northern Ireland. Parkin must oversee the operations and coordinate efforts between the O’Malleys and the MacCahans.
In order to dock at O’Malley port, Parkin and his men must sail past the legendary Island of Women. Will Parkin be able to withstand the temptation to trespass the legendary shore? Or will he be invited?

Kyra O’Connell has resided in O’Malley territory all of her life. As the niece of the late Laird Dallin O’Malley, and daughter of the clan’s chieftan, she has been part of the inner circle for as long as she can remember. When a spy is found among the villagers, Kyra is asked to take up residence on the Island of Women and to infiltrate their ranks as a spy herself.

Milo Mitchell’s life used to be charmed, but that was before her family dissolved, she went a little crazy, and her best friends started acting more like strangers. Spending Saturday morning in a treehouse with a stun gun for company and a herd of deer for friends is the only exciting thing in her life…until she shoots a fawn and finds her dart stuck in a guy.

Her gorgeous victim is dressed in a Brioni tux and armed with a hanky. He has no idea who or where he is. Afraid her dart caused his amnesia, Milo takes him in, names him Nick, and vows to help him solve his mystery. Soon the pair find Nick’s face in a newspaper obituary, and Nick begins to have strange, ethereal memories of Milo–who is sure she’s never met him. Suddenly Nick knows things he shouldn’t know and is doing things he shouldn’t do. When the Department of Defense shows up, Nick and Milo run–toward a shocking conclusion that could destroy both their worlds.

None can see like the Blind…

Ryan Lorimar and Jessica Werner have a special gift: they can see ‘fallen angel’ apparitions within other people. But as the fallen angels in turn know that they’ve been ‘viewed’, it’s a gift that will get him killed. They need protection. They need to enter ‘Blind School’.

Their only hope is Ellis Kendell and his team of agents. Day in, day out, Kendell’s team trawl through street-cam images from across the nation to pick up that tell-tale eye light-refraction of ‘viewers’. Can Kendell’s team get to the viewers before the fallen angels and get them to safety in ‘Blind School’? But there’s also an added agenda: Kendell’s department want the ‘viewers’ help in tracking down more ‘fallen angels’.

Yet is Kendell deluding himself? Setting this small group of teens against a legion fifty-times their number of the most cunning and vicious murderers and criminal masterminds the nation has to offer – is he simply throwing them to the wolves? Fated to watch them one-by-one die. The odds are against them.

The battle for Estelan begins.

Many annuals have passed since Estelan was nearly destroyed in a great battle between two deities. Isthile is all that remains. Built and protected over generations by survivors who evolved and learned to exist in the shadows of the ever watchful moon.

In one evening the fragile existence of Isthile is threatened when remnants of an ancient Darkness lay siege to the town’s elders. The eldest, Lord Kriton escapes to safety with a small band of young Isthiliens bearing old magic of Light. Kriton must convince them to fight the growing darkness, unlock their own powers, and unravel the secrets of Estelan’s past to fulfill the prophecy that can save their world.

When nothing is at it seems, these young warriors must make their own ways even if it means leaving the behind everything they have ever known.

A Mother’s Love. A Sister’s Promise.
Will Two Women Find the Path to Save a Young Woman’s Life?

When an insidious genetic disease strikes her family, Harvard graduate Dr. Kai Chang must alert Lily, the sister Kai left on orphanage steps years earlier. Standing in her way are the Powells, Lily’s adoptive parents. Gloria Powell, a shy pastor’s wife, distrusts Kai and thinks her presence will send their troubled seventeen-year-old over the precipice of teenaged angst. A Texas-sized tornado whirls when Kai summons the Powells to a Fort Worth hotel. Tempers and cultures collide. Can Kai and Gloria, separated by culture and faith but devoted to Lily, reconcile their differences and trust their dreams to God?

Two complete strangers meet on a train and agree to off their significant others. Sounds familiar? It should be, it’s ‘Strangers on a Train’. 60 years later, two strangers meet online. A man and a woman – Seabee and Annika – hook up on a wannabe authors’ site where they flirt, banter and play around with the notion of dispatching their equally impossible partners. It’s all a big literary, intertextual joke, until the weekend when both their partners actually do die in what seems to be unrelated freak accidents – or are they? Seabee and Annika find out in a hurry that cyberspace makes strange bedfellows – and if it’s not he nor she who did it – then who has done the killings? The two team up to find out who has hijacked their fantasy and turned it into a bloody real-life. Contains strong language

Lexi Dixon is in L.A. The guys are hot, the girls are chic, and her modelling career is taking off. The road to stardom is just a matter of less pizza and better posing—she’ll be there in no time!

But behind the designer clothes and the runway shows lies a very real pain that Lexi is powerless to overcome by herself. She can’t help wondering, isn’t there more to life than this?

One temperamental Colorado cowboy + one phony ad campaign + one quirky NY ad exec = one wild Rocky Mountain ride in Destiny Wears Spurs!

Monica Hammond—NY ad exec at Hammond’s Advertising Agency—will do anything to save her father’s company from her ex-fiancé, but she never imagines that will involve working beside cowboys on a Colorado dude ranch. With the boss looking like the centerfold for a Hot Men of the West calendar, her slogans sound more like an advertisement for a singles’ ranch than a family run operation. While Cody Rafferty—owner of Rafferty’s Remote Ranch—only agrees to need a phony ad campaign because he owes her father a favor and her crazy antics are making more work for him than it’s worth, but he can’t help rooting for the spunky little spitfire. Falling in lust is one thing, but falling in love isn’t part of the plan, only sometimes destiny has a mind of its own.

Mara Cunningham knew that sleeping with a married man was a bad idea. But when her lover shows up in the hospital after his wife and son are murdered, the rumors about Mara turn dangerous. Now she’s the prime suspect in a double homicide, and the real killers will stop at nothing to silence her. Mara’s race against time takes her from the dense heart of Boston to the dark woods of New Hampshire, from gritty streets to the halls of power. Before she’s through, she’ll learn just which of her friends she can trust – and she’ll stare death in the face.

Fear is sabotage’s sweetest weapon.

Kate has no time for meaningless romantic charades, and definitely no time for hot college professors who are full of themselves and smitten with her. Constantly battling eviction notices, tuition she can’t afford, and a sick, dependent mother, the last thing she needs is to be distracted with someone else’s complicated baggage.

When she stumbles into Ryan Campbell’s creative writing class, he is only “Mr. Campbell” to her, until Ryan finds himself captivated by her writing and she is forced to face their mutual attraction. His cocky know-it-all syndrome is enough to send her running in the other direction, and his posse of female admirers and playboy reputation are enough to squander any odds in her favor.

But underneath Ryan’s abrasive facade is something to behold, and she can’t stay away for long. Ryan and Kate must decide who they’re willing to become and fight against their former selves if they want to make things work. That’s if academia, vicious vixens, old skeletons, and their own mastery at self-destruction don’t pummel their efforts first.

Yara Jones doesn’t believe in sea monsters—until she becomes one.

When a hurricane hits her island home and she wakes up with fins, Yara finds herself tangled up in an underwater world of mysterious merfolk and secretive selkies. Both sides believe Yara can save them by fulfilling a broken promise and opening the sealed gateway to their realm, but they are battling over how it should be done. The selkies want to take her life. The merfolk want something far more precious.

Treygan, the stormy-eyed merman who turned Yara mer, will stop at nothing and sacrifice everything to protect his people—until he falls for Yara. The tides turn as Yara fights to save herself, hundreds of sea creatures, and the merman who has her heart. She could lose her soul in the process—or she might open the gateway to a love that’s deeper than the oceans.

Bobby Gallagher has it all…a great job, a loving wife, and an adoring son…
Then he’s fired; his wife divorces him; and he goes bankrupt…
Now, to reclaim his life, all he has to do is rig the Super Bowl, win a huge bet, and avoid getting killed.

From missing socks to missing people, nothing could remain hidden from seventeen year-old Katelyn Kestrel for long, but after locating a forbidden passage out of her isolated country, Haven, she discovers for the first time that there are some things that should never be found.

Outside the safety of her homeland’s borders, Katelyn meets Rune, a young soldier who will die without her immediate aid. She never considered that helping him would lead to her capture. While being held prisoner by the handsome Lord Dylan Axton, she learns that the outside world is rife with war and controlled by people with extraordinary powers. It becomes clear that there was a very good reason the founders of Haven locked their people away from the rest of the world. The depth of her peril reaches a fever pitch when a ruthless Commander wants Katelyn dead. Her only hope is to return to Haven, but can she survive long enough to find her home?

Alexa O’Brien has never been like other people. A hunter of supernatural rogues, she is a werewolf with unusual but extraordinary power. Power that draws her to Arys Knight, the mysterious vampire who awakens her dark side. What they create together is dangerous and binding, forcing her to question the source of her abilities. It threatens not only her remaining humanity, but her relationship with fellow werewolf, Shaz Richardson, as well.

When Alexa’s womanizing former lover and the Alpha of her pack is framed for murder, he draws public attention that could earn him a death sentence unless she steps in to help him. Alexa would love to watch karma at work but as the body count rises, long buried secrets are exposed. She’s forced to face the painful truth that not everyone is who she thinks they are.

A raid on a Pakistan Al-Qaeda cell recovers two laptops. When the computers’ booby-traps are defused and the computers decrypted and translated, they indicate that Al-Qaeda has planned a series of simultaneous attacks in five U.S. cities involving potential dirty bombs, biological weapons and maybe even a nuclear weapon-on Election Day. Derek Stillwater, troubleshooter for the Department of Homeland Security, is assigned to a multi-jurisdictional Special Terrorism Activity Response Team (START) to locate the weapon and terrorists in Los Angeles and prevent the attack. They have two days. But as they close in on their targets, Derek begins to think that the intelligence they gathered is a sideshow to distract them from the real target-one of the two candidates for President of the United States.

First in the Medieval Herb Garden Series, a short novel (about 80 pages) of passion and love in Medieval England. Now with exclusive excerpts.Lord Bernard of Derkland needs to find a wife, if for no other reason than to satisfy his father and his incessant badgering. He has no interest in marrying, but when he meets the beautiful and gentle Joanna of Swerthmore, he knows immediately that she is the one.

What would you do if street thugs invaded your home? What if you’re a daycare provider, caring for a dozen children at the time? Lisa Kaamp, a most unlikely heroine, faces just such a nightmare in This Time You Lose, the suspense driven story of one woman’s struggle to survive when she and the children she cares for become victims of a home invasion gone terribly wrong. Lisa Kaamp operates a small childcare business out of her home in Nogeksum, Michigan. Highly respected and known for going the extra mile for her daycare kids, she thinks she’s handled every daycare emergency possible. But nothing prepares her for the horror she now faces. Lisa finds herself bound and gagged, four strange men in her home, and the daycare children held hostage in the next room. Terrorized by her captors as the authorities work to meet the ransom deadline, she tries negotiating with the men for the release of the children, but soon realizes they have no intention of letting anyone go. With the deadline approaching, Lisa must do the unimaginable to protect the children and get everyone out alive.

With all the vampire, werewolf and faerie books out there, it’s easy to become numb to all things supernatural. The antidote? Darkhouse introduces two real and unforgettable characters, Perry Palomino & Dex Foray, amateur ghost hunters who are “attractive, relatable and oddly heroic,” “flawed but loveable,” “slightly crazy” and just the most endearing pair to ever tackle the paranormal…just don’t call them normal. Darkhouse is a thrilling and sexy new take on concepts like Supernatural and The X-Files, bringing a breath of fresh air to a genre that has been inundated with the dead.

Please note that this is a novella equivalent to 70 pages of a hardback novel.

From the acclaimed author of Reunion comes the hilarious tale of a girl who whacks a witch, gets cursed, and becomes a pumpkin at midnight. Sound strange? She thinks so.

Cindy had a fairy tale life – well, not literally – but she was pretty and popular. Then one fateful autumn day, while picking apples, she encountered a real-life witch. After accidentally clocking the witch on the head with her basket of apples, the angry witch put a spell on her. As Cindy would soon find out, she was destined to live out her nights turning into a pumpkin at midnight. Talk about a crimp in your social life!

There is only one antidote for Cindy’s terrible curse – if only she knew what it was. Hilarity ensues as Cindy attempts to lead a normal life as a part-time pumpkin.

Evening Kindle-ites! Here is this weeks edition of Teaser Tuesday! What? You’ve never heard of it? Well.. let me fill you in. Teaser Tuesday is a fantastic way to get a sneak peak at book you may or may not have ever considered reading before PLUS… you get a chance to see what everyone else has to offer.

All you have to do is:

- Grab your current read
- Open to a random page
- Share (in the comments) 2 “teaser” sentences (or a paragraph…I’m not picky) from somewhere on that page (BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! you don’t want to give too much away!)
- And then tell us where you got it! (Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!)

The Innocents by Francesca Segal

Synopsis

A smart and slyly funny tale of love, temptation, confusion, and commitment, “The Innocents” is a generous and deeply satisfying look at a close-knit society in which one young man’s pre-wedding panic illuminates the universal conflict between responsibility and passion.

Newly engaged and unthinkingly self-satisfied, twenty-eight-year-old Adam Newman is the prize catch of Temple Fortune, a small, tight-knit Jewish suburb of London. He has been dating Rachel Gilbert since they were both sixteen and now, to the relief and happiness of the entire Gilbert family, they are finally to marry. To Adam, Rachel embodies the highest values of Temple Fortune; she is innocent, conventional, and entirely secure in her community—a place in which everyone still knows the whereabouts of their nursery school classmates. Marrying Rachel will cement Adam’s role in a warm, inclusive family he loves.
But as the vast machinery of the wedding gathers momentum, Adam feels the first faint touches of claustrophobia, and when Rachel’s younger cousin Ellie Schneider moves home from New York, she unsettles Adam more than he’d care to admit. Ellie—beautiful, vulnerable, and fiercely independent—offers a liberation that he hadn’t known existed: a freedom from the loving interference and frustrating parochialism of North West London. Adam finds himself questioning everything, suddenly torn between security and exhilaration, tradition and independence. What might he be missing by staying close to home?

My Teaser – Page 3

“They had been together since they were sixteen  -  twelve years last summer.  For twelve years she had been his girlfriend, and now for a week, she had been his fiancee.  And it all felt different.  He could never have anticipated the shift, profound and inarticulable, that had taken place when he had seen the ring over which he had agonized winking on Rachel’s slender finger.  It was more than possession, more than union, more than love. It was absolute confidence.  It was certainty, and promise of certainty always.”

Click images for additional details

Gripping is defined as: Taking and keeping a firm hold of; grasping tightly.

A simple word really…when you actually think about it; BUT one that can potentially hold mounds of meaning.

Yesterday I gripped my husband’s hand as we watched TV.  The day before that, I gripped a fishing pole with 3 year old daughter.

Gripping: Taking a keeping a firm hold on things.

People. Objects. Memories. Emotions. Stories. Shadow on the Wall.

“Recai Osman: Muslim, philosopher, billionaire and Superhero?

Controversial and daring, Shadow on the Wall details the transformation of Recai Osman from complicated man to Superhero. Forced to witness the cruelty of the Morality Police in his home city of Elih, Turkey, Recai is called upon by the power of the desert to be the vehicle of change. Does he have the strength to answer Allah’s call or will his dark past and self doubt stand in his way?

Pulling on his faith in Allah, the friendship of a Jewish father-figure and a deeply held belief that his people deserve better, Recai Osman must become The SandStorm.

In the tradition of books by Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie, Shadow on the Wall tackles issues of religion, gender, corruption and the basic human condition. Beautiful and challenging, this is not a book to miss.”

In all honesty, this book is not going to be for everyone.  I feel it necessary to state this up front for those of you that flock to everything I put a five star rating on. (With or without reading the review – *cough* Mom!) If you are easily offended by the mistreatment of women (Think “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “Speak”) and have a difficult time handling touchy subjects such as religion, then this is NOT the book for you. But…if you are drawn to books that have a deeper meaning, that bewitch you with their flawless plots (regardless of the harshness of the events that reside in them) AND urge you to believe in hope when even the characters themselves feel as though all hope is lost. Read this book immediately.

I cry when I read.  This is something that I have come to accept and finally appreciate.  While my husband thinks I’ve lost my mind for weeping over a few smudges of black ink (his words, not mine) I view it as the mark of expert craftsmanship. Not all books draw on something deep inside of you, some are simply read and then discarded.  A brief hiatus from reality and then back to the grind.  Others strike cords. “Shadow on the Wall” was one of those books for me. It not only stuck a cord, it gripped it, chopped it into tiny pieces and then fed it back to me on a silver platter.

At 20% in, I found myself in the throws of chest wracking sobs. Something that HASN’T happened to me since the ugliness of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” Much like Larsson, Tyler laid all of her cards on the table.  She opened her characters up to the most unthinkable of human acts (rape) and she did so in a way that made the agony of it feel palpable.  I was inside of that room, and though I wanted to (much like Tyler’s lead Recai) I couldn’t force my eyes away from it.  It was a fact of this characters existence and I had to watch as it happened, to turn away would be cowardice.

It’s this single event that shapes the remainder of the story, and the emotions that ran thick throughout it.

Recai is all of the things stated above: Muslim, philosopher, billionaire, superhero. But much like our childhood superheros (for example: Batman) he he was thrust into his circumstances due to some deep-seeded issues of loss, revenge, and guilt.

Let me paint the picture differently. (It might help you to understand the driving force behind the actions in this book.) In “Casino Royale” James Bond (despite his many lovers in other movies) finally develops legitimate feelings for a woman named Vesper Lynd.  At the end of this movie, she is killed. In the next installment of the series (“Quantum of Solace”) Bond is controlled by his anger and pain. He feel responsible for Vesper’s demise and because of this “responsibility” (however misguided it may be) he sets out to avenge her.  The same could be said for Recai in “The Shadow on the Wall.” A horrible (but very brief) moment in his life takes a hold of his consciousness and develops into uncontrollable anger and pain.  However, unlike Bond, his guilt is what fuels him not his anger, and eventual all of these emotions morph him into a man hell bent on correcting corruption.

With that…a superhero is born.

Though the plot is very segregated (allowing the reader insight through several different perspectives) it is fluid, well thought out, and intricate enough to engage ALL of your senses. Tyler does a wonderful job of incorporating Turkey’s cultural aspects (and language) without drowning the reader, and though some might feel (initially) turned off by it’s religious connotations,  I assure you that by 50% your mind will be focused on a bigger picture.

In short. I loved this book, and cannot wait for the second installment. If for no other reason than my emotional connection to Recai.

Live it. Love it. Pass it on.

Happy Reading my fellow Kindle-ites and remember: you don’t have to stand up for everyone, but you can’t turn your back on everyone either.

***** (5/5)

Book Trailer

Amazon Gets The Boot!

Target plans to stop selling Amazon Kindle e-readers and tablets, and has already removed the products from its website. The Verge reported that an internal Target memo said “the company will be removing Amazon hardware from its locations starting this month. Certain accessories will remain in stock, but shipments of Kindles themselves will cease as of May 13.”

Target representative Molly Snyder confirmed the move, telling CNN that the retailer, which started selling the devices about two years ago, is “phasing out Kindles and Amazon- and Kindle-branded products in the spring of 2012.” Apple recently partnered with Target for a number of “mini-stores” at 25 of its locations and is now selling the iPad.

Fortune magazine observed: “If Target did make the decision in an effort to mollify Apple, that would be sort of a retro-chic move in an era when big retailers tend to dictate terms to manufacturers rather than the other way around. There aren’t many manufacturers with market power like Apple’s, however.”

Reuters noted

that “Amazon ran Target’s website for several years, but that relationship ended last year amid a legal battle.”

“This is evidence that Target is getting more serious about Amazon as an enemy rather than a partner,” said analyst Matt Nemer of Wells Fargo. “That’s probably something Target now regrets. It put them behind in the world of multi-channel retail and let a serious competitor learn a lot about their business.”

The New York Times reported that as retailers like Target address the challenge of “showrooming,” carrying Amazon’s Kindle is, as Michael Norris of Simba Information put it, “like Starbucks selling Dunkin’ Donuts gift certificates.”

The warning signs for Target’s move were there in January, the Times wrote. According to a Citi analyst Deborah Weinswig, a letter sent by Target executives to vendors stated: “What we aren’t willing to do is let online-only retailers use our brick-and-mortar stores as a showroom for their products and undercut our prices.”

At Mobylives, Dennis Johnson suggested that “opponents can take some satisfaction in the interesting suggestion made by the Times reporters that anger at Amazon’s price check app hasn’t dissipated, and six months later may still be motivating a wide range of retailers to fight back.

“Which makes the notion that others may indeed follow suit not so far-fetched at all, but an equally simple, elegant and possible development.”

Corrections & Dragons

HBO has decided not to go forward with the pilot based on Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. Deadline.com reported that the Noah Baumbach/Scott Rudin p

roject “boasted

one of most star-studded casts ever assembled on television: Chris Cooper, Dianne Wiest, Ewan McGregor, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Rhys Ifans and Greta Gerwig.”

The attempt to bring Franzen’s novel to the screen “was considered a big swing,” Deadline.com wrote. “Word is HBO brass liked the performances but the decision came down to adapting the book’s challenging narrative, which moves through time and cuts forwards and back. While that works in the novel, it proved difficult to sustain in a series and challenging for viewers to follow, hampering the potential show’s accessibility.”

—

Stephen King’s 1987 fantasy novel The Eyes of the Dragon is being developed by the Syfy network “as a longform project,” with Michael Taylor (Battlestar Galactica) and Jeff Vintar (I, Robot) writing the script, Entertainment Weekly reported, adding that Dragon “is a rarity among King’s early works: A stand-alone novel that hasn’t been previously adapted into a live-action feature.”

From Page to Screen

On its first full day in U.S. and Canadian theaters, “The Avengers,” Marvel’s tale about a team of superheroes, raked in $80.5 million Friday

Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk, Nick Fury and Black Widow are kicking off the summer movie season in style.

On its first full day in U.S. and Canadian theaters, “The Avengers,” Marvel’s tale about a team of superheroes, raked in $80.5 million Friday, the second-biggest single day ever at the box office behind last year’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2,” which conjured $91.1 million, Variety reported.

The haul puts the Disney-distributed “Avengers” on course to gross more than $150 million through Sunday and gives it a chance to overtake “The Dark Knight,” the 2008 Batman epic that netted $158.4 million its opening weekend.

The well-reviewed “The Avengers” looks to continue its Hulk-like strength. The movie received a rare “A+” grade from American audiences, according to CinemaScore, a market research firm. On Friday, Fandango, the online ticket seller, was selling 19 tickets a second to the movie, spokesman Harry Medved told TheWrap, a movie industry news website.

Depending on ticket sales Saturday and Sunday, “The Avengers” may have a shot at outpacing “Deathly Hallows,” which holds a first-weekend record of $169.2 million.

By Brian Browdie / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Book Trailer of the Day

The Baker’s Daughter by Sarah McCoy

Synopsis: In 1945, Elsie Schmidt is a naive teenager, as eager for her first sip of champagne as she is for her first kiss. She and her family have been protected from the worst of the terror and desperation overtaking her country by a high-ranking Nazi who wishes to marry her. So when an escaped Jewish boy arrives on Elsie’s doorstep in the dead of night on Christmas Eve, Elsie understands that opening the door would put all she loves in danger.

Sixty years later, in El Paso, Texas, Reba Adams is trying to file a feel-good Christmas piece for the local magazine. Reba is perpetually on the run from memories of a turbulent childhood, but she’s been in El Paso long enough to get a full-time job and a fiancé, Riki Chavez. Riki, an agent with the U.S. Border Patrol, finds comfort in strict rules and regulations, whereas Reba feels that lines are often blurred.

Reba’s latest assignment has brought her to the shop of an elderly baker across town. The interview should take a few hours at most, but the owner of Elsie’s German Bakery is no easy subject. Reba finds herself returning to the bakery again and again, anxious to find the heart of the story. For Elsie, Reba’s questions are a stinging reminder of darker times: her life in Germany during that last bleak year of WWII. And as Elsie, Reba, and Riki’s lives become more intertwined, all are forced to confront the uncomfortable truths of the past and seek out the courage to forgive.

Trailer

Afternoon Kindle-ites!

I wanted to make a small announcement about an event I am hosting the first week of June.

Accessory Week!

I have been in touch with a TON of wonderful companies such Sticker Boy, Decal Girl, Oberon Designs, iLuv, DodoCase, Built NY, Timbuk2, and PDair (just to name of few) that have graciously offered up their amazing products for giveaways!

That’s right…not only will I be reviewing the product, but I will also be GIVING THEM AWAY!!!!

More details will follow, including banners if you want to post (for extra contest entries)

I just wanted to share the exciting new because I am TOTALLY HYPED UP about it!

—Misty

Prices are subject to change at anytime, be sure to double check before you click buy.

Thirteen year old Angel Bishop is fed up with all the unanswered questions about her life, like why did her daddy run off when she was just a baby? And why has her Aunt Patsy, the only family member she feels she can talk to, been locked up in a place for crazy people all these years? It seems to Angel like her family fell apart right after she was born, which makes her wonder what her coming along had to do with it.

Growing up with her mother, Ruth, who is often distant and preoccupied, and her bible thumping grandmother, Naomi, Angel is certain there’s more to the story than she’s been told. When her father, Calvin, telephones out of the blue one evening and says he’s coming home for Thanksgiving, Angel thinks her dream of having a normal family is finally going to come true. Instead, she finds herself at the center of a dangerous scenario, threatened by secrets far beyond her understanding.
Set in a small Appalachian town in the early 1970′s, Angel is the compelling story of an innocent girl as the unwitting link between the two generations of her family’s dark and unresolved past.

Lt. Joe Gunther of the Brattleboro, Vermont police force has a serious problem: in a community where a decade could pass without a single murder, the body count is suddenly mounting. Innocent citizens are being killed—and others set-up—seemingly orchestrated by a mysterious ski-masked man. Signs suggest that a three year-old murder trial might lie at the heart of things, but it’s a case that many in the department would prefer remained closed. A man of quiet integrity, Lt. Gunther knows that he must pursue the case to its conclusion, wherever it leads.

Open Season is the first of Archer Mayor’s Joe Gunther novels, a series of gripping police procedurals set in New England, where small-town charm, stoicism and civility sometimes conceal brutal truths.

A New Dakotah Territory Saga From Bestselling Author Lauraine Snelling!

Book 1 of Dakotah Treasures. Author Lauraine Snelling once again takes readers west to the untamed land of Dakota Territory, introducing new characters both unique and appealing. Ruby Torvald and her young sister, Opal, have received an inheritance from their long-lost father who left home years ago to seek his fortune in the Black Hills. When they leave their comfortable situation in Chicago and arrive at the mining town of Medora to claim their inheritance, the sisters discover that rather than the legacy of gold they expected, their father has left them a shocking bequest. Ruby’s bold determination in the face of scandal leads the reader on a journey both heartwarming and inspiring.

A disturbing glimpse into a digital future, not far from now.

Mathew Grey is a brilliant scientist who accidentally unleashed a man-made plague that ravaged America’s heartland, and now threatens the rest of the planet. Riddled with guilt and running out of time, he decides to use a dangerous technology to enter a computer-generated reality called Cyberdrome, hoping to unravel a mystery that could be the key to Earth’s survival.

Alek Grey was an athlete whose career was cut short by a near-fatal accident. Now he is a software hacker with the unique ability to outsmart the best Artificial Intelligence programs of his day. When he is called in after one of his programs inadvertently attacks Cyberdrome, he is shocked to learn that both his father and ex-fiancée have become trapped inside the simulation, unable to be removed without risk of death.

Alek knows of only one way to rescue the people he loves, but will he risk all of humanity to save them?

Enter a world of fierce wolves, stunning magic and romance…

It’s bad enough feeling different among the human crowd, but feeling different among wolves?

No one said returning to her pack would be easy, especially after ten years without them, but seventeen year old Caia Ribeiro is unprepared for the realities of the transition. Raised in a world where kids aren’t scared by bedtime tales of the bogeyman but by the real life threat of enemy supernaturals who might come creeping into their community to kill them in their sleep, Caia is used to the darkness; she’s used to the mystery and the intrigue of the ancient underworld war she’s bound to by chance of birth. What she’s having trouble with are pack members treating her with wary suspicion, the Elders tucking secrets behind their backs, and her young Alpha, Lucien, distracting her with a dangerous attraction from her decision to uncover the truth.

But as the saying goes ‘the truth will out’ and when it does, Caia will only have so long to prepare herself before the war comes pounding on their door threatening to destroy the safe, secret lives of the wolves… and the girl they protect.

He Was a Man Who Took What He Wanted.
And He Wanted Her.

To escape her cruel stepfather, seamstress Alexandra Cogsworth envisioned sailing far from England . . . though not as a captive aboard a pirate’s ship.

Pirate Captain Nathaniel Kent’s strategy for exacting revenge on his cold-hearted father involved taking a valuable hostage . . . not a seamstress he mistakenly thinks is his half sister.

Yet fate has designs of its own, landing them both on board the Royal Vengeance. At sea, Nathaniel intercepts and plunders his father’s ships, all the while tormented by his illicit hunger for the tempting prisoner he thinks is his blood relation. And although Alexandra wants no part in this terrifying voyage, to reveal her true identity to the handsome, blue-eyed Nathaniel would invite danger. Not only would she become worthless cargo, but the revelation would surely unleash what she and Nathaniel have been fiercely battling a rising undercurrent of impossible desire that could sweep them away for good.

YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS TO MAKE A DECISION:
Let A Kidnapper Take Your Child, Or Watch Your Son Die.
Choose!

Sadie O’Connell is a bestselling author and a proud mother. But her life is about to spiral out of control. After her six-year-old son Sam is kidnapped by a serial abductor, she nearly goes insane. But it isn’t just the fear and grief that is ripping her apart. It’s the guilt. Sadie is the only person who knows what the kidnapper looks like. And she can’t tell a soul. For if she does, her son will be sent back to her in “little bloody pieces”.

When Sadie’s unfaithful husband stumbles across her drawing of the kidnapper, he sets into play a series of horrific events that sends her hurtling over the edge. Sadie’s descent into alcoholism leads to strange apparitions and a face-to-face encounter with the monster who abducted her son–a man known only as…The Fog.

Expectations depicts the struggle between what we desire for ourselves and our familiar obligations. This is personified by Chris and Matt Taylor, identical twins who are trying to win their overbearing father’s approval and acquire their trust funds. Their best friend and roommate, Aiden O’Boyle, left his family behind in Ireland to pursue a career in dance.

Robert Taylor, Matt and Chris’s father has set certain conditions that must be met in order for them to receive their trust funds. Matt must work at a job he hates while struggling with alcoholism. Chris has to deny his own desires and deep love for Aiden, to get married to Matt’s girlfriend. All the while, their father continues to use extreme measures to ensure his sons’ compliance. Will they learn to lean on each other and discover their strength or succumb to their father’s will?

Margie Bradford is picking up the pieces of her shattered life following her husband’s death. When her cousin encourages her to make a fresh start with her teenage daughter, unsuspecting Margie takes a reading specialist job in the small town of Redemption, PA. The last person she expects to encounter is Rocket Manion, the ex-NFL quarterback and Dr. Phil wannabe who broke her heart nineteen years ago. Strangling her meddling cousin is now at the top of Margie’s to-do list.

Divorced teacher and head football coach Jake Manion experiences an eerie sense of déjà vu when his son announces he’s gotten his girlfriend pregnant. The feeling simply grows stronger when Jake learns the girl’s mother is Maggie, the same woman on whom he’s wasted nearly two decades of bitterness.

While planning their kids’ wedding and helping them grow up too soon, Jake attempts to pick up right where he left off–in Margie’s bed. But no matter how irresistible his kisses are, she isn’t stupid enough to let him hurt her again. Or is she?

Shayne Barlet has been kidnapped, his powers disabled and his memory altered. He’s having a bad day…and he doesn’t even know it.

Shayne believes he’s living the ideal life.

He attends a great school in the Midwest, gets along with his roommate, and has even met a girl who seems perfect for him.

But it’s all a lie.

His girlfriend is deceiving him, his roommate is in on it, and perhaps most unbelievably of all: he’s not from Earth. He’s not even human…and neither are they.

As he discovers his own buried psychic abilities, Shayne realizes the only truth he’s been told is perhaps the most improbable one: his girlfriend, a member of the invasion force, seems to truly love him, even though her actions are rife with deceit.

Shayne soon uncovers a vast conspiracy involving planetary conquest, erased memories, holographic worlds, and dark agendas. He vows to expose the truth, set his people free, and stop The Overtaking…once, and for all.

When Holly Evans wakes up dead at the tender age of twenty-two, she’s pretty sure things can’t get any worse (especially since her boyfriend was about to propose to her with a diamond ring the size of her knuckle). But Holly’s wrong and it turns out that she’s still got some mortal baggage to unload before she can walk through the pearly gates, which is why she’s being sent back to earth to get things sorted out.

Problem is that when she lands in the body of computer geek, Vince Murphy, she discovers that instead of having left the building, Vince is still very much alive (and remarkably unimpressed at the idea of sharing with a dead girl). So now Holly has to sort out her unresolved baggage in the next forty-eight hours while stuck in the body of a guy she barely noticed while she was alive. And if she doesn’t? Well, let’s just say that she’s probably not going to like the alternative.

Declan Elliot is an ordinary man trying to survive in 2025. His life is turned upside down one night on the way home from work. The night’s events thrust him headlong into a perilous journey fraught with murder, catastrophic weather and out of control crime. In this 21st century retelling of the classic parable of the Good Samaritan, Declan battles to overcome rejection, betrayal and a high powered politician who will stop at nothing to see him dead.

Guns of Seneca 6 is a trailblazing, gun-slinging, high-octane adventure of the Old West set on a distant planet in outer space.   For years, the mining settlement of Seneca 6 was kept calm and peaceful by its steady-handed sheriff, Sam Clayton.   That all ended on the day he was murdered in the wastelands, deep in the heart of Seneca’s native people, the Beothuk.
Twenty years later, an intergalactic Marshal crash lands on Seneca transporting one of the galaxy’s most ruthless, despicable criminals.  It is only a matter of time before his brother, Little Willy Harpe, arrives to murder the Marshal and kill everyone and everything he finds inside Seneca 6.
Jem Clayton has turned into the infamous outlaw, “Gentleman Jim.”  Upon his return to Seneca, he is joined by legendary scoundrel Doctor Royce Henry Halladay, and together, they make a stand against the Harpe Gang and a weapon they possess of unholy power.

Solo sailor Maggie Riley is cruising aboard her forty-foot sailboat when she rescues a sexy – but crazy conspiracy-spouting treasure hunter/archeologist who is swimming totally nude off the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. She soon learns he is searching for the wreck of a mysterious submarine. Cole Thatcher claims the sub holds millions in gold coins as well as secret documents from a powerful inner circle of Skull and Bones whose goal is to keep America at war for their own profits. Cole hopes for Riley’s help in decoding his father’s journals that are the key to the location of the wreck.At last, Riley joins the search for Surcouf when she discovers the demons in her own past intersect the inner Circle of Bones, and this conspiracy nut might not be so crazy after all.

The ancient battle between good and evil is nearing its end. Evil is winning.Since ancient times, our planet has been visited by super-intelligent aliens who shift between parallel worlds as easily as we move from sunlight to shadow. Described in our myths as angels, gods, and demons, these trans-dimensional beings often walk among us unnoticed, but they’re locked in a battle older than time, with our future hanging in the balance.

The Archons’ goal is to destroy the human race and seize our world for their own. Standing against them are the Irin, a benevolent race of winged aliens with great power but limited numbers. As our planet sinks rapidly toward apocalyptic doom, our only hope lies in the Synaxis, a group of ordinary men and women conscripted by the Irin and given supernormal powers.

But it’s a race against time. And as the Synaxis members trek across the Scottish highlands to open the ancient dimensional portal on Iona, they must overcome heavily-armed psychopaths, flying bat-winged demons, and the awakening of a long-dormant volcano. Most of all, they must learn how to use their fantastic new powers to drive back the Archons and rescue the world from destruction

“It’s a strange time when the safest place in the world is in the arms of the person who frightens you the most.”After the violent death of her father, it is Selena who becomes the ghost. Every day is a lone struggle for survival in the wilderness, more than a decade after the fall of modern civilization. No longer subject to law, order, or the social norms of its domestic past, the primal nature of man has reared its head with alarming swiftness.

From her own frightening experiences, Selena has learned just how dangerous men are. Now, she avoids them at all costs, mastering a thoroughly elusive lifestyle, until she meets her match. After a chance encounter, Selena’s life is swept on a tide of chaotic involvement with Dan, an intense but disciplined leader who clashes with her approach to survival on every level. Through her wild experiences with this frightening but captivating man, Selena learns that the human animal loves as passionately as it kills.

This wasn’t the adventure she’d signed up for…

A sexy boss, a rough crossing, and pirates—all Brylie Winston wanted was a job to help her earn money to buy her own restaurant. She hopes to earn it by working as a chef on a cruise to Antarctica. But she’s slept with her boss, which throws her off-balance even more than the rough seas and warnings of pirates in the area. And he’s determined to have a repeat performance…

Bad boy former snowboarder Marcus Devlin is running from his reputation, sent to learn the family business after decking a senator’s son and making the papers. So maybe he indulged in a last-minute fling before boarding his family’s cruise ship to Antarctica. Perhaps Fate is showing him that wasn’t so bad—the gorgeous redhead who snuck out of his bed is on the cruise. She’ll be a lovely distraction during his exile.

But when modern-day pirates take over the ship, his instinct is to protect her and the other passengers. But what does a spoiled rich boy know about saving people’s lives?

Breathless is the first book in the Blue Fire Saga, a paranormal romance series set at a small college in present day Connecticut. There are currently three books in the series.

Weston College freshman Leesa Nyland has been fascinated by vampires since she was three years old. That’s when her mom started acting weird, insisting sunlight hurt her skin because she’d been bitten by a one-fanged vampire.

But fascinated doesn’t mean Leesa believes. Any more than she believes in blue fire, people who live for centuries, and kisses that can kill. But when her beloved older brother suddenly disappears, she is forced to consider all these and more. She also has to figure out what to do about her mysterious new boyfriend. She knows Rave likes her a lot–so why won’t he kiss her?
As Leesa draws closer to finding her brother, she faces some gut-wrenching decisions. Should she risk her mom’s life trying to “cure” her? Should she continue seeing Rave, after he reveals his dangerous secret? And most terrifying of all, should she make the ultimate sacrifice-give up her humanity-to save her brother?

It seemed the perfect stunt to save the ailing Adventure Channel. When a famed anthropologist disappears in the middle of a formidable African jungle while searching for a legendary–and reportedly bloodthirsty–”lost tribe,” fading star Max Carrington and his bumbling television crew swiftly set off to find him. Their goal: bring him back, alive or dead, documenting every moment along the way for a blockbuster television event. Back home, their dramatic live video dispatches from the middle of the jungle swiftly become the media sensation of the moment. But when members of the crew start disappearing as well, they realize too late that much more than the network’s fortunes are at risk…

Welcome to the Shade.In the small town of Beaver Hollow, West Virginia, forester Mark Steele has experienced the same reoccurring vision since he was a boy − one that foreshadows a towering tree, menacing premonitions and his own suffocating demise. Tess McCoy is a former captain in the United States Army, harbors a debilitating secret and can’t get far enough from her mountain roots to save her life.

When a mystifying accident takes the life of Tess’ younger brother, a series of preternatural events are set into motion, propelling the former lovers from the oak-lined streets of the sleepy West Virginia town to an impenetrable hidden fortress within German-occupied France to the ever-changing seasons of an aberrant land − a wondrous otherworld called the Shade. Here, within this tethered realm, they discover an ageless war between two fabled brothers and the terrifying pact made in the closing days of World War II − a pact that will ultimately bring destruction to modern day America.

The Solstice Treaty has an eco-bent and blends accessible fantasy, European folklore, and the fighting men of the Greatest Generation. The novel audaciously crosses the standard genres and engages readers with a fresh voice − one that weaves the familiar with the preternatural.

Montana truly is heavenly. Especially those handsome cowboys.
Her parents want a clout wielding attorney. She just wants to teach kindergarten. When her “all-powerful” parents actually choose her future husband, -a divorce lawyer named Elroy, Charlie opts out and heads for Big Sky Country to work on a sprawling ranch in the heart of the Montana Rockies. Filled with colorful characters of all kinds, a horse of her own, and one extremely attractive rancher, it makes for a summer never to be forgotten. Once again, Jaclyn M. Hawkes spins a tale filled with a deft mix of humor, romance, and tension that will leave you wishing that she’d kept on writing.

One summer night in the town of Hell, Ariel Donovan’s best friend goes missing. Everyone else believes Jenna ran away, but Ariel thinks something more sinister may have happened. She dreams of Jenna running to the abandoned orphanage in town, and then the building catching on fire. What does the orphanage have to do with Jenna’s disappearance?To complicate matters, a handsome new boy named Henry Rhodes has arrived in town, plaguing her with unwarranted attention. Even though she tries to stay away, she’s drawn to him despite her best efforts, and can’t help giving in to her attraction to him. Though he doesn’t believe in the supernatural events that Ariel begins to witness, she enlists his help to figure out what is going on.

But when she discovers the truth, it’s much worse than she ever feared.

>What happens when special-op team consisting of a werewolf, vampire, super-soldier, and computer geek—are sent to a island with prehistoric wildlife to rescue the prince of Saudi Arabia from a bunch of tank-driving pirates? The kind of chaos and mayhem that can only be described as—Freaking Wicked.For Jack the werewolf it was simple. There were good guys and there were bad guys, and his CIA job let him kill the bad ones with sanctioned approval of America. An adrenaline junkie that liked to live on the edge of out of control, Jack lived for the—pull your face off and howl—kind of adventures that only the clandestine world of special-ops could deliver. Teamed with the irresistibly cute vampire—Megan, the only survivor of a canceled super-soldier program named Grod, a computer nerd called Big Dork, Jack figures that there is nothing his team of monsters called the Freak Show can’t handle.

But when they are handed a mission to rescue the Prince of Saudi Arabia from a secret island ruled by Somalian pirates, the Freak Show runs into the sort of death-inducing complications that has the heckles on the back of Jack’s neck raising in alarm. A smack-down with a mummy and a mysterious meeting with a team of commandos in Egypt, drives the blood-starved Megan into crazed feeding frenzy that only Jack can stop by surrendering to a long suppressed forbidden desire. Then a showdown with the pirates leaves the team stranded on island where the wildlife is prehistorically monstrous. And if that’s not enough, Jack finds out somebody in their own government has cut off them off and ordered their elimination with extreme prejudice.

The Dark One’s are growing in numbers and strength. They gather underground and await the perfect time to strike back against Atlanticus. Caught in the middle of the age old war is Sollara. Sollara must protect a city she’s never seen from the only family she’s ever known.

Sweet and humorous Christian romance novel.Twenty-something Kate Henry lives a simple life in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. She fills her days managing a bookstore that she loves, spending time with her best friends and their young children, and trying to convince herself that she will someday have what she’s always wanted – a family of her own. Wounded by a father who abandoned her, Kate is desperate to find a man who wants to know and love the real her. The real her who talks to inanimate objects, loves to cook for others, and named her favorite pillow Mr. Darcy. Will the reliable lawyer Ian realize after ten years of friendship that Kate is the one? Will the exciting and spontaneous Ben sweep her off her feet? After facing one heartbreak after another, Kate begins to wonder if perhaps she was meant to be alone. She faces some life-changing decisions, but always manages to keep her sense of adventure and humor.

A Vampire Out to Clear Her Son’s Name.A Former Lover Bent on Revenge.

But Neither is Prepared for What Happens Next…

Vampire couple Olivia and Lucian were forced to separate nearly two centuries ago, but now a series of murders has brought them back together. Their task? To investigate who’s responsible for the grisly killings. And the prime suspect is none other than Olivia’s son, Kaden.

For Olivia, the reunion brings back all the pain of their shattered love—a love she abandoned to marry another. The decision held fateful consequences for herself and her troubled, warring sons. But her new mission also offers a chance at redemption as she risks everything to prove Kaden’s innocence—and put back together a fractured family before it’s too late.

Through it all, Olivia faces the seemingly unyielding hate of Lucian, a powerful leader of the Council, the enforcers of all immortals. He’s determined to seek vengeance on Olivia and her son—but can his hatred withstand the love his heart can’t deny?

The first book of the Misfits of the Lore series, Lover’s Betrayal challenges everything you thought you knew about vampires and the paranormal. Savvy, sexy, and full of surprises, Lover’s Betrayal will keep you guessing right up until the finale.

When sixteen-year-old Hannah Sheraton is arrested for the murder of her stepgrandfather, the chief justice of the California Supreme court, her distraught mother turns to her old college roommate, Josie Baylor-Bates, for help. Josie, once a hot-shot criminal defense attorney, left the fast track behind for a small practice in Hermosa Beach, California. But Hannah Sheraton intrigues her and, when the girl is charged as an adult, Josie cannot turn her back. But the deeper she digs the more Josie realizes that politics, the law and family relationships create a combustible and dangerous situation. When the horrible truth is uncovered it can save Hannah Sheraton or destroy them both.

Missing Pieces of My Forever-Heart tells the unforgettable story of two teenagers’ fateful decisions and the resulting grown-up consequences that impact their lives and hearts forever.News and Internet writer Cath Monahan finally has her life on an even keel after the death of her husband and her daughters’ leaving for college. But long-lost ex-high school boyfriend Jame Patterson has a reason for disrupting her peace and dropping back in her life like a stick of dynamite.

Cath and Jame’s history threatens all that she has built and the biggest threat will reveal a long-buried secret.

Filled with the highs and lows of teenage romance, adult struggle and fateful reality, Missing Pieces Of My Forever-Heart is the haunting story of Cath and Jame as they struggle to make things right after so many years of things being wrong.

You could learn more, do more, even livemore. The potential is there. You could be anything: an engineer, a doctor, a chemist…Or one of the most lethal Secret Service agents on the planet.

Undetectable is the story of Kevin Brooks, the first test subject of a new and unproven neurological technique called scrubbing. A private-school teacher in Manhattan, he has just landed a brand new job. It’s the most important, most dangerous job he’ll ever have.He just doesn’t know about it yet.

Kevin will soon be in charge of protecting the greatest computer scientist of our generation. This man is on the verge of a breakthrough that could change all of our lives, and he already has 24-hour protection from the United States Secret Service. There are people who want this scientist dead, and these people know how to pick their moments. Which is why the man will soon be the beneficiary of a new kind of protector, an undetectable protector.

Now, in the second book of the Great Minds series, Kevin Brooks will be put through every imaginable test. He will have less than two weeks to prepare, but several years of training to absorb.

Whether he is ready in time or not, there will be lives that need saving. And no one else who can do the job.

 

 

 

 

Halifax cop Allan Stanton is a troubled homicide detective who has lost everything, including his family and his sense of justice. When he finally decides to leave the force and start over, he’s assigned a string of murders that all bear the signs of a serial killer collecting trophies. As Stanton unravels each grisly crime scene, the mounting evidence points uncomfortably close to him, forcing him to confront a past he’d rather forget–and a dangerous future when the killer targets Stanton himself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wearing a Maid of Honor dress that very well makes the South want to rise again, Jess Reynolds is prepared to walk down the aisle at her best friend’s wedding. It’s just that things keep getting in the way, like a sex-crazed coworker, an annoying brother-of-the-bride, and a handsome and horribly charming friend posing as the Best Man. As it turns out, Jess might just be the last one to know everything, including the workings of her own heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every Once in a Blue Moon Your Heart Waits at a CrossroadsFor Seattle architect Heather Hampton, a trip back to tiny Moses Lake, Texas, is hardly in the plan. Yet because a promotion hinges on the sale of the family farmland, Heather heads to the last place she ever wanted to go. She’s determined to return home, signed contract in hand, the next day.

But the currents of Moses Lake take visitors on unexpected journeys. As Heather’s stay lengthens, she discovers a family steeped in secrets and an unexpected connection to local banker Blaine Underhill, despite his opposition to Heather’s project. With each new revelation and question, Heather can’t help but wonder if the handsome banker–and the family she has come to know again–are crooks or crusaders. Somehow she must find out the truth before she loses everything she has worked for and everything she’s found on the shores of Moses Lake.

 

 

 

 

A hero for the rest of us?Escaping the cheating fiancé and sheltered life her father has arranged for her, Claire Albritton wants nothing more than to take control of her life and learn to fight her own battles.

Kevin Fuller believes he must rescue damsels in distress and Claire is decidedly out of her element in small town South Carolina. When trouble inevitably finds Claire, Kevin’s white knight protection and heroics are exactly what Claire doesn’t want. But his kisses…that’s another matter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living large in New York City as a corporate lawyer for the most savvy drug lord on the East Coast, Special Agent Steve Williams carefully plots Charlie Wisnowski’s downfall. His plans go to hell when his wife Jennifer survives an attack by a serial killer. With her life in jeopardy and his undercover guise threatening to unravel, he orders Charlie’s arrest. But the sting goes woefully wrong and Steve becomes the target of a mafia assassin hired by the biggest crime boss in America.Escaping from the city, Steve and Jennifer settle back into their quiet life on the banks of Mirror Lake. Their peaceful existence shatters with a crippling loss and Jennifer’s visions escalate, forecasting a brutal assault on their family.

Armed with scant details from her dreams, Steve trudges through a litany of past connections, searching for the key to stop the course of fate.

What he uncovers chills him to the core – a brother with a grudge, a serial killer and a mafia assassin are all on his trail. The hunt begins . . .

 

 

 

 

Some say that dreams are the doorway to the soul. Willow Haywood is no stranger to that doorway. Each night she shares a blissful, silent dream with a stunning blue-eyed boy. With each new moon she is haunted by a painful nightmare shared with a different boy, who’s always hidden by the shadows.In her waking hours she must battle her sixth sense. The one that allows her to feel others emotions as if they were her own. This insight is exhausting and frustrating causing her to draw inward, only trusting her family and few close friends. Oddly, this sense also attracts ghostly images that seem to appear out of nowhere. With a touch, they take her to wherever they may be, allowing her to change their emotion. This alone would cause most to go insane, but Willow filters her aggression by painting, capturing the emotion she changed.
One August night a nightmare came days after the new moon. In this dream the shadowed boy marked her wrist with star, leaving her father no choice but to share a family secret that would tie all of the odd attributes of Willow’s life together. Now, she has no choice but to outrun the fate that is closing in around her.

In an attempt to lure her, the shadowed figure captures her closest friends. In order to save them, she must weave through broken myths, half truths, and the undeniable power of the Zodiac. With each step she takes Willow comes to realize that she has lived before, her path is one that she chose, and this trial is simply the beginning.

 

 

 

 

An adoptee raised in a foreign land, sixteen-year-old Lianne was content with her life as handmaiden to the queen, until a spell cast on her at birth activated. Now she’s filled with uncontrollable rage and access to magic she thought had been bled from her people years ago. Even her years of secret training in elite hand-to-hand combat and meditation can’t calm the fires raging inside her.Her heart is torn between two boys, the one she’s always loved and the one who always ignored her. But when the kingdom threatens to tear itself apart due to rumors surrounding the queen’s alleged affair, who will Lianne protect and who will she destroy?

 

 

 

 

 

 
With millennia-old magic, emerging romance, and ever-shifting allegiances, this inventive new series unveils a scintillating, homoerotic world of Nightwalkers, Daywalkers, Sentinels, and Humans, who battle for world dominance in the not-too-distant future.Overview:
Los Angeles, 2040. The terrorist Medusa and her followers threaten to destroy the metropolis with a nuclear bomb. One individual, the vampire Nicholas Jameson, comes forward to oppose them. As Nick takes on the terrorists, the fragile peace between the races hangs perilously in the balance as the supernatural peoples are exposed.

Arshad Ahsanuddin is a hematopathologist. The irony of a physician who specializes in blood disease writing a series of vampire novels is not lost upon him.

 

 

]]> http://www.kindleobsessed.com/writers-block/kindle-freebie-alert-45/feed/ 0 http://www.kindleobsessed.com/sarcasm-its-best/visual-stimulation-5-book-trailers-i-love/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=visual-stimulation-5-book-trailers-i-love http://www.kindleobsessed.com/sarcasm-its-best/visual-stimulation-5-book-trailers-i-love/#comments Sat, 05 May 2012 13:42:17 +0000 Misty http://www.kindleobsessed.com/?p=11483  

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 12, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs… for now.

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

 

Trailer

 

 

Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway

From the acclaimed author of The Gone-Away World, blistering gangster noir meets howling absurdist comedy as the forces of good square off against the forces of evil, and only an unassuming clockwork repairman and an octogenarian former superspy can save the world from total destruction.

Joe Spork spends his days fixing antique clocks. The son of infamous London criminal Mathew “Tommy Gun” Spork, he has turned his back on his family’s mobster history and aims to live a quiet life. That orderly existence is suddenly upended when Joe activates a particularly unusual clockwork mechanism. His client, Edie Banister, is more than the kindly old lady she appears to be—she’s a retired international secret agent. And the device? It’s a 1950s doomsday machine. Having triggered it, Joe now faces the wrath of both the British government and a diabolical South Asian dictator who is also Edie’s old arch-nemesis. On the upside, Joe’s got a girl: a bold receptionist named Polly whose smarts, savvy and sex appeal may be just what he needs. With Joe’s once-quiet world suddenly overrun by mad monks, psychopathic serial killers, scientific geniuses and threats to the future of conscious life in the universe, he realizes that the only way to survive is to muster the courage to fight, help Edie complete a mission she abandoned years ago and pick up his father’s old gun . . .

 

Trailer

 

 

 

The Twelve by Justin Cronin

At the end of The Passage, the great viral plague had left a small group of survivors clinging to life amidst a world transformed into a nightmare. In the second volume of this epic trilogy, this same group of survivors, led by the mysterious, charismatic Amy, go on the attack, leading an insurrection against the virals: the first offensives of the Second Viral War.

To do this, they must infiltrate a dozen hives, each presided over by one of the original Twelve. Their secret weapon: Alicia, transformed at the end of book one into a half human, half viral—but whose side, in the end, is she really on?

 

 

Trailer

 

 

 

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.
Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life—a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.
Yet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha…and the secrets of her heart.

 

 

Trailer

 

 

 

Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung

On the night Janie waits for her sister, Hannah, to be born, her grandmother tells her a story: Since the Japanese occupation of Korea, their family has lost a daughter in every generation, so Janie is charged with keeping Hannah safe. As time passes, Janie hears more stories, while facts remain unspoken. Her father tells tales about numbers, and in his stories everything works out. In her mother’s stories, deer explode in fields, frogs bury their loved ones in the ocean, and girls jump from cliffs and fall like flowers into the sea. Within all these stories are warnings.

Years later, when Hannah inexplicably cuts all ties and disappears, Janie embarks on a mission to find her sister and finally uncover the truth beneath her family’s silence. To do so, she must confront their history, the reason for her parents’ sudden move to America twenty years earlier, and ultimately her conflicted feelings toward her sister and her own role in the betrayal behind their estrangement.

Weaving Korean folklore within a modern narrative of immigration and identity, “Forgotten Country” is a fierce exploration of the inevitability of loss, the conflict between obligation and freedom, and a family struggling to find its way out of silence and back to one another.

 

 

Trailer

]]> http://www.kindleobsessed.com/sarcasm-its-best/visual-stimulation-5-book-trailers-i-love/feed/ 0 http://www.kindleobsessed.com/book-rants/same-train-different-endings/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=same-train-different-endings http://www.kindleobsessed.com/book-rants/same-train-different-endings/#comments Sat, 05 May 2012 03:43:06 +0000 Misty http://www.kindleobsessed.com/?p=11448 I was shuffling through my Kindle today trying to find something quick and easy to read (because I’m being knocked on my ass by a 700 page book about the fashion world in the 50′s) when I stumbled upon these 2 short stories.  At first glance they look different. Alarmingly different actually, so I’m sure you are wondering why I am featuring them in the same article. Easy. They are the same train of thought brought to life in two very different ways. One is a contemporary look at one woman’s life, her choices, and her priorities; while the other is the same concept wrapped up in a slightly sadistic horror short. Both make a point, but the way they reach it is drastically different. I’ll introduce you to both, you feel free to make up your mind from there. Happy Reading!

 

 

 The Glass Case by Kristin Hannah

 

Synopsis:

In her classic short story THE GLASS CASE, Kristin Hannah explores the heart and mind of a young mother.  April Bannerman is a young mother of three, married to her high school sweetheart & living in the same small town in which she grew up.  Although she loves her children and husband, April is plagued by the growing doubt that she has not lived up to her mother’s expectations for her—until one day when something terrible and unexpected happens, and April must face the truth about her own life and discover what really matters.

 

My Thoughts:

Kristin Hannah is known for “chick lit” and “The Glass Case” is no exception.  But while many authors skate around reality, (mounds of laundry and a husband who is constantly asking “What’s for dinner?”) Hannah goes right for the jugular…introducing her lead character (April) in the very words that define most stay at home mothers.

“Like many young mothers, I am overworked, underpaid, and in serious need of a makeup intervention.”

Doing this (smart smart girl) she instantly endears the female audience to her story.  We no longer feel alone in our thoughts of loneliness. We realize that we have all given up a piece of ourselves for our families,  and we are comforted when the reigns of guilt are  loosened from carrying the burdens of our parents expectations.

It’s through brilliantly sculpted internal dialogue that Hannah (and by Hannah I mean April) makes mothers everywhere finally feel normal.  And as a result it allows us to let go and focus on what’s really important.

The story is not particularly sad, (though it has it’s sad moments) but it is (for mothers at least) a knuckle clinching ride into the wide world of priorities. What happens when you lose focus of the things you love, and how to find peace where you least expect it.

Enjoyable quick read.

***½~ (3.5/5)

 

 

 

Dark Water: Beaming Smile by Kevin James Breaux

 

Synopsis:

Sarah should have left Montgomery County when she had the chance, but now it’s too late. She is trapped on the rooftop of her family home which is almost completely submerged by dark flood waters. The air smells of a mixture of sewage and mold and it’s still raining. Alone with only her thoughts Sarah is mad she did not leave town years ago when she was right out of high school, before she became the one things she dreaded most; her mother.

Haunted by the re-occurrence of an eerie thumping sound, Sarah is startled when she discovers a large hairy animal, almost the size of a cow, brushing against the corner of her house. What is it? Where did it come from? What other horrors are hiding in the dark water?

 

My Thoughts:

Unlike “The Glass Case” the lead in Breaux’s story (Sarah) takes a different route.  The path of least resistance, which to her is avoidance and denial. Sarah’s homelife is strangling her, (or so she says) and clinging to the fear that she will forever be a carbon copy of her mother she makes dreadful choices. Choices that leave her stranded on top of house while dark waters and guilt raise around her.

Priorities are not on her to-do list, getting out is. The trials that surrounds Sarah’s “escape” are what form the plot in the incredibly creepy short story.

The most impressive element to Dark Water is Breaux homage to Poe’s “The Tale Tale Heart” which may or not may be intentional, but is prominent all the same.

Now, while both stories took a “mystical” turn, (in the end) Dark Water takes the cake in the WTH! column adding an unforeseen element in the end that even I didn’t see coming. (A very hair unforeseen element.)

In short…if you like Gothic literature or stories that can morph from normal to weird in approximately 5 seconds, this might just be the story for you.

Interesting plot, interesting characters, fantastic ending.

***½~ (3.5/5)

]]> http://www.kindleobsessed.com/book-rants/same-train-different-endings/feed/ 0 http://www.kindleobsessed.com/book-rants/pearls-of-wisdom/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=pearls-of-wisdom http://www.kindleobsessed.com/book-rants/pearls-of-wisdom/#comments Fri, 04 May 2012 21:39:11 +0000 Misty http://www.kindleobsessed.com/?p=11420

There are few things in life that genuinely intrigue me.

• What happened to the Jonas Brothers? Did they die in a plane crash?
• Why is there braille on drive up ATM machines?
• Who was the idiot that inspired the “do not drink” sign on the back of concrete mixers?

and

• Who in there right mind would think to combine the fascinating world of mermaids with the destructive premise of dystopian literature?

I’m still working on the first three, but as for the mermaids? I can blame that  on Ami Blackwelder.

“Mira always knew she was different. Growing up with Mers, she never quite fit in. When Mira breaks the rules and takes Niren with heracross the border dividing Ellis Island and New Jersey, the border dividing two vastly different worlds, she thought the journey to find out who she really is would be an easy one.

But, as the world in Jersey proves to be a convoluted mix of aristocrats who hate the Mers, pirates who want to sell them, and magi who want to use them…finding her true identity will be a challenge, especially when her best friend Niren is a Mer willing to fight to the death. “

In the interest of saving time (cause I’m going to be horribly wordy with this review)  on with the good the bad and the ugly.

The Good:

Blackwelder did an amazing job of creating a unique story set in a well thought out (very “Waterworld-ish”) dystopian society.  The introductory creation of her future world was vivid, imaginative and detailed enough to paint a very lucid mental image. And her distinction of “classes/races” (including the behavior each were subjected to) was handled quite eloquently despite the horrendous treatment she inflicted through her writing.

All of the characters had strong backgrounds, (which of course lead to tons of doom and gloom in the second half of the story) and though there were more than a handful of characters at any given time, their distinction through their actions made it very clear who the narrating party was.

Unfortunatly these few “good” things took a back seat to the few “bad” things.

The Bad: It was too long.

I know you are probably looking at the page count for this book (196) thinking I’ve lost my marbles for calling it too long, but that’s exactly what it was.  I found myself on several different occasions thinking I was at the end of the book, only to turn around and find out I had another 25% to go.  What this tell me is that Blackwelder was so determined to tie up loose end, (and avoid a catastrophic cliffhanger) that she burned through her characters’ plot issues much quicker than she should have resulting in a “finalized feeling” well before the story was complete.  If she had opted to end the book at one of these major revelations vs continuing the story through several more (bright shiny and new) issues, I wouldn’t have felt quite so weighted down. As it stands…I feel like I have everything I need to complete the story myself which eliminates the need/want to read it’s second installment.

Also, where Blackwelder’s descriptive passages shined like the jewels mentioned in her story,

“Slapping her arms into the water, Mira glided smoothly beside Nerin.  They pushed forward towards Liberty Shore, or at least in the direction Nerin’s internal compass guided them.  Mira trusted Nerin completely, and if he said Liberty Shore sat wet, west they would go.  But maneuvering in the seas grew more difficult and dangerous as darkness rolled over them and heavy waves crashed against their fragile bodies.”

the dialogue between her characters felt stiff and forced.

“I don’t know, Mira, but I image if you unravel the secrets of your parents, you will find out.” “Then I have to return to Remantville.” “It would seems so.” “But first, I must save the Mers from further destruction.”

The disconnect with the dialogue led to a disconnect with the characters and ultimately…I didn’t care what happened to them. That’s not a very good sign. Did I want them to die? No. Would I cry myself into a hot sloppy mess if they did? Probably not.

Overall? It wasn’t that bad of a read.  It had a few redeeming qualities that kept me interested, (like the expertly choreographed action scenes) and even though it morphed through 3 or 4 different genres (YA, Dystopian, Fantasy, Greek Lore…) it had a solid direction. (Which I have to say is impressive for a book about mermaids.)

Buy it if you like our fin-tailed friends, pirates and a pretty pissed of Poseidon, avoid it if you prefer short journeys.

Happy Reading my fellow Kindle-ites and remember: the apple NEVER falls that far from the tree.

***~~ (3/5)

]]> http://www.kindleobsessed.com/book-rants/pearls-of-wisdom/feed/ 0 http://www.kindleobsessed.com/book-rants/bear-grylls-memoir-mud-sweat-tears-excerpt/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bear-grylls-memoir-mud-sweat-tears-excerpt http://www.kindleobsessed.com/book-rants/bear-grylls-memoir-mud-sweat-tears-excerpt/#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 15:03:34 +0000 Misty http://www.kindleobsessed.com/?p=11400 Morning Everyone!

I was doing a little web-surfing this morning and ran across something I found pretty interesting and thought that I would share it with all of you. Bear Grylls (host of Man vs Wild – which I LOVE) has written a memoir titled “Mud, Sweat, and Tears,” and in this memoir he talks about how he coped with bullying as a child.  I have two small children, and bullying (unfortunately) was a problem for one of them a few years ago.  I did NOT no how to handle it, neither did my husband. We were angry, we were  sad for our son and at a total loss.  If I would have been smart, I would have asked for help, or at the very least advice, so when I saw this book my first thought was: “This is what I needed.” So I wanted to share it with all of you.  Just in case one day you find yourself at an impasse you don’t know how to handle it.  Happy Reading!

 

Mud, Sweat, and Tears: The Autobiography

by Bear Grylls

 

Synopsis:

Bear Grylls has always sought the ultimate in adventure. Growing up on a remote island off of Britain’s windswept coast, he was taught by his father to sail and climb at an early age. Inevitably, it wasn’t long before the young explorer was sneaking out to lead all-night climbing expeditions.

As a teenager at Eton College, Bear found his identity and purpose through both mountaineering and martial arts. These passions led him into the foothills of the mighty Himalayas and to a karate grandmaster’s remote training camp in Japan, an experience that soon helped him earn a second-degree black belt. Returning home, he embarked upon the notoriously grueling selection course for the British Special Forces to join the elite Special Air Service unit 21 SAS—a journey that would push him to the very limits of physical and mental endurance.

Then, disaster. Bear broke his back in three places in a horrific free-fall parachuting accident in Africa. It was touch and go whether he would walk again, according to doctors. However, only eighteen months later, a twenty three-year-old Bear became one of the youngest climbers to scale Mount Everest, the world’s highest summit. But these were just the beginning of his many extraordinary adventures. . . .

Known and admired by millions as the star of Man vs. Wild, Bear Grylls has survived where few would dare to go. Now, for the first time, Bear tells the story of his action-packed life. Gripping, moving, and wildly exhilarating, Mud, Sweat, and Tears is a must-read for adrenaline junkies and armchair explorers alike.

 

The following is an excerpt from “Mud, Sweat and Tears: The Autobiography,”  in which television survival man Bear Grylls divulges just how he earned such stellar mountaineering chops. But before he could lecture Discovery Channel viewers on dehydration and shark attacks on his show “Man Vs. Wild,” he had to overcome predators of his own: school bullies. In this chapter of his memoir, Bear explains how learning karate gave him confidence.

 

The Excerpt

 

“I signed up as soon as I could for the karate and aikido clubs, and found that I loved the martial arts way—the focus, the camaraderie, and above all the acquiring of an art that requires the use of guile over power, technique over force.
And I stuck with it. That was the real key to getting good at martial arts: time and motivation—and I certainly had the motivation, thanks to the foghorn.

A few of my friends also signed up with me, and came along to the early classes. In actual fact they were invariably much better than me when we started—often stronger, fitter, and more flexible—but after a few weeks they all began to drop out.
It was hard sometimes on a Sunday evening, when everyone else was messing around playing table tennis or watching TV, to drag yourself out into the winter’s darkness and head off to get battered for two hours in the gym by some maniacal martial arts teacher.

But I kept going and kept going, and I guess I did a bit of a Forrest Gump on it: I just stuck at it—and I am so pleased I did.
One summer I got the chance to tour as part of the Karate Union of Great Britain (KUGB) team to Japan. It was a dream come true.

I remember being dropped off at the bus station in London by my mother, and nervously waving her good-bye. I was neatly dressed in a blazer and tie, with my karate team badge neatly sewn in place on my lapel.

The bus was filled with the rest of the karate squad, gathered from all over the UK—none of whom I had met before.
I could instantly see that they were all bigger, tougher, and louder than me—and I was pretty scared. Japan felt a frighteningly long way away.

I took a deep breath and sat down in the bus, feeling very small and insignificant.

The team was an eclectic mix of karate experts—from London taxi drivers to full-time professional fighters. (The only other Etonian who had been selected as part of the team was Rory Stewart, the MP who went on to become known for his epic walk through Afghanistan, as well as governing a province of occupied Iraq age only thirty.) This is going to be an interesting trip, I thought.

But I had nothing to fear.

The squad completely took me under their wing as their most junior member, and arriving in Tokyo as a fresh-faced teenager, away from home, was eye-opening for me.

We headed up to the mountains outside of Tokyo and settled into the training camp.

Here we began to study and train under Sensei Yahara, one of the most revered karate grandmasters in the world. Each night we slept on the floor in small wooden Japanese huts, and by day we learned how to fight—real and hard.

The training was more exacting and demanding than anything I had previously encountered. If our positions or stances weren’t pinpoint accurate, we would receive a firm crack from the bamboo “jo” cane.

We quickly learned not to be lazy in our stances, even when tired.

In the early evenings when we finished training I would walk the two miles down the mountain to a small roadside hut and buy milk bread, a form of sweet milk cake, and I would slowly eat it on my way back to the camp
.
Then I would bathe in the natural hot volcanic springs and soak my tired muscles. And I loved it all.

On our return to Tokyo, en route back to the UK, we got to witness a private training session of the top twenty karate fighters in the world. It was intense to watch. Fast, brutal at times, yet like poetry in motion.

I was even more hooked than I had been before.

One day I would be that good, I vowed.

I will never forget the day I finally got awarded my black belt, and the pride I felt.

The day of the grading had taken three years to arrive, and for those three years I had given it my all: training at least four or five times a week, religiously.

The final examination came and my mother came down to watch it. She hated watching me fight. (Unlike my school friends, who took a weird pleasure in the fights—and more and more so as I got better.)

But Mum had a bad habit.

Instead of standing on the balcony overlooking the gymnasium where the martial arts grading and fights took place, she would lie down on the ground—among everyone else vying to get a good view.

Now don’t ask me why. She will say it is because she couldn’t bear to watch me get hurt. But I could never figure out why she just couldn’t stay outside if that was her reasoning.

I have, though, learned that there is never much logic to my wonderful mother, but at heart there is great love and concern, and that has always shone through with Mum.

Anyway, it was the big day. I had performed all the routines and katas and it was now time for the kumite, or fighting part of the black-belt grading.

The European grandmaster Sensei Enoeda had come down to adjudicate. I was both excited and terrified—again.

The fight started.

My opponent (a rugby ace from a nearby college), and I traded punches, blocks, and kicks, but there was no real breakthrough.

Suddenly I found myself being backed into a corner, and out of instinct (or desperation), I dropped low, spun around, and caught my opponent square round the head with a spinning back fist.

Down he went.

Now this was not good news for me.

It was bad form and showed a lack of control.

On top of that, you simply weren’t meant to deck your opponent.

The idea was to win with the use of semicontact strikes, delivered with speed and technique that hit but didn’t injure your opponent.

So I winced, apologized, and then helped the guy up.

I then looked over to Sensei Enoeda, expecting a disapproving scowl, but instead was met with a look of delight. The sort of look that a kid gives when handed an unexpected present.

I guess that the fighter in him loved it, and on that note I passed and was given my black belt.

I had never felt so proud as I did finally wearing that belt after having crawled my way up the rungs of yellow, green, orange, purple, brown—you name it—colored belts.

I had done this on my own and the hard way; you can’t buy your way to a black belt.

I remember being told by our instructor that martial arts is not about the belts, it is about the spirit; and I agree . . . but I still couldn’t help sleeping with my black belt on that first night.

Oh, and the bullying stopped.”

The foregoing is excerpted from Mud, Sweat and Tears: The Autobiography by Bear Grylls. All rights reserved.

 

]]> http://www.kindleobsessed.com/book-rants/bear-grylls-memoir-mud-sweat-tears-excerpt/feed/ 0 http://www.kindleobsessed.com/sarcasm-its-best/sword-laser-ep-2-the-magicians-by-lev-grossman/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sword-laser-ep-2-the-magicians-by-lev-grossman http://www.kindleobsessed.com/sarcasm-its-best/sword-laser-ep-2-the-magicians-by-lev-grossman/#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 00:43:28 +0000 Misty http://www.kindleobsessed.com/?p=11387

 

“The Magicians” by Lev Grossman (Wrap-up!)

 

This week on Sword & Laser, my girl crush and her handy helper wrap up their adventure into Lev Gorssman’s “The Magicians!” They also chat with author Saladin Ahmed! Enjoy!

(If you missed episode 1 you can check it out HERE and if you want to check out the S & L webpage, click the banner at the top of the page.)

 

]]> http://www.kindleobsessed.com/sarcasm-its-best/sword-laser-ep-2-the-magicians-by-lev-grossman/feed/ 0 http://www.kindleobsessed.com/book-rants/move-over-carrie/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=move-over-carrie http://www.kindleobsessed.com/book-rants/move-over-carrie/#comments Wed, 02 May 2012 23:49:28 +0000 Misty http://www.kindleobsessed.com/?p=11364

A few years ago I got really into Sex in the City. Not the books, the show. I like to tell myself that it’s because I adored Big and I just couldn’t wait for Carrie and him to get their shit together. The truth. I was fascinated by the casts brazen disregard for normal behavior, especially when it came to their sexual relationships.

See…I grew up in a tiny town, going to church every Sunday and NOT talking about sex, and the fact that this group of women didn’t bat and eye about flaunting their exploits over teeny tiny salads and alcoholic beverages at 9am on a Tuesday morning intrigued me. It also taught me something. I’m not going to tell you what that something is (that’s an entirely different blog) but Chrystal Rose, the author of Unfaithfully Yours: Confessions of a Cheating Bitch, was more than happy to. (tell you..that is.)

“My name is Chrystal Rose and I’m a cheating bitch. I’m not the first woman to cheat and I won’t be the last. I’m just one of the few who’ll admit to it. Forget what you think you know about cheaters. You think once we are, we always are. You think it’s all about sex. You think we’re whores. Maybe we are.

Maybe we’re just looking for the right one, the right one to keep us faithful. Maybe that’s you. Or maybe it’s no one.

Either way, I spent 6 years with a man I wasn’t in love with, but promised to marry. And I cheated on him, mercilessly. This is my story.”

I have to say first and foremost that I thought this book was great. Filthy. Sometimes a little too explicit, and laced with enough F bombs to sink a US destroyer? Yes. But great all the same.

For some reason men have gotten this horrible rap of ALWAYS being “the cheaters” and while I don’t necessarily think this is true (I’ve had a few girlfriends that didn’t understand the meaning of commitment) there are still too many women that do. Let’s face it ladies, we look at abs just as much as they look at boobs. That’s just life. The only difference, we are labeled as sluts while Joe, in his bright red penis-mobile, is labeled a stud.

In Unfaithfully Yours, Chrystal sheds her cloak of sanity quiet reform and teaches us the ins and outs of the (female) cheating world. She doesn’t “promote” it, but she doesn’t hide behind it either…which is kind of refreshing.

So, how was the writing? (Please excuse my sloppy train of thought, I’m not good with memoirs. *sigh*)

It was engaging, in a very “He’s Just Not That Into You” way. Are you a person who needs an instruction manual when trying to pick out a “good” man? No problem, Chrystal has that covered.

“Nice guys don’t actually exist so stop looking for them immediately. The “nice guy” is like some sort of unicorn women are determined to find and marry. For some reason it appears as though all these unicorns are gay or taken.” – Assholes vs. Nice Guys

The chapters, which were broken down into 3 or 4 paragraphs not only told a portion of the overall story. (For example: Adventures of Dunk Boy, which shares an antidote about her fiance’s need to drown himself in alcohol and then ralph all over his shoes. In public.) But also taught a lesson on how to handle the situation if you find yourself it in. (aka how to get your man up 3 flights of stairs without dropping him.) Add these tips to some pretty interesting first person narration:

“He looked utterly pathetic and defeated as I screamed at him, begged him to make some sort of sense as to why he’d lead me on like that. “I’m just not read.” Was his brilliant response to my rant. I would have felt bad for him if I hadn’t wanted to punch him repeatedly in his face.”

and you have a wildly entertaining story about a nymphomaniac looking for love.

As a side note, I loved the titles of the chapters and her “lovers” nicknames. They are what ultimately kept me reading. You can’t see chapter titles like:

*How to Determine if You’re Dating a Mama’s Boy

*The Do’s and Don’ts of Getting Laid

*The Rules of Being a Mistress or Mister

and nicknames like: Shark Boy, The Crazy Bitch, Stopwatch, The Italian Liar and Mechanic Boy without wanting to know WHERE the names and titles came from.

Overall, definitely NOT a book for everyone, and I dare say even hardcore memoir readers may find themselves a little taken aback by Chrystal’s story, but if you loved Sex in the City, aren’t offended by crude language, and feel the need to laugh…this might just be the book for you.

Happy reading my fellow Kindle-ites and remember: If his mother still makes his dentist and doctors appointments for him, even though he no longer lives in the same state…chances are he’s a momma boy.

Click image for additional details

****~ (4/5)

;

;

;

]]> http://www.kindleobsessed.com/book-rants/move-over-carrie/feed/ 0 http://www.kindleobsessed.com/sarcasm-its-best/teaser-tuesday-9/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=teaser-tuesday-9 http://www.kindleobsessed.com/sarcasm-its-best/teaser-tuesday-9/#comments Tue, 01 May 2012 14:54:11 +0000 Misty http://www.kindleobsessed.com/?p=11353

 

Evening Kindle-ites! Here is this weeks edition of Teaser Tuesday! What? You’ve never heard of it? Well.. let me fill you in. Teaser Tuesday is a fantastic way to get a sneak peak at book you may or may not have ever considered reading before PLUS… you get a chance to see what everyone else has to offer.

All you have to do is:

- Grab your current read
- Open to a random page
- Share (in the comments) 2 “teaser” sentences (or a paragraph…I’m not picky) from somewhere on that page (BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! you don’t want to give too much away!)
- And then tell us where you got it! (Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!)

 

 

The Paris Directive – Gerald Jay

 

The Synopsis:

In a Berlin hotel room in the late 1990s, two former French intelligence agents hire Klaus Reiner, a ruthlessly effective killer, to eliminate an American industrialist vacationing in southwestern France. Reiner easily locates his target in the small Dordogne village of Taziac, but the hit is compromised when three innocent people are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Enter Inspector Paul Mazarelle. Formerly of Paris but now living in Taziac, the inspector is charged with bringing his experience and record of success in the capital to bear on the gruesome quadruple homicide at the height of tourist season.

Both Mazarelle’s investigation and Reiner’s job become complicated when Molly, a New York City district attorney and daughter of two of the victims, arrives to identify the bodies and begins asking questions. All evidence points to Ali Sedak, a local Arab handyman, but Mazarelle and Molly have doubts, forcing Reiner to return to Taziac to ensure they see things as he arranged them. Little does anyone in the picturesque French countryside know how politically charged this crime is: its global ramifications, stemming from the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, could overshadow everything.

Tailored in crisp prose, this tantalizing and skillfully written thriller possesses all the luxury refinements of the best international intrigue. Jay’s novel chills, excites, and engrosses, pitting a smooth, calculating villain against an earthy, sympathetic Frenchman whose twilight career is suddenly heating up.

 

My Teaser – Page 87

“Mazarelle and Bernard each took an end and tugged at it hard, but they were out of synch. The basket quivered and creaked noisily. The wall to which it was attached appeared solid and unyielding.  Although Bernard was eager to try again, Mazarelle brushed him aside.  He wrapped his big hands around the handle, planted his legs, and yanked with all his might, falling back as the basket tore away from the wall.  “Salaud!” Picking himself up with Bernard’s help, he brushed off his clothes and eyed the basket disagreeably.  The inspector was certain that the dogs had been on the right track.  What they were looking for had to be right behind the basket.  But who expects a sealed room with no windows in a barn?”

]]> http://www.kindleobsessed.com/sarcasm-its-best/teaser-tuesday-9/feed/ 2