Killer Deadline (+ Giveaway)

"Lauren Carr's books are never boring, that's for sure. They entertain, give us a good mystery to dig into, keep the reader guessing, give us a few good laughs and make us eager for the next book. Warning: Lauren Carr's series are addictive, so be ready to read more than just one book!" - Laura Fabiani, Library of Clean Reads 

Join us for this tour from April 20 to May 22, 2020!

Book Details:

Book Title:  Killer Deadline (A Nikki Bryant Cozy Mystery) by Lauren Carr
Category:  Adult Fiction (18 +),  232 pages
Genre:  Mystery/Cozy Mystery
Publisher:  Acorn Book Services
Release date:   April 23, 2020
Content Rating: G. This is a true cozy mystery. No sex. No on-stage violence. No swearing. Just good clean fun!

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"Here we go! Carr is a master storyteller who always offers a plot full of twists and turns, a bit of humor to offset the dark, and a unique cast of characters. In Killer Deadline that cast includes - handsome Ryan, her first love (who is now her step-brother); a mysterious social media friend called Nerdy Guy; Elmo, a super smart dog, a boxer, she rescued who has become asocial media star and has a penchant for cleaning; a TV station full of suspicious employees; and more.

"This book is a wonderful read to pick up at the end of a long day. It truly is a "cozy murder mystery."  I promise, it'll draw you in right from page one and keep you turning the pages until you reach the very last page. I can't wait for the second book in this series." - Marilyn R. Wilson, Olio by Marilyn

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Book Description:

Folks in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania, claim that where Nikki Bryant goes, trouble is not far behind. Her refusal to back down from a challenge has made Nikki Bryant a top investigative journalist.

When an online friend nudges her to join him in a pact to reconnect with their first loves, Nikki and her boxer dog Elmo leave the bright lights of Las Vegas for the charming town of Pine Grove. There, she must face the biggest challenges in her career and life—the first love she had left behind and her father’s unsolved murder.

But before she has time to unpack her car, Nikki stumbles upon the dead body of local news anchor, Ashleigh Addison, her childhood rival. Could Ashleigh’s death be connected to an explosive news story that she had teased about airing live? Did that explosive story have anything to do with the murder of Nikki’s father?

With the clues in her father’s cold case hot again, Nikki intends to chase down the story of her life until she catches his killer—no matter what it takes.

Order Your Copy Today!

Amazon.com
Add to Goodreads

Meet the Author:

Lauren Carr is the international best-selling author of the Mac Faraday, Lovers in Crime, Chris Matheson Cold Case, and Thorny Rose Mysteries—over twenty-five titles across three fast-paced mystery series filled with twists and turns!

Killer Deadline marks Lauren's first venture into mystery's purely cozy sub-genre with a female protagonist.

Book reviewers and readers alike rave about how Lauren Carr’s seamlessly crosses genres to include mystery, suspense, crime fiction, police procedurals, romance, and humor.

A popular speaker, Lauren is also the owner of Acorn Book Service, the umbrella under which falls iRead Book Tours. She lives with her husband and two spoiled rotten German Shepherds on a mountain in Harpers Ferry, WV.

Connect with the author: Website  ~  Twitter  ~  Facebook  ~  Instagram ~ Pinterest

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Tour Schedule:

April 20 – Olio by Marilyn – book review/giveaway
April 20 - Working Mommy Journal – book review/giveaway
April 20 - Michelle's Goodreads – book review
April 21 - Rockin' Book Reviews – book review/guest post/giveaway
April 21 - The avid reader – book spotlight/giveaway
April 22 - Thoughts in Progress – book spotlight/giveaway
April 22 - Brooke Blogs – book spotlight/giveaway
April 23 - My Reading Journeys – book review/giveaway
April 23 - Christa Reads and Writes – book review/giveaway
April 23 - Sefina Hawke's Books – book spotlight
April 23 - Books for Books – book spotlight
April 24 - Jazzy Book Reviews – book review/giveaway
April 27 -Cassidy's Bookshelves – book spotlight/guest post/giveaway
April 28 - It’s All About the Book – book review/giveaway
April 28 - Down the Rabbit Hole – book review/author interview/giveaway
April 29 - Book Corner News and Reviews – book review/giveaway
April 29 - Laura's Interests – book review/guest post/giveaway
April 30 - I'm Into Books – book spotlight/giveaway
April 30 - Stephanie Jane – book spotlight/giveaway
May 1 -
May 4 -
May 5 - She Just Loves Books – book review/giveaway
May 6 - A Madison Mom – book review/giveaway
May 7 - Locks, Hooks, and Books – book review/giveaway
May 8 – Adventurous Bookworm – book review/giveaway
May 11 – Literary Flits – book spotlight/giveaway
May 12 – Bound 4 Escape – book review/giveaway
May 12 - Leels Loves Books – book review/giveaway
May 13 – FUONLYKNEW – book review/giveaway
May 14 – fundinmental – book review/giveaway
May 15 - Splashes of Joy – book review/author interview/giveaway
May 15 – Adventurous Jessy – book review/giveaway
May 18 – Mowgli with a book – book review
May 19 – Pause for Tales – book review/giveaway
May 20 – Peaceful Pastime – book review
May 20 - eBook Addicts – book review
May 21 – Books and Zebras – book spotlight/giveaway
May 22 -  Sahar's Blog – book review

Thanks so much for stopping by today. I gotta love any story that involves an investigative journalist, what about you?

Enter the Giveaway:

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The Gringa by Andrew Altschul (+Giveaway)

It’s my pleasure today to welcome new-to-me author Andrew Altschul to Thoughts in Progress to talk about his latest release, THE GRINGA.

Thanks to the author and the fabulous Meg at Tandem Literary: Publicity & Marketing, I have a copy of this tantalizing book to giveaway. Please see more about the giveaway at the end of the post. This post is a little longer than usual, but well worth the read.

THE GRINGA is Andrew’s third novel and it was released by Melville House on March 10th. Andrew took eight years to write this magnificent novel and a year to plan his tour, only to have it released just as the global pandemic was declared.

Here’s a brief synopsis of the book:

A gripping and subversive novel about the slippery nature of the truth and the tragic consequences of American idealism.

          Leonora Gelb came to Peru to make a difference. A passionate and idealistic Stanford grad, she left a life of privilege to fight poverty and oppression, but her beliefs are tested when she falls in with violent revolutionaries. While death squads and informants roam the streets and suspicion festers among the comrades, Leonora plans a decisive act of protest—until her capture in a bloody government raid, and a sham trial that sends her to prison for life.

          Ten years later, Andres—a failed novelist turned expat—is asked to write a magazine profile of “La Leo.” As his personal life unravels, he struggles to understand Leonora, to reconstruct her involvement with the militants, and to chronicle Peru’s tragic history. At every turn he’s confronted by violence and suffering, and by the consequences of his American privilege. Is the real Leonora an activist or a terrorist? Cold-eyed conspirator or naïve puppet? And who is he to decide?

In this powerful and timely new novel, Andrew maps the blurred boundaries between fact and fiction, author and text, resistance and extremism. Part coming-of-age story and part political thriller, THE GRINGA asks what one person can do in the face of the world’s injustice.

Now please join me in giving Andrew a warm welcome as he answers some questions about his book and writing. Welcome, Andrew.

The Gringa is inspired by the real-life story of Lori Berenson, an American who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for terrorist activities in Peru in the 1990s. What about Berenson’s story inspired you to base this historical novel on it?

Andrew:

I lived in Peru for a couple of years in the late 1990s, soon after Berenson’s arrest and trial. Even though she was in a military prison, she was still in the news from time to time, and every time her name came up people went crazy – she was the most hated person in Peru, the foreigner who’d come to try and restart a war (or so the government alleged). I was intrigued by this, and also by the question of what had brought her there. She and I have certain things in common – we’re the same age, we both grew up in secular Jewish families in the New York area, went to great schools, etc. etc. I like to think of myself as a liberal or even a leftist, but I had never gone “all in” the way Berenson had, or really risked much of anything in the name of my political beliefs. So there was something about her story that was both chastening and frightening to me, and part of writing the novel was to try and understand why one of our lives went in one direction, and the other’s went in such a different direction.

How did it come to pass that you left the US to live and work in Peru in your 20s?

Andrew:

Oh, for the most clichéd reasons. I had nothing better to do, my writing career wasn’t taking off, I’d gone through a bad breakup, I had a little money saved up and I knew that I could live in Peru for quite a while on it. I was the stereotypical American expat: “finding myself,” and totally unaware of the ways my privilege made that possible. At the same time, it’s also true that I recognized something very sheltered in myself, something very American, and I wanted to change that, to become something more than your typical ignorant U.S. citizen who knows nothing about the rest of the world. It was the era of the Clinton impeachment, and as a young man I was slowly coming to realize just how limited and poisonous the American cultural and political discourse is. I wanted out – and I was lucky enough to have the opportunity and the resources to get out, so I did.

What did you learn about yourself and your country of origin from this experience of making your way in a foreign country as a young man?

Andrew:

Well, see above, for one thing. My privilege and shelteredness came home to me very quickly, as I came to understand the lives of my Peruvian friends – even those who came from privileged backgrounds in their own country. It’s simply impossible, from inside the U.S., to understand how profoundly the U.S. has shaped and altered the lives of people around the world, particularly in developing countries – and mostly for the worse. It’s impossible to understand how much resentment and cynicism there is toward our country – but not, usually, toward Americans themselves. Almost everyone I met was warm and open and accepting of me as an individual. But everyone had very strong opinions about the United States – and they all knew a hell of a lot more about our country and its actions than most Americans know about theirs. Little kids in Cuzco can recite the first ten U.S. presidents. I’ll bet there aren’t 5% of Americans who could name even one Peruvian president. (Come to think of it, I’ll bet most Americans can’t name the first ten American presidents!) It was sobering, and made me want to do better, and to be better.

The point of view in the novel is that of an American journalist living in Peru. How closely is that perspective based on your own life experiences?

Andrew:

Well, he’s sort of a “reluctant” journalist – he’s a failed novelist and a “refugee from George W. Bush’s” America, who gets strong-armed into writing the story of this paroled terrorist. He’s left the U.S. for a lot of reasons, and many of them are somewhat similar to mine. And his life in Peru, too, isn’t so different from mine – he thinks only of himself and his enjoyment, rather than trying to do anything to contribute to this country he claims to love. In that sense, he’s an exaggerated version of me, and I wanted to use Andres to both investigate this American propensity for self-centeredness and self-misunderstanding and to maybe think through what it might take to get Americans to think in more complex and responsible ways about the lives of people in the rest of the world.

In writing about the radical group the Shining Path, what common bonds did you see between them and the Weather Underground and other revolutionary movements?

Andrew:

Well, the Shining Path was unique in many ways. Though they split off from the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) and espoused a fairly boilerplate Maoist ideology, they were also a kind of personality cult, bent around the vision of a philosophy professor named Abimael Guzman. They were indiscriminately violent, and though they claimed to be waging a “peasant war” it was really the peasants who suffered most throughout the years of the conflict. Of course, Peru’s history of oppression, racism, and oligarchy created a fertile ground, which Guzman exploited – in this sense, the Shining Path was no different from most revolutionary movements, who see a monolithic political system in which the wealthy and powerful are not responsive to the needs of common people, a system which they see as impregnable to normal avenues of political change or protest and which therefore can only be changed through violent struggle. This is always the diagnosis, and I can’t say I disagree with it, given the stranglehold that the wealthy and the right-wing have on politics in our own country. That’s not to say I support violent revolution – I don’t – only that I understand how one comes to such conclusions.

What did you learn from researching and writing the novel about the ways in which people get involved with radical groups and how they transition from activist to radical?

Andrew:

I learned that it’s often, as Hemingway supposedly said about bankruptcy, “little by little and then all at once.” That is, not many people join radical groups in the hopes of killing people or blowing up buildings or hijacking planes – they join because they see these groups as dedicated to change and potentially more effective than traditional political avenues. The groups themselves usually start as “legitimate” political groups, and slowly evolve or factionalize as members grow dissatisfied with a lack of results. (Weather Underground split off from SDS precisely because they felt SDS wasn’t ready to do what it took to be effective). So someone who joins to take part in nonviolent protest, seeing that such protest isn’t working – and in fact is often provoking violent responses from the police or government – might slowly grow willing to consider… other tactics. Or they might not quite grasp how the group itself is changing around them, until suddenly the “actions” start to cross the line, but because of their dedication or solidarity they feel they have to stand with their comrades. I think the psychology varies.

Do you see any parallels between those groups in their time and the polarized climate in the US today?

Andrew:

Oh gosh, let’s not go there. I really hope not. I mean, there are plenty of people – like Thomas Piketty, for example – who warn that the skyrocketing levels of inequality in the West, the chokehold that the ultra-wealthy have on economic policy, and the refusal of governments to address this, will lead inevitably to social unrest. I hope not… but I certainly won’t be surprised.

Did you feel a burden to be 100% historically accurate in your depictions of the war and conflict in Peru?

Andrew:

In my depictions of the war and the history of Peru: yes. This is serious, life-and-death stuff, and a novelist has no business manipulating history to make a “better story.” That is, my protagonist and her colleagues in the group I’ve called the Cuarta Filosofía have some similarity to real-life persons, but the specific things they did and said are purely fiction. I did not set out to write about the “real story” of Lori Berenson, or the MRTA. But I placed them in a context which I took tremendous pains to keep accurate to the realities of the war, and to the reactions of the government and the Peruvian people. I had no right to do otherwise. At the same time, one of the most interesting things about writing the book was discovering that there is no “authoritative history” of the conflict – and in fact many people I talked to and many sources I read told very different stories, disagreeing even about “objective” facts like dates, statistics, etc. This was challenging for me, and really slowed down the writing – until one day I was talking to a Peruvian friend who’d been a student activist during this period, and he said, “But Andrew, that’s always how it is. No two Peruvians agree on what happened or why.” Once I understood this, I knew that my novel had to take precisely this approach, to look at the history of the war as something unstable, ever-changing, subject to manipulation and bias. It makes the novel more challenging, I think, but also, I hope, makes it “truer” to the experience of anyone who lived through the conflict.

How long did it take you to write this book? What was your writing and research process like?

Andrew:

It took eight years. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever written – largely because of all these ethical questions: How do you write about a war? How do you write responsibly about another culture, another history, particularly a history that claimed so many lives? I worked on it nonstop and made four or five extended trips back to Peru to talk to people and get to know Lima better than I had when I lived in Cuzco. But there were many times when I thought I wouldn’t be able to finish it, that I just had no business, as a privileged white American, trying to take on this material. “Who am I to write this?” I kept asking myself. “Who am I?” What finally turned it for me was a conversation I had with a journalist friend, who told me, “You’re Lori Berenson.” What she meant was that I, too, was an outsider, an interloper, a gringo, and so there was a direct analogy between my relationship to the material and Berenson’s relationship to Peru and its history. It was this realization – that I had to write it from the perspective of someone who doesn’t really know how to write it, and maybe has no business writing it, and that I had to cop to that in the form of the novel itself – that enabled me to finally finish writing it.

What has the experience been like of publishing your book in the midst of a global pandemic?

Andrew:

It’s been great! Ha ha. It’s been hell. I had five events set up during the week after publication, and ten more throughout March and April – but as I travelled from city to city I would get notified almost as soon as I arrived that the event was cancelled: Worcester, MA; Providence, RI; New York City, Denver, San Francisco… one by one, they all went down. I spent nearly a year putting this tour together and I’m crushed. And since then, I’ve spent all day every day trying to shore up the book through online events, social media posts, etc. It’s far more exhausting than the book tour would have been, and I feel like it’s just getting started. Still, there have been some nice things, one of which is forming a kind of unexpected fellowship with other authors in the same boat, sharing tips and experiences with them, recommending one another when we hear about possible events, etc. I’ve always been a big believer in the literary community, and the outpouring of support I’ve heard – for authors, for bookstores, for small publishers – has been a real silver lining through this difficult time.

What are you working on next?

Andrew:

Uncharacteristically, I have a number of projects going simultaneously, including what might be a cycle or collection of novellas that picks up where The Gringa leaves off, looking at American expatriates and the ways their lives intersect with the lives of people in their adopted countries. I’m also revising a short story collection and possibly working on a book-length essay about American masculinity. All very challenging in the age of coronavirus, of course… At some point, I’d like to work on getting some sleep and some exercise. Maybe this summer?

Author Andrew Altschul

Andrew, thanks for sharing this insight into your book and writing with us. For those like me who weren’t or aren’t familiar with Andrew, here’s a bit of background on him.

Andrew Altschul is the author of the novels Lady Lazarus (2008) and Deus Ex Machina (2011). His work has appeared in Esquire, McSweeney's, The Wall Street Journal, Ploughshares, Fence, One Story, and other publications, and in anthologies including Best New American Voices, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and O. Henry Prize Stories.

A former Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, he has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers Conferences, the Ucross Foundation, the Fundación Valparaíso, and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center. He was the founding books editor at The Rumpus and is a Contributing Editor at Zyzzyva.The former director of the Center for Literary Arts at San Jose State University, he now directs the Creative Writing program at Colorado State University. He lives in Fort Collins, CO.

For more on Andrew and his writing, connect with him on his website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

GIVEAWAY

As I mentioned earlier, thanks to the author and the fabulous Meg at Tandem Literary: Publicity & Marketing, I have a copy of this tantalizing book to giveaway. The giveaway is open to residents of the US only. To enter the giveaway, click on the Rafflecopter widget below and follow the instructions. If the widget doesn’t show up, click on the link HERE and follow the instructions.

Thanks so much for stopping by today. While we are missing out on personal book signings due to the shelter-in-place situation, do you think online book tours are a good thing right now? If so, why and if not, why?

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The Closer You Get by Mary Torjussen

I’m delighted to be participating in the blog tour for acclaimed author Mary Torjussen’s newest release, THE CLOSER YOU GET.

* Paperback: 368 pages

* Publisher: Berkley (April 21, 2020)

* Language: English

* ISBN-10: 1984804588

* ISBN-13: 978-1984804587

They had the perfect plan to start a new life together...before it all went horribly wrong.

Coworkers Ruby and Harry are in love—but they’re married to other people. They decide to tell their spouses that their marriages are over and to start a new life together. Ruby has wanted to leave her controlling husband for a while, so she tells him she’s leaving and waits at the hotel where she and Harry are to meet. But Harry never shows up.

Suddenly, Ruby has lost everything. Harry won’t answer her calls, and she’s fired from her job. She finds a cheap apartment in a run-down part of town, all the while wondering what happened to Harry.

Just as Ruby thinks she’s hit rock bottom, strange and menacing things start to happen—someone is sneaking into her apartment, and someone is following her home late at night—and she is going to have to fight for her survival.

Mary is known for addictive psychological suspense. She shocked everyone with a jaw-dropping twist in her debut novel, Gone Without a Trace, that explored how far someone might go to find the love of their life who goes missing. In her follow up, The Girl I Used To Be, Mary delivered a compulsive page-turner that asked the question: how do you protect yourself from an enemy you can’t remember? And now, after already thrilling readers with two addictive stories, Mary is back with THE CLOSER YOU GET (Berkley Trade Paperback Original; April 21^st), a twisted tale that will keep readers guessing at every turn.

Mary once again presents us with a unique premise that explores the core of human relationships. In THE CLOSER YOU GET, a man and woman both married to other people have an affair and devise the perfect plan to start a new life together before it all goes horribly wrong.

Toxic relationships are given a fresh take in this thriller centered on infidelity that’s a perfect fit for fans of Fiona Barton and David Bell. Mary’s enthralling story of blackmail, betrayal, and revenge will have readers anxiously racing through the pages, desperate to uncover the truth.

THE CLOSER YOU GET is also available in eBook and audio formats. Here’s an audio sample for your listening pleasure.

Thanks so much for stopping by. What do you think happened to Harry? Did he just get cold feet or did something bad happen to him?

Love on the Line (+Giveaway)

* Love on the Line
* By Kirsten Fullmer
* (Women at Work #1)
* Publication date: June 14th, 2017
* Genres: Coming of Age, New Adult, Romance, Young Adult

Andrea is an ordinary girl in an extraordinary situation.

She left her comfortable home and family to take a job building a pipeline with her estranged grandpa, Buck. She’s curious about his job, and why her mother dislikes the man. She didn’t expect to uncover buried family secrets, or for the job to be so difficult.

Rooster isn’t a bad guy. He respects women; he was raised by one of the best. But that new girl on the job is too small and feminine. She’s a distraction, plain and simple, and she doesn’t belong on a pipeline. This job is his chance to impress Buck Brennan, a pipeline legend, and no girly greenhorn is going to ruin it for him.

Will Andrea prove herself to her grandfather and forge a relationship with the old man, or will continuous disagreements and unexpected sexual tension between Andrea and Rooster derail their hard work?

Goodreads / Amazon

 Now here is an excerpt for your reading pleasure.

Without another word, Rooster led Andy away. He did take time however, to catch Nick’s eye, motioning down toward Andy with his head to indicate he would walk her home.

Nick nodded back.

Andy wobbled on her feet, so Rooster slipped his arm around her waist to keep her from tripping. Once they were out of hearing range, he held her at arm’s length, inspecting her face in the dim glow of the street light. “You okay?” he asked, his expression speculative. “You’re not gonna hurl, are you?”

          She mumbled and tried to push away.

          He kept hold of her, certain she’d topple to the ground if he let her go, and pointed her back toward the lane through the park.

          Finally accepting his arm around her, Andy staggered unevenly at his side, muttering under her breath about apples and pint jars.

          Three trailers down she tripped on a rut, nearly falling headlong into the road. Rooster grabbed her, wrestling her back to an upright position. They stood facing each other, with Andy swaying from side to side.

Rooster shook his head and moved his hands to circle her waist, to steady her.

She blinked up at him, looking beautiful, but so very drunk. “You’re gonna be sick as hell in the morning,” he murmured, unable to ignore the feel of her under his hands.

“I don’t feel so great now,” she slurred, trying in vain to focus on his face. “Where are we?” She flung her head from one side to the other, causing Rooster to tighten his grip in order to keep her upright.

“I’m walking you home.”

“Well.” She pointed back toward the party. “I live back there.”

“Why didn’t you say—never mind.” He turned her around to face back the way they’d come.

Andy’s feet dragged like a rag doll, and she giggled to herself. Feeling no pain, she broke into a rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, pronouncing the lyrics as ‘Trinkle, Trinkle.’

Rooster chuckled in spite of himself, working to keep her moving. “Come on, one foot at a time.”

She stopped abruptly, and her head kinked back as she gawked up at Rooster. “Why are we walking together?”

Taken aback at her ridiculous question, he wondered the same thing. “You need to get home.”

She regarded him; her head tipped to one side.

Fireflies winked behind her in the darkness. He waited.

Finally, her expression cleared. “You’re handsome, you know that?”

He didn’t reply, just took in her solemn expression. What was it they said, you were more honest when you were drunk, or was it…?

“No, I mean it,” she reiterated, flailing one hand. “I’ve always thought so.”

With a grin, he pointed her back down the drive. “Well, thank you. You’re very pretty as well.”

“Yeah.” She shrugged, being agreeable.

Amused at her shifting moods he tightened his arm around her waist. The girl was warm and soft and, to his chagrin, humming again. She hiccupped loudly, and he sighed. He needed to get her home. “Which trailer is yours?”

Andy ground to a halt and flung her head to the left, then to the right, causing Rooster to tighten his grip once again.

“They all kinda look the same.”

He sighed. “Are you sure your trailer is by Nick’s?”

Her attention returned to Rooster. “I don’t know where Nick lives.”

He shook his head in exasperation. Holding her by one arm, he watched her with concern, wondering how he’d figure out where she lived. Reaching up with his free hand, he readjusted his ball cap. This wasn’t going well.

                                      ***

The pancake flipped twice in the air then landed back in the frying pan. Rooster settled the pan back on the burner and turned to his friend. “I’m just sayin’, you should have watched her closer. She’s never had moonshine before.”

Nick moaned and placed his elbow on Rooster’s table, then gingerly lowered his forehead into his palm. “Why you gotta be like that? Don’t I feel bad enough today?”

Rooster glared at the pan as he checked the pancake. “I’m sure Andy feels even worse.” And a drunk woman on her own is always at risk, he added to himself. In truth, she was in no danger with the crew, but still.

Raising his coffee cup for a long, slow slurp, Nick groaned. A rusty mew from under the table caused him to lean to one side and peer, red eyed, at the kitten batting his untied bootlaces under the table. With a sigh, he carefully placed his coffee mug back on the table and tossed his friend a dirty look. “Sounds like you were watching her most of the night. Why didn’t you step in?”

The pancake was done so Rooster slid it expertly onto a plate. “Not my party,” he stated flatly as he poured more batter in the pan. He moved to the table and put the plate in front of Nick. “Besides, you’re her friend.”

“Oh, and what are you?” Nick asked, lifting his blurry eyes to meet Rooster’s.

Rooster plopped a bottle of syrup onto the table, making Nick wince. “I’m the guy who had to drag her all over the park, trying to figure out what trailer to put her in!”

***

          Kneeling in her tiny bathroom, Andy dropped her head onto her arm circling the toilet seat and moaned. Not only did she feel like all holy hell, but she remembered bits and pieces of the evening before.

She thought she’d done okay at the party, but the fragmented memory of Rooster helping her home made her wince. Never again would she drink moonshine.

She lifted her head, then groaned and dropped it back to her arm. A hazy recollection of Rooster helping her up the trailer steps flashed in her memory. She recalled slipping to one knee, obliging him to grab her butt, a cheek in each hand, in order to heft her up into the trailer.

“Damn,” she lamented, feeling every inch the fool.

 

Author Bio:

Kirsten is a dreamer with an eye for art and design. She worked in the engineering field, taught college, and consulted free lance. Due to health problems, she retired in 2012 to travel with her husband. They live and work full time in a 40' travel trailer with their little dog Bingo. Besides writing romance novels, she enjoys selling art on Etsy and spoiling their three grandchildren.

As a writer, Kirsten's goal is to create strong female characters who face challenging, painful, and sometimes comical situations. She believes that the best way to deal with struggle, is through friendship and women helping women. She knows good stories are based on interesting and relatable characters.

For more on Kirsten and her writing, contact with her on the following sites: 

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram

Thanks so much for stopping by today. Do you enjoy stories where the female protagonist is put in situations that women aren't normally associated with such as pipeline workers?

GIVEAWAY!
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Freddie Mercury: A Life, In His Own Words

This is another review that is long overdue, not because of the book but simply due to my tardiness in writing. This is an intriguing behind the public perception story of a man dealing with all aspects of fame and his life.

Freddie Mercury: A Life, In His Own Words

* Compiled & Edited by Greg Brooks & Simon Lupton

* Paperback: 200 pages

* Publisher: Independently published (September 5, 2019)

* Language: English

* ISBN-10: 1688967486

* ISBN-13: 978-1688967489

"Freddie Mercury: A Life, In His Own Words" is the nearest thing to Freddie’s autobiography as it is possible to achieve. A moving, witty, often irreverent collection of quotes and interview transcript from the man himself, covering an extraordinary life, meticulously edited together by Queen’s long-time archivists, and with a Foreword by Freddie's mother. An essential read not just for fans of Queen and their iconic frontman, but anyone intrigued to know more about one of music’s most endearing and enduring performers.

Now my thoughts:

If you grew up in the ‘70s there is little doubt that you’ve probably heard of Queen (the rock band). But fans of the music may not truly know a lot about the lead singer, Freddie Mercury.

FREDDIE MERCURY: A LIFE, IN HIS OWN WORDS is an insightful, sometimes humorous, look at the man and his amazing journey to fame. Compiled from the few interviews Mercury gave, this book reads like an autobiography. The book reveals a great deal about the person Mercury was and what drove him.

The book shows a side of Mercury not seen on stage – shy and searching for happiness. The story follows Mercury’s journey from being born Farrokh Bulsara to becoming a British rock star living life to the fullest with “excess in every direction” as he put it. The forward is a touching note written by Mercury’s mother, Jer Bulsara.

You don’t have to be a fan of the man or his music to enjoy this brief look into his life. The story tells of a man’s passion for living, music and wanting to make people happy.

Queen Archivist Greg Brooks and co-author Simon Lupton have done an excellent job telling Mercury’s story. They give readers a glimpse at the real man behind the stage image and his music through his own words.

Full Disclosure – A complimentary copy of this book was sent to me. My review thoughts are completely my own and given honestly and freely.

Thanks so much for stopping by today. Were you or are you a fan of Queen? Did you hear some of their lyrics in your head as you read this? Which song?

Hidden Salem by Kay Hooper

I’m delighted to be a part of the blog tour for HIDDEN SALEM (Berkley Hardcover; April 7, 2020), the newest installment of author Kay Hooper’s spooky and supernatural Bishop/Special Crimes Unit series.

HIDDEN SALEM is yet another hair-raising, spine-tingling and mystery-filled novel starring Noah Bishop and his team of mind-reading FBI agents who crack cases and save lives. And in this novel, the members of the SCU band together to solve a string of murders with supernatural circumstances in perhaps the most eerie location yet—the small town of Salem.

A town shrouded in the occult. An evil that lurks in the dark. The SCU returns in a hair-raising novel from New York Times bestselling author Kay Hooper.

Nellie Cavendish has very good reasons to seek out her roots, and not only because she has no memory of her mother and hardly knew the father who left her upbringing to paid caregivers. In the eight years since her twenty-first birthday, very odd things have begun to happen. Crows gather near her wherever she goes, electronics short out when she touches them, and when she’s upset, really upset, it storms. At first, she chalked up the unusual happenings to coincidence, but that explanation doesn't begin to cover the vivid nightmares that torment her. She can no longer pretend to ignore them. She has to find out the truth. And the only starting point she has is a mysterious letter from her father delivered ten years after his death, insisting she go to a town called Salem and risk her life to stop some unnamed evil. Before her thirtieth birthday.

As a longtime member of the FBI's Special Crimes Unit, Grayson Sheridan has learned not to be surprised by the unusual and the macabre--but Salem is different. Evidence of Satanic activities and the disappearance of three strangers to the town are what brought Salem to the attention of the SCU, and when Gray arrives to find his undercover partner vanished, he knows that whatever’s hiding in the seemingly peaceful little town is deadly.  But what actually hides in the shadows and secrets of Salem is unlike anything the agents have ever encountered.

Author Kay Hooper, Photo Credit Claudio Marinesco

For those not familiar with the author, here’s a bit of background on her.

Kay Hooper is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of the Bishop/Special Crimes Unit series and the Bishop Files series.

For more on Kay and her writing, visit her website.

Thanks for stopping by today. Do you enjoy a few supernatural circumstances woven into a murder mystery? Do you think most murder mysteries have a touch of supernatural environments hidden within the story?

Death of an American Beauty by Mariah Fredericks

I’m delighted today to tell you about author Mariah Fredericks’ next installment in her riveting Jane Prescott series, DEATH OF AN AMERICAN BEAUTY (on sale April 14th) where lady’s maid Jane is taking a break from her duties to attend the hottest and most scandalous show in town.

History has the best stories and Mariah does a remarkable job bringing the Gilded Age back to life while bringing a deadly mystery and new romance into the mix. I invite you to feel the fabrics, smell the streets, and fall into the atmosphere of one of the most anxious times in history, 1920’s New York City.

Mariah once again creates an enticing mystery by bringing her readers into both the luscious world of wealthy social elite as well as revealing the harsh realities of “downstairs” servants: social change, political turmoil and gender roles are expertly and piercingly examined through relatable characters and a compelling mystery. (Perfect for those who love Downtown Abbey or The Crown!)

Now here’s a brief synopsis of the story.

Death of an American Beauty is the third in Mariah's compelling series, set in Gilded Age New York, featuring Jane Prescott.

Jane Prescott is taking a break from her duties as lady’s maid for a week, and plans to begin it with attending the hottest and most scandalous show in town: the opening of an art exhibition, showcasing the cubists, that is shocking New York City.

1913 is also the fiftieth anniversary of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation speech, and the city's great and good are determined to celebrate in style. Dolly Rutherford, heiress to the glamorous Rutherford’s department store empire, has gathered her coterie of society ladies to put on a play—with Jane’s employer Louise Tyler in the starring role as Lincoln himself. Jane is torn between helping the ladies with their costumes and enjoying her holiday. But fate decides she will do neither, when a woman is found murdered outside Jane’s childhood home—a refuge for women run by her uncle.

Deeply troubled as her uncle falls under suspicion and haunted by memories of a woman she once knew, Jane—with the help of old friends and new acquaintances, reporter Michael Behan and music hall pianist Leo Hirschfeld—is determined to discover who is making death into their own twisted art form.

DEATH OF AN AMERICAN BEAUTY is available through the following sites:

Amazon

B&N

IndieBound

Now for your entertainment, here’s an excerpt from this tantalizing story.

The Princess of Wales has had a son.

       Beyond that, I’m not sure.

My eyesight is not bad for someone of my age, but by any other measure, it is not good. Reading the newspaper has become a challenge. My glasses must be fixed at a precise point, the light sufficient, and the room quiet because I cannot read the words if I cannot hear them in my head. My daughter says this makes no sense, but they’re my eyes and it’s my head.

Raising the paper, I peer at the print, which I swear t they’ve made smaller. The young man who shot the president has been found not guilty because he is insane. Apparently, the would-be assassin wished to impress a famous young woman. I think of all the things one might do to impress such a woman. Killing the president is not one of them.

The same thought occurred to the jury; they found the young man’s reasoning so flawed, they decided it constituted insanity. They must have felt he was sincere; I might have thought he was lying. That he tried to kill the president not because he wanted a young woman to think well of him, but because he wanted to think well of himself. If he found it splendid to kill, she would also find it splendid and reward him.

Perhaps if the prosecutor had pointed out this level of self- interest to the jury, they might have told the young man and  others like him that you cannot kill  because you have come up with stories about w omen that are not true. No matter how alluring   those stories might be. Helen of Troy was prob ably an ordinary- looking woman who had gotten bored with her husband and vice versa. But would we remember the heroes of the Trojan War if the Greeks w ere simply land- hungry? No, much better to say it was the face that launched a thousand ships. A woman’s face.

I won der if this jury would have declared Achilles insane. Or if they might have understood that he had a compulsion to kill and Helen’s face was simply the excuse.

Or maybe the Greeks disliked that she ran away. A woman at liberty— that could be provocation enough.

I feel a curl of unease, a memory unfolding. A face.

For a moment I can’t breathe. Even after all these years, I can feel the vicious grip of those hands on my neck.  There are days when I feel unsteady. I feel it now. A sense of falling, flailing . . .

I hold my head at the correct angle. Try to focus on the newspaper. The princess. The young man. But still I see that other face.

A woman’s face. Taken apart. Put back together.

And the scars, so many years later.

Author Mariah Fredericks

For those not familiar with the author, here’s a bit of background on her.

Mariah Fredericks was born and raised in New York City, where she still lives with her family. She is the author of several YA novels. Death of an American Beauty is her third novel to feature ladies' maid Jane Prescott.

For more on Mariah and her writing, contact with her at the following sites:

Author Website

Facebook

Twitter: @MariahFrederick

Thanks so much for stopping by today. What is it about the Gilded Age that draws us in so quickly?