Where I share my love of books with reviews, features, giveaways and memes. Family and needlepoint are thrown in from time to time.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Mailbox Monday and In My Mailbox 2-1-10



Mailbox Monday is hosted at The Printed Page or In Your Mailbox at The Story Siren on Sunday. Please stop by those posts and take a look at what packages everybody else got this week!





The Crazy School
by Cornelia Read


Recently settled in the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts, Madeline Dare now teaches at the Santangelo Academy, a boarding school for disturbed teenagers. But behind its ornate gates, she discovers a disorienting world where students and teachers alike must submit to the founder's bizarre therapeutic regimen. A chilling event confirms Maddie's worst suspicions, leading her to an even darker secret that lies at the academy's very heart. Now cut off from the outside world, Maddie must join forces with a small band of the school's most violently rebellious students -- kids who, despite their troubled grip on reality, may well prove to be her only chance of survival. (back cover)



The Confident Woman
by Joyce Meyer


Our society has an epidemic of insecure people in it. This problem causes great difficulty in relationships and is one of the reasons divorce is so prevalent today.

I have learned a lot on my journey about what true confidence is, and it will be my great delight to share with you anything I know that can help you be the woman God intends you to be. His desire is that you be bold, courageous, confident, respected, admired, promoted, sought after, and most of all, loved.

God has a wonderful plan for your life and I pray that reading this book will help you enter it more fully than ever before. You can hold your head up high and be filled with confidence about yourself and your future. You can be bold and step out to do new things, even things no man or woman has ever done before. You have what it takes. -- Joyce Meyer (back cover)



Marriage and Other Acts of Charity (audio)
by Kate Braestrup
Read by Kate Braestrup


In her award-winning memoir Here If You Need Me, Kate Braestrup won the hearts of listeners across the country with her deeply moving and deftly humorous stories of faith, hope, and family. Now, with her inimitable voice and generous spirit, she turns her attention to the subjects of love and commitment in Marriage and Other Acts of Charity.

As a minister, Kate Braestrup regularly performs weddings. She has also, at forty-four, been married twice and widowed once and accordingly has much to say about life after the ceremony. From helping a newlywed couple make amends after their first fight to preparing herself for her second marriage, Braestrup offers her insights on what it truly means to share your life with someone, from the first kiss to the last straw, for better or for worse.

Part memoir, part observation of modern marriage, and part meditation on the roles of God and love in our everyday lives, Marriage and Other Acts of Charity is a unique and unforgettable look into why, and how, we love each other and proves yet again why Kate Braestrup's writing is "inspirational in the best sense" (New York Daily News). (back cover)




I am Ozzy (audio)
By Ozzy Osbourne
Read by Fred Skinner


"They've said some crazy things about me over the years, I mean, okay: 'He bit the head off a bat.' Yes. 'He bit the head off a dove.' Yes. But then you hear things like, 'Ozzy went to the show last night, but he wouldn't perform until he'd killed fifteen puppies. . .' Now me, kill fifteen puppies? I love puppies. I've got eighteen of the f* things at home. I've killed a few cows in my time, mind you. And the chickens. I shot the chickens in my house that night.

"It haunts me, all this crazy stuff. Everyday of my life has been an event. I took lethal combinations of booze and drugs for thirty f* years. I survived a direct hit by a plane, suicidal overdoses, STDs. I've been accused of attempted murder. Then I almost died while riding over a bump on a quad bike at f* two miles per hour.

"People ask me how come I'm still alive, and I don't know what to say. When I was growing up, if you'd have put me up against a wall with the other kids from my street and asked me which one of us was gonna make it to the age of sixty, which one of us would end up with five kids and four grandkids and houses in Buckinghamshire and Beverly Hills, I wouldn't have put money on me, no f* way. But here I am: ready to tell my story, in my own words, for the first time.

"A lot of it ain't gonna be pretty. I've done some bad things in my time. I've always been drawn to the dark side, me. But I ain't the devil. I'm just John Osbourne: a working-class kid from Ashton, who quit his job in the factory and went looking for a good time." (back cover)




The Unnamed (audio)
by Joshua Ferris
Read by Joshua Ferris


Tim Farnsworth is a handsome, healthy man, aging with the grace of a matinee idol.

His wife, Jane, still loves him, and for all its quiet trials, their marriage is still stronger than most. Despite long hours at the office, he remains passionate about his work, and his partnership at a prestigious Manhattan law firm means that the work he does is important. And even as his daughter, Becka, retreats behind her guitar, her dreadlocks, and her puppy fat, he offers her every one of a father's honest lies about her being the most beautiful girl in the world.

He loves his wife, his family, his work, his home.

And then one day he stands up and walks out. And keeps walking.

The Unnamed is a dazzling novel about a marriage and a family and the unseen forces of nature and desire that seem to threaten them both. It is the heartbreaking story of a life taken for granted and what happens when that life is abruptly and irrevocable take away. (back cover)



Captivity
by Deborah Noyes


What is the difference, after all, between real and unreal when people react precisely the same way to either?

This masterful historical novel by Deborah Noyes, the lauded author of Angel & Apostle, The Ghosts of Kerfol, and Encyclopedia of the End (starred PW) is two stories:

The first centers upon the strange, true tale of The Fox Sisters, the enigmatic family of young women who, in upstate New York in 1848 proclaimed that they could converse with the dead. Doing so, they unwittingly (but artfully) gave birth to a religious movement that touched two continents: The American Spiritualists. Their followers included the famous and the rich, and their effect on American spirituality lasted a full generation. Still, there are echoes. The Fox Sisters' is a story of ambition and playfulness, of illusion and fear, of indulgence, guilt and finally self-destruction.

The second story in Captivity is about loss and grief. It is the evocative tale of the bright promise that the Fox Sisters offer up to the skeptical Clara Gill, a reclusive woman of a certain age who long ago isolated herself with her paintings, following the scandalous loss of her beautiful young lover in London.

Lyrical and authentic -- and more than a bit shadowy -- Captivity is, finally, a tale about physical desire and the hope that even the thinnest faith can offer up to a darkening heart. (back cover)




Eggs Benedict Arnold
by Laura Childs


Suzanne, Toni, and Petra lost their husbands but found independence -- and, in each other, a life raft of support, inspiration, fresh baked goods, and their own business. But when the Cackleberry Club cafe opened its doors in the town of Kindred, who'd have guessed that the three women would be working a double shift as amateur sleuths?

When Suzanne stops by the local funeral home to deliver a pie to funeral director Ozzie Driesden, she discovers him not working at the embalming table but lying on the embalming table. She barely has time to recognize his corpse before she's drugged with chloroform. With more suspects than breakfast specials, the Cackleberry Club scrambles to crack the case before one of their own ends up six feet under. (back cover)




Before I Fall
by Lauren Oliver


What if you had only one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?

Samantha Kingston has it all -- looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it's her last. The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. In fact, she relives the last day of her life seven times, until she realizes that by making even the slightest changes, she may hold more power than she had ever imagined.

This incandescent page-turner from twenty-six-year-old debut author Lauren Oliver will leave readers breathless. (back cover)




Making Toast
by Roger Rosenblatt


"How long are you staying, Boppo?"

"Forever."

When his daughter, Amy -- a gifted doctor, mother, and wife -- collapsed and died from an asymptomatic heart condition, Roger Rosenblatt and his wife, Ginny, left their home on the South Shore of Long Island to move in with their son-in-law, Harris, and their three young grandchildren: six-year-old Jessica, four-year-old Sammy, and one-year-old James, known as Bubbies.

Long past the years of diapers, homework, and recitals, Roger and Ginny -- Boppo and Mimi to the kids -- quickly reaccustomed themselves to the world of small children: bedtime stories, talking toys, playdates, nonstop questions, and nonsequential thought. Though still reeling from Amy's death, they carried on, reconstructing a family, sustaining one another, and guiding three lively, alert, and tenderhearted children through the pains and confusions of grief. As he marveled at the strength of his son-in-law, a surgeon, and the tenacity and skill of his wife, a former kindergarten teacher, Roger attended each day to "the one household duty I have mastered" -- preparing the morning toast perfectly to each child's liking.

With the wit, heart, precision, and depth of understanding that has characterized his work, Roger Rosenblatt peels back the layers on his most personal of losses to create both a tribute to his late daughter and a testament to familial love. The day Amy died, Harris told Ginny and Roger, "It's impossible." Roger's story tells how a family makes the possible of the impossible. (inside cover)



Forest Gate
by Peter Akinti


In a community where poverty is kept close and passeed from one generation to the next, two teenage boys, best friends, stand on top of twin tower blocks. Facing each other across the abyss of London's urban sprawl, they say their good-byes and jump. One dies. The other, alternating with the sister of the deceased, narrates this novel.

James gives us a window into the inner city -- his mom is a crack addict, his gang "brothers" force him to kill another black boy. Meina describes with feeling her family history in Somalia: after her parents are killed before her eyes, her village aunt sells her to six husbands -- before she is even a teenager. Desperate to rebuild their lives, James and Meina set out to find the place for which every child longs -- home.

Brutal and shockingly violent in places, rambunctious and lively in others and slyly, dryly witty in yet others, Meina and James' journey toward life through their past is ultimatlely a powerful story of redemptive love and the debut of an extraordinary literary talent. (back cover)



Keeping the Feast: One Couple's Story of Love, Food, and Healing in Italy
by Paula Butturini


Paula Butturini and John Tagliabue met as foreign correspondents in Italy, fell in love, and four years later, married in Rome. But not even a month after the wedding, tragedy struck. They had transferred away from their Italian paradise when John was shot and nearly killed on the job. The period of physical and mental suffering that followed marked the abrupt end of what they'd known together and the beginning of a phase of life neither had planned for.

They followed their instincts and returned to the place they loved, Italy, and there they found a lifeline of sorts. As John struggled to regain his health and Paula reexamined her assumptions about illness and recovery, it was food and its rituals -- the daily shopping, preparing, sharing, and memory of food -- that kept them moving forward. Food became a symbol of the family's innate desire to survive, to accept, and to celebrate what fell its way.

Keeping the Feast is an inspiring story of what happens when tragedy strikes a previously happy marriage and a couple must fight to find its bearings. It is a testament to the extraordinary sustaining powers of food and love, to the healing that can come from the simple rituals of life, even during life's biggest challenges, and to the stubborn belief that there is always an afterward, always hope. (back cover)




The Gin Closet
by Leslie Jamison


In the beginning, there was Tilly: fabulous and free, outrageous and untamable, vulnerable and terrified. Was it the Sixties that did her wrong, or the drugs, or the men, or was it the middle-class upbringing she couldn't abide? As a young woman, she flees home for the hollow neon underworld of Nevada, looking for pure souls and finding nothing but bad habits. She stays away for decades, working the streets and worse, eventually drinking herself to the brink of death in the middle of the desert. One day, after Tilly has spent nearly thirty years without a family, her niece shows up on the doorstep of her dusty trailer.

Stella has been leading her own life of empty promise in New York City. She makes her living booking Botox appointments and national-media appearances for a famous (and famously neurotic) "inspirational" writer by day; she complains about her job at warehouse parties in remote boroughs by night; she waits for her married lover to make time in his schedule to screw her over, softly; and she takes care of her ailing grandmother in Connecticut. Before Stella's grandmother dies, she tells Stella the truth about Tilly, her runaway daughter, and Stella decides to give up the vast and penetrating loneliness of the city to find this lost woman the family had never mentioned.

The Gin Closet unravels the strange and powerful intimacy that forms between Tilly and Stella s they move to San Francisco to make a home with Abe, Tilly's overworked and elusive son. Shifting between the perspectives of both women, the narrative documents the construction of a fragile triangle that eventually breaks under its own weight.

With an uncanny ear for dialogue and a witty, unflinching candor about sex, love, and power, Leslie Jamison reminds us that no matter how unexpected its turns are, this life we're given is all we have: the cruelties that unhinge us, the beauties that clarify us, the addictions that deform us, those fleeting possibilities of grace that fade as quickly as they come. In the words of writer Charles D'Ambrosio, this extraordinary novel teaches us that "history has its way, the body has its way, and the rebellions we believe in leave behind a bleak wisdom, if we're lucky -- and defeat, if we're not." The Gin Closet marks the debut of a stunning new talent in fiction. (inside book jacket)



Benjamin Pratt and the Keepers of the School: We the Children
by Andrew Clements


One secret mission.
One secret society.
One chance to save their school from total destruction.

Benjamin Pratt's harbor-side school is going to be bulldozed to make room for an amusement park. It sounds like a dream come true. . . or is it more like a nightmare? Something about the plan seems fishy, and Lyman, the new assistant janitor, seems even fishier. When Ben and his friend, Jill, start digging for answers, they find things that the people with money and power don't want them to see. Could the history hidden deep within an old school building actually overthrow a thirty-million-dollar real-estate deal? And how far will the developers go to keep that from happening? Ben and Jill are about to discover just how dangerous a little knowledge can be. (back cover)




The Totaled Woman: True Slices of Life from a Mother of Five
by Marcia Veldhuis


Everyone knows that life happens -- the secret is finding God at work through it all!

Comprising individual true stories, The Totaled Woman shares the challenges and joys from a mother's perspective in a home with five precocious children and a brilliant (if impractical) scientist husband. Marcia Veldhuis looks beyond the crisis of the moment and finds the lessons that God would have. Enter into the joy, sorrow, hilarity and difficulty of each unbelievable situation.

Day to day living has always been stranger than fiction! (back cover)






Disrupting Grace: A Story of Relinquishment and Healing
by Kristen Richburg


Often we hear stories of adoption and happy endings, but what about the adoptions that don't work out? What are families to do when despite all efforts, their child isn't thriving, and the rest of the family is coming apart at the seams? Isolated families are running out of hope, battling pain, experiencing grief and the loss of a dream. Kristen Richburg sadly admits the inability to meet the needs of her adopted daughter and how five years later she relinquished her parental rights of a child she had so hoped to love, nurture and cherish for life. What now?

Aren't adoption stories supposed to have happy endings? How did we get here?

Disrupting Grace describes Richburg's journey through mothering and relinquishing an adopted child, and how through that experience, her shallow and small understanding of grace was enlarged and forever changed. It is in heartbreak, that she learned about love, in loss, that she experienced spiritual gain, and in brokenness, that she was made whole. (back cover)




Out With the In Crowd
by Stephanie Morrill


She knew changing her life wouldn't be easy, but she never expected it to be this hard.

Skylar Hoyt may have vowed to change her partying ways, but it's not so easy to change her friends. Even though the old Skylar is gone, she's still not sure who this new Skylar really is. Add to that two parents battling for her loyalty, a younger sister struggling with a crisis pregnancy, and a new boyfriend wishing for more of her time, and Skylar feels like she can't win. After all, how do you choose favorites among the people you love most? (back cover)




The Teaberry Strangler
by Laura Childs


The New York Times bestselling author of Oolong Dead serves up an old-time treat, spiced with a Sherlock Holmes-style murder mystery. . .

It was the Dickensian evening Theodosia Browning had hoped for, flickering candles lined the narrow cobblestone alleys of Charleston as shop owners dressed in cloaks of yore threw open their back doors to shoppers. Visitors took advantage of bargains on antiques, heaping bowls of shrimp chowder -- and of course Theodosia's delicious teas.

But when the clock strikes ten, the alleys clear except for one body discovered by a horrified Theodosia. It's the strangled form of Daria, the mapstore's owner. Many locals have shown interest in buying her shop -- but enough to kill? Plus there's been a customer hell-bent on getting his hands on a certain not-for-sale map. In this case one can hardly throw a scone without hitting a suspect.

Most alarming of all the theories, however, is Detective Tidwell's: that the killer mistook Daria for Theodosia herself. And if that theory holds water, the killer's work isn't done. (back cover)



What books came home to you this week?

Saturday, January 30, 2010

A Black Tie Affair by Sherrill Bodine (Book Review)


Title: A Black Tie Affair
Author: Sherrill Bodine

Publisher: Forever/Hachette Books

My synopsis: The first dilemma that comes to light is that four Bertha Palmer dresses have become infected with a "truth serum" type toxin. This toxin was created as the materials in the dresses started breaking down over the years. Athena Smith has the misfortune of discovering this after laying down under one to study it. She had been observing the dresses in the Clayworth's Secret Closet in hopes of acquiring them for her Founding Families Exhibit at the museum. An exhibit that would help cement the scholarship fund for her assistant, Makayla.

The second dilemma occurs after Athena is rushed to the emergency room under the effects of the toxin. The Clayworths rush to the hospital to make sure that Athena is going to be okay, and to try and discover what has caused this episode. When they go to recover the dresses from the Closet, an unknown thief has gotten to the dresses first, not knowing that they can infect innocent people.

Athena practically throws herself at Drew Clayworth while under the effects of the truth serum toxin, which creates the third dilemma. They both have unresolved feelings from a relationship that had ended 15 years earlier, when Athena was only 17 and Drew was 19. How will her "revelations" affect their relationship now, and will they be able to work together to try to find the missing dresses?

Underlying all of this is the fact that Athena's father, Alistair, has been "forced" into retirement from John Clayworth and Company's stores. He has retreated to Florida without telling his daughters the details of his dismissal. What part did Drew play in this dismissal and how will it affect his possible second chance with Athena?

Throw in the other two Smith sisters, Venus and Diana, along with Connor, Drew's cousin and another eligible bachelor and Bridget, the Clayworth boys' aunt, and you have two very loyal families who will stand up against all to protect their own.

My thoughts: I really enjoyed reading this book. It started out on such an original note with the toxic dresses and I found that refreshing. Having all the subplots really helped the book to move along and made me want to know how everything would play out in the end. I was cheering for the unrequited love of Athena and Drew and wanted this couple to be able to work things out. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys contemporary romance.

You can connect with the author on her website: SherillBodine.com or follow @SherrillBodine on twitter.

~I was provided this book for review by Hachette Books.~

A Black Tie Affair
Publisher/Publication Date: Forever, Jan 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-61859-5
240 pages



Friday, January 29, 2010

Friday Finds: 1-29-2010

Here is my find this week!




In a Heartbeat
by Loretta Ellsworth


When a small mistake costs sixteen-year-old Eagan her life during a figure-skating competition, she leaves many things unreconciled, including her troubled relationship with her mother. From her vantage point in the afterlife, Eagan reflects back on her memories, and what she could have done differently, through her still-beating heart.
When fourteen-year-old Amelia learns she will be getting a heart transplant, her fear and guilt battle with her joy at this new chance at life. And afterwards when she starts to feel different—dreaming about figure skating, craving grape candy—her need to learn about her donor leads her to discover and explore Eagan’s life, meeting her grieving loved ones and trying to bring the closure they all need to move on.
Told in alternating viewpoints, In a Heartbeat tells the emotional and compelling story of two girls sharing one heart. (Amazon)


The Girl in the Lighthouse
by Roxane Tepfer Sanford


From the time Lillian Arrington was born in 1862, she lived an isolated life on a remote lighthouse station with her father Garrett and her young mother Amelia. But Lillian has wishes and dreams far beyond her years. When her father is transferred to a new station, Lillian is anxious to meet the assistant keepers and their two sons, Heath and Ayden. She had never met children her own age, had playmates, or made a friend. Heath, the handsome teenage boy who desires to become a doctor someday, welcomes Lillian. However, his younger brother, Ayden, doesn't like her and she struggles to win him over. Before long, a secret bond between the three is forged and to Lillian's delight, they become close friends. After so many years, Lillian's childhood is beginning to resemble that of a normal girl. No longer is she lonely and isolated from the rest of the world by over-protective parents. Instead, she experiences new adventures, attends school, and falls in love for the first time. However, her glorious days on Jasper Island are short-lived as her beautiful young mother begins a tragic descent into insanity and passes away. Lillian is left in the care of her sinister grandmother Eugenia Arrington, who, since the end of the Civil War, continues to steadfastly hold onto the once glorious Georgia plantation known as Sutton Hall. It is there that the immoral secrets of Lillian's parents are revealed, and she is left to pick up the pieces of her scandalous past, and somehow, find her long way home. (Amazon)



The Girl in the Lighthouse
Publisher/Publication Date: Llumina Press, March 2009
ISBN: 978-1605942384
256 pages


In a Heartbeat
Publisher/Publication Date: Walker Books for Young Readers, Feb 2010
ISBN: 978-0802720689
224 pages





The Friday 56: 1-29-2010





Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of Storytime with Tonya and Friends.
*Post a link along with your post back to Storytime with Tonya and Friends.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.




"Now that things have settled down to a dull roar, I'm going to take a batch of scones, a jar of fig jam, and a big thermos of lemonade over to the fellows who are working on the Journey's End Church." Last month, the church, which was just down the frontage road from the Cackleberry Club, had been tragically torched by an arsonist. (Eggs Benedict Arnold by Laura Childs, p56)








Eggs Benedict Arnold
Publisher/Publication Date: Berkley, Dec 2009
ISBN: 978-0-425-23155-5
336 pages



Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Library Loot - Late Edition - 1/27/2010





These books are from the last two weeks as I missed posting last week.

Library Loot is hosted by Eva at A Striped Armchair and Marg at Reading Adventures.







Ghostwriter
by Travis Thrasher


When a writer's haunting novels suddenly intersect with real life, he faces terror unlike anything he ever imagined.

For years Dennis Shore has thrilled readers with his spooky bestselling novels. Now a widower, Dennis is finally alone in his house, his daughter attending college out of state. When he's stricken by a paralyzing case of writer's block and a looming deadline, Dennis becomes desperate. Against better judgment, he claims someone else's writing as his own, accepting undeserved accolades for the stolen work. He thinks he's gotten away with it. . . until he's greeted by a young man named Cillian Reed -- the true author of the stolen manuscript.

What begins as a minor case of harassment quickly spirals out of control. As Cillian's threats escalate, Dennis finds himself on the brink of losing his career, his sanity, and even his life. The horror he's spent years writing about has arrived on his doorstep, and Dennis has nowhere to run. (back cover)






Eggs in Purgatory (A Cackleberry Club Mystery)
by Laura Childs


Suzanne, Toni, and Petra lost their husbands but found independence -- and, in each other, a life raft of support, inspiration, fresh baked goods, and their own business. But when the Cackleberry Club cafe opened its doors in the town of Kindred, who'd have guessed that the cozy oasis would become the scene of a crime?

Eggs to Go, Murder on the Side

Suzanne's lawyer is found in his car behind the Cackleberry with egg on his face and blood on the dash. Suzanne's taking the crime personally: The murder reveals a scandal in her late husband's past and brings a stranger fleeing a messianic sect to her for help. Now, discovering the link between a dead man with secrets and a runaway cultist may be putting Suzanne's own life on the line. (back cover)




When She Flew
by Jennie Shortridge


Police officer Jessica Villareal has always played by the book and tried to do the right thing: She's worked hard at her job and even harder at her family. Despite all that, she finds herself approaching midlife divorced, estranged from her daughter, alone. . . and completely unhappy. And she's wondering if she ever made a right choice in her life.

But then Jess discovers an Iraq vet and his young daughter living off the radar in the Oregon woods, avoiding the comforts -- and curses -- of modern life. Her colleagues on the force are determined to uproot and separate Lindy and her father, but Jess knows the damage of losing those you love, and believes the pair is safer and happier together.

Jess recognizes her chance to make a difference by doing something she's never dared. Because even though she's used to playing by the rules, there are times when they need to be broken. . .(back cover)




Death by Darjeeling
by Laura Childs


Meet Theodosia Browning, owner of Charleston's beloved Indigo Tea Shop. Patrons love her blend of delicious tea tastings and southern hospitality. And Theo enjoys the full-bodied flavor of a town steeped in history -- and mystery. . .

It's tea for two hundred or so at the annual historic homes garden party. And Theodosia, as event caterer, is busy serving steaming teas and blackberry scones while guests sing her praises. But the sweet smell of success turns to suspense when an esteemed guest is found dead -- his hand clutching an empty teacup. All eyes are on Theo . . . who is now trying desperately to save her reputation and track down the real killer. If only she can make sense of it all -- before someone else takes their last sip. . .(back cover)




Keeper of Light and Dust
by Natasha Mostert


From the acclaimed author of Season of the Witch comes a highly original supernatural thriller, blending magic, science, martial arts, and the greatest desire of all: to live forever.

Mia Lockhart has a secret. Her mother was a Keeper, as was her grandmother -- women who were warriors, healers, and protectors. As Mia practices her craft among the boxers and martial artists of South London, she has no idea that a man who calls himself "Dragonfly" is watching form the shadows.

Adrian Ashton is a brilliant scientist, an expert in the field of biophoton emissions from cells within the human body. He is also a skilled martial artist -- and a modern-day vampire. With the aid of an ancient Chinese text, he has mastered the art of draining the chi of his opponents -- the vital energy that flows through their bodies. Mia finds herself drawn to his dark genius. But when he targets the man she loves, she is forced to choose between them. It becomes a fight to the death in which love is both the greatest weakness and the greatest prize.

A fast-paced, highly evocative thriller, Keeper of Light and Dust is a twenty-first-century novel exploring themes as old as time: the imperative of violence and the redemptive power of love (inside cover)




A Quiet Belief in Angels
by R.J. Ellory


1939. In the small, rural community of Augusta Falls, Georgia, twelve-year-old Joseph Vaughan learns of the brutal assault and murder of a young girl, a classmate he knew better than anyone in his class, a girl he quietly loved. The murder is the first in a series of killings that will plague the community over the next decade. Compelled by fear and duty, Joseph gathers a group of friends to form "The Guardians," who vow to watch over the young girls of Augusta Falls. But the murderer evades them and they watch helplessly as one child after another is taken.

Even when the killings cease, a shadow of fear follows Joseph for the rest of his life. The past won't stay buried and, fifty years later, Joseph must confront the nightmare that has overshadowed his entire life. . . (inside cover)




LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...