Teaser Tuesday: Forbidden (Oct 4, 2011)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
• Then visit MizB and add your link!

Whatever this virus had done to humanity, the alchemists had found a way to undo it in him.  The chaos of emotions had come roiling back into veins and neurons too tepid to house their fire, and Saric wasn't sure if he wanted to kill the alchemists or thank them for it.  (p23, Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee)

Forbidden (The Books of Mortals)
Publisher/Publication Date: Center Street, Sept 2011
ISBN: 978-1599953540
384 pages

ARC Arrival: THR3E by Ted Dekker

THR3E

by Ted Dekker

Center Street

By all accounts Kevin Parsons is leading a virtuous life.  But like all people, Kevin has his secrets.  And someone wants them revealed.

While driving home from graduate school, Kevin receives a call from a deluded stranger who calls himself Slater.  Slater demands that Kevin confess his sin in the next three minutes or the car he's driving will be blown to pieces.  With the threat, he offers a riddle:  What falls but never breaks, what breaks but never falls?

Thus starts a harrowing chain of threats with progressively higher stakes.  Another riddle, another three minutes.  Confess your sin, Kevin.

The problem is Kevin has no idea what sin.  And Slater's cycle won't stop until he's dead.

Now only Samantha, the woman he once loved more than life itself, can help him uncover the secrets of a mysterious past.  But Samantha may soon be dead as well.

About the author: TED DEKKER is a New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty novels with a total of more than 3 million books in print. He is known for thrillers that combine adrenaline-laced plots with incredible confrontations between good and evil.



~ I received a complimentary copy of this book from Hachette Books and hope to have it reviewed by the end of the month.~



Thr3e
Publisher/Publication Date: Center Street, Nov 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59995-314-4
416 pages

The Bride Collector by Ted Dekker - audiobook giveaway!

The Bride Collector (audiobook)

by Ted Dekker, read by John Glover

FBI Special agent Brad Raines is facing his toughest case yet. A Denver serial killer has killed four beautiful young women, leaving a bridal veil at each crime scene, and he's picking up his pace. Unable to crack the case, Raines appeals for help from a most unusual source: residents of the Center for Wellness and Intelligence, a private psychiatric institution for mentally ill individuals whose are extraordinarily gifted.

It's there that he meets Paradise, a young woman who witnessed her father murder her family and barely escaped his hand. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Paradise may also have an extrasensory gift: the ability to experience the final moments of a person's life when she touches the dead body.

In a desperate attempt to find the killer, Raines enlists Paradise's help. In an effort to win her trust, he befriends this strange young woman and begins to see in her qualities that most 'sane people' sorely lack. Gradually, he starts to question whether sanity resides outside the hospital walls...or inside.

As the Bride Collector picks up the pace-and volume-of his gruesome crucifixions, the case becomes even more personal to Raines when his friend and colleague, a beautiful young forensic psychologist, becomes the Bride Collector's next target.

The FBI believes that the killer plans to murder seven women. Can Paradise help before it's too late?

Listen to an excerpt

GIVEAWAY

I have 3 copies of this audiobook to giveaway courtesy of Hachette Books.

Open to U.S./Canada. No PO boxes.

This giveaway will end July 5.

Simple Summer Rules - just leave a comment with your email address.

The Bride Collector by Ted Dekker

Title: The Bride Collector
Author: Ted Dekker
Publisher: Center Street/Hachette Books

My synopsis/thoughts: We meet Brad Raines, FBI agent, and his partner Nikki after the serial killer takes his fourth victim.  All have been beautiful women, left behind with only a bridal veil - hence the serial killer has been dubbed The Bride Collector.  With the fourth victim, however, comes a note that gives Brad his first glimpse of what the killer is really like.  This note leads them to the Center for Wellbeing and Intelligence.

This Center is home to mentally ill patients who are also highly gifted individuals.  There we meet a group of patients who Brad calls on to give him a different aspect of his killer.  Paradise is a young girl - schizophrenic and agoraphobic - who appears to have the ability to see someone's last moments if she touches their dead body.  Roudy has a brilliant mind that works at a much greater pace than anyone's around him.  Allison is the ex-nun who facillitates the meeting up of her patients and Brad.  She enables us to see the patients for their abilities and not their "illness".

We also meet the killer early on in the book.  I love the fact that you don't go through the thriller trying to figure out who is doing the killing - but instead, you get to try to figure out WHY he is killing and how everyone is connected.  Especially after the killer starts making it personal with Brad. 

I noticed in someone else's review that they brought up that Mr. Dekker is able to write these wonderful thriller's with very graphic portrayals and yet can do so without using any profanity.  Well done!  I love thrillers, and sometimes feel that the use of profanity is a "lazy" effort to portray "bad" people or situations.  (Ok - I feel the wrath of some authors coming on here - and no, I am not a writer so this is just MHO.)  I can still remember a poster from my highschool English class (and we are going back a ways here!) that said something to the effect "Profanity is a strong effort of a weak mind to express itself forcefully."  I will get off my soapbox now...

I'll just finish by saying I loved this book.  Highly recommend it - and can't wait to read another my Ted Dekker.  I actually have Burn smoldering in my TBR pile!

The Bride Collector is not due out until April 13 - but if you preorder - you can receive a free PDF of Ted Dekker's first unpublished novel.

Hook up with Ted Dekker on these sites:
Facebook
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Website

The Bride Collector
Publisher/Publication Date: Center Street, April 13, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59995-196-6
416 pages

Boneman's Daughter by Ted Dekker - Audiobook Giveaway!

It is time for some new giveaways from Hachette! To start them out I have 3 copies of Boneman's Daughters audiobooks to give away. (Thanks Anna and Hachette!) I will be hosting giveaways for another audio book everyday this week - so be sure to come back by!

Synopsis (from Barnes and Noble)

They call him BoneMan, a serial killer who's abducted six young women. He's the perfect father looking for the perfect daughter, and when his victims fail to meet his lofty expectations, he kills them by breaking their bones and leaving them to die.

Intelligence officer Ryan Evans, on the other hand, has lost all hope of ever being the perfect father. His daughter and wife have written him out of their lives.

Everything changes when BoneMan takes Ryan's estranged daughter, Bethany, as his seventh victim. Ryan goes after BoneMan on his own.

But the FBI sees it differently. New evidence points to the suspicion that Ryan is BoneMan. Now the hunter is the hunted, and in the end, only one father will stand.

Rules are:

1. Canada or U.S. only - NO P.O boxes! (books will be coming direct from Hachette)
2. 3 copies to give away
3. Contest runs from May 5 - May 22 (midnight CST)

How do you enter? (Put all entries into one comment please)

1. For your first entry you must tell me your favorite Ted Dekker book, or if you haven't read anything by him, then tell me that also. W/o this entry, no other entries will count. YOU MUST INCLUDE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS.

2. If you sign up to follow my blog (or already do) - 2 entries

3. If you sign up to follow in a feed reader, email subscription or facebook - 2 entries

4. If you tweet or post this giveaway on your blog and leave the link back here - 2 entries

MAXIMUM entries is 5.

BoneMan's Daughter by Ted Dekker (Book Review)

Title: BoneMan's Daughter
Author: Ted Dekker
Publisher: Hachette
Genre: Thriller
Available: Today! April 14
My ebook was provided by Net Galley.

First sentence: The day that Ryan Evans' world forever changed began as any other day he'd spent in the hot desert might have begun.

Ryan Evans is a Naval Intelligence Officer on location near Fallujah. Normally he deciphers information from his desk, but today he is being sent out to a remote location. His caravan is hit on the road and he is taken hostage by a man called Kahlid. Kahlid wants to show America all the senseless killing of women and children that is happening because of America's bombs. He tells Ryan that he must either tell him where his wife and daughter live, or watch more children die in front of him by having their bones broken one by one.

Many days and several children later, Ryan is able to escape. But is he leaving the same man that he was when he was captured?

Celine and Bethany are Ryan's wife and 16 year old daughter back in Texas. They were abandoned by Ryan years ago because he felt the best way to serve them, the only way he knew how, was to serve his country. Now he is back and wants to be the husband and father he never was. But Celine is currently involved with the D.A. Burton Welsh. Is it too late for this family to mend?

BoneMan is a serial killer that made his way across Texas two years earlier. A man was convicted and sent to prison. Evidence has come to light that the blood samples that were used to convict may have been planted. BoneMan has been set free. Ricki Valentine, the FBI agent who was on the case 2 years ago, reopens the investigation now. Either they have just released a serial killer back on the public, or they never had him to begin with.

BoneMan has been looking for the perfect daughter - as he considers himself to be the perfect father. When the girls he abducts do not live up to his expectations - he is forced to kill them by breaking their bones one by one. After two years of no activity, he is feeling the need to find a daughter again. Who better than the soon to be step daughter of the D.A. that is trying to find him and the daughter of a man who doesn't deserve her - as he abandoned her years earlier? How far will a father go to protect his daughter?

This is my second Ted Dekker book and I can't wait for more. I love the way that we really get to know these characters. We can feel their pain, their frustration, their fear. And what is scarier than having one of your children abducted! If you love thrillers, this is a book you won't want to miss.

Teaser Tuesday 4-7-2009

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to: Grab your current read.

Let the book fall open to a random page.

Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.

You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

Please avoid spoilers!

The man's breath smelled like clean dirt. Like most Middle Easterners, he valued cleanliness far more than your typical westerner - even here in the desert, assuming he hadn't been out long enough to have been driven to a city, the man would take care to bathe each day. Ryan could still smell the soap on him. (p26, uncorrected proof, Boneman's Daughter by Ted Dekker)

Kiss by Ted Dekker and Erin Healy (Book Review)

Title: Kiss
Author: Ted Dekker and Erin Healy
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Genre: Fiction/Christian/Suspense

First sentence: The view from my therapist's window was unremarkable.

Shauna awoke after being in a coma for six weeks to a nightmare that she would like to forget. She had no idea why or how she ended up in the hospital. Actually, she couldn't remember the last 6 months. She knew who she was, who her brother Rudy was, her dad Landan, "Uncle" Trent, even her evil stepmother Patrice. However, she did not know Wayne Spade, the guy who claimed to be her boyfriend. How could she have forgotten him?

After Shauna is released from the hospital, Wayne offers to stay with her 24/7 to help her recuperate. He works for her Uncle Trent at her father's company, McAllister MediVista, so there isn't a problem with him getting some time off. She discovers that her brother Rudy is brain-damaged due to the accident that put her in the coma. The accident that they say she caused. She had been indicted while in the coma because they had found Ecstacy in her system, and in her car, and in her apartment. She couldn't EVER remember taking drugs in her life. How could this be happening to her?

Rudy had been her father's favorite ever since he had married Patrice. She had been left for Patrice to raise and Patrice was every bit the wicked stepmother - even burning Shauna with an iron. But did her father believe her? No. He believed Patrice when she told him that Shauna just wanted to be the center of attention. This drove a wedge between Shauna and her dad, which is why she now calls him Landon.

Soon, Shauna starts remembering things - but they don't seem to be her memories. Why is she remembering things that couldn't possibly have happened to her? And can she really trust Wayne or is he trying to kill her?

The underlying theme in Kiss is that God will always love you and you don't need to fear. (Shauna keeps remembering her deceased mom telling her this.) What Shauna wants more than anything is for Landon to feel this way about her. We also get to see some family and romantic relationships develop and some family and romantic relationships fall apart. You will have to read to find out whose!

This was my first Ted Dekker book (I know, I know, I must have been living under a rock!) and I loved it - the book, not living under the rock. Thrillers are hard for me to put down and this one was no exception. I was lucky enough to get a galley of Mr. Dekker's book that is coming out in April - The Boneman's Daughters and can't wait to read it!