Slave Graves is currently free on Amazon and you might want to head over there right now to snag your Kindle copy. It's the first in the "River Sunday" series set in backwoods Maryland featuring a university archaeologist named Frank Light. (If this were a romance series instead of a mystery, "River Sunday" would be the name of the heroine.)
Frank is out in the mosquito-ridden marshes because real estate financier Jake Tennent wants to build a bridge right in the middle of what might be a significant archaeological find. Jake is a friend of the university that employs Frank (and his girlfriend Mello, who teaches some business courses) and when Frank and a ragtag team of students, scholars, and state archaeologists block his plans, he is not a happy man. (It's no coincidence that Terment comes across like a certain New York-based real estate mogul currently running for president.)
Saturday, July 2, 2016
Friday, July 1, 2016
Something Different in a Shakespeare Book: The Shakespeare Stealer
This looks like a coming of age story set in Shakespeare's time The hero is a young orphan 9aren't they always?) who can write a symbol language. His cruel master orders him to steal Hamlet or ele, and it goes from there.
My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix...a review
The title of this book makes it sound like a bouncy YA with a dash of horror--maybe something along the lines of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. That is not this book. Instead, Grady Hendrix has whipped up a complex study of teenage friendship that' is brutally honest about class iand exceptionally sharp in dissecting the pecking order of a private high school in the deep South where the worst thing you can do to a dad is make him look like a Republican.
Abby, the book's narrator, is a kid whose life takes a downward spiral after her father, an air traffic controller, loses his job when President Reagan goes over his union for calling a strike. She's buoyed up by her freindshp with Gretchen, a rich girl who lives in the "nice" part of Charleston in a house that always smells of air conditioning and carpet shampoo. They are closer than sisters and then something terrible happens to Gretchen that changes everything.
As Gretchen goes into freefall she gives Abby plenty of reasons to simply walk away from their friendship but Abby will not do it. And because she will not, she pays a horrific price. The way Hendrix lays this out is very well thought out, and he final chapters of the story are genuinel tense, genuinely horrific, and terribly, terribly real. This is a book about love and loyalty and boundaries. And it will make you ask--how far would you go to save someone you love?
Abby, the book's narrator, is a kid whose life takes a downward spiral after her father, an air traffic controller, loses his job when President Reagan goes over his union for calling a strike. She's buoyed up by her freindshp with Gretchen, a rich girl who lives in the "nice" part of Charleston in a house that always smells of air conditioning and carpet shampoo. They are closer than sisters and then something terrible happens to Gretchen that changes everything.
As Gretchen goes into freefall she gives Abby plenty of reasons to simply walk away from their friendship but Abby will not do it. And because she will not, she pays a horrific price. The way Hendrix lays this out is very well thought out, and he final chapters of the story are genuinel tense, genuinely horrific, and terribly, terribly real. This is a book about love and loyalty and boundaries. And it will make you ask--how far would you go to save someone you love?
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Heartblaze 2: Savage Steel by Shay Roberts...a review
If you were worried that author Shay Roberts might have
fallen into a “sophomore slump” with this second book in the Heartblaze trilogy, worry no more. This
book is a delight in every way, with deeper conflicts, richer emotions, and
relationships that are layered and nuanced. He’s even deftly woven in
references to the three novellas set in the Heartblaze
world, a move that makes his fictional universe seem even more complex and
interesting than it already was. As with the first book, the story unfolds in
two different time frames—modern-day Providence and Tudor England—and involves
heroine Emma Rue in a story that has epic consequences. Rowan, the mad witch
behind Emma’s troubles in the first book, returns with an entire coven of
witchly allies, and her tale weaves in and out of Emma’s story like a dark
ribbon. Written in an almost cinematic style full of character cross-cutting
and cliffhangers, this book is a fast read and a deeply satisfying addition to
the series.
Labels:
Heartblaze,
paranormal romamce,
Shay Roberts
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Picnic by the Lake of Time
Tor.com put out a call for novella-length stories about time travel this month and I desperately wanted to submit something. I love time travel stories and this "story bunny" has been drifting around for years. But as I started writing the story, I realized that it was just a story--that it had a finite beginnin and a finite ending and there was no way I could stretch the story out to 20K novella length.
At the same time, I saw this cover on Book Cover Designer and realized it would be a perfect cover for the story. And though I'm really, really trying to increase my output of longer work, I decided that sometimes a story is just a story. So by the Fourth of July, I'll have Picnic by the Lake of Time out in the world. The cover was designed by Ntasja Hellenthal of Beyond Book Covers. Find her here.
At the same time, I saw this cover on Book Cover Designer and realized it would be a perfect cover for the story. And though I'm really, really trying to increase my output of longer work, I decided that sometimes a story is just a story. So by the Fourth of July, I'll have Picnic by the Lake of Time out in the world. The cover was designed by Ntasja Hellenthal of Beyond Book Covers. Find her here.
Monday, June 27, 2016
Butterly Bones by Savanna Redman, a review
Amanda
thinks her life is fine—or at least as fine as it can be when she’s not
following her dream of being an artist and is instead advising clients on what
to do with their money. She thinks that that her life is fine except that she
can’t seem to make her husband happy, and on top of that…she’s having
premonition dreams. Her life is fine but she doesn’t have those dreams unless
her life is a mess. And soon enough, real life catches up with her dreams.
BUTTERFLY
BONES is a terrific novel about dreams, both literal and metaphorical. It is
about a complicated woman living a complicated life. The genre straddles the
line between chick lit and lit fic with a dash of paranormal thrown in and
Savanna Redman makes it all work because her writing is just that good.
For one
thing, from the opening page as Amanda experiences a lucid dream, we’re thrown
into a multi-sensory world, seeing the shadow of black branches against a
violet sky, hearing the buzz of insects, smelling the scent of honeysuckle,
feeling the chill of cold dew om our bare feet. And from the first pages we
also know that Savanna may long for a normal life but she is ANYTHING but
normal.
A Shakespeare Mystery
This si the first in a series so if it's good, there are a few more where it came from. I look forward to reading this book and am also recommending it to my mystrey book club.
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