It’s all fun and games, until someone gets killed.
Meet Jax Diamond, a sharp, sophisticated, skilled, no-nonsense private detective. Or is he? Glued to his side is his canine partner, Ace, a fierce and unrelenting German Shepherd whose mere presence terrorizes criminals into submission. Well, maybe not.
But the two of them are a whole lot smarter than they look. And they have their hands full when a playwright’s death is declared natural causes, and his new manuscript worth a million bucks is missing.
Laura Graystone, a beautiful rising Broadway star, is dragged into the heart of their investigation, and she’s none too happy about it. Especially when danger first strikes, and she needs to rely on her own ingenuity to save their hides.
Join Jax, Laura and Ace on a fun yet deadly ride during the Roaring Twenties that takes twists and turns, and a race against time to find the real murderer before he/she/they stop them permanently.
Award-winning author Gail Meath writes historical romance novels that will whisk you away to another time and place in history where you will meet fascinating characters, both fictional and real, who will capture your heart and soul. Meath loves writing about little or unknown people, places and events in history, rather than relying on the typical stories and settings.
My thoughts: if you’ve watched the TV series Hudson & Rex (based on a German series called Kommissioner Rex) you’ll know that having a German shepherd in a partnership makes crime solving so much better, and that’s the case here as detective Jax Diamond has a canine partner of his own called Ace.
In this case they’re investigating some suspicious deaths and keeping the titular songbird, actress Laura Greystone, safe from a particularly keen stalker. Ace is key in rescuing innocent parties and defending his preferred humans from harm.
Set during the Roaring Twenties, this was a fun and charming read, Laura is perfectly capable of looking after herself, but Jax’s instincts as a detective help them track down the dastardly duo behind a series of shocking murders rocking the theatre world. I’m hoping there will be more of these fun and enjoyable stories to come.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
THE BREAKOUT SUPERNATURAL THRILLER FROM ICELANDIC WRITER JOHANN THORSSON
Detective John Dark’s daughter has been missing for two years. In his frantic and unfruitful search for her two years ago, John Dark overreached and was reprimanded and demoted.
Now suddenly back into the homicide department, Dark is put on a chilling case – a man who killed his wife in their locked house and then dressed the body up to resemble a deer, but claims to remember none of it. A few days later an impossibly similar case crops up connecting the suspects to a prep school and a thirty year old missing persons’ case.
Just as he is getting back into his old groove, a new lead in his daughter’s disappearance pops up and threatens to derail his career again.
Time is running out and John Dark needs to solve the case before more people are killed, and while there is still hope to find his daughter.
In the style of True Detective and Silence of the Lambs, WHITESANDS is a thrilling supernatural crime novel.
“Tense, breakneck storytelling. WHITESANDS is a dash of Thomas Harris swirled with supernatural elements that leave you speeding through the pages.” – Kristi DeMeester, author of SUCH A PRETTY SMILE and BENEATH
“Johann Thorsson’s fast-moving debut WHITESANDS, packs enough incident for a novel twice its size, until it’s impossible to turn the pages fast enough.” – John Langan, author of Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies
“… certainly one of the best thrillers I have read this year.” – Khasif Hussain, The Best Thriller Books
Johann Thorsson is a writer of fiction with a supernatural slant, mainly short stories, mainly in English.
He was born in 1978 in a small town in Iceland (dark and cold, close to the sea). When he was nine he moved to Israel, and later to Croatia. He now resides in the Reykjavik area with his beautiful wife and two little kids.
His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Every Day Fiction, eFiction Magazine, eFiction Horror and Fireside Fiction.
His favorite books are 1984, Flowers for Algernon, I am Legend, The Things They Carried and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novels. Oh, and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone. Romeo and Juliet. (This could go on for a while).
My thoughts: this was a clever and creepy crime story with revenge at its heart. After a man murders his wife and insists someone else did it, despite all the evidence, Detective John Dark thinks something weird is going on, a second murder convinces him. The only link is that the two killers attended the same boarding school – Whitesands. Did something happen in their shared past that’s finally manifesting?
Dark is an interesting character, tormented by the disappearance of his daughter some years before, he’s never stopped looking, but his bosses need him to focus on his career before he loses his job. He’s willing to believe in the supernatural in order to solve this case, since it genuinely seems to be the case.
I can imagine this book growing into a series where Dark investigates other strange crimes while still hunting for his daughter and turning to both his wife and his partner at the police station Monique as well as his new friend, schizophrenic psychic Daniel, to access as much support as he can.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
When a group of social activists arrives in a small town, the lives and beliefs of residents and outsiders alike are upended, in this wry, embracing novel.
Big Burr, Kansas, is the kind of place where everyone seems to know everyone, and everyone shares the same values—or keeps their opinions to themselves. But when a national nonprofit labels Big Burr “the most homophobic town in the US” and sends in a task force of queer volunteers as an experiment—they’ll live and work in the community for two years in an attempt to broaden hearts and minds—no one is truly prepared for what will ensue.
Furious at being uprooted from her life in Los Angeles and desperate to fit in at her new high school, Avery fears that it’s only a matter of time before her “gay crusader” mom outs her. Still grieving the death of her son, Linda welcomes the arrivals, who know mercifully little about her past. And for Christine, the newcomers are not only a threat to the comforting rhythms of Big Burr life, but a call to action. As tensions roil the town, cratering relationships and forcing closely guarded secrets into the light, everyone must consider what it really means to belong. Told with warmth and wit, Under the Rainbow is a poignant, hopeful articulation of our complicated humanity that reminds us we are more alike than we’d like to admit.
My thoughts: each chapter is a glimpse into the life of a different resident of Big Burr, from the newcomers trying to change prevailing attitudes to the lifelong residents who want things to either stay the same or who long for change.
This was a really interesting way to tell the story of a small town, everyone has a different perspective on things and some events you only learn about second or third hand, the way you might in real life. On the whole the LGBTQ+ activists are left alone, apart from a few really obnoxious individuals (who kidnaps a cat like that?). Big Burr might have been seen as the most homophobic town but underneath the surface, things are not quite so clear cut.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
Welcome to the book tour for genre-blurring novel, The Blue Pendant by Rob James! This will be the first book in a new series called When Gods Clash. Read on for more info and enter the giveaway for a chance to win a $25 Amazon e-gift card!
The Blue Pendant (When Gods Clash #1)
Publication Date: November 15th, 2021
Genre: Paranormal Thriller/ Greek Mythology
Debilitated in Afghanistan, Angus MacDonald struggles to find peace and escape his nightmares. He visits Culloden Battlefield, Scotland, where ancient voices traumatize him. They reveal a shocking connection to his ancestors who died in 1746 where he now stands. They compel him to fight again, but this time against an unworldly enemy. Inexplicable and uncanny changes wrack his mind and body.
To protect humankind from slavery Angus must face the past, but more troubling, his future while unraveling the mystery of his heritage. He strives to discover millennia-old truths from Olympus, Greece, and the violent history that produced them. The truth of who bred him to die saving humanity. The most crucial battle of Angus’s story begins on the same infamous field of his clan’s decimation, but worse, when he returns to Washington, D.C., war follows.
Rob James’ WHEN GODS CLASH includes a fascinating take on Greek mythology through vivid world-building; a work of supernatural fantasy. Olympians are not what books describe. Here, they are real. The book is a searing, unique makeover of loved themes.
Rob James is a student of history and geopolitics and writing novels with historical themes is his passion. Dramatic events and tales from history help to create thrills and suspense. They also color flawed but compelling protagonists.
Since childhood, stories of Rob Roy MacGregor, and the ancient Greek heroes heightened Rob’s passion for reading. He knows them and the history of their times intimately, lighting the richly layered backstory of his novels.
When referencing ancient characters, tradition can become repetitive so Rob takes care to provide unique takes on the often-repeated tales. As his plots are set in the present day, intertwining the old with the new demands respect for the old, while giving them a modern punch; a lift to provide relevance and resonate with readers.
Lady Isabelle must flee her pursuers, posing as a young male scholar in the New College of St Mary in Oxford. But when she learns she is with child it won’t be long until she is discovered amongst their ranks.
Can she bring herself to love an infant conceived in evil?
And will she ever be reunited with her beloved Richard, or will Sir Henry Lormont’s dagger find him first?
This deftly plotted 15th century novel traverses the well-trodden pilgrimage routes from Oxford to Rome encountering lepers, assassins, sea rovers and historical figures Lady Margaret Beaufort and Edmund Tudor along the way. Superbly researched by a scholar of the period, Clover blends history with the riveting story of a woman who overcomes the restrictions placed on her sex to create a page-turning novel.
Catherine Clover completed her doctoral degree from Trinity College, Oxford and her research about the end of the Hundred Years’ War informs the Maid of Gascony series. She has a particular professional interest in one of the great surviving English medieval treasures, the two-panel painting known as the Wilton Diptych, which plays a key role in the trilogy. Catherine is also producing a series of choral music albums that connect with the characters in the series. Visit www.catherineclover.com to learn more about Catherine and her work.
The story features textual references to a number of choral music pieces. The choir of New College plays a central role in the book. The author has produced an album in collaboration with the New College choir in Oxford, which accompanies the book.
My thoughts: this was an interesting look at a period in history that I’m particularly interested in, as it preceeds the Cousins’ War or War of the Roses, immediately. A volatile time in English history when things could change very rapidly.
Lady Isabelle has endured tragedies and heartbreak, travelling across Europe to Rome in order to carry out an important task, while under threat from an awful man and his allies. Her return to England is hasty, and she loses much that’s important to her, including her faith. But gradually she recovers and becomes guardian to the young Margaret Beaufort – later the mother of Henry VII.
Isabelle is an interesting character, not one of the main figures in this period, she is a mystic from Gascony, given to religious visions, she spends much of her time with priests, monks and nuns. Her family are all murdered as traitors and she is left with nothing. However she is incredibly strong, brave and resilient. Disguised as a man she is able to get into places denied to women at this time – from an Oxford University college to the hostel of the Knights Templar in Rome.
I found her an interesting protagonist and although I haven’t read the first book in the series yet, someone I would like to read more about.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my
Wren is impulsive, curious, and always in trouble. Can her flaws become her greatest asset?
Wren Sterling has a problem. She knows she’s super smart and a good friend, but no matter how hard she tries, she can’t shake her reputation as a troublemaker. It feels like the only people who believe in her are her three best friends in the Renegade Girls Tinkering Club. She’d hoped middle school would be different, but when her inability to control her temper causes an accident, even her beloved STEM Club is no longer a safe haven.
She has to find a way to fix it. When her idea to start a business inventing and selling spy gadgets succeeds, it looks like she’s finally done something right! But then the Club is accused of a crime. Can they use their own gadgets, and a little bit of trouble to solve the mystery? If they can find the real culprit, Wren may just discover she has a bright future after all. If they can’t, she could lose her best friends forever.
“It’s The Babysitter’s Club meets MacGyver!”
Build your own SPY GADGETS! Instructions included in this charming story about friendship, middle school, and the Engineering Design Process for kids ages 8-12.
Excerpt Technically it was Wren’s Greenhouse, hidden behind her family's small home in the middle of San Francisco, but all the Renegades felt at home there. In the Greenhouse, they didn't have to worry about other people's rules and opinions. Or try to be boring or be like everyone else. The Greenhouse was their safe space. They could just be themselves. Wren's parents let them use it as their workshop and clubhouse as long as her little sister, Trixie, could be part of the club. When they'd formed the Renegade Girls Tinkering Club, the Greenhouse had been abandoned and filled with broken pots and spiderwebs. It was small and dirty, but had everything they needed. A door hidden like a secret behind an overgrown wisteria vine. A back wall with shelves from floor to ceiling, and excellent light from a front wall made entirely of glass. A small but sturdy potting table sat against the windows. It was pleasant and warm, with one electrical outlet and a small work sink. They loved it from the first time they saw it. Amber, Kammie, Ivy, Wren, and even Trixie had worked tirelessly last summer, cleaning and gathering assorted leftovers, recyclables, and a mishmash of bins to put them in. They categorized and labelled, collected cardboard by cutting down shipping boxes, and saved empty toilet paper rolls from the trash. They snuck random scissors from kitchen drawers, ribbons, buttons, anything that looked useful or had an interesting shape. Amber had borrowed a folding card table from her garage, and Kammie brought in some stools her parents were getting rid of. Wren found an old glue gun, and they had even managed to find an unused sewing machine. The first purchase with their club dues had been copies of the side gate key, so everyone could head directly into the backyard when they came over. Amber rocketed through that side gate, clutching a cardboard box protectively to her chest with her delicate arms. Beneath a spring green sundress her feet, in their pristine white flats, skipped quickly and skillfully over the ground. The September afternoon sun lit up her auburn hair like a fiery halo.
In 1996, Terri left Colorado, where she grew up, and headed even more West until she couldn’t get any West-er. Landing in San Francisco, her career spanned more than a decade in 3D character animation for video games, films, television shows, and even a comic book (but mostly video games.) Her work encompassed character animation, art direction, and story development before she had children and, imagining a better world for them, co-founded the Renegade Girls Tinkering Club with her friend Vicky in 2015. Since then she’s created over a dozen curricula and assisted in creating half a dozen more, encompassing more than 230 individual projects.
She lives in San Francisco with 2 rowdy children and a fabulous, brilliant husband who brings her tea every night.
My thoughts: I wish the Renegade Girls Tinkering Club had been around when I was a kid, I liked all the science-y stuff they did, building cool gadgets and learning about circuits and things. My dad’s an engineer and I got quite into that side of science at school.
The book is a lot of fun and there are illustrated guides to building your own cool spy gadgets, and templates to download on the website. There’s also a mystery to solve and one very smart little sister too.
I felt sorry for Wren, it can be really hard when your brain works differently from other people and I didn’t like maths lessons either. But she has great friends and I’m glad she and Amber patched things up, those years just before your teens can be tough and good friends are worth hanging onto as you get older.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
The annual celebration of publisher Clink Street is back and full of great books. Check out the poster below my review to see all the fab bloggers taking part.
If you found an unsigned lottery ticket, what would you do if it turned out to be worth millions? Hand it in or claim the prize? Follow the twisting path of Maggie and Greg when faced with this dilemma. Who are the winners and who are the real losers? What is the price of honesty and does winning bring happiness? Can you do more good in the world if you are rich or poor? Find out in this intriguing tale of an ordinary family.
My thoughts: this was an entertaining and enjoyable read about what happens to an ordinary family whose whole world is turned upside down when they find a winning lottery ticket in the park. Suddenly insanely wealthy, Greg and Maggie decide to keep it quiet while also doing things they’ve always wanted to do.
Greg starts investing and growing his hospitality recruitment business, splashing out on a fancy car once he feels he can justify it to friends with his business successes, meanwhile Maggie wants to donate to wildlife charities, specifically ones that save African elephants (something my sister, who is obsessed with pachyderms, could definitely get behind).
Of course their plan to do all this but not let their sudden and obscene wealth change them doesn’t quite work and over the next few years things change massively for them and their children. Maggie becomes an international environmental champion and Greg becomes one of the wealthiest businessmen around. Things in their personal lives change dramatically too. Can their family survive all of this?
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
Before Baker Street, there was Montague. Before partnership with a former army doctor recently returned from Afghanistan, Sherlock Holmes had but the quiet company of his own great intellect. Solitary he might be but, living as he did for the thrill of the chase, it was enough. For a little while, at the least, it was enough. That is, until a client arrives at his door with a desperate plea and an invitation into a world of societal scandal and stage door dandies. Thrust deep in an all-consuming role and charged with the safe-keeping of another, Holmes must own to his limits or risk danger to others besides himself in this the case of the aluminium crutch.
M. K. Wiseman has degrees in Interarts & Technology and Library & Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her office, therefore, is a curious mix of storyboards and reference materials. Both help immensely in the writing of historical novels. She currently resides in Cedarburg, Wisconsin.
My thoughts: I enjoyed the previous one of these (here) and was pleased to be reading another of M.K Wiseman’s Sherlock stories, this one set before Dr Watson entered Holmes’ life.
This was quite a complicated case involving false identities, gangsters, land deeds in America, a jilted lover, and a rich uncle keeping secrets. Hired to solve a missing person case, that is slightly more complex due to another person impersonating the missing man, Holmes soon finds himself drawn into the complex lies of Price family. Trying to figure out the whereabouts of the real Tobias-Henry Price, he comes across a safe cracker who is happily in custody and Price’s uncle insists the foppish dandy using his nephew’s name is the real Tobias, but his fianceè insists her Toby is someone else entirely.
Eventually Holmes resorts to disguise and goes undercover in society, where he feels intensely uncomfortable, as well as keeping track of a gang of criminals he thinks are involved. And why is everyone so interested in Price’s aluminium cane?
Obviously Sherlock Holmes is Sherlock Holmes and he solves the case, probably a lot sooner that he says he has, through deduction and his acute understanding of how humans think.
A fiendishly clever case and at times very confusing but all is revealed in the end.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
Someone’s playing tricks on Karen at home and at work. When two cold case files about missing girls turn up on her desk, she’s fuming. When a third file arrives…she blows a fuse.
Her boss demands she takes holiday leave just as Karen discovers her late father was involved in one of the cases. Now she’s compelled to investigate them.
Karen’s accompanied by sometime boyfriend John – but can she trust him or his friend and mapkeeper Mr Binks?
She has formidable detective skills but will they work in places where old-world magic is still powerful?
Karen’s life is in serious danger… but from whom…. or what?
Jane writes novels, short stories and poems, usually with a good dose of humour in them. She’s probably owes it all to her late grandmother who, she’s just found out, also wrote short stories and poems. She tends to get an idea and then run with it whether it be a 100 word short story or an 80 thousand word novel. It all depends on the voices in her head at the time…
My thoughts: this was a quirky blend of crime fiction and supernatural shenanigans. As Karen digs into the cases of 3 missing girls from 50 years ago, she finds a strange link to her father’s death and some seriously spooky goings on. With boyfriend John and partner Macy in tow, she sets off to unravel this mystery.
Then there’s Mr Binks, owner of a curious bookshop, he knows a lot more than he’s willing to share but he also has answers to a few things about the case. But can he be trusted and is he acting in the best interests of himself or the case?
With the team racing across the country and even up into Scotland, this case stretches inter-force cooperation and nearly makes Karen’s boss blow his top (she’s supposed to be holiday, not having around solving cold cases).
A clever and occasionally very peculiar addition to supernatural police procedural novels, a bit like Rivers of London or The King’s Watch.
Click the poster to find the other stops on the tour
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
Congratulations to author LindaAnn LoSchiavo for winning the prestigious Elgin award for her speculative poetry collection, A Route Obscure and Lonely!
A Route Obscure and Lonely: Poetrylandia 2
Publication Date: December 30th, 2019
Genre: Speculative Poetry
Haunting and harrowing in its portrayal of supernatural creatures, “A Route Obscure and Lonely” explores the road less traveled by restless ghosts, sexually curious aliens, cunning vampires, transgressive angels, regretful mermaids, defiant witches, surly goddesses, mysterious phantoms, fearless fortune tellers, and “goth’s Mr. Goodbar” himself — — Edgar Allan Poe. The boroughs of the dead invite you to approach the gate guarding their abyss.
Come look inside.
House Guest
With measured strokes, I brushed defiant hair, Cascading waves that cancer left untouched. You’d had enough of hospitals, that lack Of privacy, imagining your home Serene, secure, free from intrusive pests.
It would shock you to learn we’re not alone.
At dawn, the presence by the sills crispens, Emerges as the drapes inhale into A phantom shape. Infernal company, Omniscient brakeman, timer in cold hands, Poised, waiting, exhalations nearly through.
Lost in the territory of morphine, Deciding to eject your breathing tubes, You tossed away the life-saving device.
Asleep, I’m unaware — — till ghost commands Arouse me full awake. There’s no choice but To go rescue you, reconnect the air.
Long shadows darken the stairs, that peek-a-boo Behind the hooded cloak. I startle you, Attaching oxygen’s feed properly, Removing you tonight from danger’s ledge.
A grimace rises from the bedding’s edge As if to say, “Not now! I’ll tell you when.”
Native New Yorker LindaAnn LoSchiavo, recently Poetry SuperHighway’s Poet of the Week, is a member of SFPA and The Dramatists Guild. Elgin Award winner “A Route Obscure and Lonely” and “Concupiscent Consumption” are her latest poetry titles.
Forthcoming is “Dark and Airy Spirits” (a paranormal collection of ghost poems), “Messengers of the Macabre” (a collaborative chapbook), and an Italian-centric book, “Flirting with the Fire Gods,” inspired by her Aeolian Island heritage.
She has been leading an SFPA poetry critique group for two years.
ramblingmads 