Category Archives: Book Talk

Spotlight on The Black Song Inside by Carlyle Clark

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About the book, The Black Song Inside

The Black Song Inside

Atticus Wynn and Rosemary Sanchez, newly engaged private investigators, have seen the dark and violent side of life. Nothing, though, has prepared them for an explosive murder investigation that threatens to tear their relationship apart as they struggle to solve a case that could leave them in prison or dead.

Atticus’s manipulative ex-girlfriend bursts back into their lives wielding a secret about Rosemary’s family that she exploits to force the couple into investigating the execution-style slaying of her lover. The case thrusts Atticus and Rosemary headlong into the world of human trafficking and drug smuggling, while rendering them pawns in Tijuana Cartel captain Armando Villanueva’s bloody bid to take over the cartel.

The Black Song Inside is a vivid crime thriller rife with murder and madness, melded with gallows humor and the heroism of two flawed and compelling protagonists who, if they can save themselves, may learn the nature of redemption and the ability to forgive.

Buy a copy!

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Join the conversation!

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About the author, Carlyle Clark

Carlyle Clark

Carlyle Clark was raised in Poway, a city just north of San Diego, but is now a proud Chicagolander working in the field of Corporate Security and writing crime and fantasy fiction. He has flailed ineffectually at performing the writer’s requisite myriad of random jobs: pizza deliverer, curb address painter, sweatshop laborer, day laborer, night laborer, security guard, campus police, Gallup pollster, medical courier, vehicle procurer, and signature-for-petitions-getter.

He is a married man with two cats and a dog. He is also a martial arts enthusiast and a CrossFit endurer who enjoys fishing, sports, movies, TV series with continuing storylines, and of course, reading. Most inconsequentially, he holds the unrecognized distinction of being one of the few people in the world who have been paid to watch concrete dry in the dark. Tragically, that is a true statement.

His latest book is the mystery thriller, The Black Song Inside.

Connect with Carlyle

Website | Facebook | Goodreads | Twitter

Pump Up Your Book & Carlyle Clark are giving away a $100 Amazon Gift Card!

  • By entering the giveaway, you are confirming you are at least 18 years old.
  • One winner will be chosen via Rafflecopter to receive the Accelerate Your Power Grand Prize.
  • This giveaway begins December 2 and ends February 28.
  • Winner will be contacted via email on Monday, March 3, 2013.
  • Winner has 48 hours to reply.

Good luck everyone!
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The Black Song Inside

Spotlight on External Forces by Deborah Rix

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About the book, External Forces

External Forces

Treason, betrayal, and heartbreak.

A lot can happen to a girl between her first kiss and her first kill.
It’s 100 years since the Genetic Integrity Act was passed and America closed its borders to prevent genetic contamination. Now only the enemy, dysgenic Deviants, remain beyond the heavily guarded border. The Department of Evolution carefully guides the creation of each generation and deviations from the divine plan are not permitted.
When 16-year-old Jess begins to show signs of deviance she enlists in the Special Forces, with her best friend Jay, in a desperate bid to evade detection by the Devotees. Jess is good with data, not so good with a knife. So when the handsome and secretive Sergeant Matt Anderson selects her for his Black Ops squad, Jess is determined to figure out why.

As her deviance continues to change her, Jess is forced to decide who to trust with her deadly secret. Jess needs to know what’s really out there, in the Deviant wasteland over the border, if she has any hope of making it to her 17th birthday. Because if the enemy doesn’t kill her first, the Department of Evolution probably will.

Buy a copy:

External Forces at Amazon

Join the discussion:

External Forces at GoodReads

About the author, Deborah Rix

Deborah Rix

Deborah Rix’s favourite position for reading a book is head almost hanging off the couch and feet up in the air with legs against the back of the couch. She’s been reading too much from Scientific American for research and ideas and needs to get back to some fiction. She has a long standing love of science fiction, some of her favourite authors include William Gibson, Philip K Dick, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Douglas Adams, Iain M Banks. A bit old school.

Deborah enjoyed a successful career in entertainment publicity, live music promotion and event management. Which means she slogged through muddy fields for music festivals, was crammed into concert halls with too many sweaty teenage boys and got to go to Tuktoyaktuk (that’s in the Arctic Circle) for a Metallica concert. She lives with her family in Toronto, Canada, where she is the proprietor of The Lucky Penny, a neighborhood joint in Trinity-Bellwoods.

External Forces is her first novel.

Connect with Deborah:

Website
Facebook
Goodreads
Twitter
YouTube

Watch the Book Trailer:

External Forces at PUYB

Enter to Win a Kindle Fire HD

ACCELERATE YOUR POWER GRAND PRIZE

GRAND PRIZE: Winner will have a minor character named after them in Acceleration, the second book in The Laws of Motion Trilogy by Deborah Rix. PLUS: 1 (One) WakaWaka Power – a solar powered charger and light, 1 (one) Limited Edition EXTERNAL FORCES Black Ops Beanie, and 1 (one) signed copy of External Forces.

The fine print: Grand Prize winner will have a minor character named after them in the forthcoming book, Acceleration. The winner can choose a name other their own as long as it is mutually agreeable with the Author, Deborah Rix. That means nothing obscene, stupid or ridiculous, as decided at the sole discretion of the author. Winner agrees that the gender, race, physical description, sexual orientation or any other characteristics of the character are at the sole discretion of the author. Winner agrees that the character may suffer some sort of gruesome downfall or may be a heroic figure in the story, it is at the sole discretion of the author what the role of the character will be and to what extent the character will be part of the story. The author assures the winner that it will be a real character in the story and part of a sub-plot or major plot.

Terms and Conditions:

  • By entering the giveaway, you are confirming you are at least 18 years old.
  • One winner will be chosen via Rafflecopter to receive the Accelerate Your Power Grand Prize.
  • This giveaway begins November 4 and ends January 31.
  • Winner will be contacted via email on Monday, February 3, 2013.
  • Winner has 48 hours to reply.

Good luck everyone!

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Reviewed Elsewhere: Taking What I like, by Linda Bamber

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Taking What I Like

I reviewed Linda Bamber’s short story collection Taking What I Like over at All Things Girl earlier this morning. I loved the book so much that if I were a student at Tufts, where the author teaches, I would camp out over night in order to sign up for her class.

And I’m a person who typically thinks “roughing it” means “staying in a hotel that doesn’t have room service.”

Here’s an excerpt from my review:

At turns hilarious and poignant, bitter and sweet, but always based in a place of truth, Bamber turns familiar works upside down and lets us see well-known characters to a filter of modernity.

The first story in the collection, “Casting Call,” gives us all of the familiar characters from Othello – including a Desdemona who remembers having died – and turns them into the English department faculty in a small university (though it could be worse, Desdemona points out: the characters from Measure for Measure run the political science department at a school in Ontario; at least the Othello crew is in their creator’s field of study.), arguing over hiring diversity and creating new and different romantic liaisons.

Read the rest of the review here.

Book Blast: Pieces of Me by Daron Kenneth

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PiecesofMe-PUYB

About the Book, Pieces of Me

Pieces of Me

Pieces of Me is Daron Kenneth’s newest offering of poetry that takes the reader on the real, and often surreal, ride through the mindscape of the author’s soul. Pieces of Me is an electric journey into some of life’s richest and most memorable moments.

Buy a Copy from AuthorHouse

Pieces of Me at AuthorHouse

About the author, Daron Kenneth

Daron Kenneth, a teacher, writer, play wright and poet gives us his current collection of poetry and insightful observations about the things that mean the most: life, love, friendships and relationships.

Enter to Win a $25 Gift Card from Daron Kenneth and Pump Up Your Book

Terms and Conditions

  • By entering the giveaway, you are confirming you are at least 18 years old.
  • One winner will be chosen via Rafflecopter to receive one $25 Amazon Gift Certificate.
  • This giveaway begins January 7 and ends on January 21.
  • Winners will be contacted via email on January 22, 2014.
  • Winner has 48 hours to reply.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Spotlight on The Tempest Murders by P.M. Terrell

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About the book, The Tempest Murders

The Tempest Murders

Detective Ryan O’Clery has always had dreams of a beautiful woman he’d loved and lost but when he discovers his ancestor’s journals from his native Ireland, he realizes his dreams are really the other man’s memories.

Now he is working a series of murders in North Carolina that are eerily similar to cases Rian Kelly was working when his soul mate was murdered during one of Ireland’s most horrific storms, in which the Atlantic Ocean swept over the island all the way to the Irish Sea.

As Hurricane Irene barrels toward the North Carolina coastline, Ryan discovers the serial killer’s real target is a reporter who bears a striking resemblance to the woman of his dreams—a woman with whom Ryan O’Clery is falling deeply in love.

Is history destined to repeat itself? Or can Ryan save Cathleen Reilly from a killer intent on destroying everything he ever loved

Buy a copy of your own!

Buy from Amazon

About the author, P.M. Terrell

P.M. Terrell

P.M. Terrell is the award-winning, internationally acclaimed author of more than 18 books in 4 genres. A full-time author since 2002, she previously opened and operated two computer companies in the Washington, DC area. Her specialties were in the areas of computer crime and computer intelligence and her clients included the Secret Service, CIA and Department of Defense as well as local law enforcement. Computer and spy technology are two themes that recur throughout her books.

She is the co-founder of The Book ‘Em Foundation, whose mission is to raise awareness of the link between high illiteracy rates and high crime rates. And she founded the annual Book ‘Em North Carolina Writers Conference and Book Fair which takes place each February.

She is also an animal advocate and helped to start the New Leash on Life program in which dogs destined for euthanasia are rescued and paired with prison inmates in Robeson County, North Carolina, who train them. The dogs are then adopted into loving homes.

Connect with P.M. Terrell

Website
Facebook

This spotlight is part of a virtual tour hosted by Pump Up Your Book. Click HERE for the tour page.

Check back on Monday for my review of The Tempest Murders, by P.M. Terrell.

Spotlight on White Rogue by Dr. David R. Fett, Stephen Langford & Connie Malcolm

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About the book, White Rogue

White Rogue

Cold War era biological experiments are resurrected and after Boston experiences a seemingly inexplicable bio-terrorist attack, the Center for Disease Control’s Dr. Davie Richards and Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Paula Mushari once again join forces to uncover who is behind it.

An obscure reference to a Dresden project found amid crash site evidence marks them both for execution. Paula and Dave are forced to leave Boston in the middle of the night and head to Washington, D.C.,where they soon find that anyone they contact also becomes the target of assassins.

When the daughter of the CDC’s director is taken hostage, Dave and Paula come face to face with an evil that forces them to question the very nature of duty and service to country. With the help of one man, they learn the true meaning of dark operatives while they desperately try to stop another bio-attack from happening.

Buy your own copy:

White Rogue at Amazon

About the authors, Dr. David R. Fett, Stephen Langford, & Connie Malcolm

About David

Dr. David R. Fett

Dr. David Fett, a board certified ophthalmologist, received his BS and Masters from MIT before earning his MD from Dartmouth Medical School. He now runs a private practice in Los Angeles and serves as an assistant clinical professor at UCLA School of Medicine. He lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife, Randi, and their four children.

About Stephen

Stephen Langford

STEPHEN LANGFORD is a veteran writer/producer of over 150 hours of primetime television. His credits include Family Matters and Malcolm and Eddie.He has also ventured into screenwriting and fiction. He lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife, Sandy, and their two daughters.

About Connie

Connie Malcolm

CONNIE MALCOLM is a recovering journalist who worked on The Globe and Mail in Toronto. She has worked previously on ten books of nonfiction authored by her husband, Andrew. She lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband and the youngest of their three sons.

This book spotlight is part of a blog tour sponsored by Pump Up Your Book. For more information, visit the tour page for White Rogue.

White Rogue at Pump Up Your Book

Review: Perfect by Rachel Joyce

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About the author, Rachel Joyce

Rachel Joyce

Rachel Joyce is the author of the international bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. She is also the award-winning writer of more than twenty plays for BBC Radio 4.

She started writing after a twenty-year acting career, in which she performed leading roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company and won multiple awards. Rachel Joyce lives with her family on a Gloucestershire farm.

Connect with Rachel

Website: Rachel Joyce Books
Facebook: Rachel Joyce

My Thoughts

I love it when I go into a book thinking it will be one thing, only to discover it’s something else entirely. Perfect is just such a book.

On one level, it’s the story of two boys, Byron and James, and how they influence each other, especially in regard to their reactions after Byron’s mother is involved in an accident, told in alternating chapters with the story of a man named Jim, who uses his OCD to protect the world from the bad things he feels he causes, and how those two timelines eventually converge. But it’s also a story about time and youth, love and maturity, and how close each of us really is to the “insanity” side of the mental health spectrum.

Joyce’s voice for the chapters that focus on the boys and Byron’s mother takes on the quality of a fairy-tale or fable. Everything is wrapped in gauze and seen through the soft-focus filter of memory. Jim’s chapters, though, are told in crisp HD clarity, an interesting juxtaposition with the cloudiness of Jim’s mental state.

Having finished reading Perfect over the weekend, and taking a day to digest it before posting this review, I’m left feeling like I’ve read the most profound novel ever, and at the same time, like I didn’t quite get everything the author was hoping the reader would perceive.

Is it a good story? Yes. Would I recommend it? Yes.

On the other hand, I’m not sure I liked all – or any – of the individual characters. I know I wanted to slug Byron’s father a lot, and wanted to shake some sense into his mother.

But you don’t have to LIKE the characters to enjoy the experience of reading a novel, and after everything, I find that I did enjoy Rachel Joyce’s novel, because it made me see things like sanity and stability a little differently.

I already knew that no one is “perfect,” but this made me realize how many people still try to be.

TLC Book Tours

This review is part of a blog tour hosted by TLC Book Tours. To see the entire schedule of tour stops, visit this link: Book Tour for Perfect, by Rachel Joyce

Spotlight on Forward to Camelot by Susan Sloate & Kevin Finn

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About the book, Forward to Camelot

Forward to Camelot

WHERE WERE YOU THE DAY KENNEDY WAS SAVED?

On the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination comes a new edition of the extraordinary time-travel thriller first published in 2003, now extensively revised and re-edited, and with a new Afterword from the authors.

On November 22, 1963, just hours after President Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President aboard Air Force One using JFK’s own Bible. Immediately afterward, the Bible disappeared. It has never been recovered. Today, its value would be beyond price.

In the year 2000, actress Cady Cuyler is recruited to return to 1963 for this Bible—while also discovering why her father disappeared in the same city, on the same tragic day. Finding frightening links between them will lead Cady to a far more perilous mission: to somehow prevent the President’s murder, with one unlikely ally: an ex-Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald.

Forward to Camelot: 50th Anniversary Edition brings together an unlikely trio: a gallant president, the young patriot who risks his own life to save him, and the woman who knows their future, who is desperate to save them both.

History CAN be altered …

Buy your copy from Amazon.

About the authors, Susan Sloate & Kevin Finn

About Susan Sloate

Susan Sloate

SUSAN SLOATE is the author of 20 previous books, including the recent bestseller Stealing Fire and Realizing You (with Ron Doades), for which she invented a new genre: the self-help novel. The original 2003 edition of Forward to Camelot became a #6 Amazon bestseller, took honors in three literary competitions and was optioned by a Hollywood company for film production.

Susan has also written young-adult fiction and non-fiction, including the children’s biography Ray Charles: Find Another Way!, which won the silver medal in the 2007 Children’s Moonbeam Awards. Mysteries Unwrapped: The Secrets of Alcatraz led to her 2009 appearance on the TV series MysteryQuest on The History Channel. Amelia Earhart: Challenging the Skies is a perennial young-adult Amazon bestseller. She has also been a sportswriter and a screenwriter, managed two recent political campaigns and founded an author’s festival in her hometown outside Charleston, SC.

For updates and more information about Forward to Camelot: 50th Anniversary Edition, please visit http://susansloate.com.

About Kevin Finn

Kevin Finn

After beginning his career as a television news and sports writer-producer, KEVIN FINN moved on to screenwriting and has authored more than a dozen screenplays.

He is a freelance script analyst and has worked for the prestigious American Film Institute Writer’s Workshop Program. He now produces promotional trailers, independent film projects including the 2012 documentary Setting the Stage: Behind the Scenes with the Pirates of Penzance, and local content for Princeton Community Television.

His next novel, Banners Over Brooklyn, will be released in 2014.

Book Blast: XGeneration: You Don’t Know Me, by Brad Magnarella

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About the book, X-Generation: You Don’t Know Me

XGeneration You Don't Know Me

In the fall of 1984, Cold War tensions between Washington and Moscow are close to breaking.

But in sleepy Gainesville, Florida, fourteen-year-old Janis Graystone is mainly worried about starting high school, earning a spot on the varsity soccer team, and keeping her older sister from running her life. And then there are her nighttime experiences. Experiences where she awakens in her backyard—out of her body—with the disturbing sense that someone is watching her.

For Scott Spruel, the start of high school means the chance to start over. And he’s willing to ditch everything—computer hacking, Dungeons & Dragons marathons, even his comic book collection (well, except for his X-Men)—if it means getting closer to Janis, the secret love of his life. But will Scott’s past be so easy to shed. And what about the eerie delay on his telephone, a delay he senses through powers he is only beginning to understand?

Welcome to the gripping new series, XGeneration: part The X-Files, part Freaks and Geeks, and totally ’80s.

This book is rated 16+ for language.

Buy a copy at Amazon. It’s only $0.99 during this book blast!

About the author, Brad Magnarella

Brad Magnarella

Brad Magnarella grew up in North Central Florida. As a boy he discovered Marvel Comics, text-based gaming, Bruce Springsteen, and Stephen King, roughly in that order. The prize, however, was a creek that wound through his neighborhood, providing him and his friends a wooded sanctuary in which to lose themselves, while discovering natural Florida.

A graduate of the University of Florida and American University, Brad has long aspired to write the kind of fiction that colored his childhood. His books include The Prisoner and the Sun trilogy and the first in his new young adult series, XGeneration.

Brad lives in Washington, D.C. When he’s not writing, he’s somewhat hard to find.
His latest book is XGeneration 1: You Don’t Know Me.

Connect with Brad:

Facebook: Brad Magnarella
Mailing List Sign-up: Click Here.

Enter to Win a $25 Amazon Gift Card

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XGeneration You Don't Know Me

Review: Secrets and Lies (Cassie Scot book 2) by Christine Amsden

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About the book, Secrets and Lies

Secrets and Lies

Cassie Scot,still stinging from her parents’ betrayal, wants out of the magical world. But it isn’t letting her go. Her family is falling apart and despite everything, it looks like she may be the only one who can save them.

To complicate matters, Cassie owes Evan her life, making it difficult for her to deny him anything he really wants. And he wants her. Sparks fly when they team up to find two girls missing from summer camp, but long-buried secrets may ruin their hopes for happiness. Book 2 in the Cassie Scot Mystery series.

Buy a copy here:

Amazon

About the author, Christine Amsden

Christine Amsden has been writing science fiction and fantasy for as long as she can remember. She loves to write and it is her dream that others will be inspired by this love and by her stories. Speculative fiction is fun, magical, and imaginative but great speculative fiction is about real people defining themselves through extraordinary situations. Christine writes primarily about people and it is in this way that she strives to make science fiction and fantasy meaningful for everyone.

At the age of 16, Christine was diagnosed with Stargardt’s Disease, a condition that effects the retina and causes a loss of central vision. She is now legally blind, but has not let this slow her down or get in the way of her dreams.

In addition to writing, Christine teaches workshops on writing at Savvy Authors. She also does some freelance editing work.

Christine currently lives in the Kansas City area with her husband, Austin, who has been her biggest fan and the key to her success. They have two beautiful children.

Connect with Christine

Website: Into the Dreaming
Facebook: Christine Amsden, Author
Twitter: @ChristineAmsden

My Thoughts:

I want Cassie Scot to be my best friend. She’s funny, feisty and, as the only non-magical person in a family of practitioners, deliciously flawed.

Having just read both book one and book two of this series, back to back, the details are a bit muddled in my head (This, and my tendency to give spoilers, are why I never write summaries. If you want to know the story – read the book yourself), but I know that as much as I respect Cassie’s determination to make it on her own (or at least without the help of her parents), I also wish she was better at confronting them.

That said, I know all too well the way our parents continue to affect our lives, long after we’ve reached adulthood. I’m 43, have been married for almost 19 years, run a business, and own my home, and my mother still has the power to shatter my world.

Still Cassie Scot, as a character, rocks my world.

But I also like Evan Blackwood, who loves her enough to wait for her to love him back. And I thought the his-and-hers cousins were also well-written, as were both Cassie and Evan’s fathers.

As in the first book, author Christine Amsden has given us a rich world full of great characters, both magical and mundane. In some ways her work reminds me of Laurell K. Hamilton’s early Anita Blake novels (you know, before they became mostly monster porn) and that’s due to the world she’s created. There’s enough detail to make it feel real, but not so much that you start picking at the fabric of her fictional town.

Bottom line: No paranormal novel, whether it’s a romance, detective story, or even a musical, is ever going to be considered high art, but that’s okay, because literature doesn’t have to be high art to be entertaining. And the Cassie Scot stories are just that: smart, sexy, and fabulously entertaining. Can’t wait for book three.

Win a Kindle Fire HD!

Terms & Conditions

  • By entering the giveaway, you are confirming you are at least 18 years old.
  • One winner will be chosen via Rafflecopter to receive one Kindle Fire HD.
  • This giveaway begins November 11 – February 28.
  • Winners will be contacted via email on Monday, March 3, 2014.
  • Winner has 48 hours to reply.

Good luck everyone!

Enter to Win

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Secrets and Lies