BW48: Book link love

We are coming in to the homestretch with just 5 weeks left in our quest to read 52 books. I'm in the homestretch with NaNoWriMo and close to the 50,000 word mark so today we'll check out some more authors who blog.  Hopefully it will give you a few new ideas for books to read in 2012.  Have you started your book bucket list for 2012?  An eclectic mix of writers of crime, paranormal, thrillers, suspense, romance.

I follow these group blogs and have read many of their books.

Murder She Writes:   Lori Armstrong, Allison Brennan, Toni McGee Causey, Sylvia Day, Laura Griffin, Sophie Littlefield, Jennifer Lyon, Roxanne St. Claire, Karen Tabke and Debra Webb. 

The Deadline Dames: Another group blog by writers of paranormal, romance, thrillers:  Rachel Vincent, Devon Monk, Jackie Kessler, Jenna Black, Karen Mahoney, Keri Arthur, Lillith Saintcrow, Rinda Elliott and Toni Andrews. 

Riding with the Top Down:  Leanne Banks, Kylie Banks, Helen Brenna, Debra Dixon, Kathleen Eagle, Cindy Gerard, Lois Greiman, Michelle Hauf, Betina Krahn and Christie Ridgeway.

The Debutante Ball:  Changes each year - meet the new class of 2012:  Joanne Levy, Erika Marks, M. Molly Backes, Rachel Bertshe, Linda Grimes.

If you haven't checked out my favorite author blog  Murderati lately, they've made a few changes, added some new faces, lost a few. 

Have fun exploring. Happy Reading!

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Link to your most current read. Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you have multiple reviews, then type in (multi) after your name and link to your general blog url.

If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.

BW47: Big U, little U, what begins with U

In my quest to complete the A to Z challenge by author and title, I am up to U. I managed to squeak past Q with a two-fer when I read Quicksilver by Amanda Quick. How lucky was that! So, U. Big U, Little u, what begins with U.

I came across this interesting little book the other day about mathematical obsession and thought I'd give it a go: Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession by Apostolos Doxiadis. In the process get to read an new author as well.  Plus there is always my fall back gal when it comes to the alphabet, Sue Grafton and her Alphabet Series with p.i. Kinsey Milhone set in the 1980's pre cell phones and computers.  

So now the search is one for an author whose first name or last name ends with U.  AND, their books sound interesting and hopefully aren't chunksters that will take forever to read. I have Leon Uris's QB VII on the shelves and read it several years ago. It's on standby in case can't find anything else. Not ready to delve into any of his other stories. Will save him for next year.  So did a bit of searching and found a few people I've never heard of before. 

Thrity Umrigar

Lisa Unger

Errol Lincoln Uys

Luis Alberto Urrea

Then you have the known - Upton Sinclair and  John Updike.  Plus a list of freebies on Project Gutenberg that you can check out at your own risk.

After a bit of Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble browsing,  decided I'll go with Lisa Unger's Beautiful Lies.  Sounds quite interesting and thankfully so easy to download on my nook. 

Synopsis:  What if your family was a lie?  What if your name was a lie? What if your whole life was just a pack of Beautiful Lies?

If Ridley Jones had slept ten minutes later or had taken the subway instead of waiting for a cab, she would still be living the lie she used to call her perfect life. Instead, she's in the wrong place at the right time to unleash a chain of events that begins with a mysterious package on her doorstep. A package that informs her that her entire world is just an illusion. Forced to question everything she knows about herself, Ridley wanders into dark territory, where everyone is hiding something.

Anyone else doing the A to Z quest?  If you are, which letter are you on?  

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Link to your most current read. Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you have multiple reviews, then type in (multi) after your name and link to your general blog url.

If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.

BW46: A poetic moment

Courtesy of Zedam Nabil

I'm in the midst of typing up all my crazy writings for NaNoWriMo so leaving you with a poetical moment that rings so true. 

Drop a Pebble in the Water

by

- James W. Foley -

Drop a pebble in the water:
Just a splash, and it is gone;
But there's half-a-hundred ripples
Circling on and on and on,
Spreading, spreading from the center,
Flowing on out to the sea.
And there is no way of telling
Where the end is going to be.

Drop a pebble in the water:
In a minute you forget,
But there's little waves a-flowing,
And there's ripples circling yet,
And those little waves a-flowing

To a great big wave have grown;
You've disturbed a mighty river
Just by dropping in a stone.

Drop an unkind word, or careless:
In a minute it is gone;
But there's half-a-hundred ripples
Circling on and on and on.
They keep spreading, spreading, spreading
From the center as they go,
And there is no way to stop them,
Once you've started them to flow.

Drop an unkind word, or careless:
In a minute you forget;
But there's little waves a-flowing,
And there's ripples circling yet,
And perhaps in some sad heart
A mighty wave of tears you've stirred,
And disturbed a life was happy
Ere you dropped that unkind word.

Drop a word of cheer and kindness:
Just a flash and it is gone;
But there's half-a-hundred ripples
Circling on and on and on,
Bearing hope and joy and comfort
On each splashing, dashing wave
Till you wouldn't believe the volume
Of the one kind word you gave.

Drop a word of cheer and kindness:
In a minute you forget;
But there's gladness still a-swelling,
And there's joy a-circling yet,
And you've rolled a wave of comfort
Whose sweet music can be heard
Over miles and miles of water
Just by dropping one kind word.
 

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Link to your most current read. Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you have multiple reviews, then type in (multi) after your name and link to your general blog url.

If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.

BW45: Haunted Bookshop Mysteries

Mix together a book shop, haunt it with a disembodied spirit of a private eye, and you have the makings of an interesting mystery series.   Alice Kimberly aka Cleo Coyle of the Coffee House Mysteries has come up with a wonderful cozy mystery series that is quite entertaining.  I read the first book in the series and will be going back for more and reading the rest of the books in the series. I'm a series junkie. 

The Haunted Bookshop Mysteries

The Ghost and Mrs. McClure

The Ghost and the Dead Deb

The Ghost and the Dead Man's Library 

The Ghost and the Femme Fatale

The Ghost and the Haunted Mansion

The Characters:

Penelope

After her husband’s suicide, young widow Penelope Thornton-McClure moves herself and her young son from New York City back to her little seaside New England hometown of Quindicott, Rhode Island. When she arrives, however, she finds her aunt Sadie Thornton in financial trouble and about to lose the family's old bookshop. 

Unwilling to allow the business to fail, Pen cashes her late husband’s life insurance money and uses every penny to overhaul the inventory and remodel the place. As fate would have it, the construction rouses the spirit of a dead man, a private investigator from New York who’d been gunned down on the premises in 1949 while investigating a murder. 

     Waking from a half-century of slumber, the hard-boiled ghost is less than thrilled to find himself cosmically imprisoned within the fieldstone walls of Pen’s bookstore...

Jack
Shepard, PI

 

In life, Jack's pulse pounded to the rhythm of the city streets: the smoky dice joints and swingin’ suds clubs. Why couldn’t he have been gunned down in a joint like that? Instead, he got lead poisoning in the god-forsaken sticks, eternity in cornpone alley. There's only one thing that makes this backwater existence tolerable. Her name is Penelope...

     Okay, so the broad is one of those annoying do-right, fair-play Jane types, but she has a nice face, a sweet voice, and Jack always had been a sucker for redheads. If he hears her thoughts right, Penelope doesn't even believe in ghosts. Well, he never believed in them, either. But, brother, had he been wrong.

     Now he's a disembodied spirit, sentenced for his sins to exist in a world he hardly knows. Lucky for him his purgatory comes with an auburn haired angel, a doll named Penelope he can't stop watching or watching over...   

 

Coming January 3rd, 2012

 The Ghost and The Bogus Bestseller

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 Link to your most current read. Please link to your specific book review post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you have multiple reviews, then type in (multi) after your name and link to your general blog url.

If you don't have a blog, tell us about the books you are reading in the comment section of this post.