General Fiction

The Murder at Astaire Castle by Lauren Carr

 

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FTC: I received a free copy of this audio book from iRead Book Tours in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

The Murders at Astaire Castle by Lauren Carr was a good audiobook. I don’t listen to many audiobooks, so this was a nice change of pace for me. I like the narrator’s voice in this book, and I felt like he really could have been the main character in the book. I did at one point have to make it go faster because at times I felt like he was just talking to slow that I got bored or distracted as I will listening to it. After I had turned up the speed of the book, I did enjoy this book even more than at the start. I am starting to love listening to audiobooks like this one while I am driving to and from work each day. I have a pretty long commute, and I find when I am listening audiobooks I don’t get as angry at other drivers. I have read one other book in this series, but with that being said you don’t have to read them in order or even read them all if some of the books don’t interest you. At times I thought this book was trying too hard to be scary and I didn’t like that about the book. All in all, it was a good book and I am sure I will be checking out other books in this series because I am a huge of Gnarly in the series. If you love mystery books than I know, you will enjoy this book as much as I did.

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About The Book

Never tell Mac Faraday not to do something.

Spencer’s police chief, David O’Callaghan, learns this lesson the hard way when he orders Mac Faraday to stay away from the south end of Spencer’s mountaintop – even though he owns the property. It doesn’t take long for Mac to find out what lies on the other side of the stone wall and locked gate, on which hangs a sign warning visitors to Keep Out!

Topping the list of the 10 top haunted places in America, Astaire Castle is associated with two suicides, three mysterious disappearances, and four murders since it was built almost a century ago – and Mac Faraday owns it!

In spite of David’s warning, Mac can’t resist unlocking the gate to see the castle that supposedly hasn’t seen a living soul since his late mother had ordered it closed up after the double homicide and disappearance of Damian Wagner, a world-famous master of horror novels.

What starts out as a quick tour of a dusty old castle turns into another Mac Faraday adventure when Astaire Castle becomes the scene of even more murders. Mac is going to need to put all of his investigative talents to work to sort out this case that involves the strangest characters he has run into yet – including a wolf man. No, we’re not talking about Gnarly.

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About The Author

Lauren Carr is the international best-selling author of the Mac Faraday, Lovers in Crime, and Thorny Rose Mysteries. The twelfth installment in the Mac Faraday Mystery series, Candidate for Murder will be released June 2016.

Lauren is a popular speaker who has made appearances at schools, youth groups, and on author panels at conventions. She lives with her husband, son, and four dogs (including the real Gnarly) on a mountain in Harpers Ferry, WV.

Connect with Lauren: Website  ~  Twitter  ~  Facebook

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Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2016 Margaret Margaret

The Kept Woman by Karin Slaughter

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from Pump Up Your Book in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

The Kept Woman by Karin Slaughter was a great book. I was hooked on this book right from the first page. This is the typical book that I usually love so I wasn’t shocked that I like it as much as I did. I was shocked at how fast I was able to get through this book though. It is a bigger book and I was still able to get it read in a few days which was nice. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Will during the first few chapters of the book but when I four and five chapters in I really started to like him. I really liked Sara right from the start because she seems like someone that I would get along with in the real world. There are parts of this book that were pretty graphic but that didn’t bother me at all. I know that I will be reading other books by this author because I loved this book that much. If you love mystery/thriller books than you will love this book as well and you need to pick up a copy for yourself. If you pick it up to read let me know how you like it.

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About The Book

Husbands and wives. Mothers and daughters. The past and the future.

Secrets bind them. And secrets can destroy them.

The author of Pretty Girls returns with an electrifying, emotionally complex thriller that plunges its fascinating protagonist into the darkest depths of a mystery that just might destroy him.

With the discovery of a murder at an abandoned construction site, Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is brought in on a case that becomes much more dangerous when the dead man is identified as an ex-cop.

Studying the body, Sara Linton—the GBI’s newest medical examiner and Will’s lover—realizes that the extensive blood loss didn’t belong to the corpse. Sure enough, bloody footprints leading away from the scene indicate there is another victim—a woman—who has vanished . . . and who will die soon if she isn’t found.

Will is already compromised, because the site belongs to the city’s most popular citizen: a wealthy, powerful, and politically connected athlete protected by the world’s most expensive lawyers—a man who’s already gotten away with rape, despite Will’s exhaustive efforts to put him away.

But the worst is yet to come. Evidence soon links Will’s troubled past to the case . . . and the consequences will tear through his life with the force of a tornado, wreaking havoc for Will and everyone around him, including his colleagues, family, friends—and even the suspects he pursues.

Relentlessly suspenseful and furiously paced, peopled with conflicted, fallible characters who leap from the page, The Kept Woman is a seamless blend of twisty police procedural and ingenious psychological thriller — a searing, unforgettable novel of love, loss, and redemption.

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About The Author

Karin Slaughter is the #1 internationally bestselling author of more than a dozen novels, including the Will Trent and Grant County series and the instant New York Times bestselling standalones, Cop Town and Pretty Girls. There are more than 35 million copies of her books in print around the world.

Visit her at http://www.karinslaughter.com

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Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2016 Margaret Margaret

The Things We Said Today by Lise McClendon

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from Pump Up Your Book in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

The Things We Said Today by Lise McClendon was a great book that I loved from the first page. While I was reading this entire book I had a smile on my face because of some of the things that the characters were doing throughout the book. I also loved that this book takes place in Scotland. I have always wanted to travel there and after reading this book I know that at some point I will have to go.   I loved all the crazy personalities that are in this book because you never knew what was going to happen and I loved that about this book. I am usually not a huge fan of romantic comedies but I loved this book and I know that I will be picking up the others books in this series because I loved everything about the characters and their personalities. The characters are people that I would want to hang out with in real like which means that the author did an excellent job of making the characters come to life as I was reading this book. If you love romance novels that leave you smiling after the book is over than I know this is the right book for you.

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About The Book

Five sisters, all lawyers, well-trained in the art of demanding what’s necessary.It’s enough to drive a wedding planner to tears. Then add in a European venue, a Scottish hunting lodge, and a reluctant bride, and things get dicey. Can the middle sister, Merle, rally the troops, deal with the in-laws, and stop a powerful storm from ruining everything? Merle has powers of persuasion, especially when it comes to her French beau, Pascal, but in Scotland she has no clue how to corral her out-of-control sisters who are hellbent on wringing every bit of drama from a bad situation.

Annie Bennett is getting married…. At the ripe old age of 55. She’s turned down a few proposals over the years and stayed true to her motto: Stay single, stay happy. When she met handsome Scot Callum Logan she had no intentions beyond her own personal Highland fling. Then it happened: she fell in love. Annie’s doubts about marrying a much-younger man continue to plague her. Callum wants to get married in the bluebells of his native Highlands. But does Annie want to get married at all?

Join the Bennett Sisters in their third rollicking novel, after Blackbird Fly and The Girl in the Empty Dress, in another summer adventure with romance, intrigue, men in kilts, plus wine and whisky, as they navigate the treacherous waters of middle-age, self-discovery, and understanding your fears.

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About The Author

 Lise McClendon writes fiction in the Rocky Mountains of Montana. She has been a film reviewer, a film maker, a journalism professor, and a PR flack. Since her first novel, The Bluejay Shaman, was published in 1994, she has served on the national board of Mystery Writers of America and the International Association of Crime Writers/North America, as well as on the faculty of the Jackson Hole Writers Conference where each year she critiques, speaks, and learns from writers new and old.

Lise McClendon also writes as Rory Tate.

Her latest book is the women’s fiction, The Things We Said Today.

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Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2016 Margaret Margaret

The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from Harper Collins in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan was a fantastic book. From the first page of this book right through the end, I didn’t want to put this book down. I saw a lot of myself in Nina and the fact that she loves books just as much as I do. I have never thought about getting a job at the library but after this book, I am going to consider it. I have read one other book by this author, and if you want to see what I thought of that book, you can click here to check it out. I am pretty sure that I was going to like this book because I loved the other book of hers that I read. I also love these books because of the take place somewhere other than the United States which I like because I love learning what it is like living in other places in the world. If you love contemporary fiction books than I know, you will love this book just as much as I did.

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About The Book

Nina Redmond is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more.

Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile—a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling.

From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that’s beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.

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About The Author

Jenny T. Colgan was born in 1972 in Prestwick, Ayrshire, Scotland, UK. After studying at Edinburgh University, she worked for six years in the health service, moonlighting as a cartoonist and a stand-up comic, before the publication of her first novel Amanda’s Wedding in 2000. In 2013, her novel “Welcome to Rosie Hopkin’s Sweetshop of Dreams” won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists’ Association. She is now working on her next novel.

She mostly lives in France, with frequent visits to London. She occasionally writes for The Guardian newspaper, as well as a TV series.

Her Doctor Who novel Dark Horizons is published under the name Jenny T. Colgan.

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Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2016 Margaret Margaret

Everlasting Lies by Barbara Warren

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from iRead Book Tours in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

Everlasting Lies by Barbara Warren wasn’t my favorite book that I have read lately.  I had such a hard time with it because of the lying that goes on.  When I saw this book I thought for sure, it would be something that I would enjoy reading but in the end, it just bugged me.  It was well written, and I enjoyed the author writing.   I kept thinking of my parents who lie all the time, and I just wasn’t able to get past that while I was reading this story.  I  am going to hold on to this book because I am sure I would like it, so I am going to pull it out in the future and give it another chance.  Like I said this book is well written, and I know that most people would enjoy this book, and I want to try and read it again in the future to see if my thoughts change.

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About The Book

Edina Paxton is kissed at twelve, seduced at fourteen and married with child at fifteen. She immediately regrets her marriage to Charles Vernon and is relieved when he leaves to fight in the trenches during WW1. She soon finds love, comfort and sexual satisfaction with Bill, another soldier and the boy who first kissed her.

Charles is invalided out of the army and is sent to India on a hospital ship. There, he becomes a manager of a coalmine in Britain’s Indian Empire, with all the privileges that his position rewards, including sexual favours from female employees. At the end of his army service in 1920 he returns to England to collect his family and return to India, only to be greeted with the news that while he was away Edina was at play. She is pregnant.

Reluctantly, Edina and her three children sail for India with Charles and Edina gives birth to her fourth child while sailing south on the Red Sea. On reaching India, Charles finds his Indian mistress is pregnant, and Edina finds Charles’s Indian boss to be very attractive. It’s a mutual attraction. Neither Edina nor Charles is a saint.

Piecing together fragments of her grandmother’s remarkable and tragic story, Everlasting Lies is Barbara’s loving tale of the early life of Edina, her grandmother, and Charles, Edina’s husband. They both experience the horrors of WW1 and, in hopes of renewing their marriage, start new lives as members of the upper class in Imperial India.

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About The Author

Barbara Warren always has the pedal to the metal. Born in England and educated at a convent, she left school at sixteen and was selling encyclopedias in the roughest part of London at eighteen. She married and emigrated to Canada when she was twenty-three, had three charming daughters, went to university when she was thirty-six and retired from teaching in her mid fifties.

Then she pursued her passion for the arts and travel. She and her husband rode camels in India, elephants in Nepal and horses in Montana. They hitchhiked in Norway, cycled across Denmark and snorkeled on the Great Barrier Reef. Barbara’s paintings grace homes in Canada, USA, and Mexico and she designs her clothes. She spends the winters in Mexico and the summers in the bible belt of southern Alberta.

Her first novel, Everlasting Lies, tells the story of her grandparents’ love affairs with each other and with others. They struggle to survive in the last years of Victorian England and the horrors of WW1 and then start a new life with four children in Imperial India.

Connect with the author:  Website  ~  Facebook

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Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2016 Margaret Margaret

The Ride Of A Lifetime by Kitty McGregor

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from Book Look in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

The Ride of a Lifetime by Kitty McGregor was am an okay book. I did enjoy this book but at times I found myself getting bored with the story. When I do get bored with a book, I just put it down and come back to it later which I was able to do with this one. I usually really enjoy books like this one but for some reason I think that this one tried too hard to be something that it wasn’t. There are parts where it seems like there are devil worshipers and that just rub me the wrong way with this book. I think that is because I wasn’t expecting that to happen with this book. Other than feeling like this book was trying to be scary it was an okay book. I would also be willing to check out other books by this author in the future. If you love Christian fiction, then I recommend you pick this one up and check it out.

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About The Book

When Lucas McCade retired from the PRCA rodeo circuit, he was an internationally famous rodeo star. In a life of conquering hard bulls and harder men, he had rarely known defeat and never given into fear. Little could he have known that as he left the arena of wild-eyed bulls and slashing hooves, he was stepping into a life filled with real danger. Once he rode for gold-buckle dreams, now ride with Lucas McCade as he scouts the back trails over the rolling hills of Oklahoma and encounters the paths of the powers of darkness. In a culture where a man’s word is still his bond and a handshake seals a deal, McCade leads his family in a walk with Christ that causes outrage in the spiritual realm. Once again, ancient battle lines are drawn between the powers of the Prince of Darkness and the Heavenly forces of Jesus Christ. It promises to be the ride of a lifetime!

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Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2016 Margaret Margaret