Category Archives: Fiction

Review: The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang

The Heart Principle
(The Kiss Quotient #3)
by Helen Hoang
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: Aug. 31, 2021
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Rating:

When violinist Anna Sun accidentally achieves career success with a viral YouTube video, she finds herself incapacitated and burned out from her attempts to replicate that moment. And when her longtime boyfriend announces he wants an open relationship before making a final commitment, a hurt and angry Anna decides that if he wants an open relationship, then she does, too. Translation: She’s going to embark on a string of one-night stands. The more unacceptable the men, the better.

That’s where tattooed, motorcycle-riding Quan Diep comes in. Their first attempt at a one-night stand fails, as does their second, and their third, because being with Quan is more than sex—he accepts Anna on an unconditional level that she herself has just started to understand. However, when tragedy strikes Anna’s family she takes on a role that she is ill-suited for, until the burden of expectations threatens to destroy her. Anna and Quan have to fight for their chance at love, but to do that, they also have to fight for themselves.

 

Read More →

Sneak Peek Wednesday: The Secrets We Keep by Nikki Lee Taylor (Giveaway)

The Secrets We Keep
by Nikki Lee Taylor
Publisher: Self-published
Publication date: Jan. 11, 2021
Genre: Fiction

Not all mothers are created equal… Some are better at hiding the truth

Crippled with anxiety, Sophie is desperate to overcome the pain of losing her husband and only child in a freak car accident. Living and working in isolation with only the company of her dog Miss Molly, Sophie agrees to take on a job reviewing the manuscript of an up-and-coming writer. But this isn’t any story. It is one that unearths old secrets and to discover the truth, Sophie must find the courage to embark on a search that will change her life forever.

​On the outside, Love Mommy blogging queen Madelyn-May has it all. To her online community she is the perfect mother. She has a successful husband, perfect twins, and an idyllic life. What they don’t know is Madelyn-May also has a secret. When her past collides with the present, Madelyn-May is forced to make a choice that could destroy everything she loves.

​Would you risk destroying a family, if it meant healing your own heart? Would you tell the truth, if it meant losing everything you love?

​The Secrets We Keep is a confronting look at the complexities of family and lengths a mother will go to for her child.

Read More →

Sneak Peek Wednesday: Life and Other Inconveniences by Kristan Higgins

Life and Other Inconveniences
by Kristan Higgins
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: Aug. 6, 2019
Genre: Fiction

Emma London never thought she had anything in common with her grandmother Genevieve London. The regal old woman came from wealthy and bluest-blood New England stock, but that didn’t protect her from life’s cruelest blows: the disappearance of Genevieve’s young son, followed by the premature death of her husband. But Genevieve rose from those ashes of grief and built a fashion empire that was respected the world over, even when it meant neglecting her other son.

When Emma’s own mother died, her father abandoned her on his mother’s doorstep. Genevieve took Emma in and reluctantly raised her–until Emma got pregnant her senior year of high school. Genevieve kicked her out with nothing but the clothes on her back…but Emma took with her the most important London possession: the strength not just to survive but to thrive. And indeed, Emma has built a wonderful life for herself and her teenage daughter, Riley.

So what is Emma to do when Genevieve does the one thing Emma never expected of her and, after not speaking to her for nearly two decades, calls and asks for help?

 

Read More →

Sneak Peek Wednesday: Saving Beck by Courtney Cole

Saving Beck
by Courtney Cole
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication date: July 17, 2018
Genre: Fiction

There comes a time when offering your life for your child’s doesn’t work, when you realize that it’ll never be enough.

The cold needle in his warm vein was a welcome comfort to my son at first. But then it became the monster that kept us apart.

Heroin lied, and my son believed. It took him to a world where the last year didn’t happen, to a place where his father was still alive. What Beck didn’t understand was that it couldn’t bring his father back from the dead. It couldn’t take away his pain, not permanently.

You think it can’t happen to you, that your kids, your family, will never be in this situation.
I thought that too. But you’re wrong.

Step into our world, and see for yourself.
Watch my golden boy become a slave to this raging epidemic. Watch me try and save him.

Drug addiction comes with a price.
Trust me, you’re not equipped to pay it.

Don’t miss this heartwrenching, evocative, yet hopeful novel—it will leave you forever changed.

 

Read More →

Sneak Peek Wednesday: Come This Way by Michelle Schlicher

Come This Way
by Michelle Schlicher
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: Oct. 21, 2016
Genre: Fiction

A hiking and outdoor enthusiast, fifty-year-old Fern Conrad can’t imagine spending her time doing anything else, much to the dismay of her daughter, Colby.

Kara Dawson, a twenty-five-year-old student therapist, has shut life out to focus on her sister’s illness. That is, until a chance meeting pushes her to confront the possibilities—by letting go and moving forward.

Eighty-three-year-old Nettie Campbell heals in the hospital while facing the consequences of her actions. Can she repair relationships and forge new bonds as she comes to terms with the truth?

Come This Way is an emotional, honest look into the lives of women who are discovering their own strength. It is a story about difficult choices and the people around us who help us find our way.

 

Read More →

Excerpt: A Trip Down Reality Lane by Ian Thomas Malone

mtA Trip Down Reality Lane
By: Ian Thomas Malone
Publisher: Limitless Publishing
Published: Feb 24, 2015
Genre: Fiction

Goodreads | Amazon

College life can be tough…

For a junior pursuing a degree in English with no plans for his future, living in the present is far better than the alternative.

One morning he wakes up and embarks on an acid trip to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with two of his friends.

A step outside reality might be the best way to come back down to earth…

Along the way, the three friends discover what matters most to them, and more importantly, that life is not so much about answers as it is about the exploration of the questions.

When the real world doesn’t quite cut it, take a journey down the rabbit hole.

Read More →

Excerpt: Patience, My Dear by Bower Lewis

22609269Patience, My Dear
By: Bower Lewis
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: March 24, 2015
Genre: Fiction

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N

In this quirky, romantic novel, in the irreverent spirit of Christopher Moore’s national bestseller Lamb, a young woman is getting texts from an iPhone-obsessed God, and she’s not okay with that. Her handsome new neighbor tries to intervene in the dispute, but is he on her side, or the Almighty’s?

Patience Kelleher doesn’t want to be a soldier of the Lord. She doesn’t want His voice in her head, and she certainly doesn’t want Him texting her emoticon-laden messages about boy band singers and sinister solar power corporations. What would a cranky, twenty-three-year-old waitress know about preventing the Apocalypse? He’s got believers for that sort of thing, or the Army. All Patience wants is to keep a job she actually likes, and to avoid falling for her confounding new neighbor, if at all possible. When the Lord enlists said neighbor to convince her to step up, it doesn’t brighten her mood. That was dirty pool.

Zane Grey Ellison doesn’t particularly want to be a soldier of the Lord either, but he’s keeping an open mind. His world’s been pretty skewed since he abandoned his father’s estate, and his preoccupation with the waitress across the street hasn’t helped him regain his equilibrium. The messages she’s receiving from a text-happy God don’t seem all that much more wondrous to him than his discovery of diner food, or the realization that not every girl in the world can be impressed by a Bugatti Veyron. In fact, if Patience would just stop bickering with the Lord for a minute, he believes they might even get the job done.

Patience fights to keep her sanity as Zane fights to keep the peace, determined not to let the world die … not when it’s just getting good.

Read More →

Review: Little Peach by Peggy Kern

22573856Little Peach
By: Peggy Kern
Publisher: Balzer & Bray/HarperCollins
Published: March 10, 2015
Genre: Contemporary
Rating:
PhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucketPhotobucket

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N

What do you do if you’re in trouble?

When Michelle runs away from her drug-addicted mother, she has just enough money to make it to New York City, where she hopes to move in with a friend. But once she arrives at the bustling Port Authority, she is confronted with the terrifying truth: she is alone and out of options.

Then she meets Devon, a good-looking, well-dressed guy who emerges from the crowd armed with a kind smile, a place for her to stay, and eyes that seem to understand exactly how she feels.

But Devon is not what he seems to be, and soon Michelle finds herself engulfed in the world of child prostitution where he becomes her “Daddy” and she his “Little Peach.” It is a world of impossible choices, where the line between love and abuse, captor and savior, is blurred beyond recognition.

This hauntingly vivid story illustrates the human spirit’s indomitable search for home, and one girl’s struggle to survive.

 

Read More →

Excerpt & Recipe from How To Bake A Chocolate Soufflé by Carly Ellen Kramer

23269278How To Bake A Chocolate Soufflé
(Cherry Harbor, #1)
By: Carly Ellen Kramer
Publisher: Self-Published
Published: Sept. 23, 2014
Genre: Fiction

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N

Forget what your English professor told you – life stories are not written in college.

Madeleine LaBlange, Annie Anderson, and Audrey Navarro shared formative years as roommates at Chicago’s Catholic haven for women, the historic Abbott College. If only they could have predicted the collisions between their carefully crafted life plans and the realities they discover beyond campus…

Madeleine harbors dreams of becoming a concert pianist while Dr. Reynold Fenwick, her mercurial graduate school mentor, harbors fantasies of Madeleine. Will pursuing her dreams be worth the cost? Will an evening in Budapest change her life forever?

Annie plans to build a perfect family with her perfect husband in the cutthroat news media industry, until an abrupt tragedy shakes the foundations of her marriage. What happens when she feels pulled between the two men she loves most, her husband and her father?

Audrey leaves her religious, restrictive parents behind and aims for Chicago’s downtown skyline, dating recklessly and staring down each grueling workday one Chicago Dog at a time. Will an island respite lure her away from her corporate future? When she finds herself in the arms of an unexpected lover, will she have the courage to stand up for her own evolving sense of self?

Follow the journeys of these remarkable women, and cheer them on as they navigate life, love, and chocolate soufflé.

Includes over a dozen decadent new recipes from Crowded Earth Kitchen!

Read More →

Excerpt: Third Rail by Rory Flynn

thrdrailThird Rail
By: Rory Flynn
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: June10, 2014
Genre: Mystery

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N

At crime scenes, Eddy Harkness is a human Ouija board, a brilliant young detective with a knack for finding the hidden something—cash, drugs, guns, bodies. But Eddy’s swift rise in an elite narcotics unit is derailed by the death of a Red Sox fan in the chaos of a World Series win, a death some camera-phone-wielding witnesses believe he could have prevented. Scapegoated, Eddy is exiled to his hometown just outside Boston, where he empties parking meters and struggles to redeem his disgraced family name.

Then one night Harkness’s police-issue Glock disappears. Unable to report the theft, Harkness starts a secret search—just as a string of fatal accidents lead him to uncover a new, dangerous smart drug, Third Rail. With only a plastic disc gun to protect him, Harkness begins a high-stakes investigation that leads him into the darkest corners of the city, where politicians and criminals intertwine to deadly effect.

Excerpt

When the first headlights burn in the distance, Harkness shoves the wire cutters in his back pocket, climbs through the fresh hole in the chain-link fence, and scrambles down the gravel embankment. He pulls on a Red Sox jacket to hide his uniform and finds his place in the center of the road like a pitcher taking the mound—focused and ready for tonight’s game. His departmental counselor would see this late-night return to the scene of the incident as proof of risk-seeking tendencies. His brother George would just shake his head and tell him to get over it and move on. Thalia would tell him to have another drink. But they aren’t here. Only Officer Edward Harkness, formerly of the Boston Police Department, stands on the Turnpike, ready to see if a stranger in a car will kill him.The first contender appears, a white BMW that takes the curve at Kenmore Square and races toward Harkness. The roar grows louder and echoes from the cement walls of the Pike. At twenty yards, the headlights set his Red Sox disguise aglow.

Harkness runs west toward the car. No dodging. Stay on the line. These are the rules of engagement tonight.

The BMW hurtles closer and the driver hits the horn. Breath steaming in the cool night air, Harkness runs down the yellow line. The horn screams and the car swerves so close that Harkness could reach out and touch the doors as it flies past, its slipstream spinning Harkness to the ground. The driver lays on the horn, the note bending lower as the car speeds away.

“One down,” Harkness whispers. His palms scrape in the grit as he stumbles to his feet and turns to watch the red taillights smearing toward South Station.

When Pauley Fitzgerald stood here exactly a year ago, the highway was crowded with Sox fans driving home. In the blurry security video, he leaps across the lanes, pivots sideways, ricochets from one lane to the next, and somersaults over moving cars. More than three million people had watched Turnpike Toreador the last time Harkness checked YouTube, staring in sick fascination as Pauley Fitz dropped, danced, and died. After it was all over, the Staties couldn’t even find his teeth.

Harkness runs down the empty highway as the white eyes of new headlights race toward him.

authorrory

Rory Flynn is a Boston-based mystery writer whose novels include Third Rail, the debut of the Eddy Harkness series (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, June 2014). Author Jess Walter (Beautiful Ruins) calls Flynn “a suspense writer to watch.” And readers compare his work to Robert B. Parker, Richard Price, Dennis Lehane, and George V. Higgins.

Website