THE FRUGAL FIND OF THE DAY: The Diet Dropout’s Guide to Natural Weight Loss, Stan Spencer {$0.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!}

June 12, 2013 By Leave a Comment

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Stan Spencer‘s Frugal Find Under Nine:

Description of The Diet Dropout’s Guide to Natural Weight Loss:

As seen on the TODAY show, this book isn’t about the latest celebrity diet, wonder food, or miracle supplement. It’s about creating a personalized weight loss plan—your own easiest path to naturally thin. While you can lose weight with almost any diet, keeping the weight off is much more difficult, requiring permanent changes in eating and exercise habits. This book provides a science-based approach for making those changes in a way that works best for you, without wasting time, money, or effort.

Dr. Spencer explains why we gain weight and why the fat lost by dieting almost always comes back. He then presents an array of practical weight loss tools for controlling emotional eating, calming cravings, boosting metabolism, and improving nutrition and exercise. In the final chapter he has you create a natural weight loss plan based on your unique set of needs, abilities, and preferences. Simple recipes are provided for weight loss foods that reduce cravings and prolong satisfaction.

What this book offers is a solid approach to weight loss—self-directed, gradual, and lasting—in contrast to the quick but fleeting weight loss offered by most one-size-fits-all diet plans.

 

Accolades:

“Well-presented and easy to understand, this one is highly recommended.” — Library Journal (starred review)

“A slim volume that has the basics of behavior change, and includes all the ones people really struggle with.” — NBC’sTODAY show

“Dr. Spencer’s book presents a common sense, safe, and enduring weight loss program that presents the essential elements of a healthy lifestyle.” — James E. Gangwisch, PhD, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University

“There are no superfluous words here, just the facts. . . . For those who want to lose weight naturally, safely, healthfully and permanently (no matter how gradually) this is simply THE book.” — Be Healthy and Well

 

Review Ratings:

The Diet Dropout’s Guide to Natural Weight Loss currently has a review rating of 4.4 stars from 86 reviews. Read the reviews here.


The Diet Dropout’s Guide to Natural Weight Loss is available for purchase at:

Amazon Kindle for $0.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!

 

An excerpt from The Diet Dropout’s Guide to Natural Weight Loss:

If this were the early 1960s instead of the 2010s, you might not need a weight loss book. Most people were thin then.
Not now. Even with all the dieting we do, more than two thirds of US adults are now overweight, and the rate of obesity has almost tripled since 1960. So what is behind this weight gain epidemic?

A Less-Active Lifestyle

Our bodies are designed for manual labor and long-distance walking. Many of us, however, enjoy door-to-door motorized transportation to and from a desk job followed by hours of television or other passive entertainment. Such a lifestyle not only burns few calories but can also encourage us to eat more than we would if we were busy with physical activities.

The Fattening Food Environment

Before processed foods became the norm, our ancestors filled their dinner plates with minimally processed vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. Meats were unprocessed and lean. These natural foods, combined with an active lifestyle, promoted a slim, healthy body.
In contrast to the healthy foods enjoyed by our ancestors, the foods on our grocery store shelves today are often highly processed and have added fat and sugar. These processed foods are packed with calories and are so convenient and tempting that it’s easy to eat too much of them. As a result, the average adult today eats more calories than in past decades, with most of the extra calories coming from carbohydrate-rich foods such as sweets, soft drinks, potato products, pizza, bread, pasta, and white rice.
There are ten important aspects of our food environment that encourage us to eat too much.

1. Foods that Don’t Satisfy
Food processing produces calorie-heavy, low-nutrient, low-fiber foods that digest quickly. These foods leave us with loads of calories, soon-empty stomachs, and cravings for more.

2. Highly Palatable Foods
Highly palatable is a term used by scientists for foods that taste so good that we are tempted to eat them even when our stomachs are full. Most of these are processed foods high in fat, sugar, or refined flour. Such foods have become more abundant and affordable in recent decades, resulting in greater temptations to overeat. We often eat these foods for comfort or pleasure, not because we are hungry.
Highly palatable foods affect the parts of the brain that are responsible for drug addiction and cravings. The authors of a scientific study of the brain’s response to highly palatable foods concluded that “overconsumption of palatable food triggers addiction-like … responses in brain reward circuits and drives the development of compulsive eating.” In other words, junk food can be addictive.

3. Calorie-Heavy Foods
While the vegetables, fresh fruits, and whole grains our ancestors ate were high in nutrients and low in calories, the processed foods that fill our grocery store shelves are just the opposite — high in calories and low in nutrients. The result is that a typical meal of modern processed foods has more calories than we need and often too few nutrients. Calorie-heavy foods are believed to be a major factor in the weight gain epidemic.

4. Cheap, Convenient Food
There is inexpensive, ready-to-eat food almost everywhere we go. We have candy jars at work and cookie jars at home. We stock our refrigerators with soft drinks and our pantries with packaged snacks. Just seeing junk food can make us hungry, and food within easy reach is harder to resist than food that requires a little more effort to obtain. Eating too much has never been easier.

5. Large Portions
In the US, portion sizes of many foods have increased two- to five-fold since the 1970s. We tend to keep eating until the portion in front of us is gone, no matter what its size. Similarly, we tend to eat more when eating a snack food directly out of a large package (such as a bag of potato chips) than when served individual portions.

6. Passive Entertainment
Watching television or movies burns very few calories. It also encourages needless eating. If we eat during such entertainment, our distraction with the storyline can cause us to continue eating past the point at which we would normally be satisfied.

7. Convenient Substitutes for Water
Sports drinks, sugary soft drinks, fruit juices, and alcoholic drinks are readily available in our homes and elsewhere. These drinks quickly add calories without lasting satisfaction. Their consumption is believed to be a major factor in the weight gain epidemic.

8. Misleading Labels and Advertising
A picture of a slender athlete on a package of fresh fruit might make sense. The same picture on an “energy bar” consisting mostly of corn syrup and puffed rice does not. Advertisements often inaccurately depict the health benefits of the foods they are promoting.

9. Unhealthy Snack Foods
Common snack foods tend to be higher in calories and lower in nutrients than the kinds of foods usually eaten with meals. They are quick to add calories but slow to satisfy.

10. Restaurants
We eat out more now than in decades past. Restaurant food tends to be higher in calories and served in larger portions than food cooked at home. As a result, one restaurant meal might have enough calories for an entire day.

The Solution

Think of excess fat as a collection of bad habits. Lose the fat-promoting habits, and you will lose the excess fat. Each time you give up one of these bad habits (all other things being equal), you will lose fat until your body naturally settles at a lower weight. At that point you will need to give up another bad habit to lose more weight and keep it off.
Permanent weight loss requires permanent lifestyle changes. The information in this book will help you replace bad habits with good ones and make the lifestyle changes required for lasting weight loss. You will learn how small adjustments in your eating and exercise habits can result in a big difference in body fat over time, why many of the things you hear about gaining or losing weight are false, and why popular diets rarely produce permanent weight loss. You will also learn how to change your personal environment so it’s no longer fattening, boost your metabolism without drugs or supplements, give your body the exercise it needs without wasting time, eat fewer calories without counting them or going hungry, and beat temptation with the willpower you already have.

 

The Diet Dropout’s Guide to Natural Weight Loss is available for purchase at:

Amazon Kindle for $0.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!


Connect with Stan Spencer:

Website: http://www.fatlossscience.org

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WeightLossBook

Twitter: http://twitter.com/DrStanSpencer

Filed Under: Finds Under $1, FREE with Prime, Frugal Find of the Day, Health Mind and Body, NonFiction Tagged With: , ,

THE FRUGAL FIND OF THE DAY: Call Me Tuesday, Leigh Byrne {$2.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!}

June 7, 2013 By Leave a Comment

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Description of Call Me Tuesday:

At eight-years-old, Tuesday Storm’s childhood is forever lost when tragedy sends her family spiraling out of control into irrevocable dysfunction. For no apparent reason, she’s singled out from her siblings, blamed for her family’s problems and targeted for unspeakable abuse. The loving environment she’s come to know becomes an endless nightmare of twisted punishments as she’s forced to confront the dark cruelty lurking inside the mother she idolizes. Based on a true story, Call Me Tuesday recounts, with raw emotion, a young girl’s physical and mental torment at the mercy of the monster in her mother’s clothes–a monster she doesn’t know how to stop loving. Tuesday’s painful journey through the hidden horrors of child abuse will open your eyes, and her unshakable love for her parents will tug at your heartstrings.

 

Accolades:

We are carried along, not able to put the book down – not wanting to hear more at times for it becomes almost too difficult to hear – but having to see it through, for we have come too close to Tuesday’s inner turmoil than to desert her now ~ David Lloyd, Virtual Muser eBook Review

Ms. Byrne delineates the normal reactions of outsiders: disbelief, fear of involvement, and the presumption that the child is bad. She also did not forget to detail the after-effects of abuse that continue long after it’s over, and the strange ways they can manifest. ~ Java Davis, The Kindle Book Review

The horror of the scenes is heightened by the author’s simple, straight-forward style… the prose is clean and flows well and the voice is tragically honest without being melodramatic. ~ Mayra Calvani, Blogcritics

A horrifying story inspired by true-life experience…the prose so vividly and evocatively portrays suffering.~ Kirkus

Tuesday Storm’s mother named her two daughters and three sons after movie stars, but what Tuesday’s mother does to her is hardly movie star quality and more shades of “Mommie Dearest”. ~ Alice D. for Reader’s Favorite

 

Amazon Reader Reviews:

Call Me Tuesday currently has a Amazon reader review rating of 4.4 stars, with 105 reviews! Read the reviews here!

 

Call Me Tuesday is available for purchase at:

Amazon Kindle for $2.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!


Excerpt from Of Call Me Tuesday:

SNAP

1

Mama knocked twice on my bedroom door. “There’s a god-awful stench coming from in there,” she said. “You need to take your bucket outside and empty it.”
At one time, when I first started using the bucket as a toilet, the acrid air in my room had burned the inside of my nose and everything I ate and drank tasted like the smell of pee. But now, after months of constant exposure, I hardly noticed it at all. I was only aware, whenever I left my room, that the air outside it was different, thinner, crisper—different.
I heard the two-by-four Mama kept wedged under my doorknob fall hard, as usual, as if she had kicked it away, but its impact to the floor was muffled by the carpet. Like an angry fist blocked by a pillow. The sound of the two-by-four falling was always the same. Every morning, as I waited for her to come and let me out to go to school, or do my chores, I listened for it with both anticipation and dread, hoping one day it would be different. I kept thinking if the sound was different then maybe other things beyond the door might be different too.
As I made my way down the stairs, balancing the half-full bucket against my thigh, I noticed the house was quiet for a Saturday. When I came to the bottom of the stairway, I looked around, and realized no one was home but Mama and me. I always got nervous when I was alone with her.
Passing the kitchen, I saw her leaning up against the counter stirring creamer into a cup of coffee. She hadn’t been up long; she still had on a sleeping gown and her hair was matted to the back of her head. When I walked by her, she glanced up at me and tapped her spoon on the side of her cup. “Make sure you take it far away from the house,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I yelled, on my way out the door.
Out in the backyard, I found a grassy area under a tree and sat the bucket down. I had learned if I dumped the pee all at once it spread quickly on the surface of the baked earth, and sometimes my feet got wet. Pouring slowly, I watched the bucket’s contents seep into the grass and wrap its rusty fingers around the tree roots.
When I came back inside, Mama met me at the door. “I need some potatoes peeled for lunch,” she said, and then went into the kitchen again.
After I returned the bucket to my room, I stood before her awaiting my next instructions. She pointed to a corner where she’d spread some newspaper on the floor. “Sit down over there,” she said. Then she pulled a sack of potatoes from the pantry and plopped them beside me, along with a deep soup pan. She handed me a paring knife. “Now get to peeling.”
Taking a potato from the sack, I started to work right away. Mama went over to the counter, picked up her coffee and walked back and forth in front of me. Sipping her coffee, she continued to pace the floor, staring at me, her steps getting faster and faster, as she became fueled by the caffeine. I ignored her. Concentrated on the potato in my hand, on keeping the peeling the way she required it to be—thin enough to see through when she held it up to the light.
Finally, she stopped, tilted her head to one side. “I swear you get homelier every day,” she said.
If I had been younger I would have cried, crushed by her words. But in the last couple of years I’d become much tougher. So what, I thought, acting as if I hadn’t heard her. I don’t care what you think of me anymore.
“I thought you might get prettier when you became a teenager, but I do believe you’re even uglier than before.” She paused, took a long drink of her coffee, allowing enough time for what she’d said to really sink in. “Honestly, I feel sorry for you because I don’t know how you’re going to make it on your own. I mean, I always had men standing in line to take care of me, but with your face I doubt you’ll be able to find anyone.”
Sliding the knife blade under the peel of a fresh potato, I tried to imagine her at thirteen, a bubbly cheerleader with a head full of shiny red curls and perfect skin. It was a stretch. She had gained about thirty pounds in the last year or so, and her hair was brassy and brittle from constant bleaching. The scar from her accident, deep and severe, slashed across her cheek like a lightning bolt.
For several minutes, she went on walking and talking and I continued to ignore her. Every so often, I caught a glimpse of her as she passed, but I didn’t hear a word she was saying. The only sound I allowed into my head was the knife scraping across the potatoes.
When I had finished and there was a mountain of paper-thin peelings in front of me, Mama snatched up the pan filled with creamy, spotless potatoes. “Now pick up the papers and put them in the trash,” she said. “I have another chore for you to do.”
She pulled a brown paper grocery bag from a cabinet drawer and motioned for me to follow her into the family room. With her finger, she drew a series of small circles in the air above an area of the floor littered with crumpled potato chips. “I want you to pick up all the crumbs on the carpet in here. And don’t stop until this whole room is clean.”
She handed me the paper bag and I nodded my head, as if I understood her. But I didn’t. I had never understood why she made me use my fingers to pick up specks of dirt and food crumbs from the floor when she had a perfectly good vacuum cleaner.
On her way back to the kitchen, she stopped in the hallway. “On second thought, start there,” she said, pointing in the direction of the back door where there were dirt clods and mud ground into the carpet. “And then work your way up the hall into the family room.”
I trudged down the hall, dragging the paper bag beside me. When I came to the top of the steps leading to the door, I sat and stared at the dirty carpet wondering where Daddy and the boys had gone. Wishing I were with them.
About ten minutes later, Mama came back to check on my progress and found me sitting down on the job. “What in hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked, her voice reflecting disbelief more than anger.
Had it been a year, a month, or even a few days earlier, I would have been terrified of what she might do to me for disobeying her. I would have dropped to my knees and started picking up crumbs, scratching mud. But on this day, something was different. This day I didn’t budge when I heard her coming.
“Answer me!” she shouted.
I didn’t turn around.
Suddenly I heard the rapid pounding of her feet against the floor behind me. “Answer me!” she shouted again, but this time with her words came the blunt force of her foot in the small of my back. I felt a hot pain in my kidney. “I said answer me damn it!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her cock her leg back to kick me again. But before she could deliver the blow, I sprang to my feet, grabbed her by one of her wrists and dug my fingers into the soft flesh of the underside of her forearm.
Looking down into her eyes, I tried to decipher what she was feeling from a facial expression I’d never before seen. I had known my mama at her darkest time, in her deepest pain. And, certainly, I’d witnessed her anger again and again. But never, under the safety of Daddy’s six foot seven inch wingspan, had I known her to be afraid.
“My name is Tuesday, Mama!” I said, twisting her arm, slightly. “Say my name! Say it! Say Tuesday!”
The words had come out of my mouth, and yet, the voice I heard, full of vengeance and bitterness, sounded strangely foreign to my ears. One part of me was entirely detached from what was happening, as if I were watching some mean, crazed intruder hurting my mama. At the same time, another part was well aware of what I was doing, of every detail of the instant: the blood rushing through my head, the smell of coffee on her breath, her pulse throbbing under my hand.
“I’ll call you what I damn well please!” A grimace cut across her face. “Take your hands off me!”
I tightened my grip. “Don’t you think you’ve punished me enough, Mama? Don’t you think I’ve suffered enough for what I did? I can’t take it anymore! I won’t take it anymore!”
She tugged her arm back, trying to pull free of my clutch. “Take your hands off me—now!” she demanded.
Then, in an instant, something—maybe it was the tone of her voice—caused the courage I had seconds earlier to desert me and I dropped her arm like it was a hot wire. And once again I became a frightened child, ready to obey her every command in the same instinctive way I had always obeyed her.
After what I’d just done, I expected her to attack me. This time I wanted her to. This time I’d asked for it, deserved it. I braced myself for the punch I knew was inevitable.
But nothing happened.
Maybe she had seen something in my eyes when I was squeezing her arm and knew if she made an attempt to hurt me again it would unleash all the rage I had pent up inside, the rage she had created. Maybe now she was scared of me.
She looked down at her arm and examined the purple crescents my fingernails had imprinted there. When she finally looked up again, I saw that her complexion was colorless, her bottom lip quivering. We stood face to face, stunned, as if neither of us was able to process what had happened, as if neither of us knew what to do next.
“Get out of my sight,” she said, trying to sound in control with a voice that was thin and shaky. “Go to your room—now!”
Pushing past her, I bounded up the stairs, clearing two at a time. When I got in my room, I shut the door behind me and pressed my back up against it.
After a few minutes, I heard Mama wedge the two-by-four under my doorknob again. All at once, my legs gave out and I slid down to the floor. “I’m sorry, Mama!” I cried out to her, as she walked down the stairs. “I didn’t mean it!”

 

Call Me Tuesday is available for purchase at:

Amazon Kindle for 21.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!


Connect with Leigh Byrne:

Filed Under: Finds Under $5, FREE with Prime, Frugal Find of the Day, Memoirs, NonFiction Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Salty Miss Tenderloin, Jacki Lyon {$2.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!}

June 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment

SALTY MISS TENDERLOIN is a fiercely tender novel by award winning writer Jacki Lyon. Never shying away from the dark side of humanity, Lyon introduces Starlight Nox, a scrappy girl born on the gritty streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin District when Jimi Hendrix and the Vietnam War are center stage.

Starlight learns at an early age to rummage food from dumpsters and collect clothes from the corner charity for survival. When the girl’s father dies with a needle in his arm and her mother disappears searching for her next fix, the forsaken twelve-year-old is adopted by wealthy grandparents. Uprooted from San Francisco to Cincinnati, Star spends the next two decades learning that danger doesn’t lurk just in pimps and pill pushers on Turk Street. She discovers that evil finds a welcome host in tailored suits and Chanel dresses and even glossy church pews. Star calls on her early, bitter lessons from the streets to navigate the more sinister roads she travels as a young woman.

SALTY MISS TENDERLOIN is a poignant coming-of-age story that proves the transition from child to adult is a process that repeats itself many times in life. Coming-of-age is about survival. For the lucky, the change begins with a raging gnaw of desire; for the unlucky, the change begins with a crying gnaw of hunger. For Starlight Nox, the treacherous journey begins much too early in life and continues to test her ability to grow and persevere, time and time again.

What readers are saying:

Jacki Dillon Lyon hit a home run again!!! I loved this book. Star is a character that you will fall in love with because of her determination, loyalty to her friends and grandmother and her ability to keep it all together at times . . . Get your book groups to read this. You will not be disappointed. Barb Rohs, Cincinnati, Ohio

I just finished reading Salty Miss Tenderloin and am not ready to let the heroine, Star, go. Jacki Lyon has written an awesome novel, but more importantly, she’s shown through Star, that regardless what life offers, one can find the strength to overcome adversity and perservere! Becki D., Sarasota, Florida

The average Amazon Review Rating is currently 5 Stars {5 reviews}.

Click here to read more about and purchase Salty Miss Tenderloin for $2.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!

Filed Under: 5 Star Frugal Finds, Fiction, Finds Under $5, FREE with Prime Tagged With: , , ,

Hot Water (A Mossy Bog Book), Maggie Toussaint {$2.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!}

June 4, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Solving Mossy Bog’s first fire fatality could net police officer Laurie Ann Dinterman the promotion she desperately wants. When the state arson investigator arrives to take over the case, Laurie Ann is assigned to give the man everything he needs while keeping him alive. The fact he’s the sexiest man ever to hit town shouldn’t make a difference.

Hot on the trail of a serial arsonist, Wyatt North demands justice for his partner, the arsonist’s first victim. He’ll find the murderer or die trying–no matter how distracting the tall, lithe figure of his local partner is.

As the investigation zeroes in on a suspect uncomfortably close to Laurie Ann’s life, her cop instincts conflict with her feelings for Wyatt. Worse, the arsonist will do anything to protect his identity. Can Laurie Ann accept the truth in time…or will she and Wyatt go up in flames?

What readers are saying:

“A terrific read. Highly recommended” – Polly Iyer

“A fast paced novel that will keep you guessing right to the end” – Nora Snowdon

“Couldn’t put it down” -Robin Covington

“Hot Water, a Mossy Bog novel, takes the reader to a new level of enjoyment” -Rising Star Reviews

The current Average Amazon Review Rating is 4.6 stars {24 reviews}.

Click here to read more about and purchase Hot Water (A Mossy Bog Book) for $2.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!

Filed Under: Fiction, Finds Under $5, FREE with Prime, Romantic Suspense Tagged With: , ,

THE FRUGAL FIND OF THE DAY: Jake (California Dreamy), Rian Kelley {$2.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!}

May 30, 2013 By Leave a Comment

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Rian Kelley’s Frugal Find Under Nine:

Description:

Red-Hot and Ready!
Ivy has been too good for too long,
so when wickedly hot, but by-the-book
Marine Lieutenant Jake finds
her stranded on the side of the
road, she decides giving into temptation
is exactly what she needs.
But will they burn as brightly outside
the bedroom?

 

Accolade:

5 Stars on Amazon!

This review is from: Jake (California Dreamy) (Kindle Edition)
Wow! Hot and steamy. The romance was fantastic. The story line was good .It fit together nicely and made for enjoyable reading.

This review is from: Jake (California Dreamy) (Kindle Edition)
Really great book. It has a really great story line & that’s what I love. Absolutely great!!! Highly recommended. Great!!!!

This review is from: Jake (California Dreamy) (Kindle Edition)
I have to admit, I’m a sucker for strong military men, and Jake fits that to a T! I wish he was my boyfriend, and I can’t wait to check out more books in this series!

This review is from: Jake (California Dreamy) (Kindle Edition)
This is a sexy story and this author has just become a new favorite.
I can’t wait to read the next book.

This review is from: Jake (California Dreamy) (Kindle Edition)
I loved this story. Jake was the perfect hero. A few flaws but hardly noticeable when you looked at the whole picture. The heroine had a good brain in her head and a backbone. They had a few issues to work thru but they did so. Their connection could be felt through the page. I love this kind of story. A man and a woman and their coming together. Perfect. I highly recommend. Jake will be one of my favorite heroes. Great read. Give it time because you won’t be able to put it down until you finish it. Loved it.

This review is from: Jake (California Dreamy) (Kindle Edition)
Can’t wait til the continuation of Jake and Ivy.

We all want to fall in love at first site and this books lets that happen for us. Ms. Kelley hits
the nail on the head. Nice to read about a couple who don’t start out hating each other like most romance books do. Ivy and Jake take us with them on their whirlwind romance and we develop a vested interest in what’s going to happen next with them.

I look forward with anticipation for Ms. Kelley’s next book.

Easy read with a page turning storyline. You did good Ms. Kelley!


Amazon Reader Reviews:

Jake (California Dreamy) currently has an Amazon Reader Review rating of 4.5 stars, with 29 reviews. Read the reviews here.

 

An excerpt from Jake (California Dreamy):

Chapter One

The road was dusty and potted and sure enough the bald tires on her Jeep Patriot weren’t up to the challenge. Ivy heard the pop before the steering wheel jerked in her hands and pulled the car left, into on-coming traffic—if there was any. But her luck was running in negative numbers lately. She was on a desolate stretch of state road, between islands of civilization, with a cell phone that had a weak battery.
She pumped the brakes and wrestled with the steering wheel. As the car slowed, the wind through the open windows calmed enough that she could hear the crunch of gravel under her tires. She coasted to a stop on the shoulder, then pried her fingers loose and flipped on the emergency flashers.
She had no spare. She’d loaned it to her neighbor, who was in thicker dire straits than Ivy.
But she had a can of Repair! that promised to re-inflate tires and keep them going fifty-plus miles; she had flares, a marker and cardboard she could rip off a box in the back and make into a distress sign if the ‘miracle in a can’ didn’t work.
This was not her first emergency; just the latest in what seemed like a lifetime of living
on the edge, waiting for the next round to begin.
She pulled her purse into her lap and rummaged through it for her cell phone, a Blackberry more than four years old and dropped so many times the red veneer had chipped off around the edges.
Cell phones were a luxury. As were movie rentals and pedicures, her morning frappuccinos and shoes priced over forty dollars. She’d given up a lot over the past nineteen months. She had no regrets about it. Not even now.
Although tires were not an excess, two repairs in a single month was more than her budget could sustain. She’d had to choose between those and a tune up. A fifty-fifty gamble she’d just lost.
She pressed her thumb to the ball on her phone and the screen lit up. Then faded. Before it went black, Ivy noted the red x over the tower icon and the complete absence of reception bars. Even if her phone was capable of a full charge, it would be of no use to her here.
She climbed out of the car and into a dry wind that plastered her cotton skirt to her bottom and legs. Long, supple legs. She’d given up her membership to a fancy gym and purchased a pair of running shoes. That was one of her better decisions. She felt stronger than ever, had shed the eight pounds she hadn’t been able to chisel away before hitting the pavement, and her mind was a lot clearer, too. She loved a landslide win. The thought of it made her smile, which instantly covered her teeth in grit.
The desert. August. Sand and wind and plenty of both. Ivy had trouble remembering that. She made this drive twice a month, without fail, but the sharp air and the unrelenting sun, which dried everything to tinder, was always on the outside. It was three hundred and thirty miles from San Diego to Las Vegas and Ivy did it in one long stretch, fueling up before departure, loading up on water and fresh fruit. She did the same for the trip back. There was nothing worth pausing over out here. Not a lick of green in the landscape. No scent of salt in the wind.
Ivy loved San Diego, even if living there meant a five hundred square foot studio apartment and street parking. All she had to do was throw open her windows and inhale. She was less than a block from the Bay and just a short sprint from the boardwalk and the beach. When she wasn’t working late or already outside running, she perched in one of the windows and watched the sun slip through its palette of colors before disappearing into the sea. Nothing beat that.
She walked around the car, stood at the hood and noted its unnatural leaning. The wind pulled her hair into long streamers, the sun catching the red highlights. She was dark where her sister was light. Ivy had taken her coloring from her father, who was born in Mexicali. She’d gotten her bone structure from him, too, with broad cheeks and full lips and a straight nose that flared slightly. Of course, she had only her mother’s word on that—Ivy’s father left long before she’d developed any meaningful memories of him.
She took a step back and bent slightly at the waist to examine the extent of the damage.
Front tire, driver’s side. She’d known that before getting out. But the tire was a goner. It had already started to shred, rubber peeling away from the rim. Not good news.
She didn’t panic. She was a pro, now, at handling crisis situations. At saving herself. She’d had to do it at thirteen, when her mother, in one of her drunken stupors, had set fire to their home, and again at twenty-two, when she’d walked away from an abusive marriage. A blown tire in the middle of nowhere was an inconvenience. It wasn’t life-threatening.
Ivy lifted her chin and propped her hands on her hips. The wind blew drifts of sand over the hood and roof of the car, coating the black paint and the windshield. She felt it in her hair and knew she probably had a fine dusting of pale over mahogany. She gazed beyond the car, but there was no traffic coming from the west. She turned and looked east, the way she’d come. Nothing.
She had taken this two lane interchange on purpose. Less traffic meant swifter travel. She worked Sunday evenings at a job doing what she loved—respiratory therapist. Nights on the pod, as they called it, were no less busy than her days on the acute care unit at Children’s Hospital, but there was a hushed quality to them that soothed her. She worked a twelve hour shift, seven to seven, checking ventilators and coaching children through coughing and breathing exercises.
It was rewarding. And it had given Ivy her first flush of personal value.
She didn’t want to be late. At ten after four in the afternoon, that gave her an hour to get help and get on her way and almost two hours to finish the drive.
So she would slip out of her sandals and into her running shoes and trek however many miles to a call box. In California, that could be as much as seven miles. She’d run five that morning.
Ivy opened the back hatch of the car and pulled the cardboard box toward her. She kept supplies in here—oil, coolant, jumper cables, a flashlight. She tore off a flap and then searched for a black Sharpie, which she found pushed to the back of the glove compartment. ‘Call police,’ she wrote in big block letters and then taped the sign to the back window. Next, she wrote a note on the back of a grocery receipt: ‘Walking west to call box.’ She slipped this on the dash, in front of the steering wheel, and then dug her running shoes out of her bag in the back seat.
Running was a privilege. Holly wasn’t able to, not yet. Her sister, who had run track in high school—mostly so that she had a reason to be out of the house—and then spent the past ten years competing in long distance races and always placed, was no longer able to run. She was still relearning to walk. Ivy blinked away the first sheen of tears before they could overwhelm her. Holly had worked relentlessly for the past nineteen months to get her mobility back, and yesterday the doctor had said that she was at the halfway point. He’d said that three months ago, too. He’d warned them from the beginning that Holly could hit a brick wall anywhere along the way. It was inevitable. And Ivy worried that maybe that time was now.
Ivy was in the car with Holly the night their lives had changed forever again. She remembered everything about the crash. How they had left the restaurant laughing and it had felt so good after such a long silence—Ivy’s fault for refusing to speak to her sister for nearly three years. They had gotten on the freeway, determined to catch the sunset while sitting on the beach sipping margaritas. A celebration and a promise not to let anything—or anyone—come between them again.
And then, in the gathering dusk, a car had come barreling toward them. The wrong way on the freeway. Ivy remembered seeing the flashing bar of police lights behind it. And how those colors had seemed to merge and shatter on impact. But she never lost consciousness. For a few moments, while her mind and body absorbed the shock of the crash, all had gone dark. But she was still able to hear—Holly’s gasps shuddering into a low groan and then into silence.
She had used her medical training to keep her sister alive while the police fluttered around her peripheral, offering help, following Ivy’s instructions. Then the wail of the siren as the paramedics arrived.
Ivy had broken her wrist. Her sister had lost her leg, above the knee, and had broken several bones including a vertebrae and femur.
They rode to the hospital together inside an ambulance that rocked through sharp turns and gathered darkness as the sun set and her sister’s conditioned worsened.
When they were kids, Ivy had been all about Holly. She was her big sister by two years and Ivy wanted to do everything she did. Holly had tolerated it well. As teens, the tables turned and it was Holly who spent much of her time looking out for Ivy. Nothing like a dysfunctional family life to pull siblings together—and then eventually tear them apart. Ivy had allowed all those insecurities that were planted by the experience of never being good enough to command their mother’s attention or to deserve the presence of a father, whittle away any shred of self-confidence or value.
After high school, Holly had tried to take Ivy with her. Her sister had received a scholarship to UC Berkeley. California. A fresh start, leaving a dripping Oregon behind and the damp, shadowed mobile home where they had lived with their sometimes sober mother. Her sister was willing to work nights—every night—waitressing, and attend school full time as well, if it meant Ivy was with her and safe.
But Ivy had other ideas, and they all revolved around Trace Patrick. She was in love and so sure of it, at the age of sixteen she’d accepted his proposal, declared herself emancipated and finished high school—because Trace’s parents had insisted—with an engagement ring on her finger. Instead of donning cap and gown, she and Trace had climbed into his shiny blue Ford 150 and shot over back streets and down the thin ribbon of highway all the way to the coast and gotten married, with two strangers as their witnesses.
Ivy had worn a pair of blue jeans, split at the knee, and a red t-shirt with their school mascot holding a baseball bat and with the number four printed on the back—Trace was the state’s top homerun hitter and a killer first baseman with only two steals his entire four years.
They had left the next morning for Arizona, where Trace had been placed by the San Diego Padres. He’d made it to their farm team. A place where he would bulk up and perfect his swing. Only that never happened. And Trace, who had been so full of dreams he’d seemed to float—the very trait that Ivy had needed in her life—came crashing down.
He’d taken Ivy with her. And the only swing he’d improved upon was his left hook. He brawled at the bars and he brought it home afterwards. It took Ivy four years to find her way out.
Ivy had made mistakes. More than a few. Some more serious than others. But she’d fixed what she could and put to rest what she couldn’t. And there was no looking back.
Holly insisted she didn’t. Not even now. Nineteen months after the crash, her sister was still using a cane. The doctors had expected much less of her. They had said that she would never recover full mobility. That she may never do more than sit upright. But they didn’t know Holly, or Ivy, or the circumstance in which they were raised.
The Warner girls were not quitters.
They didn’t run away from their problems—not anymore—they ran toward them.
Holly would walk again, under her own steam. She would run again, with a new
hydraulic leg crafted specially for her. And Ivy would be there with her. For now, it had to be every other weekend. But she hoped that would change. That Holly would finally agree to move west.
Ivy pulled a pair of socks out of the bag, along with a pair of shorts and her runner’s bra. If she ran to the call box, it would cut off a good chunk of time. She stood inside the open car door for a little modesty, dropped her sneakers on the blacktop, and slipped off her sandals. She shimmied into the shorts and then rolled her skirt down to her ankles and off in a single, economical movement. Ivy was a doer. She didn’t like feeling swamped by a problem and knew life was in the solution. She was living proof of that.
She sat down on the edge of the seat and pushed her feet into socks and then shoes and started lacing up. If the call box was close enough, she might even have time for a quick dinner before her shift started. A shower, too.
“Ma’am.”
She was so engrossed in carrying out her plan that she didn’t hear the approaching car. Later, she would blame it on the wind that clapped in her ears. On the zone that she always slipped into whenever she became a woman of action, which is how she liked to think of it—whether she was running or pulling herself out of one of life’s nose dives.
Ivy dropped her hands, which had been gathering the hem of her shirt in order to pull it over her head, and looked up. Way up.
Six feet, broad shoulders, buzz cut. Probably a Marine.
That ribbon of thought was immediately followed by: rugged, like the man was cut out of
the dry, craggy hills that surrounded them; intense—his mouth was firm, lips thin, eyes a startling, clear shade of green-blue and focused relentlessly on her face.
Blond. Ivy had a weakness for blonds built like a god.
Of course, with her current work schedule and her history of poor relationships, she indulged only from a distance now.
Ivy placed a hand on the open door, and realized that she still held her bra, as white as a flag of surrender. She tossed it into the backseat behind her and ignored the flush of heat that swept up her neck and settled in her cheeks.
But he had noticed and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He was an imposing figure. Not just tall and broad, but cut. The muscles of his shoulders and pecs were clearly outlined by his t-shirt.
Her skin tingled and flushed with sensitivity. Even her nipples responded, puckering into beaded delight.
Ivy made herself blink—it was the only way to break the tension between them.
She wondered where it came from. The sudden awareness of him—his shape, his strength, the chiseled features—and her swift reaction to his everything male.
She never responded this way—so quickly and completely—especially to a stranger.
She thought: Wow. And it kept repeating, like ticker tape running through her head.
She stood and said, “It’s about time.” Thinking about all the scenarios in which she’d found herself over the years—wishing someone would send in the Marines—but with no one but herself to rely on, and not at all about the timing of his arrival. But her words irritated him. She could tell by the way his face tightened, his eyes became hooded.
He lifted his hands—strong, long, tapered fingers—and placed them on his hips. Narrow hips in snug denim. The move caused his biceps to bunch, the corded muscles in his forearms to ripple. And she noticed three things at once—a hot spear of need shot through her body; she was badly in need of some male attention; and them were fighting words.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he returned, sarcasm slicing and dicing his words.

 

Jake (California Dreamy) is available for purchase at:

Amazon Kindle for $2.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!


Connect with Rian Kelley:

Author Website: riankelley.blogspot.com

Filed Under: Fiction, Finds Under $5, FREE with Prime, Frugal Find of the Day, Romance Tagged With: , , , , , ,

THE FRUGAL FIND OF THE DAY: Helga: Out of Hedgelands (Wood Cow Chronicles), Rick Johnson

May 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment

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Description of Helga: Out of Hedgelands (Wood Cow Chronicles):

Twelve-year-old Helga has more danger in her life than most beasts her age—Wrackshee slavers after her, a vicious attack by bandits that nearly kills her, a race against dragons pursuing her, and leading a daring rebellion to save her life and rescue friends and family from the insidious WooZan. And that is just the beginning. But what do you expect when you are a young beast who just can’t see the stupid rules of the world making any sense? Helga can’t accept things as they are and ends up taking on not just one, but two all-powerful, supreme tyrants in two different realms.

Helga never intended to lead a revolution. It just sort of happened because she wouldn’t go along with the “rules of normal” that keep tyrants in power and entire societies enslaved. Beginning on a dangerous quest to solve some mysteries in her own past, Helga leads her quirky comrades on a journey that will not only forever change them, but upset ancient civilizations.

As an author, I’m drawn to eccentric, unexpected characters: those who surprise because they hear a distant galaxy, see a different music, create their own fragrance rather than get hooked on a soundtrack; the child who has her own ideas about how the emperor is dressed; the lunatics and rebels who tell stories on the boundaries. Helga’s unusual story will take readers to worlds they never imagined—definitely a whole new ride.

Time and again, the unconventional heroine and her eccentric comrades overcome ominous tyrants and black-hearted slavers, not by battling to the last beast standing, but by being the first beast to think differently.

Helga: Out of Hedgelands is divided into three books which introduce the epic saga of the Wood Cow clan and their role in overturning centuries of slavery and tyranny. This story will continue in additional volumes of the Wood Cow Chronicles now in development. Over the series of current and future volumes, the entire history of the Wood Cow clan, the fall of Maev Astuté, and the coming of Lord Farseeker to the Outer Rings, will be told.

 

Accolades:

Amazon 5-Star Reviews:

STEP ASIDE FRODO Since completing the Lord of the Rings trilogy in college, I’ve looked forward to a fantasy series that exhibited the potential to keep me up reading well past my bed time. Helga, Out of Hedgelands, did just that. Mr Johnson has created a fascinating world full of vivid landscapes and characters wise and courageous enough to inhabit them. Helga is a tale for young and old alike. Pour yourself a hot cup of Peskee tea and gather round your children or grandchildren. You’re in for a treat. I am eagerly awaiting the next installment.

HELGA IS A NEW CLASSIC! Absolutely phenomenal book . . . J K Rowling step aside!! I can’t wait to read Book Two!! Creativity abounds, excitement rips through each page. It doesn’t get better than this! Helga needs to become a classic!

Helga, the wood cow, is the essence of a courageous woman, a true role model for any young person. She solves difficult situations in her life through steadfast belief that she will be assisted and she can do it, no matter what it is. This book has the most creative characters, environments, even food descriptions, of any story for children that I have read. It meets the standard set by the classics, and it is even about cows, lizards, otters, and every animal imaginable. Don’t miss this great book.

WONDERFUL FAMILY READ Helga: Out of Hedgelands is a perfect family book for evening read aloud — or individual reading for ages 10 to 100.
It is an amazing story. Not only does it provide adventure, mystery, charming – and not so charming – characters, delightful descriptions and a truly warm story – but it also provides the reader with many areas that are perfect for discussions about discrimination, class systems, peer pressure, and other life issues using the animals as examples. The author has provided a master piece with his story telling and has also given the readers many things to think about on topics that can be easily understood and discussed by all ages. I highly recommend reading Helga: Out of the Hedgelands and hope the author soon comes out with his next book.

 

Amazon Reader Reviews:

Helga: Out of Hedgelands (Wood Cow Chronicles) currently has a Amazon reader review rating of 4.3 stars, with 10 reviews! Read the reviews here!

Helga: Out of Hedgelands (Wood Cow Chronicles) is available for purchase at:

Amazon Kindle for $0.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!

 

Excerpt from Helga: Out of Hedgelands (Wood Cow Chronicles):

Tangled snags of fallen trees and piles of debris littered the riverbank. Floating along, exhausted, half-submerged, Helbara grabbed a protruding branch to rest a moment. Remaining low in the water with her small daughter, Helga, clinging to her back, she pulled herself in among the dense reeds and willows surrounding the fallen tree. Except for the soft gurgling of the Deep Springs River—its water colored bronze in the light of the orange moon overhead—the warm night was ominously quiet. Struggling to control the harsh rasping of her ragged breathing, Helbara knew she could not rest long. “Help us, Ancient Ones,” she breathed, as the glint of moonlight caught on more and more points of polished metal rounding the riverbend not more than a hundred yards away. Her mind worked in frantic desperation as she watched what almost seemed to be clouds of ghostly fireflies approaching from up the river.

She hardly had time to think, however, before Helga’s grip on her neck tightened. Their pursuers were drawing near. “Snake-bloods, Mama! Now what?” her five-year-old daughter whispered urgently.

“Shee’wheet, Helga, Shee’wheet,” Helbara whispered. “Yes, I see them. The Wrackshees will soon be here. Be still. Ever so quiet.”

Six heavily-armed Wrackshees, kneeling in individual kayaks made of tightly-woven reeds, paddled silently toward them. The once-faint outlines of the Wrackshee slave hunters steadily grew more distinct as they approached. Their beeline course on the wide river seemed to be zeroing in on Helbara’s hiding place. She realized she could not risk further movement above water—the Wrackshees were now too close.

Shaking the reeds as little as possible, she pulled herself and Helga further back among the reeds until only small cracks were left to peer through. Sensing Helga’s rising terror, Helbara softly whispered an old lullaby to her daughter, trying to calm her: “Shee’wheet, Sweet-Leaf, Shee’wheet…Shee’wheet, Sweet-Leaf, Shee’wheet…”

Her own heart banging in her chest, Helbara watched the Wrackshee kayaks approaching relentlessly. Moonlight clearly revealed the albino Wolf in the lead kayak—small in stature, abnormally flattened face, thick-necked, with a large moustache. She shuddered. Six kayaks. One Wolf and five Weasels. Somewhere behind them, many more. If she and Helga were discovered, what resistance could they offer?

Suddenly the kayaks slowed, pausing about twenty yards away—close enough that the Wrackshees’ awful stench covered the area with a suffocating blanket. Using only hand signals to communicate, the slavers silently peered here and there for any sign of their prey. The razor-sharp tips of dozens of small throwing lances, carried on bandoliers slung over the Wrackshees’ shoulders, shone red in the moonlight. Helbara knew that terrible things happened to beasts hit by those poisoned tips—going mad with thirst, eyes bugging, bleeding the color of grass. Each time the gaze of a Wrackshee seemed to fix on the spot where they were concealed, Helbara trembled on the edge of panicked flight. To do so, however, would mean certain capture or death. They were trapped. With every ounce of inner strength, Helbara held her panic in check.

“Shee’wheet, Helga, Shee’wheet…We must be very still. Do not say anything unless I ask you to.” As she uttered these words, she attempted to shift Helga’s weight on her back and slipped on the loose sand. Her boot seemed to suddenly drop into a hole. Catching herself before she made a complete fall, she feared the Weasels might have observed her misstep. For the moment, however, their pursuers seemed to be absorbed in their sign language consultation.

Moving her boot gently, Helbara explored the apparent hole where she had stumbled. The opening was large—the submerged end of a long-decaying fallen tree. In the moonlight, Helbara’s eyes struggled to see evidence of the rest of the tree. The dense reeds and willows made it difficult to be certain, but the position of the hollow end she had discovered seemed connected to a massive upended root clump visible further down the bank. How much of the tree was hollow?

“Sweet-Leaf,” Helbara whispered very softly, “I need you to explore something for me. Slide quietly off my back, take a deep breath, and duck underwater—see if you can tell if this tree beside us is hollow.” The request immediately dampened Helga’s fear. Action was an antidote to terror. As quietly as the reeds waved in the soft evening breeze, she disappeared below the surface.

In a few moments she was back. “Not hollow very far,” she whispered, “but there’s a big opening at first. Then the hollow part ends, but there’s a hole in the bark at the end that’s above water. It’s small but a beast could breathe there.” Pausing and looking deeply into her mother’s eyes, she concluded with a tone of sorrow, “But only room for a small beast.”

As she listened to her daughter’s report, a plan rapidly formed in Helbara’s mind. It was none too soon. The albino Wrackshee made a quick sign with his paw. The gesture was at the same time purposeful and sinister. The Weasels were no longer waiting. Two of the kayaks turned and glided directly toward the Wood Cows’ hiding place. Pressing her daughter close to her chest in a comforting embrace, Helbara calmly gave Helga instructions.

“The hollow space in the tree is large enough,” she said, “to conceal you well for some time. The Wrackshees will not likely think to look there for you. They may not even know you escaped with me. I want you to quietly—just as quietly as you did before—duck under again and hide in the hollow space in the tree. Be absolutely quiet no matter what happens.”

Helga immediately understood she was being asked to play a serious game of Hide-n-Seek with their pursuers. Long moments seemed to drag by. Helga knew there had been no mention of what her mother planned to do.

Then Helbara urged Helga underwater and whispered, “Sweet-Leaf, Mamma’s going to talk to those Snake-bloods to make certain they don’t harm you. I won’t be long. You wait in that hollow place and stay as quiet as you can.” She gave Helga a squeeze and handed her a pronghorn flute she had always played for her back in their home. “Take this, Sweet-Leaf, it is my promise that I will be back soon.”

Helga’s eyes met her mother’s in a deeply moving, but silent, farewell as she slipped the flute in her pocket. “Don’t worry, Mama. I will do as you say,” the look said to her mother as surely as if it were spoken.

Then Helbara stood up. “Sweet-Leaf,” she whispered after Helga silently ducked under the surface, “no matter what, wait in that hollow place. I will be back to you soon.” Whether Helbara actually believed this or not—six heavily-armed Weasels awaited her—whatever “talk” Helga’s Mamma had in mind would not be pleasant conversation…

Suddenly, the replay of her experiences from ten years earlier shifted. The silhouette of a large canoe now filled her misted vision, looming before the same young Helga, who was now sloshing miserably through the river shallows during the deepest dark of the night.

A beast crouched low in the canoe grabbed her with long, brawny arms. Captured in the strong grasp of this unknown powerful stranger, Helga’s sense of panic surged. In a desperate effort to escape, she was almost ready to bite the beast that held her, when the whisper of a gruff voice stopped her struggles.

“Hey-hey, ya lee’tle Bungeet! Stop da chop sputter, or those Wracker’mugs will b’a back at ya ’gin frighter t’en ever. Shee’wheet…Shee’wheet…Shee’wheet…”

The softly whispered “Shee’wheet” calmed Helga. The gentle, soothing tones, so reminiscent of her mother, marked this rough stranger with a kindly manner that made her feel safe. Settling the small Wood Cow in the bottom of the canoe, her rescuer—Pickles DiArdo as she later learned—continued his soft soothing lullaby and patted her gently on the back in assurance of safety, as his partner began paddling again.

“This’n Bungeet has had some stinkin’ Wracker’mugs b’itin at her,” Pickles said to the other Trapper Dog paddling in the prow. “Go for Mianney’s, Lupes—the Healer will s’nd her pain t’way.”

The canoe traveled about another two hundred yards and turned into a small, nearly invisible side channel flowing into the main river course from among the willows. Paddling with gentle determination against the current, the canoe glided toward a rough shack perched high above the water on stout poles. Giving one final hard push with their paddles, the Trapper Dogs bent low as the canoe glided under a dense thicket of wild thorn trees growing around the shack. The thorns, tough as steel and with points so sharp and fine they made marvelous sewing needles, ringed the cabin like sentries. No one would attempt to approach the shack through such ferocious thorns except those invited to come and shown the way to pass.

The thorns did not deter Pickles and Lupes, who often visited Mianney Mayoyo. Tying their canoe to one of the thorn trees, Lupes unrolled a bark mat and threw it up over the lowest branch of the tree. Using the mat for safe passage over the outermost thorns, the three travelers reached the interior of the tree where they were able to drop to the ground. Branches on the rear of this particular tree had been trimmed away to allow exit to the shack.

They had hardly reached Mianney’s shack and called out to her when she was instantly with them. The old River Cat, who was rumored to be ancient—some said she had always lived—had long, jet black hair that was smooth and shining from the walnut oil she rubbed into it each day. Dangling far down in front of her was an ornate necklace of beads, and on each wrist she had broad woven bracelets, decorated with copper sunbursts.

Mianney carried a small basket. Without any word of greeting to her visitors, she pulled a bundle of dried herbs and two green-colored balls of thorn tree pitch from the basket. Arranging the herbs and pitch balls in a ceremonious pile before them, with seeming magic she produced a glowing coal from her jacket pocket and lit the pile. A sudden burst of flame, and the herbs and pitch balls sent up a sharp pillar of fire.

As the small fire flamed, Mianney’s deep brown eyes darted here and there gleefully. Her bubbling wild intensity frightened some superstitious people, who said she was a demon in disguise. Mianney did seem to do things that were supernatural. The flames that burned so furiously for a few moments, suddenly died down, leaving a dense pungent cloud of smoke. Still without speaking, with lightning quickness Mianney lifted Helga to her arms and ascended the ladder to her shack. In the blink of an eye she and Helga were gone. A whisp of pungent smoke, swirling where Mianney had stood, was all that assured Pickles and Lupes that she had actually been with them a moment before…

As Mianney held Helga close through that long-ago night, flute music, rising and falling from a more distant cabin, was a safe and soothing sound in the dark.

That flute music—so comforting, such a balm on her terror—was, for Helga, a symbol of her deliverance. The peaceful imprint of the flute melody wafting to her during the darkest part of the night struck Helga in the heart as powerfully as the shafts of yellow sunlight that illumined Mianney Mayoyo’s shack the next morning. It was as if her mother’s promise to return soon had been fulfilled.

Helga: Out of Hedgelands (Wood Cow Chronicles) is available for purchase at:

Amazon Kindle for $0.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!


Connect with Rick Johnson:

Website: www.woodcowbooks.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/WoodCowBooks

Twitter: www.twitter.com/WoodCowBooks

Filed Under: Fantasy, Fiction, Finds Under $1, FREE with Prime, Frugal Find of the Day, Middle Grade Tagged With: , ,

THE FRUGAL FIND OF THE DAY: AN UNQUIET AMERICAN, AFN CLARKE {$2.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!}

May 15, 2013 By Leave a Comment

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Description of AN UNQUIET AMERICAN:

In this provocative political thriller an ex-British SAS officer goes up against powerful conspirators who are about to regret they ever met him! Readers call it riveting, thought provoking, can’t put the book down reading; a masterpiece of psychological warfare; superior storytelling and liken it to the best of John Le Carré.
Rufus Reed, ex-British Special Forces is kidnapped, falsely accused of terrorism and taken to a secret CIA “Black Site” for questioning. He’s not only up against his captors, but dangerous elements at the top levels of government who intend to use him as part of a plan to ensure “their man” wins the Presidency of the United States. Seeking power at all costs, they set in motion a global conspiracy of unthinkable proportions.
Yet nothing is quite what it seems, and Rufus is no ordinary prisoner.
As he slowly plants seeds of doubt in the minds of his captors, related events explode on the world stage racing with unnerving twists and turns from Hong Kong, Jordan, Italy, Latvia and the USA to the highest levels of the CIA, the Knesset and the Vatican.  What’s at stake is not just Reed’s survival, but that of democracy and freedom as we know it!
And just as you think you know what’s going to happen, three powerful figures – a high-profile Iranian Muslim woman, a former Israeli Intelligence Officer, and a Catholic mining billionaire – reveal their true intentions and propel the story to a riveting and unexpected conclusion!

This web of intrigue draws on bestselling author AFN Clarke’s own experiences in the military and as the son of a British MI6 operative living in different countries, cultures and political systems around the world. It is set against the background of a U.S. Presidential election and creates dramatic tension through its politically explosive premise and controversial analysis of decisions in history that continue to impact the world today. An exciting, emotionally stirring and thought-provoking book, it reveals both the power of greed and corruption and the power of the human spirit to rise above it.

AFN Clarke is the best selling author of CONTACT (non-fiction), and various works of fiction: An Unquiet American, Dry Tortugas, The Book of Baker Series (Dreams from the Death Age; Armageddon; Genesis Revisited), Collisions and The Orange Moon Affair, the first of the Thomas Gunn thriller series. For more on the author visit afnclarke.com and leave your email for new release updates.  Deep appreciation for any reviews you post on this or other AFN Clarke books.
Book length 365 pages.

 

Accolades:

An Unquiet American is riveting, thought provoking, “can’t put the book down” reading. AFN Clarke’s writing draws me in and keeps me captivated until the very end. Intense, passionate, intelligent writing. Don’t miss this! Rebecca Fisk 5 Stars

This political thriller is superbly written and for much of it the reader could be forgiven for thinking he or she had picked up the latest from Le Carré. Certainly the main character, Rufus Read, is pure Le Carré. His toying with his captors is brilliantly written and his reminiscences packed with fascinating and very disturbing facts. As someone who has spent many years in Hong Kong, I can certainly attest to the accuracy of the parts of the book located there. As for the overall message regarding the manipulation of the US government, again, fascinating stuff well backed up with modern/historical fact. If you like thrillers with a difference, ones that make you think long and hard about the modern world, An Unquiet American is well worth reading.
I am very pleased to have discovered Tony Clarke’s work (for the conspiracy theorists who think every 5Star review is a plant, he is, I should add, no relation!) and I shall certainly be reading more. All strength to twitter where I first came across his name. David George Clarke, 5 Stars

Kept my intererst from the first page. I am looking forward to reading previous novels I have missed! I recommended it to a retired Army career person who is also enjoying the read. Mary Moret, 5 Stars

 

Amazon Reader Reviews:

AN UNQUIET AMERICAN currently has a Amazon reader review rating of 3.7 stars, with 11 reviews! Read the reviews here!

 

AN UNQUIET AMERICAN is available for purchase at:

Amazon Kindle for $2.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!

 

Excerpt from AN UNQUIET AMERICAN:

DAY 3 – MARCH 2008 FCTIS INTERROGATION CENTRE – ROOM 2

Rufus Reed stared at the light as if trying to assimilate it into his soul. To become the light and block out every other stimulus that had been flirting with his sanity. The after effects of the drug they had given him had finally worn off, leaving a lingering feeling of disconnect with the real world.
‘What difference would it make in the totality of time?’ he thought idly as the light burned deep into his mind, shining onto memories that had long been left in the dark recesses of a life few people would ever know. ‘This is an interesting experience and what matter if I should die as a result? I’ve lived well, loved deeply, fought hard…’ he paused his thinking and sighed. ‘But perhaps I haven’t been the father I should have been.’
Normally he was not given to reminiscing about the past, except perhaps to enhance the quality of his work, because the future always had so much to offer in the excitement of the unknown. Besides, he knew that a few unforgivable mistakes, some bad behavior and two ill-advised marriages, had no redeeming qualities under the harsh light of introspection.
‘Just what kind of ridiculous truth serum did they give me,’ he thought, knowing that the drugs were more successful in novels than in real life. ‘Except that stuff the Russians were supposed to have come up with, Litvinenko called it SP-117 before he was killed by radionuclide polonium-210. And he should have known because he said he used it himself when he was working for the Russian Federal
Security Service. Ah well, no matter, my life’s an open book.’
The silly reference to his job as a novelist made him smile as tried to clear his head. He had no memory of anything from the moment he felt the needle in his neck, just glimpses of shadowy figures and the boring murmur of his own voice, until yesterday when he began to emerge from his drugged state.
He tried to remember the events from the time of the attack in Marin to this moment, but only saw ghostly images in his mind as if he was caught in a living dream. ‘Perhaps if I can go with the dream I can piece together the puzzle. Figure out what I said, or didn’t say,’ he thought, rationalizing that fighting the remembered images and trying to sort them into a logical pattern would not reveal the truth.
The CIA was well versed in truth serums, the use of LSD, and hypnosis from their experiments during the 1950s, but what other chemical tools were in their box-of-tricks. Reed was sure he had caused his interrogators a great deal of frustration, which was why they were letting him drift back to reality so that they could progress in a more traditional way.
‘This is combat,’ he thought as his mind slowly cleared. ‘There is always a certain feeling of inevitability about combat, a feeling that you are already dead, and that surreal conviction helps get through the fear, the terror of killing and watching friends die.’
And like combat, there were certain tactics, manoeuvres and tricks that could keep the enemy guessing. It didn’t necessarily change the outcome, but it made their job much more difficult.
Rufus Reed liked that tiny sense of control, that rebellion against the inevitable.
‘According to Sun Tzu,’ he mused, ‘All warfare is Deception and If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant’.
Reed wondered if his tormentors had read ‘The Art of War’. He had been in this position before, and the training of so many years ago stood him in good stead, but he idly wondered why he should
fight instead of just succumbing to their wishes.
“You wrote that you ‘knew’ that Saddam Hussein did not possess nuclear weapons. How did you know?” The voice was as reasonable and insistent as always.
“I was born….” Rufus began.
“Answer the question,” the Interrogator interrupted impatiently.
Rufus sighed disappointedly, held the Interrogator’s gaze and allowed a slight smile to twitch his dry lips. “….Differently.”
“Really. But that still doesn’t answer my question.”
Rufus looked away from the light at the face in the shadows. It took a little time for the face to come into focus as the effects of the drug had slowed his reactions. When it did, it was a caricature American Military face; a clean-cut face with fleshy lips, and an impossibly chiseled jaw.
Rufus smiled inwardly. ‘An amateur posing as a professional,’ he thought with a glimmer of satisfaction. ‘A True Believer. Patriotic to the core, but under-educated and inexperienced. Why is it that the most Powerful Nation on Earth is politically and diplomatically the most ignorant?’
As he studied the face behind the light, his peripheral vision took in the rest of the cell. The Interrogators euphemistically called it a room, but it was a cell and each day he formed a more cohesive picture of what might be outside these walls.
The room was obviously East European. Rufus could smell the mould in the rough cheap wall plaster tinted with ageing colors of green and pale yellow, and idly wondered why Government interior designers the world over, seemed to think that two tone wall colors were in any way desirable.
Perhaps he was in a Russian satellite country.

‘No not Russia, a former Russian province.’
The window behind him was narrow and quite wide, punctuated with two cheap heavy galvanized steel bars that rusted in the damp winter, beyond the bars mildew formed on the concrete that blocked any view there might have been. The heavy steel door in front of him, was set into the rotting walls, and he smiled inwardly at the thought that perhaps the people who constructed this prison imagined that the door itself was deterrent enough for a determined prisoner. But then maybe this had been the house of an aristocrat long since deceased as the Russian revolution swept across Eastern Europe. The mildew was a clue, and he smiled at the thought that the room was in a cellar and the bricked up ‘window’ was a bluff.
‘It is going to be very undignified, dying in a foreign cellar at the hands of sadistic amateurs.’ He brushed the musings away.
“You have the rudeness and arrogance of youth, and none of the finesse of experience,” Reed said quietly. “I was born in a foreign land, just after the Second World War…”
“We know that. Kowloon, Hong Kong.”
The Young Interrogator felt secure in the knowledge he had digested for four days before starting the interrogation and that he had control. The experimental drug they had injected Reed with produced nothing more than garbled reminiscences, so now it was time to move to the next phase of interrogation. It was difficult because the man opposite him, this ‘Master Terrorist’, had the ability to shut him down with a few, well-chosen, words. He could feel the sweat beginning to pool in his lower back and soak through his underwear, and feared it would appear as a small ‘V’ shaped stain on his immaculately pressed pants. It was a fear he had never been able to shake. An irrational fear based on the thought that anyone he met was secretly scrutinizing him in detail and would surely notice that telltale sign of his lack of confidence.
Rufus Reed leaned forward and stared into his eyes, and saw the uncertainty.
“You know nothing,” Rufus said slowly. “You only know what you think you know, but you know nothing. You have a list of dates and times, of names and places but that tells you nothing. Only that I existed in those places at those times. You do not have the thoughts, the emotions, the smells, the experiences of touch and sensation. You do not have the ability to understand why something happens…..,” he paused again and waited, watching the young man’s eyes until they flickered down to the table, “…differently.”
The Interrogator tried to smile, feeling that maybe he could fool Rufus Reed into thinking that he was playing with him.
“We have everything you ever wrote,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “We’ve studied your books, emails, everything.” He leaned forward as if explaining to a child. “We know you. We have all the facts,” he whispered and leaned back again smiling smugly, feeling a little more confident.
“The facts,” Rufus Reed said quietly. “What facts? Do you know what a man is thinking when he stares at a woman’s breasts? Could it be that he is a sculptor thinking of Venus, a predator thinking of rape, or a homosexual thinking of his mother? Or do you assume he is thinking what you would think and what you want him to think? What do you know when a man writes satire that is interpreted as literal truth? Fiction that is interpreted as fact? Know me? You know nothing. I can tell you more about yourself right now than you will ever know about me.”
There was a sudden fear in the young interrogator’s blue eyes. An unconscious flicker that Rufus was looking for, and the impossibly square cleft chin thrust forward antagonistically.
“I doubt that,” the younger man said aggressively.
“You were born in the mid west, your accent gives that away,” Rufus carried on smoothly.
“Your father was probably a middle manager for a local company, Westinghouse maybe, and your mother a pillar of the PTA. You were a High School quarterback but failed to make a college team so you went into the military. After all, your Daddy was a cook in some training camp, maybe in Biloxi, never saw combat and voted conservative no matter what the issues were because that’s what ‘Good ole country boys do’. And whatever America did in the world was a-okay, providing it kept the dollars flowing in and you didn’t have to think about the poor Blacks down the road and starvation in Bangladesh, or that fact that you were ripping off the resources of the oil producing countries as fast as the tankers could sail. That’s what this country’s all about. Overthrow a democratically elected Government, put a Dictator in power and bribe him to give away his country’s wealth for a Swiss Bank Account and an apartment in the Big Apple. This is a pale copy of the Roman Empire with all of the self-centred, militaristic arrogance and yet none of the art. We let the Government do anything it wants as long as we don’t have to think about the consequences as we wallow in luxury.”
The Interrogator’s eyes widened before he recovered and attempted a weak smile that was supposed to impart denial. Rufus Reed allowed himself a moment of smugness before he went back to staring at the light, but not before he looked directly at the mirrored wall behind and to the right of the Interrogator.
“You want to know me, then listen. But I fear that you will not hear. It’s not in your nature. Any of you.” His eyes flickered back to the light.

 

AN UNQUIET AMERICAN is available for purchase at:

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Filed Under: Fiction, Finds Under $5, FREE with Prime, Frugal Find of the Day, Mystery/Thrillers Tagged With: , , , , ,

THE FRUGAL FIND OF THE DAY: Thirty-Nine Again, Lynn Reynolds {$1.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!}

May 13, 2013 By Leave a Comment

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Description of Thirty-Nine Again:

A “Chick Noir” novel from award-winning author Lynn Reynolds.

So what’s Chick Noir? It’s like chick lit, but with guns and dead bodies instead of shoes.

A portion of author royalties from the sale of Thirty-Nine Again will be donated to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and to the Foundation for Women’s Cancer.

On her first thirty-ninth birthday, Sabrina O’Hara battled cancer. This year, she discovers her fiancé Scott’s leading a treacherous double life. Now she’s on the run – from Scott, from the Mexican Mafia, and from one dangerously sexy Homeland Security Agent. Thirty-nine the first time was horrible. But can Sabrina survive Thirty-Nine Again?


Accolades:

J★★★★. 4 Stars. A first-class mystery and . . . a first-class read.”
~ Cindy Himler, RT Book Reviews

5 Cups. Sabrina . . . has strength and tenacity in abundance. With the guns, bad guys, and sexy men, Thirty-Nine Again is a wonderful and exciting read.
~Coffee Time Romance

. . . a contemporary romance full of excitement and suspense. You will be rooting for Sabrina and Evan until the very end.
~Night Owl Romance

5 Ribbons. A Romance Junkies Blue Ribbon Book of the Month.
~RomanceJunkies.com

 

Review Rating:

Thirty-Nine Again currently has an average Amazon Review Rating of 4.5 stars {32 reviews}. Read the reviews here!

 

Thirty-Nine Again is available for purchase at:

Amazon Kindle for $1.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!


An excerpt from Thirty-Nine Again:

Evan jogged around a corner and stopped beside me. “Hey, I thought maybe you decided not to come!”
I looked up, disappointed to discover his dark eyes were hidden by a pair of those Oakley sunglasses that are big with military guys.
“Ready to go?”
“Yeah, sure!” I felt my face heating up involuntarily and heard the perky little exclamation point in my voice. It made me ill. I charged up the steps next to the Harbor to cover my embarrassment, but I’d never finished with that whole shoelace-tying thing, so I got tangled in my own feet and stumbled. Badly. I stumbled in a way only I could stumble. I started to fall face forward right into Evan’s arms. That threw me into such a huge panic that I windmilled my arms wildly and tried to arch away from him. I flailed backwards, somersaulting down the steps and coming within a millimeter of rolling into the dirty, oily water of the harbor. The only thing that saved me was Evan, who dove down the steps with incredible speed and grabbed me by the arms. I wound up with my legs in the water but my clothes unscathed. He pulled me onto the steps, and I buried my face in my hands.
“Oh, that went way better than the gym,” I muttered.
Evan snorted, blatantly failing to hide his amusement. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I replied. “I am not. I have a bloody knee that’s probably been exposed to all sorts of mutant flesh-eating bacteria. And my pride is utterly in tatters.”
“Not to worry. Be right back.” He left me there and jogged over to the nearby tourist mall. When he returned, he was carrying two cups and a little plastic shopping bag.
“Water, bandages, and lemonade.” He knelt beside me.
“What good will all that do?”
He hooked his sunglasses over the neck of his t-shirt. Then he lifted the lid on the cup of water, put his hand under my knee, and poured the water over the wound. The water was warm, but it stung nonetheless. Still, I was impressed at the effort he’d made to get the water temperature right. I peered at him surreptitiously. His head was down, and the sun’s rays glinted off shoulder-length hair so black it almost seemed blue. He wore it tied back in a ponytail, which looked natural, not phony and pretentious. At my firm a couple of investment bankers with receding hairlines had adopted the mini-ponytail look in some lame effort to compensate. On them, the effect was comical. Not on Evan though.
The hard lines of muscle in his shoulders and back flexed as he leaned forward and blotted at my knee. To my surprise, he used the hem of his olive green t-shirt to clean the wound.
“Oh, Evan, don’t,” I protested.
“It needs cleaning.” He glanced up with a reassuring grin. His almond eyes were so black I couldn’t even see the pupils. But his smile was so open and honest, like none of this was the least bit of trouble, and there was no place he’d rather be.
“This is an old shirt,” he added. “From my Army days. It’s seen worse than this. Anyway, time to let it go.”
We both laughed, because when he laughed, I couldn’t help but join him. His eyes gleamed, and little crinkly lines formed at their corners. How could a woman not want to laugh with him? No wonder Scott had blown a gasket last night when I’d said I was going running with Evan.
Scott and I considered ourselves engaged, even though no ring had ever been proffered. He was an immigration lawyer at Homeland Security, and he came from an uptight, politically well-connected Southern family. They didn’t blow gaskets in Scott’s family, so his display of temper had come across to me as almost flattering. Making Scott a little jealous was one thing, and not a very classy thing. But I knew it was about more than making an indifferent lover jealous. Scott wasn’t even here to bait, yet I continued to sit, immensely enjoying the feel of Evan’s hands all over my leg. Guilt fluttered at the base of my skull, like a moth trapped in a light.
Evan pulled a couple of bandages out of the bag he’d brought with him.
“Where did you find those?” I peered over at the pavilion he’d just left. Baltimore’s big tourist Mecca was full of overpriced chain restaurants and gift shops. No drugstores in a place like that.
“I went to their first aid station. No big deal.”
He shrugged in that mellow way he had. Everything about Evan as my personal trainer was like that—laid-back, low-key. So unlike the other Evan I came to know later. He ripped open a packet of antibiotic cream and dabbed it all over my knee as I winced.
“That’s what this is for.” He handed me the lemonade. “To take your mind off the pain.”
“I’m sorry I’m being such a girl,” I said.
“I’m not.” His voice sounded uncharacteristically husky. When his eyes tried to meet mine again, I looked away.
“I should go.” I half-rose from the step, his hands still wrapped around my leg.
“Come on. First let me bandage this,” he insisted.
I sat back down. He laid a piece of non-stick gauze against my knee before fixing the big square bandage on top. His hands were broad with long, thick fingers, and they moved with swift confidence, like he’d done this a million times.
“Can you walk okay?” He rose with a lithe, animal grace and offered me his hand. As I took it, I realized I’d never remotely believed he was gay or bi. Except in a couple of really weird fantasies involving him and me and Matt Damon. I shook my head hard, trying to knock those embarrassing images out of my head.
“Does your head hurt?” Evan threw his arm around my shoulders, not in a romantic way, but like he was trying to steady me.
My head did hurt now, mostly because I’d shaken it so hard. I’d almost been able to hear marbles rattling around.
“It’s fine.” I squirmed out of his unexpected embrace.
“Where’s your car?”
Normally I wouldn’t even have my car with me. I can walk to my office from my condo at Harborview and usually do. But I’d driven to a client’s that morning and then left my car in the office parking garage. When I told Evan where I’d parked, he said that was a long walk with a sore leg, which it wasn’t. Then he offered to come with me. I don’t know why I said yes. Okay, I do know why I said yes. But at least I had the dignity to hesitate a bit.
We lumbered down the street side by side in silence.
Evan interrupted my private musings, laying a hand on the middle of my back as he guided me into the garage. We came to a halt in front of a bank of elevators.
I turned to face him. “I’m on the top level. Thanks for walking with me.”
And then I kissed him, just like that—a shy little girl kind of kiss, a geeky peck on the cheek. I slapped a hand over my mouth.
He froze, his golden-brown skin darkening slightly. This would be the moment where he would tell me he had a girlfriend in L.A. or wherever he was from. A girlfriend way prettier than me, who didn’t try to drop barbells on him at the gym or trip over her own shoelaces. He stared at me for the longest two seconds of my life.
“Hey, come on,” I joked. “It wasn’t that bad.”
He gave a peculiar little smirk and turned away, planting his hands on his hips as if he were angry or thinking hard about something. I was fourteen the last time I’d tried to kiss a guy first, and it had gone about as well as this seemed to be going. I looked down at the grimy concrete floor and opened my mouth to apologize.
Evan spun around with a fluidity that startled me. He caught me by the elbow and pulled me close. He pressed his other hand against my neck, so that his fingers were tangled up in my hair and his thumb teased at the corner of my lips. Then he ducked his head down and kissed me, long and hard. My hands slipped around his back as if they were used to going there. I staggered a bit as his tongue slipped into my mouth. When we stopped for breath, he pressed his forehead against mine and sighed.
“That was incredibly unprofessional of me,” he murmured.
He surprised me. I had suspected personal trainers were like tennis pros—that a fair percentage of them were in the job for the extracurricular benefits. I thought about Scott and how angry he’d been last night. He’d implied I was trying to bait Evan, and I’d denied it heatedly. Now here I was proving him correct. I’ve always hated women who try to make their boyfriends jealous.
“I should really go. Now,” I said. The elevator doors opened and I felt a childish tear steal its way down my cheek.
“Hey,” Evan protested softly.
He raised a hand again, as if he wanted to touch me. But then he drew it away, balled it into a tight fist, and clamped his other hand on top.
“I’m sorry,” I babbled. “Scott and I had a fight yesterday, and he left for his business trip in a really bad mood. He was so flustered he even took the wrong damned laptop, which is not like him. He never lets me touch his computer. Barely lets it out of his sight. He’s going to be in such a mess at his meeting in Mexico, and then he’ll be in an even crankier mood when he calls later.”
Behind me, the elevator doors whooshed closed again. Evan’s face twisted, a deep line creasing his brow.
“Do you have the laptop with you?”
Talk about a non sequitur.
“What, when I go jogging I should bring someone else’s computer? Not even my own?”
I laughed but he didn’t. His whole demeanor had changed somehow, like a panther sighting a wounded rabbit.
“Do you have it in your car?” He said it with a weird, disconcerting urgency.
“What do you care?” I was baffled and even a little alarmed. The kiss had obviously rattled us both way more than it should have.
“You know, I need to leave.” I thrust out a hand to keep him at bay and backed up a little. What did I know about him, except he looked hot in a muscle shirt and could probably wrestle me into submission with frighteningly little effort? As I stepped away from him, two silver-haired businessmen approached the elevator and pressed the call button. The doors slid open again.
“Sabrina,” Evan said, lunging toward me. “Wait. I need to tell you something.”
“Please don’t,” I said, backing away.
I positioned myself close to the two, fatherly businessmen, who eyed Evan with suspicious sneers. One of them moved to block the center of the elevator doors. He pushed the “close” button before Evan could follow me.

 

Thirty-Nine Again is available for purchase at:

Amazon Kindle for $1.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!

 

Connect with Lynn Reynolds:

Website: www.lynnreynolds.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/authorlynnreynolds

Filed Under: Chick Lit, Fiction, Finds Under $5, FREE with Prime, Frugal Find of the Day, Romantic Suspense Tagged With: , , ,

Secrets, Lorhainne Eckhart {$0.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!}

May 7, 2013 By Leave a Comment

For Diana, Jed was the first man she trusted. He was the first man to show her what true love was. He was the father of her child, the one man she could always count on. Until one spring day Jed falls from the roof of the barn and Diana’s world as she knows it begins to unravel.

Diana is forced to face two things, her husband’s secrets, and what if… there was no Jed.

What readers are saying:

Captivating, suspenseful, full of emotion and love. Brings a family together in support and compassion. Can’t wait to read more about the Friessen family.

There should be no secrets between husband and wife, Ms. Eckhart does a wonderful job of portraying the emotions felt by a woman who is thrust into this situation.

The current Average Amazon Review Rating is 5 stars {5 reviews}.

Click here to read more about and purchase Secrets for $0.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!

Filed Under: 5 Star Frugal Finds, Fiction, Finds Under $1, FREE with Prime, Romance, Western Tagged With: , , ,

250 Speed Dating Questions – Your Guide to Dating Success, Connor Champion {$3.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!}

May 2, 2013 By Leave a Comment

In this book you will find a fantastic list of really good Speed Dating questions, and you will also find out the best time to ask these questions so that the other person does not feel like they are being interviewed.

You will discover questions that will let you discover more about your dates, their hobbies and interests, their makeup, their personality and what makes them tick.

This book will enable you to establish whether you have any common interests and most importantly if there is chemistry between you and to see if the spark is there – or not!

Armed with this book, your speed dating night is bound to be a success.

It is so much more though – the dating tips and advice in this 20ish page ebook will help you in your quest to be with someone very compatible to you, and ultimately help you succeed in your relationships.

What readers are saying:

Speed Dating can be intimidating but a lot of fun as well. With limited time, the way you present and the questions that you ask are vital. Rather than asking some random boring questions I wanted to get prepared and focus on interesting and revealing conversation starters. With this book I feel ready for the next dating adventure!

This is a good guideline for anyone – male or female – to read. Over and over. Many great questions if you’re out there dating to weed out what you want and don’t want. Also gives many “icebreaker” questions, in case the situation is uncomfortable. I highly recommend it.

Fun read. It made me think about how I would answer some of the questions. Some of the questions were unexpected but funny!

The current Average Amazon Review Rating is 4.1 stars {18 reviews}.

Click here to read more about and purchase 250 Speed Dating Questions – Your Guide to Dating Success for $3.99 or Borrow FREE w/Prime!

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