Stacy Alesi's BookBitch.com™

CENTRALIA by Mike Dellosso

June 14, 2015

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Centralia is an adventure into the surreal with questions and puzzles from beginning to end. The reader is led into a fascinating adventure in which many clues to what is going on are recorded but final answers only at the end.

Peter Ryan awakens one morning with a big question in his mind. He has been told that his wife and daughter were killed in an automobile accident, but suddenly he knows that they are alive. His phone call to a neighbor gives him the information that indeed his wife and daughter are dead, and both Peter and they attended the funeral several months ago. But Peter is now becoming more and more sure that both are alive, and that fact is supported by the discovery of a note from his daughter in her handwriting.

At the same time, his home is broken into by armed men who attempt to kill him. Skills that Peter did not remember having return and he takes out the killers like a professional without knowing where he learned them.

Ryan leaves his home and begins a search for his missing family believing only that they went to Centralia due to information on his daughter’s note. In searching for them he unearths information that leads further into the investigation. There are many twists and turns making the plot one of working within the surreal in order to find answers. The novel is a fast read, keeping the reader locked into it and wondering what is the truth in all of these findings, including who is Peter Ryan and what was his background.

6/14 Paul Lane

CENTRALIA by Mike Dellosso. Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. (May 21, 2015). ISBN: 978-1414390413. 400p.

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SOMETHING ABOUT YOU by Julie James

June 13, 2015

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So as regular readers know, for some reason I rarely start a romance series at the beginning. And Julie James’ FBI/US Attorney series was no exception. I read book 3, About that Night, and loved it. Here’s my review.

Now I’m going back to the beginning and read book 1, Something About You. Actually, I listened to the audiobook, couldn’t find the printed book. Karen White is the reader and she did a great job and I really enjoyed it.

U.S. Attorney Cameron Lynde lives in a big old house that she inherited. The floors need to be redone, so she gives herself a little mini-staycation and checks into a swanky hotel. Much to her surprise, the paper thin walls brings amorous sounds into her bedroom for most of the night, keeping her awake and making her cranky. Things finally calm down, she falls asleep and then it starts over again. Exhausted, she complains to the front desk then watches out the peephole to see what happens.

What she doesn’t expect is that the woman next door has been murdered, and she saw the murderer, or at least his back, as he left the room before the hotel staff arrives – quickly followed by Chicago’s finest and then the FBI. And sadly, the one FBI agent with whom she has history – he thinks she dumped years of his hard work when she wouldn’t take a crime lord to trial, and that she got him transferred out of state for a few years. She thinks he’s an arrogant jerk, albeit a really good looking man. They are not on the best of terms but they are about to become very close – as the only witness, her life is in danger and it is his job to protect her.

This is a great romantic suspense novel. Frankly, the murder mystery is quite secondary to the romance, but it all works brilliantly. A fun and sexy read by one of my new favorite authors.

6/15 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

SOMETHING ABOUT YOU by Julie James. Berkley; First Printing edition (March 2, 2010). ISBN 978-0425233382. 336p.
Audible Audio Edition. Listening Length: 10 hours and 3 minutes. Tantor Audio. Audible.com Release Date: June 29, 2012

3 Comments | Book Reviews, Fiction, Romance | Tagged: Romantic Suspense | Permalink
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CONSTANT FEAR by Daniel Palmer

June 12, 2015

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Jake Dent was a hot prospect for major league baseball when his dream fell apart due to a drunken driving accident. His baseball days were over, and to top off the matter his wife left him and his son Andy to go and find herself. Jake finds some relief in the annals of a popular survival blog and raises Andy also to prepare for the doomsday he foresees is coming. He also obtains employment as a custodian in the prestige private school “Pepperell Academy and manages to enroll Andy in that school and maintain him there due to the employment he has with them.

Andy becomes friendly with a group of four other students that have picked up the practice of pirating small sums of money from very rich people via computer hacking. They then disburse the funds taken to people they deem needy of such charity. Generally the money taken is not missed by the wealthy people they take from, but one such robbery results in getting the huge amount of several hundred million dollars held in the form of bit coins. Unfortunately the amount belongs to a Mexican drug cartel that sends a hit squad to get their money back. These people trace the theft to students at Pepperell and stage a chemical truck spill as a ruse to get to the students that stole the money – the group of five that Andy belongs to.

Jake’s survival training and the cache of weapons and equipment he has stored in tunnels under the school are brought to bear when Andy’s group are taken hostage by the cartel soldiers. It appears likely that the computer group will be killed if they either do or don’t give up the bit coins which are held solely as online deposits.

The novel is fast, engrossing and keeps the reader glued to the book. Palmer presents various twists and turns to arrive at a logical conclusion. A good read and one guaranteed to bring the reader back again and again for books by Daniel Palmer.

6/14 Paul Lane

CONSTANT FEAR by Daniel Palmer. Kensington (May 26, 2015). ISBN: 978-0758293459. 416p.

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LET ME DIE IN HIS FOOTSTEPS by Lori Roy

June 10, 2015

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If a girl looks into a well at midnight on the night of the half birthday between her fifteenth and sixteenth years, she’ll see the face of her intended.

Annie Holleran has always claimed she doesn’t put much stock in the ascension-day tradition, but that doesn’t mean she’s not going to try. Typically a girl would have her friends and family beside her as she looks into the well, and the well she’d be looking into is the one on Sherriff Fulkerson’s land. But Annie isn’t typical. No, Annie has long planned to sneak onto the nearby Baine property to peer into their well all by her lonesome. This in spite of the fact that Annie’s family has a longstanding hatred for anything and anyone Baine.

Unfortunately for Annie her intended is not the one she sees at all. Instead, Annie sees Cora Baine, dead in her garden. And Cora Baine’s death surely means the return of Annie’s Aunt Juna, the one who started all of the Baine trouble. The one who caused a Baine boy to hang for crimes some wonder if he even committed.

Let Me Die In His Footsteps is a dual narrative that alternates between 1952 and 1936. Annie, in 1952, lives with the knowledge that her birth mother is none other than the notorious Juna Crowley. It’s not something she’s ever been officially told, but it’s something she knows nonetheless. Annie’s mother, Sarah, narrates the story two decades prior, telling the terrible tale that led to Annie’s birth and the hanging of one of the town’s own.

At heart, Let Me Die In His Foosteps is a mystery – what happened to Juna, was the Baine boy really responsible, and why is everyone so scared of Juna’s return – but the book as a whole is so much more. It’s a story of secrets and tragedy, folklore and magic, community and – ultimately – family.

6/15 Becky LeJeune

LET ME DIE IN HIS FOOTSTEPS by Lori Roy. Dutton (June 2, 2015). ISBN 978-0525955078. 336p.

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MEMORY MAN by David Baldacci

June 9, 2015

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Amos Decker series
David Baldacci introduces another protagonist into his very wide field of principal characters. Meet Amos Decker, a man who has had his taste of personal glory and lost it.

He began as an athlete with a promising career in football. Unfortunately, on the very first play in the first pro game he played he was knocked out by a vicious block from a member of the opposing team. As a result, he was no longer physically able to continue in pro football, but as recompense he found that he strangely remembers everything that happens to him; what is termed an eidetic or photographic memory.

Amos becomes a police officer and then a detective, using his talent as a means of solving cases. Unfortunately, a second incident occurs about two decades after his football injury, which changes his life forever.

Returning home one evening, he comes upon the horror of finding his wife, daughter and brother-in-law brutally murdered. Decker’s world collapses; he leaves the police force, loses his house and ends up living on the street, taking private detective jobs when he can to keep his head above water. His eidetic memory continues to keep the discovery of his slaughtered family fresh on his mind, living with the knowledge that after a year no clues have been found.

A year after the killing, a man comes into the police station and confesses to the crime. At the same time the city where he lives experiences a horrific crime. Amos is called in to help with both incidents by the police department he had worked for.

At this point, the reader will be treated to an Arthur Conan Doyle/Sherlock Holmes type scenario where Amos builds up to solving the cases by logic. One bit of accrued knowledge after another builds towards the solutions and allows Amos to work out the details which will solve the mysteries.

Baldacci has created another interesting protagonist to utilize to full effect in his books.

6/14 Paul Lane

MEMORY MAN by David Baldacci. Grand Central Publishing; First Edition / First Printing edition (April 21, 2015). ISBN: 978-1455559824. 416p.

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Guest Blogger: Laura Dave

June 8, 2015

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I am delighted to welcome guest blogger Laura Dave. Her new novel, Eight Hundred Grapes, is the top Library Reads pick for June. Read on to see what Laura has to say, and to find out how you can win your own copy.

Bringing A Little Wine Country Home With You

In my new novel, EIGHT HUNDRED GRAPES, Georgia Ford finds out a devastating secret about her fiancé’s double life the week before their wedding. She flees to her family’s vineyard in Sonoma County seeking refuge.

One of the nicest compliments I’ve received about the novel is that it makes people wish they could hop a flight to Wine Country for a little refuge of their own. But, if a weekend getaway isn’t in the immediate cards, I thought it would be fun to bring a little wine country to you.

Here’s what you’ll need for a great wine country evening in the comfort of your own home.

A Trio of Great Wine

Wine tasting is the name of the game in Napa Valley and Sonoma County. Usually a tasting involves small pours of several delicious wines. For your tasting, you want to make sure to drink the wines in the right order, starting with the lighter whites and moving into he heavier red, so you can appreciate all three.

To that end, I created a sample wine pairing for you that will elevate any wine country evening—and, most importantly, it will do so without breaking the bank. http://tinyurl.com/oc28g2u

Great food pairing

Wine is meant to be enjoyed with food. If you pair it well, the wine complements the exotic tastes of what you’re feasting on, and the food helps the wine open up on your palate.

For your wine country evening, it’s fun to prepare tapas—in order to give each wine you’re drinking it’s own course.

For the prosecco, you want to think crisp and spicy. A citrus salad with a warm vinaigrette would work beautifully as would roasted almonds with fresh herbs.

For the chardonnay (or whatever yummy white you have on hand), pair it with a fresh and quick shrimp cocktail, or a creamy garlic pasta.

For the zinfandel, you want to get creative with something heavier and richer, like a spicy burger. A charcuterie plate would also be a lovely (and painless) way to end your meal.

Dining Al Fresco

The other key your wine country eve is to enjoy it outside. Serve your wine and your treats on your front steps or in your backyard. Light some candles. And make sure to relax on the porch afterwards with your last glass of wine, a gorgeous sunset and your copy of EIGHT HUNDRED GRAPES—which will transport you the rest of the way to gorgeous Sonoma County.

About the book

As any good book club knows, nothing pairs with a great read like a terrific glass of wine. This is especially true when the novel is set against the lush backdrop of California’s wine country.

The breakout new novel from bestselling author Laura Dave is a heartbreaking, funny, and deeply evocative book about love, marriage, family, wine, and the treacherous terrain in which they all intersect.

The story opens on Georgia Ford, who is a week away from her wedding when she discovers that her perfect, British fiancée has been keeping a devastating secret. So she does what she has always done in times of trouble: she flees to her family’s Sonoma vineyard, hoping to find comfort and escape in the familiar routines of the grape harvest. When she arrives, she finds things are anything but routine.

Dave’s story moves seamlessly from the present to the Ford family past, revealing how Georgia’s formidable parents fell in love, founded The Last Straw Vineyard, raised their children and ultimately, drifted apart, arriving at a place where they would consider leaving behind their legacy—and each other. As Georgia attempts to fix her family’s problems, she realizes that all is not what it seems, and sometimes you have to let go of the way things are.

Eight Hundred Grapes is the perfect companion for one of those quiet summer afternoons spent reading on the porch with a glass (or two) of a bright, chilled white (Laura recommends a Sauvignon Blanc from Napa Valley’s Duckhorn Vineyards).

About the author

Laura Dave is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The First Husband, The Divorce Party, London Is The Best City In America, and the forthcoming Eight Hundred Grapes. Dave’s fiction and essays have been published in The New York Times, ESPN, Redbook, Glamour and Ladies Home Journal.

Dubbed “a wry observer of modern love” (USA Today), Dave has appeared on CBS’s The Early Show, Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends and NPR’s All Things Considered. Cosmopolitan Magazine recently named her a “Fun and Fearless Phenom of the Year.”

Three of her novels have been optioned for the big screen with Dave adapting Eight Hundred Grapes for Fox2000.

Laura reveals the secret to the Ford family’s legendary lasagna

Joy in a Glass: A special wine pairing for Eight Hundred Grapes

Reading Group Guide

To win your own copy of EIGHT HUNDRED GRAPES by Laura Dave, please send an email to contest@gmail.com with “800 GRAPES” as the subject.

You must include your U.S. street address in your email.

All entries must be received by May 30, 2015. One (1) name will be drawn from all qualified entries and notified via email. This contest is open to all adults over 18 years of age in the United States only. Your prize will be sent by the publicist.

One entry per email address. Subscribers to the monthly newsletter earn an extra entry into every contest. Follow this blog to earn another entry into every contest. Winners may win only one time per year (365 days) for contests with prizes of more than one book. Your email address will not be shared or sold to anyone.

EIGHT HUNDRED GRAPES by Laura Dave. Simon & Schuster (June 2, 2015.) ISBN 978-1476789255. 272p.

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WHEN WE WERE ANIMALS by Joshua Gaylord

June 7, 2015

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Lumen Fowler led a fairly normal life as a child. At least that’s what she’d like everyone to believe now that she’s an adult. Now that she’s left that tiny town she grew up in, and the name she was born with, behind.

Her mother died early on, leaving Lumen and her father alone together. Theirs was a loving relationship until the winter of Lumen’s fifteenth year when she went breach. All of the teens in Lumen’s town did it – breached that is – usually around the time they hit puberty. Lumen’s dad did it, but her mom was different and Lumen always thought she would be as well. Now, as an adult looking back on that time of her life, Lumen still feels like part of her will be forever different from everyone around her. Like she’ll never be able to truly escape the past she’s tried so hard to outgrow.

Gaylord, who also writes as Arden Bell, delivers a bizarre and eerie tale in When We Were Animals. The story explores the various hormonal confusions of puberty – with an extra animalistic twist – and the messy emotions of teenage life, as well as the lingering questions of identity and fitting in that follow undoubtedly everyone into adulthood.

There are a lot of questions that are never answered in the book, the most maddening being the reason behind the town’s teens going breach in the first place. Lumen and her journey/experiences are the focus of the tale but even she spends a good amount of the story trying to discover the truth behind the trend.

Unresolved issues aside, Gaylord’s latest is an engaging, almost hypnotic, read and one that will appeal to fans of fiction that’s goes a bit beyond the boundaries of easily categorized genre fiction.

6/15 Becky LeJeune

WHEN WE WERE ANIMALS by Joshua Gaylord. Mulholland Books (April 21, 2015). ISBN 978-0316297936. 336p.

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THE FATEFUL LIGHTNING by Jeff Shaara

June 6, 2015

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A Novel of the Civil War

With the writing of The Fateful Lightning, Jeff Shaara brings to a conclusion his monumental work about the Civil War in the West.

The book follows the style of the preceding presentations in the series. It is painstakingly researched and documented. Studied examinations via writings, written accounts and third person descriptions of a select group of participants bring them to life for the reader. Using literary license based on careful study, thoughts, conversations and opinions read, conversations and remarks of the characters involved allow supposed dialogs to be attributed to the leading protagonists presented as pivotal to the story told.

The book opens as the city of Atlanta is captured by union forces, burned and creates a departure point for General William T. Sherman’s famous march to the sea. In the eight months covered by the book there are no major battles fought, but a long series of skirmishes between the opposing forces that push the Confederacy back and lead to their ultimate surrender.

Leading characters involved and followed in the narrative go from General Sherman, who was second to Ulysses S. Grant commanding the Union armies, to General Joseph Johnston, Confederate general who agonized over the need to surrender to Sherman in order to avoid further unnecessary bloodshed. The adventures of a slave freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, named only Franklin, are included, indicating his need to follow Sherman’s army in order to eat and find protection.

Franklin’s adventures are chronicled in later reports about him, indicating that this man actually lived and experienced the trauma of becoming a free man and finding a place in society for himself and his wife.

Shaara’s disdain for the Southern president Jefferson Davis and his inability to recognize talent is evident in the blame placed on him for his major contribution to the defeat of the Confederacy. The normally accepted surrender by Robert E. Lee to Ulysses Grant is shown to be just the first surrender of a southern army. Sherman and Johnston’s later dialogs and decisions regarding surrender are considered by Shaara to be of greater import than the short meeting between Grant and Lee.

The attempt by the Union’s Secretary of War to impose harsher sanctions on the south and Sherman’s fight to retain the original conditions met in the surrender at Appomattox courthouse are an obstacle not covered by most historians.

A brilliantly conceived and written series of historical works delineating the agonizing conflict of Americans against Americans is brought to a satisfying conclusion by The Fateful Lightning. One wonders if Shaara can find the proper field to bring forth his next book. I hope that his energy level will permit this to be done in the near future.

6/14 Paul Lane

THE FATEFUL LIGHTNING by Jeff Shaara. Ballantine Books (June 2, 2015). ISBN: 978-0345549198. 640p.

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Guest Blogger: Debbie Howells

June 5, 2015

“An intriguing dark psychological thriller—truly brilliant!” –Lisa Jackson

A stunning, wonderfully assured psychological thriller that evokes Gillian Flynn and Alice Sebold, The Bones of You revolves around a young girl’s murder and one woman’s obsession with uncovering the secrets in an idyllic English village.

I have a gardener’s inherent belief in the natural order of things. Soft‑petalled flowers that go to seed. The resolute passage of the seasons. Swallows that fly thousands of miles to follow the eternal summer.

Children who don’t die before their parents.

When Kate receives a phone call with news that Rosie Anderson is missing, she’s stunned and disturbed. Rosie is eighteen, the same age as Kate’s daughter, and a beautiful, quiet, and kind young woman. Though the locals are optimistic—girls like Rosie don’t get into real trouble—Kate’s sense of foreboding is confirmed when Rosie is found fatally beaten and stabbed.

Who would kill the perfect daughter, from the perfect family? Yet the more Kate entwines herself with the Andersons—graceful mother Jo, renowned journalist father Neal, watchful younger sister Delphine—the more she is convinced that not everything is as it seems. Anonymous notes arrive, urging Kate to unravel the tangled threads of Rosie’s life and death, though she has no idea where they will lead.

Weaving flashbacks from Rosie’s perspective into a tautly plotted narrative,The Bones of You is a gripping, haunting novel of sacrifices and lies, desperation and love.

Win this fabulous gift basket – Enter here between June 1 & July 1 or click on picture to enter

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NIGHT TREMORS by Matt Coyle

June 4, 2015

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Matt Coyle introduced Rick Cahill in a previous book (the Anthony Award-winning Yesterday’s Echo.) Rick was a police detective when he was hit with the double whammy of the murder of his wife, and the accusation of his own guilt and arrest for the crime. He was released without explanation but due to the adverse publicity surrounding the murder and the suspicion of his guilt had to leave the area and relocate to another city.

Night Tremors takes up Rick’s life two years later at which time he is working for a firm of private detectives and devoting his time to providing proof of infidelity about a wife or husband for the other partner in a marriage. He is good at locating the evidence, but it is not the police work that he loved prior to the stain of suspicion in his wife’s murder that prevents returning to that career.

He is approached by an old nemesis of his to look into the case of an individual currently in prison for murder, to help exonerate that man for the crime. Rick jumps at the chance to do some real police work and takes a vacation from the firm he is working for in order to handle the investigation.

His inquiries take him from the wealthy enclaves of La Jolla to the dangerous areas of San Diego. He draws the ire of the police chief who tried to put him away for the murder of his wife, endangers his job, and causes a biker gang to try and stop him from investigating the murder committed by the imprisoned man.

The reader is pulled along by a writing style that is fast and crisp throughout the actual investigation. A logical, but not telegraphed ending, is the reward for enjoying the book and does set up additional novels about Rick Cahill. Very well done and and a novel that will keep the reader glued to the pages.

6/14 Paul Lane

NIGHT TREMORS by Matt Coyle. Oceanview Publishing (June 2, 2015). ISBN: 978-1608091492. 330p.

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