The Year of Mysterious Giveaways: May

I am very excited this month to give away this new mystery. For those of you who have followed my blog before, you know how big of fan I am of Sandra Brannan. She was one of the authors I met last year the Book Blogger Convention. I read her first mystery novel, In the Belly of Jonah, on the plane ride home and I lOVED it!

I was lucky enough to kick off her blog tour last September for its release and I am lucky and honored to be here giving away an ARC of her second book in this series starring Liv Bergen.

I started this book right when I got it but I wanted to save it for my plane ride to NYC and have it fresh in my mind when I see Sandra again! She will be at the Book Blogger Convention again this year and she was kind enough to offer to take me to dinner in thanks! Can't wait!

Here is the description from Amazon. The book is out in June and I hope to have more to give away at that time and do other fun posts about it and about her!

The Annual sturgis Motorcycle Rally is no place for buttoned-down citizens - unless, of course, they are trying to hide a murder or two. In this second book in the eponymous series, Liv Bergen is back with a vengeance - a righteous one. The gutsy, sharp-witted amateur sleuth pulls out all the stops as she solves the murder of her brother Jens' fiancee, Michelle, and clears his name. As it turns out, more than one person in Liv's sleepy hometown wanted Michelle dead. A trail of clues leads Liv through the Black Hills, where she encounters half a million hardcore bikers and sideline gawkers - many clad in nothing but black leather thongs and bikinis - who have turned the place into a sodomitical playground saturated in booze. Further complicating matters, Liv is an eyewitness to a second homicide, which calls down upon her the uninvited attentions of the men- acing leader of a biker gang called Lucifer's Lot. The cat-and-mouse game that ensues puts Liv in the path of her admirer Streeter Pierce, who has gone undercover with a fellow FBI agent to find both Michelle's murderer and a perp the agency calls the Crooked Man. Liv taps every ounce of brains and brawn she has to avoid becoming the killer's next victim, which wins her the further respect of Streeter. By the end of "Lot's Return to Sodom", Streeter has shown his admiration for Liv by giving her Beulah, an FBI bloodhound who is certain to help them track down the still-at-large Crooked Man in book three.

Here is my review of In the Belly of Jonah if you are new to it.

Contest Rules:

* Please be a follower of my blog.

*Please reside in the United States.

*Please leave an email address

* Let me know if you have read In the Belly of Jonah

Contest runs May 3- May 31

Happy reading and as always, thanks for stopping by!

red headed book child

The Year of Mysterious Giveaways:April Winner!

I am a few days late for announcing the winner.

So sorry!

Thank you to all for entering for last month! Stay tuned for this month's giveaway!

Our winner is Jenny from Take me Away!

Happy Reading and as always, thanks for stopping by!

red headed book child

I'm doomed.

Like I need more books, right? I'm doomed.

Tomorrow is the annual Ladies Auxillary Book Sale in my hometown. The ENTIRE ice arena is filled with tables of books. Tomorrow is the last day and for the morning from 8-12 it is only $4 for a bag. A BAG! After 12, it is free! FREE!

Why does this happen one month before BEA?

This event is fun and stressful at the same time. I get excited and continue filling up bags. Last year I agreed on ONE bag. I got FOUR.

Oh well...this is my destiny. To live surrounded my books that I may never read. Reading From My Shelves Project be damned.

sigh.

red headed book child

Wrecker by Summer Wood (review #120)

Wrecker by Summer Wood

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Genre: Fiction

What an extraordinary novel. I am so glad I signed on to do this tour. Before I go any further here is a description from the TLC Book Tour website.

After foster-parenting four young siblings a decade ago, Summer Wood tried to imagine a place where kids who are left alone or taken from their families would find the love and the family they deserve. For her, fiction was the tool to realize that world, and Wrecker, the central character in her second novel, is the abandoned child for whom life turns around in most unexpected ways. It’s June of 1965 when Wrecker enters the world. The war is raging in Vietnam, San Francisco is tripping toward flower power, and Lisa Fay, Wrecker’s birth mother, is knocked nearly sideways by life as a single parent in a city she can barely manage to navigate on her own. Three years later, she’s in prison, and Wrecker is left to bounce around in the system before he’s shipped off to live with distant relatives in the wilds of Humboldt County, California. When he arrives he’s scared and angry, exploding at the least thing, and quick to flee. Wrecker is the story of this boy and the motley group of isolated eccentrics who come together to raise him and become a family along the way.

This book had a feel to it that everything and nothing happened at the same time. Even though it spanned over 15 years, there was such a simplicity to the way the story was written. It wasn't a traumatic event one after the other, it just seemed that it was life; Wrecker's life. You take it. You leave it. You move on. Each character was touched on a bit and each got their moment in the sun, so to speak. I felt for each of them; Ruth's quirkiness, Melody's need for love, Willow's distance, Johnny's activism and Len's sorrow.

Their link was their love for Wrecker.

I especially felt for Wrecker. I just adored this character from the tough little 3 year old he starts out as to a smart, matter-of-fact, kind adult.

As a mother, this hit home. Summer Wood portrayed a unique blend of family. She carved out her own definition. I liked that Wrecker's biological mother, while in prison, was still very much his mother and not portrayed as a dead beat. She was a young woman who made a mistake and paid for it for 15 years away from her son.

They each cared for Wrecker in their own way and always knew the day would come when his mother would find him. The ending is quite simply life, as it happens; knowing, bittersweet and uneventful.

Review: 6/6

I highly recommend this book. It may not be for everyone but it hit home for me being a mother and putting such importance on family and caring for my child. It was a unique tale filled with a cast of eccentric yet heartwarming characters. It reads quick and when finished I was left a little sad that their story had ended. Summer Wood is a fresh voice in fiction and one I would read again.

Book Club Pick?

Yes. I think the core message here is that you create your own definition of family. That alone would get MY book club buzzing!

Don't miss the other stops on the tour:

Monday, April 18th: Scraps of Life

Tuesday, April 19th: Musings of an All Purpose Monkey

Thursday, April 21st: Book Club Classics!

Friday, April 22nd: Bloggin’ ‘Bout Books

Monday, April 25th: In the Next Room

Tuesday, April 26th: Life in Review

Wednesday, April 27th: Boarding in my Forties

Thursday, April 28th: Red Headed Book Child

Monday, May 2nd: Joyfully Retired

Thursday, May 5th: Rundpinne

Monday, May 9th: Caribousmom

Tuesday, May 10th: Amused by Books

Wednesday, May 11th: I’m Booking It

Author Website:

Summer Wood writes

The publisher has been kind enough to give away one copy of Wrecker to one of my readers. Please leave an email address and reside in the United States please.

Giveaway ends May 5.

Happy reading and as always, thanks for stopping by!

red headed book child

Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay (review #119)

Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Genre: Fiction

TLC BOOK TOUR

This book was on my TBR shelf from the first moment I saw this cover. I am a cover junkie and I just think this one is absolutely beautiful. I was excited to be on the blog tour for this.

Here is a synopsis from the TLC Book Tour site:

When Nina Revskaya puts her remarkable jewelry collection up for auction, the former Bolshoi Ballet star finds herself overwhelmed by memories of her homeland, and of the events, both glorious and heartbreaking, that changed her life half a century earlier. It was in Russia that she discovered the magic of dance and fell in love, and where, faced with Stalinist aggression, a terrible discovery incited a deadly act of betrayal—and an ingenious escape to the West.

Nina has kept her secrets for half a lifetime. But now Drew Brooks, an inquisitive associate at a Boston auction house, and Grigori Solodin, a professor who believes Nina’s jewels hold the key to unlocking his past, begin to unravel her story—setting in motion a series of revelations that will have life-altering consequences for them all.

From the very beginning of this book, there is a feeling of intrigue, a suspense that something has happened and there are secrets that have been buried. I always enjoy that mystique in books especially when it is written well. Kalotay did just that. She intricately laid out the stories of the central characters; Nina, Drew and Grigori. Weaving back and forth in time, you follow Nina in her rise to a successful Ballerina in the Bolshoi Ballet. Since having seen Black Swan, I am ever more intrigued with the art and sport of ballet. It was interesting to read about the lives of these performers especially during such turbulent times in Soviet Russia.

I am not familiar much with the history of Soviet Russia and this novel introduced me to the terrors and the hardships of that time. On the other extreme, it was lovely to read about Boston and reminisce about my time living there.

There are some books that leave you with nothing to say and others that leave you with words flying from your fingertips as you type. This one leaves me with a bit of both. It was a well written novel, impressive for a debut and obviously well researched. You could feel the passion that the author had for this story and for the characters. The author's note and Q&A at the back of the book are fascinating to read and hearing the inspirations and work behind this novel make it even better.

Review: 5/6

If you are looking for a rich, involved, passionate, layered story of love, loss and intrigue, pick this up. It takes some time. You have to pay attention to the details, for the story goes back and forth in time. Perhaps not the best for a beach read for the summer but more so a rainy spring evening.

Book Club Pick?

Yes, this would be a good choice. There are so many things going on in this book that there would be plenty to discuss; the politics of Soviet Russia, the oppression, the lack of support for the arts, the world of Auction Houses and the value of jewelry.

Author Website:

Daphne Kalotay

Other Stops on this Tour:

Tuesday, April 5th: Library Queue

Wednesday, April 6th: Luxury Reading

Thursday, April 7th: nomadreader

Monday, April 11th: A Few More Pages

Thursday, April 14th: We Be Reading

Tuesday, April 19th: Books Like Breathing

Tuesday, April 19th: Chefdruck Musings

Thursday, April 21st: Book Addiction

Monday, April 25th: red headed book child

Tuesday, April 26th: Red Lady’s Reading Room

Wednesday, April 27th: Bloggin’ ‘Bout Books

Thursday, April 28th: Calico Critic

Friday, April 29th: Wordsmithonia

Monday, May 2nd: Historical Tapestry

Tuesday, May 3rd: Man of La Book

Wednesday, May 4th: In the Next Room

Thursday, May 5th: Life in the Thumb

Friday, May 6th: she reads and reads

Happy reading and as always, thanks for stopping by!

red headed book child

Hey, You Wrote a Book!

It's always lovely to meet authors that you enjoy reading but it's also quite lovely to have worked with a person who is now an author. Jessie Chandler is a former bookseller colleague of mine. We traveled in the same book selling circles for many years and I even attended a training session that she taught back in the day.

Well, turns out she has been very busy and now is a mystery author!

I went to my Sunday morning bookstore gig last week and my manager asked if I remembered her. I said, "Sure do!" and was quickly led to her book on our local author table.

How cool is that?

Well, when I got home I emailed Jessie and congratulated her and caught up. When I told her I had a book review site, she offered to send me a copy to read and review at my leisure.

Well, I can't pass that up, especially if it's a mystery!

So here it is folks, Bingo Barge Murder -Book 1 in the Shay O'Hanlon mystery. series

(description from author's website)

Shay O'Hanlon is a Minneapolis coffee shop co-owner whose life revolves around her work. Her best friend, Nicholas "Coop" Cooper is a vegetarian tree hugger who wouldn't hurt a fly. He works on a moored bingo barge on the Mississippi River. Coop has words with his boss, Stanley "Kinky" Anderson, and the talk ends with Kinky telling Coop, "You're fired!"

The next day Kinky is found dead in the bingo barge office, his head smashed in by a bronzed bingo dauber. Coop runs to Shay for help. They enlist the aid of Shay's mother-figure, Edwina "Eddy" Quartermaine, who's a 60-something, hip, lovable woman (also the owner of the Victorian house in Uptown where Shay's coffee shop is located).

After breaking into the barge to look for clues to who really bashed Kinky's head in, Eddy is kidnapped, and craziness ensues. Shay and Coop must locate a missing truckload of nuts and return it to two bumbling mobsters or they'll feed Eddy to the fish. During the search for these missing nuts, Shay and Coop do some additional breaking and entering, discover another dead body, acquire a Boxer dog named Dawg, and try to dodge JT, the Minneapolis detective working Kinky's murder case.

Will they succeed in their quest to clear Coop and nail the murderer? Or will their madcap inexperience doom Eddy forever?

Sounds like a lot of fun!

My review is to come since I just got it in the mail yesterday.

I am excited to stop by her book release party at Once Upon a Crime Mystery bookstore in Minneapolis on May 19.

It's so much fun to support local authors and it's even more fun to support the ones you know!

I hope you check her out.

Author Website:

Jessie Chandler

Happy Reading and as always, thanks for stopping by!

red headed book child

Coming Soon: A Lisa Lutz near you

Lisa Lutz is here. In my town. Minneapolis. Holy Crap!

Will I see her? You bet your pants I will!

Tonight at Once Upon A Crime Mystery Bookstore, she will be there with David Hayward to promote their book, Heads you Lose. NOT a Spellman book but funny still. I am only a few pages in and it is ripe with her humor!

I'm so excited! I hope I don't trip over myself in my nerdy fan glory.

More later.

Happy Reading and as always, thanks for stopping by!

red headed book child