Highlight: Creating an Ideal Life by Janet Delee

When her career runs aground during the recession, baby boomer Ginny Lawther decides to reboot her life with a leap of faith and systematically sets out to make a long-cherished dream come true.

Highlight: Take Mum Out by Fiona Gibson

“What do you need a boyfriend for? You’re a mum.”

Fiona Gibson returns with a laugh-out-loud read, sharply observed and full of dating disasters.

Three blind dates
Two teenage boys messing up her plans
And one man who'll melt Alice's heart.

'You need to get back in the saddle…' Alice despises that phrase. She's fine being single – with two slothful teenage boys and a meringue business to run, she has enough on her plate without negotiating the troublesome world of modern dating.

However, Alice's three best friends have other ideas. Each one will present her with an utterly delicious, eligible man – all Alice has to do is pick her favourite.

Perfect for fans of Tracy Bloom, Kate Long and Tess Stimson.

Fiona is an author and journalist who has written for many UK publications including The Observer, The Guardian, Marie Claire, Red, New Woman, Top Sante and Elle. She writes a monthly column for Sainsbury’s magazine and is a Contributing Editor at Red magazine.

Fiona lives in Scotland with her husband, their twin sons and daughter. She likes to draw, run 10k races, play her saxophone and lie in the bath with a big glass of wine, although not all at once. 

Highlight: Brain The Man Who Wrote the Book That Changed the World by Dermot Davis

"...an entertaining farce about modern society, a deft, fast-paced tale that will leave self-aware readers giggling." - Publishers Weekly
"...ironic, iconoclastic, and pure entertainment from first page to last." - The Midwest Book Review
"...full of odd metaphors, literary allusions, and hilarious coincidences... pure fun for the reader." - San Francisco Book Review

It's the classic dilemma of the artist: Do you write what's in your heart or do you write what sells? In this modern age of publishing there is a huge chasm between the best selling authors that are rich beyond their dreams and... well, everybody else. All Daniel Waterstone ever wanted to do was write the great American novel and change the landscape of modern literature forever. He has two literary books in print but no one's buying. His agent won't even accept his latest masterpiece which he poured his soul into: apparently, it's not commercial enough. In a final act of desperation, Daniel decides to write - not what's in his heart but - what he thinks will sell. Boy, did he get that one wrong...
worst of all, most likely lose the woman of his dreams.

Dermot is an Irish writer now living in the US. As a playwright, Dermot is a recipient of the O.Z. Whitehead Award which was co-sponsored by Irish Pen and the Society of Irish Playwrights. A fictional account of a dream therapist who is stuck in a dream from which he cannot awaken, with his debut novel, ""Stormy Weather," novelist Dermot Davis has deftly crafted a minor literary masterpiece," (Midwest Book Review). 

His second novel, "Zen and Sex," is a witty and ironic first-person look at love and relationships as seen from the confused eyes of twenty-four-year old Martin who falls in love with Frances, a woman fourteen years his senior. Winner of two indie author awards and perhaps because it provides a no-holds-barred look into the mind of a man and his uncensored thoughts, it was suggested by the Kindle Book Review that, "every woman should read it as marriage counseling."

Winner of the 2013 USA Best Book Awards for humor, Dermot's third novel, "Brain: The Man That Wrote the Book That Changed the World," is "an entertaining farce about modern society; a deft, fast-paced tale that will leave self-aware readers giggling," (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Coming "Highly Recommended" by the Midwest Book Review, who also called it, "ironic, iconoclastic and pure entertainment from first page to last," the book poses the question of whether an author should write from the heart or write only books that he thinks will sell. I suspect that this novelist is trying to do both...

SheReads Blog Network: Review: Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen

I am part of the amazing SheReads Blog Network! Which means that I am fortunate enough to partner with some of the most savvy, talented, and intelligent book bloggers in the business. Every month we wonderful women read our selections and review them on our personal sites. We are kind and witty and love books more than air. We would love for you to visit each of us online and follow us on our blogs, Facebook and Twitter. You don’t want to miss all the book goodness we have to offer! 

THIS MONTH'S SELECTION:

From the New York Times bestselling author of Garden Spellscomes a novel about heartbroken people finding hope at a magical place in Georgia called Lost Lake.

Suley, Georgia, is home to Lost Lake Cottages and not much else. Which is why it's the perfect place for newly-widowed Kate and her eccentric eight-year-old daughter Devin to heal. Kate spent one memorable childhood summer at Lost Lake, had her first almost-kiss at Lost Lake, and met a boy named Wes at Lost Lake. It was a place for dreaming. But Kate doesn't believe in dreams anymore, and her Aunt Eby, Lost Lake's owner, wants to sell the place and move on. Lost Lake's magic is gone. As Kate discovers that time has a way of standing still at Lost Lake can she bring the cottages—and her heart—back to life? Because sometimes the things you love have a funny way of turning up again. And sometimes you never even know they were lost . . . until they are found.

There is so much going on in Lost Lake. It is a story about finding happiness after overcoming what seems like insurmountable loss. It is about how you can be awakened after sleepwalking through your days. It is about looking back in order to move forward. With an original and engaging story, Lost Lake brings together very different characters, from very different backgrounds. Each character has a defined voice and interesting story. It is this diversity of characters that helps save what is really important and to find things you may have never even known you lost. 4 stars. Favorite Quotes from LOST LAKE: ~"She knew him in a way you can only know a person you remember as a child, like if you cracked away the adult shell, you'd find that child happily sitting inside smiling at you." page 110 ~"But relying on one person for your every need is so dangerous.  One set of hands isn't enough to keep you from falling." page 132 ~"She understood that the hardest times in life to go through were when you were transitioning from one version of yourself to another."  page 136 ~"Eby knew all too well that there was a fine line when it came to grief.  If you ignore it, it goes away, but then always comes back when you least expect it.  If you let it stay, if you make a place for it in your life, it gets too comfortanble and it never leaves.  It was best to treat grief like a guest.  You acknowledge it, you cater to it, then you send it on its way."  page 154 ~"When your cup is empty, you do not mourn what is gone.  Because if you do, you will miss the opportunity to fill it again." page 284   ************************************************************

New York Times Bestselling novelist Sarah Addison Allen brings the full flavor of her southern upbringing to bear on her fiction -- a captivating blend of magical realism, heartwarming romance, and small-town sensibility.

Born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Allen grew up with a love of books and an appreciation of good food (she credits her journalist father for the former and her mother, a fabulous cook, for the latter). In college, she majored in literature -- because, as she puts it, "I thought it was amazing that I could get a diploma just for reading fiction. It was like being able to major in eating chocolate." 

After graduation, Allen began writing seriously. Her big break occurred in 2007 with the publication of her first mainstream novel, Garden Spells, a modern-day fairy tale about an enchanted apple tree and the family of North Carolina women who tend it. Booklist called Allen's accomplished debut "spellbindingly charming." The novel became a Barnes & Noble Recommends selection, and then a New York Times Bestseller.

Allen continues to serve heaping helpings of the fantastic and the familiar in fiction she describes as "Southern-fried magic realism." Clearly, it's a recipe readers are happy to eat up as fast as she can dish it out.

Her published books to date are: Garden Spells (2007), The Sugar Queen (2008), The Girl Who Chased the Moon (2010), The Peach Keeper (2011) and the upcoming Lost Lake, to be published January 21, 2014.

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Highlight: The Good Enough Husband by Sylvie Fox

What would you do if you met your soul mate, but you were already married? 

In The Good Enough Husband, Sylvie Fox delivers a riveting story about a woman who refuses to let her past define her future.

For years, Hannah Morrison Keesling’s marriage to Michael was good enough. Then she wakes up one morning and it isn’t. Taking her puppy Cody along, Hannah drives north to put distance between herself and her past. Planning to go as far as her SUV will take her, she has to stop on the Lost Coast when her dog gets sick. There she meets small town veterinarian Ben Cooper.

Ben is the man Hannah wishes she had met first. He’s perfect for her, but gun shy because he’s been lied to before and vows not to be betrayed again. Hannah leaves Michael and moves to Ben’s rural town to pursue a future with the man she knows is her soul mate. But Michael won’t let go so easily. Forced to make a decision between the man she chose and the man she loves, Hannah soon realizes that her choices will define everyone else’s consequences.

Sylvie Fox writes spicy contemporary romance featuring quirky characters, and emotionally driven women’s fiction about ordinary women facing extraordinary challenges.

She lives in Los Angeles, California with her husband, son, and a menagerie of pet rescues. In spite of her decade in Hollywood, she’s never been on television or in a movie, but avoids the paparazzi like the plague. When she is not in LA, Sylvie is eating her way through Budapest. 
Sylvie loves to connect with readers at sylviefox.com She can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

I blog at TheKeeperShelf

CLP Blog Tour: Loves Bites by Adrienne Barbeau

NOT YOUR MAMA’S POLICE PROCEDURAL! A COP STORY WITH BITE… 

Not to mention sharp, cutting wit. Detective Peter King and movie star Ovsanna Moore are the sexiest tongue-in-cheek crime-solving duo since MOONLIGHTINGhit the air waves in the ‘80s. But they may remind you more of TRUE BLOOD’s Sookie and Eric than Maddie and David—because one of them’s a vampire. And like Sookie’s Bon Temps, their Los Angeles has its fair share of shapeshifting sometime-humans. 

Ovsanna’s the successful owner of her own Hollywood film studio and the star of 17 blockbuster horror films, plus three, sadly, that went straight to video. But even vampires have bad days. Though never fat days or bad hair days—she looks pretty great for 450. And in those four and a half centuries she’s pretty much seen everything, formed an opinion about it, and developed the kind of worldly-wise wit Joan Rivers only dreams about. 

Peter, on the other hand, is a Beverly Hills cop firmly rooted in human affairs, from the domestic issues of his lively Italian family to the romantic ones of his neighbor, snake dancer Suzie Q. Though Ovsanna’s had flings with everyone from Genghis Khan to Errol Flynn, Peter’s got what it takes to catch her eye and hold her interest. And he’s one hell of a detective. He's also a consummate master of spin, concealing what he knows about the world of vampires, werewolves, and shapeshifters while solving the crimes they commit. 

Barbeau, a beloved actress much like Ovsanna herself, is a skilled satirist possessed of a sharp eye for the absurdity of Hollywood, with its petty jealousies, vain ambitions, over-the-top visuals, and twisted values. The result of all these delicious elements? An action-packed mystery, a sly satire, and a lush love story, spiced and seasoned with paranormal characters that the author manages to turn into metaphors for the monsters we all encounter on a daily basis. 

I am nearly 500 years old. My skin is flawless, my butt is tight, and my tits don’t need help staying up. Unless you impale me, dismember me, decapitate or drown me, you can’t do me much damage. I’ve been stabbed, scalded, and stretched on the rack, and I have survived. I’ve been burned, flayed, and shot, and I have survived. I’ve lived through the Thirty Years War, the French Revolution and the Spanish Inquisition. The Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion, two World Wars and a couple of scathing movie reviews from the L.A. Times. And two weeks ago, with a little help from my personal assistant and a hunky Beverly Hills cop, I managed to do away with the mother of all evil, leaving me the most powerful vampyre in North America. I’m not saying I’m invincible, but I’ve got a pretty good track record when it comes to dealing with danger.

So why was I so terrified to drive over the hill to Studio City to have Christmas Eve dinner with the parents of a man I barely know?

He looks like a cross between Springsteen and the model they use in all those paintings of Christ. Melt-in-your-mouth-attractive. Water-in-the-desert attractive. Good-looking enough to get me going just staring at him, and that doesn’t happen very often, believe me. The last time was Nureyev, in the sixties. It’s the cheekbones. I like the ones you can cut paper on.

His name is Peter King and he’s a detective with the Beverly Hills police. Early forties. Divorced. We met two weeks ago when he was assigned by his Captain to investigate the murders of my business partner, three of my stars, and an employee of my film company, Anticipation Studios. Yes, five murders, all connected to me. I am Ovsanna Moore, writer, producer, and star of seventeen blockbuster horror films, several less than successful ones, and a few that went straight to DVD. In the film business, I’m known as a Scream Queen. In my private life--my very private life--I’m known as Ovsanna Hovannes Garabedian, Chatelaine of the Clan Dakhanavar of the First Bloodline. A vampyre. 

A fairly powerful vampyre, when you consider my clan includes most of the A-list Hollywood stars--past and present.

Peter King knows what I am. And he’d asked me out just hours after he’d discovered my secret. I found that intriguing. I like a man who’s not put off by an extra set of teeth. I was intrigued enough to accept his invitation.

            So there I was, standing in my dressing room on Christmas Eve, throwing clothes on the floor as fast as I could try them on and get them off again. I’d already eliminated a Costume National suit and my Diesel jeans. What should I wear to meet the family of a man I’d already fed on, but barely knew? I was so nervous, if I’d had a gag reflex, I’d have been on my knees in front of the toilet.

 Meeting his parents, for God’s sake? On Christmas Eve?

I’d just taken my Caroline Herrera smoke suede pants off the hanger when the fowl started honking.

Someone was in my yard.

I rely on a gaggle of geese to sound an alarm. It’s an idea I borrowed from Louis XVI and I swear it’s more effective than my high tech security system. Like Louis, geese are territorial, and when they’re upset, they’re loud. 

This time they were making a hell of a racket.

I let my senses sharpen. I am of the Dakhanavar clan--vampyre elite--with extremely honed sight, smell, and hearing. When I choose to, I can hear conversations taking place a half mile away. I stood still and listened.

I heard the geese.

I heard the koi in the pond. The waterfall hitting the stream. The neighbor’s cat cleaning herself out on the street. And more fucking geese.

But I couldn’t hear the intruder. 

Who was it, Marcel Marceau?

I couldn’t smell him either, which meant he wasn’t human. Humans give off a distinctive scent, specific to their tribe. What I did smell, over the goose shit and honeysuckle, was something pungent and feral.

I dropped the hanger and the pants on the floor, and moved through my bedroom into my office. Whoever it was had had to scale the two foot wide, twelve foot tall stucco wall that surrounds my property--he wasn’t there by accident. I unsheathed my fangs, but kept my claws in so I could use the computer to bring up the security cameras trained on the grounds. 

I hit the keyboard and my 45” monitor split into eight screens, giving me a 360 degree view of my property. I could see the guest cottage, the pool, the squash court, the front drive--nothing there save honking fowl. They had spread all over the yard, which they didn’t usually do, and had completely abandoned their resting place by the waterfall. Which is where I finally saw movement; behind the thick bougainvillea on the far side of the stream.

You remember those scenes in Angel where David Boreanaz was standing on one side of the room and suddenly, without being seen, he was somewhere else? That’s what vampyres do. We transport ourselves so quickly that we become momentarily invisible. Something having to do with the speed of light. In the movies we call it space shifting. I don’t do it very often; I don’t have the need. My lack of practice was evident in the several seconds it took me to get to my yard. I’ve got to get back in shape.

The smell near the water was overpowering, like burning manure, and I knew for certain whatever was there wasn’t human. Or female. No bitch on earth gives off that kind of stench. I dropped my fangs, let my claws out, and studied the ground, as everything took on the glowing clarity of my vampyre vision. 

The sound of his claws pushing off the cliff fifteen feet above me brought my head up, just in time to see him hurtling down on me from the waterfall. I threw my arms out to deflect him and my nails sunk into his fur. He was some sort of wolf, three times the size of a Grey, with rabid orange eyes and a coat so black it disappeared against the darkening sky. I could feel it, though. A coarse, grimy undercoat, thick enough to act like armour, and then the outer pelage, as sharp as porcupine quills with razor-like edges. His muzzle was wide and long, overfilled with an extra set of yellow fangs that peeled his lips into a Jack Nicholson rictus and sprayed me with white foam. A Tom Savini wet dream. With foul breath.

I met him in mid-launch and we went down in the water. He had me pinned beneath him with all four paws. The stream was only inches deep. I’d spent thousands of dollars lining it with broken tourmaline granite. If I’d known I’d be playing Little Red Riding Hood, I’d have bought moss. The fucking rocks were making mincemeat of my back. At least, I was nude; having to bleach my own blood out of my suede pants would have left me doubly pissed.

He shifted his weight to his front paws, pressing my shoulders deeper into the rocks, and tried going for my neck with his fangs. I couldn’t throw him off. He must have weighed 250 pounds. I held him back with both hands, my claws slicing through his pelt into his flesh. His muzzle was inches from my face, snarling and slashing from side to side. His breath was rancid, infected, like the stench of a sewer. I couldn’t get close enough to get my mouth on him. Feral saliva dripped like acid in my eyes. I wedged a leg under his belly and gashed it with my claws. I tried again for his bowels but he trapped my leg with his hind paw. Blood from his belly poured down on my breasts, pooling between them and slimeing down through my legs into the water. 

We struggled like that for minutes, holding each other at bay in a thrashing embrace. I was snarling; he was growling; the geese were honking. He was stronger than I was, in that position anyway, and if I couldn’t do something to get out from under him soon, the only Peter I was going to be spending Christmas with was a guy in a robe with the key to a gate. 

Author Bio:

Adrienne began her career in 1963 with the San Jose Civic Light Opera. After graduating high school, she traveled with a musical comedy revue, entertaining our servicemen on Army bases throughout Southeast Asia. In 1965, she moved to New York where she made her Broadway debut as Tevye's second daughter, Hodel, in Fiddler on the Roof. A Tony nomination and a Theatre World Award for her creation of Rizzo in the original Broadway production of Grease led her back to California and the role of Bea Arthur's daughter, Carol, in the hit series Maude.

Since then she has become a best selling author, a recording artist, and the star of numerous features, films for television, concert performances, musicals and plays.

Movie fans know her best for her performances in The Fog, Escape From New York, Creepshow, Swamp Thing, Back to School, and Cannonball Run. Her recent films include Reach for Me, with Seymour Cassell and Alfre Woodard and the award winning "zombie film" Alice Jacobs is Dead. She can currently be seen in Argo, directed by and starring Ben Affleck.

Adrienne has a Golden Globe nomination and over 450 screen performances to her credit. Drew Carey fans know her as Oswald's mom. She starred as Ruthie, the Snake Dancer, on HBO's fascinating series, Carnivale. Her recent appearances include Son's of Anarchy and Dexter and nine months on ABC's General Hospital, her first foray into daytime television. She also portray's Victoria Grayson's (Madeline Stowe) mother on ABC's hit series Revenge.

After appearing in over 25 musicals and plays, among them the West coast premieres of Women Behind Bars and Drop Dead; the Canadian premiere of Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers; and the world premiere of What the Rabbi Saw by Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore, in 2006 she returned to New York to garner standing ovations as Judy Garland in The Property Known As Garland. Summer of 2012 found her returning to her favorite musical Fiddler on the Roof, playing Golde this time, not Hodel.

Off camera, Adrienne is the voice of Catwoman in Batman, The Animated Series, Ms. Simone in Scooby-Do on Zombie Island, and Scooter's Mom in the 3-D animated film Fly Me To The Moon. She can be heard in a myriad of video games: God of War and Halo 4 among them.

Adrienne is the author of three books: the best-selling memoir There Are Worse Things I Could Do; Vampyres of Hollywood; and the most recent Love Bites.

In March of 1997, Adrienne gave birth to identical twin boys, William and Walker Van Zandt, at age 51, "the only woman on the maternity ward who was a member of AARP". She lives in Los Angeles, but travels to Japan whenever she can to visit her older son, Cody Carpenter.

Connect with Adrienne!

http://www.abarbeau.com/blog/

Amazon Page

Buy the Book!

Review:Safe with Me by Amy Hatvany

A novel about two mothers and one daughter who are linked by tragedy and bound by secrets, from the acclaimed author of Heart Like Mine. Now, in the provocative Safe with Me, Amy Hatvany explores controversial and timely issues with astonishing emotional complexity.

The screech of tires brought Hannah Scott’s world as she knew it to a devastating end. Even a year after she signed the papers to donate her daughter’s organs, Hannah is still reeling with grief when she unexpectedly stumbles into the life of the Bell family, whose child, Maddie, survived only because hers had died. Mesmerized by this fragile connection to her own daughter and afraid to reveal who she actually is, Hannah develops a surprising friendship with Maddie’s mother, Olivia.

The Bells, however, have problems of their own. Once on the verge of leaving her wealthy but abusive husband, Olivia now finds herself bound to him as never before in the wake of the successful transplant that saved their fifteen-year-old daughter’s life. Meanwhile Maddie, tired of the limits her poor health puts upon her and fearful of her father’s increasing rage, regularly escapes into the one place where she can be anyone she wants: the Internet. But when she is finally healthy enough to return to school, the real world proves to be just as complicated as the isolated bubble she had been so eager to escape.

A masterful narrative, shaped by nuanced characters whose fragile bonds are on a collision course with the truth, Safe with Me is a triumph.

Amy Hatvany was born in Seattle, WA in 1972, the youngest of three children. She graduated from Western Washington University in 1994 with a degree in Sociology only to discover most sociologists are unemployed. Soon followed a variety of jobs – some of which she loved, like decorating wedding cakes; others which she merely tolerated, like receptionist. In 1998, Amy finally decided to sell her car, quit her job, and take a chance on writing books. 

The literary gods took kindly to her aspirations and THE KIND OF LOVE THAT SAVES YOU was published in 2000 by Bantam Doubleday. THE LANGUAGE OF SISTERS was picked up by NAL in 2002. (Both titles published under "Yurk.")

Amy spends most of her time today with her second and final husband, Stephan.

"She wanted to warn them, to tell them how quickly everything can change, but she knew it was useless.  There's simply no telling whose life will be touched by tragedy.  There is only a before and an after, with no way to predict the moment when one is over and the other begins (Safe with Me, pg 46)."

What would you do if you were faced with the loss of a child and then the possibility to save many others due to this loss?  Would you be able to let your child live on inside others? What happens when your path crosses with one of the people your child saved?  Answer:  Your world is turned upside down and changed in ways you never imagined!  This is a book filled with tragedy, loss and emotions.  And also healing, second changes and unexpected friendships.  "Sometimes it's easier to talk to someone who doesn't have preconceived notions of who you are, no expectations based on past behavior, no running commentary on the choices you've made in your life (Safe with Me, pg 225)." Safe with Me is complex, raw and real.  I was so completely drawn into the pages of this novel.  Safe with Me will cause you to think and to be grateful for everyday you have with your loved ones.  You will feel emotionally connected from page one and be held tight to the very last page.  4.5 stars