#MMBBR Review/Showcase Round-Up!!!!

Sparkle In The Snow Leads To So Much More 

Celeste Nichols has always preferred to keep to herself in her hometown of Pine Gulch, Idaho…until she becomes an instant celebrity! When one of her children's stories becomes a major success, she's suddenly the talk of the town. Celeste should be gloriously happy…but something, someone, special is still missing from her life. Could the return of her childhood crush be the answer?  

Flynn Delaney has moved back home for his daughter's sake. Yet all the millionaire's resources can't help the little girl heal from the tragic loss of her mother. Shy librarian Celeste and her stories do hold some indefinable magic, though. Flynn came home looking for support—can he find that, and true love, in the one who got away?

MY REVIEW:

What a beautiful Christmas story!  What is better?  Two great books in one!!!  This book contains: A Cold Creek Christmas Story and Christmas in Cold Creek.  Both are heartwarming and sometimes heartbreaking, but always a delight to read!  What a great read for the holiday season and a book I recommend to all lovers of romance!  4.5 stars

For 15-year-old Emma Wilson, everything is changing. Uncomfortable at home and in school, Emma’s growing up, and feels isolated from her friends and family. Things go from bad to unfathomably worse when Emma inadvertently causes an accident that kills her increasingly distant father on a spring break canoe trip meant to bring them closer together.

Suddenly, Emma's efforts to reconcile with her father as a parent and a person have to happen without him, and she must confront her guilt and her grief to begin moving forward. With the help of river rats, ranch hands, and her horse, Magic, Emma finds strength in herself as she and her family navigate their reentry into “normal” life.

MY REVIEW:

This is a YA book with depth, heart and authenticity that some YA lacks.  The voice that Treichel gives to his characters is fresh and real.  The story is gripping and emotional and one I will not soon forget!  What a great read! 4.5 stars 

In her enthralling debut, Gilly Macmillan explores a mother’s search for her missing son, weaving a taut psychological thriller as gripping and skillful as The Girl on the Train and The Guilty One.

In a heartbeat, everything changes…

Rachel Jenner is walking in a Bristol park with her eight-year-old son, Ben, when he asks if he can run ahead. It’s an ordinary request on an ordinary Sunday afternoon, and Rachel has no reason to worry—until Ben vanishes.  

Police are called, search parties go out, and Rachel, already insecure after her recent divorce, feels herself coming undone. As hours and then days pass without a sign of Ben, everyone who knew him is called into question, from Rachel’s newly married ex-husband to her mother-of-the-year sister. Inevitably, media attention focuses on Rachel too, and the public’s attitude toward her begins to shift from sympathy to suspicion.

As she desperately pieces together the threadbare clues, Rachel realizes that nothing is quite as she imagined it to be, not even her own judgment. And the greatest dangers may lie not in the anonymous strangers of every parent’s nightmares, but behind the familiar smiles of those she trusts the most.

Where is Ben? The clock is ticking...

 MY REVIEW:

I am going to be honest when I say that I am still reading this.  Why????  Because, it is so stressful, good stressful, engaging stressful, but oh so stressful.  As a mother, I am heartbroken by the story line and I cannot help but put myself in Rachel's place and it breaks my heart!  The story follows Rachel and Jim, an officer working the case.  It is such emotional read and I cannot wait to see how it end, but truth be told I can only read a little bit at a time. I am invested in the story and intend to finish it over the holiday!  So far the book is a solid 4.5 stars!

Twenty-nine Indiana authors write about their love of books, bookstores, and reading. Proceeds from the book support Indianapolis adult literacy program, Indy Reads.

The collection features bestselling authors John Green, Will Shortz, Dan Wakefield, Cathy Day and John David Anderson, Victoria Barrett, Frank Bill, Ray Boomhower, Mary Susan Buhner, Lorene Burkhart, Michael Dahlie, Cathy Day, Carol Faenzi, Terence Faherty, Lou Harry, Liza Hyatt, Angela Jackson-Brown, Lyn Jones, Jeff Knurek & David Hoyt, Karen Kovacik, Norbert Krapf, Bonnie Maurer, Susan Neville, Barb Shoup, Amy Sorrells, Gordon Strain & Dianne Moneypenny, Larry Sweazy, and Ben Winters. It was edited by M. Travis DiNicola and Zach Roth.

Television variety shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show used to offer audiences a little of this and a little of that, introducing them to a range of styles in an unintimidating way, making it easy to shake off a dud while continuing to mine for gold. That is what a good anthology such as Indy Writes Books does as well.

Lou Harry, Indianapolis Business Journal

Indy Writes Books: A Book Lover's Anthology. Published by Indy Reads Books and benefiting the adult-literacy nonprofit Indy Reads, the book features 27 authors, poets, and even puzzle-makers with significant Indiana connections. The publisher nailed the book's physical appearance clever visual play on the cover makes it a handsome collection. But is it any good? Yes quite good, actually.

Matt Gonzales, Indianapolis Monthly

MY REVIEW:

What a stunning set of stories!  This is a book that can be cherished over time.  You can sit down and read one story or make your way through many!  There are so many voices contained in this book that there is certainly something for everyone!   I took my time working my way through and had a delightful time doing so!  4 stars

SHOWCASING: 

Sometimes there are not enough hours in the day to read all the books that are sent.  Very sad indeed, right??? But I want to feature them, so you can become aware of them and read them yourself!  ENJOY!!!  

"The problem with cutting your own hair is that once you start, you just keep cutting, trying to fix it, and the truth is, some things can never be fixed. The day of my daddy's funeral, I cut my bangs until they were the length of those little paintbrushes that come with dime-store watercolor sets. I was nine years old. People asked me why I did it, but I was too young then to know I was changing my hair because I wanted to change my life."

In 1983, on her nineteenth birthday, Zora Adams finally says goodbye to her alcoholic mother and their tiny town in the mountains of South Carolina. Living with a woman who dresses like Judy Garland and brings home a different man each night is not a pretty existence, and Zora is ready for life to be beautiful.

With the help of a beloved teacher, she moves to a coastal town and enrolls in the Davenport School of Beauty. Under the tutelage of Mrs. Cathcart, she learns the art of fixing hair, and becomes fast friends with the lively Sara Jane Farquhar, a natural hair stylist. She also falls hard for handsome young widower Winston Sawyer, who is drowning his grief in bourbon. She couldn't save Mama, but maybe she can save him.

As Zora practices finger waves, updos, and spit curls, she also comes to learn that few things are permanent in this life--except real love, lasting friendship, and, ultimately... forgiveness.

Second Chance Ranch with First-Rate Cowboy  

Kimberly Lee isn't sure what she'll find when she comes to Forever, Texas, to do a story on a groundbreaking program that could put this small town on the map. It certainly isn't the warm, friendly community that makes the roving reporter feel instantly at home. Or the accident that lays her up at Garrett White Eagle's ranch, where the blue-eyed rancher awakens feelings she long ago gave up. 

Giving people hope again is the goal of the healing ranch Garrett started with his brother. And the lovely, hardworking writer is no exception. Doesn't Kim realize how much good they can do—together? Her future is here with him. If she's willing to trust in a love that could fulfill the promise of forever.

An Amish Homecoming 

Luke Bowman's homecoming is turning Emma Swartzentruber's carefully ordered world upside down. Gone is her rebellious girlhood crush, and in his place is a handsome man who seems committed to serving the community. Luke's even agreed to work for Emma's ill father, whose last wish is to see his daughter wedded to a stable, loving man. But Luke—a man who flirted with the outside world with disastrous consequences—is hardly marriage material for a good Amish woman. Yet this Christmas, when her family is flung into crisis, Emma finds that he may just be the one to capture her heart for good.

Grey Haward has always detested the Chemists, the magicians-come-scientists who rule her small western town. But she has always followed the rules, taking the potion the Chemists ration out that helps the town’s people survive. A potion that Grey suspects she—like her grandfather and father—may not actually need.

By working at her grandfather’s repair shop, sorting the small gears and dusting the curio cabinet inside, Grey has tried to stay unnoticed—or as unnoticed as a tall, strong girl can in a town of diminutive, underdeveloped citizens. Then her best friend, Whit, is caught by the Chemists’ enforcers after trying to protect Grey one night, and after seeing the extent of his punishment, suddenly taking risks seems the only decision she can make.

But with the risk comes the reality that the Chemists know her family’s secret, and the Chemists soon decide to use her for their own purposes. Panicked, Grey retreats to the only safe place she knows—her grandfather’s shop. There, however, a larger secret confronts her when her touch unlocks the old curio cabinet in the corner and reveals a world where porcelain and clockwork people are real. There, she could find the key that may save Whit’s life and also end the Chemists’ dark rule forever.

"Radziwill's delicious debut novel… is a poignant tale of love and loss." ―Publishers Weekly

"One of the richest, most deeply satisfying stories I've read in a long time." ―BookPage

"Carole Radziwill writes like a cross between Sophie Kinsella and Christopher Buckley. Cautiously romantic, unexpectedly moving, and funny!" ―Susan Sarandon

The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating is Carole Radziwill's deliciously smart comedy about a famously widowed young New Yorker hell-bent on recapturing a kind of passionate love she never really had

Claire Byrne is a quirky and glamorous 34-year-old Manhattanite and the wife of a famous, slightly older man. Her husband, Charlie, is a renowned sexologist and writer. Equal parts Alfred Kinsey and Warren Beatty, Charlie is pompous yet charming, supportive yet unfaithful; he's a firm believer that sex and love can't coexist for long, and he does little to hide his affairs. Claire's life with Charlie is an always interesting if not deeply devoted one, until Charlie is struck dead one day on the sidewalk by a falling sculpture ... a Giacometti, no less!

Once a promising young writer, Claire had buried her ambitions to make room for Charlie's. After his death, she must reinvent herself. Over the course of a year, she sees a shrink (or two), visits an oracle, hires a "botanomanist," enjoys an erotic interlude (or ten), eats too little, drinks too much, dates a hockey player, dates a billionaire, dates an actor (not any actor either, but the handsome movie star every woman in the world fantasizes about dating). As she grieves for Charlie and searches for herself, she comes to realize that she has an opportunity to find something bigger than she had before―maybe even, possibly, love.

Years ago, family loyalty caused Fain Hauk to give up everything he loved: His military career. His planet. His fiancée. Even his name.

Now decades later, everything has changed. He's built a new life out of the ashes of his old, and he's vowed to never let anything threaten his loved ones again.

But when old enemies align themselves with new ones, he's caught in the middle of a brutal war. And when fate throws his former fiancée back into his world and she has her own agenda that includes taking his head for what he did to her years ago, more than just his life is at stake. The fate of the Ichidian universe and that of his brothers-in-arms hangs in the balance. Winner take all.

It's kill or be killed, and never has the battle been more fierce...

Or more fun, in Born of Betrayal, the next League: Nemesis Rising novel from #1 New York Timesbestselling author Sherrilyn Kenyon!

Welcome to Monsterland – the scariest place on Earth. All guests can interact with real vampires in Vampire Village, be chased by an actual werewolf on the River Run, and walk among the dead in Zombieville. Wyatt Baldwin, a high school student and life-long movie buff is staring bleakly at a future of flipping burgers. Due to a fortuitous circumstance, Wyatt and his friends are invited to the star-studded opening of Monsterland. In a theme park full of real vampires, werewolves and zombies, what could possibly go wrong?

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