Speakeasy by Elyse Douglas

Speakeasy: A Time Travel Novel by Elyse Douglas

Publisher: Broadback (April 5, 2022)
Category: Time Travel, Historical Fiction Romance
Tour Dates May 3-June 30
ISBN: 979-8423229016
Available in Print and ebook, 375 pages

Description Speakeasy by Elyse Douglas

In 2019, A West Village Nightclub Singer, Roxie Raines, stumbles through a basement doorway into the past and finds herself in Roaring Twenties New York, with all its dangers, secrets, excitement, and romance.

Roxie Raines lurches through a secret basement doorway in 2019, and time-slips back to New York’s raucous Roaring Twenties. While she dazzles the speakeasy crowds with her “modern sound,” she gets trapped in the dangerous web of Frankie Shay, an evil club owner. She struggles to escape his control and return to the basement doorway that sent her to 1925.

When she meets the handsome detective, Jake Kane, it’s love at first sight, but Jake has a secret past, and her own time travel secret makes him suspicious.

Roaring Twenties New York comes alive with flappers, gangsters, romance and speakeasies and Roxie’s stunning rise to stardom could come with the price of losing both the man she loves and her own life.

They Called Him Marvin by Roger Stark: Excerpt, Review

They Called Him Marvin by Roger Stark

Publisher: Silver Star (September 21, 2021
Category: Historical Romance, WW2, Family Saga, Based on a True Story
Tour dates: April 25-June 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-0578855288
Available in Print and ebook, 320 pages

Description They Called Him Marvin by Roger Stark

They were just kids, barely not teenagers, madly in love and wanting to be a family, but WW2 and a B29 got in their way.

Three hundred ten days before Pearl Harbor, buck private Dean Sherman innocently went to church with a new friend in Salt Lake City. From that moment, the unsuspecting soldier travelled a remarkable, heroic path, falling in love, graduating from demanding training to become a B29 pilot, conceiving a son and entering the China, Burma and India theater of the WW2.

He chronicled his story with letters home to his bride Connie that he met on that fateful Sunday, blind to the fact that fifteen hundred seventy five days after their meeting, a Japanese swordsman would end his life.

His crew, a gaggle of Corporals that dubbed themselves the Corporealizes, four officers and a tech Sargent, adventured their way across the globe. Flying the “Aluminum Trail” also called the Hump through the Himalayas, site of the most dangerous flying in the world. Landing in China to refuel and then fly on to places like Manchuria, Rangoon or even the most southern parts of Japan to drop 500 pounders.

Each mission had its challenges, minus fifty degree weather in Mukden, or Japanese fighters firing away at them, a close encounter of the wrong kind, nearly missing a collision with another B29 while flying in clouds, seeing friends downed and lost because of “mechanicals,” the constant threat of running out of fuel and their greatest fear, engine fire.

Transferred to the Mariana Islands, he and his crew were shot down over Nagoya, Japan as part of Mission 174, captured and declared war criminals.

Connie’s letters reveal life for a brand new mother whose husband is declared MIA. The agony for both of them, he in a Japanese prison, declared a war criminal, and she just not knowing why his letters stopped coming.

Song Girl by Keith Hirshland: Review & Interview

Song Girl: A Mystery in Two Verses by Keith Hirshland

Publisher: Beacon Publishing Group (January 21, 2022)
Categories: Mystery Thriller, Detective/Police Procedural
Tour Dates April and May, 2022
ISBN: 978-1949472400
Available in Print and ebook, 388 pages

 

Description Song Girl by Keith Hirshland

Detective Marc Allen is ready to leave the Raleigh, North Carolina, Police Department. Two murders that happened on his watch have apparently been solved thanks to a suicide note confession written by a distraught father. But Allen isn’t buying it. He’s convinced that the man’s adopted daughter, Teri Hickox, is the one responsible for the heinous crimes. With his personal life a muddle and his professional career unsettled he decides the best thing for him is a change of scenery.

The detective, now in Colorado Springs, is working new cases and making new friends. One of those friends is Hannah Hunt who, after suffering a freak accident, finds herself only able to speak in song titles. Another is a mysterious drifter who lives out of an old Dodge van and goes by “the champ”. But as Allen builds a new future, events unfold showing him that he can’t escape his past.

Listen To Me by Lynne Podrat: Review

Listen To Me: How My Down Syndrome Brother Saved My Life by Lynne Podrat 

 Publisher: LP Press (August 19, 2021) 

Category: Non Fiction, Memoir, Special Needs, Disabilities, Down Syndrome, Siblings 

Tour dates: March 14-April 14, 2022 

ISBN: 978-1737666806 

Available in Print and ebook, 128 pages

 

Description Listen To Me by Lynne Podrat

This memoir was written to honor my youngest brother’s influence over my life, the good, the bad, and the ugly of living with a Down Syndrome sibling. It tells the story of the children in my family, despite our parents’ frailties, remaining committed to each other through life’s many changes and separations. Who I am today is directly related to the who I needed to become.

Suzie's Review and Author Guest Post: Time and the Tree by Róisín Sorahan

Time and the Tree by Róisín Sorahan


Publisher: Adelaide Books, NY (September 6, 2021
Category: Literary Fiction, Fantasy, Modern Fable, and Self-actualization
Tour dates: January-February, 2022
ISBN: 978-1955196635
Available in Print and ebook, 282 pages

Description Time and the Tree by Róisín Sorahan

A modern fable about the nature of time and the quest for happiness.

It’s darkly funny, deceptively simple, and a necessary read for testing times.

In this gripping philosophical tale, a boy awakens beneath a tree in a forest in summer. He is soon joined by Time and his slave, a withered creature hooked on time and aching to disappear. The story evolves over the course of a year as a host of characters are drawn to the Tree for guidance. The unlikely cast grapple with choices and grope towards self-knowledge in a world where compassion is interwoven with menace. As the seasons bring great changes to the forest, we watch the child grow while the trials he faces mount. Then the time for talk and innocence passes as the forces of darkness rally, threatening the lives of his friends.

Lyrical, honest and heart-breaking, Time and the Tree confronts readers with a unique perspective on the challenges life presents. A wise and hopeful book, it is uplifting and unsettling by turns.

Suzie's Review and Author Guest Post: Square Up by Lisa Dailey

Square Up: 50,000 miles in search of a way home by Lisa Dailey

Publisher:  Sidekick Press, (March 30, 2021)
Category: Memoir, Travel, Family Travel, Adventure Travel, Grief
Tour dates: January 17-February 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1734494556
Available in Print and ebook, 272 pages

 

Description Square Up by Lisa Dailey

Have you ever wished you could run away and leave your life behind? Born on the “Day of the Wanderer,” Lisa Dailey has always been filled with wanderlust. Although she and her husband had planned to take their family on a ’round-the-world adventure, she didn’t expect their plans to come together on the heels of grief, after losing seven family members in five years. 

Square Up shows us that travel not only helps us understand and appreciate other cultures, but invites us to find compassion and wisdom, heal from our losses, and discover our capacity for forgiveness, as well as joy.

Suzie's Review and Author Guest Post: Finding Sisters by Rebecca Daniels

Finding Sisters: How One Adoptee Used DNA Testing and Determination to Uncover Family Secrets and Find Her Birth Family by Rebecca Daniels 

Publisher: Sunbury Press (September 14, 2021) 

Category: Non Fiction, Memoir, Genetic Genealogy, Adoption, Family Reunion, Extended Families 

Tour dates: January-February, 2022 

ISBN: 978-1620065587
Available in Print and ebook, 125 pages

 

Description Finding Sisters by Rebecca Daniels

Where does she come from?

Who are her genetic parents?

Who is she?

Does she even want to know?

With almost no information of her genetic heritage, adoptee Rebecca Daniels follows limited clues and uses DNA testing, genealogical research, thoughtful letter writing, and a willingness to make awkward phone calls with strangers to finally find her birth parents.

But along the way, she finds much more.

Two half-sisters.

A slew of cousins on both sides.

A family waiting to be discovered.

With the assistance of a distant cousin in Sweden and several other DNA angels on the internet, Daniels finally comes face to face with her birth mother just months before her passing. Join in on this author’s discovery of family and self in ‘Finding Sisters: How One Adoptee Used DNA Testing and Determination to Uncover Family Secrets and Find Her Birth Family.’

Amanda's Review: Little Creeping Things by Chelsea Ichaso

Little Creeping Things 

by Chelsea Ichaso

          


 

                                                 My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this debut by Chelsea Ichaso. It had plenty of twists and kept me guessing.

A girl goes missing and the main character, Cassidy, thinks she might know who is to blame. I thought almost every character was at fault at some point by the time we got to who was actually at fault.

The only issue I had with the book was that the main character was quite annoying at times. I understand that she has trauma and has a kind of victim personality, but it got irritating early in the book to hear her constantly whining about how horrible everything is for her, how everyone hates her, how she can't have what she wants, and her cowardly way of handling everything. I wanted to reach into the audiobook and shake her.

Altogether, I think this is a good story and would recommend it to anyone that likes a teen murder mystery with plenty of twists and turns.

Amy McFadden did a good job narrating this audiobook. She emotes well and makes the characters' emotions realistic and fitting with the story. It was easy to discern which character was speaking and what they were feeling. I enjoyed her narration and will be listening to her again when I get the opportunity.

View all my reviews

Mother’s Tale and Other Stories by Khanh Ha- Review

 

A Mother’s Tale and Other Stories by Khanh Ha Publisher: C&R Press (October 15, 2021) Category: Linked Short Stories, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction Tour dates: October 11-November 24, 2021 ISBN: 978-1949540239 Available in Print and ebook, 150 pages

 

Description Mother’s Tale and Other Stories by Khanh Ha

A Mother’s Tale is a tale of salvaging one’s soul from received and inherited war-related trauma. Within the titular beautiful story of a mother’s love for her son is the cruelty and senselessness of the Vietnam War, the poignant human connection, and a haunting narrative whose set ting and atmosphere appear at times otherworldly through their land scape and inhabitants.

Captured in the vivid descriptions of Vietnam’s country and culture are a host of characters, tortured and maimed and generous and still empathetic despite many obstacles, including a culture wrecked by losses. Somewhere in this chaos readers will find a tender link between the present-day survivors and those already gone. Rich and yet buoyant with a vision-like quality, this collection shares a common theme of love and loneliness, longing and compassion, where beauty is discovered in the moments of brutality, and agony is felt in ecstasy.

Book Tour and Guest Review: Grenade Bouquets by Lee Matthew Goldberg

Grenade Bouquets (Runaway Train, Book 2) 

by Lee Matthew Goldberg 

 Publisher:  Wise Wolf Books (August 5, 2021) 

Series: Runaway Train, Book 2 

Category: Young Adult, Runaways, Outcasts, Drug and Alcohol Abuse, Depression, Mental Illness