Friday 56 #89 & BB #65 – Fatal Tide by Iris Johansen @Iris_Johansen

Posted on June 17, 2016 by fundinmental

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The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice.The only rules are to grab a book (any book), turn to page 56 or 56% in your ereader and find any sentence or a few ( no spoilers) that grabs you and post it.

Please join Rose City Reader every Friday to share the first sentence or so of the book you are reading along with you initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

Please include the title of the book and the author’s name.

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Fatal Tide by Iris Johansen

Iris Johansen is a New York Times BestsellingAauthor and I know why! 😉

I have several novels she has written, plus I checked out her books from the library, looking for her latest release every time I went in. I love her suspense novels, but I chose this one to spotlight because of the cover and the fact that the main character is a marine researcher. I know a lot of you will recognize her Eve and Duncan series, so…I love anything to do with water, oceans and seas, so this was a no brainer.

MY FRIDAY 56

Then Kelby was there beside her, holding her. She cold hear the pounding of his heart beneath her ear Life. Carolyn’s heart would never beat like that again.

Fatal Tide is a shorter novel and easy reading for the summer season.

(page 56 in hardback)

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

Cool water, smooth as glass as Kelby swam through it. Jesus, he was thirsty. He knew all he had to do was open his lips and the water would flow down his throat, but he wanted to see beyond the arched doorway first. It was huge and ornately carved beckoning him forward…

Uh, oh…What do you think happens next?

Add me to Goodreads

GOOREADS BLURB

In this electrifying novel of suspense, #1 New York Times bestselling author Iris Johansen takes us deep below the surface, where a ruthless killer strikes without warning, without mercy—and with the deadliest intent.

Marine researcher Melis Nemid is treading dangerous water—and she’s about to be dragged under. Melis knows something that has already caused one oceanographer to disappear from the face of the earth . . . and that’s only part of a past torn by violence and betrayal. She thought she had put that past behind her when she arrived at her Caribbean island home to research dolphin behavior.

But Melis’s peace—and her life—are about to be shattered by a savage killer who is cutting a path of destruction and death that leads directly to her. Only one person can save her—a man who claims to be a fellow oceanographer. But what this enigmatic stranger really wants, Melis may not discover until it’s too late. Because whoever is after her knows her fears intimately. And soon Melis will be forced to relive them all over again. Except for the final nightmare—the one she cannot possibly survive.

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I have the above cover on my hardcover of Fatal Tide by Iris Johansen, but here is the ebook version.

Which cover do you like best? Why?

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Fatal Tide
Body of Lies
Chasing The Night

Friday 56 #88 & BB #64 – Exit Wounds by J A Jance @JAJance

Posted on June 10, 2016 by fundinmental

Please include the title of the book and the author’s name.

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Exit Wounds by J A Jance

J A Jance is a top ten New York Times Bestselling author and I know why! 😉

Exit Wounds by J A Jance is the 11th book in the Joanna Brady series.

I am a big fan of J A Jance. She has some amazing covers for her for her mystery, thriller, suspense and women sleuths novels.

You will see that I got this First Edition hardcover for a…song.

MY FRIDAY 56

And they might have slept. It’s possible they could have slept, except right then, as soon as they stopped talking, Lucky, confined to his bedside carton, set up a mournful wail – the same keening cry that had summoned Manny Riuz earlier that evening. Within seconds Tigger, at the far end of the hall,began barking his head off and throwing himself against the door to Jenny’s bedroom.

I love critter stories and there are a lot of them in Exit Wounds by J A Jance.

(page 56 in hardback)

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

The woman lay in her bed, tossing and turning, and tried to sleep. It was hot, but southern Arizona in July is always hot. Due to unpaid bills, the power company had shutt off electricity to the shabby mobile home months ago. By now she was pretty well used to sleepubg without benefit of a cooler or even a blowing fan.

Uh, oh…What do you think happens next?

Add me to Goodreads

GOOREADS BLURB

Top ten New York Times bestselling author J.A. Jance returns with a powerful tale that explores the darkest corners of human nature.

The heat is a killer in Cochise County, Arizona, with temperatures over 100 degrees. In the suffocating stillness of an airless trailer, a woman is lying dead, a bullet hole in her chest. Why someone would murder a harmless loner with a soft spot for strays is only one of the questions nagging at the local police; another is why the killer used an eighty-five-year-old bullet, fired from the same weapon that slaughtered two other women who were discovered bound, naked, and gruesomely posed on the remote edge of a rancher′s land. The slayings are as oppressive as the blistering heat for Sheriff Joanna Brady, who must shoulder the added double burden of a brutal re-election campaign and major developments on the home front. With more on her plate suddenly than many big city law officers have to contend with, she must put marital distractions and an opponent′s dirty tricks in the background and deal with the terrifying reality that now threatens everyone in her jurisdiction: a serial killer in their midst. Sheriff Brady must pursue this sadistic murderer into the shadows of the past to get to the roots of a monstrous obsession and expose the permanent wounds of a crime far worse than homicide.

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This cover of Exit Wounds by J A Jance is the mass market edition.

Which cover do you like best? Why?

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Friday 56 #87 & BB #63 – Gone Wild by James W Hall @jameswhall

Posted on June 3, 2016 by fundinmental

Please include the title of the book and the author’s name.

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Gone Wild by James W Hall

I love to travel with murderous psychopaths to exotic locations. How about you?

MY FRIDAY 56

He played with the straw, lifted up a handful, let it fall on his belly. Lifted another handful, let it all on his belly. Burying himself in straw. Deeper and deeper till it was nearly dark. Trying to sleep in that dark, but unable to.

(page 56 in hardback)

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

Allison Farleigh felt the dull tingle of a leech on her neck. Her fourth this week. With her right hand she reached back and touched the thing, fixed to her flesh like a damp strand of dough. She couldn’t see it, but knew the leech was black with an eerie inner shine like a dark tube of neon.

Add me to Goodreads

GOOREADS BLURB

THE JUNGLE WAS EERILY QUIET…THEN TWO ALMOST SIMULTANEOUS RIFLE BLASTS CUT HER DAUGHTER’S SCREAM IN HALF. THE EXPLOSIONS ECHOED THROUGH THE FOREST, SWEPT LIKE ICY WINDS DOWN THE DARK CANYONS OF ALLISON’S HEART…

As her daughter lay dead on the jungle floor, Allison cowers in a cave, hearing the poachers’ taunts, “All-iii-son, All-iii-son. Come out, come out, wherever you are.” They’re hunting game in Borneo. Human prey. Her. Allison Farleigh, the conservationist whose obsession with protecting wildlife has unleashed human savages, twin psychopathic killers trafficking in endangered species. From Malaysia to Miami they stalk her, even as she is driven by her own twin demons, rage and guilt. Desperate, Allison reaches out to the only man she knows can help: Thorn, a Florida renegade who knows the savagery in men’s hearts. Together they are plunged into a world gone wild, as the hunters corner the most dangerous game of all: a mother bent on revenge….

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The cover below is the hardcover edition I have that was published in 1995 by Delacourte Press.

Which cover do you like best?

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Friday 56 #86 & BB #62 – Leviathan by #James Byron Huggins

Posted on May 27, 2016 by fundinmental

Please include the title of the book and the author’s name.

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Leviathan by James Byron Huggins

If you are a creature feature lover like me, Leviathan is one you don’t want to miss.

The cover below is the same as my hardback copy published Thomas Nelson, Inc in 1995. There are some different covers and I will share another below that I think is super cool. Maybe you can guess what creature the Leviathan is by checking it out.

Add me to Goodreads

MY FRIDAY 56

His mind spinning, Frank whispered, “But I don’t think that you can hold it, Chesterton. Not if Leviathan really wants to get out. That cavern was never designed to hold anything like this.”

(page 56 in hardback)

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

Bloodred warning lights blazed as the cavern’s shock alarm was triggered, frantically launching wounded computer personnel into emergency stabilizing procedures.

GOOREADS BLURB

Conner felt an eerie sensation as he studied the image on the ancient Viking ax: a great, fiery dragon with wings as wide as the universe, viciously locked in battle with a heroic, winged figure that grimly held the dragon’s hideous head, struggling breath to breath. “Every man must face the dragon once in his life,” Thor told him. “It is then he learns what he truly loves.”

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The cover below is the Kindle edition published in 2013 by James Byron Huggins.

Which cover do you like best?

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James Byron Huggins also has a new release, Maggie Magdalene. Check it out now.

Friday 56 #85 & BB #61 – Sepulchre by James Herbert

Posted on May 20, 2016 by fundinmental

Please include the title of the book and the author’s name.

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Sepulchre by James Herbert

I read this some time ago and when I picked it up to share for my Friday memes, it looked so good I wanted to read it again. None of the cover I see match the hardcover jacket that I have, so I am going to share a couple others with you. Which you do like best?

MY FRIDAY 56

“You mean Magma is going to all this bother because their man – this chap Kline – has had a premonition of some sort?” He glared at Halloran as though it were his fault.

(page 56 in hardback)

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

Three thousand years before the birth of Christ, the first real moves toward civilization emerged from southern Mesopotamia, around the lower reaches of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. Because the land was between two rivers – Sumer – the peopl there were called Sumerians.

ABOUT THE BOOK

There is a house called Neath that holds a dark and terrible secret. In that house there is a psychic called Kline who is part of its secret. The Keeper is guardian of the house, of the psychic, and of the secret. But now an outsider must protect them from a terrible danger. Halloran will combat men who thrive on physical corruptions; he will find love of a perverse nature; he will confront his soul’s own darkness. And eventually he will discover the horrific and awesome secret of the Sepulchre.

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This cover is a slight variation for the copy I have that was published by G P Putnam’s Sons in 1988 and designed by Anthony C Russo/The Complete Artword LTD.

Which cover do you like best?

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Friday 56 #84 & BB #60 – My Soul To Keep by Judith Hawkes

Posted on May 13, 2016 by fundinmental

Please include the title of the book and the author’s name.

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Wishing you much luck on Friday the 13th, 2016.

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My Soul To Keep by Judith Hawkes

I picked up this gem at a sale for $5.98. Lucky me.

MY FRIDAY 56

She was alone. Alone in the barn, the surrounding silence intensified now by the spinning of the dust motes and by a faint prickling over the entire surface of her skin.

(page 56 in hardback)

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

A white winter silence.

Forested mountain slopes lie blanketed in deep snow, in stillness broken only the rattle of bare branches inn the wind. Shaggy pines bend almost to the ground beneath their cold white cargo, creating unexpected shapes and spaces in the landscape and rendering it unfamiliar even to those who, in other weathers, know it well.

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS

On a mountainside in Tennessee lies an abandoned quarry, flooded long ago by an underground river. There, in the gathering shadows of a winter twilight, something happened to a nine-year-old girl named Nan Lucas. Something that left her daredevil playmate Tucker Wills, dead and her memory crippled, unable to recall the horror. Twenty years later Nan has returned to Tennessee, but not to remember the past. Now a trendy Manhattan fashion photographer, she comes seeking refuge from the shock of her collapsed marriage. In the old farmhouse inherited from her grandmother, she begins to reorder her priorities – among them, a more solid relationship with her young son, Stephen. Common sense says the imaginary playmate who consumes most of Stephen’s time is only a normal invention for a little boy who has no companion his own age. Yet Nan cannot ignore her mounting fears that the mysterious figure Stephen calls “Woody” is both very real and very dangerous. Joining forces with an old mountain woman said to possess the gift of second sight, she struggles to save Stephen from the shadowy companion who seems to be compelling him toward destruction. Yet as hope and time run out, Nan comes to understand she must somehow pierce the veil of her forgotten past and reach into the dark recesses of her memory to rediscover what happened in that long-ago twilight at the quarry when Tucker Wills died.

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I couldn’t find a cover for the copy I have that was published by Penguin in 1996 and designed by Jess Cohen.

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Friday 56 #83 & BB #59 – Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

Posted on May 6, 2016 by fundinmental

Please include the title of the book and the author’s name.

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Next up on the shelf is Red Dragon by Thomas Harris.

I have loved each and every Hannibal Lecter book and movie. Serial killers are some of my favorite villains and Hannibal Lecter is at the top of my list.

MY FRIDAY 56

There was an opinion he wanted. A very strange view he needed to share: a mindset he had to recover after his warm round years in the Keys.

The resons clacked like roller-coaster cogs pulling up to the first log plunge, and at the top, unaware that he clutched his belly, Graham said it aloud.

“I have to see Lecter.”

(page 65 in hardback)

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

I want to tell you the circumstances in which I first encountered Hannibal Lecter, M.D.

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS

Will Graham stands in a silent, empty house communing with a killer. An FBI instructor with a gift for hunting madmen, Graham knows what his murderer looks like, how he thinks, and what he did to his victims after they died. Now Graham must try to catch him. But to do it, he must feel the heat of a killer’s brain, draw on the macabre advice of a dangerous mental patient, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, and follow a trail of microscopic clues to the place where another family has already been chosen to die–and where an innocent woman has found the Dragon first.

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I am a “cover girl”.

This is the oldest cover on Goodreads. Which do you prefer?

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Friday 56 #82 & BB #58 – The Pardon by James Grippando

Posted on April 29, 2016 by fundinmental

Please include the title of the book and the author’s name.

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Next up on the shelf is The Pardon by James Grippando.

MY FRIDAY 56

“The why’d you hire me?”

Neil smiled wryly. “Because you were the son of Harold Swyteck. And I could think of no better way to piss of the future law-and-order governor than to have his son come work for a long-haired leftover from a lost generation.

(page 56 in paperback)

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

The vigil had begun at dusk, and it would last all night. Clouds had moved in after midnight, blocking out the full moon. It was as if heaven had closed its omniscient eye in sorrow or just plain indifference. Another six hours of darkness and waiting and the red morning sun would rise over the pine trees and palms of northeast Florida. Then, at precisely 7:00 AM, Raul Fernandez would be put to death.

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS

In this stunning debut novel, which combines the breakneck pace of John Grisham’s “The Firm” with the murderous suspense of James Patterson’s “Along Came a Spider,” an estranged father and son must find common ground to survive the machinations of a psychopath bent on serving his own twisted vision of justice.

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None of the available covers match my paperback.

I am a “cover girl”.

Which cover do you like best?

~~~

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Friday 56 #81 & BB #57 – Gravity @tessgerritsen

Posted on April 22, 2016 by fundinmental

Please include the title of the book and the author’s name.

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Next up on the shelf is Gravity by Tess Gerritsen.

MY FRIDAY 56

“Everyone stand back!” a doctor ordered, placing the defibrillator paddles on the chest.

Jack saw the body give a jolt as the paddles discharged, and saw the line shoot up on the monitor, then sink back to baseline. Still in V fib.

(page 56 in hardcover)

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

He was gliding on the edge of the abyss.

Below him yawned the watery blackness of a frigid underworld, where the sun had never penetrated, where the only light was the fleeting spark of a bioluminescent creature.

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS

Chosen to conduct a three-month series of NASA experiments with single-cell organisms called Archaeons, Dr. Emma McCallum soon discovers the terrifying nature of these organisms and must race against time to stop a deadly disease that could threaten the entire world.

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This is the hardcover copy I have.

Cover design: Joseph Perez

I am a “cover girl”.

Which cover do you like best?

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To see all my Giveaways, go HERE.
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Friday 56 #80 & BB #56 – The Dead House @LindaFairstein

Posted on April 15, 2016 by fundinmental

Please include the title of the book and the author’s name.

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Next up on the shelf is The Dead House by Linda Fairstein.

MY FRIDAY 56

“Just once, I’d lie to read an obituary of a murdered woman who hasn’t been canonized overnight” It was Chapman, my Saturday morning 6:45 wake-up call. “Doesn’t anybody wicked and ugly ever get blown away?”

(page 56 in hardcover)

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

It was hard not to smile as I watched Lola Dakota die.

AMAZON SYNOPSIS

On Roosevelt Island, a strip of land in New York City’s East River, stands as abandoned nineteenth-century smallpox asylum, “The Deadhouse, where the afflicted were shipped off to die. It’s a gruesome bit of history perhaps best forgotten. But for Alexander Cooper, it may be the key to a shocking murder that cuts deeper than the arctic cold front gripping the city. A respected university professor is dead – strangled and dumped in an elevator shaft. And as Cooper and her close detective friend Mike Chapman scramble for answers, they make a shocking discovery: a piece of paper, found on the lifeless body of Professor Lola Dakota, that reads The Deadhouse….

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I am a “cover girl”.

Which do you think of the cover?

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