Red by Kate SeRine
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Fairytale characters meet the mean streets of Chicago in this gritty paranormal romance featuring Little Red Riding Hood as a tough-as-nails detective.
Once upon a time, a spell went awry, stranding Make Believe characters in the ordinary world. Since then, Tess “Red” Little has worked as an Enforcer for the Chicago branch of the Fairytale Management Authority. All grown up and with nothing to lose, she’s not some waif with a basket of goodies. Guns and combat boots are more her style now. And on her latest assignment, no one’s living happily ever after.
Someone is viciously murdering transplanted Tales, and the list of characters capable of such grisly violence includes more than one of Red’s old flames. To make matters worse, she’ll be working alongside sexy, enigmatic Nate Grimm, the FMA’s lead detective and part-time Reaper. Red normally prefers playing the lone wolf, but Nate’s dark side makes him perfect for this case. That is, if she can trust him. As she learned long ago, believing in the wrong person can have big, bad consequences.
Transplanted Tale Series
- Red
- Grimm Consequences
- The Better to See You With
- Along Came A Spider
- Ever After
- Better Watch Out (Fall 2022)
Read an Excerpt
I threw the covers back and stormed down the stairs, brushing past Gran in my fury. I charged into the kitchen, fully expecting to light into Nate about barging into my house—okay, well, not technically my house, but still—but when I saw him I slid to a halt, briefly wondering if I’d wandered into a parallel dimension.
Nate had discarded his omnipresent suit jacket and fedora in exchange for one of Gran’s pink frilly aprons with a creepily cheery gingerbread man embroidered on the front. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, revealing muscled forearms and intricately drawn tribal-style tattoos that were completely out of sorts with the girly cooking attire.
When he heard me come in, he turned away from where he was scrambling eggs with peppers and onions and offered me a wide smile. “Good morning, sunshine,” he called over his shoulder.
I intended to stun him with a witty comeback that started with Piss and ended with Off, but before I got the chance, he added, “Breakfast will be ready in a sec. I hope you like your eggs loaded. I didn’t figure you for a cinnamon roll kind of girl, but Gran insisted I whip some up when she heard my recipe.”
I blinked at him, now certain about my alternate reality theory. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Nate added some shredded cheese to his concoction and gently folded the eggs a couple of times before responding, “Thought we’d get an early start.”
I hopped up onto one of the stools nestled around the kitchen bar and gave him a wary look. “Start on what exactly?”
“I figured we’d drop in on Wolf,” he said. “Get it out of the way.”
I felt my stomach flop ominously. Probably just the hangover. “He’s nocturnal,” I muttered. “Maybe we should wait until later in the day.”
“Or we can catch him unawares so he doesn’t run,” he rejoined.
I bristled a little at his tone. “Seth won’t run.”
Nate shrugged. “Because he has a history of sticking it out when things get rough?”
“Fine,” I snapped, having to admit he had a point. “But he’s not the guy.”
“So you keep saying. As soon as he’s cleared, we’ll move on to Caliban.”
Nate scooped the eggs onto a plate and arranged a few slices of crisp bacon, perfectly toasted sourdough, and a sprig of parsley around them before setting the lot in front of me.
I stared down at the beautifully arranged food before me and wondered if I should eat it or take a picture of it. My stomach grumbled in spite of its queasiness, which really left only one option. I shoveled a bite of eggs into my mouth and had to stop myself from moaning with delight as Nate set out a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.
“So what do you think?” he asked, studying me in that über-intense way of his.
“I think Caliban can be an arrogant, foul-tempered asshole,” I mumbled around my eggs, “but I don’t think he’s your perp either.”
Nate laughed. “Not what I meant. The breakfast—do you like it?”
I swallowed, lifting my face from the trough—uh, plate—and meeting his gaze. “Yeah, it’s great. Thanks.”
He gave me a wink and went back to the stove, gathering up the frying pans and utensils and loading them into the dishwasher. Bemused by the decidedly surreal experience, I continued eating and was just polishing off the last of the most delicious cinnamon roll I’d ever consumed when Gran came bustling in.
“Well, I’m off!” she cried cheerily, her cheeks aglow with excitement. “Wish me luck, my darlings!”
Darlings? Plural?
Nate hastily dried his hands on the edge of his apron and shook Gran’s hand warmly. “Best of luck, Tilly—”
Tilly?
“—I’m sure your interview will go swell.”
Swell?
Gran tittered like a schoolgirl, blushing at Nate’s encouragement, then good-naturedly batted at his shoulder. “Oh, Detective, if all my audience was as kind as you, I would never worry about ratings!”
Dear God, it was a morning person conspiracy.
About the Author
Kate lives in a smallish, quintessentially Midwestern town with her husband and two sons, who share her love of storytelling. She never tires of creating new worlds to share and is even now working on her next project — probably while consuming way too much coffee.
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Giveaways
Red Blog Tour Giveaway
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Giveaway – The Venturi Effect by Sage Webb @partnersincr1me @SageWebbWrites
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Synopsis:
After fleeing the crush of a partnership at a large Chicago criminal-defense firm and the humiliation of a professional breakdown, Devlin Winters just wants to be left alone with a couple sundowners on the deck of her dilapidated mahogany trawler on Galveston Bay. But when an old flame shows up on the boardwalk with a mysterious little boy in tow and an indictment on his heels, fate has other plans, and Devlin finds herself thrust onto a sailboat bound for St. Kitts and staring down her demons in the courtroom, as she squares off against an obsessed prosecutor with a secret of his own.
Book Details:
Genre: Legal Thriller
Published by: Stoneman House Press, LLC
Publication Date: November 15th 2020
Number of Pages: 329
ISBN: 9781733737944 (Ebook: 9781733737951)
Links: Amazon | Goodreads
Read an excerpt:
Chapter 1
Carny
Red metal boxes lined the wood-railed tourist boardwalk, giving children access to fish food if the kids could finagle quarters from parents wilted and forlorn in the triple-digit Gulf Coast heat. With the food, kids could create great frenzies of red drum, snook, spotted sea trout, or whatever fish species gathered at the boardwalk’s pilings in agitated silver vortices. Devlin Winters lifted her ballcap and wiped a sleeve across her brow. She favored long-sleeved t-shirts for just this reason—their mopping properties . . . and to protect her from the Galveston Bay sun in its unrelenting effort to grill her and the other boardwalk barkers. In the two years she’d been on the boardwalk, she’d never fed the fish.
A kid stopped beside one of the boxes.
“Can I have a quarter, mommy?” the boy asked.
He looked about eight or nine, though Devlin had little interest in guessing accurately the ages of the pint-sized patrons fueling her income stream.
“I’m not sure I have one,” the mom replied.
She appeared a bit younger than Devlin, maybe late twenties.
Once upon a time, Devlin would have looked at a mother like that and made a snide remark about crib lizards and dead ends, but nine bucks an hour in the sun makes it awfully hard for a carny to judge others. Lacking a more interesting subject, Devlin watched the woman paw through a backpack-sized purse. The chick produced a quarter and handed it to the kid, who dropped it into the box’s payment slot and ground the dial, catching in his miniature palm a limited portion of the fish food that spilled out of the machine when he lifted the metal flap. The majority of the pellets rained down onto the wooden boardwalk planks, bounced, and disappeared through the cracks between the planks.
Devlin fancied she could hear the tiny fish-food BBs hitting brown water: plink, plink, plink. Once upon another time, when she was still at Sondheim Baker, but toward the end, she would go outside in the middle of the day. Instead of sitting at her desk, drafting appellate briefs for the Seventh Circuit, she would ride the elevator down to La Salle, down seven hundred feet of glass and stainless steel and terribly expensive architecture. She would drop down those elevator cables at random times, at times rich, successful attorneys should have been at their desks. And she would turn left out of that great glass building the color of the sky and walk over to the river, that nothing-like-the-Styx river that mankind had turned back on itself, contrary to nature.
She would stand and look down into the water, which was sometimes emerald, sometimes the color of jeans before they are ever washed. Once or twice, she had reached into her purse (expensive purses, Magnificent Mile purses from Burberry and Gucci and Hermès) and she had dug around until she’d found a penny. She’d dropped the penny into the river and, even now, on the sauna-hot boardwalk with the whistle of the kid-sized train behind her and the pulses of unimpressive pop music overhead, she was sure she could hear those pennies hit the Chicago River, hit and sink down, down, and farther down.
Plink. Plink. Pli—
“You want to try this one?”
The fish-feeding entertainment had run its course and the mother stood in front of the water-gun game Devlin guarded. She gestured toward Devlin and the row of stools in front of their narrow-barreled water guns.
“Is it hard?” The kid looked up at his mom, and the mom turned to Devlin.
“He can do it, right?” she asked. “I mean, he can figure it out, right?”
“Sure, it’s easy.” Devlin lifted her cap for another mop across her hairline, and then wiped perspiration away from her eyes under her sunglasses. “It’s fun, little dude,” she said to the kid in his obviously secondhand clothes.
She wanted to care, wanted to be “affable” or whatever it is a carny should be toward summer’s ice-cream-eating cash-crop flux of kids. But wanting alone, without effort, is never enough.
The mom held out a five-dollar bill.
“You both wanna do it? I gotta have more than one person to run it for a prize.” Devlin rubbed the top of her right flip flop and foot against her left calf.
“Oh,” the woman said, “I wasn’t planning to play. I’m no good at these things.”
“Um,” Devlin stepped out of the shade of the game’s nook and cast her eyes up and down the boardwalk, “we’ll find some more kids.” She took the woman’s money without looking away from the walkway and the beggarly seabirds.
A young couple, likely playing hooky from jobs in Houston, held the hands of a girl sporting jet-black pigtails and lopsided glasses.
“Step right up, princess. You wanna win a unicorn, right?” Devlin reached back into her game nook and snatched a pink toy from the wall of unicorns, butterflies, bees, and unlicensed lookalikes of characters from movies Devlin had never heard of. She dangled the thing in the girl’s direction.
“Would you like to play, habibti?” The mom jiggled the girl’s arm.
“Tell ya what.” Devlin turned to the mom. “The whole family can play for five bucks. We’re just trying to get some games going, give away some prizes to these cuties.” She turned back to the first mother. “And don’t worry, I’ll give him three games for the fiver.”
“Hear that, Vince? You’ll get to play a few times. Is that cool?”
Vince picked at his crotch. Devlin looked away.
“Yes, we’ll all play,” the second mother said. The dad pulled a twenty out of a pocket and Devlin started to make change while Vince’s mom hefted Vince onto a stool.
“Just a five back,” the father said. “We’ll play a few times.”
“Sure thing,” Devlin replied. Then she raised her voice to run through the rules of the game, to explain how the water guns spraying and hitting the targets would raise plastic boats in a boat race to buzzers at the top of the game contraption. She offered some tired words of encouragement, got nods from everyone, and counted down. “Three, two, one.”
She pushed the button and the game loosed a bell sound across the boardwalk.
A guy in waiter’s livery hurried past, hustling toward one of the boardwalk’s various restaurants, with their patios overlooking the channel and Galveston Bay. He’d be serving people margaritas and gimlets in just a few more steps and minutes. Devlin wanted a gimlet.
She drew a deep breath, turned back to her charges. “Close race here, friends.”
An ’80s-vintage Hunter sailboat slid past in the channel, leaving Galveston Bay and making its way back to one of the marinas up the waterway on Clear Lake.
When Devlin turned back to her marksmen, the girl’s mother’s boat had almost reached the buzzer.
“Looks like we’ve got a leader here. Come on, madam. You’re almost there.”
Devlin checked her watch. She’d be off in less than an hour. She’d be back on her own boat fifteen minutes after that, with an unopened bottle of Bombay Sapphire and a net full of limes rocking above the galley sink.
The buzzer blared.
“Looks like we have a winner. Congratulations, madam.” Devlin clapped three times. “Now would you like a unicorn, a butterfly, or,” Devlin pulled a four-inch-tall creature from the wall, not knowing how to describe it, “this little guy?” She held it out for the woman’s inspection.
“Habibti, you pick.” The mom patted her daughter’s back. The kid didn’t say anything, just pointed at the butterfly.
“Butterfly it is, beautiful.” Devlin unclipped the toy from the wall of plush junk and handed it to the girl. “Well, we’ve got some competition for this next one, folks, now that you’re all warmed up. Take a breather. We’ll start the next game when you’re ready.”
“Can I try?” A boy pulled at a broad-shouldered man’s hand, leading the guy toward the row of stools. It was hard to tell parentage with these kids and their mixed-up step- and half- and melded-in-other-ways families, and with this one, the kid’s dark curls and earnest eyes contrasted with the dude’s Nordic features and reminded Devlin of a roommate she’d had in undergrad, a girl from Haiti who’d taught Devlin about pikliz. Devlin hadn’t thought about Haitian food in ages. She decided she would google it later and see what she could find in Houston. A drive to discover somewhere new to eat would do her good.
Any chance at plantains and pikliz would have to wait, though. The kid and the dude now stood in front of Devlin. Ultra-dark sunglasses hid the guy’s eyes, and a ballcap with a local yacht brokerage’s logo embroidered on it cast a shadow over his face. Devlin cocked her head. She narrowed her eyes and hoped her own sunglasses were doing as good a job of being barriers. He reminded her of—
“Still time to add another player?” The dude pulled out a wallet and handed Devlin a ten.
“Sure,” she said. “Is this for both of you? You should give it a try, too. This’ll get you both in on the next two games.”
She didn’t wait for confirmation. She shoved the money in the box beside her control board of buzzer buttons and waved the guy and his kid toward stools on the far side of the now-veteran players already seated.
“Uh, sure,” the guy said, putting a hand on the kid’s back and guiding him to a seat.
Running through the rules again, Devlin envisioned those gimlets awaiting her. With Bombay Sapphire dancing before her, she counted down and then pushed the button to blast the bell and launch the game. The buzzer over the newcomer father’s boat’s track rang moments later. What kind of scummy guy just trounces a kid like that? Devlin rolled her eyes behind the obscuring lenses.
“Looks like our new guy is the winner, ladies and gentlemen. Now, would you like a unicorn, a butterfly, or this little dude?” Devlin again proffered the hard-to-describe creature, walking it over for the fellow to examine.
“What is it?” the guy asked.
Devlin shrugged. “What do you get when you cross an elephant and a rhino?”
The guy’s sunglasses gave away nothing. But something she couldn’t articulate made her feel like he was studying her.
“An ’el-if-I-know,” she said.
Still nothing . . . except that feeling of scrutiny.
“Dude, I’ve got no idea,” she replied to her reflection in the lenses.
“Grant, which one do you want?” The guy turned away and handed the unnamed creature to the kid, and then gestured at the identifiable unicorns and butterflies hanging on the wall over Devlin’s control station.
“Those are for girls,” Grant said, waving at the recognizable plushes on the wall.
“So is this one okay?” The guy patted the thing in the kid’s hand.
Grant wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“All right, folks. You’ve all got another game coming here. Competition is fierce. Who’s gonna take this last one?” Devlin strode back to her place at the control board.
“Deep inhale, everyone. Relax. All right, here we go. Three, two, one.” She pushed the starting button.
Up shot the new guy’s boat again. What a bastard. Poor Grant. This patriarchal showmanship would be worth about five or ten grand at the therapist’s in twenty-five years.
Out in the channel, two jetskis purred past, headed toward the bay. The day’s heat had cracked and the sky hinted at evening. Behind her, the victory whistle sounded. She turned. The dude with the sunglasses sat patting Grant’s shoulder, with Grant’s boat at the top of its track. So the guy wasn’t a complete fool.
“A new winner here, ladies and gentlemen.” She walked to Grant’s stool. “Now, little man, because you’ve won two prizes today, you can trade that one you’ve got and this one you’re going to get for one bigger one. You can pick from these if you want.”
She pointed at a row with only-slightly-bigger caterpillars, ambiguous characters, and a dog in a purple vest.
“That one,” Grant said, pointing at the dog.
“That one it is, good sir.” Devlin retrieved the dog, taking back the first creature and returning it to the wall in the process.
As she retraced her steps to Grant, the dog in her hand, fuzzy pictures coalesced in a fog and mist of bygone memories.
Devlin handed the dog to Grant. “There you go.”
She looked at the guy again, focusing on him for longer than she should have, feeling him perhaps doing the same to her. Yes, she had it right: it was him. She pushed a flyaway strand of bleached hair back into place beneath her cap and turned away.
“Thanks for playing this afternoon, folks,” she called. “Enjoy your evening on the boardwalk.”
The parents gathered their kids, and Devlin walked back toward her control board. Waiting for Grant and him to head off down the row of games and rides, she fussed with the cashbox and then lifted her water bottle to her lips. She could feel him and the kid lingering, feel them failing to move along, failing to leave her to forget what once was and to focus on thoughts of gimlets at sunset on the deck of a rotten old trawler.
“Um.” His voice sounded low and halting behind her. A vacuum, all heat and silence, followed and then a masculine inhale . . . and then the awkward pause.
He cleared his throat.
“Sorry to interrupt, but are you from Chicago?”
***
Excerpt from The Venturi Effect by Sage Webb. Copyright 2020 by Sage Webb. Reproduced with permission from Sage Webb. All rights reserved.
Author Bio:
Sage Webb practiced criminal defense for over a decade before turning to fiction. She is the author of two novels and the recipient of numerous literary awards in the U.S. and U.K., including second place in the Hackney Literary Awards. Her short stories have appeared in Texas anthologies and literary reviews. In 2020, Michigan’s Mackinac State Historic Parks named her an artist in residence. She belongs to International Thriller Writers and PEN America, and lives with her husband, a ship’s cat, and a boat dog on a sailboat in Galveston Bay.
You can find Sage at:
www.sagewebb.com, Goodreads, Twitter, & Facebook!
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Giveaway!:
This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Sage Webb. There will be Fourteen (14) winners for this tour. Seven (7) winners will each receive a $15 Amazon.com Gift Card and Seven (7) winners will each receive a physical copy of The Venturi Effect by Sage Webb (US addresses only). The giveaway begins on November 1, 2020 and runs through January 2, 2021. Void where prohibited.
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Who’s Afraid Of A Little Kitty Kat?
9 Lives by George M. Moser
Is it true cats have 9 lives?
A cat has nine lives – three to play – three to stray – and three to stay.
Author Unknown
Jenny could remember when her and Michael first met at the library. She was studying and he was with his friends, drunk. She told him the name of her dormitory house, the Mayflower, thinking he’d never remember. But he did. When she turned up pregnant, he was happy.
Jenny had called Michael at work telling him about the cat JR had found under the deck. It didn’t seem to be able to find its way out and needed rescuing.
He had a 66 blue Ford Mustang Shelby GT his dad had given him and he called it his cat’s meow. How ironic that would prove to be. While Michael and Max, his lab, were trying to scare the cat out its hiding place, it made a run for it. A chase ensued. Unfortunately, his attempt to catch the cat was a complete failure and he accidentally killed it. He hurriedly disposed of it before Jenny could see what happened.
Near the Valley of Kings in the Sahara Desert was an excavation site. Among the artifacts were small mummies of cats or maybe small dogs. Marty McAndrews was heading up the dig. He had accidentally stumbled upon the site and began digging illegally thinking to get the permit if they found anything.
Marty had found 250 cat mummies They were usually buried because they were loved or someone wanted to protect them. The door they had come across had a warning telling them not to go in, but Marty would anyway. He felt there was a great treasure inside, just waiting for him to come and take it.
They had not gotten the necessary paperwork done and Mohamed was trying to get Marty to slow down, use caution. Money would not buy them out of trouble this time, even though Marty’s arrogance had always allowed him to have his way before.
Michael called Shaun, Jenny’s brother, to come over and when he did, he gave him the cat in a plastic bag and told him to get rid of it. He was drunk, but took it to the forest preserve thinking it was a perfect place to dump it. He thought he heard it move, but nothing happened so he threw it in the bushes and left, not realizing a cop had seen him.
After Shaun had left, the cop went to see what he had done. The saying “curiosity killed the cat and satisfaction brought it back,”, proved so true. Unfortunately for Steven Case. He opened the bag, sure the cat was dead, but it hissed and spat at him before he could pull his gun and shoot it.
Michael was waiting for Jenny to finish dressing for the block party. A cat jumped on the ledge outside the window. It looked like the one he killed,, but he knew it couldn’t be.
Everywhere he turned he saw the cat with its head bashed in and its funky eye, except now he brought a friend. He must be imagining it.
Ever since Michael got his promotion and accidentally killed the cat, his life began going downhill. He had been scratched by the cat and the scratches had become infected. He was getting rabies shots, just in case, but had told no one about it. Not even his wife.
The fortune-teller at the party told him about the cat in the garbage and Krista, the town hussy. She mentioned other things, but Michael was not really paying attention. Who believed in fortune-tellers anyway?
His first day of work in his new position turned into a nightmare. When he left work he decided to stop for a bit to eat before heading home. He sat down by his favorite statue, Picasso, in the center of Daley Plaza. Cats began appearing from everywhere. As he ran, he kept turning back and saw all the cats still chasing him, but where were all the people? It was like in a dream, where you’re running as fast as you can, but it feels like slow motion.
The fortune-teller, Zara, had written down Reland, His car was parked on Ireland, was she behind this? There was a man in the parking structure in a long black coat. His hat covered his face, just like the fortune-teller had mentioned. When lightning flashed, he saw the man was deathly pale with catlike eyes and fang-like teeth. Cats were swirling all around him. The man and cats vanished into thin air, but written on the windshield was Valafar. What or who was that?
He was caught in a nightmare and it just kept getting worse. Everywhere he went, the cats were there attacking him and getting meaner and meaner.
“Look, why would I take a cat from the zoo and release him into the Wagon, only to kill the damn thing in a blender? Sounds like a book to me.” Made me laugh, even through the gruesomeness.
“Snakes! I hate snakes” copied from Indian Jones.
Sneak up on prey – efficient, silent.
I think cats are already creepy, so go ahead and add a supernatural one. LOL
Techniques – stalk, run, pounce, ambush .
What’s not creepy about that?
4 STARS – Would Highly Recommend To Others
Won on Goodreads First Read Giveaway. The author was gracious enough to sign it for me. Thank you. I have been wanting to read this book ever since it arrived in the mail, but I just got to it.
The cover is eye-catching. If I had been in the library, I would have pulled it off the shelf without even looking further. If I saw it in the book store, I definitely would have investigated further. And after reading the book blurb, I would have bought it. The blurb put a smile on my face, but I’m not sure if it was appropriate considering the gruesomeness and horror of the book, even though I’m smiling as I write this.
What happens when you forget your dreams? So many people grow up and trade their dreams for the things it takes just to survive and provide for your family.
It seemed Michael did like most of us, put aside his dreams and entered the “real world”. But who’s to say what is right or wrong when you are talking about the rest of your life. Sometimes there will be a moment in our lives that will lead us to the path we wanted to take in the beginning.
He talked about pulling a Bruce Willis in Die Hard, strapping the gun to his back. Only real life isn’t like in the movies.
I really like that I couldn’t figure out what was going to happen next. The tension created by the anticipation of the cat’s attack kept building throughout the book. More than once I found myself saying to myself don’t turn around, don’t go there, don’t open the bag. I could feel the chills running up and down my spine and the hairs rising on the back of my neck as the cats stalked him, creeping around, unafraid and so bold.
Right up there with Stephen King and Dean Koontz, who are two of my favorite horror writers.
This is a caracal cat – one of the Kings of terror in 9 Lives.
About The Author
George M. Moser graduated from St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa with a degree in Business Finance. He enjoyed a successful career in real estate in the Chicago area and became an active and upstanding member of the community, making charitable donations to local hospitals, churches and community projects. He lives with his wife and children just outside Chicago and spends his free time writing. Nine Lives is his first novel and he is currently working on a further two titles.
Website: http://www.gmmoser.com
Author Profile Page: http://www.gmmoser.com/the-author.html
To order, simply click on the cover.
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International Giveaway – Catch a Tiger by its Tail
Tiger Paw Review and Giveaway
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Once you’ve finished with the awesome trailer, please continue reading for the review and giveaway.
by Charles A. Cornell
Billionaire Matthew Colton was the fifth victim. He was found in his bathtub filled with red wine and an indecipherable script of symbols and lines ending with a bloody paw print. It was the same symbol left at all the crime scenes. His wine collection was worth over 13 million dollars. He had to watch as the killer dumped it down the drain, then filled the bathtub to drown him in it. Fits in with what’s going on today, people’s resentment of the rich and their flaunting of their wealth.
Dominic Sant’Angello looked out the window of his fancy 87th floor office of the John Hancock Center in Chicago, Illinois. He was CEO and principal shareholder of Sigma Venture Capital. He thought of two of their clients, Deuce Meredith, CEO at Razorback Software and Liang Wong, founder of Silicon Pathways, having been murdered. Now Matthew. Two deaths a coincidence? Not three. He was about to lose everything. Bankruptcy was just a matter of days away. He was finished.
FBI Profiler, Scott Forester had spent six months chasing a killer in Denver. He worked at the FBI National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in Quantico, Virginia and had been called back to help when Matthew was killed.The first murder had been done in Florida, then two victims in Wyoming and now the Hampton’s.
The killer used the wine to torture Matthew and make him suffer. Was it a part of the killer’s ritual? Why? There had to be a pattern to all the murders. What was it? Deuce Meredith had been wounded and left alive, yet his guide had died instantly. Each victim had a specific torture attached to it. Was it a test? A contest? Payback? Was the killer making a statement?
I like when Scott places his order at the diner and the waitress reads it off the ticket to Archie in the kitchen:
“One hungry man’s, over cooked eggs, foreign toast and a bottle of red wine!”
“Red wine? Are you sure? With eggs?”
“Okay, make it white.”
Made me chuckle when Scott described it as Archie’s floor show.
Doctor Rajeev Chandra was sitting with the case notes, drinking a cup of tea, in the Garden Cafe at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and waiting for Scott and Special Agent Van Cleyburne. The Doctor had received the information and autopsy reports of the murders to examine. He told them they were meeting some people who would tell them about the killer. If they knew the motive, it would explain a lot, but if Doctor Chandra could tell them about the writing it may give them more clues. The writing was Sanskrit and the symbols were Hindu.
Doctor Chandra rose from the bench he had been resting on and they resumed their walk to the Freer Gallery, the gallery of Asian art. He wanted to show them three paintings, all different yet all the same, the God – Vishnu, Shiva and Brama. The whole exercise was designed to make them think differently. The final painting was the showpiece – The Revenge of Dvaipa. Could the killer be bringing his victims to Judgment Day? She is the daughter of Kali, Goddess of Death and Destruction. Dvaipa in Hindi means ‘from a tiger’ half human and half tiger. The Indian government had considered the sect that worshiped Dvaipa so dangerous they closed all their temples and scattered their sacred objects. She had been exiled to America. Satanists worshiped her. She was revenge Incarnate, the unholy scythe she wields – the Tiger Paw. Below the seated Demon Goddess the letters spelled out, “I am the energy of her divine anger”. The Signature – the incision in victims left earlobe to be able to use the victims own blood to write the message.
Miami – De Andre Antoin had been killed by a sniper bullet on his yacht. It was the same rifle that was used in Wyoming. California – Lian Wong had been strangled by a noose made from the hot air balloon’s guy rope. It was the first murder to use the signature. Now the Hamptons. What did the victims have in common? Why was each victim killed in such a manner that they died slowly? Channels Dvaipa’s anger and becomes her instrument of revenge – the Tigers Paw. Covers it all -Tiger Paw killer – motive – revenge.
Scott’s at the diner again:
“Heart attack on a plate with fries coming up. And a crushed dead fish salad.”
5 STARS – Would buy for Them (lol)
I worked as a waitress and bartender for years, so maybe that’s why these funny tidbits stand out to me.
The cover is awesome. I love the vibrant colors and the photo draws you in, trying to see further into it. Good, catchy title, made me want to know what the story was about. Both the cover and the title lead into the story and with me that is always a good thing. It’s not a quick read and from the very beginning it will draw you in. You will not want to put it down.
Full of intrigue. Complex mixture of plots. Wall Street bigwigs. Greed. House of cards. Scams. Reading along thinking I know were all this is going, all of a sudden there’s another story angle intertwines with the others. Jamie was pathetic. Your typical “it’s not my fault” loser. But what would you do to protect the only family you have? The characters were well-developed and you will love them or hate them. All I kept thinking was, they got what they deserved, ignoring the 99% and thinking the world was theirs for the fleecing.
Should 401Ks, IRAs…be invested in Wall Street, which we all know is full of corruption? What doesn’t change? If you have the money, you have the power and control. Everyone’s rules are different. Things done in the name of religion, fanaticism. When I thought the fight would be over, something would happen and it would continue making me wish it would be done before something worse happened and my hero lost. .
This book had my juices flowing-my heart pounding, blood boiling, anger, rage, PISSED OFF. It had me thinking of all kinds of things. So applicable to what is going on today. Believable. For a debut novel, I was really impressed.
I thought it was ironic that while I was reading this, Shiva was mentioned on the new TV show, Perception.
The ending had me shocked and bummed. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. It has a “killer ” ending. It left me asking ????????????????????? I had to pose the question to the author who responded ?????????????????????????????????????? No peeking. It is definitely worth waiting til you arrive at the last sentence, the last word. You will deprive yourself of an awesome ending, so once again, NO PEEKING!!!!
Giveaway – Charles has been kind enough to offer three ebooks of his debut novel, Tiger Paw. As always, entry is easy. Just leave your email address along with a comment to Charles telling him what you like about tigers. Giveaway ends August 31, 2012 so be sure to enter soon.
Please feel free to like this post and tweet it out to your friends.
It is not required. but following my blog and twitter are always appreciated.
BONUS: For an additional chance to win go to Laura’s blog: http://wp.me/p27ipo-k0
BONUS PLUS: Tigers can swim. The Jaguar is the only other big cat that likes to do this. But, there is something that tigers don’t do that other big cats can do. What is it? The first correct answer gets a copy of Tiger Paw!
THIS JUST IN. We have our three winners to the mini-giveaway- the Bonus Plus. The answer was climbing trees! The three lucky winners are: Janna – D.H. Nevins – Jill
To see what happens when Tigers climb trees, check out this video below:
There are still three ebooks up for grabs.
I am curious to see Laura’s review. Even though we are sitting here together, I won’t be able to see her review until we push that publish button. One, two, threeeeeeeee!
Visit Charles blog to find out more about his mission to save the tiger.
About the author
Charles A Cornell was born in England, raised in Canada and now divides his time between Michigan and Florida. After 35 years of global business experience on three continents, Charles A Cornell brings a diverse and unique perspective to his fiction. His novels are mystery thrillers carved from today’s headlines, blended with action and intrigue, and cloaked in psychological suspense.
Tiger Paw, his debut thriller has been nominated for two national Best Thriller awards (from the Kindle Book Reviews & from the Royal Palm Literary Awards).
Website: http://www.CharlesACornell.com
Tiger Paw is available now in paperback and ebook. Click the cover below to order.
Stop by Archie’s Diner for dinner.
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