After tragedy strikes on the day they were to wed, Jayden must support Kadesh as he ascends the throne and becomes king of Sariba. But with the dark priestess Aliyah conspiring to control the crown, and the arrival of Horeb, Jayden’s former betrothed, Kadesh’s kingdom, as well as his status as king, is at stake.
Jayden knows that the time to be merciful has come and gone, and that some enemies can only be halted by death. Now she and Kadesh must prepare to fight not only for their love, but also for their kingdom.
This is the final book in the epic trilogy that began with Forbidden and Banished. Jayden and Kadesh’s love will be put to the ultimate test as they fight a war to save their kingdom.
Praise for the Book
Booklist (starred review)
“At its core, this is a romance, with all the push and pull that goes along with impossible love, and Little elevates the story by creating a perilous landscape, both outward and inward, as Jayden must deal with the hardship of desert life as well as her own desires. . . descriptions of the landscape are evocative in both desolation and in beauty. Just as good is the pacing, which gets the blood pumping for both characters and readers. This will heighten anticipation for a no-doubt exciting conclusion.”
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
“Rich historical details are deftly woven into Jayden’s narration, and the dynamics of Jayden’s tribe are vividly drawn. Jayden’s story becomes as much about finding herself as it is about finding love.”
Reader: “This book took my breath away. I loved the immersive story and the rich setting of ancient Mesopotamia. The customs, traditions, and beliefs of the desert people were captivating and every time I set the book down I couldn’t wait to pick it up again. I’ve never read anything like this before.”
Reader: “Forbidden was so captivating that I awoke early in the morning, while my family was still sleeping, so I could finish the last pages of this beautifully haunting tale.”
Author Kimberley Griffiths Little
Kimberley Griffiths Little is the author of ten award-winning Middle-Grade and Young Adult novels with Knopf, Scholastic and Harpercollins, including the Whitney Award, the Arizona/New Mexico Book Award, the SCBWI Crystal Kite, the Southwest Book Award, and others. ALA BOOKLIST named FORBIDDEN, the first book in her Ancient Mesopotamian historical fantasy a Young Adult Top 10 novel for the Historical category, Romance category, and Religious/Inspirational.
Kimberley adores anything old and musty with a secret story to tell. She once stayed in the haunted tower room at Borthwick Castle in Scotland and didn’t sleep a wink; sailed the Seine in Paris; ridden a camel in Petra, Jordan; shopped the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul; and spent the night in an old Communist hotel in Bulgaria. She was born in San Francisco but now lives on the banks of the Rio Grande with her husband and three sons.
Open only to those who can legally enter, receive and use an Amazon.com Gift Code or Paypal Cash. Winning Entry will be verified prior to prize being awarded. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 or older to enter or have your parent enter for you. The winner will be chosen by rafflecopter and announced here as well as emailed and will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen. This giveaway is in no way associated with Facebook, Twitter, Rafflecopter or any other entity unless otherwise specified. The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning. Giveaway was organized by Kathy from I Am A Reader and sponsored by the author. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW.
. 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.
~~~
I have a few James A Michener novels, but seeing I am a love of the Caribbean, my favorite area to visit, I chose Caribbean, a historical fiction novel.
James’ death is a huge loss to the writing world.
This is the cover for my 1st edition hardcover published in 1989.
“That afternoon the captain general summoned all hands to the afterdeck, very nervous he was, and he said: “What did I promise yesterday when you were near mutiny?” and a man near me bellows: “That if we don’t see land in three days, back we go safe to our homes in Spain.” And he said: “That’s still the promise,” and we cheered
(Page 56 in hardcover, published in 1989)
If you like Witches and magic, check out the fabulous new Tag Team Event and enter to win an ebook or audiobook for your very own. Multiple chances to win. HERE
Book Beginnings
The first chapter is the Hedge of Croton and if you know these plants, they paint a vivid and colorful picture right off the bat. Too bad they die back in winter here in the Florida Panhandle.
The chief character in this narrative is the Caribbean Sea, one of the world’s most alluring bodies of water, a rare gem among the oceans, defined by the islands that form a chain of lovely jewels to the north and east. Although bounded on the south and west by continental land masses, it is the islands that give the Caribbean its Unique charm. On the north lies the large and important trio: Puerto Rico, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Domincan Republic) and great Cuba. On the east are those heavenly small islands that so artistically dot the blue waves: Antigua, Guadeloupe, Martinique, All Saints,Trinidad and remote Barbados among them. The southern shore is formed by the South American countries of Venezula and Colombia and the Central American nation of Panama The western shore is often overlooked, but it contains both the exciting republics of Central America – Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras – and the wonderful, mysterious peninsula of Yucatan where the ancient Maya flourished
GOODREADS BLURB: In this acclaimed classic novel, James A. Michener sweeps readers off to the Caribbean, bringing to life the eternal allure and tumultuous history of this glittering string of islands. From the 1310 conquest of the Arawaks by cannibals to the decline of the Mayan empire, from Columbus’s arrival to buccaneer Henry Morgan’s notorious reign, from the bloody slave revolt on Haiti to the rise of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Caribbean packs seven hundred dramatic years into a tale teeming with revolution and romance, authentic characters and thunderous destinies. Through absorbing, magnificent prose, Michener captures the essence of the islands in all of their awe-inspiring scope and wonder.
. 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.
~~~
Cape Cod by William Martin would have been on my reading list because of the many trips I have taken there. It is a very unique place and that cover pretty much tells it all for me.
Then the woman in front called, “Ten.” And before Geoff could get his hand up, the bid bounced to ten-five, then eleven.
Geoff’s hand relaxed, as though it had gone beyond him.
Janice said, “Thank God for her.”
“Are we out of it?” G” Geoff said to his wife. “I think so,” he whispered to his friend.
(Page 56 in hardcover, published in 1991)
Book Beginnings
Each year the whales went to the great bay. They followed the cold current south from seas where the ice never melted, south along coastlines of rock, past rivers and inlets, to the great bay that forever brimmed with life. Sometimes they stayed through a single tide, sometimes from one full moon to the next, and sometimes, for reasons that only the sea understood, the whales never left the great bay.
My question to you:Have you ever been to Cape Cod or gone whale watching?
GOODREADS BLURB: By the bestselling author of Back Bay, this is a majestic multi-gnerational saga that brings to life the story of Cape Cod, from the landing of the Mayflower to the present. From its highly-charged opening to its shattering conclusion, Cape Cod is a novel as impressive and captivating as the land it portrays.
Oubliette by Vanta M Black has a simple, yet awesome cover for a novel that was inspired by true events. Check it out closely and, if you see what I see, you will be eager to open the pages and learn what’s inside.
Be sure and scroll to the bottom of the post for the giveaway!
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Oubliette: A Forgotten Little Place by Vanta M. Black
Genre: Fiction, Thriller, Paranormal, Historical Fiction, Genre-Fiction, New Adult, Horror
Veronica knows the monsters aren’t “just in her head”, but no one listens to the headstrong ten-year-old as they tie her to a hospital bed every night.
Years later, after being dumped by her business-partner/boyfriend, Veronica finds herself on the verge of bankruptcy. Then a late-night call promises the perfect solution — a job opportunity decorating a castle in France.
Will Veronica risk what little she has left to chase a fairytale?
When the shadowy things that once terrorized her come back, Veronica must decide how much she’ll sacrifice for them, for her sanity, and for her life.
This epic book consists of interwoven stories with paranormal twists. A horror-filled historical fiction adventure, it spans nearly two millennia.
You’ll be transported to an ancient Pagan ritual, Roman-ruled Gaul, the bloody Inquisition of the Knights Templar, France as it’s ravaged by the Black Death, the duplicitous Reformation, the Paris Catacombs, and the gory French Revolution, while you unravel Oubliette’s cryptic layers.
Veronica didn’t understand why they looked for the monsters in her head, that’s obviously not where they were. Instead of listening, the doctors stuck pads with wires to her temples and increased the dosage of an IV that dripped into her veins.
They also told the nurses to tie her down with thick, leather belts every night.
The tethers didn’t matter though, because when the monsters came, she wouldn’t be able to move anyway. The only thing Veronica could ever do was scream.
The doctors called them “night terrors”. The pudgy lady who talked funny –– she told Veronica it was her accent –– said they were “spirits”. Mommy used the term “shadow people”. Veronica just called them “monsters”, and wished they’d stop scaring her when she slept.
They wanted her. Deep inside, on a primal level, Veronica knew the monsters –– or whatever they were –– craved her, and if given the chance, they would do something very, very bad to her.
The little girl tried to explain this to the doctors, the nurses, the accent-talking lady, and her mother, but none of the adults really listened. Instead they argued and shouted at each other, and huffed in and out of the room –– but the thing that frightened Veronica the most, is when the adults would simply shrug their shoulders, and admit that they really didn’t have any idea what the monsters were at all.
It was almost ten o’clock –– shift-change time. The night staff would come now. The nurse on duty was a plodding and lazy lady who would only check on Veronica at the beginning of the shift, and then abandon her in favor of the nurses’ station and a VHS tape of the day’s soap operas. Veronica didn’t like her. Sometimes it would take “Nurse Lazy” a full five minutes before she’d respond. She never came fast enough.
Veronica tried to tell the doctors that the nurse was too slow, but the complaints of a ten-year-old weren’t taken seriously against the word of the lazy nurse who smiled sweetly and said, “Poor dear and those dreadful night terrors. I always come running as fast as I can!”
Veronica cringed as the television automatically turned itself off. It always happened at ten o’clock; it was on a timer. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt it protected her and wished more than anything it could stay on. The noise, the pictures, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, there was something inexplicable about the TV that kept the monsters away.
Veronica’s pleas to leave the television on all night were never honored by the adults. Nurse Lazy actually once told her, “Oh, we can’t leave the TV on, it’ll give you bad dreams.”
Ha! Little did she know the TV prevented the bad dreams.
The door opened and in walked Nurse Lazy. Her metal nameplate actually read “Lucy”. She handed Veronica a little paper cup with a green pill inside and waited with a thin, forced smile. The longer Veronica took to take her medicine, the longer Nurse Lazy would have to wait until she could watch her soaps.
Veronica plucked the pill out of the cup. “Aren’t they ’sposed to be yellow?”
Lucy flared her nostrils ever so slightly as she replied, “No, your new doctor prescribed the green ones. Hurry up and take it.”
Veronica studied the pill closely, holding it inches from her nose. She looked at it slightly cross-eyed. “I don’t think I like the green ones though. Yellows are better.”
Lucy’s trembling hand clutched a Dixie cup of water. “That’s for the doctors to decide. Now eat it up! Time for sleep.”
Veronica painstakingly laid the pill on her tongue and grunted for the nurse to hand her the water.
Lucy thrust it forward. “Here, drink!”
Veronica pouted, though she knew the cute face wouldn’t work on ol’ Lazy.
“Thanks,” she muttered as the nurse buckled down Veronica’s arms and legs and pulled the covers up to her chest.
“Goodnight,” Lucy grumbled. She snatched the mermaid doll that sat by Veronica’s side, and tossed it on the nightstand before careening out the door.
Random acts of meanness like that weren’t uncommon for Lucy. Veronica sniffed as the silence left in the nurse’s wake permeated the room.
Then familiar, tinny tunes from a transistor radio wafted through the air. It hung from the janitor’s cleaning cart. He always blared it while mopping the halls. There was that song again. Some stupid radio station played it almost every night right around this time. Veronica stared at her doll on the nightstand, just out of reach, as the lyrics began:
Dream the dream that only you can dream
Sing the song that only you can sing
Dance with me, we’ll start slow
Clasp my hand, now lose control
Bite the monster only you can see
And dream the dream you only dream for me
Veronica tried to squish her head into the stiff pillow so her ears were covered, but it didn’t work. The heavy metal song’s pounding chorus kicked in.
Spirits in the maze
Burning brighter
Like a dream within the haze
Dancing fire
Deep inside malaise
Hungry spider
Force your screams to blaze
Spinning spiral
The song frightened her. It seemed to always precede a particularly bad episode. She really wished she had the yellow pills. She felt defenseless as sleep consumed her. The green pills would be no help if one of the bad ones came…the real Bad Ones, that is.
She twisted her head and glared into the large mirror on the wall across the room. People watched her from inside there. Veronica wasn’t sure if they were the doctors, the accent lady, or maybe even her mother, but every now and then someone would move, the light would catch just right, and she would see a figure behind the glass. Dimly, she watched them watch her. They studied her and talked about her and wrote notes about her on clipboards. Knowing they were there gave Veronica little comfort because they weren’t there to help; they were only there to watch.
Her sleepy eyes narrowed at the watchers and she whispered with dopey lips, “What, no popcorn? You gonna stare at me all night and you got no stinking popcorn? You’re all a bunch of stupid heads, ya’ know that? Stooopid heads…”
Sleep quietly took over while Veronica cursed the stupid heads behind the glass. She jerked her droopy neck to force herself awake, but the green pill was powerful. It pushed her into the darkness where the shadow people waited.
Veronica, here we are!
Veronica, time to steal your dreams.
Time to let us steal your dreams and break your bones and slip your soul right out of your slimy sack of skin…Veronica!
She fought to wake up. With all her might she tried to scream, but the green pill seized her motor functions and paralyzed her. She was like a petrified slab of meat laid out on a table –– unable to move, unable to cry out, unable to defend herself.
Do you know the evil that you dream, Veronica?
Do you know the song that only you can sing?
Veronica!
In the limbo between sleep and lucidity Veronica sensed their heinous presence with crystal-clarity. She was hyper-alert and instinctively knew these were the real Bad Ones. Without looking she saw one crouching in the far corner of the room. It glared at her intently and oozed animosity. It waited patiently, almost casually, for Veronica to succumb.
With a sudden surge of intense willpower she cried out — just a little — it was a tiny whimper that was barely audible. It wasn’t loud enough to scare the shadow people away though, and it definitely wasn’t loud enough for anyone living to hear.
Another Bad One pulled itself onto the foot of her bed. This one was small and hairy like an animal. Scrooching under the blanket, it crept slowly along the side of her bare leg. It felt for a nook to burrow — a soft place like her stomach or side so it could squirm and writhe itself into her flesh — where it could rip her apart from the inside out.
“Help,” Veronica whispered one last time before falling into the dark depths of sleep –– deep, down, spinning ‘round, until the darkness took a hold…
About the Author:
Vanta M. Black, author of Oubliette—A Forgotten Little Place, enjoys uncovering the dark mysteries of our Universe. In addition to writing, she enjoys traveling to provocative places and studying all things esoteric.
Black has degrees in English, communication and art. She resides in Southern California with her husband and two pug-mix dogs, and spends her time in support of causes that empower women and advance science and technology.
I love learning about covers and characters and this is what Mark Morey has to say about The Last Great Race
ABOUT THE COVER: The Last Great Race is based upon the life and loves of 1930s Italian motor racing champion Achille Varzi, so the choice of cover was quite easy. Achille Varzi was a heavy smoker at a time when the health consequences of that were not known. His joining the Auto Union racing team in 1935 set in train a sequence of events which almost destroyed him emotionally. A picture of Achille Varzi in an AutoUnion smoking a cigarette is not only typical of the man at the time, it’s also poignant that a few weeks after that picture was taken at Monaco in 1936, he was about to suffer two savage blows which took him years to recover from.
ABOUT THE NAMES: I have followed Formula One car racing since the early 1970s, and through that I was aware of the story of Achille Varzi, a good driver of the 1930s, until his private life got in the way of his racing career. When I looked into the facts about Varzi I didn’t realise that he was the best racer in a legendary era, certainly one of the best of all time, and that his love affair with Ilse was so passionate and ultimately so destructive. I thought that passionate love, the tragedy that came out of it, and his recovery with the help of Norma who came back into his life, made a great story. Norma Colombo was a woman against the odds. She lived with Achille Varzi unmarried when women didn’t do that, and when Achille broke up with Ilse she came back to him. That was just as amazing as anything that happened between Achille and Ilse. One man and two women who adored him completely, totally and absolutely.
The names of most of the characters are real, except for the fictional characters Paul Bassi and PIa Donati. Paul (real name Paolo) is a straightforward name for a straightforward man, while I thought that Pia Donati was a particularly attractive name.
Thanks so much for sharing Mark. Now…on to the info about the book: The Last Great Race by Mark Morey.
I love reading about any type of auto racing and watch many of the races on TV. How about you? Are you a fan?
This story is based around the life of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic sportsmen of his era, Achille Varzi: multiple race winner, twice Racing Champion of Italy and a hero to his many followers. Told partly through the eyes of Varzi and partly by fictional Italian-Australian racing journalist Paul Bassi, we follow the many triumphs and tragedies of Varzi’s life: his passionate love affair with Ilse, his tragic morphine addiction, his recovery from his addictions, his marriage to Norma and his re-signing to race for Alfa Romeo.
Only war intervenes, and Paul and his wife Pia leave Achille to spy for the British at the naval base in Naples. Paul and Pia endure hundreds of Allied air-raids, they join the partisans who fought off the German army until the Allies could rescue them, and then they survive in a near-ruined city as best they can.
By 1946 Italy is still shattered but life is returning to normal, and no more normal is Achille Varzi winning the Grand Prix of Italy that year. Over the next two seasons Achille Varzi scores more successes, until he makes his only ever driving mistake and is killed in Switzerland in 1948. Even though he died too young, Paul and Pia know that Achille Varzi would never have lived in his life in any other way.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EXCERPT
“Achille crashed,” she said and drank some more. “I have never seen anything like it. He was the only driver taking the banked curve at the end of the straight flat-out. Each lap I heard the exhaust note of his car never wavering as he took that curve with his typical, stylish precision. And then on lap fourteen a sudden gust of wind came in from the desert, blowing dust and debris. I held my hat and glanced at the Englishman nearby, just as the wind caught the front of Achille’s car and lifted the front wheels from the track. The car rose higher and higher like an aeroplane, flying away from the track until the rear of the car hit the ground and then the front, and it rolled over and over with the most terrible noise. Over and over until it stopped on its wheels in the middle of an orchard. There were Arab men dressed in robes and they ran to the car. I was on the wrong side of the circuit and checked that nobody was coming before I ran to it as well, and so did the Englishman.” She drank more water. “I thought he must be dead, nobody could survive a crash like that, but he climbed out of the wrecked car and brushed dirt from his overalls. He looked around and saw me but I don’t think it registered.”
“Is he alright?” Paul asked, worried.
“He’s fine although shaken. He didn’t even light a cigarette, and then he fainted. The Englishman Raymond Mays helped him, and he drove us back here.”
Paul contemplated what he heard, and that would have been a terrible thing to see.
“I have never seen anything like it,” Pia repeated and Paul hoped that Achille really was alright. If he was taking that curve flat-out he must have been doing about 300.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Writing technical documentation and advertising material formed a large part of my career for many decades. Writing a novel didn’t cross my mind until relatively recently, where the combination of too many years writing dry, technical documents and a visit to the local library where I couldn’t find a book that interested me led me consider a new pastime. Write a book. That book may never be published, but I felt my follow-up cross-cultural crime with romance hybrid set in Russia had more potential. So much so that I wrote a sequel that took those characters on a journey to a very dark place.
Once those books were published by Club Lighthouse and garnered good reviews I wrote in a very different place and time. My two novels set in Victorian Britain were published by Wings ePress in July and August of 2014. These have been followed by a story set against the background of Australia’s involvement on the Western Front, published in August 2015. Australia’s contribution to the battles on the Western Front and to ultimate victory is a story not well known, but should be better known.
Staying within the realm of historical fiction, one of the most successful sportsmen of the 1930s, Achille Varzi, lived a dramatic and tumultuous life. It is a wonder his story hasn’t been told before, beyond non fiction written in Italian. The Last Great Race follows the highs and lows of Varzi’s motor racing career, and stays in fascist Italy during the dark days of World War Two.
Title: The Tree of Life Author: Dawn Davis Publisher: Friesen Press Pages: 304 Genre: Historical Fiction
MY REVIEW
The Tree of Life by Dawn Davis is her debut novel. It is part of a series, but does stand alone. Each book will represent new characters and a different time period in Canda’s history.
The Tree of Life starts in 1999 but spends most of its time in 1939. It is a fun and lively adventure through time with Charlotte as she strives to solve the mystery of the missing brooch, The Tree of Life. She lives the history she has been taught.
Charlotte is a precocious 11 year old girl. She is headstrong and some think she acts like a know it all. She is always getting Henry, her best friend, in trouble, bossing him around.
She will learn first hand about the wealthy, discrimination, and hard work.
Gwendolyn is prim and proper, a perfect example of the snobbish and haughty air of the privileged.
I feel this is a very creative way to write a coming of age story. A heartwarming story of life – its rights and wrongs, its hopes and dreams, its wants and desires, its loves and loss…
There are no bells and whistles, no blood and guts of the thriller and horror novels I love, but a wonderful story just the same.
I received a copy of The Tree of Life by Dawn Davis in return for an honest review.
3 Stars
SYNOPSIS
Two accidental time travelers explore Canada in 1939 in THE TREE OF LIFE, the first installment in the Tower Room series by Dawn Davis.
As THE TREE OF LIFE opens, Charlotte Hansen and her friend, Henry Jacobs, are hanging out in the old mansion where Charlotte and Leo, her grandfather, live. Henry is there to practice the piano, and Charlotte is waiting for him to finish so that she can supervise his work on a massive school project researching the 1930s. When Leo leaves the house to pick up his friend Gwendolyn Fenton—whom Charlotte does not like—the two eleven-year-olds prepare tea and cookies for the grown-ups’ visit and then rush to the Tower Room. The room is located on the top floor of the mansion. Charlotte is not allowed in the room without permission; but she is headstrong and ignores the directive. After leaving the tray of tea and sweets on the tabletop, Charlotte pulls Henry underneath the table with her.
The children soon hear Gwendolyn telling Leo about a magical brooch from her childhood. Suddenly, a large hand grabs Charlotte, who clutches Henry tightly before the hand thrusts the pair into nothingness. After Charlotte regains consciousness, she and Henry meet the younger version of Gwendolyn, a spoiled force of nature determined to appropriate the brooch her late mother left her brother. The friends learn that they are still in Rose Park, the neighborhood they both call home, but the year is 1939.
As Charlotte and Henry realize that they have traveled backward to move forward, the purpose of their time travel is revealed: Charlotte is there to help Gwendolyn resolve the pain of her past. During the adventure, Henry advocates against the anti-Semitism and racism of that time, and Charlotte learns to look beyond her own desires to help a person in need.
The idea for THE TREE OF LIFE and the Tower Room series came to the author after she attended a centennial celebration at her daughters’ school. “What might happen,” Davis thought, “if two children lived their research instead of simply reading about it? This one step outside the restrictions of time became the foundation for the series.”
As in THE TREE OF LIFE, the next three books will highlight different time periods in Canadian history, with the one constant being the appearance of Charlotte and Henry. Although the children will appear in each book with different names and bodies, they will be easily recognizable as eternal soul mates, and the harbingers of love and connection for those who have stumbled and lost their way.
Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.
EXCERPT
They needed to work on our outfits for school on Monday.
There was to be a parade in the playground, a decade fashion show parade. Since most of the parents refused to scour the bins at Good Will for appropriate clothing, Henry and Charlotte were the only ones so far who had volunteered. Technically Henry did not volunteer. Charlotte signed his name in invisible ink and was planning on informing him later this afternoon. She would tell Henry that he would get special marks for being in the parade (a lie) because Henry was motivated only by marks. Their grades were already as high as they could go, mostly for bringing in a lot of old junk from Charlotte’s great aunt Dilys’s decaying trunks; printed spun rayon dresses, white nubuck open-toed Cuban-heeled shoes, step-by-step instructions on how to pluck out all your eyebrow hair and draw on fake eyebrows that had a larger arch, one of the first ballpoint pens ever made (1938), a picture of a chesterfield suite in mohair that cost $1.95 at the Adams Trade-in Store Special, and a spring hat with a lilac ribbon purchased at Fairweathers for $2.00 and still in the bag. In reviewing her list, Charlotte found one item to be extremely interesting. In the 1930s, a hat cost more than a chesterfield.
It irked Charlotte that she needed to refer to her lists to remember how many items she had collected because Henry never needed this crutch. He could recite any list, any page of a book, any tiny print on a newspaper, even if he had only seen it once and for less than a second.
That’s because Henry had a condition called eidetic memory bog.
A bog is a swamp, a very damp place where unpleasant things grow and multiply. This was Charlotte’s way of describing the interior of Henry’s skull.
Eidetic memory: an article in a newspaper, a children’s story, musical notes from dingy old manuscripts, the script on a Chinese menu, junk mail forced through the mail slot, recipes, etc. etc. misc., all absorbed, imprinted, collated and filed away for future reference, word perfect. Although Henry denied it, Charlotte believed he had this disease because of his permanently crossed eyes. Therefore his brain was unable to process information the way the brain of a normal person (like Charlotte’s) did by sucking up facts through perfectly aligned eyeballs and expelling it all through the very same portals. Henry’s out-take portals were plugged by all the surgeries he had when he was a toddler, and Charlotte feared that someday Henry’s brain might explode from all the useless information he could not eliminate.
A handful of people knew he had this illness, and Henry utilized it sparingly.
“Because I appear to be blind, I overcompensate by having an unusual ability to retain data that may or may not be useful in the world at large,” Henry once told Charlotte. “Is that so unusual?”
Of course she immediately had to set him a test.
Henry was lounging around on Charlotte’s bed, breathing her air and staring at her ceiling and moving his lips in a really annoying way so she said: “Let me show you something.”
He ignored her for a while but finally cranked his head over to where Charlotte was stitching together a hole in the leg of one of her stuffed animals.
“What?”
She dropped the dog and held the World Book up to his face.
“Look at this.” She pointed to the section on German wirehaired pointers. She let Henry look at the article for three seconds and then she whisked the book away and sat cross-legged on the end of her bed because Henry was taking up all the middle space.
“What about it?” he asked.
“What kind of dog is a German wirehaired pointer?” Charlotte asked.
“A hunting dog,” he replied immediately.
“How did it come to be?”
“It’s a cross-breed which means the dog was developed by breeding a German short haired pointer with a poodle pointer.”
“And how much does it weigh?”
“About twenty-five kilos.”
“Does it like having its ears scratched?”
Silence.
“How many times a day do you have to take it out for a walk?”
Silence.
“What do you do if the dog howls in the middle of the night?”
Angry silence.
“How long does it take the average German short haired pointer to devour a bowl of food, and what happens if one freshly cooked pea is buried in the midst of its food?”
Confused silence.
“What good does it do you to be able to memorize this anyway?”
Superior silence.
“Facts are meaningless,” she said. “Experience is everything.”
“Shut up,” Henry said. “There is only one fact that is significant. I blend in. I get along just fine.”
In fact, Henry did not get along just fine, and if it weren’t for Charlotte, he never would have survived at Rose Park Public School.
For some reason the mere presence of Henry on the playground at school annoyed a few of the boys in the grade five class, the ones who weren’t very bright—Tyler MacKenzie in particular. Tyler invented a few colourful names which he felt best described Henry’s exterior; cross-eyed creep, frogman, slimebucket, and monster boy were a few of the favourites. These insults usually bounced off Henry, drifting into the air like soap bubbles, which then quietly burst, leaving Henry unharmed. He didn’t seem to hear the words directed at him. But once Henry made the mistake of getting in Tyler’s way. He was standing at the southern end of the playground reading a book he had projected onto the wall of the school, the same brick wall Tyler and his friends were using to see who could slam a baseball the hardest.
Henry didn’t know he was in the way because he was not present to the reality of the moment.
He returned abruptly when Tyler stood before him, blocking his view of the wall.
“Hey, slimebucket, we’re playing a game here. Move.”
Henry didn’t.
“Or maybe we could use you as a target and just aim for your nose.” Tyler touched Henry’s nose lightly with his fingertips. “That would be easier to hit than the wall.”
Henry brushed aside the grubby fingertips and stared straight at Tyler.
“Smell,” he said, “is stored in the limbic area of the brain.” His voice was measured and precise. “That’s why whenever I smell dog shit, I think of you…”
“In fact, all our memories and emotions are stored in the limbic area,” Henry told Charlotte five minutes later as they were both hurried off to the nurse’s office. Charlotte got an elbow in her eye trying to defend Henry whose upper lip had been cut right open.
He continued to talk as blood pooled in his mouth.
“The emotional content we all have stockpiled is extremely personal,” he said matter-of-factly, shifting the ice pack from the staffroom freezer to spit in the yogurt jar from the daycare centre. “And everything we possess inside here,” he said, tapping his forehead with three fingers, “is warehoused instantly with no conscious intervention on our part at all.”
So much for blending in.
ABOUT DAWN DAVIS
Dawn Davis is a writer living and working in Toronto, Canada. Before becoming a writer, Davis worked as a teacher after completing her education at York University and the University of Toronto.
TheTree of Life is Davis’s debut novel, and the first book in her Tower Room series.
Choosy Bookworm has partnered with eNovel Authors at Work to bring you a month long celebration with great books, great book deals, and let’s not forget the great giveaways!
Check out today’s featured authors and books, then head on over to the event page and enter to win one of two$250 Amazon Gift Cards or Paypal Cash!
Be sure to check out the featured books and the awesome author sponsored giveaway below!
Just days after cranky food critic, Josie Tucker, is the last-minute bridesmaid at a massive Boston wedding, the bride dies on her honeymoon at an Arizona resort. The mother of the bride thinks Josie, with her…unique people skills, can find out what happened. Josie discovers the dead bride may not have been the first to die. And to Josie’s horror, the killer has set his sights on her next.
Award-winning EM Kaplan writes snarky, fun Josie Tucker mysteries as well as epic fantasies. She’s classically trained as a technical writer and as a world-class smart aleck. Currently in Illinois, she enjoys embarrassing her children and scratching her dog’s belly.
Series: All My Love, Detrick, #1 Genre: Historical Fiction
“All My Love, Detrick,” is the story of forbidden love in Nazi Germany. It is a tale of two families, one German, one Jewish and how Hitler’s dark and terrible regime changed their lives forever.
HI, I am an American author of Historical Fiction and Holocaust novels. My mother was Jewish and her father was Romany and therefore I grew up with memories of the Holocaust hovering over me. I write in this genre in the hopes that maybe through recognizing past mistakes we can find a way to stop the genocides that are still going on today. Thank you for taking the time to read my work. Blessings to you.
When a conman wants you as the patsy for a crime, you run, right? That’s what Claire decides. She makes it out of town and into an Otherworld situation that is filled with so much terror it makes the conman and his threats look easy. This novel won the Eppie for Best Fantasy of the Year.
Urban fantasy is Phoebe Matthews’s favorite reading. She likes a mixture of current events and fantasy and sets her stories in places where she has lived, from Scotland to Washington State.
Her Mudflat Magic series combines sword and sorcery with a neighborhood in Seattle where old magic runs amuck through the families. The first book, Tyrant Trouble, won the EPPIE for Best Fantasy of the year. Book seven, Jimmyed Coffin, is now available.
Choosy Bookworm has partnered with eNovel Authors at Work to bring you a month long celebration with great books, great book deals, and let’s not forget the great giveaways!
Check out today’s featured authors and books, then head on over to the event page and enter to win one of two$250 Amazon Gift Cards or Paypal Cash!
Be sure to check out the featured books and the awesome author sponsored giveaway below!
Grand Master’s Pawn
by Aurora Springer
Series: Grand Master’s Trilogy, Book 1 Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy
One young woman challenges the super psychics ruling the galaxy, and finds an impossible love.
Young empath, Violet Hunter, travels to strange planets on missions for her mysterious Grand Master. Life-threatening cracks appear in the vast web of portals and Violet agrees to investigate the disruptions. When she discovers the perpetrator comes from within the ranks of the Twelve Grand Masters, she must penetrate their curtain of secrecy to fulfill her task. Armed with only her erratic powers and a mishmash of allies, she must tackle the most powerful beings in the galaxy.
Aurora Springer is a scientist morphing into a novelist. Her works are character-driven adventures set in weird worlds with romance and a sprinkle of humor.
Series: Hetta Coffey Mystery, #1 Genre: Young Adult, Historical Fiction
Hetta Coffey is a sassy Texan with a snazzy yacht and and she’s not afraid to use it. She’s a globe-trotting civil engineer with swath of failed multi-national affairs in her jet stream. Plying the San Francisco waterfront, trolling for triceps, her attention is snagged by a parade of passing yachts–especially their predominantly male skippers–and experiences a champagne-induced epiphany: If she had a boat, she could get a man. In spite of a spectacular ignorance of all things nautical, Hetta buys her dream boat, but shadowy stalker, an inconvenient body, and Hetta’s own self-destructive foibles, give a whole new meaning to the phrase “sink or swim!”
Series: GodSword Chronicles, Book 1 Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Hankley is a brown-robed servant of the Inner Realm God. His job is to discover why the wall is stuck and his viewing screen is set to the Kingdom of Zandell. His god has warned him not to interfere with the goings on of humans, no matter what world they inhabit. But Hankley loves the people of Zandell and more especially the royal family. And he knows the queen is up to no good.
Eva is married to Prince Micah and she is carrying their first child, a baby she must protect in her battle against her own frailties and a power mad queen in an effort to bring her unborn child through betrayal and deceit into a safe world.
Dale has enjoyed many creative pursuits including playing guitar and singing in a band, acting and directing in theatre, written novels, short stories, plays, songs and poems. She also reads any genre so long as it is a good story.
After over thirty years of writing, she still loves her journeys to unknown places, meeting unheard-of peoples.
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.
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DRAGONFLY by Charles A Cornell
I am a huge fan of Charles A Cornell, since reading his thriller, Tiger Paw, an awesome debut novel.
DragonFly (The Illustrated Edition)… Parts I & II with 30 color and 30 B&W illustrations… price of $3.99
(56% on Kindle)
“Hans and I have seen Trevillian, the ghost of Affodill’s father,” I said. I was no longer uncertain about my insights, nor afraid of speaking about them. “He told us… ‘to bring the black one to the deep-water cave where your dragons rest’. We will find Affodill there. He’s waiting to take the Blutskrieger away. We need to move the Blutskrieger before the power of that crystal fades and time runs out.”
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SYNOPSIS
A young woman with the fate of a nation in her hands.
An aircraft designed by science, fueled by magic and flown with passion.
A World War re-imagined like never before.
Strap yourself in for a wild ride as award-winning author Charles A. Cornell takes you on his dieselpunk adventure, DragonFly; a collision of science fiction with fantasy that fast forwards steampunk into an alternative World War Two.
In 1942, an unlikely heroine changes the course of history.
On the eve of invasion by the Nazis, twenty-two year old RAF pilot Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Somerset is fighting another battle – winning respect within the stuffy, male-dominated British military. She’s feisty and brash and determined to overcome every obstacle to become Britain’s first female combat pilot.
When Ronnie is re-assigned to Enysfarne, a mysterious Royal Navy base off the coast of Cornwall, fate places her inside the cockpit of the most revolutionary aircraft ever invented. Brilliant engineer, Dr. Nigel Pennbridge has discovered quadra-hydrogen, an element that powers the DragonFly, a remarkable fighter-bomber that carries the hopes of Britain on its blue and silver wings.
Across the English Channel, Nazi Germany is busy planning its next conquest. Reichsführer Bernhardt Morax, Hitler’s personal sorcerer and leader of the Third Reich’s Zauber Korps is preparing his Blutskriegers for the invasion; bio-mechanical warriors created by a depraved occult science whose dark secrets cross the boundaries of evil.
In DragonFly, Veronica Somerset’s adventures unfold in two self-contained novellas:
In Part I: ‘To Hell and Back’, Ronnie proves she’s a hard-nosed, quick-thinking daredevil. She embarks on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines to spy on Hitler’s invasion plans and rescue a defecting officer from the Zauber Korps. Hans Schüller is a Nachtjäger or Night Hunter who introduces her to psychic powers she didn’t know she possessed; powers that entwine her destiny with his.
In Part II: ‘Victory or Death’, DragonFly comes to its dramatic conclusion. The Nazi invasion fleet is gathering off the shores of England. Morax, with help from his spies, is determined to seize the DragonFly and unlock the secrets of Enysfarne’s Druid past. Will the Druid wizard, Affodill – whose ancestral home of Enysfarne has been expropriated by the Royal Navy – join forces with the British, or will he make a pact with the evil Morax? Can Princess Victoria and Ronnie Somerset convince Affodill to place his magic in the service of a nation that has betrayed his Druid ancestors for centuries?
‘DragonFly – the Illustrated Edition’ is the ultimate DragonFly reading experience! It’s packed with sixty illustrations that make the action jump off the page, including character dossiers, historical ‘retrographs’ and fantastic designs of retro-futuristic aircraft. Eleven of the sixty illustrations are exclusive to this omnibus edition of DragonFly and will be unavailable anywhere else!
Click on the cover below to get your Amazon copy Dragonfly by Charles A Cornell.
Hawk MacKinney is a writer that I have had my eye on for a while. Any time I see one of his books come up for promotion, I’m in. So let’s check out Moccasin Trace.
Moccasin Trace by Hawk MacKinney
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BLURB
… it was about the land…a tale of love and loss and hope…
Hamilton Ingram looked out across the fertile Georgia bottomlands that were Moccasin Hollows, seeing holdings it had taken generations of Ingrams to build. No drop of slave sweat ever shed in its creation. It was about the land…his trust, his duty to preserve it for the generation of Ingrams to come… It is July of 1859, a month of sweltering dog days and feverish emotional bombast. Life is good for widower Rundell Ingram and his Hazel-eyed, roan-haired son, Hamilton. Between the two of them, they take care of Moccasin Hollows, their rustic dogtrot ancestral home, a sprawling non-slave plantation in the rolling farming country outside Queensborough Towne in east Georgia. Adjoining Ingram lands is Wisteria Bend, the vast slave-holding plantation of Andrew and Corinthia Greer, their daughter Sarah, and son Benjamin. Both families share generations of long-accepted traditions, and childhood playmates are no longer children. The rangy, even-tempered Norman-Scottish young Hamilton is smitten with Sarah, who has become an enticing capricious beauty—the young lovers more in love with each passing day, and only pleasant times ahead of them. But a blood tide of war is sweeping across the South, a tide that might be impossible to stand before.
“The most engaging and brilliantly crafted historical work since Margaret Mitchell’s great classic.”
Barbara Casey – Author, The Gospel According to Prissy
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EXCERPT
Bessie’s head jerked around, “…them gun shots.”
A stooped-over Sarah looked up, “What?”
“Gun shots…” Bessie put down the box of jars and headed toward the cellar door. “From the direction where the men be. We gittin’ upstairs, an’ gittin’ now.”
Sarah’s heart pounded as they came up out of the cellar and looked in the direction of more shots.
“Come on…” Bessie hurried into the pantry where she reached down the powder horn from the top shelf, then the rifle and pistols. “Git ’em ready with all that shootin’. Till we know different, we make sure two-legged low-downs don’t sneak to the house.”
Sarah rushed to the window and murmured, “Hamilton…” She feared for him, for their child, for all of them. “Surely you don’t suppose it’s Federals?”
“Might be better if’n it is ‘stead of what else be skulkin’ in them woods. Stay away from the winder, an’ finish rammin’ this powder.”
Sarah poured the ball and powder firm, rammed it, pulled the rammer out, and whispered, “Bessie listen…birds stopped singing.”
“Except that cawin’ crow seein’ somethin’ what don’t belong.”
Sarah took another quick peek, “There’s several horses, but I don’t see any riders. Mules are still hitched. I don’t see anyone at the plow, but there’s men on among the trees.”
“You watch the front door.” Bessie snugged the pistol in her apron pocket. “I cover the back. Anybody tries comin’ through the dogtrot door or through the parlor, we back into here, keep ’em from circlin’ us.”
“What about Papa Rundell?” Sarah’s stomach was queasy.
“He keep his rifle ready. Anyone bust in his room be dead ‘fore they twitch a hair.”
With a crash the kitchen door flew open. Sarah brought her rifle up and fired, the shot splintering door and jamb. The sound thundered through the house. Bessie’s rifle steadied dead-on.
The silhouetted head and shoulders ducked into a hunch and Hamilton yelled, “Sarah!” His hand smeared at stinging blood-speckled splinters of wood along his cheek.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With postgraduate degrees and faculty appointments in several medical universities, Hawk MacKinney has taught graduate courses in both the United States and Jerusalem. In addition to professional articles and texts on chordate neuroembryology, Hawk has authored several works of fiction. Hawk began writing mysteries for his school newspaper. His works of fiction, historical love stories, science fiction and mystery-thrillers are not genre-centered, but plot-character driven, and reflect his southwest upbringing in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma. Moccasin Trace, a historical novel nominated for the prestigious Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Writers Notes Book Award, details the family bloodlines of his serial protagonist in the Craige Ingram Mystery Series… murder and mayhem with a touch of romance. Vault of Secrets, the first book in the Ingram series, was followed by Nymrod Resurrection, Blood and Gold, and The Lady of Corpsewood Manor. All have received national attention. Hawk’s latest release in the Ingram series is due out this fall with another mystery-thriller work out in 2014. The Bleikovat Event, the first volume in The Cairns of Sainctuarie science fiction series, was released in 2012. “Without question, Hawk is one of the most gifted and imaginative writers I have had the pleasure to represent. His reading fans have something special to look forward to in the Craige Ingram Mystery Series. Intrigue, murder, deception and conspiracy–these are the things that take Hawk’s main character, Navy ex-SEAL/part-time private investigator Craige Ingram, from his South Carolina ancestral home of Moccasin Hollow to the dirty backrooms of the nation’s capital and across Europe and the Middle East.”
Returned by Kimberley Griffiths Little
Author Kimberley Griffiths Little
Blast Giveaway
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The Friday 56 is hosted by 
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.
Vanta M. Black, author of Oubliette—A Forgotten Little Place, enjoys uncovering the dark mysteries of our Universe. In addition to writing, she enjoys traveling to provocative places and studying all things esoteric.
3 Stars
Dawn Davis is a writer living and working in Toronto, Canada. Before becoming a writer, Davis worked as a teacher after completing her education at York University and the University of Toronto.
Hawk will be awarding a $25 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour.