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

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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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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.

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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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Gone Wild (Thorn Mystery, #4)

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

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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.

~~~

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.

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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.”

~~~

The cover below is the Kindle edition published in 2013 by James Byron Huggins.
Which cover do you like best?
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Leviathan

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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

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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.

~~~

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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Sepulchre

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

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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.

~~~

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

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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.

~~~

2016-02-25 05.16.31~~~

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.
The Pardon
I am a “cover girl”.

Which cover do you like best?

~~~

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

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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.

~~~

2016-02-25 05.16.31~~~

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.

~~~

This is the hardcover copy I have.
Cover design:  Joseph Perez
Gravity
I am a “cover girl”.

Which cover do you like best?

~~~

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Friday 56 #80 & BB #56 – The Dead House @LindaFairstein

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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.

~~~

2016-02-25 05.16.31~~~

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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Friday 56 #79 & BB #55 – Digger by Joseph Flynn

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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.

~~~

2016-02-25 05.16.31~~~

Next up on the shelf is Digger by Joseph Flynn.

MY FRIDAY 56

Even so, the spell of seduction Hunt had woven over Powell still held:  Everything and everyone involved in the MicroCosmic deal would come out golden if Hunt’s scheme succeeded. Because Anthony Tiburon Hunt had gotten his hands on the invention of the century:  a superconducting microprocessor.

(page 56 in hardcover)

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

The church was dark until John Fortunato struck the match. The point of light revealed rows of votive candles in red glass sleeves. John touched the match to a wick.

“God keep you Jamie Doolan,” he murmured.

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS

As a soldier in Vietnam, John Fortunato fought in the crushing darkness of the tunnels of Cu Chi, from which the Vietcong launched their deadliest operations. Back home in Elk River, Illinois, he secretly re-created those deadly tunnels. Partly a memorial, partly a kind of exorcism, they now lie hidden beneath the town’s peaceful streets.

But that peace shatters when Fortunato witnesses the brutal sidewalk shooting of an innocent victim. The vicious crime is only the first assault by a man who will wage a full-scale battle to control Elk River. And on the front line is John Fortunato, whose secret tunnels will provide the battleground for his own war. As his enemy is about to learn, when this veteran warrior goes down, he’s just beginning to fight.

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Digger
I am a “cover girl”.

Which cover do you like best?

~~~

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Friday 56 #78 & BB #54 – Ten Big Ones @janetevanovich

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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.

~~~

2016-02-25 05.16.31~~~

Next up on the shelf is Ten Big Ones by Janet Evanovich.

I have several of her books on my shelf, so I put them in the random generator and Ten Big Ones, a Stephanie Plum novel, popped out.

I love Stephanie Plum and her sidekick, Lula. Feeling down, pick up one of these babies and I think you will perk right up. 🙂

Ten Big Ones (Stephanie Plum, #10)

MY FRIDAY 56

“Fuckin’ A. Oh crap!” Snap. Snap.

“You gotta remember about fudge,” Grandma said.

Sally nodded. “Fudgin’ A.”

We all did a mental eeyeuuw. Fudgin’ A didn’t sound tasty coming out of Sally’s mouth.

(page 56 in hardcover)

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

The way I see it, life is a jelly doughnut. You don’t really know what it’s about until you bite into it. And then, just when you decide it’s good you drop a big glob of jelly on your best T-shirt.

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS

“I’m Stephanie Plum. My mother says that I’m famous and have to set a good example. She’s right, but I’m from Jersey and truth is, I have a hard time getting a grip on the good example thing.”

Swing off the Jersey Turnpike and you’ll be in bounty hunter Stephanie Plum’s neighborhood. You’ll know it because all hell will be breaking loose. Not that she looks for trouble – it just seems to follow her. In Ten Big Ones it explodes at a deli, and when Stephanie pegs a robber as a member of a vicious Trenton gang, they peg her as dead. Vice cop Joe Morelli fears she’s in way too deep – even with the help of crime-solving, cross-dressing, bus driver Sally Sweet, and Stephanie’s friend Lula riding shotgun as backup. With a notorious killer on her tail, Stephanie figures the best hideout is Ranger’s secret lair…
Original.

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I am a “cover girl”.

Which cover do you like best?

~~~

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Friday 56 #77 & BB #53 – The Coffin Dancer @JefferyDeaver

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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.

~~~

2016-02-25 05.16.31~~~

Next up on the shelf is The Coffin Dancer by Jeffrey Deaver.

Jeffrey Deaver is a New York Times Bestselling author and pens the Lincoln Rhyme series. Each book can stand alone.

For the suspense/thriller lovers out there, these are must read novels.

MY FRIDAY 56

He glanced out the window to avoid having to shake her moist hand, tipped with five white squooshy worms.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, turning back, sippig his new cup of tea, which he found disgustig. Sheila noticed that two of her stubby nails were dirty. She tried unobtrusively to dig the crud from under them.

(page 56 in paperback)

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

When Edward Carney said good-bye to his wife, Percey, he never thought it would be the last time he’d see her.

AMAZON SYNOPSIS

Smokeout’s bitingly entertaining portrait of a misbehaving Florida state legislature drew raves for both its inventiveness and timeliness, and the Providence Journal declared, “Carl Hiaasen may have an heir apparent.” Now, Date takes out after another cherished state institution, and the results are every bit as subversive.

In the “ideal” designed community of Serenity, Florida, pride of the late theme-park king Waldo Whipple, things are far from ideal. The houses are listing, the regulations are onerous, the mayor is lecherous, and the occasional Wild Dominion animal has started turning up dead. Graffiti is sprouting in odd places-“Serenityites Arise!” and “WWWS: What Would Waldo Say?”-and when a reporter begins poking around, he quickly discovers that Waldo’s successors have a decidedly different vision for America’s Hometown-and if certain people don’t stop interfering with it, animals won’t be the only things that start turning up dead. . . .

Filled with wicked humor and razor-sharp plotting, Deep Water is delightfully twisted-and maybe more plausible than any of us would like to think.

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There are quite a few covers, and I couldn’t find the one I have on my paperback, so I picked the one that jumped out at me the most.
jeffrey deave the coffin dancer
I am a “cover girl”.

Which cover do you like best?

~~~

  • To see all my Giveaways, go HERE.
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