Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Lesley A. Diehl - A Sporting Murder - Review & Giveaway



About the Book

It's smooth sailing for Eve Appel and her friend Madeleine, owners of Second to None Consignment Shop in rural Florida's Sabal Bay, land of swamps, cowboys, and lots and lots of 'gators. Eve and her detective boyfriend Alex have joined Madeleine and her new beau David Wilson for a pleasure cruise on his boat. But cloudy, dangerous waters lie ahead. A near fatal encounter with Blake Reed, David's supremely nasty neighbor, is soon followed by a shooting death on the dividing line between David and Blake's land. Both men run sport-hunting reserves, but Blake imports "exotics" from Africa and promotes gator killing, while David stays within the law, pointing clients toward the abundant quail and turkey as well as the wild pigs that ravage the landscape. Nevertheless, when a mutual client is killed, it is David who is arrested and charged with murder.

Blake's nastiness is only exceeded by that of his wife, Elvira, who forces Eve and Madeleine out of their shop, intending to replace it with a consignment shop of her own. It seems that bad luck looms over them all, even Eve's brawny and hard-to-resist Miccosukee Indian friend Sammy, whose nephew has disappeared. As the case against David grows stronger and his friends' misfortunes multiply, Eve and her strange and diverse group of friends, including her ex, a mobster, her grandma, and Sammy's extended family, band together to take on the bad guys. But the waters are getting muddier and more troubled, and Eve and Madeleine may end up inundated in every sense of the word.


My Review

Rural Florida is quite an interesting place for a mystery novel.

"Gators cross the roadways to get to water, food and mates." 
"Feral pigs are running around." 
"All kinds of bugs and crawly things come to visit in the night."

It's where matrons from the coast drive out to drool over the Indian warrior hunk giving airboat rides and to go two-stepping with the sexy cowboys down at The Biscuit, the local watering hole that just so happens to have the best ribs in town.

But the sense of serenity that an end of the day sunset gives to the residents of Sabal Bay is often short lived. The environment is ever changing. Dark, ominous looking clouds are always threatening to blow in from off shore, the wind ready to whip the palm trees around even while it lifts the oppressive heat and humidity from the air. Because danger is always lurking in an area where different nationalities are forced to mix and those lower down the economic ladder are exploited, taken advantage of by the well to do. It creates a sense of hopelessness for the working class along with a stubborn determination to hold on.

"Like her home, Mrs. Warren looked worn out, but her hair was a bubble of salt and pepper curls and her clothing neat and pressed."

The streets are laid out in a grid pattern, but the canals connecting them meander in all different directions, causing outsiders to have to backtrack and find a bridge to get to the other side. It's a confusing sort of environment that functions more as a maze, trapping its poorer residents where they land, and giving the upwardly mobile their own tiny insulated community, free of strife.

But the salt of the earth working stiffs cling to what makes them happy.

"The casino wasn't grand, no fancy bars or restaurants—only worn and tired carpeting and gray and dingy walls—rural Floridians' need to toss away their money and drink without having to travel too far."

But when native Miccosukee men start going missing from the casino, things become a lot more dangerous than a cowboy's jangling spurs upping the charm factor. Because the rusticity doesn't look so charming when minorities are getting picked off left and right with hunting rifles.

That's when a line gets crossed and things go way too far.

Eve Appel is often accused of reading too many mystery novels, her overactive imagination getting the better of her. But she refuses to believe the ingrained prejudice that runs so deeply though her hometown—that these missing natives are just off somewhere, drying out after a bender. She knows they're not all alcoholics and drug addicts, running away from their problems. They're good, decent, hard-working men, looking to provide for their families. They would never up and leave them without any means of support.

And that's why Eve is determined to bring them home, or die trying, even when her friends keep asking her:

"Why do you try to make everything your issue?"

Because for Eve, it's not a choice. It's just something she has to do, be a champion for those being denied a voice.

***

A Sporting Murder can be purchased at:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble

Formats/Prices: $4.95 ebook, $13.95 paperback
Genres: Cozy Murder Mystery
Pages: 250
Release: July 15, 2015
Publisher: Camel Press
ISBN: 9781603819398
Click to add to your Goodreads list.


About the Author

Lesley retired from her life as a professor of psychology and reclaimed her country roots by moving to a small cottage in the Butternut River Valley in upstate New York. In the winter she migrates to old Florida—cowboys, scrub palmetto, and open fields of grazing cattle, a place where spurs still jingle in the post office, and gators make golf a contact sport. Back north, the shy ghost inhabiting the cottage serves as her literary muse. When not writing, she gardens, cooks and renovates the 1874 cottage with the help of her husband, two cats and, of course, Fred the ghost, who gives artistic direction to their work.

She is the author of a number of mystery series and mysteries as well as short stories. A Sporting Murder follows the first two books in the Eve Appel mystery series, A Secondhand Murder and Dead in the Water.

Links to connect with Lesley:
Web Site
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads
Blog
Blog Tour Site


About the Giveaway

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Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Kathleen M. Rodgers - Johnnie Come Lately - Review & Giveaway



About the Book

Would life have been different for Johnnie if she'd been named after a woman rather than her dead uncle? Or if her mama hadn't been quite so beautiful or flighty? The grandparents who raised her were loving, but they didn't understand the turmoil roiling within her. And they had so many, many secrets.

Why did her mama leave? Would she ever return? How did her Uncle Johnny really die? Who was her father? Now Johnnie Kitchen is a 43-year-old woman with three beautiful children, two of them grown. She has a handsome, hardworking husband who adores her, and they live in the historic North Texas town of Portion in a charming bungalow. But she never finished college and her only creative outlet is a journal of letters addressed to both the living and the dead. Although she has conquered the bulimia that almost killed her, Johnnie can never let down her guard, lest the old demons return. Or perhaps they never went away to begin with. For Johnnie has secrets of her own, and her worst fear is that the life she's always wanted--the one where she gets to pursue her own dreams--will never begin.

Not until her ghosts reveal themselves.


My Review

Being a military mom isn't easy.

Ask Johnnie Kitchen.

She's just going about her day-to-day life in her small town Texas home when her son, Cade, drops a bombshell. He's quitting the high school baseball team. He's giving up on the chance at a scholarship because he doesn't want to go to college anymore. He wants to enlist in the army.

Too bad if Johnnie is vehemently against his decision.

But she has her reasons. Her father died in combat. A neighborhood boy just got the left side of his face blown off in Iraq. And she really doesn't want the "Proud Army Mom" mug that Cade picked up for her at the recruitment office. She just wants her little boy back.

But as her husband, Dale, reminds her—that's not going to happen. Their son is old enough now to start making his own decisions, and he's never seen him so committed to anything before. Cade has his heart set on this, and there's no way they're going to dissuade him. It's time for them to let go.

But on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Johnnie wanders out into her backyard and looks up at the sky. They live near an airport and she remembers how on that fateful September night, there wasn't a plane in the sky. And now years later, her son wants to go overseas and fight for his country.

In her heart she feels:

"I don't want my son sacrificed for anyone."

She never knew her father. She only remembers visiting him one time on an army base when she was a little girl and he sided with her when her mother kept scolding her for chewing on her hair. That one memory along with two old photos of him are the only things she has left of him.

Taking a walk around the local park, the soldier monument calls out to her, as if:

"Hundreds of thousands of young men in battle calling across the waves of time, crying out in pain and anguish, 'Mama, Mama' before they took their last breath." 

She does not want this to be her future. She doesn't want to ever lose her precious son.

But when Cade calls home after starting boot camp he starts having second thoughts when he has this to say about his instructors:

"They hate us." 

He's alone and scared and away from home for the first time in his life. But Johnnie stands firm, encouraging her son to take heart, telling him:

"When things get rough, remember the spirit of [your grandfather] walks beside you."

She knows her father would never abandon his grandson. The military thread that binds their family together will not fray. Even if she doesn't like it, she'll continue to support her son on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, and every day in between.

Because she's not just a mom, she's an Army Mom.


***

Johnnie Come Lately can be purchased at:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
BAM

Special $2.99 ebook sale!
now through July 31, 2015

Formats/Prices: $4.95 ebook, $9.75 paperback
Genres: Military Family, Women's Fiction, Literary Fiction
Pages: 292
Release: February 1, 2015
Publisher: Camel Press
ISBN: 9781603812153
Click to add to your Goodreads list.


About the Author

Award-winning author Kathleen M. Rodgers is a former frequent contributor to Family Circle magazine and Military Times. Her work has also appeared in anthologies published by McGraw-Hill, University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books, Health Communications, Inc., AMG Publishers, and Press 53. She is the author of the award-winning novel, The Final Salute, featured in USA Today, The Associated Press, and Military Times. Deer Hawk Publications reissued the novel in e-book and paperback September of 2014.

Her second novel, Johnnie Come Lately, released from Camel Press February 1, 2015. Barnes and Noble in Southlake, TX hosted the official launch on February 7, and Kathleen signed copies of both novels for three hours straight. In 2014, she was named a Distinguished Alumna from Tarrant County College/NE Campus.

She is the mother of two grown sons, Thomas, a graduate of University of North Texas and a working artist in Denton, TX, and J.P., a graduate of Texas Tech University and a former Army officer who earned a Bronze Star in 2014 in Afghanistan. Kathleen’s husband, Tom, is a retired fighter pilot/commercial airline pilot, and they reside in Colleyville, TX with their rescue dog, Denton. Kathleen is working on a new novel titled Seven Wings to Glory and is represented by Loiacono Literary Agency.

Links to connect with Kathleen:
Web Site
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads
Blog
Blog Tour Site


About the Giveaway

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