A to Z Wednesday: Catching Up with E and F

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THIS WEEKS LETTER IS: "E"

Evermore by alyson noel



Read my review here.

Welcome to A-Z Wednesday!!
To join, here's all you have to do: Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the letter of the week.
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THIS WEEKS LETTER IS: "F"

Field of Blood by Eric Wilson



Read my review here

A to Z Wednesday: D is for Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

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THIS WEEKS LETTER IS: "D"



My review is here. Please read and comment!

A to Z Wednesday: C is for Calamity Jack

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THIS WEEKS LETTER IS: "C"

Calamity Jack by Shannon and Dean Hale with illustrations by Nathan Hale

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-9–The Hales follow up Rapunzel's Revenge (Bloomsbury, 2008) with this fast-moving story focusing on Jack. It begins in the city of Shyport with his birth. Even as a child, Jack tends toward scheming, conning, and thievery with various accomplices, including Pru, a hat-fancying pixie. One scheme involving magical beans and the wealthy and corrupt giant Blunderboar goes awry, leaving Jack's tenement and his mother's bakery destroyed. Jack's mother orders him to go, and go he does with a certain goose under his arm. After the events recounted in Rapunzel's Revenge, Jack and Rapunzel head back to Shyport to set things right. They arrive to find that Jack's mother is being held prisoner by Blunderboar, who is virtually running the city. They team up with Pru and Freddie Sparksmith, a young journalist, to save Jack's mom and the day. Nathan Hale's artwork again places the action in a fairy-tale version of the American West, now with the city as backdrop. His character sketches are delightfully expressive, and the book has the same rich palette as the previous story. It should satisfy readers who enjoy adventure, fairy tales, and anyone who loves a rogue. Some fans of Bill Willingham's Jack of Fables series (Vertigo) may also enjoy this take on the Jack stories for a younger audience.–Eric Norton, McMillan Memorial Library, Wisconsin Rapids, WI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Please take a minute to read my review of this book!

A to Z Wednesday: B is for Beautiful Mess

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THIS WEEKS LETTER IS: "B "

My book is: Beautiful Mess by Diamond Rio


Can a band comprised of six very talented but very different musicians make a difference with their music?

What made it possible for Diamond Rio to weather the storms inherent in the fickle world of fame and fortune and go more than two decades without a single lineup change? Any reader in search of transparency and a behind-the-scenes look into the life of the band as a unit as well as the individual lives of the players and singers will be well satisfied. Can true loyalty exist within the competitive, seemingly unforgiving music industry? In A Beautiful Mess, Marty Roe, Dan Truman, Jimmy Olander, Brian Prout, Gene Johnson, and Dana Williams each has an entire chapter devoted to his personal and professional life. A Beautiful Mess is a wild ride from the edge of disaster and a little-known secret to an ongoing heart-warming revival.


Please take a minute to read my review of this book here.

This weekly meme is hosted by Reading at the Beach! Be sure to check out her blog for more great A-Z Wednesday posts and feel free to join in!

By clicking on the link to the book in this post, you will be taken to Amazon's website. Should you make a purchase from that click, I will receive a minuscule profit of which is used to purchase further books for review.

A-Z Wednesday: W

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THIS WEEKS LETTER IS: "W "

White Picket Fences by Susan Meissner



I loved looking into the heart of this family whose life looks perfect only from the outside. Meissner s characters are so real, so haunted by the past, and so in denial for reasons of self-defense that you will be swept away till the final page. You ll find it hard not to wonder, as one of the elderly characters did, if remembering is a choice that takes courage.
Julie L. Cannon, author of Truleove & Homegrown Tomatoes, Mater Biscuit, Those Pearly Gates, and The Romance Readers Book Club

To step into a Susan Meissner book is to be blessed by a craftsman s tender touch. In Susan s hands, we move carefully into compassion, entering the ordinary lives of people who could be our neighbors, ourselves, each doing what we can to staunch the pain of memory. This book opens a gate in the white picket fences of our lives, helping transform memory and secrets so we are no longer held hostage by the past. Beautifully written by a keen observer of the human condition, White Picket Fence will keep you reading into the night and make you sigh with satisfaction at the end.
Jane Kirkpatrick, award-winning author of A Flickering Light

This compelling story with its wonderful cast of characters offers hope to all of us who live less than perfect lives behind our white picket fences. Susan Meissner skillfully weaves together parallel storylines to show how healing can come when we risk sharing our secret pain with others.
Lynn Austin, author of Until We Reach Home

Susan Meissner just keeps getting better and better. This novel is a deftly woven portrayal of family and friendships, of secrets and sacrifices, one that tiptoes beyond the white picket fence to look at what happens when people stop talking to each other.
Siri Mitchell, author of Love s Pursuit

Poetic prose and a can t-put-it down plot make White Picket Fences a great read. A thought-provoking look into a dysfunctional family that thinks it is functional and how an outsider can serve as a means of grace. Caution: be ready to lose a few hours of sleep!
Elizabeth Musser, missionary and author of The Swan House, The Dwelling Place, Searching for Eternity and Words Unspoken

White Picket Fences is a beautiful, yet haunting portrayal of what lies beneath a seemingly perfect suburban family. Susan Meissner s powerful storytelling woos the reader into the lives of flawed, needy characters, making us ache with them, rejoice with them. Meissner deftly weaves old and new, producing a seamless, satisfying and enduring story.
Mary DeMuth, author of Daisy Chain and A Slow Burn

Writing as incandescent as pure flame. Susan Meissner delivers again with a family story that wraps you up and stays with you long after the last page. --
James Scott Bell, bestselling author of Deceived and Try Fear --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

I have not yet read this book. However, I did win it in a blog contest and it is sitting on my shelf to be read.

I am an Amazon Associate. By clicking on book links, you are taken to my affiliate page, where, if you make a purchase, I receive a minuscule profit that feeds my book addiction.

A-Z Wednesday

Welcome to A-Z Wednesday!!
To join, here's all you have to do: Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the letter of the week.
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THIS WEEKS LETTER IS: "V "

Vanish by Tom Pawlik

From Amazon:

From Publishers Weekly

In Pawlik's debut novel of inspirational suspense, two men and one woman wake up one morning to find that every other human being on the planet seems to have disappeared. (Yes, one character even uses that tell-tale phrase "left behind.") The three survivors hallucinate and sense they are being watched. But by whom? Protagonists Mitch, Conner and Helen not only struggle to survive physically, but find themselves pondering vivid memories and grappling with issues from the past. Helen, for example, regrets certain choices she made in her personal life years ago, and Mitch ponders unresolved issues with his parents. Conner mourns his dead son and failed marriage, and tries to cope with the fact that his ex-wife and daughter have become evangelical Christians. The circumstances of his survival prompt him to wrestle with questions of belief. Resolution and even redemption come for some of the heroes, but the prose is flat and the character development is thin enough that readers will have a hard time caring.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description

2009 Christy Award winner!
Three strangers each encounter the same mysterious storm and awake the next day to find that everyone else has vanished. There's Conner Hayden, a successful but unscrupulous trial lawyer who has forsaken his family for his career; Helen Krause, a middle-aged model struggling to come to grips with her fading beauty; and Mitch Kent, an enterprising young mechanic unable to escape a past that still haunts him. Afraid and desperate for answers, their paths eventually cross and they discover they are being watched. Elusive and obscured in shadows, the "observers" are apparently forcing them to relive vivid hallucinations of events from their past. They discover a mute homeless boy in tattered clothing and believe he may hold the key to the mystery, but the "observers" soon become aggressive and the four are forced to flee. When the boy disappears, the four decide to head from Chicago to Washington, D.C., in search of answers…and more survivors. Winner of the 2006 operation first novel contest, Vanish is a nonstop suspense thriller in the vein of Ted Dekker.

A-Z Wednesday: P

To join, here's all you have to do:

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THIS WEEKS LETTER IS: "P"

PUSH by Sapphire

From Publishers Weekly
With this much anticipated first novel, told from the point of view of an illiterate, brutalized Harlem teenager, Sapphire (American Dreams), a writer affiliated with the Nuyorican poets, charts the psychic damage of the most ghettoized of inner-city inhabitants. Obese, dark-skinned, HIV-positive, bullied by her sexually abusive mother, Clareece, Precious Jones is, at the novel's outset, pregnant for the second time with her father's child. (Precious had her first daughter at 12, named Little Mongo, "short for Mongoloid Down Sinder, which is what she is; sometimes what I feel I is. I feel so stupid sometimes. So ugly, worth nuffin.") Referred to a pilot program by an unusually solicitous principal, Precious comes under the experimental pedagogy of a lesbian miracle worker named, implausibly enough, Blue Rain. Under her angelic mentorship, Precious, who has never before experienced real nurturing, learns to voice her long suppressed feelings in a journal. As her language skills improve, she finds sustenance in writing poetry, in friendships and in support groups-one for "insect" survivors and one for HIV-positive teens. It is here that Sapphire falters, as her slim and harrowing novel, with its references to Harriet Tubman, Langston Hughes and The Color Purple (a parallel the author hints at again and again), becomes a conventional, albeit dark and unresolved, allegory about redemption. The ending, composed of excerpts from the journals of Precious's classmates, lends heightened realism and a wider scope to the narrative, but also gives it a quality of incompleteness. Sapphire has created a remarkable heroine in Precious, whose first-person street talk is by turns blisteringly savvy, rawly lyrical, hilariously pig-headed and wrenchingly vulnerable. Yet that voice begs to be heard in a larger novel of more depth and complexity.

I have not yet read this book but it is one that I picked up on a Borders run this week. I have heard many great things about this book and movie! Have you read this book? Seen the movie? Tell me about it!

I am an Amazon.com affiliate!

A to Z Wednesday: Ohhhhhh!!!

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THIS WEEKS LETTER IS: "O"


Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Amazon.com Review

In Outlander, a 600-page time-travel romance, strong-willed and sensual Claire Randall leads a double life with a husband in one century, and a lover in another. Torn between fidelity and desire, she struggles to understand the pure intent of her heart. But don't let the number of pages and the Scottish dialect scare you. It's one of the fastest reads you'll have in your library.

While on her second honeymoon in the British Isles, Claire touches a boulder that hurls her back in time to the forbidden Castle Leoch with the MacKenzie clan. Not understanding the forces that brought her there, she becomes ensnared in life-threatening situations with a Scots warrior named James Fraser. But it isn't all spies and drudgery that she must endure. For amid her new surroundings and the terrors she faces, she is lured into love and passion like she's never known before.

I was lame and sore in every muscle when I woke next morning. I shuffled to the privy closet, then to the wash basin. My innards felt like churned butter. It felt as though I had been beaten with a blunt object, I reflected, then thought that that was very near the truth. The blunt object in question was visible as I came back to bed, looking now relatively harmless. Its possessor [Jamie] woke as I sat next to him, and examined me with something that looked very much like male smugness."

Gabaldon creates characters that you'll remember, laugh with, cry with, and cheer for long after you've finished the book. --Candy Paape --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

I have not yet read this book. I do own it though, thanks to a purchase on ebay! I am an Amazon Associate.

A-Z Wednesday

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To join, here's all you have to do: Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the letter of the week.

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THIS WEEKS LETTER IS: "N"

Nothing But Trouble by Susan May Warren

(Taken from Amazon.com)

Product Description It's not fair to say that trouble happens every time PJ Sugar is around, but it feels that way when she returns to her home town, looking for a fresh start. Within a week, her former teacher is murdered and her best friend's husband is arrested as the number-one suspect. Although the police detective investigating the murder—who also happens to be PJ's former flame—is convinced it's an open-and-shut case, PJ's not so sure. She begins digging for clues in an effort to clear her friend’s husband and ends up reigniting old passions, uncovering an international conspiracy, and solving a murder along the way. She also discovers that maybe God can use a woman who never seems to get it right.

I've not had the opportunity to read this book yet, but I do own it. I'm hoping to get to it soon! Have you read this book? What did you think? Please leave your comments here!

A-Z Wednesday

Welcome to A-Z Wednesday!!

To join, here's all you have to do: Go to your stack of books and find one whose title starts with the letter of the week.

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THIS WEEKS LETTER IS: "M"

Monique and the Mango Rains by Kris Holloway

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This tender, revelatory memoir recalls the two years Holloway spent as an impressionable Peace Corps volunteer in the remote village of Nampossela in Mali, West Africa. It centers on her close friendship with Monique, the village's overburdened midwife. When Holloway (now a nonprofit development specialist) arrived in Nampossela in 1989, she was 22; Monique was only two years her senior. Yet Monique, barely educated, working without electricity, running water, ambulances or emergency rooms, was solely responsible for all births in her village, tending malnourished and overworked pregnant women in her makeshift birthing clinic. With one of the highest rates of maternal death in the world, these Malian women sometimes had to work right up until and directly after giving birth and had no means of contraception. Holloway especially noted Monique's status as an underpaid female whose male family members routinely claimed much of her pay. Monique shared her emotional life with Holloway, who in turn campaigned for her rights at work and raised funds for her struggling clinic. Holloway's moving account vividly presents the tragic consequences of inadequate prenatal and infant health care in the developing world and will interest all those concerned about the realities of women's lives outside the industrialized world. B&w photos, map. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

I bought this on the recommendation of Sheila

I am an Amazon Affiliate. I purchased this book from Amazon.

A-Z Wednesday: I

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THIS WEEKS LETTER IS: "I"

I Can See You by Karen Rose

From Publishers Weekly (taken from Amazon.com)
Virtual reality meets bloody reality in bestseller Rose's spine-tingling 10th thriller, which introduces the Minneapolis PD's Hat Squad, whose members earn snappy fedoras for successfully fighting crime. Almost six years have passed since Eve Wilson, a former runaway introduced in Rose's debut, Don't Tell (2003), moved from Chicago to the Twin Cities after a vicious assault. Plastic surgery has improved her looks, and she's begun researching a Web role-playing game, Shadowland, and how it can be used to build self-esteem. Eve also connects with a homicide detective investigating the Red Dress Killer, who finds some victims through Shadowland. Samantha Altman is the killer's first victim, but she's not identified until the second, Martha Brisbane, is found. When Eve learns Martha was a fellow research participant, she becomes a Hat Squad confidential informant. Rose keeps the action popping as the psycho claims more lives, hoping to add Eve to his list. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.