Bout of Books Read-A-Thon

CMash April 29, 2013 Leave a Comment

I have been in an awful slump since the beginning of the year, having read, if I’m lucky, one book a month. I can only remember once that this has happened to me whereas I was in a slump this long. I know part of the problem is that I have been very busy with VBTs. I have tried different things to get me in the reading mood again, even signing up for a couple of Read-A-Thons in hopes that it would jump start my lack of desire to read, but it didn’t work. But I’m not giving up.

Bout of Books is hosting a read-a-thon, May 13th thru May 19th, with sign ups today and I plan to participate. Will this help? I think so especially since this will be taking place while I am on vacation and have already packed what books will be coming along.

Want to join this read-a-thon? Click on the link above and sign up. From the Bout of Books site:

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, May 13th and runs through Sunday, May 19th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 7.0 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team.

Mailbox Monday, Meme, Monday Memes, Musing Mondays

Monday Memes

CMash April 29, 2013 1 Comment

MAILBOX MONDAY

April is being hosted by Mari @ MariReads

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia of A girl and her books and is now on tour.
According to Marcia, “Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week. Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.
Click on title for synopsis via IndieBound (I am an IndieBound affiliate)

Tuesday: The Outsider and The Abbey by Chris Culver from The Hachette Book Group

Giveaway, Winners

And the winners are…..

CMash April 28, 2013 1 Comment

**…of Friendship Makes The Heart Grow Fonder by Lisa Verge Higgins**

9 Linda Kish Be a Public Follower of ‘CMASH Loves to Read’

22 Maureen Carol Tweet about the Giveaway

An email has been sent to the winners and they have 48 hours to respond or another winner will be chosen. Thank you to all that entered.

Giveaway, Guest Author, Showcase, The Hachette Book Group, The Hachette Book Group

Guest Author DEBRA WEBB showcase and giveaway ENDED

CMash April 27, 2013 22 Comments

Don’t you just love it when you receive unexpected treasures? Then you know how I felt when Marissa, from GCP/The Hachette Book Group, thought of me and sent not one, but all 4 of the series. And when I read the synopsis, I wanted to share with you. So, grab your coffee, and please help me welcome Ms. Debra Webb to CMash Reads!!

Debra Webb, born in Alabama, wrote her first story at age nine and her first romance at thirteen. It wasn’t until she spent three years working for the military behind the Iron Curtain—and a five-year stint with NASA—that she realized her true calling. A collision course between suspense and romance was set. Since then she has penned nearly 100 novels, including her internationally bestselling Colby Agency series. Debra’s debut romantic thriller series, Faces of Evil, propelled her to the top of the bestselling charts for an unparalleled twenty-four weeks.

Connect with Ms. Webb at these sites:

ABOUT THE BOOK

Debra Webb’s USA TODAY bestselling Faces of Evil suspense series is back with the chilling fourth installment, RAGE.

A woman has been brutally murdered and the scene is one straight out of a Charles Manson playbook. A former profile for the FBI, Jess sees beyond the heinous parlor tricks of a demented killer.

Once again her unorthodox tactics have her colleagues in the Birmingham Police Department at odds with her, especially when the victim’s husband, a decorated detective, becomes the focus of her investigation. When she discovers an unexpected witness in an autistic child, both Jess and the boy become targets of a killer who will stop at nothing to protect an act of rage no one saw coming…

BOOK DETAILS:

Publisher: Forever Mass Market
ISBN-13: 978-1-4555-2764-9
$5.99; April 30, 2013

PURCHASE LINKS:

THANKS TO MARISSA AT GCP/FOREVER,
I HAVE ONE (1) SET, 4 BOOKS, TO GIVE AWAY.

OPEN TO U.S. and CANADA RESIDENTS

FILL OUT RAFFLECOPTER ENTRY FORM BELOW

GIVEAWAY ENDS MAY 17th AT 6PM EST

WINNER WILL BE CHOSEN BY RAFFLECOPTER AND NOTIFIED
VIA EMAIL AND WILL HAVE 48 HOURS TO RESPOND
OR ANOTHER NAME WILL BE CHOSEN

a Rafflecopter giveaway

YOUR JAVA SCRIPT MAY NEED TO BE UPDATED
IF YOU AR EXPERIENCING DIFFICULTY
USING THE RAFFLECOPTER ENTRY FORM

DISCLAIMER

I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me, in exchange for my honest review. No items that I receive are ever sold…they are kept by me, or given to family and/or friends.

ADDENDUM

I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble. I am an IndieBound affiliate. I am providing link(s) solely for visitors that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

Giveaway, Winners

And the winner is….

CMash April 24, 2013 1 Comment

**…of Replacement Child by Judy Mandel**

15 Susan Stenvog Leave a Blog Post Comment

An email has been sent to the winner and she has 48 hours to respond or another winner will be chosen. Thank you to all that entered.

Guest Author, Partners In Crime Tours, Showcase

Guest Author HALLIE EPHRON

CMash April 24, 2013 1 Comment

Today I have the honor and opportunity to introduce you to an award-winning author, who is currently on tour with Partners In Crime Tours and has been receiving rave reviews, at the request of William Morrow Books. A very warm welcome, please, for Ms. Hallie Ephron!!

HALLIE EPHRON

An award-winning mystery reviewer, Hallie Ephron is the author of Never Tell a Lie (a Mary Higgins Clark Award finalist that was also made into the Lifetime Movie Network film And Baby Will Fall) and the Edgar- and Anthony Award-nominated Writing and Selling Your Mystery.
Ephron lives near Boston.
Connect with Ms. Ephron at these sites:

ABOUT THE BOOK

There Was An Old Woman by Hallie Ephron is a compelling novel of psychological suspense in which a young woman becomes entangled in a terrifying web of deception and madness involving an elderly neighbor.

When Evie Ferrante learns that her mother has been hospitalized, she finds her mother’s house in chaos. Sorting through her mother’s belongings, Evie discovers objects that don’t quite belong there, and begins to raise questions.

Evie renews a friendship with Mina, an elderly neighbor who might know more about her mother’s recent activities, but Mina is having her own set of problems: Her nephew Brian is trying to persuade her to move to a senior care community. As Evie investigates her mother’s actions, a darker story of deception and madness involving Mina emerges.

In There Was an Old Woman, award-winning mystery author Hallie Ephron delivers another work of domestic noir with truly unforgettable characters that will keep you riveted.

READ AN EXCERPT

Mina Yetner sat in her living room, inspecting the death notices in the Daily News. She got through two full columns before she found someone older than herself. Mina blew on her tea, took a sip, and settled into her comfortable wing chair. In the next column, nestled among dearly departed strangers, she found Angela Quintanilla, a neighbor who lived a few blocks away.

Angela had apparently died two days ago at just seventy-three. After a “courageous battle.” Probably lung cancer. When Mina had last run into Angela in the church parking lot, she’d been puffing away on a cigarette, so bone thin and jittery that it was a miracle she hadn’t shaken right out of her own skin. Mina leaned forward and pulled from the drawer in her coffee table a pen and the spiral notebook that she’d bought years ago up the street at Sparkles Variety. A week after her Henry died, she’d started recording the names of the people she knew who’d taken their leave, beginning with her grandmother, who was the first dead person she’d known. Now four pages of the notebook were filled. Most of the names conjured a memory. A face. Sometimes a voice. Sometimes nothing—those especially upset her. Forgetting and being forgotten terrified Mina almost more than death.

Mina found lists calming, even this one. These days she couldn’t live without them. Some mornings she’d pick up her toothbrush to brush her teeth and realize it was already wet. She kept her Lipitor
in a little plastic pillbox with compartments for each day of the week, though sometimes she had to check the newspaper to be sure what day it was.

Now she started a new page in the notebook. At the top she wrote the number 151, Angela’s name, and the date, then she opened the drawer to tuck the notebook back in. There, in the bottom of the
drawer, were her sister Annabelle’s glasses. Mina picked them up.

The narrow white plastic frames had seemed so avant-garde back in the 1960s when Annabelle had decided she needed a new look. She’d worn them every day since. It was probably time—good
heavens, past time—to throw them away, along with Annabelle’s long nightgowns, flowered cotton with lovely lace collars that she used to order from the Nordstrom catalog. Mina preferred short gowns that didn’t get all twisted around her legs when she turned in her sleep.

It was odd, the things one could and couldn’t throw away. She’d kept Henry’s New York Yankees cap, the one he’d worn to Game 5 of the 1956 World Series when Don Larsen pitched a perfect game in Yankee Stadium, and she wasn’t even a baseball fan.

And then there were the things you had no choice but to carry with you. She touched the side of her face, feeling the scar, raised numb flesh that started at her cheekbone and ran down the side of
her neck, across her shoulder blade, and down into the small of her back. Mina tucked Annabelle’s glasses back into the drawer along with her catalog of the dead. She picked up her cane and stood carefully.

What she really didn’t need was to fall again. She already had one titanium hip, and she had no intention of going for a pair. She knew too many people who went into a hospital for a so-called
routine procedure and came out dead.

She carried her tea outside to the narrow covered porch that stretched across the back of the house. After an icy, miserable winter and a soggy spring, it was finally warm and dry enough to sit outside. Her unreplaced hip ached, and the old porch glider screeched an appropriate accompaniment as Mina settled into the flowered cotton cushions she’d sewn herself. She took off her glasses to rub the bridge of her nose, and the world around her turned to a blur. She was legally blind without her glasses, but she’d been secretly relieved when the doctor told her she was far too myopic for that laser surgery everyone talked about.

“Oh, shush up,” she said when Ivory gave a plaintive mew from inside the storm door. “You know you’re not allowed out here.”

She put her glasses back on, and the porch and the marsh beyond snapped into focus. Mina rocked gently, taking in the view from Higgs Point, across the East River and Long Island Sound, and on to the Manhattan skyline. As a little girl, she’d watched from this same spot behind the house where she’d lived all her life as, one after the other, Manhattan’s skyscrapers had gone up. When the Chrysler Building poked its needle nose into the sky, she’d imagined that her bedroom was in the topmost floor of its glittering tiara. Then up went the Empire State, taller and without all that frippery at the top. It had been a dream come true when Mina, single “still” (as her mother so
often reminded her) and just out of school, got her first job there. Mina remembered wearing a straight skirt with a kick pleat, a peplum jacket, a crisp white collared shirt, and a broad-brimmed
lady’s fedora that dipped down in the front and back, thinking that was all it took to make her look exactly like Ingrid Bergman. Movies, the war, and where you could find cheap booze were all anyone talked about in those days.

Two years later, the dream turned into a nightmare. For years after, the roar of an airplane engine brought the memory back, full force, and yet there she had been living and there she remained, right in the flight path of LaGuardia Airport. It was only after the long days of even more terrifying silence after 9/11 that the waves of sound as airplanes took off, one after the other, had become reassuring. All is well, all is well, all is well.

Right now, what she heard was a buzz that turned into a whine, too high pitched to be an airplane. Probably Frank Cutler, her across-the-street neighbor. Installing marble countertops or a hot tub. Making a silk purse or . . . what was it they called it these days? Putting lipstick on a pig.

At least he wasn’t rooting around in her trash or practicing his golf swing again. The last time she’d asked him to please, please stop using her marsh as his own personal driving range, he’d grinned at her like she’d cracked a particularly funny joke.

“Your marsh?” he’d said. Then added something under his breath. And when she politely asked him to repeat what he’d said, he told her to turn up her hearing aid. Ha, ha, ha. Mina’s eyesight might be fading, but her hearing was as sharp as it had ever been. The buzz grew louder. Perhaps he was using a band saw. When he got around to adding dormers to the second floor, maybe he’d find the front tooth she’d lost playing under the eaves with Linda McGilvery when they were five years old. Linda, who’d been fat and not all that bright but awfully sweet, and who’d died of leukemia, what, at least forty years ago, though it still seemed impossible to Mina that she could remember so clearly something that happened so long ago. Insidious disease. Mina had been a bridesmaid at Linda’s wedding. Awful dress—The sound morphed into a whinny, and then into whap-whap-whap, yanking Mina from a billow of pink organza. It was a siren, not a saw. And it was growing louder until she knew it had to be right there in her neighborhood. On her street.

As Mina hurried off the porch and up the driveway, the sound cut off. An ambulance was stopped in front of the house next door, its lights flashing a mute beacon. Sandra Ferrante lived in that house,
alone for the past ten years since her daughters moved out. Two dark-suited EMTs jumped out of the ambulance and hurried across grass that hadn’t been mowed in months, pushing their way past front bushes that reached the decaying gutters and nearly met across the front door.

A third EMT—a man in a dark uniform who nodded her way—opened the back doors of the ambulance, unloaded a stretcher, and wheeled it up to the house. Had the poor woman finally managed to kill herself? Because as sure as eggs is eggs, drinking like that was slow suicide.

Mina stood there, hand to her throat, waiting. Remembering the ambulance that had arrived too late for her Henry. It didn’t seem possible that that had been thirty years ago. He’d died in his sleep. By
the time she’d realized anything was wrong, he was stone cold. Still, she’d called frantically for help, as if the medics who arrived could restart him like a car battery. A massive pulmonary embolism, the doctors later told her. Even if he’d suffered it at the hospital, they said, he wouldn’t have survived. That was supposed to make her feel better. Finally Sandra Ferrante was wheeled out. A yellow blanket was mounded over her. Mina found herself drifting closer, trying to overhear.
Was she alive? Coherent?

Sandra lifted her head and looked right at Mina. She raised her hand and signaled to her. Asked the EMT to wait while Mina made her way over.

Up close now, Mina could see that the whites of her neighbor’s watery eyes were tinged yellow, and she could smell the sour tang of sweat and urine mixed with cigarette smoke.

“Please, call Ginger,” Sandra said. Ginger? Then Mina remembered. Ginger was one of the daughters.

Sandra grasped Mina’s hand. Mina gasped. Arthritis made her fingers tender.

“Six four six, one . . .”

Too late, Mina realized Sandra was whispering a phone number. Mina tried to repeat the numbers back, but they wouldn’t stick. The EMT pulled out a notebook, wrote the numbers down, tore out the
page, and handed it to Mina. She’d also written Bx Met Hosp and underlined it. Bronx Metropolitan Hospital.

“Please, tell Ginger,” Sandra said, pulling Mina close. “Don’t let him in until I’m gone.”

BOOK DETAILS:

Genre: Mystery
Published by: William Morrow
Publication Date: April 2, 2013
Number of Pages: 304
ISBN: 9780062117601

PURCHASE LINKS:

If you’d like to join in on an upcoming tour just stop by our sites and sign up today!

Follow the Tour:

April 1 Review by Kelly @ Kelly’s Lucky You
April 2 Review by Heather @ SavingFor6
April 3 Review by Nicole @ bless their hearts mom
April 4 Review by Kriss @ Cabin Goddess
April 5 Review by Mary @ Mary’s Cup of Tea
April 8 Review by Kathleen @ Jersey Girl Book Reviews
April 9 Review by Teena @ Teena in Toronto
April 10 Review by Melissa @ Must Read Faster
April 11 Review by Vicky @ Deal Sharing Aunt
April 13 Showcase @ HottBooks
April 15 Review by Kristin @ Kritters Ramblings
April 16 Review by Melina @ Melina’s Book Blog
April 17 Review by Frishawn @ WTF Are You Reading?
April 18 Review by Sandie @ Booksie’s Blog
April 19 Showcase @ Omnimystery
April 20 Review by Tammy @ The Self Taught Cook
April 21 Review by Linda @ Bookvisions
April 23 Review by Kathleen @ Celticlady’s Reviews
April 24 Showcase @ CMash Reads
April 25 Review by @ Views from the Countryside
April 26 Review by Mason @ Thoughts in Progress
April 30 Review by Amy @ The Crafty Book Nerd
April 30 Review by Fenny @ HotchpotchBlog

DISCLAIMER
I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me,
in exchange for my honest review.
No items that I receive
are ever sold…they are kept by me,
or given to family and/or friends.
ADDENDUM
I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com or
Barnes & Noble. I am an IndieBound affiliate.
I am providing link(s) solely for visitors
that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

Giveaway, Winners

And the winners are…..

CMash April 23, 2013 2 Comments

**….of When She Cam Home by Drusilla Campbell**

37 Nicole Taylor Choate Follow @CherylMash on Twitter

5 Marjorie Takala Leave a Blog Post Comment

14 Alenette Tweet about the Giveaway

8 Linda Kish Leave a Blog Post Comment

17 Tarah Manning Follow @CherylMash on Twitter

An email has been sent to the winners and they have 48 hours to respond or another winner will be chosen. Thank you to all that entered.

o4/27/13 One of the above winners notified me that she has won this title at another blog so another winner has been chosen. An email has been sent for notification.

34 Josie Haney Hink Tweet about the Giveaway

Guest Author, Showcase, Simon & Schuster

Guest Author Kelly Meding

CMash April 23, 2013 1 Comment

Don’t you enjoy finding out about “new to you” authors? Well…..Stephanie, from Simon & Schuster, is back again today so that she can introduce us to another author. Welcome Ms. Kelly Meding !!

NAME

A native of the Delaware seashore, Kelly Meding lives in Maryland, with a neurotic cat that occasionally meows at ghosts. After discovering Freddy Krueger at a very young age, Kelly began a lifelong obsession with horror, science fiction, and fantasy, on which she blames her interest in vampires, psychic powers, superheroes, and all things paranormal. When not writing, she can be found crafting jewelry, enjoying a good cup of coffee, or scouring the Internet for gossip on her favorite television shows.
Connect with Kelly at these sites:

GUEST POST

Thank you so much for having me here to chat about my new release, TEMPEST, and the evolving dynamics of villains.

TEMPEST is the third book in my MetaWars series with Pocket Star. The books are set in a world where superheroes are real. Meta-powered humans once brought the United States to the brink of disaster with their battles, and they killed each other to near-extinction. During the final deciding battle, the remaining heroes and villains suddenly lose their super-powers. The villains are locked up on ManhattanIsland, which is turned into a giant prison. The surviving heroes, however, are all children between the ages of ten and fifteen. These confused, orphaned kids are put in foster homes.

Fast-forward fifteen years, and the now-adult former heroes-in-training receive their powers back as suddenly as they lost them. The imprisoned villains (called Banes) receive theirs back, as well, and one of the questions these former bad guys have to consider is: do we break out and go back to being bad, or do we stay put and allow the authorities to deal with us?

The first book in the series, TRANCE, chronicles how the survivors band back together to stop an old enemy intent on murdering them all. Banes are viewed as threats, period. This is all Teresa and her five fellow heroes know them as. The Banes killed their parents and mentors. They caused havoc around the country. This view holds fast until the end of the novel, when one Bane lends a hand, and Teresa begins to wonder if some of the Banes have truly reformed. This confusion leads to conflict within the group, especially from Renee and Ethan, who have very strong and personal reasons for hating the Banes.

In the second book, CHANGELING, the Banes are less present, because a different enemy is attacking Teresa and her team. This enemy comes from an unexpected direction, and they aren’t Meta at all. It gives Teresa more to consider about Meta unity, and the possibility of all Metas uniting against this new, equally super-powered threat.

This possibility of change was one of the big building blocks of TEMPEST. I used this book to really explore the hero/villain dynamic of the MetaWars world. The book’s narrator, Ethan “Tempest” Swift, can manipulate the air. He uses it to fly, to create manageable cyclones, and can make a targeted wind drill to blast holes in solid rock. And at the start of the book he’s keeping two big secrets from his teammates–one of which is the fact that his father is one of the Banes imprisoned in Manhattan. And he’s the same Bane who murdered Ethan’s mother.

When Teresa asks for volunteers to go into Manhattan and search for some missing prisoners, Ethan jumps at the chance to get onto the island and confront the man he knows only as Jinx. Having this conflict in place gave me a chance, as an author, to explore family dynamics, and the notion of what makes a man a “villain.” Is it only his deeds, or is it what he also holds in his heart? Jinx is more than his label as a bad guy, and Ethan is confronted with these layers head-on as he gets to know other Bane prisoners.

Villains are most dynamic when they are more than just their dastardly deeds. The HBO series “Oz” is probably one of the best examples of hero/villain dynamics out there. The good guys do bad things. The bad guys might not be as bad as you think. A character you sympathize with at the start becomes an irredeemable scumbag by episode ten. I absolutely love this series, and I highly recommend it (if you don’t mind a lot of f-bombs being dropped on you).

ABOUT THE BOOK

The third novel in Meding’s MetaWars series focuses on an X-Men-like group of young people with superpowers who must find a way to work together when the public doesn’t trust them and the government wants to control them. When Ethan “Tempest” Swift accepts an assignment in Manhattan, the island suffers an unexpected assault. Forced to side with old enemies to uncover who’s responsible, Ethan begins to question his place in defending a world that sees him as its enemy. Charlaine Harris, author of the True Blood books, called the first book in the series “a fast-paced adventure that rocks along to a very tense climax.”

BOOK DETAILS:

Publisher: Pocket Star (April 22, 2013)
Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
Language: English
ASIN: B0092PY5WS

PURCHASE LINKS:

DISCLAIMER
I received a copy of this book, at no charge to me,
in exchange for my honest review.
No items that I receive
are ever sold…they are kept by me,
or given to family and/or friends.
ADDENDUM
I do not have any affiliation with Amazon.com or
Barnes & Noble. I am an IndieBound affiliate.
I am providing link(s) solely for visitors
that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.