Today I have the the honor and pleasure to introduce you to Mr. Frank Zaccari, as he stops by and visits, during his VT with Providence Book Promotions.  Please help me welcome him to CMash Reads.

FRANK ZACCARI

Frank Zaccari is a native of western New York. He received his bachelor’s in finance from California State University at Sacramento after serving as a military medic in the United States Air Force. He spent more than two decades in the technology industry, holding various positions from account representative to CEO. He also spent time specializing in turn-around management of companies under $100 million. Zaccari left the industry to provide primary care of his children, purchasing a small business that was more accommodating to his family. He presently owns an insurance agency in Sacramento, where he currently resides. “Five Years to Live” is not his only book for sale. He has also written, “When the Wife Cheats,” “From the Ashes: The Rise of the University of Washington Volleyball Program,” and “Inside the Spaghetti Bowl.”
Visit Frank at his website here.

ABOUT THE BOOK

It is the phone call every person lives in fear of receiving. There has been an accident and your loved one is paralyzed. A spinal cord injury is the single most devastating and life altering event. Based on a true story, Michael and Donna were young, successful, in love and planning their life together. That life was radically changed by a tragic car accident. Now a wheelchair user as a quadriplegic, with limited movement, constant infections and multiple surgeries, doctors projected Michael’s best case life expectancy to be five years. See how this young couple battles through his injury and spends his five years making a lasting impact on hundreds of people. It will make you realize what can be accomplished when a person does not let circumstances dictate their life.
Purchase Link:  

Read an excerpt:

With terror in his voice, he said, “I’m not going to walk again, am I?”

“We don’t really know yet, like I said…”

Michael angrily cut her off “Answer the god-damn question. I’m not going to walk again am I?

“I don’t know Michael.” Tears began to will up in his eyes, and he looked at her, begging for an answer.

After she wiped the tear from her eyes she said “The odds are not in your favor.”

Follow Frank’s tour here for a chance to win a copy of Five Years To Live.

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 affliate.
I am providing link(s) solely for visitors
that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

Hi All:  I haven’t been participating in memes lately for a couple of reasons.  PICT and PBP tour companies have been keeping me very busy with all of our tours.  I invite you to stop by and see what great titles have been booked.  If interested in any of the titles and think you would like to participate, there is a form on either site to fill out.

And then, over this past weekend, had some major computer issues, which resulted in something I wasn’t anticipating, to purchase a new laptop since the old one crashed.  I have been trying to transfer all of my files and sites to the new one to bring it up to speed.  Not a fun task!!  But getting there.

What’s new with you?

http://btt2.wordpress.com

This week’s question:
It’s the depth of winter here where I live right now … what books do you like to read when it’s snowy and white? What books do you read to evoke a real feeling of winter (good or bad)?

My thoughts:
I have never been a seasonal reader when it comes to titles but am when it comes to reading habits.  I also live in an area where it’s the depth of winter and, especially during a snow storm, love to get comfy in my reading chair with a fleece throw, a hot cup of coffee or chocolate and read.    My reading room/office is set up so that when I am in my recliner,  I can also glance up to look out the window to see the snow falling and blowing around.  Matter of fact, this scenario played out yesterday.  I have been in a reading slump and thought that this setting would help, which it would have, if I hadn’t dozed off lol.  Unfortunately, the depth of winter flu bug, has come to visit at the Mash household.  🙁

…… of The Seventh Victim by Mary Burton

37 Linda Peters 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.

I received today’s guest’s book in the mail and was surprised at the delivery.  When I read the synopsis, I knew Linda from The Hachette Book Group, had sent me a book that I would enjoy.  And then I had the ultimate honor to host this author, as she stops by and tells us about her book.  Please help me give a very warm welcome to Lucretia Grindle!!!

LUCRETIA GRINDLE

Lucretia Grindle was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up spending half her time in the United States and half her time in the UK. Continuing as she started out, she still splits her time, but now calls the coast of Maine home.

GUEST POST

First, I’d like to thank you for inviting me. Being a guest author is a real honor. I’m always thrilled when readers enjoy one of my books, so I’d like to start by saying thank you for that, too. Although, strangely, once they are written, I always feel that they’re kind of ‘Out There On Their Own’, a bit like children who’ve grown up and, finally, left home. That having been said, I’m especially fond of Villa Triste. It’s a special book to me, and I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about why that is.

Several years ago, I decided that I wanted to write a trilogy of novels set in Italy. This sprang, in part, from my own realization of what I didn’t (and I’m sure still don’t) understand about a country I have come to love so much. It began with Italy’s role in World War II, which I had always found confusing, and in particular with a series of plaques that I began to notice in my wanderings around Florence. Almost all of them referred to The Partisans, whom I knew nothing about. As I began to discover more, I also began to look rather differently at the old lady who ran my green grocers, at the old man who fed the cats on the steps that lead to my favorite church, at the caretaker in the piazza around the corner from my flat, at the flower-seller and his wife who kept the kiosk on the corner. All of them were probably in their eighties; all of them had lived through 1943 and 1944. As my research grew deeper, I realized that many of them had probably fought their way through those years. More than one in four of the Italian Partisans were women. It began to occur to me that sweet old ladies, as well as sweet old men, might have very unexpected pasts.

While Villa Triste is a work of fiction, everything, down to the dates and locations of the Allied bombings, is based on fact. The two sisters are an amalgamation of several women, but the family I describe existed, as did everything that happens to Isabella and Caterina. Even the little red book is based on another tiny book kept hidden in the hem of a dress – although that one was in Milan. There was a radio circuit. It had a different name, but its fate was the same as is portrayed in the book. Villa Triste is simply my answer to what might have happened. I hope, too, that it is also the story of those very ordinary heroes who, when pressed with the moment, found such extraordinary courage.

Villa Triste is also important to me for a very personal reason. I’ve been married for the past fifteen years. My husband will be eighty-seven this year. In the course of my marriage, I have often been annoyed, and frequently infuriated, by the way older people are treated, the way they are patronized and too often, marginalized – patted on the head like sweet little creatures – or simply ignored, both in life, and in fiction. I’m sick of action heroes and heroines who are always and eternally thirty-five and beautiful. Who says beauty stops at fifty or for that matter sixty or seventy, anyway? Who says brains, guile, sneakiness, nobility and even evil stop at fifty-five or sixty-five or for that matter, ninety-five?

That’s one of my pet hates, or rather two of them – the trope of the youngish athletic overly qualified character with a weird name who steps forth to carry out derring-do, be it good or bad; and the idea that the elderly do not have Agency. And I’m sick of, and a bit sickened by, the increasingly bizarrely chopped up bodies of young women that are too often a feature of crime writing. In Villa Triste, the corpses are old men. The heroes and heroines are lost back in time, and with a few exceptions, the players who exist today are graying. Love, need, shame, courage, and fury – they bind into all of us and make us who we are, no matter what our age. To me, Villa Triste is a story about that as much as it is a story about anything. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it.

With all best wishes,

Lucretia

ABOUT THE BOOK

Florence, 1943. Two sisters, Isabella and Caterina Cammaccio, find themselves surrounded by terror and death; and with Italy trapped under the heel of a brutal Nazi occupation, bands of Partisans rise up.

Soon Isabella and Caterina will test their wits and deepest beliefs as never before. As the winter grinds on, they will be forced to make the most important decisions of their lives. Their choices will reverberate for decades.

In the present day, Alessandro Pallioti, a senior policeman agrees to oversee a murder investigation, after it emerges the victim was once a Partisan hero. When the case begins to unravel, Pallioti finds himself working to uncover a crime lost in the twilight of war, the consequences of which are as deadly today as they were over sixty years ago.

THANKS TO LINDA FROM THE HACHETTE BOOK GROUP, I HAVE
THREE (3) SIGNED COPIES OF THIS BOOK TO GIVE AWAY
U.S. AND CANADA RESIDENTS ONLY

CLICK HERE FOR THE ENTRY PAGE

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.

*USE THE RAFFLECOPTER FORM BELOW
IN ORDER TO BE INCLUDED IN THE GIVEAWAY*
BE SURE TO INCLUDE YOUR EMAIL

ADDRESS IN THE RAFFLECOPTER FORM
SO THAT I CAN CONTACT YOU IF YOU WIN
*LEAVE COMMENT: FROM READING THE SYNOPSIS,
WHAT DO YOU THINK ONE OF THE “DECISIONS” WERE?*

*U.S. AND CANADA RESIDENTS ONLY*
*NO P.O. BOXES*

 **PER PUBLISHER**
ONE WINNING BOOK PER HOUSEHOLD
PLEASE NOTIFY ME IF YOU HAVE
WON THIS BOOK FROM ANOTHER
SITE, SO THAT SOMEONE ELSE MAY
HAVE THE CHANCE TO WIN
AND READ THIS BOOK.
THANK YOU.

YOUR JAVA SCRIPT MAY NEED TO BE UPDATED
IF YOU AR EXPERIENCING DIFFICULTY
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a Rafflecopter giveaway

……… of Private London by James Patterson

133 Linda Ridener Dickson Leave a Blog Post Comment

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

Friends!!!  We all have and need them in our lives!  We share our lives with them, laugh and cry, depend on and are there for them, some are real, others virtual but can grow to become part of our daily lives.  They are called by many names, buddies, pals, BFFs, etc.. Today my friend, Joe, from Doubleday is stopping by, to introduce us to someone who knows all about friends and has written a book on these important people in our lives as she begins her VT with Providence Book Promotions.  So without further ado, please help me in giving Ms. Carlin Flora a warm and friendly welcome to CMash Reads.  Everyone, Ms. Carlin Flora!!

CARLIN FLORA

Author photo credit is: Copyright 2012 Erin Patrice O’Brien

Carlin Flora was on the staff of Psychology Today for eight years, most recently as features editor. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Columbia University School of Journalism and has written for Discover, Glamour, Women’s Health, and Men’s Health, among others. She has also appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, Fox News, and 20/20. She lives in Queens, New York.
Visit Ms. Flora at her website and/or the following sites:   

Follow her tour here for reviews and more chances to win a copy of FRIENDFLUENCE.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Discover the unexpected ways friends influence our personalities, choices, emotions, and even physical health in this fun and compelling examination of friendship, based on the latest scientific research and ever-relatable anecdotes.

Why is dinner with friends often more laughter filled and less fraught than a meal with family? Although some say it’s because we choose our friends, it’s also because we expect less of them than we do of relatives. While we’re busy scrutinizing our romantic relationships and family dramas, our friends are quietly but strongly influencing everything from the articles we read to our weight fluctuations, from our sex lives to our overall happiness levels.

Evolutionary psychologists have long theorized that friendship has roots in our early dependence on others for survival. These days, we still cherish friends but tend to undervalue their role in our lives. However, the skills one needs to make good friends are among the very skills that lead to success in life, and scientific research has recently exploded with insights about the meaningful and enduring ways friendships influence us. With people marrying later—and often not at all—and more families having just one child, these relationships may be gaining in importance. The evidence even suggests that at times friends have a greater hand in our development and well-being than do our romantic partners and relatives.

Friends see each other through the process of growing up, shape each other’s interests and outlooks, and, painful though it may be, expose each other’s rough edges. Childhood and adolescence, in particular, are marked by the need to create distance between oneself and one’s parents while forging a unique identity within a group of peers, but friends continue to influence us, in ways big and small, straight through old age.

Perpetually busy parents who turn to friends—for intellectual stimulation, emotional support, and a good dose of merriment—find a perfect outlet to relieve the pressures of raising children. In the office setting, talking to a friend for just a few minutes can temporarily boost one’s memory. While we romanticize the idea of the lone genius, friendship often spurs creativity in the arts and sciences. And in recent studies, having close friends was found to reduce a person’s risk of death from breast cancer and coronary disease, while having a spouse was not.

Friendfluence surveys online-only pals, friend breakups, the power of social networks, envy, peer pressure, the dark side of amicable ties, and many other varieties of friendship. Told with warmth, scientific rigor, and a dash of humor, Friendfluence not only illuminates and interprets the science but draws on clinical psychology and philosophy to help readers evaluate and navigate their own important friendships.
Watch for my review in the near future.

Watch the video:

BOOK DETAILS:
Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Doubleday
Pub Date: 1/15/13
Pages: 288
ISBN 0385535430
ISBN13: 9780385535434
PURCHASE LINKS:
  

THANKS TO JOE AND THE WONDERFUL PEOPLE AT DOUBLEDAY,
I HAVE ONE (1) COPY OF FRIENDFLUENCE TO GIVE AWAY
U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY

CLICK HERE FOR THE ENTRY PAGE

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 affliate.
I am providing link(s) solely for visitors
that may be interested in purchasing this Book/EBook.

*USE THE RAFFLECOPTER FORM BELOW
IN ORDER TO BE INCLUDED IN THE GIVEAWAY*
BE SURE TO INCLUDE YOUR EMAIL

ADDRESS IN THE RAFFLECOPTER FORM
SO THAT I CAN CONTACT YOU IF YOU WIN
*LEAVE COMMENT: WHO IS YOUR BFF?*

*U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY*
*NO P.O. BOXES*

 **HONOR SYSTEM**
ONE WINNING BOOK PER HOUSEHOLD
PLEASE NOTIFY ME IF YOU HAVE
WON THIS BOOK FROM ANOTHER
SITE, SO THAT SOMEONE ELSE MAY
HAVE THE CHANCE TO WIN
AND READ THIS BOOK.
THANK YOU.

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

a Rafflecopter giveaway