Mailbox Monday

Click on title for synopsis via GoodReads.

Monday:

First Date by Sue Watson~ eBook from Bookouture via NetGalley
Tuesday:
The Order by Daniel Silva ~ Kindle from Ted Galdi’s September giveaway
The Guardians by John Grisham~ Kindle from Ted Galdi’s September giveaway
1st Case by James Patterson and Chris Tebbetts ~ Kindle from Ted Galdi’s September giveaway
Wednesday:
Like Follow Kill by Carissa Ann Lynch~ signed TPB giveaway win from Author
Thursday:
Death And The Maiden by Samantha Norman ~ HC from William Morrow
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Little Falls by Elizabeth Lewes~ eBook from Author
Girls Of Brackenhill by Kate Moretti ~ eBook from Prime First Reads

Synopsis:

With the publication of ‘Murder, Forgotten‘, Deb Richardson-Moore departs from her popular Branigan Powers series and introduces us to an unforgettable protagonist and a heart-pounding mystery that explores the vagaries of the mind and the way our memory often betrays us. The themes are both universal and personal at once. How does grief alter one’s memory? Is there more truth in fiction than in reality? This is a novel will have readers questioning their own motivations and that of the protagonist, Julianna Burke.

Julianna is a mystery writer who is famous for her ‘wanderings’ – eventually returning to her writing desk with exciting plot twists. But lately, she has nothing to show for her creative work. She fears her memory is slipping, and with it her heralded career.

Then her beloved husband and business partner is murdered. The police look at workmen, extended family and neighbors, but Julianna fears something far worse. Could she, deep in the writing of her latest mystery, ‘Murder, Forgotten,’ have acted out the fictional murder? In this plot within a plot, she seeks to find the killer. Can she find the truth when she questions her own reality?

‘Murder, Forgotten‘ takes us from coastal South Carolina to the eastern shores of Scotland in a sweeping mystery that explores Julianna, grief-stricken and wounded, as she searches for truth in the midst of her own fiction.

Book Details:

Genre: Murder Mystery, Southern Mystery, Thriller
Published by: Lion Fiction
Publication Date: September 18th 2020
Number of Pages: 304
ISBN: 1782643117 (ISBN13: 9781782643111)
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Read an excerpt:

Author Bio:

Deb Richardson-Moore is the author of 4 fiction titles and a memoir, The Weight of Mercy, about her early years as a pastor at the Triune Mercy Center in Greenville, S.C. A former national award-winning reporter for The Greenville News, Deb is a popular speaker at book clubs, universities and college events. She has won numerous awards for her philanthropy and community involvement, including the 2014 Women Making History Award from the Greenville, South Carolina Cultural Exchange Center and the 2016 Public & Community Service Award from the Atlantic Institute. A graduate of Wake Forest University, Deb lives with her husband in South Carolina.

Catch Up With Deb Richardson-Moore:
http://www.DebRichardsonMoore.com, Goodreads, BookBub, & Facebook!

Tour Participants:

Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and giveaways!

Enter To Win!:

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Deb Richardson-Moore. There will be 4 winners. Two (2) winners will each win one (1) Amazon.com Gift Card and Two (2) winners will each win one (1) ebook copy ofMurder, Forgotten by Deb Richardson-Moore. The giveaway begins on October 1, 2020 and runs through October 18, 2020. Void where prohibited

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1. You will never find a lack of books and Yankee Candles in my home.

2. Once a year, I schedule my mammogram.

3. Sometimes my mouth has gotten me in trouble.

4. The last time I saw my granddaughters was when our youngest turned one due to being unable to travel because of COVID-19.

Synopsis:

Gripping romantic suspense from USA TODAY bestselling author Colleen Coble.

A lie changed her world.

Police Chief Jane Hardy is still reeling from the scandal that rocked her small-town department just as she took over for her retired father—the man who wrecked her life with one little lie. Now she’s finally been reunited with her presumed-dead fifteen-year-old son, Will, and his father, documentarian Reid Bechtol.

A crisis looms.

When a murder aboard the oil platform Zeus exposes an environmental terrorist’s plot to flood Mobile Bay with crude oil, Jane and Reid must put their feelings for each other behind them and work together to prevent the rig from being sabotaged.

A killer targets her son.

Then the terrorist puts her son Will’s life on the line. Protecting him could be the common ground they need . . . but then ghosts from the past threaten to ruin Jane and Reid for good. She’s got plenty of reasons to run. But what if she stays?

Book Details:

Genre: Romantic Suspense
Published by: Thomas Nelson
Publication Date: September 8, 2020
Number of Pages: 352
ISBN: 0785228489 (ISBN13: 9780785228486)
Series: Pelican Harbor #2
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | ChristianBook.com | Goodreads

Author Bio:

Colleen Coble is a USA TODAY bestselling author and RITA finalist best known for her coastal romantic suspense novels, including The Inn at Ocean’s Edge, Twilight at Blueberry Barrens, and the Lavender Tides, Sunset Cove, Hope Beach, and Rock Harbor series.

What was the inspiration for this book?

If you’ve ever been to Gulf Shores, I’m sure you noticed all the oil platforms out there. I’ve always been intrigued by them and wanted to write a story around one.

What has been the biggest challenge in your writing career?

It’s hard to keep all the balls in the air. As a career writer, I’m always working on one new story, massaging edits on the book that’s been turned in, and promoting the book that’s just coming out. That can be challenging, but I love what I get to do.

What do you absolutely need while writing?
Coffee!

Do you adhere to a strict routine when writing or write when the ideas are flowing?

I work five days a week until I reach my word count for the day. Some days that might take me two hours and other days it will take all day. When the words are really flowing, like in the last quarter of the book, I’ll write all day and get as many scenes down while the words are coming fast and furious.

Who is your favorite character from your book and why?
I love Jane Hardy. She’s small and plucky, determined and focused. She is committed to justice and stays focused on the problem at hand. She’s had a lot of overcome in her past, but she has never given up.

Who is your least favorite character from your book and why?

Ah that would give away the villain!

Give us an interesting fun fact or a few about your book?

Did you know there’s a replica of Stonehenge in the Gulf Shores area? The minute I saw it, I knew I had to have a scene set there.

Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?

I love hearing from readers! I’m an extrovert and talking to readers brightens my day.

Tell us a little about yourself and your background?

I grew up in the cornfields of northern Indiana. I’m the oldest of four kids and the only girl. I mothered my brothers relentlessly and still do. And everyone else around.  My husband and I will be married fifty years next year, and we have two great kids and three darling grandkids. I spent eleven years answering over a thousand phone calls a day for an electrical supply company. Even though that’s been over twenty years ago, if I answer the phone when I have something else on my mind, I’m apt to say, “Good morning, Wabash Electric.”

Catch Up With Colleen Coble:
ColleenCoble.com, Goodreads, BookBub, Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook!

Read an excerpt:

Tour Participants:

Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and giveaways!

Giveway!!

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Colleen Coble. There will be 3 winners, each winning ONE LITTLE LIE by Colleen Coble (Print). The giveaway begins on September 21, 2020 and runs through October 25, 2020. Open to U.S. addresses only. Void where prohibited.

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Another bad month for reading!!!! At this rate, I will never meet my GR Challenge. Maybe next year! However, I know why. I definitely am enjoying reading again, unlike in March, April, May when my focus was nil due to virus. But the past couple of months we have been super busy at Partners In Crime Tours organizing a lot of tours for authors because they are unable to do in-person marketing. Stop by and see our current and upcoming tours. If a title looks like one you think you would like to review, complete the form or email me.

I purchased a Bookly subscription thinking that it would help me put in more reading time, or should I say guilt me into reading since I bought the app!? It helps a little but I just can’t seem to find extra hours in a day to sit down and read plus complete my PICT tasks and household chores. And I am also realizing that age is creeping up on me because if I do sit down to read at the end of the day, I fall asleep, which never happened to me before. I just wish Amazon sold those extra hours 🙂

My review for Don’t Look For Me by Wendy Walker was posted on September 15th, which can be seen HERE.

Some people just need killing.

Marlena Altizer Durst lives in her husband’s shadow. He controls her every move—what she wears, the food she eats, and the friends she’s allowed to make. If she disobeys, there are… consequences. And he has all the power, so nobody would believe her.

Her Cinderella story has been well-documented and it seems that she leads a fairy-tale life. But nobody ever wonders if Cinderella was happy after she married the prince. Marlena has traded freedom and safety for luxurious imprisonment, and most days, that seems like a bad bargain. Death may be the only exit she’s allowed. Just like his first wife. And his second.

Unless she flips the script.

And gets away with murder…

At 16, Marlena Altizer leaves her mother and siblings behind when she escapes the poverty and hills of Kentucky.

Then by luck, she is noticed by a very notable talent agent and signs her to a modeling career. The owner of the company, and very rich and widowed x2, Michaell Durst, also notices her before she knows it, they marry and all her fantasies of being rich have come true. But not long after, her knight in shining armor becomes a controlling monster. He has created a false persona for her background, decides on her wardrobe, what she needs to learn like another language, and the arts so that she is the “perfect” who is worthy to be the third wife for the powerful Michael Durst. The controlling starts to get worse and the physical abuse starts.

By the middle of the book, I figured out that Marlena might have planned to become Mrs. Durst and why. But who is going to survive this murderous cat and mouse relationship?

Even though I figured part of it out, the action just ramped up and the pages started to quickly turn. Heart pounding suspense!!! An ending that I would never have guessed? It blew me away!

Purchase Links: Amazon 🔗 | Barnes & Noble 🔗 | Goodreads 🔗

Mailbox Monday

Click on title for synopsis via GoodReads.

Wednesday:

One In Three by Tess Stimson~ eBook from Harper Collins 360 via NetGalley
Thursday:
The Second Mother by Jenny Milchman ~ TPB from Margaret Yelton via Peace, Love, Books September Swap

Synopsis:

For fans of Julia Keller and Sheena Kamal, All We Buried disturbs the long-sleeping secrets of a small Washington State mountain town.

Interim sheriff Elizabeth “Bet” Rivers has always had one repeat nightmare: a shadowy figure throwing a suspicious object into her hometown lake in Collier, Washington. For the longest time, she chalked it up to an overactive imagination as a kid. Then the report arrives. In the woods of the Cascade mountain range, right in her jurisdiction, a body floats to the surface of Lake Collier. When the body is extricated and revealed, no one can identify Jane Doe. But someone must know the woman, so why aren’t they coming forward?

Bet has been sitting as the interim sheriff of this tiny town in the ill-fitting shoes of her late father and predecessor. With the nightmare on her heels, Bet decided to build a life for herself in Los Angeles, but now it’s time to confront the tragic history of Collier. The more she learns, the more Bet realizes she doesn’t know the townspeople of Collier as well as she thought, and nothing can prepare her for what she is about to discover.

Book Details:

Genre: Mystery
Published by: Crooked Lane
Publication Date: April 7, 2020
Number of Pages: 304
ISBN: 1643852914 (ISBN13: 9781643852911)
Series: Sheriff Bet Rivers #1
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound | Goodreads

Author Bio:

Elena Taylor lives on the banks of the middle fork of the Snoqualmie River in a town made famous by Twin Peaks. When she’s not writing or working one-on-one with writers as a developmental editor, she can be found hanging out with her husband, dog, and two cats. Her favorite place to be (besides home) is the stables down the road, with her two horses Radar and Jasper.

What was the inspiration for this book?

I used to live in a community with a dark, mysterious lake. Every day I drove by and thought about what might be hidden under the water. I heard a story once, that a train engine rested at the bottom. I found the idea fascinating.
The community was also built on coal mining. Several coal mining towns around Washington State went boom, then bust. The one I lived in was much closer to Bellevue than the high ridges of the Cascade Mountain Range. It not only survived, but it turned into a bedroom community a short hop from Bellevue and Seattle.

That got me thinking about what it meant for the towns that didn’t survive and became ghost towns. How the people just vanished.

There are also some small mining towns in the state that did make it, despite their original booms and busts. I liked the idea of creating a town that had that mining background and wasn’t attached to Seattle or Bellevue but managed to survive on its own. That brought me to the creation of Collier, Washington.

Then Bet Rivers arrived fairly fully formed. I just had to figure out what made her tick.

What has been the biggest challenge in your writing career?

Letting other things get in the way. I had an entire career in theater rather than a 100% focus on my writing. But I choose to see those years as helping me develop my writing style and voice. I wouldn’t necessarily change anything, but sometimes I wonder what might have been if I’d fully committed to writing much earlier in life.

What do you absolutely need while writing?

Coffee and my laptop. Almonds are a close second.

Do you adhere to a strict routine when writing or write when the ideas are flowing?

I try to write daily. Typically, I get up and write first thing in the morning. I vary depending on where I am in the process. First draft? Word count goal, usually one to two thousand words a day depending on how well the writing is going. Subsequent drafts? Either a number of pages or specific issues to address. I spend a lot of time in my head with my characters and the plot. This helps me never get “stuck” in the sense of staring at a blank page. I like to mull over what my characters are after and how their wants intersect and crash into each other. I believe that writer’s block is actually just a writer who hasn’t spent enough time thinking about their project. A friend of mine and I came up with the saying “honor the mull” and I try to do that every single day.

Who is your favorite character from your book and why?

Schweitzer! I always love the dog best.

Who is your least favorite character from your book and why?

I love all my children equally—ha ha ha. I don’t have any characters I don’t like. The ones who behave badly are what makes it a mystery, so they serve an important purpose. Now, if you asked me if there are any characters that I’d rather not meet in the real world . . . Definitely! But I can’t tell you who or it will give too much away.

Give us an interesting fun fact or a few about your book?

This book went through a LOT of possible titles and names for the town. When it first landed with my editor at Crooked Lane it was called Resurrection Lake. There’s nothing wrong with the title, but it didn’t capture the tone of the novel quite right. We tossed around a lot of different ideas, list after list of possibilities. I thought about calling the town and its lake Iron Horse (which is a name used in my area, but not a real town or a lake), and a few others.

Then I came up with Collier. A Collier is a term for a coal miner, which has a lot of meaning in the novel. It fit perfectly, so Robert Hatley became Robert Collier and the town changed its name from Resurrection to Collier. I realized it made a lot more sense that the town carried the name of the founder anyway, so that was a happy insight.

Then Peter Malone, my geomorphologist, was originally an ichthyologist. But my conversation with a scientist at the University of Washington showed me I’d picked the wrong type of expert. It’s always interesting to me how often we get close in a draft, but not quite on the money. Changing him to a geomorphologist fit much better with the story.

Then my editor came up with the title All We Buried. My agent and I loved it! We were all amazed it had never been used for a novel before.

I love how things change through rewrites. My editor brought out the best of this book and came up with the title, so I’m very grateful to Jenny Chen. When I go back and look at the first draft that I sent her, I realize how much we improved the overall story. Writers work alone most of the time, but when we do get the opportunity to work with great beta readers and agents and editors, our work can really rise to the next level.

Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?

Thank you for taking chances with new books and new-to-you authors! Whether it’s my book or another writer’s, it’s great that you are interested in the behind-the-scenes of a writer’s life. We work hard on our novels and it’s lovely to have readers interested in the full process. Thank you for being readers, without you our work would languish in various desk drawers around the world. And stay safe! Protect yourself and your loved ones. I’m looking forward to seeing you all in person soon.

Tell us a little about yourself and your background?

I started out in the theater as a playwright, director, and designer/technician. I’ve worn almost every hat in theatre production. I’ve also done a lot of teaching, mostly on the college/university level. My favorite thing to do is hang out with my horses, whether riding or groundwork or just spending time listening to them graze (one of the greatest sounds in the world). I love to travel, which has been the hardest part about lockdown, as I had to cancel a lot of in-person events. But I’m a realist and am confident about a return to travel and hanging out in coffee shops with the perfect cappuccino in 2021.

What’s next that we can look forward to?

Fingers crossed it will be book two of the Sheriff Bet Rivers Mysteries! I’d love to have you follow me on social media for updates. I also do a newsletter that goes out once a month. If you would like to sign up, visit me at www.elenataylorauthor.com and scroll down to the bottom. Or shoot me an email at elenataylorauthor@gmail.com and I’ll be happy to add you. I write about what I’m reading, writing tips, book giveaways, and often post photos of my various animals. That will be the first place to learn about my next publication and get an early glimpse of the opening chapter.

Catch Up With Elena Taylor On:
ElenaTaylorAuthor.com, Goodreads, BookBub, Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook!

PHOTO CREDIT MARK PERLSTEIN

Read an excerpt:

Tour Participants:

Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and giveaways!

Enter To Win!!

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Elena Taylor. There will be 2 winner2 of one (1) Amazon.com Gift Card each. The giveaway begins on September 1, 2020 and runs through October 2, 2020. Void where prohibited.

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Get More Great Reads at Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours