LOVE THY NEIGHBOR by Mark Gilleo

Published by The Story Plant

ISBN-10: 1611880343

ISBN-13: 978-1611880342

At the request of The Story Plant, an ARC digital edition was sent, at no cost to me, for my honest opinion.

  Synopsis (from the publisher): Clark Hayden is a graduate student trying to help his mother navigate through the loss of his father while she continues to live in their house near Washington DC. With his mother’s diminishing mental capacity becoming the norm, Clark expects a certain amount of craziness as he heads home for the holidays. What he couldn’t possibly anticipate, though, is that he would find himself catapulted into the middle of a terrorist operation. As the holiday festivities reach a crescendo, a terrorist cell – which happens to be across the street – is activated. Suddenly Clark is discovering things he never knew about deadly chemicals, secret government operations, suspiciously missing neighbors, and the intentions of a gorgeous IRS auditor. Clark’s quiet suburban neighborhood is about to become one of the most deadly places on the planet, and it’s up to Clark to prevent the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in the nation’s capital.

   My Thoughts and Opinion:  Where do I begin?  OK..let’s start off by me proving myself wrong again with first impressions.  I’m thinking this book is going to be another international espionage spy novel (not high up on my favorite read lists), 438 pages (great….this will take me weeks to read…. will probably seem like a lot more because of what I just mentioned) and it’s a debut novel!!!   OK….Let’s get this read.

The novel starts off with an Author’s Note that states It’s True.   And I am hooked!! This debut author has me, but now comes the story, will he hold my attention for 438 pages?   As I continue to read, his writing style is so graphic in detail that I actually had the ability to create a clear and vivid imagery in my mind, almost like I am watching a movie, which continues throughout the book.   He has the same ability of bringing the cast of characters to life and the settings of the scenes as if I was present and a bystander.   Throughout the book there were multiple twists and turns and chapters with mini cliff hangers that made this reader having to “read just one more chapter” but then realizing I was ten chapters later.   The suspense was non stop, a definite page turner.  There were also a couple of scenes (do not want to include spoilers) that I found myself laughing out loud.  A brilliant and compelling read!!!

I found myself thinking several things when I finished this novel. Yes, I was wrong. I could not put this book down, all 438 pages of it.   What I thought was going to take me weeks to read, took me a couple of days because it was so engrossing and kept pulling me to pick it back up.     A masterful written work of fiction, but could it become a reality?   I also thought that this novel would make for a great movie.   And most importantly, this is an author to put on your radar.   His writing is that of a seasoned author.  I say Bravo Mr. Gilleo!!!

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.

(2012 Challenges:  Romantic/Suspense, EBook, ARC, Mystery/Suspense, Off The Shelf, Serial Killers, FreeReads, Where Are You, A-Z, Merely Mystery, 52 in 52, Outdo Yourself, 100+)

…………of FOREVER’S ROMANTIC SUSPENSE GIVEAWAY

DEADLY DANCE by Dee Davis and RUN FROM FEAR by Jami Alden

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All I can say is WOW!!!  It’s not every day that an international best selling author stops by.  But today, we are in for a special treat.  I have the distinct honor to welcome MJ Rose to the CMash blog.   Please help me give her a warm welcome, as she visits and talks about her latest novel.  Ms. MJ Rose !!!

ABOUT MJ ROSE

M.J. Rose is the international best selling author of eleven novels and two non-fiction books on marketing. Her next novel THE BOOK OF LOST FRAGRANCES (Atria/S&S) will be published in March 2012. Her fiction and non-fiction has appeared in many magazines and reviews including Oprah Magazine. She has been featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, Time, USA Today and on the Today Show, and NPR radio. Rose graduated from Syracuse University, spent the ’80s in advertising, has a commercial in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and since 2005 has run the first marketing company for authors – Authorbuzz.com. The television series PAST LIFE, was based on Rose’s novels in the Renincarnationist series. She is one of the founding board members of International Thriller Writers and runs the blog- Buzz, Balls & Hype. She is also the co-founder of Peroozal.com and BookTrib.com.

Rose lives in CT with her husband the musician and composer, Doug Scofield, and their very spoiled and often photographed dog, Winka.

For more information on M.J. Rose and her novels, please visit her WEBSITE. You can also find her on Facebook.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A sweeping and suspenseful tale of secrets, intrigue, and lovers separated by time, all connected through the mystical qualities of a perfume created in the days of Cleopatra–and lost for 2,000 years.

Jac L’Etoile has always been haunted by the past, her memories infused with the exotic scents that she grew up surrounded by as the heir to a storied French perfume company. In order to flee the pain of those remembrances–and of her mother’s suicide–she moved to America. Now, fourteen years later she and her brother have inherited the company along with it’s financial problems. But when Robbie hints at an earth-shattering discovery in the family archives and then suddenly goes missing–leaving a dead body in his wake–Jac is plunged into a world she thought she’d left behind.

Back in Paris to investigate her brother’s disappearance, Jac becomes haunted by the legend the House of L’Etoile has been espousing since 1799. Is there a scent that can unlock the mystery of reincarnation – or is it just another dream infused perfume?

The Book of Lost Fragrances fuses history, passion, and suspense, moving from Cleopatra’s Egypt and the terrors of revolutionary France to Tibet’s battle with China and the glamour of modern-day Paris. Jac’s quest for the ancient perfume someone is willing to kill for becomes the key to understanding her own troubled past.

GUEST POST

 I’ve been fascinated with lost fragrances since long before I started writing The Book of Lost Fragrances… since I found a bottle of perfume on my great grandmother’s dresser that had belonged to her mother in Russia. Here is one of those lost fragrances that stirs the senses and the imagination… (reasearched and described  with the help of the perfume writer  Dimitrios Dimitriadis)

CHÉRIGAN – FLEURS DE TABAC
At the height of the Art Deco age, Parfums Chérigan launched Fleurs de Tabacin 1929.
Fleurs de Tabachas a brisk citrus opening over a dry, smokey vetiver heart which is imbued with tiny star-shaped jasmine blooms and sheets of pungent cured tobacco leaf. Finally, a rich amber/vanilla base and sensual muskiness reveals itself and trails off well into the drydown. A wonderful example of the European predilection towards tobacco-inspired scents in the 20’s and 30’s, and one that is sadly now lost to time.

April 21st, 2012

I am so excited.!!!  I just signed up for the Dewey 24 hour Read-A-Thon.  This will be my first year participating and it looks like fun.   I wasn’t blogging at the time when “Dewey” started it and now it continues in her memory.  Click on date above if you want to join in, become a cheerleader, or host a challenge, help with prizes, etc.  Have you signed up?

Hosted by Miz B at Should Be Reading

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

                                            Review here

What do you think you will read next?

………of The Good Father by Noah Hawley

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It has been a while since today’s guest has visited.   So I am thrilled that he could stop by and tell us about his latest novel because he is one very active and busy gentleman.  So sit back, grab a cup of coffee, and let’s catch up with Dr. Robert Greer!!!

ABOUT DR. ROBERT GREER

Robert Greer is a native of Columbus, Ohio, who spent his formative years in the steel mill town of Gary, Indiana. He graduated from Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, in 1965 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and subsequently earned degrees in dentistry, medicine and pathology from Howard University and Boston University. He is a professor of pathology, medicine, surgery, and dentistry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center where he specializes in head and neck pathology and cancer research. He also holds a masters degree in Creative Writing from Boston University and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Miami University, his alma mater. Greer has lived in Denver for thirty years. In 1986 he founded The High Plains Literary Review and continues to serve as its editor-in-chief. He is the author or co-author of three medical textbooks and over 125 scientific articles. His short stories have appeared in dozens of national literary magazines and his short story collection, ISOLATION AND OTHER STORIES, published in 2000 by the Davies Group Publishers, is also wonderfully illustrated.

Greer has been involved in cancer research at the University of Colorado Health Science Center for more than thirty years. In 1983 his research group was the first in the world to report a synergistic link between smokeless tobacco use and human papillomaviruses in certain cancers of the mouth. That research foundation is the basis for the plot of THE DEVIL’S HATBAND.

In addition to writing, medicine, and research, Greer reviews books for a Denver National Public Radio affiliate, KUVO, and raises cattle on a ranch in Wyoming.
You can visit Dr. Greer at his website here.

GUEST POST

History fascinates me. Western history especially. I own a working cattle ranch that sits in the Laramie River valley of southeastern Wyoming. The ranch abuts the Laramie mountain range and the headquarters sit exactly seven miles from one of the hundreds of missile silo sites that were dug into the Wyoming heartland during the height of the Cold War. That missile site, Tango 11, always intrigued me, and one day after exploring its perimeter, something I suspect the U.S. Government would have frowned upon, I decided to write a novel with Tango-11 as the story’s springboard.

I have also wanted to write about people who have had something significant, even catastrophic, happen to them that has altered their lives. With that in mind, I chose two protagonists for the story, Elgin “Cozy” Coseia, a one-time college baseball star who had his professional baseball dreams shattered because of an injury he suffered on a lark; and Bernadette Cameron, who had her Air Force fighter pilot dreams come to an end when she was grounded from flying A-10 Wart Hogs, due to something as simple as hay fever.

In ASTRIDE A PINK HORSE, these two protagonists come up against a bevy of antagonists who have also had their dreams shattered, including an aging rancher with a long time distrust of, and hatred of, the U.S. Government; a Japanese internment camp survivor, who’s never been able to come to grips with her imprisonment on Wyoming soil during World War II, and a mentally unbalanced mathematician and college professor with an ax to grind.

The novel is triggered when the body of a heavily decorated Air Force sergeant is found hanging upside down by his ankles in the Tango-11 missile silo access tube. The story unfolds from there.

ASTRIDE A PINK HORSE is the first book in a new series for me. I am currently working on the second book in the series that will also feature Cozy Coseia and Bernadette Cameron.

ABOUT THE BOOK

SYNOPSIS (borrowed from Amazon):

The Cold War ended years ago, or did it? For Thurmond Giles, a decorated African American Air Force veteran found naked, dead, and dangling by his ankles inside a deactivated minuteman missile silo in desolate southeastern Wyoming, the answer is no. The labyrinthine investigation that follows his death—led by former fighter pilot Major Bernadette Cameron and ex-college baseball phenom-turned-reporter Elgin “Cozy” Coseia—reveals how the atomic era’s legacy has continued to destroy both minds and lives.

Astride a Pink Horse follows Bernadette, Cozy, and Cozy’s boss Freddie Dames match wits with a gallery of unforgettable murder suspects: a powerful, right-wing-leaning cattle rancher; a declining seventy-six-year-old WWII-era Japanese internment camp victim and her unstable math professor cousin; an idealistic lifelong nuclear arms protestor; and a civilian Air Force contractor with a twenty-year grudge against the murder victim. Do three amateur detectives stand a chance against these characters and the conspiracy that may be behind it all? Robert Greer’s trademark mix of vivid eccentrics, surprising plot twists, and political edge makes this one of his most memorable thrillers.

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…………of DANCING ON BROKEN GLASS by Ka Hancock

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03/28  Addendum:
Due to a  non response from a winner within 48 hours, and according to giveaway rules, another winner has been chosen.  The winner is:

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