I am taking part in the 2018 Book Blog Discussion Challenge hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight!

The last Saturday of the month, I will be recapping the books I have read for the month, what I thought and the links to my reviews, and what I hope to read the following month.

I was hoping to finish more books this month, especially since I am behind on my GR Challenge, but a virus came knocking at our door and my husband and I unfortunately let it in.

Click on titles below to either see my review or to check out the synopsis on GR.

AFTER NIGHTFALL by A.J. Banner
Comments: After seeing this title all over FB, I reserved it at my local library. I posted my review on Oct. 11th

BEFORE WE WERE YOURS by Lisa Wingate
Comments: I also saw so many good things about this book, I reserved it and it it was a while before I got thecall. Review was posted on Oct. 16th

I KNOW YOU KNOW by Gilly Macmillan
Comments: Same with this book. My review posted Oct. 23rd

THE AU PAIR by Emma Rous
Comments: Am enjoying this thus far.

It’s been a while since being on NetGalley and requesting books but I have reinstated my account and was approved for the following. I am hoping that I get more reading done in November. However, this is the month I start my marathon cooking, making BIG batches of soups, Gravy with meatballs/sausage/pork, Beef stew, Stuffed Eggplant, etc. that I freeze for nights that I don’t feel like cooking and want comfort food. Plus my oldest son and his gf have put in their orders 🙂

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW by Sally Hepworth
Comments: Approved via St. Martin’s Press

BEAUTIFUL BAD by Annie Ward
Comments: Approved via Harlequin

KEEP HER CLOSE by Erik Therme
Comments: Approved via Boookouture

• What did you finish reading this month
• What book(s) should I add to my TBR list

1. _______________________ is an awful _______________________.

2. I always read __________________________ sections of the newspaper.

3. Black cats _________.

4. _________ is my favorite treat.

1. Fear of heights is an awful phobia of mine.

2. I always read local news and obit sections of the newspaper.

3. Black cats have the stigma of bad luck but I don’t believe that.

4. Ice cream is my favorite treat.

Synopsis:

At a crossroads between a cringe-worthy past (Todd the Toad) and an uncertain future (she’s not exactly homeless, but it’s close), Lucy Swift travels to Oxford to visit her grandmother. With Gran’s undying love to count on and Cardinal Woolsey’s, Gran’s knitting shop, to keep her busy, Lucy can catch her breath and figure out what she’s going to do.

Except it turns out that Gran is the undying. Or at least, the undead. But there’s a death certificate. And a will, leaving the knitting shop to Lucy. And a lot of people going in and out who never use the door—including Gran, who is just as loving as ever, and prone to knitting sweaters at warp speed, late at night. What exactly is going on?

When Lucy discovers that Gran did not die peacefully in her sleep, but was murdered, she has to bring the killer to justice without tipping off the law that there’s no body in the grave. Between a hot 800-year-old vampire and a dishy detective inspector, both of whom always seem to be there for her, Lucy finds her life getting more complicated than a triple cable cardigan. The only one who seems to know what’s going on is her cat … or is it … her familiar?

First in a new series of paranormal cozy mysteries!

Book Details:

Genre: Paranormal Cozy Mystery
Published by: Ambleside Publishing
Publication Date: September 2018
Number of Pages: 250
ISBN:13 9781981498970
ASIN: B07HDBQ7BB
Series: The Vampire
Knitting Club #1
Purchase Links: Amazon Goodreads

Read an excerpt:

Author Bio:

Nancy Warren is the USA Today bestselling author of more than 60 novels including the Toni Diamond cozy mystery series.

She shares her time between Victoria, British Columbia, and Bath in the UK.

Catch Up With Nancy Warren On:
nancywarren.net, Goodreads, Twitter, & 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 Nancy Warren. There will be one (1) winner of one (1) Amazon.com Gift Card. The giveaway begins on October 15, 2018 and runs through November 17, 2018. Void where prohibited.

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I KNOW YOU KNOW by Gilly Macmillan
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Published by William Morrow
Publication Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN-10: 0062698605
ISBN-13: 978-0062698605
Pages: 384
Review Copy From: Library
Edition: HC
My Rating: 5

From author Gilly Macmillan comes this original, chilling and twisty mystery about two shocking murder cases twenty years apart, and the threads that bind them.

Twenty years ago, eleven-year-olds Charlie Paige and Scott Ashby were murdered in the city of Bristol, their bodies dumped near a dog racing track. A man was convicted of the brutal crime, but decades later, questions still linger.

For his whole life, filmmaker Cody Swift has been haunted by the deaths of his childhood best friends. The loose ends of the police investigation consume him so much that he decides to return to Bristol in search of answers. Hoping to uncover new evidence, and to encourage those who may be keeping long-buried secrets to speak up, Cody starts a podcast to record his findings. But there are many people who don’t want the case—along with old wounds—reopened so many years after the tragedy, especially Charlie’s mother, Jess, who decides to take matters into her own hands.

When a long-dead body is found in the same location the boys were left decades before, the disturbing discovery launches another murder investigation. Now Detective John Fletcher, the investigator on the original case, must reopen his dusty files and decide if the two murders are linked. With his career at risk, the clock is ticking and lives are in jeopardy…

This year I have been addicted to psychological thrillers and this book did not disappoint.

What I also enjoyed, was the different approach of the story, whereas it was also a Podcast where Cody Swift would explain the new evidence he uncovered during the week in relation to the murder of his friends.

I thought I had this one figured out, however, once the mystery of the 3 deaths was unveiled I was a little disappointed. I thought it was a bit of a letdown BUT then came the last couple of chapters and I was floored.

Definitely a book to pick up if you are looking for a captivating read!!!

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

Mailbox Monday

Tuesday:
THE AU PAIR by Emma Rous ~ via NetGalley
KEEP HER CLOSE by Erik Therme ~ via NetGalley
BEAUTIFUL BAD by Annie Ward ~ via NetGalley
THE MOTHER-IN-LAW by Sally Hepworth ~ St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley

1. For Halloween, I want to be _____________________.

2. _____________________ makes me feel like royalty.

3. On a dark and stormy night, I _________.

4. If I had a witch’s cauldron, I would stir up a potion for _________.

1. For Halloween, I want to be able to eat some candy without putting on any weight.

2. I would think if I lived in a castle and wore tiaras it would make me feel like royalty.

3. On a dark and stormy night, I enjoy curling up with a blanket and a book.

4. If I had a witch’s cauldron, I would stir up a potion for family values and morals.

Synopsis:

I Take Care of Myself in Dreamland

by Ross Klavan

Bartok is horribly scarred. Wounded in the Army, he roams through 1970’s New York, a city of perpetual night, punctuated by crime and populated by streetwalkers, hooker bars, strip clubs, easy drugs and a feeling of doom. There’s one thing on his mind: an experience he had when his Army truck exploded, an experience he calls Red River. More than bliss, more than spiritual. But nothing goes right. Bartok loses his girl, his money, any possibility of support and decides that he’s finished, he’s going to end it but before he does, he’s going out on the town for one last attempt to recapture the incredible experience of Red River. And when he does, he runs into others who see him as an easy mark for dirtier plans…plans that involve murder before suicide.

Bartok’s story is told by a driver for the mob, a guy who’s heard it all and usually keeps his mouth shut because when he begins a trip, it’s almost always one-way.

Jammed

by Tim O’Mara

Aggie’s back. After barely escaping with his life in “Smoked,” Aggie disproves the old adage of “Once burned…” This time around he’s heading from the Midwest to New York City with a sweet shipment of stolen maple syrup. He also has picked up an unwanted-and potentially dangerous-passenger; the fifteen-year-old daughter of his latest boss has hopped on for a free ride to the Big Apple and her on-line boyfriend. When they arrive in NYC, Aggie’s worst fears are realized when the “boyfriend” turns out to be a group of human traffickers. Aggie knew that running one of the world’s most valuable liquids across state lines was skirting the line between safety and danger, but he never knew it could get this sticky.

The Maybrick Affair

by Charles Salzberg

It’s a couple weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor and a young reporter, Jake Harper, who works for a small Connecticut newspaper, is assigned a routine human interest story. A reclusive, elderly woman, has quietly passed away in her small cottage upstate. Anxious for bigger stories, Jake begins his assignment by trying to find out who this woman was and what kind of life she led. As Jake investigates the old woman’s death he finds that years earlier she was tried and convicted of murdering her husband in a well-publicized, lurid trial in London, England. And, after digging further, he, unearths evidence that she might have had a connection to an even more famous British serial killer and that the ramifications of this story might affect America’s entry into the War.

Book Details:

Genre: Crime
Published by: Down & Out Books
Publication Date: September 10th 2018
Number of Pages: 350
ISBN: 978-1-948235-25-9
Series: 3 Authors, 3 Novellas
Purchase Links: Down & Out Books | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Our Authors:

Ross Klavan

Ross Klavan’s work spans film, television, radio, print, live performance and visual art. A novella, “Thump Gun Hitched,” was published in 2016 by Down and Out Books as part of “Triple Shot” along with Charles Salzberg and Tim O’Mara. His darkly comic novel Schmuck was published by Greenpoint Press in 2014. Klavan’s original screenplay for the film Tigerland was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and the film was released by New Regency starring Colin Farrell. He recently finished an adaption of John Bowers’ The Colony and has written scripts for Miramax, Intermedia, Walden Media, Paramount, A&E and TNT-TV among others. The “conversation about writing” he moderated with Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer was televised and published as Like Shaking Hands with God, and his short stories have appeared in magazines and been produced by the BBC. An earlier novel, Trax, was published under a pseudonym. His play How I Met My (Black) Wife (Again), co-written with Ray Iannicelli, has been produced in New York City, and he has performed his work in numerous theaters and clubs. He has acted and done voice work in TV and radio commercials and has lent his voice to feature films including: Casino, You Can Count on Me, Revolutionary Road, Awake and the Amazon web series Alpha House, written by Gary Trudeau. He has worked as a newspaper and radio journalist in New York City and London. He lives in New York City with his wife, the painter, Mary Jones.

Catch Up With Ross Klavan On: Goodreads, Twitter, & Facebook!

Tim O’Mara

TIM O’MARA is best known for his Raymond Donne mysteries about an ex-cop who now teaches in the same Williamsburg, Brooklyn, neighborhood he once policed: Sacrifice Fly (2012), Crooked Numbers (2013), Dead Red (2015), Nasty Cutter (2017), published by Minotaur Books (#1–#3) and Severn House (#4). He recently signed a deal for a fifth Raymond book, The Hook, which should be published in late 2019 by Severn House. His novellas Smoked and Jammed appear in 2016 and 2018 crime trilogies from Down & Out Books. O’Mara taught special education for 30 years in the public middle schools of New York City, where he still lives and teaches adult writers. In addition to writing The Hook and the stand-alone high-school-based crime drama So Close to Me, O’Mara is currently curating a short crime story anthology to benefit the non-profit American Rivers.

Catch Up With Our Author On: timomara.net, Goodreads, Twitter, & Facebook!

Charles Salzberg

Charles Salzberg is a former magazine journalist and nonfiction book writer. He is the author of the Shamus Award nominated Swann’s Last Song, and the sequels, Swann Dives In, Swann’s Lake of Despair and Swann’s Way Out. His novel, Devil in the Hole, was named one of the best crime novels of 2013 by Suspense magazine. His latest novel is Second Story Man. He is co-author of Triple Shot, with Ross Klavan and Tim O’Mara (three crime novellas). He teaches writing in New York City and is on the board of the New York chapter of Mystery Writers of America.

Catch Up With Charles Salzberg On: charlessalzberg.com, Goodreads, Twitter, & Facebook!

I’m going to skip over the inspiration for my first book, which I began to write when I was 12-years old, primarily because I never finished it. It was a roman a clef (I don’t even think I had a title for it) based on several unhappy summers spent at sleepaway camp. I’d recently learned how to touch type—the most useful course I’ve ever taken in school—and was eager to put my new skill to work. I thought those three or four single-spaced pages were lost forever, but when I moved apartments a few years ago, I found them. Don’t bother asking about them, though, because I haven’t worked up enough nerve yet to actually read them. But I will. Maybe.

I guess the inspiration for my first completed novel, for writing all subsequent novels, in fact, came from reading the work of Saul Bellow, Seize the Day, Herzog, and The Adventures of Augie March, Bernard Malamud, The Fixer and The Natural, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and Norman Mailer’s, Naked and the Dead.
But the actual inspiration for my first completed novel, The Executioner, came from a yearly feature in the Village Voice. The novel is not what you think, an action-packed tale about a ruthless hitman, but rather a moody, literary novel about a middle-aged man who feels his life is meaningless, and is searching for something he can do to make the world a better place. One day, he reads a feature story in the Voice naming the 10 worst landlords in New York City. One of them acts so egregiously, intimidating tenants so they’ll move and he can hike up the rents, failing to provide basic services like heat and hot water, that the protagonist decides his contribution to society will be to rid the world of this horrible man (mind you, I was only in my early twenties when I wrote this novel, so how I thought I knew anything about mid-life crises is beyond me). The novel was never published but it did find me an agent, make me a finalist in for a prestigious fellowship, and serve as a writing sample to get me into an MFA program.

The inspiration for my first published novel, Swann’s Last Song, was an insult. I’d been accepted into the MFA program at Columbia and before classes began I met with my advisor, a pompous published author of middling and certainly not critically acclaimed novels. Our meeting consisted of him berating me because he said I wrote “that psychological crap like Roth and Doestoevsky” (pretty good company, I thought), and then he added gratuitously, “don’t you know what a story is?”

Yeah, I knew what a story was. I was an English major. I’d read hundreds of novels and short stories. The above mentioned The Executioner, was what got me into the program in the first place. Then he delivered the coup de grace, “if you can forget everything you think you know about writing, I can teach you how to be a good writer.” Yeah, right. I quit the program a week later.

But his words stuck in my mind. Of course, I can tell a story. I know exactly what a plot is. I wanted to prove it to him and me and everyone else in the world, so I decided I would write the most heavily plotted kind of book I could think of: a detective novel. So, I read dozens of crime novels: Chandler, Hammett, Nero Wolfe, John D. MacDonald, James M. Cain, Big Jim Thompson, Charles Willeford, anyone I could get my hands on.

And then I began to write. The result was Swann’s Last Song, which languished in a desk drawer for almost twenty years before it was finally published.

Oh, by the way, it was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel.

All of this suggests, at least in my case, that revenge is a very powerful form of inspiration.

Read an excerpt:

Tour Participants:

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

Get More Great Reads at Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours

THREE STRIKES by Ross Klavan, Tim O’Mara and Charles Salzberg
Genre:Crime
Published by: Down & Out Books
Publication Date: September 10th 2018
Number of Pages: 350
ISBN: 978-1-948235-25-9
Pages: 350
Review Copy from: Authors
Edition: eBook
My Rating: 4

I Take Care of Myself in Dreamland

by Ross Klavan

Bartok is horribly scarred. Wounded in the Army, he roams through 1970’s New York, a city of perpetual night, punctuated by crime and populated by streetwalkers, hooker bars, strip clubs, easy drugs and a feeling of doom. There’s one thing on his mind: an experience he had when his Army truck exploded, an experience he calls Red River. More than bliss, more than spiritual. But nothing goes right. Bartok loses his girl, his money, any possibility of support and decides that he’s finished, he’s going to end it but before he does, he’s going out on the town for one last attempt to recapture the incredible experience of Red River. And when he does, he runs into others who see him as an easy mark for dirtier plans…plans that involve murder before suicide.

Bartok’s story is told by a driver for the mob, a guy who’s heard it all and usually keeps his mouth shut because when he begins a trip, it’s almost always one-way.

Jammed

by Tim O’Mara

Aggie’s back. After barely escaping with his life in “Smoked,” Aggie disproves the old adage of “Once burned…” This time around he’s heading from the Midwest to New York City with a sweet shipment of stolen maple syrup. He also has picked up an unwanted-and potentially dangerous-passenger; the fifteen-year-old daughter of his latest boss has hopped on for a free ride to the Big Apple and her on-line boyfriend. When they arrive in NYC, Aggie’s worst fears are realized when the “boyfriend” turns out to be a group of human traffickers. Aggie knew that running one of the world’s most valuable liquids across state lines was skirting the line between safety and danger, but he never knew it could get this sticky.

The Maybrick Affair

by Charles Salzberg

It’s a couple weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor and a young reporter, Jake Harper, who works for a small Connecticut newspaper, is assigned a routine human interest story. A reclusive, elderly woman, has quietly passed away in her small cottage upstate. Anxious for bigger stories, Jake begins his assignment by trying to find out who this woman was and what kind of life she led. As Jake investigates the old woman’s death he finds that years earlier she was tried and convicted of murdering her husband in a well-publicized, lurid trial in London, England. And, after digging further, he, unearths evidence that she might have had a connection to an even more famous British serial killer and that the ramifications of this story might affect America’s entry into the War.

Three novellas, two ‘new to me” authors and a few hours of escape!

Being novellas, and not wanting to give anything away, other than the synopsis above, each story was unique and captivating.

I enjoyed the writing style and descriptive narrative with each story. So much so, that I felt I was able to create vivid imagery as if it was a movie in my mind.

Each story had enough suspense that it kept me turning the pages.

I had read a book by Charles Salzberg, DEVIL IN THE HOLE, so I knew his story would be enjoyable and now I have 2 new authors that I want to read more of their work.

Definitely, recommend! Three stories that are highly entertaining and gripping!

Purchase Links: Down & Out Books | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Giveaway:

This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Ross Klavan, Tim O’Mara, and Charles Salzberg. There will be 4 winners of one (1) Amazon.com Gift Card and three (3) eBooks. The giveaway begins on September 1, 2018 and runs through November 1, 2018. Void where prohibited.

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