Thursday, January 31, 2013

The Depot Launch Day by Carmen DeSousa





Available from 5 Prince Publishing www.5princebooks.com  books@5princebooks.com
Genre: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Short Stories
Release Date: January 30, 2013
Digital ISBN-10: 1939217318 ISBN-13: 978-1-939217-31-8
Purchase link : www.5princebooks.com/buy.htm 

The Depot
The Depot (When Life and Death Cross Tracks) is a twelve-thousand-word mini mystery with a paranormal edge by bestselling romantic-suspense author Carmen DeSousa. If you are looking for her full-length novels, please check out She Belongs to Me, Land of the Noonday Sun, Entangled Dreams, and When Noonday Ends.

They say The Depot is haunted. But in all the years homicide detective Mark Waters has visited the ancient train station turned restaurant, he’s never seen proof. Until now.

As he investigates a supposed suicide by train, he learns secrets of a murder that took place eighty years ago may directly affect his case.


Author Bio:
Carmen characterizes her stories as modern-day fairytales, as they overflow with romance, mystery, suspense, and of course, tragedy. After all, what would a fairytale be without a tragic event setting the stage? All of her novels are sensual, but not erotic, gripping but not graphic and will make you cry, gasp, laugh, love, and hope.

Her first two novels, She Belongs to Me and Land of the Noonday Sun, have reached bestseller status right alongside Nicholas Sparks, J.D. Robb, and other great authors. Her third novel, Entangled Dreams, just published September 2012.


All of her novels are standalones; however, she does link each of her stories with a little surprise. If you read out of order, you'll never notice. But if you read in order, it's fun.




PUBLIC AUTHOR CONTACT INFO:

Public contact information



Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Thanks!

Thanks to all who entered the Books-a-Fire Books and Music Giveaway.  It is always so much fun to give things to people.  Of course, I don't mind winning things now and then, either.  Just sayin'...

Here are the Official Winners:

Grand Prize of $100 and a bundle of books/music:
Karen Couch

The other winner of a bundle of books/music:
Jessica Pittman

Winners of the last two $25 Gift Cards were:
Becki Wyer
Fiona Williams

All winners have been notified. Thanks to everyone who entered! 

Watch for a simple $10 Amazon gift card to be given 

away here on my blog and on my FB page in February!

(see tab bar for FB link)


Afterthought:

If you haven't been here before, go up to the tab bar and 

check out some free short stories ~ who knows, you might 

like 'em.  Just be warned, sometimes I write the weird stuff 

because well, you know, I'm kinda weird.  

;-)

Friday, January 25, 2013

Books-a-Fire One More Week! Music, Books, More!


One More Week! Books-A-Fire Has Added Music to the Mix!


Hello! Thanks for stopping by.  Enter the Books-A-Fire Giveaway here!


Click here to enter!


And then return to the Main Page, here:
 http://www.booksafiregiveaway.com/


so that you can enter from all 15 blogs.
http:www.booksafire.com

Read on for all the details!


Thursday, January 24, 2013

Crisis of Identity by Denise Moncrief


Hi Folks DON'T FORGET TO SCROLL DOWN AND ENTER THE
BOOKS-A-FIRE GIVEAWAY!   15 CHANCES TO WIN BOOKS, MUSIC, AND GIFT CARDS ~ ENTER FROM MY BLOG ~ THEN FOLLOW THE LINKS AND ENTER FROM EACH BLOG!  GOOD LUCK, I HOPE YOU WIN!

Now, read on to discover this new book which is being released on Friday, January 25th from fellow 5Prince author, Denise Moncrief!





Presents 
CRISIS OF IDENTITY 
by 
Denise Moncrief

Available from 5 Prince Publishing www.5princebooks.com  books@5princebooks.com
Genre: Romance Suspense
Release Date: January 25, 2013
Digital ISBN 13: 978-1-939217-28-8 ISBN 10: 1939217288
Print ISBN 13: 978-1-939217-30-1 ISBN 13: 193921730x

Crisis of Identity:
Tess Copeland is an operator. Her motto? Necessity is the mother of a good a con. When Hurricane Irving slams into the Texas Gulf coast, Tess seizes the opportunity to escape her past by hijacking a dead woman’s life, but Shelby Coleman’s was the wrong identity to steal. And the cop that trails her? He’s a U.S. Marshall with the Fugitive Task Force for the northern district of Illinois. Tess left Chicago because the criminal justice system gave her no choice. Now she’s on the run from ghosts of misdeeds past—both hers and Shelby’s.

Enter Trevor Smith, a pseudo-cowboy from Houston, Texas, with good looks, a quick tongue, and testosterone poisoning. Will Tess succumb to his questionable charms and become his damsel in distress? She doesn’t have to faint at his feet—she’s capable of handling just about anything. But will she choose to let Trevor be the man? When Tess kidnaps her niece, her life changes. She must make some hard decisions. Does she trust the lawman that promises her redemption, or does she trust the cowboy that promises her nothing but himself?


Bio for Denise Moncrief
Denise wrote her first story when she was in high school—seventeen hand-written pages on school-ruled paper and an obvious rip-off of the last romance novel she read. She earned a degree in accounting, giving her some nice skills to earn a little money, but her passion has always been writing. She has written numerous short stories and more than a few full-length novels. Her favorite pastimes when she’s not writing are spending time with her family, traveling, reading, and scrapbooking. She lives in Louisiana with her husband, two children, and one very chubby dog.


How to contact Denise Moncrief:
Twitter: @dmoncrief0131


EXCERPT from Crisis of Identity:
The room had already filled five times with sea-soaked bodies. The dead lay head-to-foot, column-by-column, row-by-row, ten by twenty. Victim 973 had scrawled her Social Security number down her left arm just as she’d been instructed. I noted the number on my log and moved on, trying hard not to think about the person, concentrating only on the morbid job some pushy cop forced on me.
Across the high school gymnasium, a man worked the other end of the column. As his stealthy glances trailed me around the gym, the acid in my overwrought stomach churned every time our eyes met.
“Want to take a break?” His sudden question reverberated throughout the cavernous space.
I curled one tendril of hair around my left ear. “Sure.”
I followed him into the locker room, grabbing a foam cup and filling it with tepid coffee. The man did the same from another urn. The burnt brew left traces of bitterness in my mouth. I rubbed my tongue over my teeth in a vain attempt to remove the acrid leftovers.
My mind turned off for a few precious moments as I ignored the makeshift morgue on the other side of the wall. The man’s strong, masculine bass invaded my mental hideaway. “They’re starting to smell ripe.” He gulped down another ounce of artificial stimulant, staring at me over the rim of his cup.
My insides flipped. “It’s been four days.”
He nodded. “Most of these don’t have numbers.”
“Makes it harder to identify them.”
He leaned against a locker. “This group must have thought they were invincible.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” I tossed my cup into the overflowing trash. “Think they’re invincible, I mean."
“Certain death. How do you interpret that? I think it means, ‘I stay. I die.’ Must not have sunk in until it was too late.” His sarcastic attitude unsettled me, made me want to defend the dead.
“They’ve been warned before and nothing happened.” When the locals ordered an evacuation two years before, it proved to be a false alarm. The residents of the Texas Gulf coast weren’t so easy to convince this time. It seemed no one learned a lesson from Hurricane Katrina. “And…we’re not dead.” Our eyes locked.
Someone’s presence warmed my back. The site supervisor stood over my shoulder and repeated his prerecorded rant for the millionth time. “Mandatory is mandatory. The dead ignored the warning to their own peril. If they wanted to stay put, the least they could do is write their soc number on their arms...just like they were told to do. How many times did the news people make that announcement? Write your number on your arm if you plan to stay. How hard is that?”
I shifted away from him. I didn’t dare write my number on my arm.
“Suppose the two of you take a few. You look wasted, and these guys…” He waved his hand toward the gym. “Aren’t going anywhere.”

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Gangster Squad Review

DON'T FORGET TO SCROLL DOWN AND ENTER THE BOOKS-A-FIRE GIVEAWAY!  15 CHANCES TO WIN ~ JUST FOLLOW THE LINKS AND ENTER FROM EACH BLOG!


Hello folks,
As you know by now, I am not a professional reviewer, I'm just a frequent movie-goer.  Dude and I love the drive-in movies.  We go almost weekly, and this past week we only had two new movies to choose from, and they were billed as a double feature.

The first one was Gangster Squad starring Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, and Emma Stone.  It is supposedly based on an actual event in the Chicago mob history of Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn).

I was prepared to hate this movie.  I'm not a fan of mobster films at all.  In fact, I'd gone so far as to tell a couple of friends that I would NOT be going to see this one because of all the real violence our world had seen the last few weeks. But you know what Charles Dickens said, "Never say never!"

And since I like all the named actors, and since Dude and I were needing our drive-in movie fix (and a chihuahua and a char burger), I was willing to give it a try.  Besides, if you have read very many of my reviews, you know I always take my pillow and blankie so that if I don't like the movie, I can catch up on my sleep . . . can we say Skyfall?

Anyhow, surprise, surprise, I didn't even get my pillow out of the backseat!  I do not like to give spoilers, so just suffice it to say that it was sooo not what I expected.  Yes, there was violence, and yes, there was foul language, but it was obviously there to show how evil Mickey Cohen was; neither the violence nor the language seemed designed just to titillate or shock--it actually had a purpose.

I think what I really liked was the fact that even the good guys fell into a gray area once or twice.  They used whatever means they deemed necessary to try to get Cohen.  Isn't that really sort of relevant to today's culture-dilemma of whether the ends always justify the means?  I thought so.

I liked it.  I would give it ❤❤❤❤.  


The second feature was This is 40 starring Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann.  I think there were some other big names in the movie, but I didn't see them.  No, I didn't get out my pillow and blankie . . . after about two minutes, Dude and I looked at each other, made gagging noises that, after decades of marriage we both know means, blech, let's get the heck out of here and go watch NCIS reruns on TV, so that is what we did.  We did not let the proverbial doorknob hit us where the good Lord split us.

I don't think we missed a thing.  Maybe we're old prudes. . . I mean, this is humor?  How?  I don't get it.  We loved Rocky Horror Picture show and it was kind of vulgar, but it was creepy and fun, too.  This one just took vulgarity to new heights, I mean, lows.  (I downloaded a pic to include here, but I guess the Mac was in agreement with my assessment because it refused to cough it up!)

No spoiler here, either (I couldn't if I wanted to, I have no idea what happened, didn't even watch it in the rearview as we pulled away), just suffice it to say, I give it this many hearts: 

And no, that isn't a typo.

Afterthought:
Hopefully, next time, I will be reviewing one of the umpteen books I'm reading ~ or the movie Silver Linings Playbook.  It's at the walk-in movie.  They don't have chihuahuas or char burgers, and it costs three times as much as the drive-in.  But hey, it could happen . . .



Monday, January 14, 2013

One More Week! Books-A-Fire Has Added Music to the Mix!


Hello! Thanks for stopping by.  Enter the Books-A-Fire Giveaway here!


Click here to enter!


And then return to the Main Page, here:
 http://www.booksafiregiveaway.com/


so that you can enter from all 15 blogs.
http:www.booksafire.com

Read on for all the details!