Tuesday Books and Other Things

Thanks to The Purple Princess for hosting Teaser Tuesday at her blog, The Purple Booker.  Thanks to Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea for hosting FCFP.

Thanks to Stephanie at Wife Mommy Me for hosting this link-up!  (Actually, it's hosted on a baker's dozen or so of blogs, so I guess I'll have to rotate where the link goes each week.  That's actually a 'note to self' because sure as shootin' I'll forget.

~~~oOo~~~

This book (or series?) is rather interesting.  They call it a 'serial novel', published in eight novella length installments, and written by a total of 4 different authors!  Both quotes are from part 1.)

SYNOPSIS

FBI Special Agent Lara Grant thought that she'd put her past behind her--finally--with her last case. But now a serial bomber is targeting Manhattan's elite power players, offering them a choice between saving hundreds of lives or seeing their darkest secrets exposed. Lara is working with the Crisis Management Unit to stop the bomber, but how will she react when she's the one who has to choose between truth...or death? 

As the clock ticks down, Lara braces for another confrontation with evil. And no matter what, she'll make sure her enemy's first mistake is also his last...

~~~oOo~~~

(***FYI - the book quotes contain two mild instances of 'adult language'.  If this may offend you, please skip directly to the bottom for the 'Tuesday Talk' section.  In movie rating speak, it would probably get a PG or PG13.)  

TEASER TUESDAY

from ~location 604 on the Kindle:

He left the bathroom and noticed that her spare bedroom door was cracked open a bit.  He'd never been in there and had assumed she either used it as a workout room or a home office.  The door had always been completely closed before.  

Curious, he shoved the door open a little farther and then froze.

What in the hell?

His heart dropped to the floor as he stared around the room in disbelief....

~~~oOo~~~

FIRST CHAPTER, FIRST PARAGRAPH

From the prologue:

Dammit, he'd been so careful.  And now this.

From yourworstnightmare@nowhere.net: 

I know what you did with all that money.  I'll keep your secret but it will cost the lives of innocent people.  Or confess to the press and nobody gets hurt.  The choice is yours.  You have until noon tomorrow.

~~~oOo~~~

TUESDAY TALK

My 2017 BetterWorldBooks Reading Challenge Sign-Up Etc

This is cool!  The graphic for the challenge also has the book list on it, so...not a lot of typing for me! I'll keep track of my books for this challenge on this post.  You can click on the button to get more information about the challenge.

My Booklist (section added 1/4/2017)

1.  A collection of short stories - The Best American Humorous Short Stories

2.  A young adult novel - The Parting by Beverly Lewis

3.  A book with a color in the title - Night of the Purple Moon 

4.  A book that's more than 100 years old - Unknown to History by Charlotte Mary Yonge - pub 1882

5.  A book you picked based on its cover

6.  A book set in a place you want to visit - A King Ensnared by JR Tomlin (Scotland)

7.  A book based on a fairy tale - Swept Away by Vanessa Riley

8.  A National Book Award Winner - 

9.  A book that takes place in a forest - ALTDORF: The Forest Nights #1 by JK Swift

10. A romance that takes place during travel

11.  A book under 200 pages

12.  A book over 400 pages - 

13.  A banned book - 

14.  A nonfiction book about nature

15.  A fantasy novel - Gateway to Nifleheim by Glenn G. Thater

16.  A book by a person of color - 

17.  A book by a female writer - My Father's House by Rose Chandler Johnson

18.  A book of poetry - Autumn Poetry by Jan Darrow 

19.  A book set in Asia

20.  A book about immigrants - 

21.  A book about a historical event - The Voyage by Roberta Kagan

22.  A book with a child narrator -

23.  A book translated from another language - 

24.  A book that's been adapted into a movie - 

And since that took a LOT less time to set up than I thought it would, I'm going to add...

~~~oOo~~~

MY TUESDAY BOOKISH LINK-UPS!!!

(edited 3 January 2017 @ 1122 hrs to reflect change of link-up host!)

Thanks to The Purple Princess for hosting Teaser Tuesday at her blog, The Purple Booker.

Thanks to Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea for hosting FCFP.

~~~oOo~~~

In this thrilling and candid memoir, world record-holding and controversial Big Wave surfer Garrett McNamara chronicles his emotional quest to ride the most formidable waves on earth.

~~~oOo~~~

TEASER TUESDAY

(from page 143)

"I was standing in line at Foodland on a January day in 1990 and heard the checker tell the person in line in front of me that the Eddie was on.  Foodland is the only grocery store on the North Shore, not far from Shark's Cover where Pupu-kea Road meets Kam Highway.  Every surfer who winds up on the North Shore, which is to say pretty much every big-name surfer in the world, finds himself or herself buying some orange juice or tortilla chips at Foodland now and then.  The checkout clerks hear it all and they know everything."

~~~oOo~~~

FIRST CHAPTER, FIRST PARAGRAPH

(from the books prologue on page 1)

"Everyone wonders where you go when you die.  I had a preview.  I was standing in the living room of my mom's house in Pupu-kea, on the North Shore of O'ahu, talking on the phone to my doctor when suddenly the lights went out.  I apprently dropped to the floor.  There was no going toward the light, no reaching for a bright spot at the end of life's long tunnel.  This new place was velvet black, calm and pain-free.  The lack of pain was everything.  I lay there, at peace.

Then I woke up to my brother Liam crying my name."

~~~oOo~~~

So, I'm wondering....

Which reading challenges are you participating in this year?

Have you or someone you know ever surfed?

Tuesday Books and Talk - May 10, 2016

This is week 4 of the Between the Lines series, hosted at Katherine's Corner.

Between the Lines features bloggers 'of a certain age', or in other words, 50+, whom you should be following, niche or no!

~~~oOo~~~

Thanks to Jenn for hosting Teaser Tuesday at her blog, Books and a Beat. Thanks to Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea for hosting FCFP. Click on their buttons to get all the details, to see what books others have found and to join in the fun!

My next review up is for an anthology, called, Sleuthing Women: 10 First-in-Series Mysteries, so I'll take the Tuesday bookish info from the first full-length book in the group, called, "Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun", by Lois Winston.  Here are the covers for the anthology and the book, respectively:

  

FCFP TUESDAY

I hate whiners.  Always have.  So I was doing my damnedest not to become one, in spite of the lollapalooza of a quadruple whammy that had broadsided me last week.  Not an easy task, given that one of those lollapalooza whammies had barged into my bedroom and was presently hammering her cane against my bathroom door.

TEASER TUESDAY

This is from location 427 in the MOBI file of the anthology:

Why is it that guys with wrinkles look sexy, but when women get wrinkles, they just look old?

And why on earth was I thinking of such things when my life was turning to week-old crap?  Maybe my brain decided I needed a shot of serotonin to give me a brief respite from the more pressing problems of newly acquired poverty and how to avoid being fitted for cement Manolos.

~~~oOo~~~

Reading challenges, read-a-thons and blogging link-ups.  Three things I love!  I participated in the following last Tuesday, but had already finished the post so I didn't add the graphic.  I know.  Forgive me. :O)  So I'm making it official!

Thanks to Keri Lynn at Our Pretty Little Girls for hosting this link-up!  (Actually, it's hosted on a baker's dozen or so of blogs, so I guess I'll have to rotate where the link goes each week.  That's actually a 'note to self' because sure as shootin' I'll forget.

Since this is the first 'official' link-up for me, I thought I'd add a little bit about how I found Tuesday Talk and why I've gone back.  So sit back and relax.  Get a drink if you're thirsty.  I'll wait.  (No worries, it won't be that long a story.)

Katherine at Katherine's Corner is running a multiple week series on bloggers who are 50+.  Since I myself am 50+, I think it's a swell idea!  But I have met some really nice women and bloggers in the last four weeks and I truly am grateful to have some new bloggy friends.  (Nothing against younger women and nothing against the men...it's just nice to know have some women acquaintances who know that when someone says "911" they are not necessarily referring to the emergency services telephone number.  But I digress...

One of the bloggers who was featured in the same week as me, is Michelle at Grammie Time.  When I visited her blog as part of the tour, I found out she linked up to "Tuesday Talk".  And, link-up aficionado that I am, I stalked followed her and the rest is history!  (Or is that herstory?)

(And I actually found another link up while I was visiting Tuesday Talk links, but that's a story for another day.)

Tuesday Bookish Post - Auguest 19, 2016

Thanks to Jenn for hosting Teaser Tuesday at her blog, Books and a Beat.

Thanks to Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea for hosting FCFP.

~~~oOo~~~

Tuesday Bookish Post - March 1, 2016

Thanks to Jenn for hosting Teaser Tuesday at her blog, Books and a Beat.

Thanks to Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea for hosting FCFP.

SYNOPSIS

Three years ago, Julia Jackson was a well to do young woman from Boston whose fiancé, Jonathon, was killed right before her eyes. Obsessed with finding the killer, a man whose face she saw only in a flash as he walked up and shot Jonathon, she leaves her family and her life behind. She starts a new life as ‘Jacks’ Jackson—a cigar smoking, dead eye, female Pinkerton agent…pretending to be a man. 

Now Allan Pinkerton needs Jacks to find the man who kidnapped the wife and son of a railroad official, David Boyd. Their only clues are the severed finger from the man’s wife, complete with wedding ring, and a map of the Qualla boundary, the Cherokee reservation in North Carolina.&nbsp

Jacks doesn’t like the way the whole thing sounds from the beginning. David Boyd isn’t important enough to target for a kidnapping. And why travel so far with two hostages?

But Pinkerton tells her that he believes the man responsible for the kidnapping worked with Jonathon’s murderer in a train robbery five years ago. Jacks agrees to go after the kidnapper with hopes of catching him before he can reach his home grounds.

Pinkerton insists that Jacks bring three men with her—Boyd, her new partner, and a Cherokee guide named Running Wolf, who’s always watching her, like he’s trying to figure it out.

Can Jacks catch the kidnapper with her secret—and her life—intact?

~~~oOo~~~

FIRST CHAPTER, FIRST PARAGRAPH

"Are you sure they're gonna come through here, Jacks?" Davey Hume asked for the tenth time.

"Positive."

Davey shook his head.  "I hope so, or Pinkerton's gonna have our asses!  If we let that gang stroll out of the Mercantile after they robbed it, after he told us they were gonna do it, we're gonna be close enough to dead to reach out and touch his whiskers!"

~~~oOo~~~

TEASER TUESDAY

 (this is from 45% on the Kindle, in Chapter 24)

"I believe in my gun and my brain.  After that comes my horse, dynamite, and a lucky guess, not necessarily in that order."

Running Wolf didn't laugh.  "Your spirit is hollow without a faith in things you cannot see or control.  How have you survived?"

FCFP/Teaser Tuesday - Pale Highway by Nicholas Conley

Gabriel Schist is spending his remaining years at Bright New Day, a nursing home. He once won the Nobel Prize for inventing a vaccine for AIDS. But now, he has Alzheimer’s, and his mind is slowly slipping away.

When one of the residents comes down with a horrific virus, Gabriel realizes that he is the only one who can find a cure. Encouraged by Victor, an odd stranger, he convinces the administrator to allow him to study the virus.  Soon, reality begins to shift, and Gabriel’s hallucinations interfere with his work.

As the death count mounts, Gabriel is in a race against the clock and his own mind. Can he find a cure before his brain deteriorates past the point of no return?

~~~oOo~~

"First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesdays" is a linkup hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea.

I'm going to use the first paragraph of the books prologue, because it is more ... evocative.  Let me show you what I mean....

"The patient had charcoal-black eyes, hard and cold, as if rounded chunks of volcanic rock and been shoved inside her eye sockets.  Her skin possessed a sickly white pallor, as if it had been sucked dry of all its nutrients and hung up on a clothesline.  Dark veins crawled over her body like wriggling snakes, pulsing with every unsteady heartbeat.  Her mouth hung open, and a pockmarked grey tongue hung uselessly over her lower lip.  Her bedridden form emitted the stench of necrotic flesh. 

Glenda Alvarez was 63 years old, young compared to the other residents.  Just last week she'd had her hair permed and her nails manicured.  The virus had hit fast."

~~~oOo~~~

"Teaser Tuesdays" is a linkup hosted by Jenn at A Daily Rhythm.

This is from approximately 58% on the mobi file:

"If he died tomorrow, his nudity would be all they would remember, not the Nobel Prize, not the Schist vaccine.  No, his humiliation would be his legacy."

~~~oOo~~~

So, what do you think?  Too far out for you?  Not far enough?

~~~oOo~~~

Here's a little about the author:

Originally from California, Nicholas Conley has currently made his home in the colder temperatures of New Hampshire. He considers himself to be a uniquely alien creature with mysterious literary ambitions, a passion for fiction, and a whole slew of terrific stories he’d like to share with others. 

When not busy writing, Nicholas is an obsessive reader, a truth seeker, a sarcastic idealist, a traveler, and — like many writers — a coffee addict.

~~~oOo~~~

So, how did I come by this read, do you ask?  The book will be on tour (via Sage's Blog Tours) and I will post a review here on the porch this coming, Sunday, November 22, 2015.

Teaser Tuesday/First Chapter First Paragraph

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

The Agincourt Bride by Joanna Hickson tells the story of Catherine of Valois, a Princess of France who eventually married Henry V of England.  Catherine was as much a pawn as a princess, to be used to further the cause of France.  One of the queen's lovers, the powerful Duke of Burgundy, was busy solidifying his position by marrying off the princes and princesses to relatives of his.  But his designs on Catherine were of a more sinister nature.

I invite you to return to the back porch tomorrow for my review of this book.

There was no other interaction between them, for Catherine's way of preserving her sanity was to withhold all communication ... Somehow while the devil was with her, she managed to keep control but, afterwards, anguish flowed from her like wine from a split barrel.

~~~oOo~~~

Every Tuesday, Bibliophile by the Sea hosts the First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where readers share the first paragraph or (a few) of a book s/he is reading or thinking about reading soon. Care to join us?

In Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy:  Four Women Undercover in the Civil War, Karen Abbott illuminates one of the most fascinating yet little known aspects of the Civil War: the stories of four courageous women—a socialite, a farmgirl, an abolitionist, and a widow—who were spies.

I'll be reviewing this book a week from Wednesday, on October 10, 2014.

In the town of Martinsburg (VA) on the lower tip of the (Shenandoah) Valley, a seventeen-year-old rebel named Belle Boyd sat by the windows of her wood-frame home, waiting for the war to come to her.  It was July 4 and the war was still new, only two and a half months old, but Belle - known by one young rival as "the fastest girl in Virginia or anywhere else for that matter" - had long been accustomed to things operating on her schedule, and at her whim.

~~~oOo~~~

These books both tell stories about actual historical events, but are eminently readable.