SET UP - Free for Kindle - Last Time!

I promise. Today and tomorrow November 17-18) are the last free days for my romantic mystery SET UP because it goes off Kindle exclusive at the end of the month.

So if anyone likes this kind of book, this is the last chance to get it free. Here's the cover:

And here's the blurb:

Three divorces should teach a man something, but hotel heir Cal McIntyre can't figure out what. Then a flashy redhead--the kind he adores--shows up. Since he's off women, he reluctantly takes a bet to seduce her. One more hook-up won't matter. Especially with this temptress.

But Amanda’s hair is dyed and she’s not about to be seduced. Her younger sister gambled with an heirloom engagement ring, and Cal won. If Amanda has to drug him to retrieve the ring and save her sister's marriage, so be it.

She doesn't count on Cal's kisses awakening a long-banished sexuality. Lucky for her, he passes out before she gets carried away. She escapes with the ring and virtue intact. Now to forget him.

But Cal tracks her down. And tells her he bought the ring. From her sister. Worse, someone stole diamonds worth millions after sheknocked him out. Cal wasn’t the only one set up.

There must be an explanation, but her sister can't give it; she's vanished. Now Amanda must help Cal find her sister or go to jail. She's determined to protect her sister, and he's determined to recover his diamonds.

Sparks are about to fly.

UPDATED REVISION for 99 Cents

My romantic suspense TREACHEROUS BEAUTIES was published years ago--and used as the basis for a TV movie--but I recently got the rights back. After updating and (since I can't resist fiddling with words) revising it, I am self-publishing it for $.99. Right now, it's up on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Treacherous-Beauties-ebook/dp/B007P5461C/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332979452&sr=1-2

Also on Smashwords at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/145317

I imagine it'll take longer for Barnes and Noble, and the iTunes store to pick it up but it'll eventually be there, too.

So anyone who's read it: Don't buy it again! Anyone interested in checking out my style: This is a cheap intro.

Calista Taylor did the new cover art, and I really like it.

MERMAID BLUES by Joel Brown

This is the second in this series I've read, and I'm looking forward to the next from Joel Brown.

Baxter, a folk/pop singer who had one big hit decades ago, is trying to make a comeback when a local Lothario turns up dead. Naturally, Baxter's semi-involvement puts his new record contract at risk. Naturally, Baxter keeps prying into the murder. And naturally, more corpses turn up.

Poor Baxter. His romance with the record company's representative fizzles (after he spends a fortune treating her to an exclusive dinner in the top of the lighthouse). His comeback concert is hit by a thunderstorm. His ex-wife's husband still annoys him no end. But he keeps nosing around looking for the killer while trying to tend to his paternal duties. He's a likable guy in a hairy situation.

The atmosphere of the touristy harbor town is wonderful. The characters come to life. And the ending is one I didn't see coming. Good read!

DIARY OF A SMALL FISH

Pete Morin's first novel is about a lawyer, a small fish caught up in a net to expose government corruption.

Massachusetts attorney Paul Forte has a passion for golf. He loves it and plays it whenever he can with anyone he can. I'm not a golfer but evidently, when someone invites you to a golf game, you don't pay your own way; you reciprocate by inviting them to play your own club course. Paul never thought of it as a federal crime.

But one morning, he wakes up and opens his door to a federal marshall. He's been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury.

Paul's a little concerned but assumes the man they're after is a man he's golfed with. Nope. The prosecutor's set his sights on Paul. Seems he has a grudge. But no one knows why.

I consider this a 'smart' book. Not as in intelligent-smart, but as in stylish-smart. The offhand references to Hyannisport, the Shrivers, the MBTA all lend a realistic tone. The dialogue is crisp, sometimes funny. As at the end of the grand jury interrogation, after Paul had listed all the different lobbyists he'd golfed with and where they'd eaten afterward. The prosecutor asked if any of the jurors had questions for Paul. Only one of the twenty-three jurors raised a hand.

"Did you say your dinners were always at the Impudent Oyster?" she asked.

"Yes."

"How's the osso buco?"

That's what I mean about smart.

This is an entertaining read, with a hero you want to see come out on top. No dead bodies in this one, but I'd recommend it to anyone tired of the same old lawyer mysteries.

Good book.

EDITS FINALLY BEGIN

I had word from the editor on my tax office mystery, TAXED TO THE MAX (I hope they'll keep the title; you can't always tell) that she's about to start her editing. This means she goes through, picks out things that are wrong, scenes that need to be strengthened or omitted, and stuff like that. Then she sends it back to me and I have to try to give her what she wants.

I'm excited because this is a book dear to my heart. All the funny (and not-so-funny) stuff that happens in tax offices gave rise to it. Like when some assessors got locked in the courthouse attic one time and had to throw down toilet paper rolls to get someone to come let them out. Like how tag customers refuse certain tags. And other stuff about a lot of customer types tag/tax clerks deal with every day.

I hope it's funny enough that people will enjoy it. But I mostly hope it'll give everyone a new respect for the public employees on the front lines.

Course, it doesn't come out till December of next year. But at least it's getting worked on now.

DEATH OF A TROPHY WIFE

This is the first Jaine Austen mystery by Laura Levine that I've read, but it won't be the last. Jaine is a wonderful heroine who scoffs at designer clothes and health food. She'll keep her elastic-waisted pants, thank you very much, and chomp her way through fast food places without regret.

In this book, her neighbor and friend, the gay Lance with impeccable taste, is latched onto by the universally disliked Bunny. Bunny loves his fashion expertise and she has money to support his style advice. Of course, she got it when she snagged her rich husband by convincing him to leave his wife of thirty years. Now she's busy spending his money and lording it over the peons. The ex-wife hates her, her stepdaughter hates her, her cook hates her, and a woman whose boyfriend she stole hates her. Oh, and she's having an affair with her step-son-in-law.

Pretty evil person.

Then someone murders her and Lance is accused. On leave from his job till the murderer is found, he cooks healthy meals for Jaine that she's forced to eat and donates her clothes to a thrift store that makes her buy them back.

She's got to find out who murdered Bunny and fast, before she starves to death and her clothes disappear forever.

Adding to the fun is her snobby cat,Prozac and a suitor from Uzbekistan who thinks she's the next best thing to his goat.

Very entertaining book. I didn't see the ending coming. Nice cozy for anyone who likes their mysteries with a dab of humor.

AURARIA DEAD

This is the first book from a former critique partner, MELODY SCOTT.

'Real estate agent Maria Sebastian and another agent are walking property in north Georgia when the other agent falls into a deserted mind shaft. Inside is a skeleton. And he's dressed in a jacket suspiciously like Maria's ex-husband owned. But her ex is in California. Right?

The book opens with the body and takes us cross country as Maria and her hottie boy friend try to make sure the corpse wasn't her husband. Instead, they find a little boy with a murdered mother who was married to Maria's ex.

Now she must deal with a terrible real estate market, a dishonest partner, and suspicions her boy friend isn't telling her everything. And to top it off, she's about to lose the big real estate deal where the abandoned mine lies. And maybe her life.

Nice cozy. Keeps you entertained till the wrap-up! Way to go, Melody!

NAN D ARNOLD

My crit partner and regular commenter here just signed a contract with MuseItUp Publishing! Not sure when the ebook will be out, but it's a historical/romantic/paranormal called GARNET GALE GETS HER MAN. The ghost in it makes me laugh.

Nan can think of awesome titles. Her romantic mystery ebook, PESTO PACKING MAMA, was a bestseller for Champagne Books while her current release from Whimsical, MERRY ACRES WIDOWS WALTZ is a darker mystery.

Yay, Nan!

THE HANGMAN'S DAUGHTER

A few days ago I finished this book by Oliver Potzsch. It's not a quick read, not a pageturner like some. But it was interesting.

It's about a medieval executioner who is thoughtful, learned, and kind. When several village children are murdered, the midwife who tended his wife in childbirth is accused of witchcraft. The executioner's job is to torture her to get her to confess.

But he and the village doctor's son (who loves the hangman's daughter and who's a better doctor than his father) are convinced the midwife is innocent.

Executioner families intermarried back then because no one wanted anything to do with them. They were always a reminder that death lay waiting. So the hangman is not pleased with his daughter's suitor but works with the doctor's son anyway to find the real murderer.

The description of the German village and its politics is engrossing. What I found more interesting is that, while this is a novel, the author is a descendent of the main character who actually existed.

Good read.

REMIX

This book by Lexi Revellian (you can tell I've been downloading books to my kindle, can't you?) is really pretty good. The sample chapters caught my attention and I bought it and don't regret it.

The heroine finds a man sleeping on her (second floor) terrace when she wakes up. Instead of dialling for help as you or I (prudent souls that we are) would, she talks to him and decides he's okay. Besides, he's got a mongrel dog that needs feeding, too. And he also looks like a famous rock star accused of murder who died several years before.

Wait! He is the famous rock star accused of murder who everyone thinks is dead!

It's a nice mystery as we wonder what happened and whodunnit it. The attraction grows between heroine and rock-star-incognito. The neat thing about the book is that the heroine restores old wooden rocking horses and imparts dribs and drabs of information to us regarding them. Not enough to be boring. Just enough to be interesting.

Good read for everyone who likes light mysteries with a little romance thrown in. This is a great start for a series and I'll be looking for more.

ONE GOOD TURN

Last night I finished this book by Kate Atkinson, an English author. It was an interesting mystery with a twist at the end I didn't expect but that didn't really surprise me either, if that makes any sense. Her characters were engaging (maybe there was a smidgen too much study on some of them) while she did a great job of entwining people and places and incidents. At first nothing seemed connected, but turns out, as I kept reading, that everything was.

My one complaint is about the editing style. There were a lot of punctuation errors, it seemed to me, and run-on sentences and other things. But that may be the wave of the future.

Some cited examples from pages turned to at random:

He knew that gesture well, it nearly always accompanied dissimulation on Julia's part.

And:
Jackson wondered if she was quoting from a  play, she often did, and he hardly ever got the reference.

And:
Last Christmas Eve, when Graham was still a fully functioning member of the family and not yet an astronaut floating through space, she had been in the kitchen making the chocolate log, they always had a chocolate log on Christmas Day along with the pudding.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel there needs to be some periods or semicolons or dashes in here somewhere rather than commas. Or is this the wave of the future?

Anyway, I kept having to reread because my addled brain wouldn't make sense of words strung together without my comforting punctuation symbols.

Maybe it's because I dislike change.

But I did enjoy the book.

THE DEVIL AMONGST THE LAWYERS

I just finished this book by Sharon McCrumb. I love to read her because her writing flows.

She writes mysteries with an Appalachian background and did a whole set based on old ballads. That series is my favorite and THE DEVIL... is touted as another of them. It isn't the best one but it'll do.

The Devil... is based on a real murder trial in the 1930's. A beautiful young woman accused of murdering her father with all the mountain characters we've learned to love. It's not like the other Ballad mysteries though because while the others draw us into the past to explain present day mysteries, this one is set almost entirely in the past.

If you haven't read her before, you might choose another Ballad mystery to start with. Still, this one displays her mastery of time and place and, as always, the story told with such lyricism.

Good book.

Anne George

I like Anne George's mysteries. They're set in Birmingham, Alabama, and feature two sixtyish sisters, the elder quite a character. Widowed three times (she married men at least twenty-eight years older), she's well off and used to speaking her mind.

While volunteering at the library yesterday - shelving books - I discovered a large print edition of one I hadn't read before. MURDER RUNS IN THE FAMILY.

I love the dry humor. For instance, when a judge staggers out and collapses on the edge of a fountain, the younger sister Patricia Anne wets a tissue in the water for him to mop his face. The elder sister, Mary Alice, disapproves because, "That water's filthy. Kids pee in it. You know. When they go wading."

Unfortunately, Ms. George died after writing five or six in the series, but for anyone who enjoys light mysteries with voice and humor, her work is quite entertaining.

ELIN HILDERBRAND

I think it was Laura???? who said she enjoyed this author so I got SUMMER PEOPLE and read it this past weekend.

While I like women's fiction okay, I prefer something that has a tight plot. This story was more of a woman trying to find herself, detailing her family's travails along the way, and wasn't terribly interesting to me. Others will probably love it.

But I think there were two reasons the book didn't work for me. The story about a family's grief for a dead husband and father, was too realistic; I read fiction to escape real life, not depress myself further. And the writer in me kept noticing craft details like changes of POV all over the place that had me rereading whole paragraphs to figure out why they seemed disjointed.

Overall, it was a nice enough story but not one I'd read again.

And you can't ever tell what other books by the same author are like. I didn't like Nora Roberts for years because so many of her books read like standard romances. Then I read one that seemed like another person had written it because the voice stood out so sharply. In all, there were 3-4 in this voice and I liked them.

So my taste depends a lot on the voice. But I still want an interesting plot, too. I guess that's why I'm into mysteries so much right now. Some of them have great voices and intriguing plots.

Anybody else have a book or author they want to recommend?

THE BAD BOOK AFFAIR

This humorous mystery is by Ian Sansom and is one in a series about Israel Armstrong who mans the local mobile book library. He lives in Northern Ireland in a former chicken coop, wants to live in Brooklyn, is depressed, and fears (I quote from the book), "Maybe all English Jewish vegetarian mobile librarians were condemned to a life of headaches, weariness, and existential despair."

I really enjoy the guy. He muddles his way through while I keep rooting for him. I've read four books and will read more when they become available.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR

I just read this book by a couple writing as Nicci French, and I will read more. This one held my interest, from the opening moment when the Main Character looks around the room where her lover lies dead. You're not sure who her lover was right away but, as the story unfolds, there are several possibilities laid out in the backstory.

The way the backstory comes out is the main thing I didn't like. There's a current storyline called After (the death), then in different type a Before storyline, where what happened before the death is told. The After and Before shifts occur throughout the story, sometimes just a page or two and sometimes more. I found it hard to skip back and forth but others may not have that problem.

As I said, it was a good read, where new info kept developing throughout the story. Oh, and I did suspect what happened from the beginning which usually I don't do. I like mysteries but I'm usually clueless as to whodunnit or whathappened.

MYSTERY

I just finished MISTRESS OF ALDERLEY by Robert Barnard. It sounds like a period romance but is in fact one of the mysteries he does so well.

I like his stories. They go by fast and hold my interest. This one didn't have one of those solutions that surprise you, but that's okay. It's the getting to the murderer that's the fun part.

Good Book

I picked up three books at the library last week. I read part of one and won't finish it. I started a murder mystery and read it through. In Their Blood by Sharon Potts.

Now I'm in the process of starting the third. The beginning is kind of slow but I read her first book - Mary Alice Monroe is the author - and liked it so I'll keep reading.

I wonder if learning so much about craft for my own writing is hurting my reading for pleasure. Seems like I'm pickier than I used to be. Or maybe I've matured?

Lord, I hope that's it. It's about time I grew up.

Agatha Raisin

Several years ago I picked up an Agatha Raisin mystery by M.C. Beaton. I didn't like it at all.

Then, a month or so ago, I read another one and thought, "This isn't that good but it's something to read." So I got another one, and then another, and boom! I was hooked. Now I've read all of them I can find.

Not sure why I like her. She's a fiftyish, man-mad woman who's cranky and unethical - she passes off storebought jams for her own at village festivals and tries to marry again while her first husband is still alive. She's also waspish to her friends and the writing isn't all that great. But for some reason, I continue to look for adventures I haven't read.

Maybe as I age, my tastes are changing?