I recently got my hands on the second book in Diane Fanning ’s mystery/police procedural series starring Lieutenant Lucinda Pierce. I’ve been looking forward to following Lucinda again. Lucinda is, in a lot of ways, typical of women police officers. She’s tough and believes in her work. In others, she’s very different. After taking a shotgun blast to the face, one side is mauled and she lost an eye. In this book, she’s taking the first real steps to plastic surgery, but is still on the job. Along with dealing with the physical injuries, she’s working on the emotional ones. Setting aside her personal problems, Lucinda now has to deal with a violent killer who hides in the shadows and who eventually threatens her own life. She’s got quite a few other things going on in her life - like the rest of us. Lucinda Pierce is no one-dimensional character. I enjoyed discovering the different layers of Lucinda. Here’s a snippet of Diane’s writing in Punish the Deed : “She’d been to many crime s...

Born into a life of privilege, Jeremy Stroeb loves freedom, loathes responsibility, and drops out of college to start backpacking across Europe. But this free-spirited drifter crashes back to brutal reality when his parents, Rachel and Daniel Stroeb, are murdered in their home on Miami Beach. When he returns to Miami, Jeremy assumes guardianship of his teenage sister Elise, who is traumatized and convinced the killer will be back for her. With steely, urgent resolve, Jeremy vows to find out what really happened to Rachel Stroeb, the respected CPA, and Daniel Stroeb, the controversial professor. Determined to get on the inside of his parents’ lives, Jeremy takes a job at the accounting firm where his mother worked, and enrolls at the University where his father taught. But too many details don’t add up. With mounting certainty that his parents were anything but the people he thought they were, Jeremy must face the toughest questions of all. Who were Rachel and Daniel Stroeb? And w...

Revolutions not only change worlds—they often transform flawed men into heroes. In The Resqueth Revolution, disgraced physicist Steve Marks joins a group of paranormal investigators in their violent confrontations with other-dimensional monsters that feed off human fear. Soon the team must also battle the aliens’ human allies within the U.S. military. As Steve discovers more about the entities, and how to hurt them, he becomes the key factor in the plans of multiple factions. Steve must become a full player in a genocidal game he doesn’t fully understand. He must also rediscover his own integrity—an integrity that will force him to risk his friends, his new-found love, and even the survival of the human species for what he knows is right. Mark H. Phillips's mystery, suspense, and sci-fi short stories can be found i n anthologies A Death in Texas and A Box of Texas Chocolates. Hacksaw , an Eva Baum mystery/suspense, was his first published novel. The Resqueth Revolution (ISBN-13...

A Box of Texas Chocolates is a delightful, multi-genre short story collection contains fourteen stories contributed by thirteen authors, all members of Houston's The Final Twist writing group. If you have readers on your list and you're not sure what they like to read, readers who enjoy discovering new authors, or readers who grave diversity in reading material, this book is an excellent choice. Do any adults on your list enjoy spicy romance written with humor? Remember Walter Mitty? Walter never had dreams like this. In Ripping the Bodice , Casandra Devon spends most of her life daydreaming about an imaginary, erotic world in which she is the protagonist is a series of romantic dramas closely resembling the traditional bodice rippers she loves to read. Real life intrusions result in thoroughly entertaining situations. I laughed from beginning to end. Inara Lavey is the romance-writing pen name of a San Francisco mystery writer and former B-movie actress. Can you gu...

Five Years at Sea by James V. Lee is a unique book. It’s part memoir, part travelogue, part insider’s view of being on board Navy ships, and all interesting. Lee spent five years, from 1989 to 1994, traveling the world aboard 13 different Navy ships as a civilian teacher of English as part of the Navy College Program for Afloat College Education. Since he was former Navy, he presents a unique perspective on shipboard life. He enjoyed his years teaching students under difficult circumstances, and he talks about these men who, having found purpose and structure in their lives, are eager to learn. He also took advantage of the opportunity to visit places all over the world and interact with the people who lived there. He takes readers along on his many journeys to places most tourists don’t go. Those years also provided him with a front-row seat to some historical events. I’ve never been in the Navy or even on a ship, but I enjoyed reading and looking at all the pictures Lee includ...

Defying family and social pressure, Nettie Brady bucks 1920s convention with her dream of becoming a rodeo star. That means competing with men—at a time when cowgirls who ride the rodeo circuit are considered “loose women.” Addicted to the thrill of pitting her strength and wits against a half-ton steer in a rodeo, Nettie exchanges skirts for pants, rides with her brothers on their Montana ranch, and competes in neighborhood rodeos. Broken bones, killer influenza, flash floods, and family hardship team up to keep Nettie from her dreams. Then she meets a young neighbor cowboy who rides broncs and raises rodeo stock. Will this be Nettie’s ticket to freedom and happiness? Will her rodeo dreams come true? Raised on a ranch in isolated eastern Montana, Heidi Thomas has had a penchant for reading and writing since she was a child. A tidbit of family history, that her grandmother rode steers in rodeos during the 1920s, spurred Heidi to write a novel based on that grandmother’s life. ...

In Hamilton Swoop Wizard of Green Ridge, Hamilton is summoned to the Center City Wizard’s Guild, where he revisits his past, then discovers his amazing magical destiny . What can a powerless Wizard like Hamilton do about it? Mr. Hearl is a freelance writer and has been published nationally as well as He writes a regular column for a local Mensa newsletter, InforMensa . Hamilton Swoop Wizard of Green Ridge is his first published novel. He owns several cats. None of them is named "Whiskers" and, he claims, none can "talk". This entertaining read, written with both intelligence and humor, is appropriate for both adults and teens. ---------------------------------------- Charlotte Phillips is the co-author of the Eva Baum Detective Series, 2009 President for The Final Twist Writers Group and contributor to multiple blogs. Learn more about Charlotte and her books at: MarkandCharlottePhillips .com News, Views and Reviews Blog

Buddy wanted to be a Cowboy, one that rode a horse, not herd cows by foot. When the neighboring rancher, Caleb Hyman, told the boy he would be hired once he could lasso prairie dogs, Buddy worked and practiced for years to be able to catch one. The day he finally roped one of the quick rodents, two of his older brother's friends watched from the road and ridiculed Buddy, calling him a prairie dog cowboy. Their ridicule never stopped, even after Buddy became a cowboy and broke horses. Facing the hard life of homesteading in the late 1890s and early 1900s, Buddy didn't have an easy life, made worse by a mother who didn't love him or accept him. However, with the help of the Hymans, he developed into a strong, decent person who struggled to find his place in his world. ---------------------------------------- Vivian Zabel always has had a vivid imagination and, when a child, used it to tell her siblings and friends stories. As soon as she could write, she began to put those st...