Midwinter’s Eve Giveaway Hop

Posted on December 21, 2015December 18, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Blog Hops> Giveaways> Midwinter's Eve Giveaway Hop

Welcome to the 2015 Midwinter’s Eve Giveaway Hop, hosted by I Am a Reader, Not a Writer and Bookhounds.

Today is the shortest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere. And it’s also a Monday. Talk about a depressing combination!

But this coming Friday is Christmas, so a lot of people will have a long weekend next weekend, whether they celebrate the holiday or not. That’s something to look forward to.

And speaking of looking forward, starting tomorrow the days will begin getting longer again, just a little bit at a time. The very short days and long nights in January, especially after all the hustle and bustle of the holidays, made January (and February) particularly difficult when we lived in Anchorage. I usually tell people that we left because three Januarys was my limit. Five hours of daylight is just not enough.

But for those planning to read the long nights away, this bloghop gives away oodles of bookish prizes.

For my part, I’m giving away either a $10 Gift Card or a $10 Book to the lucky winner. This is an international giveaway, the books can be sent anywhere that Book Depository ships. Just fill out the rafflecopter below for your chance to win.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And for more bookish Midwinter celebrations, be sure to check out the other stops on the hop!

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The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 12-20-15

Posted on December 20, 2015December 19, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand> Winner announcement

This was a good but strange week. We started the week on our way home from a trip to Colonial Williamsburg. One of the unwritten parts of the marriage vows, hidden in the “in sickness and in health” bit, is the corollary about giving each other all the colds we ever get, for the rest of our lives. Galen came down with a cold and lo and behold, now I have it. Have I mentioned that I hate getting a cold? The drippy nose always sends me round the bend, and wakes me up from a sound sleep!

It’s a good thing that I have some great books to read during my periods of nasal-induced insomnia!

While there are no current giveaways, strictly speaking, the Best of 2015 Giveaway Hop just ended on Friday night, and the Midwinter’s Eve Giveaway Hop starts tonight at midnight. So it is still the season to give away bookish prizes. Huzzah!

Winner Announcements:

The winner of the Best of 2015 Giveaway Hop is Elizabeth C.

Blog Recap:

A- Review: At Blade’s Edge by Lauren Dane
A- Review: Where Lemons Bloom by Blair McDowell
B+ Review: Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Marty Wingate
A- Review: Lowcountry Bordello by Susan M. Boyer
A- Review: The Alchemist’s Daughter by Mary Lawrence
Stacking the Shelves (164)

Coming Next Week:

Midwinter’s Eve Giveaway Hop
The Silence That Speaks by Andrea Kane
Naughty or Nice Winter Blog Tour
Cat Bearing Gifts by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

Stacking the Shelves (164)

Posted on December 19, 2015December 18, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

This is going to sound strange, but I’ve discovered that the grid works best with prime numbers. 11 and 13 actually look good, but 12 leaves a single really, really huge picture at the bottom. So I often find myself on Friday hunting for a 7th or 11th or 13th book to add to the stack. This is NOT GOOD for the height of the towering TBR pile. Oh well, we all make sacrifices in the name of our art…

murder on the last frontier by cathy pegau

wrapped in red by nana malone and sherelle green

winemaker detective mysteries by jean pierre alaux and noel balen

For Review:
The Cold Between (Central Corps #1) by Elizabeth Bonesteel
Counterfeit Conspiracies (Bodies of Art #1) by Ritter Ames
Marked Masters (Bodies of Art #2) by Ritter Ames
Pistols and Petticoats by Erika Janik
Redemption by Kate Douglas
The Rivals of Versailles (Mistresses of Versailles #2) by Sally Christie
When Falcons Fall (Sebastian St. Cyr #11) by C.S. Harris
The Winemaker Detective Mysteries: Treachery in Bordeaux, Grand Cru Heist, Nightmare in Burgundy by Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noel Balen; translated by Anne Trager and Sally Pane.

Purchased from Amazon:
MILF on the Shelf by Nico Rosso
Murder on the Last Frontier (Charlotte Broday #1) by Cathy Pegau
Where Shadows Dance (Sebastian St. Cyr #6) by C.S. Harris
Wrapped in Red: Mistletoe Mantra by Nana Malone, White Hot Holiday by Sherelle Green

Borrowed from the Library:
Why Mermaids Sing (Sebastian St. Cyr #3) by C.S. Harris

Review: The Alchemist’s Daughter by Mary Lawrence

Posted on December 18, 2015December 17, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A- Reviews> book reviews

The Alchemist's Daughter (Bianca Goddard Mysteries #1) by Mary Lawrence
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Bianca Goddard #1
Pages: 304
Published by Kensington on April 28th 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

“A realistic evocation of 16th century London’s underside. The various strands of the plot are so skillfully plaited together.” —Fiona Buckley
In the year 1543 of King Henry VIII’s turbulent reign, the daughter of a notorious alchemist finds herself suspected of cold-blooded murder…
Bianca Goddard employs her knowledge of herbs and medicinal plants to concoct remedies for the disease-riddled poor in London’s squalid Southwark slum. But when her friend Jolyn comes to her complaining of severe stomach pains, Bianca’s prescription seems to kill her on the spot. Recovering from her shock, Bianca suspects Jolyn may have been poisoned before coming to her—but the local constable is not so easily convinced.
To clear her name and keep her neck free of the gallows, Bianca must apply her knowledge of the healing arts to deduce exactly how her friend was murdered and by whom—before she herself falls victim to a similar fate…
“Unique characters, a twisty plot and a bold, bright heroine add up to a great debut for Mary Lawrence’s The Alchemist’s Daughter. Mystery and Tudor fans alike will raise a glass to this new series.” —Karen Harper, author of
The Poyson Garden

My Review:

Think of The Alchemist’s Daughter as an antidote for all those Renaissance Faires where they make the English Renaissance look festive and clean, tidy and with no bad smells. With Bianca Goddard, we get a perspective on life among the ‘groundlings’, probably short, frequently nasty, and always unfair.

Bianca herself is an absolutely fascinating character, but the world she lives in is not a place any of us would want to visit, not even for an afternoon. The past, as they say, is another country, and they do things differently there.

Also it stinks.

Bianca has an interesting backstory. Her father is an alchemist. In other words, he was one of the the many would-be chemists who believed that there was a ‘philosopher’s stone’ that would turn lead and other base metals into gold. Trying to turn lead into gold, while fruitless, is also harmless. But Bianca’s obsessed father was also a Catholic during the latter part of Henry VIII’s reign, and nearly got executed after being caught up in a plan to overthrow the King. Someone accused him of attempting to poison Old King Hal, and he would have swung for it – if his daughter hadn’t proved his innocence – at least of that crime. (I hope the author gives us the full tale at some point in this series because it sounds amazing.)

But the notoriety brought both Bianca and her father to the attention of some of the powers that be, especially the conniving little ones who have just enough power to make life miserable for common people, which Bianca and her family certainly are.

Bianca is also unusual in that she has chosen to live apart from her family. Her father’s involvement in treasonous plots was the last straw for the independent minded Bianca. She wants to practice chemistry, not alchemy, and use the skills she learned at her father’s knee to find cures for the diseases that make people’s lives so short and miserable. Bianca lives alone in the tiny shack, or ‘rent’ that she, well, rents to practice her art.

Which makes her an all too easy target when her best friend comes to her in distress, and dies right there in Bianca’s arms. It was all too common for whoever was present at a death to be accused (and convicted) of it, and when her friend’s blood is found to be purple instead of red, accusations of poisoning fly at Bianca quicker than you can say “plague”.

The story in this book is Bianca dodging the inept law while trying to determine who really killed her friend. Because unless Bianca can find the real killer, she is the one who will be tortured and executed for the crime that she certainly did not commit.

Escape Rating A-: One of the things I found fascinating about this story is that is bookends the story of Lucie Wilton in Candace Robb’s Owen Archer series. Lucie is a master apothecary in York in the late 1300’s, and is also accused of murder. But so many things about the two women in these stories is a kind of mirror image. Lucie’s story takes place in the years before the Wars of the Roses, and Bianca’s take place in the aftermath two centuries later. Lucie is an acknowledged master of her craft, she owns her own shop and takes her own apprentices. Bianca is barely surviving, and is just as often called “witch” as “healer”. Also, Lucie marries Owen, where in Bianca’s first story, she steadfastly refuses to marry her long-time suitor, John. And Bianca’s reasons are lived out in Lucie. Bianca needs the freedom to devote herself to her obsession with her craft, where Lucie, who gets pregnant and has children and devastating miscarriages, is forced to divide her time between her life as a married woman running a household and her livelihood. Lucie never has the time, or frankly the inclination, for the kind of death-defying experiments that Bianca loses herself in on a regular basis.

In other words, if you find The Alchemist’s Daughter right up your rank and smelly alley, give The Apothecary Rose a try. Also Jeri Westerson’s Crispin Guest series, starting with Veil of Lies. It has the same gritty feel, and is set not long before the Archer series.

But back to Bianca’s life. We see the law that is after her as venal, incompetent and much more interested in finding a quick and easy solution than in actually finding the true criminal. And as the lawman Patch observes, while there is plenty of crime in the wealthy districts, the residents there have enough money to make sure that their crimes go unreported, if not absolutely unmarked or blamed on some poor sod in the poorer quarters.

Bianca has very little in the way of forensic evidence, no official assistance, and very little time to find the guilty party. She also has an entire barrel of red herrings to sort through in order to get close to the real killer and the real motive. All she knows at the very beginning is the very little that her friend Jolyn told her, and it isn’t much. Jolyn found a ring while muckracking – literally combing through garbage and debris on the Thames riverbank in the hope of finding something worth selling for enough money to keep body and soul together another day.

Jolyn believed that the ring she found brought her luck. An older woman offers her a room in her boarding house and a job after seeing Jolyn with the ring. Once there, Jolyn attracts a rich suitor. The ring is clearly a catalyst for something. Jolyn thought it was good luck, but the more that Bianca desperately digs into the history of the ring, the more she believes it was the catalyst for her murder.

We follow Bianca’s desperate quest as it goes at breakneck speed. It’s impossible not to shiver at the dangers she faces. And the legions of rats, not all of them on four legs.

Review: Lowcountry Bordello by Susan M. Boyer

Posted on December 17, 2015December 16, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A- Reviews> book reviews

Lowcountry Bordello (A Liz Talbot Mystery, #4) by Susan M. Boyer
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook
Series: Liz Talbot #4
Pages: 272
Published by Henery Press on November 3rd 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The Charleston streets are dressed for the holidays in sophisticated Southern style: topiaries adorned with red ribbons, garland entwined with white lights, and poinsettias potted in gold planters. The high class bordello in a stately historic home is certainly no exception. When Private Investigator Liz Talbot’s dear friend Olivia swears she saw a dead body in the parlor of this bordello, one Olivia accidentally co-owns, Liz promptly comes to her aid.
With her wedding back home on Stella Maris less than a week away, Liz must juggle one elderly madam, two ex and future in-laws, three ghosts in the bordello, four giddy bridesmaids, five lovely courtesans, six suspicious patrons…and a partridge in a pear tree as she tries to keep her bridesmaid out of jail and live to walk down the aisle.

My Review:

I didn’t realize I was working on a theme when I started Lowcountry Bordello. Both the heroine of this book, and yesterday’s Between a Rock and a Hard Place, are brides who are heading to the altar sometime well after their 20s, and both women are planning their weddings while in the middle of solving murders.

I think that Pru Parke and Liz Talbot would probably get along like a house on fire.

But today is Liz’ day, at least for the book review. In the book, it almost isn’t Liz’ day to get married.

The Liz Talbot series (Lowcountry Boil, Lowcountry Bombshell, Lowcountry Boneyard) centers around the island of Stella Maris, just off the South Carolina coast near Charleston. Stella Maris has managed to remain a small and cozy town, in spite of its marvelous location and its proximity to bustling Charleston. Liz Talbot, and her entire family going back generations, are partially responsible for Stella Maris still being beautiful and livable. The other force that is responsible for keeping Stella Maris Stella Maris is currently named Colleen.

Colleen was Liz’ best friend when they were kids. But Colleen committed suicide when she was 17, and her ghost is the genius loci of Stella Maris. In other words, Colleen is the protective spirit of Stella Maris. (One is forced to wonder who has occupied the office before, and how they got there. A minor digression.)

So we have a mostly cozy mystery series with one slightly paranormal element. Liz sees Colleen, and Colleen occasionally helps Liz. And often still infuriates her. Because Liz’ presence on Stella Maris is deemed necessary by whatever powers that be, as long as Liz remains a Stella Maris resident and a member of the Stella Maris town council, she is Colleen’s liaison. And while Colleen is not supposed to directly help her friend, keeping Liz alive is important enough that the rules occasionally get bent.

Mostly in the manner of cryptic advice and instructions. Colleen can’t manifest and impact the world directly. At least not yet.

Liz’ matron of honor calls in the middle of the night that she’s found a dead body at her great aunt’s house in Charleston. By the time Liz takes the ferry, the body has been whisked away, as if by magic. No body, no evidence that there even was a body. Just Olivia, overdramatic as usual, insisting that she saw her husband dead on the floor of her great aunt’s house. Olivia’s husband Robert is home with the kids, wondering if all of his wife’s late night meandering is indicative of an affair.

And this is where things get interesting, as well as convoluted in the way that Liz business typically, and often dangerously as well as hilariously, does. Olivia’s great aunt is running a very high class whorehouse. A whorehouse in which Olivia “accidentally” became part owner upon the recent death of her other great aunt.

This story gets better. Or worse depending on who you are in it. Olivia is being blackmailed about owning the whorehouse. Not by just anyone, but by her own cousin, who is the handyman at said whorehouse, and mightily resents that Olivia has inherited the place instead of him.

But since Olivia’s husband is not dead, what happened to the body she saw? Or did Olivia imagine it? (Olivia is so much of a drama queen that it is entirely believable that she DID imagine it.) And then the body of a local politician turns up in the middle of a park, and suddenly Liz has a case to solve, less than a week before her wedding.

After all, it would ruin the ceremony if the police came to arrest her maid of honor before they get to the “I do’s”. Or even after.

In order to figure out who killed the politician, Liz has to find out what the man was doing at the whorehouse. And that’s where things get interesting. The solution hinges on discovering exactly who are the rich and powerful men who sponsor young women through college by setting them up in an expensive house with a big allowance as their “nieces”. There are a lot of dirty secrets involved (as well as one fascinating clean but kinky secret). And the men keeping those secrets have a lot to lose if they are exposed.

But which of them has enough on the line to kill for?

Escape Rating A-: Lowcountry Bordello, and the entire Liz Talbot series, always edge toward going over the top without actually getting there. Alternatively, the way that Liz’ life and family are portrayed is so much fun that the going over the top is part of the charm.

The stories are all told from Liz’ first person point of view. So we only see what she sees and know what she knows. So when the craziness is revealed to her, it is also revealed to us.

However, that first person point of view is sometimes especially poignant, particularly when it comes to Liz’ interactions with Colleen. Liz still misses her friend terribly, so when Colleen appears in the middle of the bridal party, dressed as one of the bridesmaids, as she absolutely would have been had she lived, it brings a tear to Liz’ eyes (and to the reader’s).

Part of what makes this series so much fun is Liz’ crazy family and equally crazy friends. But her friendships don’t just exist so that the author has a crazy person, in this case Olivia, to work with. Olivia and Liz are friends for excellent reasons that go back to the childhood they shared on Stella Maris. So much of what makes this series work, and makes the characters work together, are the relationships they built when they were kids.

The set up for this story is particularly hilarious. How does one come to accidentally own a whorehouse? Or even half a whorehouse? (It’s not often I get to use the word “whorehouse” in a review, I’m having a little too much fun with it.)

And yet, once Olivia’s place in this mess is established, it is so easy to see how things got out of hand. Her great aunts needed a way to keep their century-plus family home in the ritzy historical section of Charleston. Old houses need a lot of expensive upkeep. The old ladies started out taking in boarders, as one does. But then some of their kindly neighbors convinced them or colluded with them that it would be much more profitable for the old ladies if their boarding house was very exclusive and sponsored by gentlemen in need of a place for their “young nieces” to live while the girls attended college. Everyone benefits. Until they don’t.

That’s where Liz steps in. Once the secret starts unraveling, everyone near the unravel is in danger, especially the girls. Only Liz, with a little help from Colleen and the resident ghosts of the house, can get everyone to safety before it’s too late. But once Liz starts protecting the girls, the killer starts chasing after her.

While it would have been a damper for her maid of honor to be handcuffed, it would be a absolute showstopper if the bride were in a bodybag.

Review: Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Marty Wingate

Posted on December 16, 2015December 17, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B+ Reviews> book reviews

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A Potting Shed Mystery by Marty Wingate
Formats available: ebook
Series: Potting Shed #3
Pages: 288
Published by Alibi on August 4th 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

Perfect for fans of Laura Childs, Ellery Adams, and Jenn McKinlay, Marty Wingate’s enchanting Potting Shed Mystery series heads to Scotland as Pru Parke plans her wedding . . . all while a vengeful murderer is poised to strike again. After her romantic idyll with the debonair Detective Chief Inspector Christopher Pearse culminates in a marriage proposal, Pru Parke sets about arranging their nuptials while diving into a short-term gig at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. At hand is the authentication of a journal purportedly penned by eighteenth-century botanist and explorer Archibald Menzies. Compared to the chaos of wedding planning, studying the journal is an agreeable task . . . that is, until a search for a missing cat leads to the discovery of a dead body: One of Pru’s colleagues has been conked on the head with a rock and dumped from a bridge into the Water of Leith. Pru can’t help wondering if the murder has something to do with the Menzies diary. Is the killer covering up a forgery? Among the police’s many suspects are a fallen aristocrat turned furniture maker, Pru’s overly solicitous assistant, even Pru herself. Now, in the midst of sheer torture by the likes of flamboyant wedding dress designers and eccentric church organists, Pru must also uncover the work of a sly murderer—unless this bride wants to walk down the aisle in handcuffs.

My Review:

I love this cozy mystery series, and it was absolutely perfect for the mood I was in as I read it.

One of the reasons I love it so much is that the heroine, Pru Parke, is easy for me to identify with. While in earlier times Pru might have been coyly referred to as a “woman of a certain age”, the fact is that Pru is in her 50s and starting her life over in England. That she has found a realistic and romantic love on her journey just makes it that much more awesome.

Pru is a kind of itinerant gardener. For those who have watched the BBC series Rosemary and Thyme, Pru reminds me a lot of Laura Thyme. She is a trained gardener and garden manager, with a degree in horticulture and some experience teaching as well as working in respected botanical gardens back home. In Pru’s case, back home is Texas.

Also like Laura Thyme, wherever Pru comes to take care of a garden, she always digs up a dead body or two. Sometimes merely figuratively, but sometimes literally. She met her fiance, DCI Christopher Pearse, when her first case in The Garden Plot (reviewed here) became tied up with a murder investigation.

After Pru’s successful recreation of a famous garden in The Red Book of Primrose House (reviewed here), Pru and Christopher took off on a six-month sabbatical. At the opening of Between a Rock and a Hard Place, she is ready to go back to work and offers are pouring in.

Pru takes a three-month contract at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Her job is to verify (or debunk) the authenticity of a journal that was purportedly written by one of the great 18th century explorer-botanists, Archibald Menzies. While she’s in Edinburgh, she is also supposed to arrange her upcoming wedding to Christopher.

Nothing ever comes easy. While the wedding arrangements are mostly fraught with humorous, if nerve-wracking, disasters, the job is nothing like Pru expected it would be.

There is something underhanded about her appointment to the position, and the RBGE administrator pulls a vanishing act whenever Pru attempts to buttonhole him to discuss it. The staff member at the Garden who is supposed to work with Pru clearly resents her very presence, and with good reason. It is obvious that Iain Blackwell is more than qualified to handle the research himself, and there is no apparent reason why Pru was brought in. Iain’s continued disparagement of her credentials and his constant sniping about “buying the job” at first may seem like plain sexism, but are soon revealed to be very specific to the arrangement that brought Pru to Edinburgh – an arrangement that Pru had no part of, but that Iain believes she connived at.

When Iain is murdered, Pru is the obvious suspect. Everyone heard them arguing – frequently and often. But when the police start focusing on Pru as their sole suspect, Christopher drops everything at Scotland Yard and rides to the rescue.

While Pru and Christopher try to negotiate their upcoming nuptials, Pru can’t resist poking her nose into the murder of her frustrating colleague. As Pru is not the guilty party, someone else must be. It’s up to Pru to figure out who and why before the murderer finishes their plans to send Pru off the exact same way.

Escape Rating B+: This is a story with a lot going on, and almost all of the plot threads are fun to follow. And although this is the third book in the series, I think it could be read as a standalone. Pru moves around so much that except for Christopher, people don’t continue from one book to the next.

I like Pru and Christopher, and I enjoyed seeing this late-blooming couple negotiate both their marriage and their future together. One of the things that I love about them is that they are portrayed as being realistically hot for each other, and very willing to explore that fire. While their love scenes are of the “fade to black” type, the author makes it clear that these two 50-somethings enjoy sex with each other much and often. We don’t see enough romantic relationships between people who are both experienced, and we should. Love blooms at any age, and sex is wonderful with the right person. Pru and Christopher are clearly each other’s “right person” and it glows.

Arranging the wedding turns into a string of disasters, or adventures if the definition of adventure is that one about something either long ago or far away happening to someone else. Pru’s discomfort at going through the first bridal travails that normally happen for a woman at half her age is honest. The craziness along the way is all Pru.

Then there are the three mysteries. There’s the minor mystery about how Pru got the job in the first place. There’s the second minor mystery about whether or not the journal she is authenticating is the real deal. And there’s the major and deadly mystery surrounding Iain Blackwell’s death.

I found the first little mystery, the one about Pru’s appointment, to be frustrating and in the end, annoying. The dodgy administrator made things seem much more serious than they were, and the reason for that dodginess, and the whole way that Pru got the appointment, went too far down unrealistic lane for this reader.

The mystery about authenticating the manuscript, including why it had been suppressed in the first place, turned into a fascinating little piece of history. It’s too bad that this part of the story is entirely fictional. The way this worked out, I’d have loved it if it were true.

The big mystery, Iain’s death, was heartbreaking on a number of levels. Not just that a not-nice but certainly not-evil man was dead for not much reason, but the number of lives that were broken in both the cause of his death and the aftermath. I had started to zero in on the murderer before the reveal, but the why of it surprised and saddened me.

Review: Where Lemons Bloom by Blair McDowell

Posted on December 15, 2015December 10, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A- Reviews> book reviews

Where Lemons Bloom by Blair McDowell
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Pages: 278
Published by The Wild Rose Press on December 16th 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

Romantic suspense that takes the reader on a non-stop thrill ride! Set on the beautiful Amalfi Coast of Italy.
When Eve Anderson meets Adamo de Leone on a ship bound for Europe, she has no idea of the dark secret that will endanger both their lives. She accompanies him to his home on Italy’s Amalfi Coast to open an inn left to him by his grandfather. But then she learns he spent 5 years in prison for a crime he claims he didn’t commit. Could the man she loves be responsible for embezzling eighty million dollars from the investment firm he once owned?
Adamo wants to hold Eve at arm’s length until he can clear his proud family name. But when there is an attempt on his life and Eve is terrorized by a gun-bearing thug, he realizes how much he wants her, and he must accept whatever help he can get to uncover the well-hidden trail of a six-year-old crime

My Review:

Where Lemons Bloom is a non-stop romantic adventure, complete with a dramatic rescue, a romantic cruise, an innocent man trying to clear his name, and his hair-raising confrontation with the ex who did him very, very wrong. All while being helped by an old Godfather in Italy and his younger brother in the States who is trying to stay out of the old family business, but can’t resist a chance to right a wrong – especially when he and his company have been caught up in the mess.

It all starts with a romantic rescue. Eve Anderson gets caught in the undertow off the coast of Barbados, and Adam de Leone rescues her from death by drowning. As she recovers from her ordeal, she wants to celebrate that she is still alive in a midnight tryst with the mysterious stranger, never expecting to see him again.

Instead, they find themselves sharing a table on a romantic trans-Atlantic cruise. For different reasons, neither of them feels ready to explore their intense attraction, but they can’t stop themselves from falling into each other’s company, and into a warm friendship that tries to bury the chemistry they feel.

Of course, they finally acknowledge failure, and as their romance blossoms, Adamo is finally forced to reveal the secret that Eve has sensed he’s been hiding. He’s a convicted felon, but he swears he’s innocent. At first, it seems as if he’s just saying what every criminal would say, but Eve believes him.

Not just because she loves him, but because the crime he is supposed to have committed doesn’t make sense. Or it doesn’t make sense that Adamo committed it. Someone certainly made off with $80 million dollars from his investment firm, but it wasn’t Adamo. His partner supposedly committed suicide to escape his own guilt, but there’s no suicide note.

And someone is trying to kill Adamo. If he’s a threat to anyone, it’s to the real perpetrators. He was willing to put it all behind him, but with his and Eve’s lives on the line, he has to find out who really done it before they do him in.

Adamo certainly has to get over his stupid notion that Eve could definitely do better than a broke ex-con with only a defunct inn in Positano to his name and seemingly a price on his head. Eve knows better, but convincing Adamo is a harder sell than it ought to be.

Of course, they could get killed before the dust settles. Or they could find their happily ever after.

Escape Rating A-: Adamo and Eve are two people who have both been through their own versions of hell. They are both certain that they are not ready to enter into a relationship, but love finds them anyway. Then it takes them on the non-stop thrill ride of their lives.

One of the things that I liked about this book is that the hero and heroine both have a few miles on them. They aren’t teenagers or even young twentysomethings. These are two people who have been around the block, and the trip has left them with some life scars that made them who they are.

Eve’s troubles have been more deeply personal, where Adamo’s were spread across the front pages for weeks. At the same time, the events in Eve’s life also changed who she expected to be, and left her with a load of her own guilt. Eve dropped out of college to become the full-time caregiver for her aging and invalid father as he suffered a series of strokes that left him disabled. She gave up her dreams so that he wouldn’t die alone in a nursing home, and in the end, he died alone while she was out shopping.

She feels both relieved and guilty. When she meets Adamo she is at the beginning of a three-month trip to Europe where she hopes to reset her life now that it is hers again. She needs to find a new purpose. She finds that purpose in helping Adamo reopen the inn that his grandfather left him. After his catastrophic failure and his prison term, the inn is the only asset Adamo has, and the only thing keeping him moving forward. Well, that and the marvelous extended family that is waiting to welcome him home to Italy.

It’s been said that the two most important things in life are love and meaningful work. Re-opening the inn gives both Adamo and Eve plenty of meaningful work. They also find love with each other, but Adamo is holding back because he’s so sure Eve can do better. When his life is threatened, he finally decides that he can’t live and let live, he has to solve the mystery of his past before it gets them both killed.

Once Adamo starts chasing own that old truth, the pace of the story never lets up. Especially once the Conti brothers get involved. With a little investigation, Adamo discovers that whoever tried to kill him is using the Conti organization, or at least its low-level soldiers, to get things done. Neither the “connected” Conti brother in Italy nor the legitimate businessman Conti brother in New York are happy to discover that someone has infiltrated their organizations and is involving them in contract hits and money-laundering schemes that they didn’t authorize.

When the villains find that the tables have been very efficiently turned on them, revenge is sweet, if not quite complete. But there are more than enough just desserts to make you smile at the end.

There has been a recent spate of “Italian Billionaire” romances, but Where Lemons Bloom turns that trope on its head. Adamo has all the makings of the typical Italian romantic hero, but is poor as a churchmouse. There has also been a recent rush of mobster romances, but this story subverts that in a good way. The old-fashioned Godfather is now an old man who is trying to take care of his people before he, and possibly some of the old ways, pass away. His younger brother is legit, but still willing to play the part if it helps the side of the angels.

All in all, Where Lemons Bloom is romantic suspense where the suspense has the reader frantically flipping pages to make sure everything turns out alright. And the romance is absolutely incandescent.

Review: At Blade’s Edge by Lauren Dane

Posted on December 14, 2015December 10, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A- Reviews> book reviews

At Blade's Edge by Lauren Dane
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Series: Goddess with a Blade #4
Pages: 177
Published by Carina Press on December 14th 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Rowan Summerwaite is no ordinary woman. Raised at the knee of The First and honed into a weapon by the Hunter Corporation, she wields ancient knowledge from the Goddess Brigid…and is newly married to a powerful Vampire scion.Though she'd hoped the deadly events in Venice would end the threat to The Treaty she is sworn to protect, Rowan found evidence of a grander conspiracy to destroy the fragile peace that holds humans, Vampires and those with magic back from war. A war that would only hurt the weakest and destabilize the world as we know it.It's not so much that someone ordered her assassination that makes her angry—people try to kill her all the time—as it is the risks those she cares for, especially her new husband, now face. Clive Stewart has never tried to pen Rowan in or control her choices. He has his own fires to put out now that he's married to the most powerful non-Vampire in their world, and Rowan knows it's a challenge to support her the way she needs while not being too much or not enough.The organization that gave her a purpose, a home, roots and a path when she'd run from The Keep at seventeen has betrayed her. Now, instead of on a much-anticipated honeymoon, Rowan is in London gathering her allies and the evidence necessary to drive out the rot within Hunter Corp. and expose whoever is at the top.Rowan is a predator and this threat is prey. She'll burn it down and salt the earth afterward. On her terms.See how Rowan's fight began in Goddess with a Blade, available now!

My Review:

When I reviewed Blade on the Hunt last year over at The Book Pushers with my friend E, one of the things that I said was that the action in Hunt probably would lead directly to Rowan’s need to straighten out the mess at Hunter Corporation, and with extreme prejudice against some of the leaders of that mess.

And that turned out to be a big chunk of the story in At Blade’s Edge. Rowan knows who the guilty parties are, but she still needs to discover just how deep the rot goes. And even worse, she needs to provide proof beyond a shadow of a doubt, because there are way too many paper-pushers at the Hunter Corp. motherhouse who think that political double-dealing is their most important product.

It isn’t. All members of Hunter Corp. have sworn to maintain the balance between the regular humans, the vampires, and the magic users. That balance requires that all three groups are equally strong, and maintain equal vigilance against those who would attempt to upset that knife-edge balance of power, whether they do it deliberately or simply as unwitting pawns.

Rowan Summerwaite may be a lot of things, but she is NEVER anyone’s pawn. Not her foster father’s, who is the head of the Vampire Nation, and not her new husband Clive Stewart, the appointed Scion of Vampire North America. And certainly not paper-pushing scumbags at Hunter Corp.

Because Rowan is the avatar of the Goddess Brigid, and is the official Liaison between the Vampire Nation and Hunter Corp. And because Rowan is a power in her own right, as Goddess, as Hunter, and as daughter of the Vampire Nation’s First.

But Hunter Corp took her in and trained her when she was young, scarred and scared, after her escape from her foster father’s Keep and his abusive power. That Hunter Corp has betrayed her and all Hunters in the field cuts deep. So she resolves to cut deep into Hunter Corp to exorcise the rot.

Only to discover that fixing Hunter Corporation isn’t nearly enough. Someone is targeting all the organizations that serve the balance, determined to undermine the world in order to strike at Rowan. And determined to strike at Rowan any way they can in order to keep her from destroying them first.

Escape Rating A-: The first 9/10ths of this book are a lot of fun. We see Rowan very much in her element, doing all sorts of sneaky things to get the goods on the baddies in Hunter Corp. We get to see her with all of her allies, and watch with glee as she hoists the self-centered evildoers very much on their own petards. At the same time, while fun, the action doesn’t move forward a lot. Rowan is cleaning up crap from the previous book and you need to have read that previous book for these events to generate much feeling. I love Rowan, so I was happy to read about her kicking ass, taking names and making lots of people feel even more uncomfortable than she is at points. But it seems like wrap up. Concealed within that wrap up is a gathering of the allies, the importance of which isn’t obvious until that last, crucial 1/10th of the story.

In the middle of her hunt for the evidence, Rowan is also forced to meet and greet her new in-laws. The game that her new mother-in-law plays on her is an absolute hoot. Rowan’s attitude towards pretentiousness and preciousness in general and her mother-in-law’s game playing in particular remind me a lot of Eve Dallas in J.D. Robb’s In Death series. Eve and Rowan both have the same inability to understand cliches and idioms. And they are both marvelous deadpan snarkers.

As much fun as that first 9/10ths of the book is, the book ends in a shocking cliffhanger. We find out that the rot in Hunter Corp is not the only thing that Rowan has to contend with, and that her enemies will commit any heinous act in their attempts to get her off balance and to make her back off. The ending of this story left me absolutely gasping with shock and horror. And scrambling to find evidence of when the next book will appear.

For a series that I at first wondered if there would actually be a series, Rowan Summerwaite has gotten deeper and darker with each entry, to the point where At Blade’s Edge ends in a moment of “things are always darkest before they turn completely black” moment. I want more NOW.

But it sets the stage for the next level of this conflict. Rowan and her allies will need to root out the evil in all three organizations; Hunter Corp, the Vampire Nation, and the Conclave of Magic Users, in order to have a chance at maintaining the balance of world order. This is the job that Rowan has been trained for all of her dangerous and bloody life. It’s time to fulfill her destiny. She is going to have to wade in the blood of her enemies, and not be able to stop to mourn those of her own who fall along the way.

It’s going to be an awesome and epic adventure. And now I am on pins and needles, desperately searching (so far in vain) for the author’s announcement of the next book in the series.

If you love urban fantasy where the heroes and heroines have layers, the cohort of good bands together to fight the most excellent fight, and evil is darker than you first imagine, start this series now with Goddess With a Blade.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 12-13-15

Posted on December 13, 2015December 11, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand> Winner announcement

Next week’s schedule kind of digs through my backfile just a bit, or at least the end of the week does. When I reviewed Empty Nest a couple of weeks ago, I realized that I hadn’t read the author’s latest book in her other series. And I have been looking for something a bit more lighthearted, and I remembered Susan Boyer’s cozy-ish mystery series might foot that bill as well. The C.S. Harris book, well, I love the series but am not in the least caught up. And I just received an assignment from Library Journal to review the next book in the series, so a bit of catch up seemed in order.

The Best of 2015 Giveaway Hop continues this week. While I’m still whittling my Best of the Year list down to a more manageable 15, the winner of my stop on the hop will get to pick from my entire list. It’s a pretty eclectic list, so there should be something for everyone!

Current Giveaways:

Any book from my “Best of 2015” list in the Best of 2015 Giveaway Hop

Winner Announcements:

The winner of Daughter of Sand and Stone by Libbie Hawker is Nadine

Blog Recap:

B+ Review: Target Engaged by M.L. Buchman + Giveaway
A-, B, B+, C+ Review: Burning Bright by Megan Hart, KK Hendin, Stacey Agdern, Jennifer Gracen + Giveaway
A- Review: Intimate by Kate Douglas
B+ Review: Atrophy by Jess Anastasi
Best of 2015 Giveaway Hop
Stacking the Shelves (163)

Coming Next Week:

Where Lemons Bloom by Blair McDowell (review)
At Blade’s Edge by Lauren Dane (review)
Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Marty Wingate (review)
Lowcountry Bordello by Susan M. Boyer (review)
Where Shadows Dance by C.S. Harris (review)

Stacking the Shelves (163)

Posted on December 12, 2015December 10, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

Discovering how to do a gallery in WordPress was the best thing ever! Especially for weeks when I managed to add a metric butt-load of books to the virtually toppling TBR stack! Or at least it felt like a lot of books as the list grew this week. Even though Xmas and New Year’s are not yet here in the real world, in the virtual world of books and book reviews, NetGalley and Edelweiss are already looking at March and April of 2016 — and beyond!

As Buzz Lightyear always said, “To infinity and beyond!” Wait a minute, I think my TBR stack has already reached infinity. Oh well, one can never have too many books.