I Take Care of Myself in Dreamland by Ross Klavan Bartok is horribly scarred. Wounded in the Army, he roams through 1970’s New York, a city of perpetual night, punctuated by crime and populated by streetwalkers, hooker bars, strip clubs, easy drugs and a feeling of doom. There’s one thing on his mind: an experience he had when his Army truck exploded, an experience he calls Red River. More than bliss, more than spiritual. But nothing goes right. Bartok loses his girl, his money, any possibility of support and decides that he’s finished, he’s going to end it but before he does, he’s going out on the town for one…
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Author Interview with Marianne Holmes
Author Interview with Marianne Holmes Hello everyone! How have you been this October? Hope all is well with y’all! It is my pleasure to invite and introduce Marianne Holmes today at Syllables of Swathi! She is none other than the author of the best selling Literary Fiction A little Bird Told Me, that released earlier this year! Click here to read my full review of the book, and enjoy the blurb of it! Read further to learn more about this Marianne and her lovely book. She also shares her writing experiences, and talks about her inspiration, favorite authors and her pet fishes – Infinity Flame and Mars!!! Author Biography: Marianne…
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Book Review – Close To Me – Amanda Reynolds
Jo Harding can't remember the last year of her life. And her husband wants to keep it that way. When Jo falls down the stairs at home, she wakes up in the hospital with partial amnesia. In fact, she finds that she's lost an entire year of memories. She can't remember what she did, or anything that happened the night she fell. A lot can happen in a year, and she begins to discover that she may have been leading a double life before the accident.
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Book Recommendation: Pieces of Her – Karin Slaughter
What if the person you thought you knew best turns out to be someone you never knew at all . . . ? Andrea Cooper knows everything about her mother, Laura. She knows she’s spent her whole life in the small beachside town of Belle Isle; she knows she’s never wanted anything more than to live a quiet life as a pillar of the community; she knows she’s never kept a secret in her life. Because we all know our mothers, don’t we? But all that changes when a trip to the mall explodes into violence and Andrea suddenly sees a completely different side to Laura. Because it turns out…
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Book Review – November Road – Lou Berney
Everything changes in an instant, and few events have had more far reaching impact than JFK’s assassination. When the shots rang out Frank Guidry, top lieutenant in Carlos Marcello’s New Orleans based crime organization, realized he helped to orchestrate the president’s murder and that there was now a very real target on his back. For Charlotte in small-town Oklahoma, it was the moment that crystalised the end of her marriage. She had to take her daughters and leave her husband—no small thing in 1963. Both fleeing their past lives, Frank and Charlotte meet in a roadside hotel in New Mexico, and see in one another their only hope of safe…
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Book Review – The Darkest Place – Jo Spain
'Island of the Lost was the isle's name long before the hospital was built. In winter, they say the fog falls so heavy there that you can't see your hand in front of your face. Storms rage so forcefully you can be blown from the cliffs. Once St. Christina's was built, the name took on a new meaning. Very few who went into that place ever left.' Christmas day, and DCI Tom Reynolds receives an alarming call. A mass grave has been discovered on Oileán na Caillte, the island which housed the controversial psychiatric institution St. Christina's. The hospital has been closed for decades and onsite graves were tragically common.…
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Book Review – The Secrets We Carried – Mary McNear
A young woman travels home to Butternut Lake, confronting her past and the tragedy she and her friends have silently carried with them for over a decade while also facing an unknown future Butternut Lake is an idyllic place—but for one woman, her return to the lake town she once called home is bittersweet… Sometimes life changes in an instant.
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Giveaway|Book Review – A Fatal Obsession by James Hayman
Zoe McCabe is a beautiful young actress on the verge of stardom who has been basking in the standing ovations and rave reviews she’s been getting from critics and fans alike for her portrayal of Desdemona in an off-Broadway production of Othello. As she takes her final bows, Zoe has no idea that, seated in the audience, a man has been studying her night after night, performance after performance. A man whose carefully crafted plans are for the young actress to take a starring role in a far deadlier production he has created just for her.
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Giveaway|Book Review – The Last Weekend of the Summer by Peter Murphy
They have been coming to their grandmother Gloria's lake cottage since they were babies. Now Johnnie and Buddy have families of their own and C.C. has a life full of adult drama and adventure. And this trip – the only stated purpose of which is to bring the family together for the last weekend of the summer – seems full of portent. Gloria has been hinting that there's more on the agenda than grilling and swimming, and when the three siblings learn that their estranged father will also be in attendance, it becomes clear that this weekend will have implications that last far beyond the final days of the season.
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Excerpt – The Last Weekend Of The Summer by Peter Murphy
Excerpt | The Last Weekend Of The Summer by Peter Murphy As the truck slithered to a halt on the gravel road, Susie and Joey took off. It was one of their cottage rituals, running to Gloria who stood waving from the veranda. For the last few years, Joey had let Susie win but had always made it look like he was running as fast as he could. Johnnie and Carol sat back and watched. They always gave the kids a few moments with Gloria before they joined them. “So, what’s really going on?” Carol asked without looking over at him. “What do you mean?” “There’s a little dark…
