First Chapter First Paragraph - Devious

Title: Devious
Author: Lisa Jackson
Publisher: Kensington (March 29, 2011)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 432
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Source: Library
Series: A Rick Bentz/Reuben Montoya Novel #7


Hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea

Chapter 1

“It's time.” The voice was clear.

Smiling to herself, Camille felt a sublime relief as she finished pushing the last small button through its loop. She stared at herself in the tiny mirror and adjusted her veil.

“You're a vision in white,” her father said . . . but he wasn't here, was he? He wasn't walking her down the aisle. No, no, of course not. He'd died, years before. At least that was what she thought. But then her father wasn't her father . . . only by law. Right? She blinked hard. Woozy, she tried to clear her brain, wash away the feeling of disembodiment that assailed her.

It's because it's your wedding day; your nerves are playing tricks on your brain.

“Your groom awaits.” Again, the voice propelled her, and she wondered if someone was actually speaking to her or if she was imagining it.


Overview

The crime scene at St. Marguerite’s cathedral in New Orleans is shocking, even to seasoned detectives like Rick Bentz and Reuben Montoya. A novice nun named Sister Camille has been found dressed in a yellowed bridal gown and viciously garroted, her body covered with an altar cloth.

Valerie Houston is devastated by her sister’s death. For weeks, she’d begged Camille to leave St. Marguerite’s, where she seemed determined to live as some kind of martyr. But Camille had a knack for making bad choices—she joined the convent in part because she’d fallen for Val’s soon-to-be ex-husband, Slade.

Convinced the police aren’t doing enough, Val begins to investigate. Slade, on a mission to repair their marriage, is determined to help her. But the deeper Val’s inquiries go, the more twisted the case becomes. St. Marguerite’s is far from the tranquil retreat many believe, and everyone, from handsome Father Frank O’Toole to the mysterious Mother Superior, has their own agenda. Despite their closeness, even Camille had a hidden life Val never suspected. But someone knew about Camille’s past—and Val’s, too. Now she has no choice but to catch a devious, depraved killer intent on purging St. Marguerite’s of all its sins—before she becomes the next victim

Mailbox Monday - The Dinner

Currently on a Blog Tour with a New Host Each Month

Title: The Dinner
Author: Herman Koch
Publisher: Hogarth (February 12, 2013)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 304
Genre: Fiction
Source: Friends of the Library sale

Overview

It's a summer's evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse -- the banality of work, the triviality of the holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.

Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

Review - Emma Dilemma and the New Nanny

Title: Emma Dilemma and the New Nanny
Author: Patricia Hermes
Publisher: Amazon Children's Publishing; Reprint edition (April 1, 2010)
Format: Softcover; Pgs 106
Genre: Emerging Reader
Source: Amazon Vine Program
Ages: 7 and up

I am still not sure if I liked this book or not.

Emma Dilemma and the New Nanny is the first book in the series and we are introduced to Emma and her family. Five children, a pilot father, a mother that works from home and a brand new nanny.

Emma is working on her responsibility skills. Marmaduke the ferret has once again gone missing. The last time, Emma’s mother swore that the critter would go back to the pet store if it happened again, so Emma is trying to stealth-ily find the troublemakers before her parents do. Easier said than done when her mother wakes up screaming because something is in her mattress.

Marmaduke cannot be sent away, Emma has a report due for school and the ferret is the main attraction. Not only does she have the report riding on this, but also if Emma does not start showing more responsibility, she will not be able to join the soccer team.

Oh, what is she to do? In steps Annie the new nanny, and hopefully, Emma will learn her lessons and Annie will be able to survive the upheavals of this family and not be sent away like all the previous nannies.

As I said, I am not sure if I liked this book or not. I have to put my mind back into secondary type reading books and think like an advancing reader. For a third plus grade reader, this book was good. There were challenges and tricky sentences, but that is what is needed for budding readers. The message – still not so sure.

The story was a bit jumbled and erratic, but then again, maybe that is the feeling that Patricia Hermes was trying to put across. Raising a houseful of children can be crazy and sometimes the calming influence of an outsider is what is needed. Other than one conversation between Emma and her father, I did not see Emma’s parents playing a very instrumental role in their children’s lives and I think that is what is bothering me the most after finishing this book.

Maybe the future books will put the family in a different light, but for now, I am on the fence about this series.

Review - The Apprentice

Title: The Apprentice
Author: Tess Gerritsen
Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (August 20, 2002)
Format: Kindle Edition; Hardcover Pgs 352
Genre: Police Procedural
Source: Library
Series: Rizzoli and Isles #2

I really need to stop reading Tess Gerritson’s books before I go to sleep at night. She has the ability to combine both medical facts with dang scary characters that when I am dreaming, everything melds together and gives me the most terrifying nightmares. I did not realize that I was so susceptible, but when a book is this well written and has drawn me in from the first chapter, I should have realized that I was going to be in trouble.

Boston is once again under attack by a serial killer. There is something very familiar with the surgical cuts on the victims. The telltale signs link Warren Hoyt, the center of Gerritsen’s previous book, but Detective Rizzoli knows that is not possible since she is the woman that had put him behind bars.

Yet the similarities are still there. Is it possible that Hoyt has trained someone to assume his role?

In steps Special Agent Gabriel Dean who seems to know a bit more about this killer than he lets on. Now Jane is trying to keep Dean out of her business, find a copycat killer and stop Hoyt once again before he finishes his job and makes Jane his final victim.

Waiting on Wednesday - Doctor Sleep

Hosted by Breaking the Spine

Title: Doctor Sleep
Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Scribner (September 24, 2013)
Format: Hardcove; Pgs 544
Genre: Horror / Suspense / Paranormal
Series: Sequel to The Shinning

Overview:

Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special twelve-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.

On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless—mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and spunky twelve-year-old Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death.

Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant “shining” power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”

Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of devoted readers of The Shining and satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.

First Chapter First Paragraph - Telling the Bees

Title: Telling the Bees
Author: Peggy Hesketh
Publisher: Putnam Adult (March 7, 2013))
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 320
Genre: Fiction
Source: Amazon




Hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea

Chapter 1

The bees travel along the high-tension wires, just as surely as one true sentence follows the next. I am not sure why the bees took to this peculiar mode of travel, but I suspect they have their reasons, and their reasons have everything to do with the Bee Ladies' murder.

There is a family living not far from my home that mistakenly holds the electricity that hums and buzzes over their heads responsible for all the people in our neighborhood who have chanced to die in recent years. It is a complicated theory based on the deleterious effects of electromagnetic fields. I hardly know this family beyond what I have been able to discern from the slogans on the handmade signs they display in their front yard. I know they believe the overhead wires that run above our homes cause all manner of human ailments, and for this reason they have planted a growing field of carefully tended crosses in their lawn, one for each neighbor who has died since they began keeping track of such things shortly after moving into one of the newer housing tracts not far from my home nearly eight years ago.

I only spoke to them once, not long after they'd begun planting crosses in their lawn. It was one of those impossibly warm Southern California days that almost always occurs in early February, the sort of day that sings to those who wish to leave behind the bone-chilling heartbreak of winter and make a new life for themselves in the promise of eternal sunshine.


Overview

Albert Honig's most constant companions have always been his bees. A never-married octogenarian, still residing in the house in which he was born, Albert makes a modest living as a beekeeper, just as his father and his father's father had done before him. Deeply acquainted with the ways and workings of the hives, he knows that bees dislike wool clothing and foul language; that the sweetest honey is made from the blooms of eucalyptus; and that bees are at their gentlest in a swarm. But Albert is less versed in the ways of people, especially his beautiful, courageous, and secretive friend Claire.

A friend and neighbor since childhood, Claire was a hovering presence—and then a glaring absence—in Albert's life, a change that has never been reconciled. When she is murdered in a seemingly senseless accident during a burglary gone wrong, Albert is haunted by the loss. In the aftermath of this tragedy, he is left to piece together the events of their lives, to attempt to make sense of their shared past and the silence that persisted between them for a decade before her death. What Albert comes to learn is that Claire's secrets were far darker than anything he could have imagined . . . and the mystery behind her murder lay not so much in who did it, but why.

Spanning the arc of the twentieth century, set in the transforming landscape of Southern California, Telling the Bees is a beautifully imagined novel about the far-reaching consequences of words left unspoken, the persistence of regret, and the power of truth both to wound and to heal.

Mailbox Monday - Deeply Odd

Currently on a Blog Tour with a New Host Each Month

Title: Deeply Odd
Author: DeanKoontz
Publisher: Bantam (May 28, 2013)
Format: ARC; Trade Paperback; 332
Genre:
Source: Suspense / Paranormal
Series: Odd Thomas #6

Overview

How do you make sure a crime that hasn’t happened yet, never does? That’s the critical question facing Odd Thomas, the young man with a unique ability to commune with restless spirits and help them find justice and peace. But this time, it’s the living who desperately need Odd on their side. Three helpless innocents will be brutally executed unless Odd can intervene in time. Who the potential victims are and where they can be found remain a mystery. The only thing Odd knows for sure is who the killer will be: the homicidal stranger who tried to shoot him dead in a small-town parking lot.

With the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock riding shotgun and a network of unlikely allies providing help along the way, Odd embarks on an interstate game of cat and mouse with his sinister quarry. He will soon learn that his adversary possesses abilities that may surpass his own and operates in service to infinitely more formidable foes, with murder a mere prelude to much deeper designs. Traveling across a landscape haunted by portents of impending catastrophe, Odd will do what he must and go where his path leads him, drawing ever closer to the dark heart of his long journey—and, perhaps, to the bright light beyond.

Review - Eliza's Kindergarten Surprise

Title: Eliza’s Kindergarten Surprise
Author: Alice B. McGinty
Illustrator: Nancy Speir
Publisher: Amazon Children's Publishing (July 1, 2007)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 29
Genre: Children’s
Source: Amazon’s Vine Program
Ages:The publisher suggests 6 to 8, this would be right for a self read, but I think that it would be fine starting at 4 if you are reading to your child.

For children that have never been to preschool, kindergarten sure can be a scary place.

Eliza’s mommy has taken care to make Eliza feel safe during her first day by giving her a kiss to keep in her pocket. Still, Eliza is too sad and empty feeling. As the day goes on, this inventive young child puts thing into her pocket that remind her of her mother. There are buttons and a pebble and during art class, she has an idea. Soon, she is not so lonely anymore and by the end of the day, she has a wonderful surprise for her mom.

This is a great book to help your young one to see that going to school does not mean that they are leaving you and that they can always carry you with them.

Review - Deadly Stakes

Title: Deadly Stakes
Author: JA Jance
Publisher: Touchstone (February 5, 2013)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 304
Genre: Suspense
Source: Library
Series:Alison Reynolds #8

The reader is expected to dig back in their memory to recall the storyline where Ali was dealing with a cyber-stalker. This book moves forward from that time when Ali meets up again with Lynn Martinson. Once again, Lynn is involved with a questionable man. This time, Chip Ralston’s wife is found stabbed to death in the desert. When both Lynn and Chip are arrested for the murder, Lynn’s mother proposes to Ali that she checks things out under the guise of being an investigative reporter.

There are two narratives going on in this book, the first presented involves a teen out in the desert looking for a hidden treasure that his ex-con father had buried for him. If it had not been for A.J. being in the same place as the stabbed woman, the body would never have been found. Then during the investigation, the body of James Sanders’ (the ex-con father) is found in the same area. Now things are getting a bit twisty. The second storyline involves Chip’s mother who is battling Alzheimer’s and a sister that refuses to allow Chip near, even though Chip is a renowned Alzheimer’s specialist.

Did one storyline help the other or was it just a coincidence that helped to fill in the holes I will never know. What the story does reveal is that if it were not for cyber experts in the name of B. Simpson and his trusty sidekick. Ali could have very well been the next body found in the desert. Then what would the very handy and gun toting Leland Brooks do about his upcoming family reunion.

I know that last part made you say “what”. I do hope that JA Jance uses that opportunity to make her next book about Leland and his upcoming trip back home. He is my favorite character of the series and I wish that we could see more of his humor.

I have come this far with the Allison Reynolds series, but I cannot say that I love the books. They are simplistic and predictable and tend to fall into the beach read category for me. Others may not see it that way, but there really is no depth or thought provoking moments in her books.

Waiting on Wednesday - The Other Typist

Hosted by Breaking the Spine


Title: The Other Typist
Author: Suzanne Rindell
Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam (May 7, 2013)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 368
Genre: Fiction

Overview:

Rose Baker seals men’s fates. With a few strokes of the keys that sit before her, she can send a person away for life in prison. A typist in a New York City Police Department precinct, Rose is like a high priestess. Confessions are her job. It is 1923, and while she may hear every detail about shootings, knifings, and murders, as soon as she leaves the interrogation room she is once again the weaker sex, best suited for filing and making coffee.

This is a new era for women, and New York is a confusing place for Rose. Gone are the Victorian standards of what is acceptable. All around her women bob their hair, they smoke, they go to speakeasies. Yet prudish Rose is stuck in the fading light of yesteryear, searching for the nurturing companionship that eluded her childhood. When glamorous Odalie, a new girl, joins the typing pool, despite her best intentions Rose falls under Odalie’s spell. As the two women navigate between the sparkling underworld of speakeasies by night and their work at the station by day, Rose is drawn fully into Odalie’s high-stakes world. And soon her fascination with Odalie turns into an obsession from which she may never recover.

Mr. Rogers - Look for the Helpers

Mailbox Monday - Reconstructing Amelia

Currently on a Blog Tour with a New Host Each Month

Title: Reconstructing Amelia
Author: Kimberly McCreight
Publisher: Harper (April 2, 2013)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 400
Genre: Suspense
Source: Amazon

Overview

A single mother reconstructs her teenaged daughter's life, sifting through her emails, texts, and social media to piece together the shocking truth about the last days of her life.

Litigation lawyer and harried single mother Kate Baron is stunned when her daughter's exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn, calls with disturbing news: her intelligent, high-achieving fifteen-year-old daughter, Amelia, has been caught cheating.

Kate can't believe that Amelia, an ambitious, levelheaded girl who's never been in trouble would do something like that. But by the time she arrives at Grace Hall, Kate's faced with far more devastating news. Amelia is dead.

Seemingly unable to cope with what she'd done, a despondent Amelia has jumped from the school's roof in an act of "spontaneous" suicide. At least that's the story Grace Hall and the police tell Kate. And overwhelmed as she is by her own guilt and shattered by grief, it is the story that Kate believes until she gets the anonymous text:

She didn't jump.

Sifting through Amelia's emails, text messages, social media postings, and cell phone logs, Kate is determined to learn the heartbreaking truth about why Amelia was on Grace Hall's roof that day-and why she died.

Told in alternating voices, Reconstructing Amelia is a story of secrets and lies, of love and betrayal, of trusted friends and vicious bullies. It's about how well a parent ever really knows a child and how far one mother will go to vindicate the memory of a daughter whose life she could not save.

Review - Betty Bunny Didn't Do It

Title: Betty Bunny Didn’t Do It
Author: Michael B. Kaplan
Illustrator: Stephane Jorisch
Publisher: Dial (February 21, 2013)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 32
Genre: Children’s
Source: Library
Ages: 3 to 5

This is a tough day for Betty Bunny, she is about to learn a hard lesson when it comes to lying.

When no one wants to play with Betty, she decides to take matters into her own hands and a lamp is broken. Quickly trying to hide the evidence, she is soon caught, but instead of owning up to her actions, she devises a fantastical story involving the tooth fairy and a bag of baby teeth.

Being called out by her mother, it is explained to her that lying is not okay. Betty is sticking to her story, but in a typical play on the Boy Who Cried Wolf, another item is broken and no one believes that it is not Betty’s fault.

This day is just getting tougher and tougher until her brother confesses to the incident and is rewarded for his honesty. Confusion ensues and silly Betty is suddenly confessing to all sorts of things.

Swearing to tell the truth brings about confusions – that is where this book teaches a dual message of honesty and doing your best not to hurt other people’s feelings.

Do not miss a great prompting opportunity to open up conversations between adults and children on honesty.

Review - Calling Invisible Women

Title: Calling Invisible Women
Author: Jeanne Ray
Publisher: Crown (May 22, 2012)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 256
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Source: Library

This is so not the book that I was expecting. When I read the description, I was preparing myself for a storyline around the feeling that women get when they become invisible to the world. We are no longer young, but at the same time, we are not old. That in between time where we do not seem to fit in. When our families take us for granted and like Clover Hobart, our spouses sense our essence but no longer “see” us. Where we are no longer suitable in our old careers and must somehow make a new difference.

That is not what this book is. Clover Hobart and a group of other “invisible women” have come together to find out why they literally have disappeared. It look as if the one thing that they have in common is that they have each taken a combination of prescription drugs manufactured by a single company and that each of them have had at least one injection of Botox.

Now, if that is supposed to be symbolism for what women resort to during menopause, maybe I get it, but come on now, that is a stretch.

So with the help of her daughter’s potential future mother in law, this group takes on the pharmaceutical conglomerate and in doing so – comes out to the world.

At this point, the storyline feels unfinished to me. I am sure that Jeanne Ray was aiming for a happily ever after feel, but an epilogue on how with the help of green tea and an ashram some women were having visible days again just seemed silly.

Waiting on Wednesday - 12th of Never

Hosted by Breaking the Spine

Title: 12th of Never
Author: James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (April 29, 2013)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 432
Genre: Mystery
Series: Women’s Murder Club #12

Overview:

Lindsay Boxer's beautiful baby is born! But after only a week at home with her new daughter, Lindsay is forced to return to work to face two of the biggest cases of her career.

A rising star football player for the San Francisco 49ers is the prime suspect in a grisly murder. At the same time, Lindsay is confronted with the strangest story she's ever heard: An eccentric English professor has been having vivid nightmares about a violent murder and he's convinced is real. Lindsay doesn't believe him, but then a shooting is called in—and it fits the professor's description to the last detail.

Lindsay doesn't have much time to stop a terrifying future from unfolding. But all the crimes in the world seem like nothing when Lindsay is suddenly faced with the possibility of the most devastating loss of her life.

First Chapter First Paragraph - The Apprentice

Title: The Apprentice
Author: Tess Gerritsen
Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (August 20, 2002)
Format: Kindle Edition; Hardcover Pgs 352
Genre: Police Procedural
Source: Library
Series: Rizzoli and Isles #2

Hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea

Chapter 1

Already the flies were swarming. Four hours on the hot pavement of South Boston had baked the pulverized flesh, releasing the chemical equivalent of a dinner bell, and the air was alive with buzzing flies. Though what remained of the torso was now covered with a sheet, there was still much exposed tissue for scavengers to feast on. Bits of gray matter and other unidentifiable parts were dispersed in a radius of thirty feet along the street. A skull fragment had landed in a second-story flower box, and clumps of tissue adhered to parked cars.


Overview

It’s a boiling summer in Boston. Adding to the city’s woes is a series of shocking crimes that end in abduction and death.

The pattern suggests one man: serial killerWarren Hoyt, recently thrown behind bars. Police can only assume an acolyte is at large, a maniac basing his attacks on the twisted medical techniques of the madman he so admires.

At least that’s what detective Jane Rizzoli thinks. Forced again to confront the killer who scarred her – literally and figuratively – she is determined to finally end Hoyt’s awful influence. Rizzoli isn’t counting on becoming a target herself.

Yet once Hoyt is suddenly free, he joins his mysterious blood brother in a vicious vendetta….

Mailbox Monday - Telling the Bees

Currently on a Blog Tour with a New Host Each Month

Title: Telling the Bees
Author: Peggy Hesketh
Publisher: Putnam Adult (March 7, 2013))
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 320
Genre: Fiction
Source: Amazon

Overview

Albert Honig’s most constant companions have always been his bees. A never-married octogenarian, he makes a modest living as a beekeeper, as his father and his father’s father did before him. Deeply acquainted with the workings of the hives, Albert is less versed in the ways of people, especially his friend Claire, whose presence and absence in his life have never been reconciled.

When Claire is killed in a seemingly senseless accident during a burglary gone wrong, Albert is haunted by the loss, and by the secrets and silence that hovered between them for so long. As he pieces together the memories of their shared history, he will come to learn the painful truths about Claire’s life, and the redemptive power of laying the past to rest.

Review - Let's Go, Hugo!

Title: Let’s go, Hugo
Author and Illustrator: Angela Dominguez
Publisher: Dial (March 7, 2013)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 40
Genre: Children’s
Source: Library
Ages: 3 to 5

See what can happen when you forget to be afraid…

Hugo is a bit different from other birds, he prefers to walk than fly. Actually, it is not so much a preference as it is a fear of flying. He spends his days in a lovely park in Paris until that fateful moment when Lulu, a little bird, flew by and noticed Hugo’s artwork.

It looks just like the Eiffel tower and Lulu wants to show him from the air. That would mean flying and Hugo is too afraid and like any wise bird, he has quite a few excuses.

Lulu is not to be put off, so with the help of a trusty friend Hugo is about to find his wings and all the things that he has been missing.

A simple straightforward story with charming illustrations that are not too busy for your young reader.

Review - French Twist

Title: French Twist: An American Mom's Experiment in Parisian Parenting
Author: Catherine Crawford
Publisher: Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (March 12, 2013)
Format: Trade Paperback; Pgs 256
Genre: Not sure if it is a memoir, parenting book or downright fiction
Source: Library

I had such high hopes for this book. By mid book, my hopes were still high, until I had come to the conclusion that Catherine Crawford was trying to stretch out a three part magazine article into a book length dissertation involving her attempts to “french-ify” her family.

Totally failing at controlling her daughters, Catherine Crawford looks around and realizes that the offspring of her French friends are better behaved. It did not occur to her that it could possibly be her own lack of parenting or her own ADD tendencies, but obviously, it was that she was not rearing her young in the French ways.

Dragging her family, kicking and screaming I might add, through this new adventure had its interesting parts. There was humor from her daughters and slight glimpse of insight from Catherine herself, but to be honest, there was nothing new in this book. This is how mothers used to raise their children right here in the United States. I do not know when parenting changed, but my mother did not sit by a pool waiting for my latest escapades to entertain her, she did not read the same book five times in a row just so I would go to sleep at night. Adults were adults that interacted with adults and children were children and expected to do what they were told the first time and only time. Only when a child was self-controlled enough to contribute to adult conversation were they allowed to participate. Do not even get me stated on the food thing. Multiple meals and snacks were not provided – you ate what was offered or you went hungry.

By the end, I was just exasperated. If this was meant to be a memoir of sorts, then I could appreciate part of the adventure, but if it was a parenting book like I was lead to believe - Oh goodness, we have a long way to go. There are many areas in life that new and improved really is, but when it comes to parenting, the tried and true works. We do not need to look at the French, we need to put on our big girl panties and set rules and examples. That is all. It does not matter what country you come from.

Waiting on Wednesday - Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince

Hosted by Breaking the Spine

Title: Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince
Author: Nancy Atherton
Publisher: Viking Adult (April 18, 2013)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 256
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Series: Aunt Dimity #18

Overview:

The dreariness of a Cotswolds February has descended upon Lori Shepherd and her sons, Will and Rob. But their neighbor Bree has an idea to banish the gloom: They visit Sproggton Manor, a museum of curiosities. While the twins gape at shrunken heads, Lori is captivated by a finely wrought silver sleigh figurine—and by Daisy Pickering, the very poor nine-year-old girl who can’t take her eyes off the sleigh.

When the silver sleigh turns up in her thrift shop, Lori Shepherd goes to speak with the museum curator, who is oddly uninterested in the theft. And the Pickerings have come into money and moved Down Under. It will take Aunt Dimity's supernatural wits to untangle a web of secrets stretching back to the days of the Russian Revolution.

Mailbox Monday - Rage Against the Dying

Currently on a Blog Tour with a New Host Each Month

Title: Rage Against the Dying
Author: Becky Masterman
Publisher: Minotaur Book (March 12, 2013)
Format: Hardcover; Pgs 320
Genre: Suspense
Source: Amazon

Overview

Brigid Quinn's experiences in hunting sexual predators for the FBI have left her with memories she wishes she didn’t have and lethal skills she hopes never to need again. Having been pushed into early retirement by events she thinks she's put firmly behind her, Brigid keeps telling herself she is settling down nicely in Tucson with a wonderful new husband, Carlo, and their dogs.

But the past intervenes when a man named Floyd Lynch confesses to the worst unsolved case of Brigid’s career—the disappearance and presumed murder of her young protégée, Jessica. Floyd knows things about that terrible night that were never made public, and offers to lead the cops to Jessica's body in return for a plea bargain.

It should finally be the end of a dark chapter in Brigid’s life. Except…the new FBI agent on the case, Laura Coleman, thinks the confession is fake, and Brigid finds she cannot walk away from violence and retribution after all, no matter what the cost.