By: Diane Chamberlain 

ISBN: 9781250087270

Publisher: St. Martin's Press 

Publication Date: 10/3/2017 

Format:  Other 

My Rating: 5 Stars +++ (ARC)

Top  Books of  2017 

From perennial bestseller Diane Chamberlain, a compelling new novel.

In 1944, twenty-three-year-old Tess DeMello abruptly ends her engagement to the love of her life when she marries a mysterious stranger and moves to Hickory, North Carolina, a small town struggling with racial tension and the hardships imposed by World War II.

Tess’s new husband, Henry Kraft, is a secretive man who often stays out all night, hides money from his new wife, and shows no interest in making love. Tess quickly realizes she’s trapped in a strange and loveless marriage with no way out.

The people of Hickory love and respect Henry and see Tess as an outsider, treating her with suspicion and disdain, especially after one of the town’s prominent citizens dies in a terrible accident and Tess is blamed. Tess suspects people are talking about her, plotting behind her back, and following her as she walks around town. What does everyone know about Henry that she does not? Feeling alone and adrift, Tess turns to the one person who seems to understand her, a local medium who gives her hope but seems to know more than he’s letting on. 

When a sudden polio epidemic strikes the town, the townspeople band together to build a polio hospital. Tess, who has a nursing degree, bucks Henry’s wishes and begins to work at the hospital, finding meaning in nursing the young victims. Yet at home, Henry’s actions grow more alarming by the day. As Tess works to save the lives of her patients, can she untangle her husband’s mysterious behavior and save her own life?  Read More 

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By:  Wiley Cash 

ISBN: 0062313118

Publisher: William Morrow  

Publication Date: 10/3/2017 

Format: Hardcover 

My Rating: 4 Stars (ARC)

The New York Times bestselling author of the celebrated A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy returns with this eagerly awaited new novel, set in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina in 1929 and inspired by actual events. The chronicle of an ordinary woman’s struggle for dignity and her rights in a textile mill, The Last Ballad is a moving tale of courage in the face of oppression and injustice, with the emotional power of Ron Rash’s Serena, Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day, and the unforgettable films Norma Rae and Silkwood.

Twelve times a week, twenty-eight-year-old Ella May Wiggins makes the two-mile trek to and from her job on the night shift at American Mill No. 2 in Bessemer City, North Carolina. The insular community considers the mill’s owners—the newly arrived Goldberg brothers—white but not American and expects them to pay Ella May and other workers less because they toil alongside African Americans like Violet, Ella May’s best friend. While the dirty, hazardous job at the mill earns Ella May a paltry nine dollars for seventy-two hours of work each week, it’s the only opportunity she has. Her no-good husband, John, has run off again, and she must keep her four young children alive with whatever work she can find.

When the union leaflets begin circulating, Ella May has a taste of hope, a yearning for the better life the organizers promise. But the mill owners, backed by other nefarious forces, claim the union is nothing but a front for the Bolshevik menace sweeping across Europe. To maintain their control, the owners will use every means in their power, including bloodshed, to prevent workers from banding together. On the night of the county’s biggest rally, Ella May, weighing the costs of her choice, makes up her mind to join the movement—a decision that will have lasting consequences for her children, her friends, her town—indeed all that she loves.

Seventy-five years later, Ella May’s daughter Lilly, now an elderly woman, tells her nephew about his grandmother and the events that transformed their family. Illuminating the most painful corners of their history, she reveals, for the first time, the tragedy that befell Ella May after that fateful union meeting in 1929.

Intertwining myriad voices, Wiley Cash brings to life the heartbreak and bravery of the now forgotten struggle of the labor movement in early twentieth-century America—and pays tribute to the thousands of heroic women and men who risked their lives to win basic rights for all workers. Lyrical, heartbreaking, and haunting, this eloquent novel confirms Wiley Cash’s place among our nation’s finest writers.  Read More 

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Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Police Procedurals

 

By:  Allen Eskens

ISBN: 1633883558

Publisher: Seventh Street 

Publication Date: 10/3/2017

Format: Paperback (Audio)

My Rating: 4 Stars

Homicide Detective Max Rupert never fully accepted his wife's death, even when he believed that a reckless hit and run driver was the cause.

But when he learns that in fact she was murdered, he devotes himself to hunting down her killers. Most of his life he had thought of himself as a decent man. But now he's so consumed with thoughts of retribution that he questions whether he will take that last step and enact the vengeance he longs for.

On a frozen lake near the US-Canadian border, he wrestles with a decision that could change his life forever, as his hatred threatens to turn him into the kind of person he has spent a career bringing to justice. Read More 

 

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 Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Mystery

 

Odd Child Out 

 

By:  Gilly MacMillan 

ISBN:  0062697838

Publisher:  William Morrow 

Publication Date: 10/3/2017 

Format: Hardcover

My Rating: 4 Stars (ARC)

How well do you know the people you love…?

Best friends Noah Sadler and Abdi Mahad have always been inseparable.  But when Noah is found floating unconscious in Bristol’s Feeder Canal, Abdi can’t–or won’t–tell anyone what happened.

 

Just back from a mandatory leave following his last case, Detective Jim Clemo is now assigned to look into this unfortunate accident.  But tragedy strikes and what looked like the simple case of a prank gone wrong soon ignites into a public battle.  Noah is British.  Abdi is a Somali refugee.   And social tensions have been rising rapidly in Bristol.  Against this background of fear and fury two families fight for their sons and for the truth.  Neither of them know how far they will have to go, what demons they will have to face, what pain they will have to suffer. 

 

Because the truth hurts. Read More 

  

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Magical Realism, Fantasy,  Witches, Coming of Age, Occult, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction 

 

The Rules of Magic 

 

By:  Alice Hoffman

ISBN:  9781501137471

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Publication Date: 10/10/2017 

Format:  Hardcover

My Rating: 4 Stars (ARC)

From beloved author Alice Hoffman comes the spellbinding prequel to her bestseller, Practical Magic.

Find your magic.

For the Owens family, love is a curse that began in 1620, when Maria Owens was charged with witchery for loving the wrong man.

 

Hundreds of years later, in New York City at the cusp of the sixties, when the whole world is about to change, Susanna Owens knows that her three children are dangerously unique. Difficult Franny, with skin as pale as milk and blood red hair, shy and beautiful Jet, who can read other people’s thoughts, and charismatic Vincent, who began looking for trouble on the day he could walk.

 

From the start Susanna sets down rules for her children: No walking in the moonlight, no red shoes, no wearing black, no cats, no crows, no candles, no books about magic. And most importantly, never, ever, fall in love. But when her children visit their Aunt Isabelle, in the small Massachusetts town where the Owens family has been blamed for everything that has ever gone wrong, they uncover family secrets and begin to understand the truth of who they are. Back in New York City each begins a risky journey as they try to escape the family curse.

 

The Owens children cannot escape love even if they try, just as they cannot escape the pains of the human heart. The two beautiful sisters will grow up to be the revered, and sometimes feared, aunts in Practical Magic, while Vincent, their beloved brother, will leave an unexpected legacy. Thrilling and exquisite, real and fantastical, The Rules of Magic is a story about the power of love reminding us that the only remedy for being human is to be true to yourself.  Read More 

 

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Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction 

 

 

By:  Jennifer Egan 

ISBN: 9781476716732

Publisher:  Scribner

Publication Date: 10/3/2017 

Format:  Hardcover

My Rating:  Currently Reading 

The long-awaited novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, Manhattan Beach opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to the house of a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. Anna observes the uniformed servants, the lavishing of toys on the children, and some secret pact between her father and Dexter Styles.

Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that had always belonged to men. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. She is the sole provider for her mother, a farm girl who had a brief and glamorous career as a Ziegfield folly, and her lovely, severely disabled sister. At a night club, she chances to meet Styles, the man she visited with her father before he vanished, and she begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have been murdered.

 

Mesmerizing, hauntingly beautiful, with the pace and atmosphere of a noir thriller and a wealth of detail about organized crime, the merchant marine and the clash of classes in New York, Egan’s first historical novel is a masterpiece, a deft, startling, intimate exploration of a transformative moment in the lives of women and men, America and the world. Manhattan Beach is a magnificent novel by one of the greatest writers of our time.

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Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Contemporary, Psychological Thriller, Domestic Suspense 

 

If You Knew My Sister 

 

By:  Michelle Adams

ISBN:  9781250126702

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Publication Date:  10/3/2017 

Format:  Paperback

My Rating: 4 Stars (ARC)

In the vein of Ruth Ware's In a Dark, Dark Wood comes a novel of psychological suspense form debut author Michelle Adams, where a woman returns to her family's home to learn the truth and escape her sister's influence.  

 

If you knew my sister, you’d run too…

First there was the Robert Kneel incident.

Then what happened to Margot Wolfe.

And now she’s found me again.

 

Dr. Irini Harringford was given away by her parents just before her fourth birthday. Although she has spent her whole life trying to convince herself she doesn't need them, deep down Irini longs to understand why she was abandoned, while her parents kept her older sister, Elle.

So when Elle gets in touch with news that their mother has died, Irini reluctantly agrees to return to the family home. But she is ill at ease. She and Elle are not close. Irini knows only too well what Elle is capable of. Inexplicably drawn to her enigmatic sister, yet terrified of the sway she holds, Irini tries to protect herself even as she is sucked back into her family's toxic web of secrets...and soon realizes that the past is more complicated than she imagined, and that her very future rests upon discovering the truth about why she was really given away. Read More

 

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Psychological Suspense, Domestic Suspense, Thriller, Mystery, Book within a book  

 

The Ghost Writer 

 

By:  Alessandra Torre

ISBN: 1940941946

Publisher:  DCA

Publication Date: 10/2/2017 

Format: Paperback

My Rating: Currently Reading

From New York Times Bestseller Alessandra Torre…

I have three months to write the last book of my life. Three months to confess the details of that day, and how it changed everything for me. 

My name is Helena Ross. I’ve written fifteen romance novels, ten of which have become international bestsellers. But this one isn't a romance, no Happily Ever After in place. This novel holds only the truth, which I have run away from for four years. The truth, which I have hidden from the police, from my loved ones, from the world. 

 

This final book?

 

It's my confession.  Read More 

 

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Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Domestic Suspense

 

 

Without Merit 

 

 

By:  Colleen Hoover

ISBN: 1501179764

Publisher: Atria Books  

Publication Date: 10/3/2017 

Format: Audio 

Narrator: Candace Thaxton

Simon & Schuster Audio 

My Rating: 4 Stars 

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Ends With Us and November 9 comes a moving and haunting novel of family, love, and the power of the truth.

“Not every mistake deserves a consequence. Sometimes the only thing it deserves is forgiveness.”

 

The Voss family is anything but normal. They live in a repurposed church, newly baptized Dollar Voss. The once cancer-stricken mother lives in the basement, the father is married to the mother’s former nurse, the little half-brother isn’t allowed to do or eat anything fun, and the eldest siblings are irritatingly perfect. Then, there’s Merit.

 

Merit Voss collects trophies she hasn’t earned and secrets her family forces her to keep. While browsing the local antiques shop for her next trophy, she finds Sagan. His wit and unapologetic idealism disarm and spark renewed life into her—until she discovers that he’s completely unavailable. Merit retreats deeper into herself, watching her family from the sidelines, when she learns a secret that no trophy in the world can fix.

 

Fed up with the lies, Merit decides to shatter the happy family illusion that she’s never been a part of before leaving them behind for good. When her escape plan fails, Merit is forced to deal with the staggering consequences of telling the truth and losing the one boy she loves.

 

Poignant and powerful, Without Merit explores the layers of lies that tie a family together and the power of love and truth. Read More  

 

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Psychological, Suspense, Thriller, Mystery, Noir, Serial Killer  

 

The Mistake 

 

By:  K. L. Slater

ASIN: B073RWKQ5J

Publisher: Bookouture 

Publication Date: 10/4/2017 

Format: Kindle 

My Rating:  4 Stars (ARC)

You think you know the truth about the people you love. 

But one discovery can change everything… 

Eight-year-old Billy goes missing one day, out flying his kite with his sister Rose. Two days later, he is found dead. 

Sixteen years on, Rose still blames herself for Billy’s death. How could she have failed to protect her little brother?

 

Rose has never fully recovered from the trauma, and one of the few people she trusts is her neighbour Ronnie, who she has known all her life. But one day Ronnie falls ill, and Rose goes next door to help him… and what she finds in his attic room turns her world upside down.

 

Rose thought she knew the truth about what happened to Billy. She thought she knew her neighbour. Now the only thing she knows is that she is in danger… 

 

The Mistake is a completely gripping thriller that will keep you up all night, from the top ten bestselling author of Blink, Liar and Safe with Me. Perfect for fans of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. Read More

 

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Serial Killer, Crime Thriller, Noir, Suspense, Mystery 

 

 

Murder Game 

Series:  Ruby Preston #3  

By: Caroline Mitchell

ASIN: B074H5X8DC

Publisher: Bookouture

Publication Date: 10/31/2017

Format:  Kindle

My Rating: 4 Stars (ARC)

To catch a killer, you must first think like one…

A killer is playing a twisted game of life or death with his victims. After he captures them, a countdown begins. He marks the time by sending clues to the whereabouts of the women he has taken in three disturbing images: alive, tortured, dead.

 

In a race against the clock, East London Detective Ruby Preston must play the killer’s terrifying murder game and decipher the clues before more women die. 

 

But this isn’t the first time the police have seen such a sickening crime. The notorious Lonely Hearts Killer, Mason Gatley, was put behind bars ten years ago for murdering six women in exactly the same chilling way. Desperate for more information, Ruby asks her gangster boyfriend, Nathan Crosby, to set up a dangerous meeting to allow her to see into the twisted mind of a murderer.

 

But the closer Ruby grows to the dark and charming Mason Gatley, the more worried her team becomes. Is he really helping her catch the killer? Or is he lining her up to be his next victim? Read More

 

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Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Mystery

 

Silent Lies 

 

By:  Kathryn Croft

ASIN: B074YGZTPB

Publisher: Bookouture

Publication Date: 10/25/2017 

Format: Kindle

My Rating: 4 Stars (ARC)

Your husband didn’t kill himself.’ 

Five years rebuilding your life.

Five words will destroy it again. 

Mia Hamilton lived the perfect life with her husband, university teacher Zach, and their two-year-old daughter, Freya. But everything changed when Zach committed suicide on the same night one of his students, Josie Carpenter, vanished. 

Five years later, and Josie is still missing but Mia has finally found some happiness with new boyfriend Will. 

 

Until one day when stranger Alison walks into her life and tells Mia that her husband didn’t kill himself. 

 

Desperate to find out what really happened to Zach, Mia is forced to put her trust in Alison. But she soon discovers that Alison has her own agenda behind exposing the details of Zach’s death. Can Mia really believe anything Alison says? 

 

Mia must decide how far she is willing to go to uncover the truth – even if she risks losing everything she loves. Read More

 

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Crime, Suspense, Kidnapping  

 

Little Secrets 

 

 

By: Anna Snoekstra

ISBN: 9780778331094

Publisher: MIRA

Publication Date:  10/17/2017 

Format:  Paperback 

My Rating: 4 Stars  (ARC)

What happens when ambition trumps the truth? 

A town reeling in the wake of tragedy. 

An arsonist is on the loose in Colmstock, Australia, most recently burning down the town's courthouse and killing a young boy who was trapped inside. 

An aspiring journalist desperate for a story.
 

The clock is ticking for Rose Blakey. With nothing but rejections from newspapers piling up, her job pulling beers for cops at the local tavern isn't nearly enough to cover rent. Rose needs a story—a big one. 

 

Little dolls full of secrets.

In the weeks after the courthouse fire, precise porcelain replicas of Colmstock's daughters begin turning up on doorsteps, terrifying parents and testing the limits of the town's already fractured police force. 

 

Rose may have finally found her story. But as her articles gain traction and the boundaries of her investigation blur, Colmstock is seized by a seething paranoia. Soon, no one is safe from suspicion. And when Rose's attention turns to the mysterious stranger living in the rooms behind the tavern, neighbor turns on neighbor and the darkest side of self-preservation is revealed. Read More

 

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Women's Fiction, Contemporary, TV/Movie, Romance 

 

Lilac Lane 

 

A Chesapeake Shores Novel #12

By: Sherryl Woods

ISBN: 9780778331339

Publisher:  MIRA

Publication Date: 10/17/2017

Format: Hardcover

My Rating:  4 Stars (ARC)

No one writes about friends, family and home better than Sherryl Woods. Told with warmth and humor, Lilac Lane is a brand-new story in her beloved Chesapeake Shores series, one readers all over the world have waited two years to read!

At the heart of Lilac Lane is Keira Malone, who raised her three children alone after her first marriage broke apart, and who, after years of guarding her heart, finally finds love again. But that love is short-lived when her fiancé suffers a fatal heart attack. Grieving and unsure of what’s next, Keira agrees to move from Dublin to Chesapeake Shores, Maryland, to spend time with her daughter, Moira, and her new granddaughter, Kate, as well as to help her son-in-law, Luke, with his Irish pub, O’Briens.

 

Not wanting to live underfoot, she rents a charming cottage on Lilac Lane, replete with views of the ocean and her neighbor’s thriving garden—not to mention views of the neighbor himself. The neighbor is none other than Bryan Laramie, the brusque and moody chef at the pub, with whom Keira is constantly butting heads. But things get real when Bryan’s long-lost daughter, whom he hasn’t seen since she was a baby, shows up out of the blue. As Bryan and Keira each delve into their pasts, reopening wounds, the rest of the town is gearing up for the Fall Festival Irish Stew cook-off, and making no bones about whose side they’re on. It’s Kitchen Wars meets This is Your Life—a recipe for disaster…or a new take on love?

 

You won’t want to miss this epic return to Chesapeake Shores, a place we’re betting you’ll want to stay forever.  Read More

 

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Non-fiction, Christian, Religion, Spirituality, Inspirational, Devotional 

 

My Time With God 

Renewed in His Presence Daily 

By: Joyce Meyer

ISBN: 9781455560141

Publisher: FaithWords / Center Street

Publication Date: 10/10/2017

Format: Hardcover

My Rating:  5 stars  (ARC)

Over the course of three years, Joyce Meyer recorded in her journal the personal devotions and inspirations that guided her busy life. 

Those writings comprise MY TIME WITH GOD, the 365-day devotional that shares powerful insight into Joyce's spiritual reflections and journey.

Each daily entry guides readers through a narrative of meditations, an uplifting declaration, and relevant scripture to encourage greater intimacy with God. Including spiritual revelations experienced by one of the world's leading Bible teachers, this book will renew readers' minds, offering assurance of God's complete love and desire for closeness with them. Read More

 

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Holiday, Christmas, Contemporary, Romance, HIstorical Fiction, Literary   

 

The Deal of a Lifetime 

 

By: Fredrik Backman

ISBN: 150119349X

Publisher: Atria

Publication Date: 10/31/2017

Format:  Hardcover

My Rating: TBR (pre-ordered) 

 

A Holiday Novella 

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove and Beartown delivers an insightful and poignant holiday novella about a man who sacrificed his family in the single-minded pursuit of success and the courageous little girl fighting for her life who crosses his path.

It all begins with a father telling a story to his son on Christmas Eve. But this isn’t your typical Christmas story. The father admits to his son that he’s taken a life but he won’t say whose—not yet.

One week earlier, in a hospital late at night, the man met a five-year-old girl with cancer. She’s a smart kid—smart enough to know that she won’t beat cancer by drawing with crayons all day, but it seems to make the adults happy, so she keeps doing it.

 

As the man tells his son about this plucky little girl, he slowly reveals more about himself: while he may be a successful businessman, idolized by the media and his peers, he knows he failed as a parent. Overwhelmed by the responsibility of fatherhood, he took the easy way out and left his wife and little boy twenty years ago to pursue professional success. Now he is left wondering if it’s too late to forge a relationship with his son, who seems to be his opposite in every way—prizing happiness over money, surrounded by loving friends in a cozy town where he feels right at home.

 

Face to face with the idea that something is missing, the man is given the unexpected chance to do something selfless that could change the destiny of the little girl in the hospital bed. But before he can make the deal of a lifetime, he needs to find out what his own life has actually been worth in the eyes of his son. And so, he seeks him out and tells him this story…

 

Written with Fredrik Backman’s signature humor, compassion, and “knack for weaving tales that are believable and fanciful” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), The Deal of a Lifetime reminds us that life is a fleeting gift, and our only legacy is how we share that gift with those we love. Read More

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Christmas in London 

 

By:  Anita Hughes

ISBN: 9781250145796

Publisher: St Martin's Press 

Publication Date: 10/3/2017 

Format:  Paperback 

My Rating: 4 Stars  (ARC)

Set during London's most festive time of year and filled with delicious food Anita Hughes' Christmas in London is about love and friendship, and the season's most important lesson: learning how to ask for and give forgiveness.

It’s a week before Christmas and Louisa Graham is working twelve hour shifts at a bakery on Manhattan's Lower East Side. When a young cooking show assistant comes in from the rain and begs to buy all the cinnamon rolls on her tray, she doesn’t know what to do. Louisa is just the baker, and they aren't hers to sell. But the show burned the rolls they were supposed to film that day; so she agrees.

 

The next morning, Louisa finds out that her cinnamon rolls were a hit, but the star of the show was allergic, and the whole crew is supposed to leave for London that afternoon. They want Louisa to step in for their annual Christmas Eve Dinner TV special at Claridge's. It’s a great opportunity, and Digby Bunting, Louisa’s famous baking idol, will be there. Even if he does seem more interested in her than her food.

 

And then there’s Kate, the show's beautiful producer. On their first day in London she runs into the skinny boy she jilted at St. Andrew's in Scotland ten years ago. Now he’s a handsome, brilliant mathematician, and newly divorced. Their familiar spark is still there, but so is the scar of how they left things. Kate and Louisa are busy preparing for the show, but old and new flames are complicating their work.  Read More

 

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What an exciting month for books!  Get ready for fall cozy weather and the upcoming holiday season.  Something for everyone!  

More October News! 

Speaking of Holiday Books, be sure and check out the enchanting
CARDINAL CABIN Blog Tour Host Oct 18.  (On sale now) 

Cardinal Cabin is an enchanting tale about finding love where you least expect it. So come on inside. A cozy fire crackles, lights twinkle on the evergreen tree, snowflakes tap at the windowpanes, and little redbirds bring cheer this time of year.  Read More

Movie News!  Coming in Theatres Oct 6

Highly anticipated:

THE MOUNTAIN BETWEEN US 

Based on novel by my favorite author, Charles Martin

Stranded on a mountain after a tragic plane crash, two strangers must work together to endure the extreme elements of the remote, snow-covered terrain. Realizing that help is not on the way, they embark on a perilous journey across hundreds of miles of wilderness, pushing each other to survive and discovering their inner strength. 

Read More 

One of favorite crime thriller authors (2nd Edition) Available Now

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