L.A. shoe designer, Maddie Springer, lives her life by three rules: Fashion. Fashion. Fashion. But when she stumbles upon the work of a brutal killer, her life takes an unexpected turn from Manolos to murder. And things only get worse when her boyfriend disappears – along with AUD20 million in embezzled funds – and her every move is suddenly under scrutiny by the LAPD’s sexiest cop. With the help of her post-menopausal bridezilla of a mother, a 300 pound psychic and one seriously oversexed best friend, Maddie finds herself stepping out of her stilettos and onto the trail of a murderer. But can she catch a killer before the killer catches up to her…

One of the best things about the free Kindle downloads is that some of them do take you out of your normal comfort zone so there is always a chance that you will find a new author or genre that will then tempt you to purchase more of the same. This book did not do it for me at all. It was rather like listening to one of those teenage girls that just blather on and on about nothing with a few kernels of bits that do matter- with some meaningless and inane bits of TMI. Sadly, I don’t have any patience with these personality types (I am working on it!) and I did not have any patience with this book at all and I am glad that none of my hard earned cash went to actually purchase this masterpiece. The heroine is awful, the plot really thin and I am just so far out of the target market that it seems a bit unfair to rate it as “I did not like it” – but for me – no, no,no, and not many redeeming qualities. If you saw my Musing Monday you know I could not even finish it.

My Gemstone Rating:

Port Fare, New York, has fallen into the clutches of true evil. The Dreser brothers have arrived with a scheme to increase drug sales in the area by whatever means possible. Seth Prescott is part of MET (Mobile Enforcement Teams) a branch of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration). He’s been assigned to work undercover at Port Fare High, and things aren’t going very well, until senior Maggie Brown enters the equation. He’s harbored a secret crush on her from day one, and now that she is in the center of the case, he’s trying to stay clear and objective while walking the line between business and unrequited love.

Maggie is truly the poster child for Heroin Chic, complete with jutting bones and dark-ringed eyes, but is she an addict, or is there another reason for her appearance? She struggles with her feelings for Seth, fearing he is just another person who will eventually let her down, as everyone in her life has done thus far.

Maggie has spent her life caring for her alcoholic mother. A task that has left her heavily burdened and alone. Before long, her mother’s health takes a turn for the worst, sending Maggie’s life into a tale-spin.

While Seth works relentlessly to inject fear into the dealers and flush them out into the open, Maggie fights to stay alive as the hunt turns deadly.

Seth and Maggie’s romantic journey is one of humor, heartbreak, and self-discovery.

I’m not overly familiar with ebook titles, so I assume the frequent errors I picked out in this novel were some fault of digital transfer, because it seems to need a more thorough editing. I found spelling mistakes and grammar errors, but the set-up also seemed rather choppy. It wasn’t properly divided by chapters and really was an overall mess to look at. In comparison to my experience with other ebooks, anyway, that were so clean and trimmed.

For all this, though, I had no trouble being swallowed by this book. It was so charming! It was easy for me to gain respect for Maggie, and her temperament – honestly, with a mother like hers, I’d go crazy. Maggie’s patience is saint-like. I loved Seth as well, sweetheart that he was. It’s a fairytale that someone with such a dreadful life like Maggie would meet a constant hero, but alas, it’s a welcome fairytale. The romance was flawlessly executed. A rare treat, yay!

My Gemstone Rating:

Timely and lyrical, The Cry of the Dove is the story of one young woman and an evocative portrait of forbidden love and violated honor in a culture whose reverberations are felt profoundly in our world today. Salma has committed a crime punishable by death in her Bedouin tribe of Hima, Levant: she had sex out of wedlock and became pregnant. Despite the insult it would commit against her people, Salma has the child and suddenly finds herself a fugitive on the run from those seeking to restore their honor. Salma is rushed into protective custody where her newborn is ripped from her arms, and where she sits alone for years before being ushered to safety in England. Away from her Bedouin village, Salma is an asylum-seeker trying to melt into the crowd, under pressure to reassess her way of life. She learns English customs from her landlady and befriends a Pakistani girl who is also on the run, with whose help Salma finally forges a new identity. But just as things settle, the need to return for her lost daughter overwhelms her, and one fateful day, Salma risks everything to go back and find her.

I desperately wanted to like this book. There were parts of it that were beautifully written. My heart wrenched for Salma — the main character of this piece. Still, it took me a good two or three reads of the first few chapters to even determine what was going on and in what time period — which was aggravating.

The story also had a tendency to move at an extraordinarily slow pace leading to an outcome which was plainly obvious from the very beginning.

I’d be interested to hear other’s thoughts on the novel and so even though I didn’t like it, I’d still recommend it to friends.

The novel centers around Salma, a Bedouin woman who flees her native country after becomming pregnant outside of marriage. She ultimately ends up in the United Kingdom where she must start a new life after escaping various tragedies in her old one.

It really opened my eyes to the struggles and challenges of those who choose to start new lives in new places, which I suppose means that my own disagreement and dissatisfaction with this novel was worth it?

My Gemstone Rating:

For centuries, Lucinda has endured her agonizing reality. As daughter of the High Lord of Hell,she rules over nothing, retrieving the occasional wayward demon and feeding off of the savage Mon�re-of whom she was a member before she died.

Then she encounters the Monre warrior Stefan, who offers himself to her. She is moved beyond measure by her desire for him-and soon finds herself drawn back into the heady eroticism of the Monre. There, she must carve out a home between the jealousy of the dead and the violence of the living, if she is to keep her newfound love-and life..

This book was disappointing. Sunny’s world is derivative to begin with, reading like cross-over fanfiction between Laurell K. Hamilton’s Merry Gentry and Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels, with some original concepts and quasi-original characters. The Mona Lisa books were at least an entertaining read, if I didn’t think too much about the ethical quandry behind lifting so much of other authors’ work (which she all but admits to in one of her acknowledgments) … this one, frankly, bored me. I couldn’t care about Lucinda, and her “males” were uninteresting at best. I’m not sure why I finished it.

It’s not the worst book I ever read, but there are many others on my TBR that I would’ve read first had I known it wouldn’t hold my interest.

How much of an impact can an animal have? How many lives can one cat touch? How is it possible for an abandoned kitten to transform a small library, save a classic American town, and eventually become famous around the world? You can’t even begin to answer those questions until you hear the charming story of Dewey Readmore Books, the beloved library cat of Spencer, Iowa.

As his fame grew from town to town, then state to state, and finally, amazingly, worldwide, Dewey became more than just a friend; he became a source of pride for an extraordinary Heartland farming town pulling its way slowly back from the greatest crisis in its long history.

The very first thing that will draw you into Dewey is the adorable cat that is on the front of the cover. This is Dewey himself of course and looking at those eyes you can see the soul within him. I have seen a lot of cat eyes but his are so expressive! How I wish I had known this lovely gentleman for surely he must be a noble soul just look at how he holds himself. We first meet Dewey on the harrowing cold morning when he is found in the book drop box of the library a shivering nearly dead little kitten. Thanks to the good handling of his new Moms however Dewey comes out of his cold daze and recovers to become a very gregarious fellow. Who wins the heart of everyone he meets in the library.

The story of Dewey the library cat is well written and emotional. It will pull at every single one of your heart strings with every turn of the page. I also love another underlying message within the book how even strangers can be part of a community. Dewey’s fame brought people from all over to meet him and he treated everyone the same. The library became a place for people to come again to relax within its walls and spend some time with the sweet soul who managed to find the best in everyone he met. How can you not be touched by that kind of story?

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a good story and of course those who love animals. If you do not know animals have personality and soul you will by the end of this book. Make sure you have time to read when you start Dewey’s book however because you will not want to put it down.

Zack Knowles and Daniel Wexler have been together for twenty-one years. Zack is a psychiatrist, Daniel an art teacher at a college in Virginia. In the fall of 2002, a few months before the Iraq War, a new artist in residence, Abbas Rohani, arrives with his Russian wife, Elena, and their two children.

But Abbas is not quite what he seems, and soon he and Daniel begin an affair. After love throws the two families together, politics threatens the future of both in ways no one could have predicted.
A novel that explores how the personal becomes political, “Exiles in America” offers an intimate look at the meaning of marriage, gay and straight, and demonstrates the breathtaking skill and daring imagination that have garnered Christopher Bram widespread critical acclaim.

That Christopher Bram is one of our finer novelists today is a given (The Notorious Dr. August: His Real Life and Crimes, Gods and Monsters, Life of the Circus Animals, In Memory of Angel Clare, etc). EXILES IN AMERICA is a very astutely constructed novel, one that explores the concept of displaced persons, whether those persons be gay men in a straight homophobic town, artists in a world of grounded minds, immigrant visitors in the land of the free, or Muslims in a path of fear guarded closely by the Christian ethic. Mix these possible people in a country post 9/11 and prior to America’s (read Bush’s) declaration of war on Iraq and there is a story brooding.

Bram writes brilliantly and moves his story at a terrific pace: EXILES IN AMERICA is a difficult book to put down once started. For this reader the only problem other than the ones mentioned above is the lack of charisma: it is difficult to truly care about any of the people in this book. But perhaps that is another ‘alienation’ Bram wants to introduce – a metaphor for the isolation among people that has been heightened by the current preoccupation with distrust of intimacy and people outside our individual realm. Bram poses questions, delivers the goods, and once again proves that he can create a fine story based on a tough theme.