A Gaggle of Book Reviews

Death of a Gentle Lady is the newest Hamish Macbeth mystery by bestselling author M.C. Beaton. Hamish is the local policeman for the small Scottish Highlands town of Lochdubh, or black lake. Lochdubh is small enough that Hamish is the entire police force for the town, and he lives in the police station. Sleepy town or not, his fellow townspeople are delightfully quirky, and Hamish appears to be quirkier still. Hamish lives with his dog and “domesticated” wild cat, plus he attracts an ex-fiancée and an ex-girlfriend, even as he is planning to marry.

I am appalled that I haven’t read any of the books in this series before, especially because I adore mysteries set in the UK and because there have been 22 novels by M.C. Beaton in the Hamish Macbeth series. While the newest book in the series, Death of a Gentle Lady picks up on threads that come out of previous novels, it is a wonderful stand-alone novel as well. Additionally, once you’ve enjoyed the detecting of Hamish Macbeth, you have a built-in book list to work through! Sometimes finding a series belatedly works out quite well.

The “Gentle Lady” in the title of Death of a Gentle Lady is a misnomer – the victims are not particularly gentle. Mrs. Gentle is a relative newcomer to the small town of Lochdubh, and she has already made quite an impact. Mrs. Gentle inhabits the “Folly”, a small castle built on a cliff on the Scottish coast. She is a perfect gentlewoman to the townspeople, but she is quite rude to Hamish when he sees through her facade, to the point of suggesting to his supervisor that Hamish should be removed from his post. After seeing Mrs. Gentle berate her maid, Hamish offers to help Ayesha with her visa. The offer of help turns into an marriage proposal, which would help both of them – Ayesha would have a British passport and could escape from Mrs. Gentle’s clutches and Hamish would be able to keep his police station.

Lochdubh is no longer a sleepy village when there are two deaths in a matter of days, police detectives visit to investigate the murders, and there are threats against the life of Hamish Macbeth. One wonders why the Superintendent had been considering closing the police station in Lochdubh once the body count rises – though perhaps the only crime in Lochdubh is murder! The interactions between the various police officers, Hamish’s ex-girlfriends, and the villagers are incredibly engaging. The characters in Death of a Gentle Lady are multi-faceted and show a freshness that is not frequently found in a series with this many books.

M.C. Beaton has created a wonderful mystery that leaves readers flipping back through the pages looking for the clues they missed. These are the best mysteries – the kind that are a surprise, and yet you kick yourself for not figuring out the clues that the author has left. I really enjoyed Death of a Gentle Lady, and recommend picking up a copy, and then reading the earlier books as well!

This review is part of a MotherTalk Blog Tour

The Natural Superwoman: The Scientifically Backed Program for Feeling Great, Looking Younger, and Enjoying Amazing Energy at Any Age is a new book by Dr. Uzzi Reiss (OB/GYN) and his daughter Yfat Reiss Gendell. Dr. Reiss is an Ob/Gyn in private practice Beverly Hills, CA who works with about 6,000 women a year to find natural solutions to women’s health issues. Ms. Gendell is the partner in a literary agency she co-founded, as well as being the co-author of several other health and non-fiction titles. The premise behind The Natural Superwoman is to build on the information in the previously published book, Natural Hormone Balance for Women, and help women be healthy and feel good through diet, exercise, and supplements.

The Natural Superwoman is a very eye-catching book: it has a bright pink cover with gold accents, an eye-catching tagline, and several questions on the back which guide you to “Feel like you again with Dr. Reiss’s groud-breaking program.” Inside, the book is broken into easily-digestible segments, with quizzes popping up every few pages to help you identify trouble areas, and then text to help educate you. The first part of the book focuses on lifestyle changes, part two on bioidentical hormones, part three on balancing mood, and part four on living disease-free. The sections are well-designed and set up so it is a very approachable book – easy to access the information you are looking for, and then get hooked by the text and keep reading.

When I am reviewing a non-fiction book, the first places I look are the resources and index. If a book doesn’t have resources to back it up, and an index that will help you find information quickly, then it isn’t a good resource. At the beginning of The Natural Superwoman, the authors say that a full list of changeable resources was available online, but they do include footnotes and some resources within the book. The index within The Natural Superwoman makes it very easy to find an area of the book that you wish to revisit. The layout of this book makes it very easily approachable and more likely that you will want to keep reading after finding your original answer.

I was prepared to dislike The Natural Superwoman, and I ended up very impressed. Due to our dietary restrictions, my own health issues, and my children’s health, I have done quite a bit of research into supplements and nutrition, and we have surrounded ourselves with others who have done that research as well. I wondered about the quality of information from an M.D., as well as questioning how well a man would understand the needs of a woman’s body. Dr. Reiss credits his wife for helping him understand reach epiphanies about bioidentical hormones because of her experiences, which makes him seem much more approachable. I had also assumed that Dr. Reiss would be affiliated with the source of bioidentical hormones, but he doesn’t even suggest only one answer – he refers readers to compounding pharmacies. After reading The Natural Superwoman, I think it is a valuable resource for women, and a good introduction into thinking differently about health and nutrition.

While I don’t agree with all of the information within The Natural Superwoman, I do agree with a lot of it. If you are looking for a place to start research on non-pharmaceutical options for improving health and mood, this is a great beginning. If you want to learn more about how hormones, vitamins, and minerals work together, The Natural Superwoman is a very useful guide. Much of the information in The Natural Superwoman has been published previously in other, less-mainstream books; it is wonderful to see an approachable book that extols the virtues of Vitamin D and Fish Oils! I recommend checking out a copy of The Natural Superwoman – it is easy find a part that speaks to you, and the writing style will keep you engaged.

Kim Harrison is the bestselling author of the Rachel Morgan series. Her newest book, The Outlaw Demon Wails will be released soon, and our review recommends picking up a copy! In addition to being a great writer, Kim was very friendly and agreed to this interview.

1. While I think everyone should read all of your books, they are also wonderful as stand-alone novels. It appears to be a difficult balance between giving the reader enough information and cluttering the book with too much information. How do you balance the amount of back story you give?
   

   I prefer writing with as little back story as I can get away with, and in fact, I think sparse back story has become one of my stylistic trademarks. I often find myself hearing in my head, Diana, my editor, telling me, “Just a line or two,” and I will stop the story flow to add what’s needed. I’m a lot more interested in what’s coming next compared to what’s happened in the past, but I’ve found an unexpected challenge in trying to find new ways to drop a line here, a line there, into Rachel’s thoughts that give old information in new ways, or even better, give out old information tied to a character’s emotion or new resolve. The quick drops of information give the new reader what he or she needs to know to follow the story, but the old reader, hopefully, finds something new to think about. And sometimes, I just chuck the back story and hope for the best. The tomato issue, for example, is a big slice of back story, but there have been entire books where I mostly ignore it because it just doesn’t matter to the story itself. It’s all about giving what the reader needs, only when they need it. And when I forget, Diana is always there to bring me back in line.

2. You have changed the way I look at tomatoes! I know that tomatoes are some of the most bio-engineered foods now, was that a reason why you chose the tomato as the catalyst for the Turn? Or was it alluding to Adam and Eve? Or something else entirely?
   

   I love tomatoes, and I usually have a couple varieties growing in with my landscaping bushes. Forget the formal vegetable garden, they grow everywhere! I chose tomatoes as the means for humanities destruction for a couple of reasons. As you guessed, it was indeed a nod to one of the first engineered tomatoes that flopped on the grocery store shelves. But mostly it was a reference to the B-rated movie, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Killer tomatoes. You’ve got to love it.

3. You have created characters with a lot of depth, ones with plenty of shades of grey. How do you manage that depth, and not make Rachel pure and Trent evil?
   

   I thoroughly enjoy writing villains, I like them almost as much as my protagonists, and allowing the bad guys to evolve redeeming features or better yet, setting their “evil” deeds in the middle of a moral dilemma is one of my favorite ideas to explore. I write with the motto “one man’s good is another man’s evil,” and that makes for interesting characters, both good and bad. For a lot of people, evil equals power, and power is attractive. As the books progress, Rachel herself is finding in her the very things that she once considered evil, and watching her come to grips with that has been interesting to say the least. Is there pure evil? Only as much as there is pure good, and I enjoy seeing that come to light in the Hollows.

4. Every author’s paranormal world has different characteristics. Did The Hollows come to you suddenly, or did you build it piece by piece?
   

   The Hollows slowly evolved from that very first bar scene, piece by piece, species by species, and making it all mesh has been a challenge. If you pick the series apart, you can see how I took the first few books to develop the vampires, then turned to the Weres, and now, Rachel seems to be exploring demons. Building the magic of her own species of witch has probably been the slowest process as I bring new elements in as Rachel needs them, and I’m looking forward to finding out what happens now that she is consciously finding out what it means to be a witch.

5. Rachel has had a hard time with her public image in the past few books because she has demon “smut” on her aura. How did you come up with the concept of demons darkening a person’s aura?
   

   Unfortunately I don’t remember where the idea for demon smut came from. If I had to guess, it probably came from my need to explain the magic with as much logic as I can, and since nothing is created or destroyed, the imbalance for changing the laws of nature has to show up as something! A hazy smut on one’s aura just seemed to fit a lot of the mythology out there already, yet be something unique to the Hollows. It sort of took on a life of its own until now it is becoming a major part of the story line.

6. You have written a series that has clues from the first book being uncovered in the sixth, and many mysteries that take a few books to uncover. Did you outline the first 6 books as a series originally? Can you explain a bit of how you conceptualized it?
   

   That is a great question. Though I never did sit down and write a series outline, I did finish that first book with some definite ideas of how I’d like to see the series end. Characters like Ceri popped up unexpectedly, but they melted seamlessly into the overall story arc in my head. The relationship with Ivy was a complete surprise, as was Kisten himself, but the ending to The Outlaw Demon Wails is remarkably close to what I had envisioned. I have a new story arc I’m working on now, pulling on a few new characters and building on a couple of ideas that sparked in both For a Few Demons More and The Outlaw Demon Wails. Hopefully it will be a smooth transition as Rachel shifts her focus.

   Working on a story arc that spanned six books was a challenge, but it came together much like how I write a book. I have an idea of what I’d like to see, and an idea of how I’m going to get there, but no matter how much I plot, scribble, plan, and outline, I always follow a new idea and occasionally scrap everything and rewrite my outline to get to the original end. It’s this mix of plot and free-flow thinking that keeps me interested in the story and my fingers on the keyboard.

7. There are a lot of surprises in The Outlaw Demon Wails and several secrets about Rachel uncovered. You’ve written that this book ends one section of Rachel’s life, and is a beginning to the next. Do you have a similar plan for clues that are uncovered in later books? Do you have a plan for how many more books will be in this series?
   

   I do plan on starting threads throughout the next set of books that will culminate in the final volume, but as to how many books it will take to get there, I don’t know. As before, I know where I want to end up, but the individual story, not the series goal, is where my main focus is when I start working on a rough draft. If I can’t wiggle the next step toward that series goal into the current book, it has to wait for the next book.

8. There are many paranormal novels that double as chick-lit or romance. Do you feel a need to balance the witchy part of Rachel with her dating side? Also have you caught any flack about Ivy’s bisexuality and interest in Rachel?
   

   Do I feel a need to balance the magic with Rachel’s personal life? Rachel’s personal life is so closely tied to her witchy and business life that the two seem to march side by side pretty evenly without author intervention. I have found that Rachel’s personal life tends to blossom in the middle portion of the book when the action seems to slow, serving as a natural balance.

   I hear from readers who are enjoying the relationship between Ivy and Rachel quite often, and the response has been, for the most part, positive. The potential for Ivy and Rachel to become physically close has been in the storyline from the very first book, but it hasn’t been until recently that I have known for sure how this particular thread is going to be tied off. No spoilers here, but I will say that their relationship is evolving into something more stable. Stable doesn’t mean everyone is getting what they want, but Rachel and Ivy are beginning to realize that what you want might destroy what you need. And choices are being made.

   9.Rachel grows up a lot in The Outlaw Demon Wails. She learns about different types of love, and about the effect that her life choices have on others. While that’s an important lesson, do you have a plan for balancing that with her impulsive nature?

   Rachel is growing up fast with certain characters leaving the series, and this goes a long way in curbing her impulsive nature. Readers will see her slowing down, assessing the possible outcomes, and then moving forward. Somehow she’s still getting into trouble, but now it’s not from not thinking. As a writer, I’m enjoying this new side of Rachel, and I hope the reader does, too.

9. So, will Rachel end up with Trent? Or is her future boyfriend going to be someone else? (I know, I know, you can’t answer that) So instead, after reading your “about the author”, my daughter and I ask What is your favorite type of sushi?
   

   Trent? No, not Trent, although a one-night-mistake might be really fun to write. I do have my eye on someone as Rachel’s happy end, but it’s not quite going as I planned, turning into something a little more complex and interesting. I guess we’ll see what happens. I learned early on not to try to script out Rachel’s love life, but just let it happen. Sometimes I feel like Rachel’s mother, presenting her with blind dates and scripting meetings . . . and then Rachel does something Rachel-ly, and it goes downhill.

   Mmmm, sushi. My favorite is something called a sweet potato roll, which sounds really southern when I write it out, but shrimp tempura or a tuna roll are right up there, too. I’m not as good with the chopsticks as Ivy purports to be, but I’m not bad . . .

   Many thanks Kim, for a great interview!

   Readers, be sure to check out our review, and pick up The Outlaw Demon Wails!

   Kim’s publisher, Eos Books is celebrating a decade of publishing sci fi/fantasy. Check out the Eos blog and Eos Books for information, free ebooks, and previews as part of their celebration. Don’t miss the podcast interview with Kim!

Felicia Sullivan was the guest on tonight’s Motherhood Uncensored Blog Talk Radio, talking about her amazing book The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here: Scenes from a Life. I was able to chat with her for a few minutes during the show, so you can hear my voice by listening to the show. The whole show is great, but I love the end of the show especially, when Kristen and Felicia discuss the book being a difficult read at times, but overall an uplifting read. Please scroll down to read my review, and don’t forget to visit ParentBloggers for a chance to win a copy of Sky!

The Outlaw Demon Wails is the upcoming sixth book in the outstanding Rachel Morgan series by Kim Harrison. Rachel is a white witch who works with a living vampire and pixy as a type of paranormal bounty hunter. Harrison has created a parallel universe to ours where the Turn came in the late 60’s as humanity battled a bio-engineered tomato, and the paranormal species (weres, vampires, witches, elves, pixies) came “out of the closet”. Rachel, Ivy, and Jenks live in The Hollows, a neighborhood with a high Interlander population. They work helping protect Interlanders and humans from the bad guys, often assisting the I.S., but their techniques can be rather unorthodox, and are often misunderstood.

In The Hollows, there is very little black and white – no one is purely bad, and no one is purely good. Rachel’s main nemesis is a politician she has known since childhood – Trent Kalamack. However, Rachel has been forced to do some “bad” things, and sometimes Trent has done “good”; they are sometimes forced to work together, too. All of Harrison’s characters are so multi-dimensional it’s hard to put them into only one category. Reading her novels makes you feel as if you took a trip through to Rachel’s world; the descriptions are incredibly vivid, creating a strong mental image. Your mind holds tight to the illusion that you have been pulled into The Hollows, smelling the spells and coffee, and making it impossible to put down The Outlaw Demon Wails or any of its predecessors.

This chapter of Rachel’s life takes place a few months after the end of For a Few Demons More, during the time around Halloween. Al, a demon Rachel had bested, has found a way out of his jail, and is breaking demon laws by trying to kill Rachel, her family, and her friends – and they can’t all hide in her sanctified church home/office. Rachel needs to track down who is summoning Al, plus Rachel’s friend Ceri has a predicament that requires her help, there’s a new guy in town who’s interested in her, and there are a lot of surprises that pop up along the way.

Each of the sub-plots of The Outlaw Demon Wails is intertwined, bringing Rachel to an inevitable conclusion. This was originally planned to be the end of the series (but it’s not!), and it is the end of one segment of Rachel’s life. She is forced to accept things she never expected, and do things that are far outside of anyone’s comfort zone. It is, however, the beginning of a new life for Rachel, a time when she is growing up and realizing that her actions have consequences on the lives of her loved ones. The Outlaw Demon Wails is a very intense book, one that challenges the reader and the characters – I can’t count the number of times I was on the edge of my seat!

While I strongly recommend reading each of the Rachel Morgan novels, you could read The Outlaw Demon Wails as a compelling stand-alone book as well. Kim Harrison does a great job balancing background for a new reader or one who has forgotten aspects of earlier books without cluttering the book.

If you enjoyed her earlier books, you will love The Outlaw Demon Wails. If you were saddened by the ending of For a Few Demons More, you’ll enjoy the sense of closure in The Outlaw Demon Wails, and should also listen to this interview with Kim Harrison, and read the exclusive Kisten short story in the For a Few Demons More paperback. If you haven’t had a chance to read the other books by Kim Harrison, if you haven’t read much paranormal literature, and/or if you really enjoy mystery and suspense, you should pick up a copy of The Outlaw Demon Wails. I savored The Outlaw Demon Wails, knowing I would have a long wait until book 7. I look forward to rereading the whole series, picking up the early clues that later turn into important plot points. Kim Harrison spins a tale that catches you in its web, and you are caught in her world long after the novel ends.

This book was received from the publisher for review. Eos Books is celebrating a decade of publishing sci fi/fantasy. Check out the Eos blog and Eos Books for information, free ebooks, and previews as part of their celebration.

This review is part of a ParentBloggers book tour. Visit ParentBloggers for a chance to win a copy of The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here: Scenes from a Life!

To learn more about Felicia and her book, be sure to listen to the Motherhood Uncensored show featuring Felicia, I have a cameo as a caller.

The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here: Scenes from a Life is the newly released memoir by Felicia Sullivan, creator of the Writers Revealed podcast, among other projects. I have been lucky enough to work with on Writers Revealed, and which piqued my interest in her memoir. This is a book about Felicia living through her mother’s addictions and relationships, surviving a very difficult childhood, and then struggling with her own addictions. I have seen friends and family members struggle with addictions, and it was amazing to look into Felicia’s life and read a brutally honest account of living with addiction.

The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here: Scenes from a Life is a particularly apt title. Felicia uses scenes from her childhood mixed together with chapters that follow her adult life through her addiction and into her recovery. In doing so, the book gains depth, as we know some of the “why” behind Felicia’s troubles and addiction. We also see her incredible honesty as she bares her life and soul to the readers, displaying to the world her own wrongs and embarrassing times, which many people would bury. Felicia gives us a window into her world, and then pulls us through the window as we are caught between the memories and her current life.

Felicia worked hard to separate herself from her mother (at the time the book was written, she hadn’t been in contact for in 11 years), and at first I couldn’t grasp why she became an addict. My thoughts are mirrored in the discussions between Felicia and her friends as she is struggling with her own addictions. Felicia is determined not to become like her mother, but the cocaine calls to her:

you wonder how it is you got to this point. Because you told yourself in your bathroom that first time in December … with two rolled bills and neatly cut lines that you’d never be an addict like your mother because you survived the war that was her, because you convinced yourself you were stronger than she was. And then, there go the lines.

Felicia follows this quote a page later with a description of her feelings about cocaine. First, she describes it for her friend, and then she completes the description for the reader:

“It’s like Broadway up my nose,” I say.
What I fail to tell Emily is how many times I’ve tried it since. And although I savored my first glass of red wine and the many that followed, cocaine is different. I like — no, I love cocaine. I tolerate the nausea, the constant swallowing, the teeth grinding — anything for that rush when the world seems simple, beautiful, and large enough to fit me in.

When she is on cocaine, Felicia is able to escape “the awkward, stammering girl who never feels smart enough, white enough, pretty enough.” After struggling to fit in as a child, first alcohol and then cocaine give her the confidence to change her self-image. The change between shy, bullied child and self-confident writer and executive is so well written and well examed that the reader can truly grasp the impact addiction can have. If you are suddenly feeling a sense of self-worth, how do you give that up?

Felicia bares her soul, giving us a good long look at her life. She chronicles her own fight with addiction and mixes in childhood memories. The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here is not an easy read by any means – Felicia’s childhood experiences were not like those of the children of addicts I knew, well-fed and sheltered in the suburbs. These are vignettes of a year eating only potatoes, of shielding her eyes so she wouldn’t see cockroaches scurrying in the floor in front of her, of seeing her friend’s mother unconscious for 36 hours, and of taking her mother to the Emergency Room over and over. I have never read a book that pulled me so far into the real world of addiction; Felicia uses such intense detail when recounting the horrors she survived that I feel as if I was walking in her shoes beside her.

While Felicia has cut off contact with her mother, The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here isn’t a psychobabble “blame the mother for everything” book. It’s an intense look into the dark world of addiction. Readers will walk away from this book with a much deeper understanding of what it is like to be caught in the life of an addict, or caught in an addiction. I highly recommend The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here, to everyone, but especially for anyone who knows addicts or those recovering from addiction.

Atomic Lobster is the latest novel by bestselling Florida writer Tim Dorsey. Dorsey brings a sense of humor to crime and suspense in the Sunshine State. If you’ve read Dorsey’s other novels, you’ll be thrilled at the number of characters who return to the scene of the crime in this novel. If you haven’t read his other books, this is a fun crime story, with a lot of humor and unique characters. When you add in the flip-book of a lobster claw at the bottom of the pages, it’s fun for all ages!

Dorsey’s main character in Atomic Lobster, Serge, is a combination of mob boss, stand-up comic, and Jeopardy contestant – he murders people, has sex in the back of a car while his friend is driving, and collects dirt to create a Legacy for himself. Serge has his own moral compass that guides the story; he knows that the mild-mannered Jim Davenport helped him in the past, so now Serge will do anything to protect Davenport when he is threatened. Serge’s choices lead to some mind-boggling situations, plus a lot of damaged people and homes.

Atomic Lobster starts as a collection of vignettes; we catch a glimpse of each character as they move towards each other. Serge’s traveling companions are his rather dim-witted friend Coleman who is on a quest for the biggest bong, and a pole-dancer named Rachael. When the characters converge on Lobster Lane, we find a famous football player enjoying a game of catch, Serge “house-sitting”, a secret agent named FoxTrot, an ex-con released from prison, and a support group for non-confrontational men; a very unusual mix! As the story continues, we add senior citizens on a cruise, some smugglers, and an accidental virgin named Johnny.

Tim Dorsey’s characters each have enough quirks to make them feel real, but overdone. I’m not sure I’d want to have a beer with all of them, but I could easily picture them having a beer together! Dorsey uses each vignette with a character or group of characters to move the plot forward. The overlap between these characters shows that in Dorsey’s world there are no real coincidences; everything is inter-connected. Not many other authors would have one set of characters drop a body off a bridge, then have it fall into the windshield of another character’s car!

I really enjoyed Atomic Lobster, and recommend it to anyone who likes a bit of humor with their crime. If you want to get a taste of Tim Dorsey’s writing, you can read the beginning here. There are several other authors who mix crime and humor, and if you are a fan of any of those, you can’t go wrong with Tim Dorsey’s books and Atomic Lobster!

This book was received from the publisher for review.