Novelspot

I’m a fan of cop-dramas, thrillers and suspense-action stories. They get my blood pumping and my mind racing to solve the puzzle. When I’m in the middle of reading a good thriller, I start to think that I could do whatever the hero is doing. In a pinch, I’d be quick on my feet; I’d be able to talk down the bad guy or outwit him. Well, that’s what I’d like to think and books like A Play of Shadows by Geoff Geauterre feed that illusion.

Professor Ralph Tomthwaite, who considers himself average in every way, is pushed to do extraordinary things when his neighbor is mysteriously murdered and the whole affair is quickly covered up. Other characters in the book also turn into everyday heroes…so long as your everyday includes butlers and big bank accounts. A Play of Shadows has money and power in spades.

How do you measure love? Is it by the way he laughs with you? The way he makes you laugh with him? The way he handles all those little things in life that you don't want to be bothered with? Or could it be measured by the sacrifice one is willing to make to be with the one that they love? I like that last one, myself. This is the question posed in Rosemary Kaenel's short It’s Called Love.
 
Pamela Moore is plagued with her daughter's complaints about the inconveniences Pamela endures living on a farm with her second husband, Edward. Shelley just can't understand what could possibly keep her mother in a place with no modern conveniences, not even indoor plumbing. Pamela suffers a fall that renders her helpless when her back is injured. Now Shelley feels justified in asking her mother to move to town. Although Pamela doesn't want to be a burden to Edward, she's not ready to leave the man she loves, even though he has begun to spend more and more time out in the barn, instead of inside with her. Doubts plague Pamela until…

When the synopsis of P.C. Cast's Divine by Blood landed in my inbox, I felt I had to take a chance on a story that started out with a woman from a parallel universe being freed from a tree into modern-day Oklahoma. Even though I had not read the first novels in this series, I just had to find out what kind of story could come of that beginning so I picked it up and started reading.

After a lengthy introduction to the history of the Partholon universe, we are introduced to Morrigan Parker, an 18 year-old who feels that she doesn't fit in with the rest of the girls she knows. Raised by her grandparents after her mother died giving birth to her, Morrigan at last finds a place she feels comfortable – the Alabaster Caves, which are filled with dazzling crystals.

When I was younger, like most girls, I loved horses. I grew up in Kentucky, smack in the middle of horse-country, but despite that I never owned a horse or even learned to ride. And that’s why I picked up Death by Dressage by Carolyn Banks. The adult me likes mysteries and the little girl inside just wanted to play with the horses.

Death by Dressage follows Robin Vaughan, the plucky, talkative heroine and amateur sleuth, as she investigates the death of one of the most hated women in Austin’s horse community: Veronika Ballinger. The rich and powerful Veronika loved to find what bothered someone the most and rub his or her nose in it, just for fun. That means that just about everyone who knows horses in Austin, and possibly beyond, had it out for her. Except for one little thing: the police believe that it was all an accident; that she was kicked by one of her horses. But if this were true, why did the police arrest Robin’s best friend Lola Albright?

One of the things I hate most is coming to a movie after it has already started. I spend precious minutes catching up on the plot and characters, and before I know it, the movie is over and I've missed it all!

I have to admit this was one of my concerns when I picked up Nalini Singh's Caressed by Ice since it is the third installment in her Psy-Changeling Series. Lucky for me and for all you spec fiction readers out there, Ms. Singh does a great job of catching us up and pulling us into the action quickly.

Judd Lauren is the man you want at your back if a bar fight breaks out. He's strong, fast and can melt a person's brains with a single thought. It doesn't hurt that he's incredibly sexy and mysterious too. What a combination!

Okay, so you go back in time and, sidestepping the rules, you mess up the future. What do you do now? I suppose it would depend on what it was you messed up. If it were only a small thing, misplaced a watch, broke a wagon wheel, spoke to the wrong person, you could probably fudge it over and get out of "time", back to your own era and hope for the best. But if you stopped someone from being born, that's another story altogether. That's the problem a time tourist faces in On Eagle's Wings by Rebecca Goings.

Shannon Phillips is trying to get to her grandfather's cabin to escape a marriage to a cruel and hateful man. She has gone so far at to hire Otis Pratt, a man reeking of whiskey and sweat, but owning a rickety wagon, to take her there. When he gets her out in the middle of nowhere, thinking there is no one else around, Pratt decides to collect his payment for his services in a manner other than in cash. Lucky for Shannon there is an Indian Brave watching from a low rise nearby, or is it lucky? Shannon wonders if being the captive of the savage would be better or worse than being raped by the disgusting man she hired.

As I said in the review for Laurie C. Kuna’s Some Practical Magic, these books fell into my hands strictly by chance. I only knew ImaJinn books from certain authors --Saintcrow, Arthur, Sams, and Brown. I regretted that I hadn’t really looked beyond those authors. So after finishing Some Practical Magic, I was more than ready to see if its sequel, That Old Black Magic, displayed the same standard of writing as its predecessor.

It was forty years ago when the witch's Tribunal handed down the punishment that restricted Endora Bast's magic and condemned her to being a familiar. Now that same tribunal needs her to save the entire witch community. But Endora is not so sure that she wants to help after what they did to her.