Down and Out in Beverly Heels by Kathryn Leigh Scott ★★★★

Reviewed by Tracy Harris

        A year ago, actress Meg Barnes had it all—fame, fortune, the house in Beverley Hills and a gorgeous man in her bed.

12 months later and Meg is scraping to find a job, living out of her Volvo and wondering about the fate of her gorgeous husband. Meg still believes Paul was kidnapped despite all evidence that he has simply abandoned her. Her friends, the media and the FBI are of the opinion that Paul has orchestrated his disappearance, taking the ransom that Meg paid to save him and the investments from almost everyone around her.

Life however is starting to look up with Meg being offered a guest role in the pilot for a new TV series. She’s also managed to be invited to stay with an acquaintance and enjoy the perks of a bed that’s not located in the back seat of a motor vehicle. However, reminders of Paul and his shady dealings are everywhere and Meg finds herself in the most important role of her life as she begins an investigation that not only leads to answers but great danger.

Kathryn Leigh Scott has spun a refreshing and quirky tale with a mature heroine who is not your stereotypical blonde bombshell. She  capably draws you into Meg's world.  An easy writing style compliments the story-line and creates a believable backdrop of the lifestyle of a homeless person living and working in Beverly Hills. Kathryn Leigh Scott has written a novel that fans of romance and “light” crime will enjoy.

Purchase DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLEY HEELS here

Purchase links on Amazon (US): Amazon USA

Amazon (UK): Amazon UK

Booktopia: Booktopia

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

            Kathryn Leigh Scott starred as the doomed fiancée of vampire Barnabas Collins in the original Gothic daytime drama series “Dark Shadows,” and in the 1971 film House of Dark Shadows. She also made a cameo appearance in the 2012 feature Dark Shadows, starring Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins and directed by Tim Burton. She is the author of several books about the series, including Dark Shadows Memories and Return to Collinwood.

       Kathryn is a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and launched Pomegranate Press, which publishes books about the entertainment industry. She is the author of The Bunny Years: The Surprising Inside Story of the Playboy Clubs and the novel Dark Passages. Kathryn lives in Los Angeles, California.

More about the book and Kathryn Leigh Scott CLICK HERE

WOOL by HUGH HOWEY ★ ★ ★★★

READ MY FASCINATING INTERVIEW WITH HUGH HOWEY: CLICK HERE

A WORLD WORTH VISITING

If you haven’t heard of ‘Wool’ or Hugh Howey, hold on to your e-reader, you soon will. The hype around his journey from indie author to major book deal is making publishing headlines.

‘Wool’ was first published as a novella in mid-2011 but reader demand from Amazon reviewers had Howey hurrying back to his apocalyptic world to spin out some follow-on stories, five self-published over the next six months.  In January 2012, he released the ‘Wool Omnibus’ containing the stories and shortly later the publishing industry courted him with a seven-figure publishing deal. As well, Twentieth Century Fox and legendary Director Ridley Scott bought the film rights. 

Were there many changes from the self-published e-book to the publisher’s paper-book? “Minor revisions and localization edits,” says Howey.  “The biggest rewrite came from a small request from my extraordinary editor, Jack Fogg. He thought a couple of characters should get an earlier mention. The next day, I sent him a brand new chapter, which we slotted into the original book two. It’s now my favourite chapter in the entire book, and I was excited to record a reading of it for readers who had read the original.”  Howey sees the 550 page Omnibus as “a director’s cut”. 

Set in a post-apocalyptic future, ‘Wool’ tells the story of inhabitants of a two-hundred-level Silo who are bound by strict rules.  Breach them and you are sent outside in a specially made suit to participate in a ‘Cleaning’.  You then clean the only wall-screen that allows the inhabitants a view of the desolate world, before your suit disintegrates and you die.

‘Wool’ opens with the Sheriff who has lost his wife to a ‘Cleaning’.  Then we move through the volumes to view the Silo habitat through the eyes of various characters including Juliette, an engineer who begins to question the values and laws of the Silo. Then the fun really begins.

‘Wool’ is an extraordinary, rare gem. Howey has a talent for creating character depth, pacing, and his world-building is all encompassing. Putting ‘Wool’ down unfinished each reading session felt like I was leaving good friends in peril. The ‘Wool’ saga continues with ‘Shift’, already available on e-book and just released in paper-book.  Go visit the Silo. You won’t want to leave.

My review copy of Wool thanks to the hardworking people at RANDOM HOUSE Australia.
For more information please visit http://www.randomhouse.com.au

Release Dates: Australia and New Zealand: January 2013

To purchase:   click here

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hugh Howey is the author of Wool, a bestselling novel that has appeared in the top 5 of science fiction on Amazon. He is also the author of the award-winning Molly Fyde Saga. He lives in Boone, N.C. with his wife Amber and their dog Bella.

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Fuse (Pure #2) by J.C. Baggott ★ ★ ★★

PART TWO STILL PURE DELIGHT

Last year I fell in love with ‘Pure’ and the marvellous talent that is Julianna Baggott.  So my hand was firmly in the air for ‘Fuse’, part two of this dystopian trilogy.  I wasn’t the only passionate fan.  In between the books, ‘Pure’ has become an award-winning novel. 
The New York Times named ‘Pure’ in its ‘2012 Top 100 Notable Books’.  It was a People Magazine pick for its ‘“Still Hungry?” List’, as suggested reading for ‘The Hunger Games’ fans.  Entertainment Weekly picked it for “Find Me a Twilight” and the list goes on.  It even featured on Suspense Magazine’s “Best Book of 2012” list. 

If you haven’t read 'Pure' then put the first two of the trilogy on your reading list.  As Fox2000 has acquired the film rights and Karen Rosenfelt, the lead producer of ‘The Twilight Saga’ film trilogy will produce, expect to hear a lot more of ‘Pure’ in the future.

Do you need to have read the first book to enjoy ‘Fuse’?  Yes and you will enjoy every minute of the catch-up.  In ‘Pure’ we met Baggott’s finely imagined characters and the devastating and mesmerising post-apocalyptic world of the Dome-dwelling Pures, untouched by the Detonations.  The survivors, the Wretches, live outside in the wasteland, scarred by horrible fusions of whatever object they were nearest during the detonations; dolls heads fused to wrists, wings fused to backs, babies fused to hips and even a boy fused on his brother’s back.

In ‘Fuse’, Baggott hits the ground running as the determined group of Partridge, Pressia, Lyda and Bradwell embark on a plan to save the Wretches from the Dome-dwellers who seem intent on wiping them out. Told via multiple perspectives, our heroes separate on various quests.  Partridge returns to the Dome to confront his dictator Father Willux.  Pressia, El Capitan and Bradwell embark on an odyssey for the antidote to reverse the Wretches disfigurements and Lyda joins the savage Mothers. 

‘Fuse’ thrusts us deeper into Baggott’s horrifying future vision and expands the central characters without slackening the pace.  On the final page, we are left hanging precariously over a literary cliff but if anyone can leave you gladly dangling, it’s Julianna Baggott and her band of extraordinary ‘Pure’ heroes.

My review copy of 'FUSE' supplied by Hachette Australia.

For more information about this book, click through to Hachette website HERE.  

RELEASED:  Febuary 2013

More Information from the Publisher Hachette Australia

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

           Julianna began publishing short stories when she was twenty-two and sold her first nove

l while still in her twenties. After receiving her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, she published her first novel, Girl Talk, which was a national bestseller and was quickly followed by The Boston Globe bestseller The Miss America Family, and then The Boston Herald Book Club selection, The Madam, an historical novel based on the life of her grandmother. She co-wrote Which Brings Me to You with Steve Almond, A Best Book of 2006 (Kirkus Reveiws).
           Her Bridget Asher novels include The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted, The Pretend Wife, and My Husband’s Sweethearts. Asher’s novels are widely published overseas.
          She has also published award-winning novels for younger readers under the pen name N.E. Bode as well as under Julianna Baggott. Her seven novels for younger readers include, most notably, The Anybodies trilogy was a People Magazine summer reading pick alongside David Sedaris and Bill Clinton, a Washington Post Book of the Week, a Girl’s Life Top Ten, a Booksense selection, and was in development at Nickelodeon/Paramount; The Slippery Map, The Ever Breath, and the prequel to Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, a movie starring Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman, and Jason Bateman. For two years, Bode was a recurring personality on XM Sirius Radio. Julianna’s Boston Red Sox novel The Prince of Fenway Park (HarperCollins) was published in spring 2009. It is on the Sunshine State Young Readers Awards List and The Massachusetts Children’s Book Award for 2011-2012.
          Visit the "Pure" website for the first chapter of "Pure", loads of cool stuff and to learn more. Information on purchasing “Pure” and "Fuse" is also there. I highly recommend you buy yourself a copy of each. You will want to read them more than once.

            Visit author Julianna Baggott’s website and blog, with fabulously informative information for writers there. http://juliannabaggott.com/

Click here to purchase Pure

PSYCHOS Anthology edited by John Skipp ★★★★★

(Serial Killers, Depraved Madman and the Criminally Insane)

THE SHORT STORY, ALIVE AND WELL

               Stephen King is arguably one of the master storytellers of our time.  Yet, even he felt he’d fallen out of touch with short story fiction in 2006 when invited to edit ‘The Best American Short Stories 2007’.

In an interview promoting his own collection, ‘Just After Sunset’, inspired by his editing of the volume, he said, “People have forgotten how to read the short story. They’ve fallen out of love with the short story.  People are too lazy to pick up a short story and start over and over again. It’s (too much of) a grab bag.’

John Skipp, editor of ‘Psychos-Serial Killers, Depraved Madman and the Criminally Insane’ certainly ensures it is not a grab bag.  He knows something about great short stories, with his first published short story in ‘The Twilight Zone’ Magazine in 1982.  He’s a New York Times Bestselling author and has co-authored over a dozen successful horror novels, ‘Psychos’ being  his third anthology with publisher Black Dog and Leventhal in the fantasy-horror genre.  So he has credibility in choosing a gripping yarn.

These stories will restore your faith in the short narrative.  Some will stick in your mind, even if you don’t want them there.  These are thirty-eight gems that will keep you reading like the addiction that follows that first black jelly-bean.  Your need for ‘just one more’ will keep you up into the psycho-prowling wee hours. 

You will meet perfectly normal people—you’ll think at first—that hide twisted, dark secrets. And you will meet normal people who don’t realise they have crossed evil’s pathway. Dark humour and light prose dance in perfect combination. Alongside, genre royalty of Neil Gaimin, Thomas Harris, Ray Bradbury, and Edgar Allen Poe, Skipp has included some astonishingly polished emerging authors.

The pleasure of reading a good story is that you don’t want it to end. The wonderful thing with ‘Psychos’, at over six hundred pages, there are plenty of beginnings.

My review copy of Psychos thanks to the lovable people at Murdoch Books and Allen and Unwin Australia

To buy or learn more visit Psychos
Release Dates: Australia and New Zealand: December, 2012  U.S.A.: October, 2012

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Skipp is a New York Times bestselling author and editor whose 23 books have sold millions of copies in a dozen languages worldwide. His first anthology, Book of the Dead, laid the foundation in 1989 for modern zombie literature. He later edited three more zombie anthologies, including Mondo Zombie, which won the Bram Stoker Award for best anthology. He is the editor of three books in Black Dog’s horror series: Zombies, Werewolves and Shapeshifters, and Demons, which also won the Bram Stoker Award. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

 

PRIME CUT by Alan Carter ★ ★ ★★

An Outback Thriller

Reviewed by Tracy Harris

The West Australian outback was never on the career path for Detective Senior Constable Philip “Cato” Kwong. The poster boy for political correctness, Cato’s career had been on the fast-track, until everything goes wrong and Cato finds himself an unwilling member of the Stock Squad, investigating the deaths of rotting road-kill.

Mining town Hopetoun is not part of Cato’s patch, a booming anomaly in a world in economic meltdown. However when a human torso washes ashore on Hopetoun’s scenic coastline, Cato is despatched to investigate and a glimmer of light appears on his career radar. Ignoring the fact that his rescue from highway hell is only for a few days until staff from other departments can be relocated, Cato grabs the opportunity to redeem himself to his old boss, DI Mick Hutchens and takes on the case like he has no tomorrow.

It’s a plan that works well until he realises that the senior officer in the two-cop town is one of his exes, Tess Maguire.  Tess has demons of her own to lay to rest, and the last person she needs to see on her turf is Cato.  After all, where Cato goes, trouble follows, and so he does, making enemies faster than friends as he lifts the lid on migrant exploitation and upsets the power brokers of Hopetoun.

However, as their investigation proceeds and another death comes to light, the whole team becomes a potential target for an even more disturbed criminal mind whose crimes not only cross the decades, but half the world as well.

With a succinct and direct style, Alan Carter has written a novel that grips from the first page to the last. An immigrant to Australia from the UK, Carter has captured the dry Australian spirit accurately. His characters are well drawn and thought out and reflect their locales perfectly.  Carter’s familiarity with the Great Southern region adds to the tale and his personal experiences of Hopetoun and a mining boom give a depth of understanding many authors would do well to emulate.

Thank you to Fremantle Press for our review copy of Prime Cut .

Publication Year  2011

Publisher             Fremantle Press

Awards         Shortlisted, Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award, 2010
Available        in Prime Cut ebook 2011 and Paperback Prime Cut 2011

Sample Chapter   PRIME CUT extract.pdf

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alan Carter was born in Sunderland, UK, in 1959. He holds a degree in Communications Studies from Sunderland Polytechnic and immigrated to Australia in 1991. Alan lives in Fremantle with his wife Kath and son Liam. He works as a television documentary director. In his spare time he follows a black line up and down the Fremantle pool. Prime Cut is Alan Carter’s first novel. He wrote it while he was living in Hopetoun as a kept man.
Awards - Winner, Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, 2011Short listed, UK Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award, 2010

An Interview with Sara Foster

DEEP CONNECTIONS

An Interview with Sara Foster the Author of Shallow Breath

Whilst most non-Australians struggle mimicking the Aussie drawl most readers of Sara Foster’s latest mystery Shallow Breath, set predominantly in Western Australia, would be surprised to learn that the author of this quintessential Aussie story has only lived there for eight years. 

English-born Foster has always felt the land down-under was her second home. Thanks to her Australian stepfather there were many childhood family visits to the sun-burnt country.

The best-selling psychological suspense author credits her “Aussie” friends and her travel around the country for her insight in creating authentic Australian characters in her latest mystery. “I’ve enjoyed talking to many different Australians with interesting stories from similar backgrounds to many of my characters before I began writing.”

Shallow Breath, set in the present day, with flashbacks to the early nineties, tells the tale of Desi, a woman who has done something terrible in her past and now returns from prison to her seaside home hoping to reconnect with her teenage daughter Maya. Maya is finding it difficult to forgive her Mother for her inexplicable actions.  

Told in five parts via multiple view-points, Desi recounts her life in the nineties whilst working at the West Australian iconic Atlantis Marine Park just as it was shutting its doors. It was there she met American Connor, a passionate marine biologist, with whom she develops a friendship which changes her life forever.

Foster spent months researching Atlantis and the true-life drama and public fascination surrounding the releasing of its tamed dolphins back into the wild upon the 1990 park closure. 

Foster continues, ‘I chatted to a lady who lived locally and had worked in the restaurants there who filled me in on extra details.  I also talked to a lot of people who had been visitors and remembered the dolphin shows well and provided their own photos.”

Ironically, one of Foster’s friends with whom she had lost touch approached her on her launch night telling her she used to work with the dolphins there. “I had no idea,” said the surprised author.

Strange connections like this were actually the inspiration for the book. The most relevant to the book reminisces Foster was not of the human-kind.  “In 1999 when I was diving on the Great Barrier Reef, I returned to the boat and was hanging on to a rope waiting to be helped out. I put my face underwater and found myself staring at a ten to thirteen foot minke whale less than an arm’s length away just watching me curiously.”

Instead of being frozen with fear, as Foster had expected to be on encountering an enormous creature, she was instead filled with wonder. “I certainly felt that there was an assessing, intelligent eye watching me.”

Foster counts this underwater encounter, as well as her ”travel to some amazing places”, as the fuel that has steadily grown her passion for conservation over the past twelve years. “Without that experience I don’t know if I would be quite so passionate about saving all the minke whales harpooned every year in the Southern Oceans,” she adds.

She also reminisces of “fabulous encounters” with wild dolphins and an hour-long play session with a baby sea lion in the Galapagos – “this little animal just bolted around me and mimicked whatever movement I made.”

          Readers of Shallow Breath will find themselves bang in the middle of an eco-warrior drama and Foster’s fervor for animal conservation shines. Foster often highlights conservation issues through her Twitter and Facebook accounts and a visit to her website www.shallowbreath.com provides information not only on her book but issues as wide-ranging as the dwindling orangutan population, horrific treatment of dolphins in Japan, and the plight of orphaned Kangaroo joeys after their mothers are killed in culls.
          “I’ve realised just how fragile so much of life is,” says Foster “and how an enormous swathe of the natural world is under threat today from industrial development without respect for nature or regard for long-term sustainability. Shallow Breath developed out of this interest, and I plan to continue talking about it and supporting different causes as much as I can.”

This book is Foster’s third and she admits that it can become “quite intense” juggling her family life in a northern Perth suburb with her young daughter. “Basically, whenever my husband isn’t working he is looking after our daughter while I am locked away with the laptop and piles of draft chapters. I try not to take on too many deadlines so our family life isn’t pushed aside for too long but it’s definitely a challenge.”

With the rise and rise of e-books, and the changes in the industry, Foster believes that “the terror of physical books ‘dying’ is probably a bit of an overreaction.”  Instead she hopes the flexibility offered by e-books may create earning opportunities for writers. “I really admire people like Hugh Howey, whom I think has been particularly savvy in the way he has published his books in different territories.”

Despite her mastery of the Australian vernacular, and without ruling out a future sequel to Shallow Breath, Foster won’t be returning immediately to the island continent in her next book. “I think I’m going to go for some more dark and unusual family secrets in a psychological suspense set over the course of one night in the Lake District in England. Watch this space!”

Read our review of Shallow Breath. CLICK HERE

Review Copy supplied by RANDOM HOUSE Australia. For more information please visit http://www.randomhouse.com.au

For a FREE First Chapter of Shallow Breath CLICK HERE

Visit The Shallow Breath Website to learn how Sara blended fact with fiction to create SHALLOW BREATH.

Release Dates: Australia and New Zealand: December 2012

PURCHASING DETAILS 
You can purchase Shallow Breath from all good books stores in Australia.

E-Book for Australians and International: Amazon   Amazon UK
if you are overseas or in Australia, you can ALSO purchase direct from the author's website.
CLICK HERE.

The Disciple of Las Vegas by Ian Hamilton ★ ★ ★★

NOT YOUR STANDARD HEROINE

 

           Reviewed by Tracy Harris

 

When a small company has a default on a payment or loan, they call in the debt collectors. But who does an International, multi-million dollar business call in when someone has defrauded them of over US$50,000,000?

The answer is simple, or for those in the know, at least. Ava Lee, a Canadian born Forensic Accountant who has partnered with her “Uncle” Chow Tung, an elderly Hong Kong based Chinese businessman who may, or may not, have close connections with the Triad gangs.

For Tommy Ordonez, the richest, self-made millionaire in the Phillipines, they are the answer. As Ava begins her investigations, starting with Tommy’s North American based brother, Phillip Chow, she soon discovers a complex real estate fraud case that ultimately links back to the shady world of on-line gambling. Travelling through San Francisco, Las Vegas, Vancouver and London, Ava is forced to watch her back as a contract has been put on her by a disgruntled adversary.

Not your standard heroine, Ava is not prepared to let others do the dirty work and, in her line of business, it can certainly get dirty. Cool and calm, she refuses to be flustered when attacked by anonymous strangers, hit men or even confronted with matchmaking close friends.

Ava is an unusual character whose unique personality adds to the tale. An exotic combination of traditional and respectful Chinese culture and modern Canadian values, Ava is not prepared to back down from any confrontation, nor allow herself or her colleagues to be manipulated into actions which are not of any benefit to themselves. Tough, resourceful, chic and incredibly intelligent, it’s certainly a wild ride as we follow Ava on her business trip like no other.

Ian Hamilton has lead an exciting life working as a journalist, a senior executive with the federal government, a diplomat, and a businessman with international links. His first book, a non-fiction publication, was published almost 40 years before his first Ava Lee novel. Fortunately, his experiences from travelling throughout the world have given him an excellent background to draw upon for his current series. Like Ava, Ian and his wife are based in Canada.

If you are a fan of strong female characters who don’t back down in a crisis and who don’t take prisoners, the Ava Lee series is certainly one you don’t want to miss. Be warned, there are punches thrown and blood spilled so if, as a reader, you’d prefer to avoid violence, this is not the book for you.

 

The review copy of 'The Disciple of Las Vegas' supplied by NetGalley.

For more information about this book, click through to Hachette website The Disciple of Las Vegas 

RELEASED:  November 2012

More Information from the Publisher Hachette Australia

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

          

It was a life-threatening health scare that prompted Ian Hamilton to write his first in the series of captivating Ava Lee novels. Just two days out of hospital and recovering from surgery, Ian sat down at his computer. The name ‘Ava Lee’ came to him and the first chapter was quickly written. A few short weeks later, the first Ava Lee novel was completed.

Ian is not a stranger to the literary world. He began his career as a journalist and wrote a non-fiction book in 1968, The Children’s Crusade, which was a Canadian Book-of-the-Month selection. He has written for several magazines and newspapers in Canada and the U.S., including Maclean’s, Boston Magazine, Saturday Night, the Regina Leader-Post, the Calgary Albertan, and the Calgary Herald. He has been a senior executive with the federal government, and as worked internationally as a diplomat and businessman. Although there are 40 years between books, Ian never lost his passion for writing.

The years he spent travelling the world on business, spending countless hours on planes and hotels, became important influences on his writing, providing personal insights into the world of business and into the many people, places and cultures Ava Lee encounters.

His inspiration for the Ava Lee series did not end when the first book was complete. About half way through writing the first book, an idea for the second book came to Ian and he built it into the plot of the first. He began writing the second book the day after the first book was finished. The same is true for the third and fourth books. Within eight months, all four books were complete. Ian secured a four-book deal from his publisher before the last two books were even read by the publisher. International rights have been sold into the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Holland, Germany and worldwide Spanish and French rights.

Ian is currently working on the continuation of the Ava Lee series and has already completed books 5 and 6.

Ian lives in Burlington, Ontario with his wife Lorraine. He has four children and seven grandchildren.

Visit this author's website  http://ianhamiltonbooks.com/