Last Call for April 2012 Reviews

We’re tying up April tours and wanted to put out one last call if anyone wanted a chance to review these books before the deadline of March 20.  If you don’t have time for a review and would like to send an interview, have the author write a guest post for you, or post a pre-formatted spotlight with a book giveaway, that’s great, too!

Please leave a comment below or email Dorothy at thewriterslife (at) gmail.com if you are interested.  Thank you!

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Susan Spence will be touring April 2 – May 25 2012 with her historical fiction novel, A Story of the West.

Matt Daly’s eyes narrowed as he faced the stranger in front of him. “I know I don’t have a quarrel with you because I don’t know you,” he growled.

“But I know you,” the menacing outlaw sneered back, clearly ready to use the Colt revolver hanging from his hip.

Only a few years earlier Matt and his father had trailed a herd of longhorns north from Texas into Montana Territory. Upon arriving, they decided to stay and raise cattle on the fertile grasslands.

Shortly after the Northern Pacific rail line was completed and it became easier for people to head west. Lavina Lavold stepped off the train in Miles City with her family and immediately caught Matt’s eye. When they fall in love, Matt’s life seems perfect.

There are unscrupulous men, however, determined to build cattle empires. A ruthless neighbor decides he wants the Daly’s claim, and he will stop at nothing to acquire their ranch. Since the entire area is undeeded land, it is up for grabs and there is no law on the rough frontier to prevent a range war. When Matt refuses to back down, his life takes a dangerous turn.

Forced to abandon his family, his travels take him down a long road of misery. An encounter with an Indian medicine man helps him to regain his sense of self, but not until after he gives in to his desperation.

A Story of the West depicts life during the open range ranching days of the Wild West. Besides plenty of action, I have added a women’s perspective to settling the American West. I researched the era to ensure historical accuracy and have written an accurate portrayal of life during this time, as well as an exciting read.

6 spots left

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Barbara Lampert will be touring March 5 – April 20 with her dog memoir, Charlie: A Love Story.

Charlie: A Love Story tells of the beautiful love between Charlie, a Golden Retriever, and his best friend Barbara. When Charlie turned eleven and started having some health problems, a gardening journal Barbara was keeping quickly became mostly about Charlie. So his story is told in journal form while it is taking place. And because it was not meant for publication, it is an intimate look at an incredible connection between a canine and a human. And the story of that connection is told by Barbara, a psychotherapist who specializes in relationships.

Charlie’s story is far more than a depiction of his struggles against illness. Those years revealed the depth of his character, the wisdom he had gathered over his lifetime. And those years contained some of Charlie and Barbara’s most memorable times together, the culmination of their connection.

Charlie defied the odds, lived much longer than anyone thought he would. There was no rational explanation for some of what he pulled through, except that Charlie lived his life with an enthusiasm and vigor not found in many beings.

Charlie: A Love Story is about devotion, joy, loss, and renewal, about never giving up or giving in. But mostly it’s about a great love affair, the love between Charlie and Barbara.

2 spots left

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Stephen Manoj Thompson will be touring April 2 – 20 with his alternate historical fiction novel, Coma Story.

Coma Story resembles a fresh David vs. Goliath.

In order to get back the Oil Islands, a de facto U.S. territory located roughly in the center of the Indian Ocean, the narrator, a coma survivor, must recall his lucid dreams. Living with a post-coma condition that no one could understand, Aldan Foy’s fascinating coma journey explores the link between conscious dreaming and creative problem solving. Based on the clever happenings of his dream episode, Aldan along with his multi-talented Chagos friend, Tarzan, conspires to gain back Chagos Archipelago from the Union Jack.

Aldan is a survivor of the Boxing Day Tsunami. On the fateful day at Mauritius, he was working on a documentary film about the Chagos Islanders’ plight. Falling into coma, the unforgiving tsunami transforms his entire life. He enters an altered state of consciousness and gets into the habit of lucid dreaming. The pursuit of fighting for the Chagos cause starts to preoccupy his coma life. Chagos Islanders are entitled British citizens, which create an opportunity for Tarzan to partake in a British reality TV show and become famous. With the new found star power and influence, Tarzan attracts attention for his displaced people, currently living in the slums of Mauritius and the Seashells, and they eventually manage to get Chagos Archipelago from the British without violence. However in this novel’s fictional universe, the U.S. President gets kidnapped, communal violence erupts in the Muslim world, intentional introduction of non-indigenous species corrupts an inhabited island and cyber-security threat creates a big chaos; all timely planned for the Chagos homeland cause.

After Aldan’s coma recovery, his accomplishment inside his conscious dreams seems meaningless, but he knows if he can remember how he freed the Chagos Island, he just might be able to replicate the creative solution in real life. As Aldan struggles to recapture the crucial moments of his dream, Tarzan falls ill. In any case, their goal to provide an optimistic future for the displaced islanders remains intact. Coma Story is not about the tragic cost incurred due to the superpower’s unjustifiable military strategies, but rather an attempt to uplift those victimized.

Coma Story is neither tragedy nor indictment but inspiration.

2 spots left

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Jessica Chambers will be touring March 5 – April 20 2012 with her women’s fiction novel, Dark is the Sky.

How far would you go to protect those you love?

Twelve years earlier, Olivia and Joel Cameron invited the family to spend the weekend at their new country home. Olivia hoped to provide them all with a much-needed escape from their anxiety over the recession crippling the nation; instead, the visit ended in tragedy when Scott, Joel’s wild and outrageously sexy youngest brother, was found dead. The repercussions tore the family apart.

Now, Olivia’s sister Violet has persuaded her to host a reunion. She claims it’s time they finally put the past behind them and laid their ghosts to rest. However, some wounds run too deep to heal, and some secrets are too destructive to remain hidden. Still grieving for the man she loved, Violet is determined to uncover the truth behind his death—a truth she believes lies within her own family.

As the web of deceit and hostility begins to unravel, family ties are tested to the limit, and no one will emerge unscathed.

1 spot left

All bloggers regardless of whether they are reviewing this book will receive a free PDF copy for their generosity in hosting our author.

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Denise Robbins will be touring April 2 – May 18 with her romantic suspense, Phish NET Stalkings.

All she wanted was to find love. Was that too much to ask? How difficult could it be to find one man, the perfect man for her?

After dating the losers of the century, Jane decides there has to be a better way. She turns to an online dating service. After all, they guarantee a ‘happily ever after’ or your money back.

Jane East, CEO of Not-So- Plain- Jane’s organic cosmetics wants to fall in love with a man who makes her toes curl when he kisses her. Unfortunately, the one man who makes her toes curl also wears ladies’ pink underwear and a badge. The pink underwear she could probably deal with, but the badge is a different story.

Ever since seeing her mother and granny Pearl murdered by men with badges, Jane has a fear of cops and anyone who carries a badge. Especially, because the killers are still on the loose and searching for her.

Former FBI Cybercrime special agent turned small-town Chief of Police, Cooper Chance, gets caught with his pants down and his family jewels tucked in pink ladies’ underwear with lacy frills when he meets the woman of his dreams. That’s not his only issue. The woman has a fear of cops. If he can get past her guard, maybe he can save her life.

5 spots left

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Caroline Alethia will be touring April 2 – May 18 with her literary fiction/travel novel, Plant Teacher.

Hailed by Huffington Post contributor Joel Hirst as a compelling and powerful story, Plant Teacher begins in 1972 when a hippie in Oakland, California flushes a syringe of LSD down a toilet. Thirty-five years later, the wayward drug paraphernalia has found its final resting place in Los Yungas, Bolivia, the umbilical cord between the Andes and Amazonia.

Enter into this picture two young Americans, Cheryl Lewis, trying to forge her future in La Paz and Martin Banzer, trying to come to terms with his past in the same city. The two form an unlikely friendship against the backdrop of a country teetering at the brink of dictatorship and revolution.

Bolivia sparks the taste for adventure in both young people and Martin finds himself experimenting with indigenous hallucinogenic plants while Cheryl flits from one personal relationship to another. Meanwhile, the syringe buried in the silt in a marsh in Los Yungas will shape their destinies more than either could anticipate or desire.

Plant Teacher takes its readers on a fast-paced tour from the hippie excesses of Oakland, to the great streams of the Pacific Ocean and to the countryside, cities, natural wonders and ancient ruins of Bolivia. It reveals­ the mundane and the magical, and, along the way, readers glimpse the lives of everyday Bolivians struggling to establish equanimity or merely eke out a living during drastic political crisis.

5 spots left

All bloggers regardless of whether they are reviewing this book will receive a free PDF copy for their generosity in hosting our author.

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Ashley Mackler-Paternostro will be touring in April and May 2012 with her beautifully written literary fiction debut novel, The Milestone Tapes.

Jenna Chamberland never wanted anything more than to be a wife and mother. That is, until she realized that her life was ending after a three-year battle against breast cancer. Now, all she really wants is more time.

With 4,320 hours left to live, Jenna worries for her loved ones and what she knows awaits them on the other side: Gabe will have to make the slip from husband to widower, left alone to raise their seven-year-old daughter; Mia will be forced to cope with life without her mother by her side. In a moment of reflection, Jenna decides to record a set of audiocassettes — The Milestone Tapes – leaving her voice behind as a legacy for her daughter.

Nine years later, Mia is a precocious sixteen-year-old and her life is changing all around, all she wants is her mother. Through the tapes, Jenna’s voice returns to teach Mia the magic of life, her words showing her daughter how to spread her wings and embrace the coming challenges with humor, grace and hope.

THE MILESTONE TAPES is the journey of love between a parent and child, and of the bonds that holds them when life no longer can.

4 spots left

All bloggers regardless of whether they are reviewing this book will receive a free PDF copy for their generosity in hosting our author.

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Valerie Stocking will be touring March 5 – April 20 with her historical coming of age novel, The Promised Land.

It’s 1966, just two years after President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, and twelve-year-old Joy Bradford’s life is changing dramatically. Born and raised in the white suburbs of Connecticut, Joy is moving to Willets Point, Florida to live with her mother Jessica because her parents are divorcing. Hoping it really is the Promised Land that her mother describes, she joins in Jessica’s enthusiasm only to find out how horribly wrong that vision is.

Unfortunately for Joy, the move does nothing to change her mother’s emotional and mental instability, resulting in a continuation of the physical and verbal abuse she is all too used to receiving. Her new school is years behind her old one, the kids dress and act differently, and on just the second day, Joy has a run-in with her geography teacher. Things are going from bad to worse until Clay Dooley, a mixed-race boy from that same geography class, offers his friendship. The two become close, sending shockwaves that dovetail with a growing sense of tension and unease in the community as a whole. Clay’s father Clytus, a well-educated black man, attempts to open his own clothing store in the white section of downtown Willets Point. This causes Jessica’s new lawyer cum boyfriend and leader of the local Klan chapter, Bill McKendrick, to join with other white citizens in using great force to block Clytus’ dreams. Tempers flare and emotions run high when Clytus refuses the Klan’s subsequent demand that he and his family move out of the white neighborhood they live in, setting off an explosive confrontation that will change them all forever.

An absorbing and suspenseful coming of age story set against the tumultuous backdrop of racial tensions in mid-1960’s America, Stocking’s blend of historical fact and fiction is as relevant today as it was during the explosive Civil Rights era. Probing the human psyche for the deep-seated fears that fuel the fires of racism and bigotry, she expertly builds characters who feel their very lives are at stake by the changing times. Full of insight and intensity, The Promised Land is a spellbinding journey you won’t want to miss.

2 spots left

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Jill Muehrcke will be touring April 2 – May 25 with her inspirational motivational book, Waking Up Happy: A Handbook of Change with Memoirs of Recovery and Hope.

WAKING UP HAPPY: A HANDBOOK OF CHANGE WITH MEMOIRS OF RECOVERY AND HOPE: Powerful, absorbing, and beautifully written, this first-of-its-kind book of transformation and healing includes memoirs of people who have recovered from addictions, harmful habits, and intolerable situations, along with exercises readers can do to make the same transformations in their own lives.

4 spots left

All bloggers regardless of whether they are reviewing this book will receive a free PDF copy for their generosity in hosting our author.

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