Category: Book Reviews

Wool places author Hugh Howey among Science Fiction’s greatest authors!

I just finished reading the Wool Omnibus, and I’m floating. WOOL is everything a great Science Fiction should be – amazing, visceral, delightful story filled with powerful characters caught up in an epic search for meaning! The birth of a great science fiction author is a very special event, and WOOL puts its author up [...]

Wednesday December 26th, 2012 in Book Reviews, Indie publishing, Novels, Writing craft | No Comments »

A Powerful Memoir of Healing and the Spirit of Survival

Tonight I finished reading one of the most inspiring books I’ve read in a long time – M. J. Adam’s Unforgiving – the Memoir of an Asperger Teen I met the author at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference a few weeks ago, and talking with her was a pleasure from the first moment. How could [...]

Thursday November 8th, 2012 in Book Reviews, The Writing Life, Writing craft | 1 Comment »

Thinking About Love

Today is a special day for me. Think About Love is now available as a Kindle book on Amazon! This one is special for a couple of reasons. Think About Love was the first of my books to be reviewed by Publisher’s Weekly. My editor at Kensington sent me the review before I saw a copy [...]

Wednesday July 25th, 2012 in Book Reviews, Indie publishing, Novels, Romances, Vanessa Grant Novels | No Comments »

Lawrence Block: lies, spiders, and more lies (book reviews)

Telling Lies for Fun & Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block My rating: 5 of 5 stars I read Telling Lies for Fun and Profit in the early 1980s, a couple of years after I’d decided to put aside my attempts to write a publishable fiction novel for a while.I knew I [...]

Sunday September 25th, 2011 in Book Reviews, Writing craft | No Comments »

Writing and publishing in 2011, Penwarriors, and the power of pull

EC Sheedy’s blog postings always make me think, and her latest Penwarriors.com posting is no exception EC’s “THE SIDE EFFECTS OF WRITING” got me thinking once again about the universe of publishing, writing, and the tangle of “empowerment + uncertainty” that the explosion of indie publishing has brought to modern writers. I replied to EC’s post [...]

Thursday May 19th, 2011 in Book Reviews, General | No Comments »

A Discovery of Witches – Deborah Harkness’ fascinating world

Last week, sitting in Oxford University’s atmospheric Bodleian Library, Dr. Diana Bishop and I brushed fingers over an ancient manuscript … and slipped into the compelling enchantment of Deborah Harkness’s “A Discovery of Witches.”  Harkness drew me more deeply under her spell as she threw each new challenge at her compelling heroine, Diana, a witch [...]

Tuesday May 17th, 2011 in Book Reviews | No Comments »

Mary Ann Shaffer Makes Potato Peel Pie delicious!

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows My rating: 4 of 5 stars Slipping gently into the enchanting story world of “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society”, I’m falling under the spell of authors Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. The story is told through [...]

Friday December 24th, 2010 in Book Reviews, Writing craft | No Comments »

Heroism, romance, and good writing – Nevil Shute

A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute My rating: 5 of 5 stars Nevil Shute is one of my favorite authors, and A Town Like Alice is my favorite of his novels. A twentieth-century British author, Shute is probably best known for On the Beach, which became a major motion picture staring Gregory Peck and [...]

Monday December 20th, 2010 in Book Reviews, Writing craft | No Comments »

Hooked on J. R. Ward’s Brotherhood series

TDark Lover by J.R. Ward My rating: 5 of 5 stars I’d been resisting Dark Lover for months before I read it in 2006. I had read several of Anne Rice’s vampire novels a few years earlier and decided it wasn’t a genre I had any further interest in. So when one of my writer [...]

Tuesday December 14th, 2010 in Book Reviews, Writing craft | No Comments »

Finding treasure in Jack Reacher

Recently EC Sheedy suggested I try Lee Child’s Jack Reacher mystery series. Any recommendation from EC is gold, so I went looking for Jack Reacher and I found fictional gold. Years ago I began writing my own stories because I love great characters and I’d exhausted the local library’s ability to satisfy my hunger for [...]

Saturday December 11th, 2010 in Book Reviews, Great mysteries, Writing craft | No Comments »
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