OH MAAAAAN!!! I think Christmas in July is over for Hallmark. No more Hallmark Original Christmas movies. Wow, my Christmas spirit left pretty quick once the movies stopped playing. The heatwave we are having certainly didn’t help. I wish I had paid more attention, and realized the last one I watched would be the last one until the real Christmas season. It’s like not realizing you ate the last Jr. Mint until your see the empty box, and wishing you had appreciated that last one more. It’s just as well. I really need to get cracking on the Halloween costumes if I want to have them done in time for the Willits KOA Halloween Costume contest. I think I have given up on the Demogorgon masks being able to open and close. I am just going to go with a few that stay open and a few that are closed the whole time. With my luck and talent they are going to look less like the frightening otherworldly creatures that bring fear and destruction, and more like a bunch of ugly goth flowers. If we win the contest as ugly goth flowers I would still be pretty happy though.
If you haven’t had a chance yet to check out all the pictures I took of our trip to the botanical gardens, click here to explore the new Gardens page of the blog. More to be added soon. Enjoy!!
Louisiana Lament : A Humorous New Orleans Mystery; Talba Wallis PI Series #3 (The Talba Wallis PI Series)
by Julie Smith
Genre: Mystery | Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
FREE for a limited time
Louisiana Lament is the THIRD book in the Talba Wallis mystery series by Edgar-winning author Julie Smith.
NOBODY KNEW WHO SHE REALLY WAS… BUT HER PARTIES WERE TO DIE FOR!
They’d be Queen Latifah and Danny DeVito if this were a movie. In Louisiana Lament, they’re P.I.s Talba Wallis and Eddie Valentino. Talba’s young, African-American, computer-brilliant, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and a noted poet by night; Eddie’s pushing seventy, white, hopelessly tech-challenged, and pretty much burned out. Somehow, they make it work — with Talba’s tech-and-street smarts, and Eddie’s old-school hard-earned savvy, they even complement each other.
One stormy day Talba gets an emergency call from Janessa, the sister she barely knows, and arrives to find a body floating in a swimming pool — the mortal husk of Allyson Brown, known in New Orleans literary circles as the Girl Gatsby. Like Gatsby, Allyson was one of those mysterious rich people who move to town, give amazing parties, and seem made of moonbeams.
Investigating, Talba finds the reality behind the Gatsby glamour. Allyson was a con artist who neglected her children, ignored her bills, and lied like a rug. But she wasn’t the only bad actor on the local literary scene. Fellow poet Rashad leads Talba a merry chase, leaving a trail of clues in the form of poetry, while novelists engage in fisticuffs, unseemly preening, and unforgivable arrogance.
Before it’s all over, Talba finds out just how seamy, petty, and downright murderous her fellow literati can be.
Click here to get this book for FREE
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I Love You My Child, I’m Abandoning You: WW2 Holocaust Survivor memoir
by Ariela Palacz
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs | History
FREE for a limited time
An exciting human documentary taking place in France during the Holocaust
Little Paulette is an excellent pupil, surrounded by a loving family. But one day she is suddenly forced to confront the cruel reality of the Holocaust, together with the rest of French Jewry. Paulette is forced to separate from her family, and as a result, abandoned by her father. But despite her difficult and shocking life experiences, she remains naïve and optimistic, holding on to her thirst for life even in the darkest hours.
An authentic and moving life story
I Love You My Child, I’m Abandoning You is an exciting human documentary, taking place in France during the Holocaust. It honors the memory of the French Jews who perished in the Second World War, while simultaneously giving voice the persistent will to live, and the strength and bravery that characterize those who survived and gave rise to the future generations of the Jewish people.
An existential odyssey that puts a spotlight on the human need and right to belong
Ariela Palacz shares her life story through the character of little Paulette Szenker, sensitively weaving past and present into an authentic and moving journey that shifts between WWII France and contemporary Jerusalem. A story about the human spirit and the thirst for a family, a tradition, and a nation, that will touch your heart.
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Children’s Book: The Power Bells
by Maytal Ramati, Orit Zemach
Genre: Foreign Languages | Children’s eBooks
FREE for a limited time
Four magical creatures that will change your world.
Hey kids!
Have you ever felt hurt or scared? Have you ever felt alone?
We want to tell you that we are here for you! That you don’t have to deal with all this by yourself.
Being a child and going to school is not as easy as we parents think. Our children need to make hard choices and deal with challenges on a daily basis, usually without having the right tools.
The lives of Libby, Yalli, Amit and Roni are not much different than other children’s lives. But they find magical creatures who help them – The Power Bells.
The Power Bells represent the four elements; Fire, Air, Water and Earth a. They help children around the world deal with daily situations and make good choices. These lucky kids know: “The moment you call us, we will be there in a snap.”
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Fat Girl (Romance in Rehoboth Book 1)
by K.L. Montgomery
Genre: Literature & Fiction | Humor & Satire | Women’s Fiction | Contemporary Fiction
FREE for a limited time
All Claire wants is a thin body and her dream man.
Is that too much to ask?
With fresh ink on her divorce papers and a new job on the horizon, Claire Sterling is tired of being the Fat Girl. With the help of her gay best friend, a body image coach, a new fitness regime, and lots of wine and snark, she sets out to find her Happily Ever After just in time for her fortieth birthday.
Will she get the body and the man of her dreams, or is she forever destined to be the Fat Girl?
Fat Girl is part of the Romance in Rehoboth Series, where the ladies are strong and independent and the men are actually nice guys. These funny, bodypositive romantic comedies are set against the backdrop of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware’s top vacation destination. Each book features a different couple and a happy ending, and they do not need to be read in order.
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Smoke Rising: The Supernatural Bounty Hunter Files (Book 1 of 10): An Urban Fantasy Shifter Series (The Supernatural Bounty Hunter Series)
by Craig Halloran
Genre: Fantasy | Mystery, Thriller & Suspense | Contemporary Fiction
FREE for a limited time
An unlikely pair on a collision course with trouble.
Bounty Hunter John Smoke never liked the rules. As a result of his overly aggressive — and often illegal — arrest methods, he ended up behind bars. But the Bureau won’t let him be. Placed in the able care of beautiful, no nonsense, Sidney Shaw, his new FBI handler, Smoke needs to alter his loose-cannon ways to remain a free man.
But there is an unchecked evil festering deep in the heart of the nation’s capital. A shadow conspiracy than won’t be defeated by conventional means. A vast, hidden network of criminals with the terrifying ability to shapeshift into monsters is spreading its supernatural sickness in the very fabric of human society.
No ordinary mortal can fight the evil. But, there is nothing ordinary about John Smoke. Sidney Shaw is about to discover for herself as she follows Smoke’s trail into the darkest, most secret corners of Washington, DC. Smoke and Sidney must fight the evil that will stop at nothing to tear them apart while destroying a nation as well.
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