Posts Tagged: adult fiction

Book Review- Promise Keeper; Maine Shore Chronicles

02 May, 2012 by in Mary Fremont Schoenecker, mystery, Promise Keeper; Maine Shore Chronicles, suspense 1 comment

Promise Keeper; Maine Shore Chronicles
by Mary Fremont Schoenecker
Hardcover; 226 pages
Published October 21, 2011
by Five Star
ISBN: 1432825372
Book Source: Author
4 stars
Book Sumary From Amazon: The theft of a painting on loan to the Cornerstone Gallery and the disappearance of Suzanne Petrone, the owner of the painting, send gallery owner Paul Fontaine on a search for both. When the stolen painting turns up for sale in Sarasota, Florida, Paul travels there in the hope of unraveling Suzanne’s existence in that city and finding the truth about her connection to the painting. But the Sarasota CID detectives and the FBI Art Crime Team form a task force with other plans in mind. Conflict and turmoil builds as this engrossing tale unfolds to a startling climax.
Danielle’s Review: Paul Fontaine has been shot, and the woman he loves may be involved. Mary Freemont Schoenecker’s next edition in the Main Shore Chronicles features Paul and his quirky family trying to sort out their personal lives as illness and marriage plans overwhelm them all. Luckily for Paul, his Tante Margaret is able to harness her psychic abilities to help him face the truth as he journeys to Florida in search of a stolen painting.
Mary Freemont Schoenecker has created characters as comfortable as the company of old friends. Paul is as emotionally fragile as his ailing father back at home, as he must come to grips with whether or not his beloved Suzanne is involved in an art heist. He is underwhelmed by the officials investigating the case, but his passion for both truth and love carry him through. Along the way we meet a colorful, spry Floridian ensemble, ready to keep him comfortable until he is ready to return home again.
I did not read the first installments of this series, and I wish I had. The Maine shore and its accompanying culture and heritage make for a beautiful setting. The mysterious art world heist kept me fascinated as I got to know the extended Fontaine family. Sharing Paul’s crime solving journey was an enjoyable ride into the Keys and hurricane season.
PROMISE KEEPER is a cozy, relaxing read I can recommend, but only after picking up the first two in the series.
Danielle Thorne
Author Bio: After early retirement from State University of New York, I pursued free-lance writing. I wrote a column for a newspaper in Saratoga Springs, New York and feature articles for newspapers and regional magazines in Florida. My first book, a children’s novel was chosen by a small press for a History Project, part of a NEH grant proposal. The grant was not received and after many rejections the first “book of my heart” was put on a shelf.
Undaunted, my dreams grew bigger. Our youngest son completed a genealogical search of his ancestors which inspired me to write a historical novel using those ancestors as characters. I felt pretty competent about research, but never did I anticipate it would take several years.

Meantime, I definitely needed help with the craft of writing adult fiction. I joined organizations, attended conferences, networked with authors and editors, joined a critique group and struggled with rejections― until finally it happened―a contract from a publisher !

I am a member of The Historical Novel Society, The Questers, chapter #1355, and The Friends of the Venice Library. Many thanks to Romance Writers of America, Tara Chapter, for the help I received as a new writer.

I write, read and enjoy life on the beach with husband Tom. Although I miss the Adirondack Mountains of my former New York State home, The Gulf of Mexico has inspired a whole new life of writing for me.

Horses Never Lie About Love Blog Tour

27 Oct, 2011 by in simon schuster Leave a comment

Fire and Ice is honored to be the first stop in the blog tour for

Horses Never Lie About Love: A True Story
by Jana Harris
Hardcover, 288 pages
Expected publication: November 1st 2011
by Simon & Schuster
ISBN 1451605846

When Jana Harris moved with her husband to Washington State for a teaching job, she realized that she could also fulfill her lifelong dream of having a horse farm. And Harris knew the horse on whom she could build her dreams the minute she saw her on a ranch in the Eastern Mountains where a herd had been corralled to be sold: a beautiful, deep dark red–colored mare known as a blood bay, standing about sixteen hands, with a pretty head with a white star and a narrow stripe that slid down her face to two black nostrils. Something about the way the mare guarded her handsome foal, a black two-month-old 200-pound colt, spoke to Harris. The mare was named True Colors.

But when True Colors was delivered to Harris’s ranch three months later, she was unrecognizable. She had gone feral, run away, and been recaptured. Terrified of people, she was head-shy from the infected sores on her face and her lungs were damaged by smoke-induced pneumonia. She sensed demons hiding in everything from the scent of fabric softener on clothes to a gate in a fence. Her will to escape was enormous. This injured, traumatized horse existed between two worlds—wild and domesticated—and belonged to neither. But there were glimmers of hope: The other horses fell in love with her on sight, just as Harris had. And true to her name and herself, True Colors would never pretend to be something she was not; with her wise, intuitive nature, she would end up changing the lives of everyone she encountered, animal and human.

Horses Never Lie About Love is the story of this remarkable horse and the revelations about life and love that she gave Harris over the course of their decades together. Now thirty-three years old, this complex, magnetic animal retains the outsize personality that transforms everyone around her, both human and equine. True Colors has grown to become the heart of the range and the farm, her quiet wisdom transmitting a strength of character that transcends the thin line between animals and the humans they love. There is a famous horseman’s saying: A horse never lies about its pain. But maybe we should also consider: A horse never lies about love.

About the Author: A poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist, Jana Harris has been a Washington State Governor’s Writers Award winner and a PEN West Center Award finalist. Born in San Francisco and raised in the Pacific Northwest, she worked for six years as director of Writers in Performance at the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York. She now lives with her husband in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, where they raise horses. She studies the riding discipline of dressage and competes.

Ms. Harris teaches creative writing at the University of Washington. She is editor and founder of Switched-on Gutenberg (http://www.switched-ongutenberg.com/), one of the first electronic poetry journals of the English-speaking world. Her seventh book of poems, The Dust of Everyday Life, an epic concerning the lives of forgotten Northwest pioneers, (Sasquatch) won the 1998 Andres Berger Award, and she has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer (for Manhattan as a Second Language and Oh How Can I Keep On Singing?). In 2001 she won a Pushcart Prize for poetry for her poem “I Drive You From My Heart.” More information at http://www.janaharris.net/

View the full blog tour schedule and more about the book here:
Click here to read an excerpt.

We are giving away one copy of Horses Never Lie about Love courtesy of Simon & Schuster as part of the blog tour. To enter click here and fill out the form. Giveaway ends November 9, 2011. A big thanks to Simon & Schuster for the chance to be a part of their tour!

Book Review-The Language of Flowers

25 Oct, 2011 by in book review 2 comments

The Language of Flowers

by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Hardcover, 336 pages
Published August 23rd, 2011
by Ballantine Books
ISBN 034552554X
Source: BEA

Rating: 5 Stars

The Victorian language of flowers was used to express emotions: honeysuckle for devotion, azaleas for passion, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it has been more useful in communicating feelings like grief, mistrust and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings. Now eighteen, Victoria has nowhere to go, and sleeps in a public park, where she plants a small garden of her own. When her talent is discovered by a local florist, she discovers her gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But it takes meeting a mysterious vendor at the flower market for her to realise what’s been missing in her own life, and as she starts to fall for him, she’s forced to confront a painful secret from her past, and decide whether it’s worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness. “The Language of Flowers” is a heartbreaking and redemptive novel about the meaning of flowers, the meaning of family, and the meaning of love

I usually read to help me drift off to sleep at night. Most nights I will read read a page or two before fatigue takes over and I slip off to dream land. Last night was different; last night I read The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. I started the book earlier in the day, reading a chapter here and there throughout the day, but not making much progress amid the craziness that is the life of a mom of five. When I headed off to bed, intending to follow my regular ritual of reading a page or two before drifting off, I had no idea that I would lose a night of sleep and not regret it.

The Language of Flowers is a book that will both break your heart and fill you with hope. Victoria’s circumstances often feel devoid of hope, and yet she over comes her struggles one at a time. We watch her make terrible mistakes, yet learn and grow from them. We see her grow from an angry girl into a woman trying to help others understand their emotions and communicate their hopes and dreams for the future through the Victorian language of flower.

If you chose just one book to read the remainder of this year, may I suggest that you chose The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh? I have not been so moved by a book since I read the much acclaimed The Help.

Content: Some swearing, mild sexual content.

The Radleys Blog Tour and Giveaway

29 Sep, 2011 by in matt haig, radleys, simon schuster 17 comments

Fire and Ice is thrilled to be today’s stop on The Radley’s Blog Tour! Read an excerpt below and be sure to enter to win their giveaway for a copy of THE RADLEYS in both hardcover and paperback signed by author Matt Haig and some blood-red hot chocolate by commenting on this post!

The Radleys
by Matt Haig
Paperback, 384 pages
Published June 7th 2011
by Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group
ISBN 1451610335

Just about everyone knows a family like the Radleys. Many of us grew up next door to one. They are a modern family, averagely content, averagely dysfunctional, living in a staid and quiet suburban English town. Peter is an overworked doctor whose wife, Helen, has become increasingly remote and uncommunicative. Rowan, their teenage son, is being bullied at school, and their anemic daughter, Clara, has recently become a vegan. They are typical, that is, save for one devastating exception: Peter and Helen are vampires and have—for seventeen years—been abstaining by choice from a life of chasing blood in the hope that their children could live normal lives.

One night, Clara finds herself driven to commit a shocking—and disturbingly satisfying—act of violence, and her parents are forced to explain their history of shadows and lies. A police investigation is launched that uncovers a richness of vampire history heretofore unknown to the general public. And when the malevolent and alluring Uncle Will, a practicing vampire, arrives to throw the police off Clara’s trail, he winds up throwing the whole house into temptation and turmoil and unleashing a host of dark secrets that threaten the Radleys’ marriage.

The Radleys is a moving, thrilling, and radiant domestic novel that explores with daring the lengths a parent will go to protect a child, what it costs you to deny your identity, the undeniable appeal of sin, and the everlasting, iridescent bonds of family love. Read it and ask what we grow into when we grow up, and what we gain—and lose—when we deny our appetites.

About the author : Matt Haig is the author of The Last Family in England, a UK bestseller narrated by a Labrador; The Dead Fathers Club, a widely acclaimed update of Hamlet featuring an eleven-year-old boy; and The Possession of Mr. Cave, a horror story about an overprotective father. His work has been translated into twenty-four languages. He lives in York, England, with the writer Andrea Semple and their two children.

Giveaway: Each Friday, we will select one person who commented on all participating blogs for that week to win a prize. The winner will be announced each Monday on Helen and Rowan’s twitter accounts @Helen_Radley and @rowanradley and in the next Monday’s blogger’s post.

The prize will be a copy of THE RADLEYS in both hardcover and paperback signed by author Matt Haig and some blood-red hot chocolate.

This Week’s Blog Tour Stops for the Radley’s

Monday September 26.
Sara @ http://www.novelnovice.com/
Tuesday September 27.
Tirzah @ http://www.thecompulsivereader.com/
Wednesday September 28.
Noa @ http://www.paperbackdolls.com/
Thursday September 29.
Heather @ http://www.fireandicephoto.blogspot.com/
Friday September 30.
Heidi @ http://www.yabibliophile.com/

Watch The Radleys book trailer
Follow Helen and Rowan’s twitter accounts: @Helen_Radley and @rowanradley
Visit the Radley’s webpage including a great quiz to find out: ARE YOU A RADLEY?

The Radleys by Matt Haig

Comment here and on each of the blog tour stops this week to enter win the huge prize pack! Visit the blog tour page for a list of all the blogs participating and more chances to win next week.