Goodreads Book Giveaway

A Summer in Oakville

by Lisa J. Lickel

Giveaway ends September 30, 2011.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Review of Steven James's The Queen

The Queen, by Steven James

2011. Revell

A Patrick Bowers thriller

It’s Wisconsin. It’s Winter. It’s a gruesome double-triple-quintuple? homicide spread over two cases near each other. Patrick Bowers is home, but it’s not for any sweet family reunion.

The fifth entry into the Patrick Bowers, FBI geospatial profiler and coffee snob, case files is a twist-your-guts ride.

You have to discover what a person regrets the most in order to understand him, Bowers’ love interest and FBI profiler, Lien-hua, says. This book is full of regret, and some redemption, as Patrick seeks to understand, forgive, and be forgiven of the circumstances that caused the rift between him and his brother, Sean. Patrick’s step-daughter deals with the regret of the circumstances that led her to kill in self-defense in the previous case. The murderer deals with the regret of…well, you’ll just have to read the book.

James deviates a bit from his previous stories in that the bad guys are identified right away in The Queen, instead of making us wait to figure out what’s happening and why. Although there’s a pretty good twist, it’s still not a huge stretch to follow Patrick’s winding path to get to the bottom of things. And this is where I have to say the clunkiness of this novel tends to get in the way of the timeline and the immediate need to solve the murders. The initial murder thread trails off; the secondary case peters out until it comes back to smack the reader in the face, and by then I had nearly forgotten about it. The devastation of the murders that end up being the major plot of the story keep us all busy, in between worrying over Patrick’s headstrong teenaged step-daughter’s jaunt through a blizzard, his sister-in-law’s fragility, the growing body count, and whether the intimate details of the weapons being used or the minute description of the interior of the ELF station really has anything to do with the outcome. I put this book down several times, despite the fact that I love the first novels and will read the rest of them; despite the fact that I went to the nearby University just about the time the Navy station set up to use Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) radio waves to signal submarines was encountering the worst protests; and despite the fact that I was pretty sure I had the real murderer pegged (I was wrong).

Patrick Bowers is a great character, the adversary in The Queen was daunting, the plot was a little windy but it worked, and the end was…intriguing. James manages to draw in several former cases to twine this story and I look forward to the next installment.

“Available September 2011 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”

Tournament of Champions!

Science Fiction, Fantasy and Supernatural

Kia Ora from New Zealand and hello from Splashdown!

Lots of goings-on this month, so let's dive right in...

Now Available

Finding Angel, the first novel by veteran author Kat Heckenbach, is here!

It's aimed at middle-graders and young adults, but fantasy-minded grown-ups will love it too.

Perfect for reading with or without kids!

Angel doesn’t remember her magical heritage…but it remembers her.

Magic and science collide when she embarks on a journey to her true home, and to herself.

Angel lives with a loving foster family, but dreams of a land that exists only in the pages of a fantasy novel. Until she meets Gregor, whose magic Talent saves her life and revives lost memories.

She follows Gregor to her homeland…a world unlike any she has imagined, where she travels a path of self-discovery that leads directly to her role in an ancient Prophecy…and to the madman who set her fate in motion.

Available at Amazon (in Kindle too). Other retailers are taking their time to list it, but you can get Epub for Nook at Smashwords right now along with many other formats.

New Look

http://www.splashdownbooks.com/ has a new face. Check out the new-and-improved, easier-to-navigate website. Find books faster. See what's new with your favorite authors. Handy drop-downs and a splashy backdrop are just a few of the upgrades. Drop by and dive in!

Splash Hit

Splashdown's first group anthology made a big splash at Amazon, rising to #1 in Bestselling Science Fiction and Fantasy Anthologies shortly after going public! See what all the fuss is about with stories from all the current Splashdown authors - Fred Warren, Caprice Hokstad, P.A. Baines, Adam Graham, R.L. Copple, Travis Perry, Mike Lynch, Keven Newsome, Kat Heckenbach, Grace Bridges and Ryan Grabow, with narration from Walt Staples.

$5.98 in print or $2.99 in e!

E-book Sale!

The Crystal Portal e-book by Travis Perry and Mike Lynch is available for $2.99 this month only. Check it out at Kindle and Smashwords!

We're also launching a cool new spin on the cover - up now in ebook formats, and coming soon to the print version:

 

 

Award Finalist

 

Caprice Hokstad's Nor Iron Bars a Cage finaled in the Global eBook Awards! The full list is here - look for the Speculative Fiction: Fantasy category.

Congratulations, Caprice!

 

In Brief

• Keven Newsome's Winter now wears 22 five-star reviews at Amazon!
• Next month sees the release of The Seer by Fred Warren - the long-awaited sequel to The Muse. It's a doozy, I can tell you!
• Avenir Eclectia has passed a total of 75 mini-stories in its shared world. Why not get on board?

Grace Bridges