As promised in January it’s my monthly update about what I read this month. I managed ten (10) print books, and five (5) audio books. I read one new author for sure, and possibly a second, but I would have to check my reading logs from years past to be sure. I succeeded in reading the challenge word from one of my yahoo groups which for the month of February was red. I read Seeing Red by Susan Crandall. It’s a romantic suspense one that started out making me wish I had even more time to read that day than I did. With the conclusion of Seeing Red I’m keeping my goal of reading a book a month for this group’s word challenge. However, the same group is also doing a TBR challenge. Last month I read two titles from my tbr and was so excited! This month I got to pick new titles because you have to always have three titles to choose from. I unfortunately only read one of my TBR challenge books. I read It Happened One Night by Lisa Dale who was a new to me author. Wish I could say I was just wowed and…

February 2010On Sale: January 26, 2010Featuring: Mitch Braxton; Lisa Vaughn400 pages ISBN: 0778327477EAN: 9780778327479Mass Market Paperback$7.99 Romance Suspense Buy at Amazon.com Down Riverby Karen Harper In the churning water, she felt her future slipping away… Attending a corporate retreat at a remote resort in Alaska, Lisa Vaughn is plunged into the frigid rapids of the Wild River. Swept away, battered and alone, she has been left for dead. But lodge owner Mitch Braxton knows something is terribly wrong when Lisa fails to turn up for a private meeting to clear the air and close the book on their broken engagement. Embarking on a heroic search that takes him miles down river, he saves Lisa from the deadly water, but not before they’ve been swept deep into the wilderness. Far from civilization, the former lovers must put aside their hurt feelings and find the will to survive. There’s a killer on the loose and, for now, they must measure their future together in days instead of years. Fast-paced and full of suspense, but will the renewed relationship end in romance? Excerpt Duck Lake LodgeNear Bear Bones, AlaskaAugust 20, 2008 Despite the calm beauty of Duck Lake ten feet below the pine-tree-lined…

Odelia Grey #5 February 2010On Sale: February 1, 2010Featuring: Odelia Grey336 pages ISBN: 0738713511EAN: 9780738713519Paperback$14.95 Mystery Woman Sleuth, Mystery Cozy, Mystery Amateur Sleuth Buy at Amazon.com Corpse On The Cobby Sue Ann Jaffarian What do you have to lose when you go searching for the mother who walked out of your life thirty-four years ago? I mean besides your pride, your nerves, and your sanity? Odelia finds herself up to her ears in trouble when she reunites with her mom in a corn maze at the Autumn Fair in Holmsbury, Massachusetts. For starters, there’s finding the dead body in the cornfield—and seeing her long-lost mom crouched beside the corpse with blood on her hands . . . A Lively Mystery Mixes Up Humor With Clues… A fun, sexy mystery for Big Girls and Those That Love Them! Previous Picks Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.

This week I’ve had some blocks of time during the work day away from the office. Usually I take my laptop with me, find a place with electricity and WiFi and work, but this week was a bit different. I knew there wouldn’t be WiFi, and each stop would be about 30 minutes or less and I may not have a place to unpack a laptop even a small one, so I decided to do some “work” reading. To me, “work” reading is that stuff I’ve let slide for one reason or another that isn’t “fun” related. Or, non-fiction technical or self-help books. I took along two: HEAD FIRST AJAX: A BRAIN-FRIENDLY GUIDE and TOTALLY TONED ARMS. Opposite poles of the non-fiction spectrum for me. Something all techie and something all probably not going to happen. And to be honest, the TOTALLY TONED ARMS or Get Michelle Obama Arms in 21 Days never made it out of the bag. But I did get through two chapters of AJAX. Not sure if I’ll retain any of the knowledge but at least I tried. And I really regret I didn’t take something more fun to read…like oh, say, Shelly Laurenston‘s Mane series….

Amanda Bell Brown #3 April 2009On Sale: March 24, 2009Featuring: Amanda Bell Brown400 pages ISBN: 1416551956EAN: 9781416551959Trade Size$13.99 Multicultural Mystery, Mystery Woman Sleuth, Mystery Amateur Sleuth Buy at Amazon.com Deadly Charmby Claudia Mair Burney When the ominous Thunders roll into Dr. Amanda Bell Brown’s town, the sassy sleuth sees a storm brewing. Disgraced playboy preacher Ezekiel Thunder and his seductive first lady, Nikki, are on the comeback trail, but Bell is less than charmed by the pair. When their toddler, Baby Zeekie, is found dead from an accidental drowning, forensic psychologist Bell suspects foul play in the fatal family, especially after the mama in mourning flirts with Bell’s estranged husband, Jazz. Bell is sickened by the woman’s behavior and the thought of someone murdering an innocent child — or is it morning sickness that’s plaguing her? Between babies and bodies, she pushes past the limits to discover the deadly truth. Sassy Amanda Bell Brown gets to the bottom of another faith-filled mystery when a small child dies Previous Picks Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.

Cowboy Trouble started with a chicken, a cowboy, and an act of rebellion. I’ve worked in book selling all my life, but a few years ago I decided it was time to escape the rigors of retail and get a job where I could sit down once in a while. I decided to try medical transcription, which meant I was sitting in front of my computer for hours at a time, tapping away at the keys. The trouble was, what I was churning out was mind-numbingly dull. Doctor’s reports are hardly the stuff of literature, and the ones that are interesting are generally tragic. The typing was good. The sitting was great. But the work? Not for me. In a vague act of rebellion, I shut off the dictation one day and just started typing whatever came into my head. Here’s what came out: A chicken will never break your heart. Not that you can’t love a chicken. There are some people in this world who can love just about anything. But a chicken will never love you back. When you look deep into their beady little eyes, there’s not a lot of warmth there-just an avarice for worms and…

Hi, everyone. I’m so glad to be here blogging with you. My 70th romance will be released this year and I’m excited about that. Whenever I write a blog, I like to give a few details about myself. I live in Pennsylvania but the Southwest is my favorite place on the planet. The scenery fills me up creatively and spiritually the way nothing else can. Cooking is my favorite hobby and I once won second place in a national Bisquick contest! I find recipes can be as interesting to put together as plots. Early on-in my teens-I wrote poetry and began a book manuscript. Music fed my creative bent then and still does today. Favorite singers? Taylor Swift, Adam Lambert and Josh Groban. What can I say? My tastes are eclectic. I’d love to discuss my Baby Experts series with you. The fourth book in the series, THE TEXAS BILLIONAIRE’S BABY, will be released at the end of February with Silhouette Special Edition. Before I go into detail about my new novel, I’d like to tell you a little about an older one. I once wrote about a heroine with a port-wine stain on one side of her face. She…

Stuff #3 November 2009On Sale: November 2, 2009Featuring: James Lessor; Skip Moore320 pages ISBN: 1933515228EAN: 9781933515229Hardcover$24.95 Mystery Amateur Sleuth Buy at Amazon.com Stuff To Spy Forby Don Bruns Could James Lessor and Skip Moore possibly have the right stuff to launch new careers as intelligence professionals? Well, more or less. Best friends James Lessor and Skip Moore are still stuck in dead-end jobs, still living in their ratty apartment in Carol City, Florida, and still dreaming of hitting the big time. It seems those dreams are finally within reach when James lands a job to install a state-of-the-art security system for Synco Systems. There’s a huge commission – and plenty of strings – attached. To collect on the cash, James will have to provide “additional services” by assuming the role of pretend boyfriend of Sarah Crumbly, an employee who’s having an affair with Sandler Conroy, Synco’s married president. When Sandler’s wife offers James a tidy sum for the dirty details about what’s going on at Synco, James and Skip resurrect their entrepreneurial dreams and go into the business of being spies. The spymobile – their beloved, rattletrap of a boxtruck – is on its last legs, and they’ll have to…

Stella Hardesty August 2009On Sale: August 4, 2009Featuring: Stella Hardesty288 pages ISBN: 0312559208EAN: 9780312559205Hardcover$24.99 Mystery Amateur Sleuth, Mystery Woman Sleuth Buy at Amazon.com A Bad Day For Sorryby Sophie Littlefield Stella Hardesty dispatched her abusive husband with a wrench shortly before her fiftieth birthday. A few years later, she’s so busy delivering home-style justice on her days off, helping other women deal with their own abusive husbands and boyfriends, that she barely has time to run her sewing shop in her rural Missouri hometown. Some men need more convincing than others, but it’s usually nothing a little light bondage or old-fashioned whuppin’ can’t fix. Since Stella works outside of the law, she’s free to do whatever it takes to get the job done—as long as she keeps her distance from the handsome devil of a local sheriff, Goat Jones. When young mother Chrissy Shaw asks Stella for help with her no-good husband, Roy Dean, it looks like an easy case. Until Roy Dean disappears with Chrissy’s two-year-old son, Tucker. Stella quickly learns that Roy Dean was involved with some very scary men, as she tries to sort out who’s hiding information and who’s merely trying to kill her. It’s going…

Sometimes our imaginations cook up the perfect story from scratch. Other times, life hands us the spark of the story and our imaginations use it as a launching pad. Such was the case with my first novella, Bluegrass Easter, released this March in Love Inspired’s Easter Promises. Sure, it’s the final story in my Kentucky Corners series, and it’s special for that, but there’s another reason it captures my heart: the real-life spark of the story. An avid knitter, I’d been getting regular updates from a yarn shop and sheep farm in my area. One email chronicled the story of a particularly…shall we say…romantic male sheep and the surprise population explosion he brought to the ewes at the farm. I ask you, how could a romance novelist–let alone one who knits–pass up a courtship like that? Any writer worth her salt (or in this case her fleece) wouldn’t leave it at just a bunch of surprise sheep pregnancies. I had to find ways for this “bumper crop” of lambs to take librarian Audrey Lupine to her emotional edge. It’s cruel, I know, to take a control freak and send her beyond her coping, but the payoff is so very sweet…