Listen Inside - Daily Book Previews From Readers In The Know By Simon Denman

Synopsis The Sangre de Cristo Mountains, The Blood of Christ, provide the backdrop for Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves, a tale of murder, revenge and redemption. Jack Sloan, businessman, gambler, casino operator, and tough guy is trapped by two con artists and kills them to escape.  Three years later, he’s built a new life with his new love, Darlene, but knows payback is on the way. It comes in the shape of two hard cases bent on avenging their partners’ deaths. The beautiful Mattie is the brains behind the crew, while Irvine, a psychotic who wields a knife, plays her main muscle. The two track down Jack and plot their attack. Jack and his enemies weigh the risks of confrontation and then prepare for the battle of their lives. But no matter how carefully they plan, it’s still a crapshoot, and the outcome is in doubt until the end. Excerpt Rain pelted my thin tee shirt.  It chilled me through in five heartbeats.  No sense in trying the fancy Leica field glasses.  Water dripped from my eyes and obscured the lenses

Synopsis Trapped in a web of deceit & confusion spun by her father from the age of 11, the author shares her true story of incest in the hopes that by coming out from under years of sexual abuse, other victims will be encouraged to do the same. This is an important, no-holds-barred book complete with graphic scenes and language because "that’s the way it happened and that’s how it must be told. Victims’own voices are the best weapons against child sexual abuse." This 291-page story comes with a "trigger warning advisory" as it details the mental, physical and sexual abuse inflicted on the author by her biological father. Victims of similar abuse need to realize this story could cause flashbacks of their own as they identify with scenes and language that mirror their own experiences. Those who have never suffered sexual abuse may be shocked by what the author's father put her through and the utter control he had of all areas of her life until she finally got away.  This book will frighten and enlighten rea

Synopsis Jeanne Le Page is lucky to be alive … 15 years ago she was almost killed in a boating accident which brought heart-breaking family tragedy. Now 31, Jeanne is returning reluctantly to the Island of Guernsey following the death of her beloved Grandmother. Struggling for breath as the ferry nears the Island, Jeanne feels a dark foreboding overwhelm her as hazy memories of that terrible day resurface. Only back on the Island to sell her inheritance - her Grandmother’s old cottage - she has no intention of sticking around to pick up her old life. But the cottage holds a secret, dating back to World War II, and Jeanne becomes drawn into discovering more. Then ,shortly after her arrival, a chance meeting with an old teenage crush leads her to thoughts of love. Jeanne is forced to face her demons, reliving the tragedy as her lost memory returns. The truth is finally revealed, endangering Jeanne’s life for a second time… Dangerous Waters is a heart-warming contemporary romance that captures the reader’s imagi

Synopsis No sane airshipman will fly near a storm, but the cover of storm edge offers effective concealment for airship pirates who can strike quickly from above before anyone knows a ship is near. With the protection of Aide, the goddess of air travel, one airship defies the elements to seek fortune for the rag tag aerialists who make up the pirate crew. The elements are the least of their problems when they find themselves saddled with an airsick clerk, a crewmember suspected of working for the East India Company and a love sick farm girl whose headstrong misconceptions compel her to seek adventure where no decent woman would wander unescorted. Battling businessmen, mechanoids and villagers armed with torches and pitchforks, Captain Bonny must decide who to trust, and if the only rational course of action is one of apparent madness.  

Synopsis In this unsettling and mysterious vision of the future, animals are almost extinct and humans are subjugated by the sinister and secretive Agros; nothing is as it seems. And 17-year-old Adara must use all her courage and power battling against evil forces to save herself and those she loves.  This is a coming of age tale with a difference. The inventive slang-derived language creates a fresh and dynamic style to create a truly compelling world inhabited by characters such as Clonies, Nearlymen, and S.A.N.T.S. Excerpt Eadgard walked to where we stood. He reached out and touched the sleeve of my dress, then shook his head and stepped back. “Adara, your dress is far from suited to this terrain. Do you have other garments?” I looked down at my torn and flimsy frock. The small holes and rips obtained from clambering along the tunnel had become larger. In places there was more flesh than fabric on view. I tried to pull together a vast rip that let my thigh through, but failed. “I do indeed have more suitab

Synopsis Kings of Brighton Beach Series  In Brighton Beach, the largest Russian immigrant community in America, criminals and spies live among hardworking immigrants. The mafia rules with an invisible hand that reaches from beyond the former Iron Curtain. Ruthless men vie to reign as kings over their profitable corners of Little Odessa, and no one can be trusted. Not even family.  Part 1: Gangsters with Guns At fourteen Vlad escaped his violent father and the criminal soup of Brighton Beach. Now, twenty years later, he will reclaim his father’s place in the Russian mafia if he can survive. Episode #1 Vlad plans to ingratiate himself with his father’s former partner, Artur, learn the “business,” and commit a hostile takeover. But Vlad isn’t the only one interested in claiming Artur’s slice of Little Odessa. Vlad’s rivals have no code of honor, and Artur’s daughter, Inna, is discovered in her brother’s own nightclub, raped and drugged, with a gun in her hand and a dead mobster sprawled on top of her. The dead m

Synopsis The young painter Karla Bocelli is all too familiar with loss. When she was five years old, her mother died in a car crash in the south of Switzerland. Her Peruvian father lives at the other end of the world, and a year ago her aunt and guardian passed away. Now, at age twenty-four, Karla almost gets hit by a speeding car. As if this wasn’t fateful enough, Andreas, the driver, turns out to be a sculptor and carver of tombstones. In spite of his profession, Andreas is anything but morbid. Quick-tempered and intense, he exudes a rough-and-tumble energy. After a tumultuous start of their relationship, Karla comes to see in Andreas the “rock” in her life, the perfect antidote to her fears of abandonment and bouts of depression. Andreas, however, wrestles with his own ghosts: an alcoholic father who abused him as a child and his own fits of anger. Together, the two artists must confront the demons that haunt them. LOVE OF A STONEMASON is a story about the struggle of two artists with their past, their fam

Synopsis Jacob Cotter survives the Civil War to finish Yale Medical School and confront two more battlefronts–one in Connecticut as a medical student and one in Texas as a surgeon. In 1868 Cotter is financially solvent for Yale from banking two-year’s worth of bounty hunter money. Post-Civil War medicine is exciting. Cotter experiences advances in anesthesia and antisepsis enabling surgery and medicine truly saving lives. He finds pseudoscience–phrenology–laughable. However, he must confront his siblings who disowned him after his father was killed in the war alongside him in 1864. His brother and sister want him dead. After graduating Yale, Cotter finds private practice in Endura Texas with a colleague as also being under fire trying to establish the first hospital in the area. Cotter faces a ruthless land baron extorting and killing opposing citizenry. He also finds his father’s murderer part of the lethal lot. Dr. Cotter is forced to combine his stethoscope and his sixguns.  Excerpt Cotter always wore the

Synopsis One young man dying of cancer.  One struggling journalist.  Six single Londoners.  One night that changes everything....  Dan is trying to conceal a stretch in jail, while time is running out for Sanjay, though his specialist can’t say how long he has left. A 38-year old lawyer is desperate to rewrite her past but, for one single mum, sex is a distant memory she longs to relive. At speed-dating there’s a nice doctor.  There’s also the kind of guy your mother warned you about.   Journalist Harriet needs a by-line not a boyfriend, but she soon becomes the focus of her own feature. Is happiness possible when you’re trying to hide a whole carousel of baggage? Excerpt In her drawing-room, Dorottya looked past the flowers on the Osborne and Little curtains. She let out a breath through pursed lips. He was mowing again. What was it with Englishmen and lawns? Roger was so obsessed with his precious expanse of grass that he had even designed a special mowing strip, as he called it, to make cutting easier and

Synopsis Robert had reached the summit of many mountains. His adventures took him to unimaginable heights, yet his greatest achievements were not in conquering these majestic beauties, but in his ability to reach people in need. That is, until he's the one facing the toughest climb of his life. Roberto Sanchez is living the dream; one could say the man had it all. He is blessed with a beautiful wife and daughter who complete him. A career that reaches at-risk kids that brings him true joy. Then a tragic accident leads Robert to a chasm of dark despair. Although his interventions have reached many, he found he is incapable of helping himself off the edge of a cliff, jeopardizing his career, his marriage, and himself. because takes us on a journey of two Roberts as he struggles to find a way to once again Believe.

Synopsis Celebrated as a ragtag force that defeated and broke the Soviet Union, no one predicted the Mujahideen would bring with them a plague that would spread like wildfire through Pakistan in the years to follow. When the battle-worn fighters returned with no enemy or war to fight, they turned their sights on the country that had been their creator and benefactor. From the same battlegrounds that birthed the Mujahideen, a young Kamal Khan emerges as a different breed of warrior. Discarding his wealthy family comforts, Kamal becomes a precision sniper, an invincible commando and a clandestine operative bringing intimidation, dominance and death with him to the battlefield. Ending the plague is his prime directive. Shrouded in political expediency, hampered by internal power struggles, international espionage and doublespeak that makes Washington's spin doctors proud, Kamal's mission is a nightmare of rampant militant fundamentalism that threatens to choke and take Pakistan hostage. For him, the fight is not

Synopsis The Guardian of Secrets, an epic historical family saga, of love, war, and revenge, spanning four generations, from 1912, Kent, England to, Spain and its 1936–39 civil war.   In present day Spain, María Martinéz Merrill is dying, but welcomes the end of her long life. She is one of the last of her generation. A survivor of the Spanish Civil War; a hellish war, long ended but still lingering in her mind like the familiar caress of an old friend. When her granddaughter, Lucia, arrives for a visit, María finds the perfect opportunity to share her dark world filled with shocking family secrets, guarded in old journals and written decades before by María and her mother, Celia Merrill.   María forces herself to relive her tormented past in order to convince Lucia to veto the   sale of the family estate whilst her children plot behind closed doors to dismantle and destroy everything she has built... Excerpt It soon seemed that the whole of Madrid had upped sticks and moved camp to the Jarama valley. Fifty b

Synopsis When Jesse McDermitt retires from the Marine Corps, he has no idea what he will do for the rest of his life. At 37, his greatest skill is killing people from up to a mile away. He knows there aren’t many job opportunities in the civilian world for that. However, he knows the south Florida waters, is an experienced diver, loves to fish, and knows his way around a boat.  A waitress in a waterfront restaurant in north Key Largo gives him an idea and he runs with it. An old friend helps get him set up as a charter fishing and dive boat Captain and a new friend helps him buy just the right boat. Danger lurks in the sleepy little town of Marathon, in the middle of the Florida Keys, as well as in the swamps of the Everglades. But danger doesn’t expect to run into a man like Jesse, who will not only respond swiftly, but with a vengeance unexpected. Excerpt The smell of fresh coffee woke me the next morning. The coffee maker had a timer and I’d taken to setting it up before going to bed. It was better than an

Synopsis Olivia wants the 80 acres in far off Michigan that her father's will left to whichever of his offspring claims the land. As Olivia says, "I'm sprung off him just as much as Avis or Tobey."The problem: she's seventeen, female, and it's 1841.Mourning Free, Olivia's trusted childhood friend, knows how to run a farm and is also sorely in need of a new start in life.The problem: though born in a free state, he's the orphaned son of runaway slaves and the slave catchers who patrol the north hunting fugitives are not particular about who they take back south with them.Not without qualms, they set off together. All goes well, despite the drudgery of survival in an isolated log cabin. Incapable of acknowledging her feelings for Mourning, Olivia thinks her biggest problem is her unrequited romantic interest in their young neighbor.Until her world falls apart.Strong-willed, vulnerable, and compassionate, Olivia is a compelling protagonist on a journey to find a way to do the right thing in a world in which so m

Synopsis The general public still has much to learn about the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the Mental Illness. Bettina "Sparkles" Obernuefemann gives a lay language overview about the "Modern Trauma." There are many causes other than the horror of war, such as bullying, natural disasters, death, divorce, child abuse, abortion, and rape. It’s easy to get stuck in an unhappy life, suffer from chronic depression, anxiety, anger, failed relationships, feeling helpless and hopeless, which leads to addictive behaviors.Author starts with a short narrative of her "Abuse Recall," the Trauma diagnosis, and shows her "willingness" to dive into into healing activities. She believes no matter what the causes, no matter what the symptoms, we are empowered and must face the past to make changes for the better. Recovery requires healing conflicting, self-defeating thoughts in our minds which helps us grow in spiritual understanding. With the processes we get a good sense of “who” we are and “why” we’re here, making us smi

Synopsis Mesmerized by the sensuous moves of the stranger who danced with her at the Lucian Club, Caitlynn Pilgrim has been trying for almost two years to get him out of her mind, with no success. Until that night, she was perfectly happy with her single life and was not looking for a man to complicate it, but this stranger with his seductive moves has her rethinking that decision. So, for over a year, she has been returning to the club, hoping to run into him and have one more dance with him. Alas, Caitlynn does not know the stranger's name or even what he looks like. She was so taken with dancing with him, she’d neglected to look into his face, and when she was suddenly called away by her friend, Esther, she’d returned to pick up where she left off only to find him gone. Andre Cunningham burns with memories of the beautiful, passionate woman he danced with two years ago at the club. He had spotted her as soon as she walked in, waving her hand in the air. He’d danced up to her and, without uttering a word, f

This is a book of magic. It is full of practical, real world advice and is brimming with insight and erudition.  If you want to know how to bring money, love, good health and luck into your life, it explains how.  If you’ve ever experienced anything out of the ordinary that you can’t readily explain, you may well find answers here. Many personal development books recount how some enlightenment can be gained by encountering and overcoming some adversity or setbacks. By going to the edge and coming back, we can often help others in similar predicaments by sharing our experiences. This book takes a different approach by exploring the notion that life doesn’t have to be intrinsically tough, unless we want it to be.  Just imagine all that your heart desires just turning up.  Just imagine having as much time as you ever need.  Just imagine a life without dis-ease and one full of joy and ease. The idea that we can only reap rewards through hard work and graft is one we can now leave behind. Each and every one of us

Synopsis Little Miss Sure Shot is a fictionalized account of the life of Annie Oakley, drawing heavily on the real timelines and events of her life. The book invents situations, people she meets, and a myriad of conversations. Moreover, while the book is presented chronologically, apart from the prologue, it skips certain periods and attempts to focus on those that are especially vital, such as the early years Annie spent with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, including the tours through Europe. A special feature of the novel is the framing of Annie's loving marriage to fellow sharpshooter Frank Butler, whom she married at sixteen and remained married to for 50 years until her death. Frank was far more than just her husband - he was her manager (he gave up his own shooting for that role) and her constant companion. The novel closes with an epilogue in Frank's voice, presenting an overview of their lives together and the circumstances of her death in 1926.   Excerpt There was nothing like Buffalo Bill’s Wild West

Synopsis The world is a far different place in 2259. Thirty years of world war, rampant bombing, and the melting of the polar ice sheets have changed the very face of the planet. The former countries of Canada, Mexico, and the United States of America have banded together as the North American Alliance, led by distinguished military hero President Walker. His daughter Poppy has served as the First Lady of the North American Alliance since she was only twelve years old, helping her father restore order to the chaotic new world they live in. Now nineteen, Poppy finds herself caught in the middle of a government takeover and dodging assassins. After fleeing to the war-torn ruins of Denver, she must face unknown dangers and new experiences. She will have to use every skill learned from her military upbringing to survive the terrifying beasts, deadly plant life, and fierce rebels who live in the shadows of the abandoned city.   Excerpt   All this went through my mind in seconds as the gunmen continued to force the

Synopsis Presidential Trail is a fast moving, action packed thriller following the exploits of two MI6 agents, Kane Rhodes and Brian Jones as they trail a deadly assassin and revenge-bent chemist from the U.K. to Pakistan and Dallas to Washington. Linking up with the CIA their original mission was to prevent the assassination of a Presidential candidate but soon developed into a race against time to stop, or at least minimise, the catastrophic effects of a major terrorist attack Excerpt Kane Rhodes quickly removed the telescopic sights before sheathing the AS50 back into the soft, brown leather case. The dull ache in his neck and back was the result of six hours surveillance, the last sixty minutes of which were spent scanning through the sights of the scope. He paused briefly to reflect on how relatively easy the mission had been and not what he would have expected from someone with Leidmeister's background.  “You wanna go take a look while I keep up the surveillance,” Zach drawled. “Give me a call on the