Cooked Goose: Big Mike and Minne by Susan Amanda Kelly

Blurb:

Mistletoe mayhem! Cooked Goose is a hilarious holiday love story filled with sizzle, sugar, and sass.

“Your father called me. He invited me for Christmas. I have a ticket for the same flight as you. Tonight.”

With those words, Big Mike sucked the oxygen out of the room. Minnie intended her father would meet her new man, Big Mike… eventually. Minnie wanted to give Daddy time to get used to the idea that his “little girl” is embroiled in a serious relationship. A few decades, perhaps. Because Daddy’s not your run-of-the-mill protective father—he’s a criminal. But now Minnie is heading home for the holidays with Big Mike in tow.

Big Mike is no delicate violet. He’s quiet and lethal—an ex-Special Forces soldier whose day job involves “keeping the Free World safe.” But Big Mike doesn’t want to spoil Minnie’s Christmas and promises not to hurt anyone. His resolve will be tested by Minnie’s father, her psycho brother, and three outlaw lieutenants who want his woman.

About the Author:

Susan Amanda Kelly loves making up stuff in her head. She drives her husband to distraction by suddenly stopping mid-conversation and staring off into space. She once spent five hours at sea on a boat, muttering, “Where would he hide the body?” She hopes the video footage of that trip has been wiped. She finally decided to put the characters that inhabit her head, onto paper. It was like opening the door on a lunatic asylum—glorious bedlam. She hopes her readers come to love her characters as much as she does. She writes action-packed romantic comedies. And her husband is convinced her male leads are based on him. Not the body-hiding psychopath, of course. Sign up to be the first to hear about her new releases: http://eepurl.com/bIb7G5

Review:

Cooked Goose: Big Mike and Minnie is the kind of short fiction one can only get with an e-reader. At less than fifty pages, you can chuckle and laugh your way through it in a little over half an hour. Although he’s promised Minnie not to hurt anyone, the men surrounding her at her father’s when they arrive for Christmas make it pretty much impossible for Big Mike to keep his fists to himself. The challenge becomes keeping the altercations—and the evidence thereof—from Minnie. Especially when the turkey ends up being one of the casualties. Now what’ll they eat? Someone’s goose is about to be cooked.

Big Mike and Minnie are an unlikely couple. The offspring of rival biker gangs, Big Mike is a killing machine whose interests include motorcycles and martial arts. Minnie is an internationally known model whose interests include shoes and Fashion Week. But, she also knows where to place her stilettos when grabbed for behind.

Short story or long, you can count on Big Mike and Minnie to keep you laughing and on the edge of your seat wondering what happens next. Because ya know it’s gonna be good! Grab Cooked Goose: Big Mike and Minnie and find out for yourself.

Author Website:  http://eepurl.com/bIb7G5

Heat Rating:  R

Length:  49 Pages

Digital Price:  $0.99

Buy Link:  https://www.amazon.com/Cooked-Goose-Big-Mike-Minnie-ebook/dp/B018K27GRE

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All These Perfect Strangers by Aiofe Clifford

Blurb:

“This is about three deaths. Actually more, if you go back far enough. I say deaths but perhaps all of them were murders. It’s a grey area. Murder, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.”

Within six months of her arrival at a university campus, three of Penelope Sheppard’s new friends are dead. And only Pen knows why. This isn’t Pen’s first encounter with violence, and she’s an expert at keeping secrets—especially ones as dark and dangerous as her own.

Reputations have a way of haunting you—they’re easy to make, hard to shake. After Pen leaves her isolated hometown to escape the judgmental stares of her neighbors and carve out a new identity for herself, she’s free from the stigma of her past mistakes. At school, Pen is anonymous, surrounded by an eclectic collection of perfect strangers. But when someone begins to uncover the deadly secrets she thought she’d left behind, how far will Pen go to protect her new life?

Six months later, Pen is back home, the victim of a violent trauma and a pariah once again. Now, reluctantly, she must recount her story from start to finish: to her shrink, to the police, even to herself. Because until she tells the whole truth, there will be no escaping the past.

About the Author:

Aoife Clifford is the author of the novel All These Perfect Strangers, published in Australia (March 2016) and the United Kingdom (August 2016) by Simon & Schuster. It will be published by Penguin Random House in the United States (July 2016). It is available as an audiobook from Bolinda Audio.

Born in London of Irish parents, Aoife grew up in New South Wales, studied Arts/Law at the Australian National University, Canberra, and now lives in Melbourne.

She has won two premier short story prizes for crime fiction in Australia—the Scarlet Stiletto (2007) and the S.D. Harvey Ned Kelly Award in 2012, among other prizes. She has also been short listed for the UK Crime Association’s Debut Dagger. In 2014 she was awarded an Australian Society of Authors mentorship for her novel, All These Perfect Strangers.

Review:

I couldn’t quite decide whether or not I trusted Penelope Sheppard, and therefore, I couldn’t quite decide whether I liked her. She was a troubled child from a troubled home, who got into trouble with her best friend that culminated with the death of a cop, and the suicide of her friend. Then, when she arrives at university, people start dying around her. I was fairly certain Pen was not involved in the murders, but still, it took a long time for the whole story to unravel.

I think that’s the problem with All These Perfect Strangers. It takes place over a semester of school, partly as told to Pen’s shrink, partly as she remembers it, and it’s mixed with memories of the events leading up to the demise of the cop and her best friend’s suicide. And, it seemed to take that long to read it.

Furthermore, Ms. Clifford did not make it clear from the beginning the book took place in Australia. There was no hint in the blurb, and I was halfway through the book when she mentioned it was getting cold in April. I did a double-take, and went back a few pages to be sure I’d read right. Prior to that, I thought the book took place in England. A couple of chapters later, Ms. Clifford mentioned eucalyptus trees, and that confirmed it was in Australia. It would have helped to know what continent the book was on—indeed, what hemisphere it was in, much earlier.

Despite the somewhat slow pacing, not being sure of the heroine, and not realizing for half the book that it was in Australia rather than England, All These Perfect Strangers still held my attention. I did figure out much of what happened back home before Ms. Clifford revealed it, but I was surprised by “who dunnit” at school, and a couple of the details at home.

Just pick up the pace a bit, Ms. Clifford, and let people know where they are sooner. The blurb could maybe say, “…isolated outback town…” or “…isolated Australian town…,” and maybe the bus could travel through the outback, or New South Wales, or Queensland, or when she got to school maybe “the shrimp could have been gone from the barbie.” Something those of us reading up north could have identified with. Otherwise, All These Perfect Strangers is a pretty good read.

Author Website:  http://www.aoifeclifford.com/

Heat Rating:  R for Violence

Length:  416 Pages

Digital Price:  $3.99

Buy Link:  https://www.amazon.com/All-These-Perfect-Strangers-Novel-ebook/dp/B01A4ATVSW

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Hold Your Breath by Katie Ruggle

Blurb:

In the remote Rocky Mountains, lives depend on the Search & Rescue brotherhood. But in a place this far off the map, trust is hard to come by and secrets can be murder…

As the captain of Field County’s ice rescue dive team, Callum Cook is driven to perfection. But when he meets new diver Louise “Lou” Sparks, all that hard-won order is obliterated in an instant. Lou is a hurricane. A walking disaster. And with her, he’s never felt more alive—even if keeping her safe may just kill him.

Lou’s new to the Rockies, intent on escaping her controlling ex, and she’s determined to make it on her own terms—no matter how tempting Callum may be. But when a routine training exercise unearths a body, Lou and Callum find themselves thrust into a deadly game of cat and mouse with a killer who will stop at nothing to silence Lou—and prove that not even her new Search and Rescue family can keep her safe forever.

About the Author:

A fan of the old adage "write what you know," Katie Ruggle lived in an off-grid, solar- and wind-powered house in the Rocky Mountains until her family lured her back to Minnesota. When she's not writing, Katie rides horses, shoots guns (not while riding, although that would be awesome), cross-country skis (badly), and travels to warm places where she can scuba dive. A graduate of the Police Academy, Katie received her ice-rescue certification and can attest that the reservoirs in the Colorado mountains really are that cold. A fan of anything that makes her feel like a bad-ass, she has trained in Krav Maga, boxing, and gymnastics.

You can connect with Katie at http://katieruggle.com/, https://www.facebook.com/katierugglebooks, or on Twitter @KatieRuggle.

Review by Rochelle:

Hold Your Breath is a fast-paced book with well-drawn characters, and a heroine who is no fainting flower. Louise “Lou” Sparks can hold her own with or without the guys on the ice rescue team she’s joined in her new home, Field County, Colorado—both in and out of the icy waters of Colorado’s reservoirs.

During a routine training exercise, Lou has difficulty orienting herself with the unfamiliar gear, and kicks something loose under the ice. That something turns out to be a headless corpse. Feeling responsible for “HDG” (Headless Dead Guy), Lou sets out to find out who he was, who killed him, and why. Team leader Callum Cook, in an effort to keep her out of trouble, decides to help. But, they get sidetracked—someone’s stalking Lou, trying to kill her, and the stalking started before she dislodged HDG.

So why am I only giving Hold Your Breath two roses? It was a five-rose book right up to the very last page. Hold Your Breath isn’t just a cliff-hanger. Ms. Ruggle never solves the mystery of who killed HDG or why. Leaving room for a sequel is one thing. Even ending on a cliff-hanger would have only lost a book this good one rose. In fact, I’d have given Ms. Ruggle thorns if Lou hadn’t been such a strong heroine.

I’m really torn about recommending this book, because the original mystery has no resolution. That's not good marketing; it's bad writing, and as an editor I would never let an author get away with it. Ms. Ruggle had 386 pages in which to solve the mystery. I knew who Lou's stalker was right away. I'm not telling, in case anyone reading this review actually wants to buy a book with no ending. But I still don't know who killed HDG, and it makes me angry.

Author Website:  http://katieruggle.com/

Heat Rating:  R

Length:  386 Pages

Prices:

Print:  $5.99

Digital:  $3.99

Buy Link:  http://www.sourcebooks.com/store/hold-your-breath.html

You’ll notice we always include the publisher’s buy link. That’s because authors usually receive 40-50% of the net proceeds from the publisher. Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%. When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left. So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40-$2.99. If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $1.70-$2.10.

Download the file from the publisher onto your computer as you would any other file. I’ve created a folder for books on my computer, with subfolders by source (Marketing for Romance Writers, Net Galley, Authors who find me on Kindle lists, etc.). That way, if there’s a glitch with your Kindle, the books are on your computer. Some publishers send books in all digital formats. If my Kindle breaks and my kids buy me a Nook, I won’t have to replace all of my books. If you have a Kindle and your hubby has a Nook, you won’t have to buy separate copies, so buying directly from the publisher can save you money.

Moving the file from your computer to your e-reader is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive. Plug the larger USB end of your e-reader charging chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from the folder into which you’ve downloaded the book to Documents/Books directory on your e-reader. You can move the file by highlighting it and dragging it to the documents directory in you Kindle you want to move it to. Or right click on it, and then left click copy or move. Or hit Control/C for copy, Control/X for cut, and Control/V for paste.

Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

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