Monday, April 16, 2018

Dark Web by Christopher Lowery

Summary by Goodreads:
The tentacles of the Dark Web are tightening their grip around the world. From Moscow to Shanghai, Washington, UK, the Middle East and Europe, nowhere is beyond their reach. When a computer scientist dies mysteriously in Dubai, Jenny Bishop's nephew, Leo Stewart, is hired to replace him. Leo's life is soon in danger, but he is the only person who can find the key to prevent an impending global cyber-attack. With the help of Jenny and old and new friends, he must neutralize the threat before the world's vital services are brought to a halt in a flagrant attempt to once again redraw the borders of Europe and Asia. Can the deadly conspiracy be exposed before the world is thrust into a new Cold War?

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Burying Leo by Helga Gruendler-Schierloh

Summary by Goodreads:
Ingrid always loved to sing. Auditioning for a summer job after high school shattered her dreams. She fled Germany for Detroit where she married with the hopes of starting a family. When hope crumbled, she attempts to sing again. Will singing bring the life Ingrid always desired, or will her mutilated soul lose her everything?

Monday, March 19, 2018

Smith by Sam B Miller II

Summary by Goodreads:
The past has a way of coming back to live in the present . . .

Jake’s Father is an archeologist who is in Israel to complete a dig on King Solomon’s Temple. As an eighteen-year-old American, Jake is unwelcome by the people in the territory. Defending himself against the townspeople is a constant torment.
Through a map Jake finds on his Father’s desk, he and his friend Avner decide to explore a newly discovered chamber. At the end of a dark and deserted tunnel, Jake uncovers the treasure of King Solomon’s Power ring. He puts it on his finger and feels his life changing.
Jake passes off the ring as a replica, but he starts to hear a voice that belongs to Smith. Smith provides him guidance on how to deal with his newfound powers. Jake wants to learn all he can about his new secret ring. Smith encourages him to sharpen his fighting skills by joining the Army.
Is Smith leading Jake to a newfound life where he can become a hero? Or will the decision to join the military endanger his life? Will Jake find out the ring he wears is good or will it be of evil intent? And who keeps trying to steal the ring?

The Testament by Mark P Dunn

Summary by Goodreads:
On the surface, it looks like Paul Callahan has it all. The family, the house, the job. But nothing is ever as perfect as it seems, and when a college friend contacts Paul out of the blue, he finds himself reliving his first year of college, when everything went so right, and then so very wrong.

Testament is a story of friendship and love and of the terrible evil people are capable of doing to one another. It is the story of a man doing his best to move forward, but struggling with an emotional anchor latched firmly in the past. But more than anything, it is a story about redemption and the unfathomable workings of the human heart.

Sunday, March 11, 2018

The Sky is Yours by Chandler Klang Smith

Summary by Blogging for Books:
In the burned-out, futuristic city of Empire Island, three young people navigate a crumbling metropolis constantly under threat from a pair of dragons that circle the skies. When violence strikes, reality star Duncan Humphrey Ripple V, the spoiled scion of the metropolis’ last dynasty; Baroness Swan Lenore Dahlberg, his tempestuous, death-obsessed betrothed; and Abby, a feral beauty he discovered tossed out with the trash; are forced to flee everything they've ever known. As they wander toward the scalded heart of the city, they face fire, conspiracy, mayhem, unholy drugs, dragon-worshippers, and the monsters lurking inside themselves. In this bombshell of a novel, Chandler Klang Smith has imagined an unimaginable world: scathingly clever and gorgeously strange, The Sky Is Yours is at once faraway and disturbingly familiar, its singular chaos grounded in the universal realities of love, family, and the deeply human desire to survive at all costs.

Friday, February 9, 2018

Marital Advice to my Grandson, Joel: How to be a husband your wife won't throw out of the window in the middle of the night. by Peter Davidson

Summary by Goodreads:
When my grandson, Joel, got engaged, I decided to jot down a few words of marital wisdom for him, based on my vast experience as a husband. Then I thought, why share this wisdom with only one person when I can share it with the whole world. So, I started a blog, listing new marital advice every week. As the popularity of the blog grew, people suggested that the material should be turned into a book and, well, here it is!
Sure, much of the advice is off-the-wall and wacky, but it’s also an upbeat, humorous look at married life that any engaged or married person can relate to and will find insightful and fun to read. Even unmarried people can enjoy the book and, who knows, it might convince some of you to take the plunge, or perhaps confirm your belief that being single is a blessing.
Advice to Joel, and to any man, includes: make sure that you buy a roll of electrical tape before you volunteer to do the vacuuming–and why, how to deal with your wife’s steely-eyed, clinched-jaw scowl, known as “The Look,” how to answer your wife’s questions such as, “Does this dress make my ass look big?,” the warning that your mouth will get you into a whole lot more trouble than your Willy ever will, and how to create the world’s most powerful anniversary card for your wife.
Virtually all of the material in the book is presented in the form of upbeat stories, scenarios, and examples. This is not the type of advice that you’ll find in a textbook on marriage or in a book on marital relations written by some psychiatrist. This is the real stuff for real people.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Love Bites by TL Clark

Summary by Goodreads:
Shakira had never felt at home growing up in Surrey, but as soon as she entered the quaint Welsh village she knew she belonged. Maybe it was because of the welcoming villagers. Or perhaps it was the presence of the others whom she sensed nearby; the ones she saw in her dreams, with their strange glowing eyes.

Fate is not always kind. It gives with one hand and takes with the other. There is a reason she didn’t grow up with her own kind.

A rich tale of witchcraft, fae, sorcery, elinefae and dragons; this is a story for all who dare to believe.

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

A Force So Swift by Kevin Peraino

Summary by Goodreads:
A gripping narrative of the Truman Administration's response to the fall of Nationalist China and the triumph of Mao Zedong's Communist forces in 1949--an extraordinary political revolution that continues to shape East Asian politics to this day.

In the opening months of 1949, U.S. President Harry S. Truman found himself faced with a looming diplomatic catastrophe--"perhaps the greatest that this country has ever suffered," as the journalist Walter Lippmann put it. Throughout the spring and summer, Mao Zedong's Communist armies fanned out across mainland China, annihilating the rival troops of America's one-time ally Chiang Kai-shek and taking control of Beijing, Shanghai, and other major cities. As Truman and his aides--including his shrewd, ruthless secretary of state, Dean Acheson--scrambled to formulate a response, they were forced to contend not only with Mao, but also with unrelenting political enemies at home, in Congress and even within the administration. Over the course of this tumultuous year, Mao fashioned a new revolutionary government in Beijing, laying the foundation for the creation of modern China, while Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island sanctuary of Taiwan. These events transformed American foreign policy--leading, ultimately, to decades of friction with Communist China, a long-standing U.S. commitment to Taiwan, and the subsequent wars in Korea and Vietnam.

Drawing on Chinese and Russian sources, as well as recently declassified CIA documents, Kevin Peraino tells the story of this remarkable year through the eyes of the key players, including Mao Zedong, President Truman, Secretary of State Acheson, Minnesota congressman Walter Judd, and Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the influential first lady of the Republic of China. Truman and his administration struggled to navigate a disorienting new political landscape that was being reshaped daily by the emerging technology of television, the rising tensions of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and growing fears of spying, infiltration, and Russia’s acquisition of the atomic bomb.

Today, the legacy of 1949 is more relevant than ever to the relationships between China, the United States, and the rest of the world, as Beijing asserts its claims in the South China Sea and tensions endure between Taiwan and the mainland. Yet at the heart of the book is a story for any season--a thoughtful and moving examination of the fierce determination of the human will.

Monday, January 8, 2018

The Chalk Man by CJ Tudor

Summary by Blogging for Books:
In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.
     In 2016, Eddie is fully grown, and thinks he's put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank . . . until one of them turns up dead.
     That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.
Expertly alternating between flashbacks and the present day, The Chalk Man is the very best kind of suspense novel, one where every character is wonderfully fleshed out and compelling, where every mystery has a satisfying payoff, and where the twists will shock even the savviest reader.

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