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An author blog from a Texas girl who’s seen the world…
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BOOK REVIEW: First Course by Jenn Bouchard

Janie Whitman, the protagonist in First Course, undergoes a life-changing twenty-four hours. First, she loses her job in Chicago and the boyfriend/boss there breaks up with her. Then, hard on those happenings, her parents die in a plane crash, and her sister, Alyssa,...

Enter My Holiday Giveaway!

One lucky participant will win: A hand-made cozy scarf A signed copy of A DIFFERENT KIND OF FIRE Bookish print swag Click here to enter, or use the widget below. No purchase necessary. The more ways you enter, the more your chances of winning. Good luck and have fun!...

A Halloween story: Morrigan

  Morrigan © Suanne Schafer A whistled song disturbs my sleep. Just outside the churchyard, I lie, warm and drowsy, buried within the earth, roofed by a grove of dark pines whose fallen needles and verdant mosses quilt my bed. Loath to leave a lovely pleasure, I...

New Book Trailer! Hunting the Devil

In case you missed it in my newsletter and here on the front and book pages of my website, here's the new goosebump-inducing book trailer for Hunting the Devil. I hope you love it as much as I do! 😈📚🎬

Enter My Summer-Into-Fall Book Lovers Giveaway!

One grand prize winner will receive a signed paperback copy of A Different Kind of Fire, a handmade beaded velvet bookmark, and a Hunting the Devil book bag. Ends at Midnight/CT on September 5th Good luck and have fun! a Rafflecopter giveaway

Enter My First Springtime Giveaway

More daylight = more time to read, so it felt like the perfect occasion for a new bookish giveaway! 🌞📚One lucky winner will receive an eBook copy of A Different Kind of Fire, and a $10 Amazon gift card. This one ends a week from today, so get in while you can. Click...
-Blog Updates-
BOOK REVIEW: Considering Us by Jenn Bouchard

BOOK REVIEW: Considering Us by Jenn Bouchard

Considering Us is a cute food-related romance/women's fiction novel. In college, Devon Paige meets Kyle Holling, they have an instant connection, but after an intense night of talking, he goes to London. They never meet again. In the meantime, Devon becomes a private...

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BOOK REVIEW: Goddess by Kelly Gardiner

BOOK REVIEW: Goddess by Kelly Gardiner

Goddess should have had everything I enjoy in books: an ahead-of-her-time, gender-swapping heroine with the swordsmanship of a musketeer and the voice of a La Scala operatic superstar. Despite her mind-boggling skills, fascinating life, and flamboyant lifestyle, I...

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BOOK REVIEW: Return to Sender by Craig Johnson

BOOK REVIEW: Return to Sender by Craig Johnson

Return to Sender is the 21st book in Craig Johnson’s “Longmire” mystery series, not counting multiple novellas and short stories. Each is a continuation of the adventures of Walt Longmire, Sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming. In this novel, Walt goes undercover to...

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BOOK REVIEW: We Burn Daylight by Bret Anthony Johnston

BOOK REVIEW: We Burn Daylight by Bret Anthony Johnston

We Burn Daylight is a contemporary western set in Waco, Texas, beginning in 1993. Though it’s based on the David Koresh/Branch Davidian standoff with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and later the FBI, it’s not a definitive play-by-play...

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BOOK REVIEW: Unspoken by Jann Alexander

BOOK REVIEW: Unspoken by Jann Alexander

Unspoken brings to life a resilient eleven-year-old girl, Ruby Lee Becker, whose family and farm are trapped in the double whammy of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The recurrent dust storms kill her baby sister and grandmother and leave Ruby with weakened...

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BOOK REVIEW: Follow Me to Africa by Penny Haw

BOOK REVIEW: Follow Me to Africa by Penny Haw

My expectations were high for Follow Me To Africa. As a budding paleoanthropologist in my youth and a lover of the Serengeti, I looked forward to discovering more about Mary Leakey’s work as a paleoanthropologist. However, this fictional biography failed to live up to...

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BOOK REVIEW: The Ancients by John Larison

BOOK REVIEW: The Ancients by John Larison

The Ancients is a post-apocalyptic climate novel. One family lives a prehistoric-feeling life. They live in isolation in the wilderness trying to survive after the fish and elk they depend on for food begin to disappear. The rest of their tribe has moved on, hoping...

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BOOK REVIEW: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

BOOK REVIEW: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

I read The Name of the Rose (Il nome della rosa) in Italian when it was first released in Italy back in 1980. For someone who was only fluent in conversational Italian, it was a tough go, so when it was released in translation in 1983, I read it again and loved it...

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BOOK REVIEW: The Book of Thorns by  Hester Fox

BOOK REVIEW: The Book of Thorns by Hester Fox

During the Napoleonic era in Europe, flowers and their “secret meanings” became a bona fide craze; for example, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, a painter and botanist from the Austrian Netherlands, was renowned for his watercolors of roses, lilies, and other flowers, many of...

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BOOK REVIEW: Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin

BOOK REVIEW: Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin

Laurus describes the life of a fictional fifteenth-century ascetic Russian folk healer, pilgrim, and monk. Arseny, the protagonist, after his parents die of the plague, is raised by his grandfather, a skilled healer who teaches his grandson both healing and reading...

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BOOK REVIEW: The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

BOOK REVIEW: The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

The Weight of Ink is a three point-of-view (Helen Watt, a British professor with Parkinson’s disease; her graduate student, Aaron Levy; and Ester Velasquez, a Jewish immigrant who serves as a scribe to a blind rabbi who lost his vision in the Inquisition. This is also...

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BOOK REVIEW: Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

BOOK REVIEW: Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

After reading Russell’s The Antidote recently and being enchanted with it, I decided to read some of her older works, beginning with Swamplandia!, her debut novel. Swamplandia! is a family-run tourist attraction on an island in the Everglades. The cast of characters...

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BOOK REVIEW: River of Lies by James L’Etoile

BOOK REVIEW: River of Lies by James L’Etoile

River of Lies is the second in author James L’Etoile’s Detective Emily Hunter Mystery series. Though it continues with the same characters both major and minor, it can easily be read as a standalone. I’ve read and enjoyed L’Etoile’s earlier Nathan Parker and Detective...

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BOOK REVIEW: Kills Well with Others by Deanna Raybourn

BOOK REVIEW: Kills Well with Others by Deanna Raybourn

Kills Well with Others is the sequel to Killers of a Certain Age. A quartet of “women of a certain age,” retired assassins Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie are called out of retirement (they’re still waiting on their pensions) by the organization they work for,...

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BOOK REVIEW: My Name is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende

BOOK REVIEW: My Name is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende

My Name is Emilia del Valle has everything I typically look for in fiction, especially women's fiction and historical fiction: an indomitable female protagonist facing sexism, unjust social mores, and other obstacles in her life. Somehow, this novel fails to deliver...

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BOOK REVIEW: Shadow of the Solstice by Anne Hillerman

BOOK REVIEW: Shadow of the Solstice by Anne Hillerman

  Each year I look forward to the next installment of the Leaphorn/Chee/Manuelito Navajo mysteries by the father-daughter duo of Tony and Anne Hillerman. Shadow of the Solstice is the 28th novel in the series. They are consistently good reads, and I have read...

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BOOK REVIEW: The Language of the Birds by K.A. Merson

BOOK REVIEW: The Language of the Birds by K.A. Merson

The Language of the Birds is a Da Vinci Code-type of young-adult exploit filled with complicated ciphers, codes, puzzles, American history, and conspiracy theories involving Herbert Hoover, the US President who botched the American recovery from the Great Depression....

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BOOK REVIEW: Roll the Sun Across the Sky by Barbara Linn Probst

BOOK REVIEW: Roll the Sun Across the Sky by Barbara Linn Probst

I was immersed in Roll the Sun Across the Sky from the first line: “The summer before I ruin his life …” Of course, I had to learn how the protagonist, a twenty-four-year-old woman, destroys someone’s life!  That the story involves a trip across Europe during the...

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BOOK REVIEW: The Last Maasai Warrior by Frank Coates

BOOK REVIEW: The Last Maasai Warrior by Frank Coates

The Last Maasai Warrior is a fascinating historical fiction account of British colonization of Kenya which has many parallels to the invasion of North America by Europeans and the ensuing genocide of Native Americans.  The British, in 1904, yield the Maasai control of...

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