Odyssey In A Teacup

Ruth Roth #1

by Paula Houseman 

Amazon US / UK  / B&N

Author Bio 

 Paula Houseman was once a graphic designer. But when the temptation to include ‘the finger’ as part of a logo for a forward-moving women’s company proved too much, she knew it was time to give away design. Instead, she took up writing.

She found she was a natural with the double entendres (God knows she’d been in enough trouble as a child for dirty wordplay).

As a published writer of earthy chick lit and romantic comedy, Paula gets to bend, twist, stretch and juice up universal experiences to shape reality the way she wants it, even if it is only in books. But at the same time, she can make it more real, so that her readers feel part of the sisterhood. Or brotherhood (realness has nothing to do with gender).

Through her books, Paula also wants to help the reader escape into life and love’s comic relief. And who doesn’t need to sometimes?

Her style is a tad Monty Pythonesque because she adores satire. It helps defuse all those gaffes and thoughts that no one is too proud of.

Paula lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband. No other creatures. The kids have flown the nest and the dogs are long gone.

Social Media Links –

Twitter: https://twitter.com/paulahouseman

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/PaulaHouseman

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulaHousemanAuthor

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulahouseman

 I Know You Know

by Gilly Macmillan

HarperCollins | Amazon | B & N

Paperback: 384 pages
 Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (September 18, 2018)

From New York Times bestselling author Gilly Macmillan comes this original, chilling and twisty mystery about two shocking murder cases twenty years apart, and the threads that bind them.

Twenty years ago, eleven-year-olds Charlie Paige and Scott Ashby were murdered in the city of Bristol, their bodies dumped near a dog racing track. A man was convicted of the brutal crime, but decades later, questions still linger.

For his whole life, filmmaker Cody Swift has been haunted by the deaths of his childhood best friends. The loose ends of the police investigation consume him so much that he decides to return to Bristol in search of answers. Hoping to uncover new evidence, and to encourage those who may be keeping long-buried secrets to speak up, Cody starts a podcast to record his findings. But there are many people who don’t want the case—along with old wounds—reopened so many years after the tragedy, especially Charlie’s mother, Jess, who decides to take matters into her own hands.

When a long-dead body is found in the same location the boys were left decades before, the disturbing discovery launches another murder investigation. Now Detective John Fletcher, the investigator on the original case, must reopen his dusty files and decide if the two murders are linked. With his career at risk, the clock is ticking and lives are in jeopardy…

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

If you can control where an interview takes place, you are part of the way to controlling the interview itself. Location matters. Fletcher’s wife announced she was leaving him when they were in the Costco car park. He didn’t see it coming. He remembers acutely the humiliation of loading bags into the boot of the car while she explained across the laden shopping trolley that their marriage was over. “Well, why are we buying in bulk then?” was all he could think to ask.

It’s a resting place for cold cases, and Fletcher thinks of it as an archive of failure. For every high-profile solve, there’s an unsolved crime shelved here. In each tidily filed box, Fletcher thinks, there are not just papers, photographs, and other case materials, but other things, invisible things. There are traces of the open emotional wounds an unsolved crime leaves on the families and detectives affected by it. There is also the shadow of something more rotten: the person who got away with it.

Like a nodding dog ornament on a dashboard, she moves her head laboriously to look at Danny. Everything she does is so slow it makes Fletcher’s joints feel as if they’re liquefying under the strain of being patient.

I said you’re a prat, John Fletcher. Always have been, always will be. I’m fed up of you strutting about like you own the place when you passed your sell-by date years ago. The only time I’ll look forward to seeing you will be at your retirement party.

I did a bit of unscientific research on the subject—by which I mean to say that I looked it up on the internet…

My Review:

I was unprepared for the twists and turns of the diabolically clever Gilly Macmillan. Her fascinating yet despicable characters were as compelling as the well-crafted storylines they inhabited. They squeezed then broke my heart while holding me captive to my Kindle as I hissed and huffed my distress. No one was innocent, except for the condemned patsy, and no one was as they had initially appeared, it was brilliant.

Gilly Macmillan has strong word voodoo. Cunningly woven into this adroitly written book were the gut-churning savagery of children, blackmail, police coercion, nefarious manipulations, greed, ambition, corruption, and desperation. The writing was exquisitely nuanced, the wily characters were deeply damaged and irreparably flawed yet keenly described and depicted in a cleverly magnetizing manner. It was riveting, yet tragic and heartbreaking. I was enthralled and even though she turned me inside out, I covet her mad skills and greedily want all her words.

New additions to my Brit Vocab list include tearaways which Mr. Google tells me is a wild or reckless person; bung which is a bribe or payoff; and cobblers which apparently has two meanings as it is nonsense to some, and testicles to the Cockneys – although those two things are pretty much the same thing to me 😉

I was provided with a review copy of this stunningly well-crafted book by HarperCollins and TLC Book Tours.

About Gilly Macmillan

Gilly Macmillan is the Edgar Nominated and New York Times bestselling author of What She Knew. She grew up in Swindon, Wiltshire and lived in Northern California in her late teens. She worked at The Burlington Magazine and the Hayward Gallery before starting a family. Since then she’s worked as a part-time lecturer in photography, and now writes full-time. She resides in Bristol, England.

Find out more about Gilly at her website, and connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Didn’t Sea it Coming

by Andie M. Long

Goodreads / Amazon

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

He could have asked me anything at that moment. I was so sucked in I’d have given him a kidney.

…he is a fine steak all right. I’m worshipping at the feet of the guy who from now on shall be known as Sir Loins.

Who you gonna protest to? The only royalty you’re going near is Burger King.

My Review:

I have enjoyed this series and have no idea what manner of creature or tribulations will next befall this quirky mix of humans and paranormals. Andie M. Long has rewritten the rulebook on interspecies mingling and mangling. The cleverly amusing storylines are rife with irreverent humor, witty banter, bawdy quips, and peculiar characters. I am eager for yet dreading the next installment, as it is supposedly the last in the series. Surely she could keep going as there are infinitely more potential love matches for the dating agency to make.

About The Author 

 The Boy at the Keyhole

by Stephen Giles

Amazon | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble

304 pages

Hanover Square Press; Original edition (September 4, 2018)

Nine-year-old Samuel lives alone in a once-great estate in Surrey with the family’s housekeeper, Ruth. His father is dead and his mother has been abroad for months, purportedly tending to her late husband’s faltering business. She left in a hurry one night while Samuel was sleeping and did not say goodbye.

Beyond her sporadic postcards, Samuel hears nothing from his mother. He misses her dearly and maps her journey in an atlas he finds in her study. Samuel’s life is otherwise regulated by Ruth, who runs the house with an iron fist. Only she and Samuel know how brutally she enforces order.

As rumors in town begin to swirl, Samuel wonders whether something more sinister is afoot. Perhaps his mother did not leave but was murdered—by Ruth.

Artful, haunting and hurtling toward a psychological showdown, The Boy at the Keyhole is an incandescent debut about the precarious dance between truth and perception, and the shocking acts that occur behind closed doors.

“A fiendishly efficient, gorgeously written, nasty little thrill ride of a psychological thriller. I couldn’t put it down, and it’s entirely possible that I’ll never sleep again. A true tour-de-force of a debut novel.”–Lyndsay Faye, author of The Gods of Gotham and Jane Steele

“The Boy at the Keyhole is sinister and tight, amusing and intense, an emotional story of a sweet boy in a precarious psychological place. A fun and wicked read that is impossible to put down!”–Matthew Sullivan, author of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Ruth could do that. Make a decree, like a queen or something, that certain topics had reached their end and that would be that.

Now that he stood on the precipice of this wrongdoing, he felt the fluttering in his chest that made every breath sound as if he were sitting on a rattling train.

The same wine his mother said made his father prone to unsettling fits of national pride and falling asleep midsentence.

Part of the reason Samuel was sent to the local school and not somewhere more distinguished, like his father and uncle had, was because his mother didn’t want him turning out like his uncle Felix, who she said was a pompous buffoon wrapped in tweed, dipped in gin and rolled in horsehair.

Samuel saw the lies easily enough; they practically leached from her skin like poisonous gas. She twisted everything, turning the truth in on itself until it looked like something else.

My Review:

I am in quite a pique over the ending, or lack thereof, so rating this skillfully crafted book puts me in a quandary. The story didn’t seem anywhere near a stopping point, yet it ended. Gah – I am infuriated as I was riveted to my Kindle while reading and hissed in complaint at any interruption.   Needless to say, adulting did not happen today, as evidenced by my profane and childish reaction to hitting the last page. Yet, I cannot deny that Stephen Giles is a master storyteller who is extremely gifted with the word voodoo. His writing was mesmerizing and laced with observant details and massive insightfulness into the mind of a child. His characters were compelling and deftly written, I was eager to learn every little nuance I could wring from the narrative. His storylines were tautly written and adroitly textured, I was on edge and keenly interested throughthroughout. I couldn’t settle on a theory and developed and cast off several while reading. The housekeeper was vile and monstrous, harsh on a good day; the mother was absent, irresponsible, and self-absorbed; and the child – oh, he squeezed my heart, I ached for him. But that ending – he really left me hanging, would it have killed him to have kept going just a few more pages? It rankles, but I have to give him his due. Sigh, 5-Stars. This would make an excellent movie.

About Stephen Giles

Stephen Giles is the Australian author behind the lauded children’s series “Anyone But Ivy Pocket”, penned under the pseudonym Caleb Krisp. The series, published in the US by HarperCollins/Greenwillow and the UK by Bloomsbury, appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List, has been translated into 25 different languages and was optioned by Paramount Pictures.

Prior to selling his first book, Stephen worked in a variety of jobs to supplement his writing including market research, film classification and media monitoring. “The Boy at the Keyhole” is Giles’ first work for adults and the film rights for this book have been acquired by New Regency.

 The Silver Shoes

by Jill G. Hall

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

 Paperback: 336 pages
 Publisher: She Writes Press (June 19, 2018)

In her second novel, Jill G. Hall, author of The Black Velvet Coat, brings readers another dual tale of two dynamic women from two very different eras searching for fulfillment.

San Francisco artist Anne McFarland has been distracted by a cross-country romance with sexy Sergio and has veered from her creative path. While visiting him in New York, she buys a pair of rhinestone shoes in an antique shop that spark her imagination and lead her on a quest to learn more about the shoes’ original owner.

Almost ninety years earlier, Clair Deveraux, a sheltered 1929 New York debutante, tries to reside within the bounds of polite society and please her father. But when she meets Winnie, a carefree Macy’s shop girl, Clair is lured into the steamy side of Manhattan–a place filled with speakeasies, flappers, and the beat of “that devil music”–and her true desires explode wide open. Secrets and lies heap up until her father loses everything in the stock market crash and Clair becomes entangled in the burlesque world in an effort to save her family and herself.

Ultimately, both Anne and Clair–two very different women living in very different eras–attain true fulfillment . . . with some help from their silver shoes.

Praise

“The crash of 1929, speakeasies and musical reviews, artistic challenges, family secrets, secret desires, romantic complications?  These are just a few of the ingredients in Jill G. Hall’s wonderful new novel, The Silver Shoes. Clair and Anne are two compelling characters born decades apart into drastically different circumstances. Each must face her own dilemmas and neither has an easy solution.” —Judy Reeves, author of Wild Women, Wild Voices

“What a delight! Hall captivates and pulls the reader in; the story is as sparkling and fun as the silver shoes that connect the two women together–pure entertainment!” —Michelle Cox, Author of the Henrietta and Inspector Howard series

“You’ll be cheering for both of these heroines as they insist on finding their own way as artists, no matter what the men in their lives want them to be. Hall’s descriptions of Anne’s visual art, inspired by the silver shoes, are delicious.” —Janice Steinberg, art journalist and author of The Tin Horse 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

We were from the South, and Ma had been fickle. Had five husbands… We called her the black widow. She’d always say, ‘Honey, they just keep on dying.’ At least she married Daddy for love. The others she said she married out of habit.”

“Always smile like dis.” Varinska demonstrated a blasé expression with a small relaxed smile and cool eyes. “Face say: No care in vorld.” Varinska lit a cigarette, stuck it in her ivory holder, and took a drag. “Rough up! Find tender spot, they poke till you break. Show me zat smile until sinks in.”

My Review:

Back in the day of Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King, I was an early card-carrying feminist, as such, I don’t often read historical fiction due to the poor manner in which women fared during history, and alas, such was the case with one of the timelines in this book. Yet Ms. Hall’s alluring style managed to quickly pull me into this tooth-gnashing tale of dual timelines and hold me captive, despite my irritation and annoyance with the restrictive patriarchal conditions of 1929. I was fully invested and curiously held in place by the writing quality and intriguing storylines even though I wanted to give the female characters in both timelines a sharp smack and a pinch or ten. I was fully exasperated with both for their dithering and weak spinal columns. Although, in her defense, 1929 was a desperately different age and Clair’s obnoxious father had been unforgivably conniving and controlling. I was intrigued by the premise and quite curious to learn Clair’s fate as well those of her friends, and in unraveling the near ninety-year path of the shoes. My favorite characters, by far, were the quirky and colorful burlesque players of Varinska and Winnie, as of course, I tend to favor the sassier broads 😉

About the Author

Jill G. Hall is the author of The Black Velvet Coat, an International Book Award Finalist for Best New Fiction. Her poems have appeared in a variety of publications, including A Year in Ink, The Avocet, and Wild Women, Wild Voices. On her blog, Crealivity, she shares personal musings about the art of practicing a creative lifestyle. She is a seasoned presenter at seminars, readings, and community events. In addition to writing, Hall practices yoga, tap dances, and enjoys spending time in nature.

Learn more at www.jillghall.com, and connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.