Noah’s Rainy Day by Sandra Brannan is the 4th book on the Liv Bergen mystery series. Liv has completed training at Quantico and is now an FBI Agent. She is immediately tossed into a case with Streeter Pierce, her lover Jack Linwood, and her bloodhound Beulah. She finds herself in a race against time to find a 5-year-old who went missing from Denver International Airport. Meanwhile her nephew Noah Hogarty, who has severe cerebral palsy, is convinced that there is something going in with the quiet new girl across the street. When no clear way to communicate his suspicions, he decides to take matters into his own hands…because that’s what his aunt would do. I am always excited to read Mrs. Brannan’s books, and this definitely didn’t disappoint. There is a lot of action and mystery throughout the story and, as always, it keeps you literally glued to the story. I couldn’t put it down. There was a bit of a change in writing style for this one. Normally, only Liv is presented in ...
book review
Book Review – Where They Bury You by Steve Kohlhagen
Where they Bury You is the newest novel by Steve Kohlhagen. It’s a historical fiction based around the death of Major Joseph Cummings, who was the Provost Marshal of Santa Fe during the Civil War. He was found in an arroyo near what is now the Hubbell Trading Post in Ganado, Arizona with roughly what would be millions in today’s money in his saddlebags. Officially, it is said that Cummings was shot by an Indian & there wasn’t much of an investigation at the time due to the war. However, over the ensuing years, more information his come to light that question who Cummings was and where his activities were during the war. Mr. Kohlhagen mixes history with fiction in his take on events leading up Cummings’s death, and has created a wonderful novel that is a mix of Civil War, western & mystery novel. The novel has several different storylines that eventually all come together. It starts with the conflict between Cochise, Chief of the Chiricahua Apaches, and the Army. ...
Product Review – Poyomi Photobooks
A few weeks ago, I was asked to create a photo book at Poyomi. Poyomi allows you to upload your images and create custom photo books of various sizes. Unlike the other photo books I’ve tried in the past, Poyomi books are paperback, affordable, and you can place bulk orders. Finding a company that offers a good photo book has been a bit difficult. I look for them mainly to be able to show off my photography and graphic design to potential customers. The hard cover ones are nice, but they tend to be very costly and you don’t get a lot of pages. The very first thing I noticed about Poyomi is that you can get a ton of pages for little cost. You can also have multiple images per page with text descriptions or one image per page. I went with one image per page in a 40 page book. I originally had some descriptions but I took them out since they printed over the bottom of the image. It only took me a few minutes to upload all of my images, and a few more minutes to arrange ...
Book Review – Riding on a Beam of Light by Ramsey Dean
Riding on a Beam of Light is a children’s ebook by Ramsey Dean, and illustrated by Noah Hamdan. Albert is a little boy with a huge imagination. It doesn’t take much for him to be imagining all sorts of things, including riding around on a beam of light. Take a look into one of the many day dreams of a young Albert Einstein that eventually fueled his scientific theories and discoveries.I've always been a fan of science stuff, so I was very excited to read this to my daughter. The story was a very quick read, and was very informative. Mr. Dean added in a lot of info about Albert Einstein, so now my three year old has a basic grasp of who he was. The illustrations were wonderful and my daughter was absolutely enthralled by them. I liked them as well. It also made me curious about Einsteins theory of relativity. I only ever learned the basics about it, but not the story behind it. I've been looking it up to past few days and have found out all sorts of neat stuff. Once my ...
Grammarics Review & Giveaway [ENDED]
Last week, I was asked to check out Grammarics’ Pictorial Guide to Commons Errors in English Usage (Volume 1). Grammarics covers all the common mistakes that people make with commas, spelling, word usage, and more.Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed that I’m picking up on grammar issues when I’m reading stuff more than I ever had in the past. I don’t always catch it in my own writings, mostly since I tend to crank stuff out pretty quick…but I do notice it when I’m reading books. It’s gotten to the point that I have to keep myself from getting a pencil to mark mistakes or highlight sections on my Kindle. I’m going to assume that they just aren’t teaching the same stuff in English classes that learned when I was a kid. I’ve seen proof of then when helping my younger sister-in-law with homework. So, I was eager to look through this to see if would be of great use to her. I wasn’t disappointed.The book is broken down into chapters, each covering a different issue. Each ...
Book Review – Bloodlines: Everything That Glitters by Myunique C. Green
Bloodlines: Everything That Glitters is the first in a series of young adult fantasy novels by first time author Myunique C. Green. Alizarin and her twin brother Ash were as normal as people could be…until they started getting strange abilities. Before long, they find out that their mother is actually a nature goddess from another dimension who has lost her powers and memories, & there is a power-hungry being after Alizarin because she is the subject of a prophecy. Why can she just be normal?The overall plot of the story is very good, and I liked it a lot. I’m not usually one for fantasy but this was very interesting. However, it has some major grammar and storyline issues that need to be fixed. The grammar issues are easy to fix, since it was all fairly simple stuff (spelling mistakes, missing words, run-on sentences, & words that are used incorrectly). There were also a few format glitches on the Kindle version. She really just needs to have someone edit it.The storyline ...