Tranquil Reader

Book Cover Year Published: 2016 Genre: Contemporary; Drama with tiny little bits of military in it. Blurb: Jen is an all-American teenage girl who struggles with her Iranian heritage. Hoping she will connect with the culture and traditions he values, her father takes her to visit the land of his birth.  Her mother's worst fears are realized when Jen is kidnapped and sold into modern day slavery.  Follow the story of an extraordinary young woman who refuses to be a victim. Cheer for her as she fights to stay alive and to ultimately find her way home. Follow the Path of Jen. About the Author: Sidney A. Wood, lives in a small, sleepy town in Alaska's Matanuska Valley. In the summer, he hikes, fishes, and rides the tires off his Harley. In the winter, he throws snowballs at his beautiful wife and teenage daughters, and then laughs at their cries of betrayal with his faithful dog and partner in crime, Cuddles. Yes, he let his daughter name her (face pal...

My Copy of the Book Year Published: 2015 Genre: Fantasy Blurb: A comet the color of blood and flame cuts across the sky. And from the ancient citadel of Dragonstone to the forbidding shores of Winterfell, chaos reigns. Six factions struggle for control of a divided land and the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms, preparing to stake their claims through tempest, turmoil, and war. It is a tale in which brother plots against brother and the dead rise to walk in the night. Here a princess masquerades as an orphan boy; a knight of the mind prepares a poison for a treacherous sorceress; and wild men descend from the Mountains of the Moon to ravage the countryside. Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory may go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel...and the coldest hearts. For when kings clash, the whole land trembles. About the Author: George R.R. Martin sold his first story in 1971 and has been writing professionally since ...

Book Cover Year Published: 2017 Genre: Crime; Mystery; Suspense Blurb: The Last Straw ,  by Ed Duncan, is a suspenseful crime thriller. This is the second book in the Pigeon Blood Red series.  When a teenage girl witnesses a carjacking gone bad, she is marked for death by a crime boss with no apparent motive. A black lawyer and a white enforcer with an unlikely history forge an uneasy alliance to protect the girl from a hit man with an agenda of his own. After they find out that the crime boss is the father of the black teenage carjacker, Paul Elliott - lawyer and close friend of the witness’s family - begins counseling them. As the long-simmering feud between Rico and John D'Angelo reaches boiling point, bodies start to pile up in rapid succession... and old scores will be settled. About the Author: Ed Duncan is a graduate of Oberlin College and Northwestern University Law School. He was a partner at a national law firm in Cleveland, Ohio for ma...

My Copy of the Book Year Published: 2018 Genre: Paranormal, with a small touch of horror Blurb: Wicked Faith (A Paranormal Mystery) Again, we join Thomas Arsen, the immortal reaper hybrid, and his two human friends (Lonnie the veteran killer and Fitz the cursed slayer), as they head to Barton/Texas, in an attempt to solve a puzzling series of deaths, mysteriously revolving around one Woman (Susan Day). Several bodies found, defiled in ways that could only hint to the victims' deepest secrets. As the mystery unravels, more details come to light that would indicate the malice of a creature more powerful and cunning than demons themselves. A convoluted thrill charged with mystery and suspense that could put our hero's talents to the greatest test he has ever undergone. In this episode, Lonnie discovers a hideous  truth about his estranged family, while Fitz faces the monstrous reality of his cursed origin. Thomas must find the creature responsible for robbing Su...

Book Cover Year Published: 2016 Genre: Sci-Fi; Adventure Blurb: Kathy Masters never expected to journey to the stars until she was selected by the prestigious Galactic Geographic Society to photograph and get videos of the flora and fauna of a newly discovered class M planet before colonization begins. Filled with hope and enthusiasm, she boards the SS America for the trip to Beta 3 Epsilon to begin her new project. On the way, she is abducted and brought aboard the privateer Rapier, beginning her nine-year sojourn among the colonies of mankind. Going from captive to slave to induction into the infamous brotherhood, Kathy finds herself being called on to raise the adopted daughter of the crew of the Rapier. Given the responsibility to raise their princess, Cindy, with the help of Lien Lan Yi, daughter of the house of Yi and princess of the imperial court, they travel among the stars, preying on merchant ships, dodging Chinese warships, fighting pirates, visiting strange ...

Book Cover Year Published: 2017 Genre: Military with a hint of romance Blurb: A Police Action is a gripping coming-of-age Vietnam War-era romantic novel. It is the story of two lost and confused young adults. It is love at first sight when nineteen-year-old Samantha Powers meets James Coppi at the Country Honky Tonk in Colorado Springs. There are just two problems to a storybook ending for Samantha's passion. She is pregnant with someone else's child and James, a young solider, is heading for a war in Vietnam.  Will this instant attraction be enough to form a lasting bond? What will happen after James is deployed? Will he return home safely, and, if so, will it be to Samantha? Follow along as the young lovers mature through their individual hardships and those that they share. About the Author: A. A. Freda is an award winning author who writes about life experiences he's had or people he's met along the way. His first novel, Goodbye Rudy Kazoo...

Book Cover Year Published: 2017 Genre: Horror Blurb: Three lost souls will collide as they navigate through a mysterious town saturated with ash raining endlessly from the sky. They soon discover that they are not alone and will have to work together in order to escape alive. As they uncover clues scattered through the town they will have to decide which is more horrifying, themselves or those who are hiding within the ashes. Heaven is forgetting, hell is remembering. About the Author: Matthew Danza and his best friend Adam Horeth, continue to explore the world of horror as author and editor. Their goal is to create a world of characters that their audience can become entranced with while relating to them. They have just finished their mini-series The Fin, and plan on continuing to explore the world of terror and thrills. Their newest gothic psychological horror "Always yell Fire" is out now! They got the call, but they didn't answer... Connect ...

Book Cover Year Published: 2017 Genre: Humorous; Action Blurb: Devious, ruthless, and loyal. Zenka is a capricious Hungarian with a dark past. When cranky London mob boss, Jack Murray, saves her life she vows to become his guardian angel – whether he likes it or not. Happily, she now has easy access to pistols, knives and shotguns. Jack discovers he has a son, Nicholas, a male nurse with a heart of gold. Problem is, Nicholas is a wimp. Zenka takes charges. Using her feminine wiles and gangland contacts, she will make Nicholas into the sort of son any self-respecting crime boss would be proud of. And she succeeds! Nicholas transforms from pussycat to mad dog, falls in love with Zenka, and finds out where the bodies are buried – because he buries them. He’s learning fast that sometimes you have to kill, or be killed. As his life becomes more terrifying, questions have to be asked: How do you tell a mob boss you don’t want to be his son? And is Zenka really ...

My Copy of the Book Year Published: 2017 Genre: Paranormal; Steampunk; Suspense with a hint of romance Blurb: Eva Thorne thought facing a werewolf, betrayal, and the army of Death was bad. She learns there are all new kinds of evil—and more enemies, as well as allies, than she ever imagined. All of them have an agenda, and all of them want the one thing she needs to defeat the Dead God and save her world from annihilation. Can she claim the First Soul before they do? The bad guys all want her dead. Fortunately, some want the First Soul more, and they need her to get it. They hope it will make them a god. She wants it for her own reasons. It summoned the God of Death, and it can send Him back to the Void before His armies ‘cleanse’ everything she’s ever known from existence. The last strongholds of humanity have fallen. Only the Three Kingdoms of Avian, Dwarf and Elf still stand. Eva is running out of time, because even that alliance is crumbling, and the Elf King, Fharen,...

Book Cover Genre: Crime; Thriller Year Published: 2016 Blurb: Pigeon-Blood Red is a fast-paced and suspenseful crime thriller by Ed Duncan.  For underworld enforcer Richard "Rico" Sanders, it seemed like an ordinary job. Retrieve his gangster boss's priceless pigeon-blood red ruby necklace and teach the double-dealing cheat who stole it a lesson. A job like a hundred before it. But the chase quickly goes sideways and takes Rico from the mean streets of Chicago to sunny Honolulu, where the hardened hit man finds himself in uncharted territory when a couple of innocent bystanders are accidentally embroiled in the crime. As Rico pursues his new targets, the hunter and his prey develop an unlikely respect for one another and Rico is faced with a momentous decision: follow his orders to kill the couple whose courage and character have won his admiration, or refuse and endanger the life of the woman he loves? About the Author: Ed Duncan is a graduate of Oberli...

Book Cover Year Published: 2017 Genre: Crime; Suspense Blurb:  A contemporary political thriller based on the ridiculous notion of what might happen if a left-wing, Labour leader was resurgent despite all the attempts by the media to discredit him. What if, as an election approached, he started to gain traction because of a serious downturn in the economy, unrest in the country and corruption revealed at the highest levels? What if the electorate started seeing him as an answer to their problems? How would the right and big business react? Finding himself at the heart of a conspiracy is 30-year-old Health and Safety Inspector, Mitch Miller who falls in love with someone he shouldn’t and gets into very hot water. A modern day Romeo and Juliet facing car chases through the streets of Sheffield, murder, betrayal and kidnap. About the Author: I like to write down to earth historical fiction that is well-researched and rooted in time and place. I love shouting a...

My Copy of the Book Year Published: 2017 Genre: Crime; Suspense Blurb: Oil—the currency of global economic power. Alter the supply a country controls; alter the power they wield.  Patrick Donovan, Texas wildcatter, sitting on a deep-water well, has tapped into a reservoir so vast it could totally alter the balance of economic power.  A software scatter-bomb planted in the trading software at the New York Mercantile Exchange. A software security engineer is killed. And the price of oil is dropping like a stone. Donovan goes missing, and an influential senior Senator from Texas is presumed dead. Sam Donovan, Patrick’s daughter, finds herself in the bullseye of a world scramble to gain control of her father’s well. A helicopter pilot operating between the rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, Sam knows how the game is played.  But this time, the stakes are life and death. As a hurricane bears down on the Gulf of Mexico, a man with everything to lose...

Book Cover Year Published: 2016 Genre: Thriller, Post-Apocalyptic Blurb: Aftermath is a growing series about war, love, brutality and most of all, survival. What was once the United States has become a savage post-apocalyptic environment where the worst of the worst prosper and the remaining good hide. The series features a brutal setting, where seven characters in different parts of the United States must adapt to this new environment. The "fight or flight" mentality plays into the story, as the nation is divided into factions fighting for control of the country. The government is outnumbered, outgunned, and forced into hiding as well to recoup their forces. The novel follows a fast paced momentum from the first page to the last word. The plot pits these characters against the elements and each other, with plot-lines intertwining on opposite sides of the war effort. And one character's quest for revenge can jeopardize not only the war outcome, but the resh...

Book Cover Year Published: 2014 Genre: Crime Blurb: Night is a winner. Rough, real, challenging...and ultimately redemptive, this novel gives an unflinching look inside the rancid, raunchy, frightening underworld of South African organized crime as fought by the South African Police Force.  A violent world of paramilitary police, African style layers of intrigue, and a mix of cultures brings a special atmosphere to an excellent story, great characters and a wonderful style of rhythm that drives this book forward. About the Author: Best selling author. Consultant. “Wine is sunlight, held together by water.” Galileo Galilei Connect with the Author: Twitter:  Casey Christie Twitter My Take on the Book: I liked the fact that this book was based in South Africa (which is the country I live in, for those that don't know); there were times when I found the jargon a little confusing, and also felt that the end of the book was a little ru...