Tranquil Reader

My Copy of the Book Year Published: 2017 Genre: Memoir; Humor Blurb: Living the French dream – vineyards, sunflowers, lavender fields, glasses of wine and platters of fromage. French ladies slender and chic, French men wearing berets and riding bicycles with baguettes clamped under their arms when they are not flirting outrageously, and all the while the sun shines down benevolently upon uniform rows of ripening vegetables. Dreams are strange and unpredictable, and sometime so is la vie en rose. A pick from some of the best bits of the popular travel author's blog diaries reveal the minutiae of expat day to day life in rural France. A must-read for Susie Kelly fans and anybody thinking of, or dreaming of, moving to France. About the Author: Susie Kelly was born in grey post-war London, and spent much of her childhood and young adulthood in the beautiful country of Kenya. She now lives in south-west France with a menagerie of assorted animals, and is pass...

My Copy of the Book Year Published: 2017 Genre: Fantasy; Mystery Blurb: Moving on from Cinderella was always going to be hard for Sylvia Stark. A change of direction sends her to create a magazine for stepfamilies called Fairytale Stepmothers Unite. She interviews Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother as well as Snow White and her wicked stepmother. As expected she finds things are not as they seem but a twist of fate brings a mysterious man into her life and sends her reeling. The Land of Make Believe threatens to suck her in unless she can make a firm stand and remember what is most important in life. Getting revenge on those who have hurt her is the icing on the cake. About the Author: I was born in Tampa, Florida but grew up in Outback NT Australia. During my 50+ years, I have been married and divorced, a single parent, a mother and a stepmother, in full-time employment and then unable to work due to chronic illness. What I have discovered is that no matte...

My Copy of the Book Date of Release: 24 August 2018 Genre: Chick Lit; Humorous Blurb: DAISY SETS OUT TO FIND PRINCE CHARMING WITH HER TALKING, HARD-DRINKING CAT. Daisy will turn 40 in eleven months and has never married. Her family figures Daisy is a loser because she is still in college trying to avoid paying off her student loans which have amassed over 22 years of a miseducation. And all Daisy has is a cat to keep her company. To make the crises worse, her cat begins giving Daisy dating advice, when she is sober! She never knew the cat was British though Daisy did name him Shakespeare. The mess of Daisy's life is even kookier because the cat is cursing and smoking now like a Downton-Abbey criminal, quoting William Shakespeare, and drinking more alcoholic beverages. Mm, there must be a connection to all this flowing alcohol, which may explain the bubbly in Daisy's brain. Her sisters and mother insist on setting Daisy up on six blind dates and all the ...

My Copy of the Book Year Published: 2018 Genre: Contemporary; Humorous Blurb: Victor Ferraro is a heroic and chivalric knight plucked from the Middle Ages and stuck in late 1990s New Jersey, or so he’d like to believe. More interested in dreaming up sweeping epics than learning how to subtract, Victor often catches himself staring out the window of his first-grade classroom, imagining battlefields riddled with arrows and orc corpses.  But his new real-life nemesis may be too powerful for Victor to defeat. A Goliath in chestnut top-siders, Pierce Stone wields a weapon more powerful than any battle-ax or broadsword. And Victor soon learns that at his new school, kids like Pierce Stone fight with words. Victor’s smattering of Itanglish might not be enough to take on his new enemy, but his obsession with Hell might just save him yet.  Follow Victor, from his impressionable childhood to the formidable years of high school, on his search for Hell—his own ordained q...

Book Information: Title:  Messing With Matilda Author:  Cat Lavoie Release Date:  April 4, 2018 Genres:  Chick Lit, Romantic Comedy Publisher:  Cat Lavoie Sign up for the CatChats email newsletter!  http://bit.ly/CatMailingList About MESSING WITH MATILDA As a professional organizer in New York City, Matilda Hart wages war against chaos and clutter on a daily basis for her clients—and she vows to never let it invade her own well-ordered world.  But when her boyfriend decides to deviate from the path she’s been planning for them, Matilda's perfectly structured life begins to crumble. She reluctantly finds herself back in the tiny hometown she fled a lifetime ago—determined to lay low and avoid running into anyone she used to know. So why is she reconnecting with her former best friend and putting up with the bridezilla antics of Amber, her high school nemesis?  When Matilda is tasked with keeping the bride-to-be’s he...

Book Cover Year Published: 2018 Genre: Chick Lit; Humorous Blurb: Sara's world shatters when she stabs her husband's lover at a party. The press has a field day, and Sara moves from Scotland and her life of riches back to her parent's modest home in West London. She ditches her married name of MacDonald and becomes Sara Sharma once more. With no friends and little money, her electronic prison anklet a constant reminder of what she left behind. Living back at home with her eccentric Bollywood loving parents is a challenge. It gets worse when Sara realizes how badly she let them down. For the sake of her family, she considers having an arranged marriage. Could she be the perfect wife again? Just as she thinks she might, her childhood love George Wright walks through the door. Memories of the past come flooding back, including how he betrayed her. Sara vows never to forgive him, however hard he mixes things up. About the Author: Bena Roberts was a jour...

Book Cover Year Published: 2018 Genre: Crime; Humorous; Chick Lit Blurb: If Lucky O’Toole, chief problem solver for the Babylon, Vegas’ primo Strip property, knows one thing—where money goes, trouble follows. So, when the NFL announces it’s moving a team to Vegas, Lucky is left on the fence until the trouble she feared lands in her lap. Nolan Ponder, one of the key players in the negotiations to get the NFL to Sin City, staggers into the Babylon covered in blood and holding a knife. With the mountains of money and careers on the line, Lucky figured someone would try to kill the deal. But murder? Chasing down a murderer is the last thing she needs. Teddie, her former live-in lover is exploiting every angle to get back into her heart. Jean-Charles, her fiancé, is planning a trip to France to introduce Lucky to his family. Mona, her mother, still hasn’t named her twins. Lucky’s life is quickly becoming a game of murder and mayhem. She just hopes this game won’t g...

My Copy of the Book Year Published: 2013 Genre: Biography; Memoir; Travel Blurb: ON THE ROAD: GROWING UP IN EIGHT JOURNEYS - MY EARLY YEARS is a new form of autobiography, in which TOP GEAR presenter Richard Hammond tells the story of his early life through a series of significant driving episodes. He's a child in the back seat of Dad's car on the way to the seaside in Weston-Super-Mare. He's on his first bike, a red one, in Solihull, then on his first motorcycle, a Honda MTX50. He's at the wheel of his first car (and in the back with his first girlfriend). He is driving a furniture delivery van as part of his first job in and around Ripon. Now he is showing off with a friend, risking everything. ON THE ROAD is an emotional road map in which each chapter has its own registration number, and its own distinctive interior. Most importantly, each chapter sets off and arrives. ON THE ROAD surges on to its destination, reversing or moving quickly through the ...

About the Book: Forty-something scientist Helen leaves her husband after twenty uninspired years of marriage. Plagued with making the wrong decisions she looks towards holistic therapy and the universe to guide her choices. She meets hairdresser Alex and takes his advice to download the dating app SPRK. Helen embarks on a voyage of self-discovery, paganism, hedonism and desire. What could go wrong? Well for one secret agent CJ is convinced that Helen is part of a notorious Romanian smuggling gang. Six Tinder weeks is not the usual romantic novel; it is realistic fiction full of twists, turns that will make you laugh out loud. If you like something different, then you will enjoy this Pandora's box of love, action and the unexpected. About the Author: Bena is an expat British woman living with her family in Germany. She was a journalist, blogger and analyst as well as CEO of quite a few geeky companies. She is a bookworm, gym bunny and partial to dry Italian red wine. ...

My Copy of the Book Year Published: 2017 Genre: Contemporary with a hint of humor Blurb: Wearing nothing but psych ward pajamas and fluffy slippers, the odd girl wasn't really dressed to kill. Being the Grim Reaper, however, she felt confident she could make it work. Have you ever had one of those days? You know, the kind of day when things just don't go your way. Like when your botched suicide attempt and claims of supernatural powers get you hauled to the emergency room, placed under observation, then transferred to a locked-down psych facility. The girl who thought she was Death had failed miserably in her efforts to shed the troublesome human body in which she was trapped. The result? Finding herself surrounded by nutjobs, locked in a mental ward ruled by a humorless doctor with a Napoleon complex and a penchant for sleight of hand. Sure, she did technically bring it on herself, but how was she to know that trying to off herself in public and using her...

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 ...

Book Cover Year Published: 2017 Genre: Women's Fiction; Chick Lit Blurb: Five feet one and full of fizz, Jennifer Brown lights up the room. She has a gorgeous partner, a wicked best friend, and a boss who doesn’t mind that she’s the worst typist on the planet. She’s loyal, generous and irredeemably ditzy. Everyone loves Jennifer Brown.But can she learn to love herself? When her world caves in, she needs every ounce of her steely core to step back from the abyss and take charge of her life, reinventing herself first as cook and housekeeper to a saucy sexagenarian, then as manager of a tumbledown country estate with sensitive secrets.Peopled by a battalion of hilarious characters from the caustic, cross-dressing confidant to the besotted ex-boyfriend with a barmy ex-wife, Jennifer Brown’s Journey is a heartwarming, thoughtful, often poignant portrait of the trials of life as a thirty-something woman.Jennifer Brown champions the importance of self-belief, and the value ...

My Copy of the Book Year Published: 2017 Genre: New Adult; Humorous Blurb: Laden with the grief of losing his childhood best friend to suicide and the weight of the “Real World” approaching fast, Joel Lupo buys a one-way ticket to Paris after graduating from college. With his faithful friends, Riley and Kev, at his side, a carry-on full of whiskey nips, and the promise of drugs, women and the chance to finally speak French (the damn beautiful tongue), Joel heads to Europe to seek adventure, excitement, and new vices. But through the haze of hallucinogens and prostitutes, new friends and new lovers (Joel quite liked to use the word 'lover,' when in Europe), bloody red wine and absinthe, something gnaws at Joel in the pit. It follows him from Paris, across the pulsating cities of the continent. It takes hold of him and eats away at his thoughts, his mood, his friendships. Across the warm waters of the Mediterranean, an awakening foments on the coasts of North Afric...