About the book:

Description: Informed by the real-life fallout of the U.S. economy and devastation caused by multiple hurricanes along the southern coast, In the Shadow of Evil tells a modern day story involving the exposure of a building rebound scam. Amidst the layers of unethical practices, supply shortages, and excess murders, a top Louisiana homicide detective loses his heart to a charitable contractor while uncovering a secret about his tragic past.

Coming in March 2011
B and H Books, Publisher
Isbn: 9780805449792
Robin Caroll's third Novel dealing with the real-life criminal activity in post Katrina New Orleans.

My Review:

The book starts with the prologue eighteen years ago.  Maddox was seventeen and late for curfew, when he comes in he finds his mom stabled and she died in his arms.

Present Day:  Maddox has become a detective and with his partner Detective Houston they are always working on solving a case.  One he really wants to solve is who killed his mother and why.  The book also includes two sisters Layla and Alana.  Layla was a building contractor just like their dad and Alana ran a retreat for cleaning up drug addicts.   They both were Christian and Maddox had no use for God.  There are so much going on with people dying that went to the same church, murder, places being burned and all of it linked back to Layla. 

This is a great read and as Robin Caroll always does with her books, she keeps you on your toes.  This book will be out in March 2011 so be sure to pick up a copy, you can pre-order it here and here.

Thanks to Wynn, Wynn Media for sending me the copy of this book to review.

 

What The Heart Sees

by

Kathleen Fuller

A Collection of Amish Romance Stories

ISBN: 9781595549198

paperback, 422 pages

 Thomas Nelson Publisher

My Review:

As the book begins the first story is "A Miracle for Miriam" where we find her working in a store run by an "Englisch" woman and they sold fabric and notions for the ladies.  She had been hurt so bad when she was in grammer school by a boy and his friends as they called her names and told her she was ugly and a bean pole.  This made such an impack in her life that she always thought of herself that way.

I know how this fills as I was made fun of a school also as I didn't have the things other children had and it has made me the same way, I feel really bad about myself.   But when the boy, man now came back into her life and he saw her as a beautiful woman, she just could not believe him.  Seth had left the Amish community five years earlier and lived the English life until he got drunk and wrapped his car around a tree.  God was really with him or he could have lost his life.

2nd story is "A Place of His Own" where Josiah left Paradise ten years before after his mother died and his father just go worse.  His father decided they were leaving and Josiah didn't even get to say goodby to his best friend Mandy.  When his father died he came back to Paradise just to fix up their old house and sell it.  But he was not thinking about Mandy and that she too had grown up.

Mandy heard a horse one night as it was the first night that Josiah had come home and she went to search for it, and found the horse in the old barn, that is when Josiah came out and found her.  He did not want anyone to bother him, nor help him, but he had forgot the way Mandy is.  After Mandy and some of her siblings just forced their way into his life to help him get his home and bard back to order, he tried to tell her he didn't want and help but she would not listen.

After his barn burned and all the Amish in the community came to have a barn raising did he realize what he had been missing all the time he was gone.  He had forgotten their ways, but this made him realize he was worth something after all.

3rd story is "What The Heart Sees by Kathleen Fuller" and it finds Ellie Chupp at her father's house when she lives alone with him since her mama passed away, She wakes up in  the very early morning from another one of her night mares, she prays that God will take those away after five years.  Then in comes Christopher Miller who had left the Amish community and had a good job, a nice apartment but something was missing in his life, he decided that he needed to go back home and pray that the people would take him back. A lot of these stories takes place in and around "Yoder's Pantry" a place where everyone comes for a good meal. Ellie is blind from an accident but she has been taught how to do things even with her blindness, she cooks and makes Ellie's Jellies to see at Yoder's Pantry.  Will Christopher be taken back into the Amish community?
 

This book was sent to me  by BookSneeze for my honest review. 

 

THE ME PROJECT

by

Kathi Lipp
Blog Tour Feb 21-25

The Me Project - 21 Days to Living the Life You’ve Always Wanted
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
ISBN-10: 0736929665, ISBN-13: 978-0736929660
Release Date: February 1, 2011
Paperback: 224 pages, Retail: $12.99

Grand Prize Giveaway: 

Deluxe Starbucks Coffee Gift Basket 

On March 7, 2011 KCWC will draw and announce a winner of the grand prize.

• Three 2.5-oz. bags of Starbucks coffee
    (Sumatra, House Blend, and French Roast)
• Tazo black tea
• Starbucks marshmallow cocoa
• Almond roca
• Almond roca buttercrunch toffee cookies
• White chocolate and raspberry cookies
• 2 Starbucks mugs
• Keepsake black bamboo basket

$62 value

Book Summary   

Taken from Kathy Willis' email

(San Jose, CA) Has that rush to make (and break) New Year’s resolutions already waned? According to Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, taking small steps every day will not only help you stay committed to your goal, but will also help you ultimately achieve that goal when obstacles come up. Author Kathi Lipp wants you and your friends to live out those dreams—and have some fun along the way.

As women, we forget the goals and dreams of our younger years. The busyness of everyday life gets in the way. To-do lists replace goals. The Me Project provides women with fun and creative ways to bring back the sense of purpose and vitality that comes with living out the plans and dreams God has planted in our hearts. Kathi Lipp’s warm tone and laugh-out-loud humor motivates women to take daily steps toward intentional goals. The end result? We get back our lives and enjoy living in the confidence of a purposeful life in spite of our chaotic schedules.

This handy guide coaches women to do one simple thing toward achieving our goals each day for three weeks. A woman experiencing the exhilaration of a rediscovered life offers more as a wife, mother, friend, volunteer, career woman.

Author Bio

Kathi Lipp Kathi Lipp is a busy conference and retreat speaker, currently speaking each year to thousands of women throughout the United States. She is the author of The Husband Project and The Marriage Project, serves as food writer for Nickelodeon, and has had articles published in several magazines, including Today’s Christian Woman and Discipleship Journal. Kathi and her husband, Roger, live in California and are the parents of four teenagers and young adults. For more information visit her website: www.kathilipp.com

My Review: 

As on the back of the book "It's Time to Pursue Your Dreams".  This book has details on a way that you or me can fulfill our goals and dreams in a three week project.  No matter what they may be.  It is a daily manual in which to help you alone the way.  Most everyone has so many things going on with their families and work that they forget them selves and what God has in store for us.  We need to take a few minutes each day for ourselves, that is what Kathi is trying to portray here.  God has a plan for all of us we just need to sit still for a minute and listen, maybe a few minutes in the morning or late at night or even on your lunch hour, we will be a better person for it.

This book is laid out in order that we may get ready for the challenge and each day it takes us step by step how to go through it.  I gives us thought for each day and at the end of that chapter there is a place for us to write what we learned or thought that day.

Very interesting book that makes us look at ourselves each day instead of letting everyone else get in the way.  I know we love our families and want to give them our all but then we do need something for ourselves.

This book was sent to me by Kathy Carton Willis Communications for me to do my review and this tour.

 

 ISBN: 9780800733858

Paper back, 308 pages

Revell Publishing

Lancaster County Secrets series

Book 1

My Review:  

Carrie Weaver, a young Amish woman living with her father, stepmother and sister Emma and little brother Andy.   Carrie was in love with Sol a young Amish man but he would not settle down and he decided to take up baseball as a career instead of being baptised into the Amish church.  So he left Carrie broken hearted and still in love with him.

Carrie had to carry on with her life but when another young man comes alone will she marry him just to get out of her step-mother's house?  Her dad had fallen and bleed to death and Carrie and Easter "her step-mom" didn't see eye to eye.  Maybe she would fall in love with another or maybe just leave her old home so that she would not have to answer to Easter.

Will Sol have his career with the baseball team or will he come back to Lancaster and make amends with the Amish community?

This was a great book as I love to read about the Amish and their simple life, sometimes it makes me feel as though I would like to have their life style as it seem we as the English go at such a fast pace.

Thanks to Suzanne Woods Fisher for the copy of this book for me to read and review.

Excert

Jerry S. Eicher's newest book

Little Valley Series

book one

 

Format: Paperback
Number of Pages: 288
Vendor: Harvest House Publishers
Publication Date: 2011

ISBN: 0736928049

Ella's Wish,  Book two due  April 2011

download a free copy of Left Homeless here today

Now for my Review:

I have read another of Jerry's books "Rebecca's Choice" and really enjoyed it.  Jerry write about the Amish a little different than the other authors that I have read.  He does not use as many German words and it is better to understand.

Ella and Aden are planning their wedding but they have to wait until Ella turns twenty-one, they both have been baptised into the Amish church and just have to wait.  Meanwhile Aden is working with his own business building houses and has a crew to help alone with his brother Daniel.  He get sick with his side hurting but refuses to go to the doctor and when he did go it was too late, his appendix had burst a few days before and the poison had gone all thought his body and even with surgery at Tri-County hospital he could not be saved,  This entire book is about Ella and how she handles the healing process of losing his only love and on she did love him so much.  Ella was working on her quilt for their home together now does she want to finish it, so just put it up somewhere.

As the story progresses the young people all talk about things happened in threes and they wondered who else was going to die.  I have always heard this also and it does seen to happen a lot of the time.

There are more things that happen and there are others that die or get killed in the area and too the Amish community.  Life had to go one and so many chores had to be done that no one really had the time to think too much about "what might happen".  Before long Ella had a visitor and her mama took him down to the basement to talk to him, it was a young man that is a Bishop and he wants to ask for Ella's hand in marriage. After Mamm talked with him, Ella went and talked and she did not say she would not marry him but told him to wait for six months and ask again, she needed time to try and heal from losing Aden.

So will she marry the Bishop or will there be someone else come into her life.  She will only marry for love so in April when Ella's Choice comes out, we will be able to read more about her life.  I will be happy to read more as this book left me hanging.

This book was sent to me free from the Author Jerry S. Eicher for my honest review.

 

The Search

by

Suzanne Woods Fisher

 

Pub. Date: January 2011

Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

Format: Paperback , 298pp

Series: Lancaster County Secrets Series , #3

 ISBN: 0800733878

Read an interview with Suzanne here .http://myheartbelongs2books.blogspot.com/

In no particular order, Suzanne Woods Fisher is a wife, mother, writer, lifelong student of the Bible, raiser of puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind, a gardener and a cook...the latter two with sporadic results.
Suzanne has loved to write since she was a young teen. After college, she started to write for magazines and became a contributing editor for Christian Parenting Today magazine. Her family moved to Hong Kong for four years, just as the internet was developing, and she continued to write articles in a 44-story high-rise apartment, sending manuscripts 7,000 miles away with a click of a key.
After returning from Hong Kong, Suzanne decided to give her first novel a try. For four and a half months, she worked on an antediluvian computer in a cramped laundry room. She didn't even tell her husband what she was up to. When the novel was completed, she told her family at dinner one night that she had written a book. "That's why there's no food in this house!" said her slightly insensitive sons.
Undaunted...Suzanne found a small royalty publisher for that book and wrote three more (all earned multiple). With help from an agent, she has five books currently under contract with Revell. On September 1st, Amish Peace: Simple Wisdom for a Complicated World, a non-fiction book of stories and examples about the Old Order Amish, will be released by Revell. The Choice, a novel about the Amish, will follow on January 1st.
Writing, for Suzanne, is a way to express a love of God and His word. With every book or article, she hopes readers get a sense of what faith really looks like in the daily grind. She hopes they realize that life can be hard, but God is good, and never to confuse the two.
Suzanne can be found on-line at: www.suzannewoodsfisher.com

Synopsis

Fifteen years ago, Lainey O'Toole made a split-second decision. She couldn't have known that her choice would impact so many. Now in her mid-twenties, she is poised to go to culinary school when her car breaks down in Stoney Ridge, the very Amish town in which her long-reaching decision was made, forcing her to face the shadowed past.
Bess Reihl is less than thrilled to be spending the summer at Rose Hill Farm with her large and intimidating grandmother, Bertha. It quickly becomes clear that she is there to work the farm—and work hard. The labor is made slightly more tolerable by the time it affords Bess to spend with the handsome hired hand, Billy Lapp. But he only has eyes for a flirty and curvaceous older girl.
Lainey's and Bess's worlds are about to collide and the secrets that come to light will shock them both.
Beautifully written, The Search is a skillfully woven story that takes readers through unexpected twists and turns on the long country road toward truth. Fans both old and new will find themselves immersed in this heartwarming—and surprising—tale of young love, forgiveness, and coming to grips with the past.

My Review:

The Search is the third book in the series, Bess Reihl was sent to her grandmother for the summer per her grandmother's request.  Her father was Bertha's only child and when his wife was killed alone with their baby daughter, he left the community and had only been back one time and that was when his dad had died.  He was still Amish and lived the faith and brought up his daughter this way.  Bess really didn't want to go to her grandmother's but Berta was getting older and needed her granddaughter.

Bess meet people there that would change her life as she really fell in love with her grandmother.  Bertha made rose preserves and had a large rose garden acres really.  So that summer Bess meet Billy Lapp as he helped Bertha part time and she also met Lainey O'Toole whom Bess and her grandmother really liked.

This book is so good and after the other two books, some sad things happen and some good things come from it also.  Sure anyone that loves Amish stories will love this book.  Suzanne is a great writer of Amish stories.

 

 WaterBrook Press

IBSN: 9781400073979

Book 2 of An Ada's House Novel

The Bridge of Peace

Headstrong schoolteacher Lena Kauffman finds herself at the center of controversy in her Amish community when a young man in her classroom refuses to submit to her authority. As her friends and family rally around her, especially longtime friend Grey Graber, things go from bad to worse when Grey’s wife, Elsie, becomes an accidental target in trouble meant for Lena. As the present unravels around them, each must find their own way through their private pain in order to find peace and a brighter future.
This second novel in the Ada’s House series returns to Dry Lake, Pennsylvania, and the beloved characters from The Hope of Refuge. The Hope of Refuge is a Christy finalist, an Inspirational Readers Choice Contest finalist, and a Carol Award finalist.

Read an Excerpt


My Review:

Lena Kauffman is a young teacher in the Amish community of Dry Oak, and she was really having a lot of trouble with one of the older boys.  She had a birthmark on the side of her beautiful face and had always been teased about this, so she was very self conscience about it.  Lena had got premission from the Old Order of the Amish to attend an English high school so that she would be a better teacher as this is what she always wanted to do.  She was having trouble with the school board also as she was putting some of the english ways into the Amish school which they did not like.

 

Peter the boy that was causing so much trouble had an older brother that for some reason he hated Lena and wanted her gone if not dead, so there were a lot of attempts on her life but always hurt one of the other people. As one of the board member Grey Graber had know Lena all her life as he was a friend of her brother, so he always took up for her.  He was married in a so called marriage and had a little boy that was born with only part of one arm.  Elsie the mother felt that it was her fought and she had another baby boy that was still born.  What will happen to Grey's marriage?  How will Lena handle Peter and all the attempts on her life?  Can she get by with all the problems that have rose up while she was teaching?

As I have not read the first book I know that this one ties them together and I love Cindy Woodsmall's books and own her first one so I want to get The Hope of Refuge and go back and read them together.  As always Cindy brings her stories to life and makes you feel as though you are in the story your self.

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review

 

Becoming Lucy

by

Martha Rogers

Realms Publishing

IBSN: 9781599799124

Winds Across the Prairie Series

MY REVIEW:

Boston 1896,  Lucinda Bishop was a seventeen year old young woman and had just lost her parents in a buggy accident.  She was down to inherited a large estate when she turned eighteen, but her uncle Rudolph Bishop was very angry that he did not receive more of his brother's estate.

Her uncle Ben and aunt Amelia from the Oklahoma territory invited Lucinda to go home with them as she had no one else to live with.  She would get to meet her cousins and have someone to love her.   So this is what she did and had to learn a completely new way of life.  She had grown up with servants and cooks, so all she knew how to do was play the piano and embroidery.  She soon learned some of the skills of keeping a home.  She met Jake Starnes that worked for her uncle Ben and she was very attracted to him, but he had a secret of his own.

Some things started to happen to Lucinda that could not be understood as she was being shot at and no one knew who it was and why.  Then Jake received God into his heart and had to go back to Texas to confess to some things in his past.  What will happen to Luncinda latter called Lucy and Jake?

I though this was a very interesting book as I have read the others in the series but not this first one, so now I know how it all begin and I will go back and read them all together.  Martha Rogers is a very good author and comes up with some great ideas.

This book was sent to me by Strang Communications Co. for my honest review.

 

A New Birth of Freedom - The Visitor Blog Tour

 

Blog Tour Dates listed here, click on book

Price: $14.95
ISBN: 9781936021239
Pages: 226
Size: 6 x 9 paperback
Release: August 2010

Read about the Author

Robert G. Pielke 

A New Birth of Freedom: The Visitor
by Robert G. Pielke
This has been taken from Tribute newsletter.

It has taken centuries to recognize that all humans possess certain unalienable rights. There will come a time when we have to consider whether others deserve those rights as well. That time will come on July 3, 1863.

When a stranger carrying a shiny, metallic valise steps aboard a train carrying Abraham Lincoln home from a two year stint in Congress, everyone stares, wondering about the stranger's odd clothing and strange footwear with the word Nike emblazoned on them.

When the strange man shows up in Lincoln's office at the White house 14 years later, still wearing the same clothes, carrying the same valise and looking not a day older, the president and his staff know something is odd.

But when Edwin Blair opens his valise and projects a 3D image of the Earth on Lincoln's wall, then proceeds to tell a fanciful tale about time traveling aliens preparing to land at Gettysburg on July 3rd, they are sure they've met a lunatic.

Unfortunately for them, they're wrong.

A New Birth of Freedom: The Visitor, is the first book in a new science fiction series that follows the adventures of Edwin Blair and the aliens known as Pests as they chase each other through all the centuries of Earth's past.

My Review:

This book is really strange as it goes from now to back in the 1800s.  Edwin Blair is traveling with Abraham Lincoln as he is going home from congress, Edwin gets Lincoln to say that he will meet with him in the near future.  Blair reveals himself that he is a man from the future and that he is in that place and time to save the world of alien invaders known as "The Pest"  as they chase each other though out the earth's past.

When Edwin enters the train he is strangely dressed as he had on Levi jeans and his shoes are Nike and this in 1863 before Lincoln becomes President and before The Civil War.  So can you just imagaine what people would think and say, what would you do if you saw someone from the far future?

This is really a sci-fi book that goes back and forth from place to place and from time to time.

This book was sent to me by Tribute books for review.

 

Alaska Weddings

by

Susan Page Davis

ISBN: 9781616261153

Paperback, 350 pages

Barbour Publishing

My Review:

This book is three stories in one, and feature three ladies.  In the first story "Always Ready" Caddie is in the Coast Guard and is involved in saving lives and patrolling the water on the Bearing Sea.  She meets a young man named Aven who is also in the Coast Guard but serves on a different boat but they both are based in the same area of Alaska.  Caddie is trying to fit into her father's life style as he died in the line of duty serving his county with the Coast Guard.  Aven's father was also dead and he takes most of his pay to help out his mother and sister "Robyn" that are trying to keep their head about water raising dogs.  Will this couple ever be on leave at the same time in order to get to know each other?

The second story is about Robyn and her struggle with the dogs alone since her grandfather has gotten too old to help her much and her mother Cheryl works past time in order for them to make ends meet.  A young doctor, Rick Baker lives next door to them, but he not Robyn has never had to time to get to know each other. The grandfather wants to do a trial run with the dogs but he is not strong enough to handle them and has an accident which lays him up for a while.  This puts more pressure on Robyn and she really need her brother Aven as she gets ready for the yearly Fire and Ice dog sled tun but she needs her brother to help her but he believes that God has the plans for him to serve in the Coast Guard.

The third story bring in another vet to help Rick with his growing business, by the name of Oz Thormond an older vet that got started later in life with his doctorate degree.  He had went to school with Rick and had been working with the wild life and was coming to Alaska to study the polar bears.  Cheryl had to pick him up at the airport for Rick as Rick had an emergency with an animal.  Cheryl had started to work full time for Dr, Rick as he had build a new building and his practice had grown so much.  She really loved this work and the first day that Oz had been in the office, as he was sitting up his office they had an emergency with a dog that had been hit by a car, so both of them had to take care of the dog.  Oz could not believe how well Cheryl could help with the surgery of the dog's leg.  Is this another romance in the making?  You need to buy this book in order to read about how they all end.  Susan Page Davis always writes great book and they will keep you interested with every page.

This book was sent to me by Shalyn at Barbour Publishing for my review.

 

Go here to read my Review

Thomas Nelson Publisher

paperback, 307 pages

IBSN: 9781595547910

Read about Kristin Billerbeck HERE