Stacking the Shelves (172)

Posted on February 20, 2016February 19, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

Although I read the early books in Gena Showalter’s Lords of the Underworld series, I stopped somewhere in the middle. I remember enjoying them, but my continuation fell prey to the “so many books, so little time” problem. I got the next-to-the-last book for a tour, so I went hunting through my various libraries to see how much of the gap I could fill in. Turns out to be quite a lot!

And, although I won’t mention it again, I was reappointed to the American Library Association Notable Books Council. What that means is that boxes of books have started to arrive and overwhelm my shelves, books that mostly won’t appear in this list. Nor will I ever say that a book I am reviewing is or is not under consideration for the award. The annual award (here’s the most recent list) goes to the best literary fiction, nonfiction and poetry of the year. While these genres are somewhat outside my wheelhouse, I have generally enjoyed, or at least found interesting or fascinating, the books I have read for the committee. Which don’t always get a full review treatment for various reasons.

For anyone wondering how the process works, I have to read any title that I suggest for the list, and give it an up or down vote. I also have to read any book that anyone else nominates for inclusion in the award. We discuss those books at meetings, and vote around the table. Then we whittle to get to a final list of 25, 26 or at the absolute maximum, 27. It’s fun to talk books, especially great books, with a great bunch of people.

For Review:
The Devil You Know by Jo Goodman
Doing It Over (Most Likely To #1) by Catherine Bybee
Late Fall by Noelle Adams
A Pact of Lies (Fatebreaker #1) by Matthew Siegard
Zero-G by William Shatner and Jeff Rovin

Purchased from Amazon:
Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man by William Shatner with David Fisher
Tea With the Black Dragon by R.A. MacAvoy
This Gun for Hire by Jo Goodman

Borrowed from the Library:
The Darkest Lie (Lords of the Underworld #6) by Gena Showalter
The Darkest Passion (Lords of the Underworld #5) by Gena Showalter
The Darkest Secret (Lords of the Underworld #7) by Gena Showalter
The Darkest Seduction (Lords of the Underworld #9) by Gena Showalter
The Darkest Whisper (Lords of the Underworld #4) by Gena Showalter

Review: The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America by Michael Eric Dyson

Posted on February 19, 2016February 23, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B+ Reviews> book reviews

The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America by Michael Eric Dyson
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Pages: 368
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on February 2nd 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A provocative and lively deep dive into the meaning of America's first black presidency, from “one of the most graceful and lucid intellectuals writing on race and politics today” (Vanity Fair).
Michael Eric Dyson explores the powerful, surprising way the politics of race have shaped Barack Obama’s identity and groundbreaking presidency. How has President Obama dealt publicly with race—as the national traumas of Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and Walter Scott have played out during his tenure? What can we learn from Obama's major race speeches about his approach to racial conflict and the black criticism it provokes?
Dyson explores whether Obama’s use of his own biracialism as a radiant symbol has been driven by the president’s desire to avoid a painful moral reckoning on race. And he sheds light on identity issues within the black power structure, telling the fascinating story of how Obama has spurned traditional black power brokers, significantly reducing their leverage.
President Obama’s own voice—from an Oval Office interview granted to Dyson for this book—along with those of Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, and Maxine Waters, among others, add unique depth to this profound tour of the nation’s first black presidency.

My Review:

I chose to review The Black Presidency this week for two reasons. One is the obvious, February is Black History Month. The second is less obvious. This week is the week of the Presidents Day compromise holiday, the Monday between Lincoln’s Birthday and Washington’s Birthday. To review a book about the first black president in the week between holidays celebrating one president who owned people who looked like this president and a later president who freed those slaves and made this presidency possible (whether he personally could have imagined it or not) seemed like serendipitous timing.

There is also another factor. To this reader, so much of the criticism aimed at President Obama smacks of racism, whether those critics intend it to or not. Certainly, to this reader, the groundswell of hatred feels like it has racism at its dark heart.

The kind of identity politics that uses this president as a representative of an under-represented class in public life is not new. It is also not over. Barring an unforeseen tragedy, the Democratic party will either nominate the first woman to lead a major political party ticket or the first Jew to do so. Women have previously, but not often, campaigned in the primaries but have never headed their party’s ticket. Likewise, no non-Christian has ever headed a major party ticket. For that matter, there has only been one non-Protestant president, John F. Kennedy.

The Presidency of the United States has been the ultimate “glass-ceiling” job, and it has been historically difficult for anyone not fitting a particular mold – male, white, Protestant – to reach that Oval Office. So one of the things I was looking for in The Black Presidency was to read more about how race and racism have affected Barack Obama’s presidency, to perhaps learn something about the ways that sexism or anti-Semitism will rear their ugly heads in the campaign, and possibly the presidential term, to come.

Back to this book. The author is looking through the lens of representation, in all its multiple definitions. Because whether he wills it or not, Barack Obama has become both a prominent face of Black America and the face of America. And while the first part of that equation will have some resonance forever, the second is specific to his presidency. Next January, a new president will be sworn in and someone else will become the face of America to the world.

At the same time, like anyone who is a member of an underrepresented or non-dominant group, Barack Obama is supposed to serve as a representative of his group to the broader community, and to represent his group’s interests to that broader community. Anyone who has ever been the only person of their kind in a particular setting has a teeny, tiny taste of what this feels like. To be the only woman in a group of men, particularly in technology, is one example. To be the only Jew in a group of Christians can also make one feel a bit like Daniel in that lion’s den.

So the author is evaluating Obama’s presidency through how he has reacted, particularly what he has said and done, in relationship to all of these axes. It has had an effect on how he has presented himself, in the stereotypical images he has consistently tried to avoid. It has had an effect on how he addresses the black community, and what policies he proposes that do or do not affect that community. It has certainly had an effect in the way that people see him and interpret his actions.

Reality Rating B+: I found this book to be on the one-hand, well-rounded, in that it attempts to look at as many of Obama’s actions and speeches through the lens of representation and representational politics as possible. It is not intended as a study of all of the President’s actions, or of actions that do not or possibly could not relate to race. At the same time, it is admittedly difficult to view this president without at least contending with the way that some portions of the population are either using race as the only way they see him, or are pretending that they are not seeing race at all.

And it is impossible in the U.S. not to see race. A point that is also explored in the book.

This is not, however a complete political biography of the 44th president, nor is it intended to be. And I’ll admit that I was hoping to see more about the way that others view him and the way that those issues have continually buffeted his administration. Because while the axes will change, I think that the buffeting will repeat if either of the potential Democratic Party candidates becomes the next President.

Review: Death of an Alchemist by Mary Lawrence + Giveaway

Posted on February 18, 2016February 17, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Death of an Alchemist (Bianca Goddard Mysteries, #2) by Mary Lawrence
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Bianca Goddard #2
Pages: 304
Published by Kensington on January 26th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

In the mid sixteenth century, Henry VIII sits on the throne, and Bianca Goddard tends to the sick and suffering in London's slums, where disease can take a life as quickly as murder. . .
For years, alchemist Ferris Stannum has devoted himself to developing the Elixir of Life, the reputed serum of immortality. Having tested his remedy successfully on an animal, Stannum intends to send his alchemy journal to a colleague in Cairo for confirmation. Instead he is strangled in his bed and his journal is stolen.
As the daughter of an alchemist herself, Bianca is well acquainted with the mystical healing arts. As her husband, John, falls ill with the sweating sickness, she dares to hope Stannum's journal could contain the secret to his recovery. But first she must solve the alchemist's murder. As she ventures into a world of treachery and deceit, Stannum's death proves to be only the first in a series of murders--and Bianca's quest becomes a matter of life and death, not only for her husband, but for herself. . .

My Review:

Actually, the title should have been “Deaths of Several Alchemists”, but that doesn’t have nearly the same ring to it, does it?

And the story really does center around one particular alchemist’s death, even though the ripples from that death take down one more alchemist, and nearly kill chemiste Bianca Goddard as well. Not to mention a very unlikeable landlady, an alchemist’s daughter (not Bianca, obviously), a ne’er do well husband and a poor unfortunate bird.

Unknotting all the threads of this case while keeping herself alive and out of jail are all in a day’s work for Bianca. What makes the case potentially life-altering is the object that causes all the trouble – a formula for the elixir of life. Too many people want it. And too many people need it. But is it a good idea for anyone to have it?

Bianca’s husband John lies in a coma in their “rent”. Bianca believes that if she can manage to interpret the arcane formula and successfully brew the potion, neither of which is at all certain, she can save John’s life from the deadly “sweating sickness”. A disease that died out long before modern medical science could figure out what it was in the first place.

But she’s not the only one in dire need. So as Bianca races through London trying to secure ingredients and equipment, someone is chasing her and the precious formula. Is her mysterious stalker in search of fame and fortune, or is their need just as dire as Bianca’s?

And why are so many people dying of mysterious, or sometimes not so mysterious, causes in the wake of Bianca’s pursuit? Bianca puzzles over the medical conundrums she discovers even as she desperately searches for everything she needs to brew the potion. All the while worried that by the time she is ready to brew the elixir, the person she needs it for, the man she loves, will be beyond healing.

Bianca races against time, and against the dictates of her own conscience. If the elixir truly gives life everlasting, is it right to go against the natural order of things? There is one figure haunting London who has lived with the answer for far too long, and hopes that the elixir, and Bianca, hold the keys to his salvation.

Escape Rating A-: If churches are sometimes referred to as “smells and bells”, then the view of the English Renaissance in the Bianca Goddard series is all the smells, with no bells at all. The series takes place during the English Reformation, and the church bells are silent. But the author makes it clear to the reader that everything stinks, and those who can afford it wear masks or carry pomanders to keep the stink away from their own personal noses.

Bianca and her husband live in the middle of it all, near the Thames in Southwark. John complains all too frequently that he wants to move someplace that stinks a little less, and Bianca responds with the sensible statement that not only is this what they can afford, but that the surrounding stinks mask the stinks created by her brewing of medicinals. Which also stink.

This is, as I said in my review of the first book in this series, The Alchemist’s Daughter, life among the groundlings, where life is often nasty, frequently brutish, and generally all too short. This was a time when medicine all too frequently consisted of bloodletting and leeches, and no one knew what caused diseases or what cured them. Bianca’s brewing of medicinal potions and poultices works by observation – she sees what alleviates symptoms, and repeats the process, but the why was beyond her or anyone in the 16th century.

Bianca also applies alchemistry methods to her brewing. Her father is an alchemist, and a spiteful basty-assed nastard into the bargain. But the processes for reduction and sublimation work for medical herbs as well as whatever the next idea is to turn lead into gold.

So when Bianca needs a master to teach her better brewing methods, she is steered to Ferris Stannum, an elderly alchemist with an excellent reputation. She arrives just as he announces that he has managed to create an elixir of life, and has proven its efficacy by administering it to his formerly sick cat, who is now capering around the place in healthy feline glee.

His announcement is followed by a trail of death, as everyone who was in the vicinity of Stannum dies in mysterious circumstances, except for Bianca and the person who chases her all over London. Because someone drops the old alchemist’s formulary into Bianca’s house, and her pursuer will do anything to get it back. Including murder.

This is an absorbing historical mystery from what we would think of as an uncommon point of view. Bianca is an average person with above-average intelligence, getting by the best she can. In this series, we see life as she sees it, not as the nobles loftily prance over it all. Getting inside Bianca’s head is fascinating and often frightening. There is so much that we know that she can’t, and we feel for her every step of the way.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

Mary is giving away a 2-book set of the Bianca Goddard mysteries as part of this tour!

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Review: Brotherhood in Death by J.D. Robb

Posted on February 17, 2016February 16, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A- Reviews> book reviews

Brotherhood in Death (In Death, #42) by J.D. Robb
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: In Death #42
Pages: 388
Published by Berkley on February 2nd 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Sometimes brotherhood can be another word for conspiracy...
Dennis Mira just had two unpleasant surprises. First he learned that his cousin Edward was secretly meeting with a real estate agent about their late grandfather’s magnificent West Village brownstone, despite the promise they both made to keep it in the family. Then, when he went to the house to confront Edward about it, he got a blunt object to the back of the head.
Luckily Dennis is married to Charlotte Mira, the NYPSD’s top profiler and a good friend of Lieutenant Eve Dallas. When the two arrive on the scene, he explains that the last thing he saw was Edward in a chair, bruised and bloody. When he came to, his cousin was gone. With the mess cleaned up and the security disks removed, there’s nothing left behind but a few traces for forensics to analyze.
As a former lawyer, judge, and senator, Edward Mira mingled with the elite and crossed paths with criminals, making enemies on a regular basis. Like so many politicians, he also made some very close friends behind closed—and locked—doors. But a badge and a billionaire husband can get you into places others can’t go, and Eve intends to shine some light on the dirty deals and dark motives behind the disappearance of a powerful man, the family discord over a multimillion-dollar piece of real estate . . . and a new case that no one saw coming.

My Review:

I thought I would be able to resist reading this until I had a break in the schedule. Who was I kidding?

I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I love this series as whole, but there are some entries in it that I like more than others. Brotherhood in Death was definitely one of the better entries in the series, because of the way that the minor detour into the angst factory is handled this time around.

In this story, both Eve and Roarke’s ties to the victims, and the reason that it drags up crap from Eve’s crappy childhood, are integral to the story and don’t feel “tacked on” for either dramatic or emotional effect.

Eve gets dragged into this case because one of her favorite people in the world, Dr. Charlotte Mira’s husband Dennis Mira, is coshed over the head when he drops in to unexpectedly visit his powerful arsehole cousin. Dennis gets knocked out and abandoned in the family house that he and cousin Edward are fighting over, and cousin Edward is missing.

Cousin Edward is Edward Mira, retired Senator Edward Mira, retired Judge Edward Mira, and no one seems to have any sympathy for the bastard, including his cousin. Dennis mourns the boy Edward used to be, while having little or nothing to do with the man he’s become. Which doesn’t mean that he doesn’t call on Eve to investigate whatever happened, because his last sight of his cousin included a black eye and other evidence of beating and/or torture. And Edward was known to have accumulated plenty of enemies in his high-profile life, both as a Senator and sitting on the bench. There were lots of potential motives for offing him, including the fact that he (and his bitch of a wife) were both pieces of work in the pejorative sense.

Eve’s not surprised when Edward’s body turns up back in the house later, swinging by the neck from a handy chandelier. The only surprise is the sign attached to the body, proclaiming that, “Justice is Served”. Eve immediately starts questioning, “served by whom?” and “for what?”

From there it’s off to the races. It’s Eve’s case to solve, and she is resolved to solve it, even as she discovers that digging into Edward Mira’s life uncovers a slime pit that begins to have all too many resemblances to Eve’s own story.

Edward and his “brothers” at Yale suffered from a really, really horrific case of affluenza. And their victims have come back to make them suffer for the crimes they were never punished for – with every single bit of painful flourish that “the Brotherhood” inflicted on them.

It’s not every case where Eve is looking to arrest both the perpetrators and the victims, but in this one, she’ll relish it.

Escape Rating A-: As much as I enjoyed this book, it should probably come with trigger warnings. Delving into the motives for the killers forces Eve to relive her own horrific experiences, even as it makes her grateful for the people who have come into her life to sway her from the same path that these serial killer took.

I’ll confess that the scene where Eve barks out just how grateful she is to have Peabody in her life almost made me blubber as much as Peabody does while hearing it.

Part of the reason that I love this series so much, even through some of the less successful entries, is that I really like these people. I would be happy to have coffee or a drink with almost every single member of Eve’s team, with the exception of Chief Tech Dickie “Dickhead” Berenski. The team atmosphere in this series reminds me very much of the way that the team works in NCIS.

But this story does have a great deal of angst in it. And unlike some of the other occasions, this is a story where the angst is appropriate, and on Eve’s side is dealt with in a way that helps her continue to process her past and move on with her present and future.

This is a case where everyone, but especially Eve, has a tremendous amount of empathy for the perpetrators, and absolutely none for the victims. There are points early on where Eve is almost angry that she has to stand for victims who were frankly a bunch of arseholes even before their true crimes are uncovered. But she still does her job and does it excellently. In the end, as much as she empathizes with the killers, she is also angry with them for not even attempting to let the system work for them.

And Eve is absolutely right. “If every day started off with sex and waffles, people would maybe be less inclined to kill each other.” Which would be a pity, because without those gruesome murders, we wouldn’t have this marvelous series.

Review: The Astronaut’s Princess by Lisa Medley + Giveaway

Posted on February 16, 2016February 15, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

The Astronaut's Princess Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Cosmic Cowboys #2
Pages: 111
on February 16th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

Astronauts, Aliens, and Apaches? What could possibly go wrong?

Working for a billionaire space entrepreneur has its perks: a nice paycheck, free room and board, and all the space flight hours a guy could want. But everything has a price. Astronaut Noah Wright has survived an alien attack, time travel and a wormhole, but the Apache princess he brought back through time may be the death of him.

Ela, only daughter of Chief Itza-Chu of the Mescalero Apaches, finds herself out of place and out of time. Everything she knows of her early 1800's life has vanished. Her savior and protector, Noah, is kind, but he’s not her family and certainly not Apache. Her only wish is to get home, but returning through the wormhole that brought her to the future threatens more than her past, causing her to have to rediscover what home really is.

My Review:

When I reviewed the first story in Lisa Medley’s Cosmic Cowboys series last summer, I said that she had done serial novels right. Space Cowboys & Indians had a proper beginning, middle and end for that story, while still setting up the action for this next book in the series, The Astronaut’s Princess.

While the mechanics of the time travel in the first book still read like a whole lot of handwavium (time travel always does) the results have very real-seeming impacts on all the people involved. And possibly on the whole damn planet.

And just as she did with Space Cowboys & Indians, the story in The Astronaut’s Princess wraps up its arc while still dropping plenty of hints about the trajectory of a possible book 3.

Space Cowboys & Indians was the journey. The Astronaut’s Princess is all about what happens when our time and space traveling cowboys return to 21st century Earth – with a passenger. They made a deal in the 1800s to bring the daughter of the Apache chief back to their time to heal her fatal case of the measles in order to have the tribe’s help in defeating the aliens and stealing their ship.

The Apache princess, Ela, is none too happy at waking up in the 21st century. And she has no qualms about generating as many temper tantrums as it takes to get those astronauts to take her back to her tribe. She also doesn’t have the language skills to understand that it can’t be done.

Instead she breaks her room in the medical facility and screams at the top of her lungs for Noah Wright, the astronaut who has tried his best to help her and care for her – even though she drives him crazy. He’s unwilling to admit to himself that it might just be more than one kind of crazy.

Noah has a lot on his plate. While the alien ship and the asteroid’s minerals made him and his two fellow astronauts Tessa and Cole rich, it’s working on the Space X development that makes him happy, at least some of the time. This is his chance to be an astronaut, and he’s not letting it go.

But the owner of the project, Duncan Janson, wants to reopen the wormhole that led to the 1800s. And he’s building a space hotel tethered to the moon. And he’s got some kind of “in” with the federal government. More importantly, he’s willing to cut through all kinds of legal, ethical and safety concerns to see all of his dreams of space avarice come true.

When Noah’s attempt to re-settle Ela with the local Apache tribe turn up evidence that the time travel trip and the aliens they battled have had an effect on the local tribe and on history, Noah finds himself heading back into space with a lot on his mind – and a stowaway in his ship. It isn’t until Ela returns to space that she finally realizes that she can’t go home again – but that she can make a home with Noah in the 21st century, if he’ll just give in to what they both feel.

And if Janson’s attempt to open the wormhole don’t end up swallowing Earth into a black hole leading to oblivion.

Escape Rating B: Both Space Cowboys & Indians and The Astronaut’s Princess are short little novellas. If you want something fun to read but don’t want to get caught up in a three hundred (or three thousand) page marathon, these are nice, bite-sized science fiction romance treats.

Also, and unlike so many parts of serial novels, both stories are complete in themselves while still furthering the arc of the book-as-a-whole. While I don’t mind well-done cliffhangers, I hate it when books feel like middle chapters of something and both the beginning and ending are elsewhere. That is definitely not the case here.

It took a little while for me to get into The Astronaut’s Princess. While I love the concept of being brought forward in time (Star Trek IV anyone?) the story dwelled a bit too much on Ela’s tantrums, helplessness and unwillingness to at least investigate her new circumstances. She comes off as much more childish, or much more self-absorbed and self-centered, than I liked. While that may be realistic for her situation, I didn’t enjoy reading about it.

But once the action gets going in this story, it really gets going. Not just because I loved the shoutouts to Roswell and all the myths about Area 51, but because the action switched from slow to non-stop, and the imminent danger kept me on the edge of my seat.

It also firmly established that billionaire Janson may cause more evil than an alien invasion in the future. And I can’t wait to see what happens.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

Lisa is giving away a $10 Amazon Gift Card to one lucky entrant.

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Review: Counterfeit Conspiracies by Ritter Ames + Giveaway

Posted on February 15, 2016February 14, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Counterfeit Conspiracies (Bodies of Art, #1) by Ritter Ames
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Bodies of Art #1
Pages: 214
on February 2nd 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Laurel Beacham grew up in wealth and society—until her grandfather died and her father gambled away the family fortune. Now with more pedigree than trust fund, she is the premier art recovery expert for museums that need to stay one step ahead of international thieves. Her latest assignment pits her against a mystery man, Jack Hawkes, who is not only her equal with blue bloods, but also seems to know where all the bodies are buried. Suddenly Laurel is racing against time to find a priceless art object before the enemy does, locate a missing art world compatriot with crucial information, and decide whether or not she wants to disentangle herself from this new male nemesis, Jack, who seems to know too much about her and her business.

My Review:

Although the story is set in the art world, Counterfeit Conspiracies has the feel of a caper story. While this somewhat madcap adventure is all about recovering a missing artifact and rescuing a missing agent, the adventure is more about, well, Laurel’s adventures than it is about the art she has to recover or the world where art is stolen, traded and sold.

The way that Laurel generally approaches her various jobs makes her feel more like a thief or a secret agent than anything so potentially staid as recovering stolen treasures – especially since she sometimes steals those stolen treasures back from the thieves who stole them in the first (or second) place.

It’s not necessary to know a thing about the art world to enjoy Laurel’s chase-and-be-chased across Europe and back again. She’s always hopping from plane to train to car, and always just one step ahead, or behind, her pursuers.

The other fascinating thing about Laurel’s adventures is one of those very pursuers. At the beginning of the story, we learn that Laurel has crossed paths with a nearly mythical master art thief multiple times, and that he usually gets the best of her. As her latest job goes pear-shaped, she crosses paths with Jack Hawkes, who knows entirely too much about her.

Jack is chasing Laurel, and catches her so frequently that he obviously has ties to too many police and security forces. But as he tails Laurel, catches her, loses her, and catches her again, it’s never clear whether Jack is truly on the side of the angels or is pursuing Laurel for his own ends.

As Laurel frequently opines, Jack regularly asks for her trust and cooperation, but he neither fully trusts nor fully cooperates with her. He has researched everything about her, but always deflects whenever she tries to learn the least little thing about him.

They have oodles of chemistry together, but no basis for anything beyond a partnership of expedience.

But when all the chips fall, Jack is the only one Laurel can turn to to get her out of her latest jam. Especially since it feels like he’s at least partially responsible for landing her in it.

Escape Rating B: Counterfeit Conspiracies is a solidly fun caper story. While Laurel may be operating on the side of the angels, she acts more like a thief than anything else. It’s just that the people she plans to steal from are thieves themselves.

Jack is an enigma from the very beginning, and neither we nor Laurel learn enough about him to trust him. The number of times he asks for trust but doesn’t reciprocate made my teeth clench right along with Laurel’s. It’s obvious that he’s hiding a whole bunch of somethings, but we never do find out what. At least not in this first book in the series.

The strained relationship between Laurel and Jack, as well as their chemistry, reminded me very much of the Vicky Bliss series by Elizabeth Peters. (While the series starts with Borrower of the Night, the mysterious John Smythe doesn’t appear to bedevil art historian Vicki Bliss’ life until the second book in the series, Street of the Five Moons)

So if you like Counterfeit Conspiracies, you’ll love Vicky Bliss. And quite possibly also Carla Neggers’ Sharpe & Donovan series, which starts with Saint’s Gate (reviewed here). In Neggers’ series her art historian is an FBI agent from a family of art recovery experts. Combine Sharpe & Donovan with Vicky Bliss and you get Counterfeit Conspiracies.

But if you’re looking for a quick caper story with a lot of twists and turns, Counterfeit Conspiracies is the fun start to what looks like an interesting series. I’m looking forward to the next book, Marked Masters, to see just what kind of hot water Laurel Beacham will fall into next, and whether Jack Hawkes will push her into it, fish her out of it, or both!

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

The tour is giving away a prize pack valued at $150: a signed copy of Counterfeit Conspiracies, a 7″ Kindle Fire HD, a movie DVD, a SAS SpyPen with hidden camera, and an Amazon gift card.

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The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 2-14-16

Posted on February 14, 2016February 12, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

It’s good to be home.

Last week, my father-in-law was admitted to the hospital up in Pennsylvania, and off we went. He’s fine now, things are settled, and we’re back home. The cats definitely missed us, and vice-versa. As many places as we’ve lived, we’ve learned to make home be wherever the cats are, wherever we’re together. It’s funny how the location changes, but the feeling remains the same.

It only takes a few hours for them to forgive us after each trip!

Current Giveaways:

The Ramblers by Aidan Donnelly Rowley
Harlequin Prize Pack of all 10 featured titles + $50 Apple Gift Card in the Valentine’s Blog Tour

Blog Recap:

Valentine’s Day Blog Tour: Guest Post by Edie Harris + Giveaway
B+ Review: The Big Brush-Off by Michael Murphy
B Review: The Ramblers by aiden Donnelley Rowley + Giveaway
B Review: Tough Love by Lori Foster
B Review: Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat
Stacking the Shelves (171)

Coming Next Week:

Counterfeit Conspiracies by Ritter Ames (blog tour review)
The Astronaut’s Princess by Lisa Medley (blog tour review)
Prince’s Gambit by C.S. Pacat (review)
Death of an Alchemist by Mary Lawrence (blog tour review)
The Black Presidency by Michael Eric Dyson (review)

Stacking the Shelves (171)

Posted on February 13, 2016February 12, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

We were out of town most of the week, a sudden family trip to Pennsylvania. But we’re home now, and it’s taken me a couple of days to organize my way out of chaos.

My hold on the ebook copy of Brotherhood in Death arrived in my inbox just when we arrived, and I had to wait until we got home to pick it up. So I didn’t get to read it on the trip, as I probably would have. I’ll have to save my treat for a bit later. 😉

The Beth Cato book, Breath of Earth, is currently the furthest book out on my calendar. It won’t be published until August 23! But if it is half as good as her Clockwork Dagger Duology, I will be one happy reader.

And I was finally able to get ARCs for all the tours I have scheduled. Some of them were getting close and starting to make me a bit nervous.

geek girls guide to arsenic by julie anne lindsey

For Review:
All I Got for Christmas by Genie Davis and Pauline Baird Jones
Breath of Earth by Beth Cato
Character, Driven by David Lubar
The Darkest Touch (Lords of the Underworld #11) by Gena Showalter
A Geek Girl’s Guide to Murder (Geek Girl Mysteries #2) by Julia Anne Lindsey
The House by the Lake by Ella Carey
Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre edited by Tracy Chevalier
A Scandalous Proposal (Little Season #2) by Kasey Michaels
Trouble in Mind (Interstellar Rescue #2) by Donna S. Frelick

Purchased from Amazon:
The Clocks of London (Waters of London #1) by Pamela Lyn writing as Lyn Brittan
The Doctor of London (Waters of London #2) by Lyn Brittan

Borrowed from the Library:
Brotherhood in Death (In Death #42) by J.D. Robb

Giveaway from Avon/Carina:
A Geek Girl’s Guide to Murder (Geek Girl Mysteries #1) by Julie Anne Lindsey

Review: Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat

Posted on February 12, 2016February 10, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> book reviews

Captive Prince (Captive Prince, #1) by C.S. Pacat
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Captive Prince #1
Pages: 270
Published by Berkley on April 7th 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

From global phenomenon C. S. Pacat comes the first in her critically acclaimed trilogy—with a bonus story.
Damen is a warrior hero to his people, and the rightful heir to the throne of Akielos. But when his half brother seizes power, Damen is captured, stripped of his identity, and sent to serve the prince of an enemy nation as a pleasure slave.
Beautiful, manipulative, and deadly, his new master, Prince Laurent, epitomizes the worst of the court at Vere. But in the lethal political web of the Veretian court, nothing is as it seems, and when Damen finds himself caught up in a play for the throne, he must work together with Laurent to survive and save his country.
For Damen, there is just one rule: never, ever reveal his true identity. Because the one man Damen needs is the one man who has more reason to hate him than anyone else…
Includes an exclusive extra story!

My Review:

I picked up the opportunity to review the Captive Prince trilogy because my friends at The Book Pushers raved about it – especially those Book Pushers who were outside the U.S. and couldn’t take advantage of the publisher’s offer of review copies.

I’m glad I did.

Captive Prince is fantasy, but not in the sense that there is magic operating in this world, at least not so far. It’s fantasy because this decadent quasi-Renaissance society is manifestly not the world we know from our history.

The countries of Akielos and Vere are at war, and seemingly have been for decades. Or possibly centuries. They each think of the other as decadent and corrupt, but to our 21st century eyes, that decadence and corruption is only a matter of degree.

The economies of both countries include slave labor, from the lowest levels to the highest. Slaves perform menial labor. Slaves are also trained as pleasure-slaves, meaning sex slaves. While it seems that slaves in Akielos are treated better than they are in Vere, it is all somewhat relative, as they are still slaves and can still be bought and sold, even away from their country and home.

The institution of slavery plays an important part in this story, because when we first meet our hero, Damen, he is being informed that his half-brother has killed all of Damen’s supporters, friends, and slaves, and Damen is being sent to Vere as a pleasure slave. Until that moment, Damen was the Crown Prince of Akielos and the rightful heir to the throne. In one move, his bastard half-brother has stripped him of his identity and his future.

And he has sent him to the one place where Damen cannot reveal his true identity and drum up support for retaking his kingdom. Not just because Vere is an enemy, but because Damen killed the Crown Prince of Vere in battle, and no one in Vere will ever forgive him for it.

Tortured, beaten, drugged and raped, Damen is better off as a slave in Vere than in revealing his true identity among people who will kill him on sight. If they recognize him. As punishment, as revenge, his bastard half brother has guaranteed that this revenge is not only served cold but will keep on chilling for as long as Damen lives.

If he can manage to adapt and keep his mouth shut, that is. Damen is used to giving commands and having them obeyed. Swallowing enough of his pride to keep himself alive is a challenge. We see this story entirely from Damen’s perspective, and we watch his struggle to piece together a way to submit enough to bend but not break.

His punishment is compounded by his half-brother’s diabolical choice of just whom to give Damen to. His owner is Laurent, the second son of the late King of Vere. Laurent is blond, cold and 20 years old. His uncle, who is possibly the equal of Damen’s half-brother in evil, is Regent. It is clear to Laurent, and to the reader, that his uncle does not intend Laurent to survive the ten months needed for him o turn 21 and achieve his majority and his throne.

Damen and Laurent should be allies, but they can’t be. If Laurent ever discovers that Damen is the man who killed his beloved brother, Damen’s life is forfeit. But if they don’t stick together, they are both dead.

The horns of this dilemma sweep them, and us, into the next book in the trilogy, Prince’s Gambit.

Escape Rating B: It took me a while to get into this story, but once I did, I couldn’t put it down.

So far, at least, this is fantasy of the “it isn’t real history so it must be fantasy” school. So far, there’s no magic.

What there is, however, is dense political corruption along with a level of sexual decadence that reminds me a bit of Kushiel’s Dart. It’s not that, at least so far, anyone derives direct sexual pleasure from torture, so much as everyone has 16 layers of agendas, and most of those in power derive a lot of pleasure, including sexual, from forcing their will on everyone they can.

And public sex and public rape seems to be a spectator sport among the upper crust. I can’t manage to call them noble, even in context.

Writing the story strictly from Damen’s point of view was an absolutely brilliant choice. As readers, we are lost in this world, and Damen is also lost in his new role. As he picks up the pieces, so do we. Having him gather his intel slowly and carefully worked much better for this reader than vast infodumps.

Howsomever, there are multiple vectors that make the reader uncomfortable. Damen’s forced immersion in slavery is cruel enough, and his exploration and survival of his new circumstances is not for the faint of heart or stomach. He is beaten and abused, but the way that slaves are treated in general, not just Damen, does cause the gorge to rise. In other stories I have said that slavery dehumanizes the masters more than the slaves, and that is certainly true here. This world is ugly.

A different discomfort arose for this reader at Damen’s situation. In fantasy, we’ve seen this trope before. The heir is presumed dead and either enslaved or hidden. It’s not uncommon. And Damen’s journey does follow the trope. The description of his dehumanizing circumstances went on just a bit too long for this reader. I got the point and wanted to get on with the story.

Speaking of getting to the point, it felt obvious to this reader that Laurent’s debauched postures were just that, postures. He knows he’s slated to be killed, and that his uncle is setting him up. Everything we see him display is so blatantly a mask, I’m amazed that no one in the story sees it. I’m not saying he isn’t as much a cold bitch as he pretends to be, but it is also very clearly a mask. Whoever or whatever Laurent is under that mask is something we haven’t seen a glimpse of yet.

This is also a very slow-burning male/male romance between Damen and Laurent. Very, very slow, and that’s appropriate. They are on opposite sides of so many divides, that anything other than an extremely slow buildup of trust would seem fake.

But their society’s approach to love and sex is fascinaating. It’s also a big twist from the world we know. There is a very large stigma attached to illegitimate births, and the stigma seems to fall equally on both the man and the woman. Male/female sex is almost taboo because of its potential for procreation. But the prohibition is on procreative sex, not on sex. Therefore, romantic relationships seem to be almost exclusively same-sex, both men with men and women with women. These relationships are public and accepted, even celebrated in some cases. It’s a very different take on sexual mores and sexual equality, and I’m curious to how this will fit into the next parts of the story.

Review: Tough Love by Lori Foster

Posted on February 11, 2016February 10, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> book reviews

Tough Love (Ultimate, #3) by Lori Foster
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: Ultimate #3
Pages: 544
Published by HQN Books on August 25th 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

She's playing hard to get… to win the MMA fighter of her ultimate fantasies in a sultry new novel from New York Times bestselling author Lori Foster…
Vanity Baker loves a good, clean match, but she's not above playing a little dirty. She's wanted Stack "The Wolf" Hannigan from day one. Seems as though the best way to corral the famously commitment-phobic fighter is to insist on keeping it casual. And her plan works—deliciously well—until Stack's past steps out of the shadows.
Stack learned early to stay free of attachments. But with sexy, forthright Vanity, he's the one always left wanting more. Then his troublemaking family comes back into the picture, threatening everything Stack cares about—Vanity included. Suddenly he realizes they're much more than friends with benefits. He's ready to go to the mat for her…but will it be in time to protect the woman who's tamed him for good?

My Review:

For this reader, Tough Love wasn’t nearly as tough to love as the previous book in this series, Holding Strong (reviewed here).

While Tough Love did have a bit too much of a feel of heroine Vanity manipulating Stack according to “The Rules” for catching a mate, Vanity never loses her agency in this story. Not that there aren’t bad people trying to do terrible things to both Vanity and Stack, but when evil closes in, Vanity rescues herself. And she helps tie up all the loose ends for Stack and the police.

Vanity is no princess, in spite of her wealth. Vanity rolls up her sleeves literally as well as figuratively, and takes care of business. Including her business with Stack.

At the end of Holding Strong, Vanity makes the notorious Stack a proposition. She needs a date for her best friend Yvette’s wedding to Cannon (see No Limits, reviewed here, for the deets on that relationship). Vanity asks Stack to be her date to the wedding, promising him the no strings attached sex that he would normally get from one or more of the ladies attending the wedding.

Vanity is very clear that she really does mean no strings attached, to the point where she tells Stack that all she wants out of this is a guaranteed date to the wedding, and that she doesn’t care what he does with whom in the intervening weeks.

Stack is completely hooked. Not just because Vanity is drop dead gorgeous, but because he can’t get over her forthrightness about what they both want.

What Stack doesn’t know is that Vanity is not being forthright at all. Not that she isn’t interested in sex with him, far from it. But what she really wants is to get him so wound up that he’ll stick around for more. Vanity has been fascinated with Stack since the first time she met him, and she thinks that the way she has him set up, she’ll at least get the night of her life. And she might get a whole lot more.

The wedding goes off without a hitch. Well, actually with the hitch it’s supposed to have, but no more. However, Vanity and Stack’s night together is just filled with hitches and glitches, from the woman they rescue out of a burning car wreck to Stack’s overly melodramatic sister Tabitha calling to tell Stack that their mother is in the hospital.

Even as Stack takes Tabby’s over-emoting with a whole shaker of salt, he still rushes to the hospital to check on his mom. Vanity invites herself along for the ride, and orphaned Vanity finds herself quickly adopted into Stack’s family, whether he wanted to bring a woman home to mom or not.

One fly in this ointment – his lying, cheating, stealing, using, dope-dealing brother-in-law, f’ing Phil. Phil sees Stack’s new girlfriend as just another sucker, and immediately starts trying to maneuver Vanity into buying his sob story, giving him money, and just maybe slouching his way into the bed of another woman that Stack cares for.

That’s where the suspense element kicks in. Phil is scum. He’s also a drug dealer. He uses his own product, and everyone within his orbit. And someone else plans to use him to find her way back into Stack’s good graces, by any means necessary.

Escape Rating B: Tough Love was way, way more fun for me than Holding Strong. It is all about tough love, in multiple directions. While Stack needs a tough, strong woman to love him, the real person who needs some tough love in this story is his sister Tabby. Their mom has always picked up after Tabby’s messes, enabling her to stay in denial about just what a low-life Phil really is. Tabby is in her mid-20s at least, and it’s past time for her to woman up and kick Phil to the curb. Her mom has to stop bailing her out as she often literally bails Phil out.

Tabby’s friendship with Vanity gives her just enough moral support, along with her absolute revulsion of the prospect of Phil helping to (read that as neglecting to) raise the baby she is carrying, to get Tabby to see Phil and her life with him for what it really is.

Vanity is a contradiction. She is so used to being completely on her own, that she takes care of business without a single thought that someone else should do it. When the danger quotient starts ratcheting up, Vanity makes sure to get professionals involved to keep herself safe. She’s very clear that she wants Stack in her life, but she doesn’t need him to take care of her. She’s got that covered, thank you very much.

But at the same time, her manipulation of Stack does come back to bite her, which readers expect from the very beginning. No one likes to find out that they are being manipulated, and Stack has already been through that particular scenario. As soon as he finds out that Vanity has kept some salient facts from him, his mind is off to the races that she’s evil and betrayed him at every turn. I don’t think he eats nearly enough crow on this score.

My overall feeling, however, was to stand up and cheer when Vanity took care of the evildoers pretty much by herself. That was awesome.

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