Redemption by C. J. Barry

Blurb:

Reya Sinclair is the last person a man sees before he dies. As a Redeemer, she offers the soon-to-be-departed one last chance to atone for their sins. It's a painful job, but it's her only shot to secure her own salvation. She won't let anyone stand in her way-not even a ruggedly sexy cop hot on her trail. Bound by her duty, Reya must shake him before he ruins her—but her heart can't seem to let him go.

Detective Thane Driscoll has watched too many criminals get away. The man who murdered his father was no exception. Now Thane carries out his own brand of justice, even if it means compromising his soul. When a string of deaths leads him to a beautiful woman in black, he discovers there's more to his father's murder than meets the eye.

As fate brings them closer together, Thane discovers that only Reya's touch can calm his rage. Racing to uncover an evil plot, they must fight together to stop the coming storm. But when the time comes, can Reya sacrifice her own redemption to save Thane?

Review:

It appears authors are finally vamped and shifted out.  Books these days seem to be focusing more on ghosts, angels, spirituality and reincarnation.  Redemption touches on all of the above, and I truly enjoyed the spiritual message embedded within the romance.  Reya gives people a chance to atone for their sins before they die.  Otherwise, they have to come back and learn those lessons again.

Thane Driscoll isn’t exactly a dirty cop.  He just gets tired of watching the bad guys’ lawyers find loopholes that allow their clients to walk out of the courtrooms.  “Go, my son, and sin no more,” is a foreign concept in the New York City justice system.  Criminals walk out the door with their buddies and often commit more crimes on their way home from the courthouse.  So maybe Thane takes a few shortcuts to clean the streets—and he doesn’t exactly use a broom.  But he becomes more than a little intrigued by the black-clad beauty who shows up on the security videos in several suspicious deaths.  Who is she, and what does she have to do with these deaths?  Why does the violent death toll in New York City seem to be accelerating suddenly?  And how does it relate to his own father’s death?

Redemption grabbed me from the first page and kept me in my seat for the full ride.  The characters were fully fleshed out and compelling, and there were no major editing glitches to pull me out of the book and make me want to hurl my Kindle across the room.  (Yea!)  I recommend Redemption.  It’s a good read.

Length:  289 Pages

Prices:

Paperback:  $17.00

Digital:  $2.99

Buy Link:  http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/c-j-barry/redemption/9781455554300/

You’ll notice I always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive.  Plug the USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory.  I actually download my books using “Save As” to a “Books” file I created on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher, friends, and books “to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from there.  That way, if there’s a glitch with my Kindle, the books are on my computer.  Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

Thanks for visiting.  RIW

Ride for Rights by Tara Chevrestt

Blurb: 

In the summer of 1916 women do not have the right to vote, let alone be motorcycle dispatch riders. Two sisters, Angeline and Adelaide Hanson are determined to prove to the world that not only are women capable of riding motorbikes, but they can ride motorbikes across the United States. Alone.

From a dance hall in Chicago to a jail cell in Dodge City, love and trouble both follow Angeline and Adelaide on the dirt roads across the United States. The sisters shout their triumph from Pike’s Peak only to end up lost in the Salt Lake desert.

Will they make it to their goal of Los Angeles or will too many mishaps prevent them from reaching their destination and thus, hinder their desire to prove that women can do it? 

Review: 

I bought this book as a summer read for my granddaughter, but we could not load it onto her Kindle, as her USB port was messed up, so I ended up reading it, and I'm glad I did.  According to the foreword, written by Bob Van Buren, this book is based on the story of Augusta and Adeline Van Buren who actually made the arduous journey portrayed here.  Of course, this is a novel, so the Van Burens may not have faced exactly the same challenges as the Hanson sisters, but they did pave the way for many of the freedoms we women take for granted today.

Angeline and Adelaide Hanson are proper young women who come from a wealthy family in New York.  Well, proper except that they're suffragists.  There's a war going on in Europe and despite President Wilson's protests that the United States intends to keep out of it, the sisters believe our country needs to be prepared to enter the skirmish.  Angeline sees a way to really serve, when a man at a National Preparedness Movement meeting proposes women ride motorbikes as dispatch couriers. They do so in Europe.  Why not in America?  As the men in the room pooh-pooh the suggestion, Angeline stands  up and makes a proposal of her own.  If a woman can ride a motorbike across America, wouldn't that prove she could serve as a dispatch courier?  Fortunately, their brother has just bought one, so she's able to start her riding lessons that day.  Thus begins the adventure.

Ride for Rights is a short book since it's aimed at the young adult audience, but the characters are fully drawn, engaging young women.  They're well-bred, but feisty and independent, fighting for what they believe in.  Along the way they encounter love and overcome hardship, working at various jobs to earn money for gas and accommodations.  In some places they're able to stay with relatives or acquaintances; in others their bed and board is less than stellar.  I couldn't put the book down.  It was a great read, and educational.  I highly recommend it for you, your daughters, and your granddaughters—whatever their ages. 

Length:  135 Pages 

Price:  $5.50 

Buy Link:  http://museituppublishing.com/bookstore/index.php/museityoung/historical-fiction-2013-07-28/ride-for-rights-detail 

You’ll notice I always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive.  Plug the USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory.  I actually download my books using “Save As” to a “Books” file I created on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher, friends, and books “to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from there.  That way, if there’s a glitch with my Kindle, the books are on my computer.  Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement. 

Thanks for visiting.  RIW

Dead at the Takeoff by Lester Dent

Chance Molloy pursues a crooked senator’s daughter aboard an airplane, but their flight is turbulent in more ways than one

In the 1940s, air travel is still in its infancy. Seats turn into private sleepers, passengers smoke in flight, and it’s no sweat to carry weapons aboard. Chance Molloy, a self-made airline owner, is dealt a blow when his plans to establish a passenger airline in South America are thwarted by a corrupt US senator. At the news, Molloy’s brother, a partner in the venture, kills himself. Seeking some kind of justice, Molloy boards Flight 14 from New York to New Mexico with one goal in mind: to get acquainted with the senator’s daughter, Janet Lord, a passenger on the plane. But her charms are greater than he anticipates, and Molloy’s simple plan quickly becomes complicated.

Also on board are three of the senator’s henchmen, a corpse disguised as a passenger, and Molloy’s stewardess ex-girlfriend. Soon Molloy realizes that this flight will reach a destination he hadn’t anticipated.

Originally, I was going to give Dead at the Takeoff 2.5 stars because the story was good, even though the writing seemed clichéd and full of adverbs.  But when I went to Amazon to get the length and price, I read the four-star review that was there, and the reviewer said, “Thank you Mysterious Press for rediscovering this lost classic.”  I thought the book was plagiarized and reduced that number to zero roses.  The editor contacted me and told me the book is a reprint of a classic.  That changes my whole view of the book.

Let’s take this one issue at a time.

Dead at the Takeoff was rather clichéd and full of unnecessary adverbs.  “Jarringly, the telephone broke the labored stillness.”

That’s how most people wrote in the 1940s.  Even the line “It was a dark and stormy night” was new once upon a time.

Mr. Dent used a lot of passive voice, and head-hopped.  The industry standard is one point of view per scene.  He changed point of view in the middle of sentences.

This is a newer standard.  It had not been set when Dead at the Takeoff was written.

Then there was the use of pluperfect verbs.  Who speaks this way?  “We had done this?  And then we had done that?”

I wasn’t around back then.  Maybe people did use more pluperfect tense in everyday speech.

There were sentences that were just plain weird:  “He gave himself, for a few moments, to allaying his anxiety.”

Again, this may simply be a matter of the style of writing people used in the 1940s.

Finally, this book takes place in the forties between World War II and Korea.  It would be nice if Mr. Dent had somehow given the date at the beginning of the book.

You don’t need to put the date into a contemporary book.  Dead at the Takeoff happens in the year in which it was written.  Who knew it would be reprinted sixty years later and reviewed by a reader who did not recognize the author’s name and realize it was a reprint of a manuscript that was sixty years old?

If you can get past the differences in writing style between then and now, you will hopefully enjoy this book.  The story is engaging and fast-paced.  The characters could have been a bit deeper, but that was the nature of pulp detective novels in the forties.  I suspect I’d have had a lot more fun reading this book if I’d realized that’s what it was.

Length:  223 Pages

Price:  $7.99

Buy Link:  http://www.amazon.com/Dead-at-take-off-Lester-Dent/dp/B0007E6MKQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361129555&sr=1-1&keywords=dead+at+the+take+off

Thanks for visiting.  RIW