Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason

“There is very little peace for a man with a body buried in his backyard.”

With this memorable first line, we meet Jason Getty, a regular guy in every mild sense of the word. But extraordinary circumstances push this ordinary man to do something he can’t undo...and now he must live with the undeniable reality of his actions. And just as Jason does finally learn to live with it, a landscaper discovers a body on his property—only it’s not the body Jason buried.

As Jason’s fragile peace begins to unravel, his life is hitched to the fortunes of several strangers: Leah, an abandoned woman looking for answers to her heartbreak; Tim, a small-town detective just doing his job; and Boyd, a fringe-dweller whose past is about to catch up to him—all of them in the wake and shadow of a dead man who had it coming.

“There is very little peace for a man with a body buried in his backyard.”

This has become one of my favorite first lines.  Adding it to the blurb was genius because after reading that, I had to read this book.  It becomes a comedy of errors as the police comb Jason Getty’s property for evidence to solve the murders (yes, plural!) that happened before he bought his house.  He gets so nervous, he decides to move the body he buried there.  He chooses a nice, quiet midnight for the job.  But, the relatives of the earlier victims somehow manage to disturb his peace and quiet and, well…

Ms. Mason has done a great job of drawing some rather odd, quirky characters to populate a sleepy little bedroom community where “nothing ever happens,” and cops who have burned out in the city go for some well-deserved rest.  About the worst they have to deal with are teenagers hanging out by a sink-hole in the woods and littering there.  And maybe the occasional speeder on the highway leading into and out of town.  Murder?  Bodies buried in back yards?  Leave that for the city cops.  Yeah, right.  Oh, and there's a great unofficial canine division.  Whether you're a dog person or not, I suspect you'll fall in love with Tessa.  Ms. Mason even gives us her doggy thoughts.

I recommend this dark comedy suspense tale. 

Length:  320 Pages

Prices:

Kindle:  $10.67

Hardcover:  $14.03

Paperback:  $10.88

Audio:  $19.79

Buy Link:  http://www.amazon.com/Three-Graves-Full-Jamie-Mason/dp/1451685033/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361050585&sr=8-1&keywords=three+graves+full

Thanks for visiting.  RIW

Going to the Dogs by Elle Druskin

Sam Kendall is a cop with a mission; find the killer who murdered his partner and track down the diamond thieves behind the killing. Chief suspect Jodie McBride is a brilliant dog trainer but a loser with men. Dog-hating Sam is stuck with a junk food addicted poodle as his new partner and stuck on a cute redheaded dog lover that he desperately wants to be innocent. Mix in an assortment of eccentric pooches, their offbeat owners, baseball fans and two very smart canines who know humans can’t be trusted to know a good thing when they see it. Before Sam and Jodie know what's happened, everybody is going to the dogs.

I’m not normally a fan of pedigreed dogs.  They’re inbred, spoiled and hyper.  Give me a mutt from the pound any day.  But ya gotta love a dog who eats pizza and Fritos, watches baseball (even if it is the Yankees and not the Cubs), and sings along with the radio.  And ya gotta love a cop who looks like George Clooney and bumbles his way through a case involving a dog trainer and her canine clients and their wacky owners.  I try to follow a schedule each day—so much time writing, promoting, reading, etc.  At night I read a chapter or so and drift off to sleep, often with my Kindle in hand and the light on.  At some point my head bobs and I wake up enough to put my Kindle on the bedside table and turn out the light.  Not so last night.  I read straight through until I finished the book somewhere around five a.m.  I highly recommend this book.  Just be sure you don’t have anything else scheduled and you don’t have to be anywhere the next day when you pick it up.  It’s not a bathtub read unless you don’t mind getting cold and pruny.

Length:  132 Pages

Price:  $5.50

Buy Link:  http://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=299&category_id=23&keyword=Going+to+the+Dogs&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1

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.

Down Home by Gail Roughton

Everybody knows everybody else’s business in Turkey Creek. The town knows Maggie Kincaid hasn’t spoken to her father in twenty-five years. It knows Billy Brayton was killed in basic training after Big John Kincaid railroaded him out of town and into the army. Nobody was surprised. For sure, Big John wasn’t going to let his daughter keep time with the local bad boy. Not for long. But the town’s missing a few pieces of the puzzle. Billy Brayton’s not dead. He’s back. He’s home. And it’s payback time.

I don’t normally review two books in a row by the same author, but this book came out last week and the author just sent it to me, so I made an exception, and I’m glad I did.

I usually get to bed around two a.m., which is bad enough when I have to be at the veteran’s hospital in the morning for some sort of appointment.  It kills me when I fall asleep around four or five a.m. and I have to get up for an appointment—which happened twice this week.  Thanks, Ms. Roughton.  I kept telling myself I needed to put the book down and go to sleep, but I just couldn’t!  And I usually figure out who did it at least half-way through.  Not this time.  I didn’t figure out all the twists and turns until the very end.  Ms. Roughton actually surprised me.

Billy Brayton’s home and he’s no longer the bad boy.  In fact, he’s a lieutenant in the Sheriff’s Department with an impressive resumé as an MP in the Army, which includes K-9 duty and medals for bravery on the front lines in the Middle East.  He could probably have written his own ticket with any law enforcement agency in the country, but he chose to return to Turkey Creek.  That resumé never included a wife.  He never got over the girl whose wedding announcement he received four weeks into basic training.

Maggie Kinkaid has never married.  She adopted her college roommate’s son after his parents were killed in a car crash and has raised him, regaling him with stories of the man who would have been his adopted father, had he lived.  So while Jake is just as shocked as anyone when Billy comes home, he has no problem accepting the man as the father he never had—which is a good thing, since Maggie marries him the day after his return.

Turkey Creek appears to be a normal, quiet Southern town.  You know, the kind of place where you sneeze at one end of town and someone at the other end yells, “Bless you.”  Meanwhile, everyone in between debates whether you have a cold or if it’s just your allergies acting up again.  But there’s more to it than meets the eye.  It has a haunted cemetery that serves as a transfer point for drugs coming into the country from the Florida coast and making their way to destinations north.  Someone in town is a major drug dealer.  Billy Brayton isn’t just home to get revenge on Maggie’s father, he knows about the drug cartel and he’s determined to take it down.  He also believes the cartel is responsible for a few unsolved murders, and he plans to solve them.  Turkey Creek will not be the same when Billy gets through with it.

I highly recommend this book.  Just don’t read it at bedtime if you have to be anywhere in the morning.  I need a nap!

Length:  285 Pages

Price:  $5.95

Buy Link:  https://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=568&category_id=231&manufacturer_id=194&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1

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 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.