Freda's Voice

Synopsis & Book Info: Three grown Southern sisters have ten marriages between them—and more loom on the horizon—when Ginger, the eldest, wonders if she’s the only one who hasn’t inherited what their family calls “the Grandma Gene”: the tendency to like the casualness of courtship better than the intimacy of marriage. Could it http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifbe that her two sisters are fated to serially marry, just like their seven-times wed grandmother, Mrs. Lillian Irene Harper Winslow Goldstein Carey James Bobrinski Gordon George? It takes a “girls only” weekend, closing up Grandma’s treasured beach house for the last time, for the sisters to really unpack their family baggage, examine their relationship DNA, and discover the true legacy their much-marrying grandmother left behind. Paperback: 320 pages Publisher: Howard Books ISBN: 9781439182031 Purchase at Amazon ©2011 My Opinion: This book was just okay for me, but it might be better for you. It's a story about sibling

Welcome to the Mothers Day/Victoria Day edition of Monthly News. For Mothers Day I got a card and a new cap from my son, and a card and beautiful flowers from the hubby. I was spoiled with a day of rest, and had dinner with my in-laws. It was wonderful! Victoria Day Weekend was much rain as usual. I was the only one who wanted to watch the fireworks, so it didn't happen. :-( BOOKS: 1. Butterfly - Thomas Marent 2. Beyond Beautiful - Jan Bornstein 3. Private - James Patterson & Maxine Paetro (recommend) 4. The Guardian - Margaret Mallory (recommend) 5. The Hynoptist - M.J. Rose (recommend) 6. My Wife's Affair - Nancy Woodruff (recommend) 7. Shoulder Bags and Shootings - Dorothy Howell (recommend) 8. Snowflake Obsidian - The Hippie 9. Look Now: The World in Facts, Stats and Graphs 10. Treasures from the Attic - Mirjam Pressler (recommend) 11. Darkness Becomes Her - Kelly Keaton (recommend) 12. Pride in a Prayer - Charles Soto 13. I Used to Know That - Caroline Taggart

HOST * Grab your current read. * Let the book fall open to a random page. * Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12. * You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from…that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given. * Please avoid spoilers! My Teaser: She could have been a role model for every woman my age who was finally embracing her orgasms and her sisters, letting her breasts go free, getting an education, a job, a female lover. I could have made a statement. ~ The Memoir of Marilyn Monroe - Sandi Gelles-Cole (TOURS JUNE 8)

Synopsis & Book Info: These 101 true stories of healing, divine intervention, and answered prayers prove that God is alive and very active in the world today, working miracles on our behalf. Regular people share their personal stories of God's Divine intervention and healing power as He makes the impossible possible! Evidence of His love and involvement in our lives will encourage, uplift, and recharge the faith of Catholic and all Christian readers. Paperback: 384 pages Publisher: Chicken Soup for the Soul ISBN: 9781935096511 Purchase at Amazon ©2010 My Opinion: Another wonderful set of inspirational stories, some really blew me away too. The best part of this book for me was the scripture at the beginning of most of the stories. What's more inspirational than a talk with God, even if only a sentence or two? I loved this book is my final answer! 5/5 Recommend? Yes. ~I won my copy. I was not compensated for my opinion.~

Synopsis & Book Info: Everyone loves a good love story. And we all love stories about how the love started and blossomed. This fun new book about dating, romance, love, and marriage, will make you laugh and make you cry, and is guaranteed to inspire you to renew that search for your soul mate or open your heart a little more to the one you already have. Read about how couples met, when "they knew", good and bad dates, proposals, maintaining the relationship, second chances, and all the other ups and downs of love, romance and marriage. Paperback: 416 pages Publisher: Chicken Soup for the Soul ISBN: 9781935096436 Purchase at Amazon ©2009 My Opinion: Not the first Chicken Soup for the Soul book I have read, and won't be the last! I love these inspirational short stories, from real people famous or not. This book was especially nice with a love theme attached to it. All the stories were heart melting and wonderful. They were as always inspirational too! I can't wa

Let's give a warm welcome to S. Dodson, author of Teen Girls Need L.O.V.E. Please check out her book website , and let me know what you think of it when you are done. 1. Please tell readers about your current book. Teen Girls Need L.O.V.E. is suitable for the straight A student, the troubled teen, and the girl looking to be empowered. The goal is to transform our teens into successful women by giving them the tools needed to build their self confidence and self esteem. This book focuses on the hottest topics facing teens such as relationships, self esteem, bullying, the importance of education, and how to set goals. If guidance is what you need, Teen Girls Need L.O.V.E. is here to the rescue! 2. Who or what inspires your writing? Life inspires me to write. I was inspired to write Teen Girls Need L.O.V.E. after hearing about so many teens committing suicide after being bullied. My heart went out to the teens. I felt it was important to write a book that shows teens that they can o

Synopsis & Book Info: Ideas that Changed the World combines the quality and breadth of a modern design museum with the high standards of a DK reference title. Stunning photography and beautifully written stories work together to give the reader a unique experience. We don't just show you what's ground-breaking about a space suit, we explain its place in history and space exploration, and the other inventions it has influenced. Readers will be struck with wonder by each item and sense the excitement that so many discoveries inspire. Each subject is introduced through text and a close-up photograph. Captivating icons lead the reader further into the story behind the object and then on to a collections spread featuring similar inventions and developments that shaped the design before and afterward. Some of the incredible inventions and ideas featured are: microscope (Charles Darwin’s), telescope (Isaac Newton's), antibiotics, elevators, eyeglasseshttp://www.blogger.com/img

Synopsis & Book Info: WELCOME TO THE APOCALYPSE In Deuce's world, people earn the right to a name only if they survive their first fifteen years. By that point, each unnamed 'brat' has trained into one of three groups-Breeders, Builders, or Hunters, identifiable by the number of scars they bear on their arms. Deuce has wanted to be a Huntress for as long as she can remember. As a Huntress, her purpose is clear--to brave the dangerous tunnels outside the enclave and bring back meat to feed the group while evading ferocious monsters known as Freaks. She's worked toward this goal her whole life, and nothing's going to stop her, not even a beautiful, brooding Hunter named Fade. When the mysterious boy becomes her partner, Deuce's troubles are just beginning. Down below, deviation from the rules is punished swiftly and harshly, and Fade doesn't like following orders. At first she thinks he's crazy, but as death stalks their sanctuary, and it becomes clear

Synopsis & Book Info: If you've forgotten the capital city of Chile; the basics of osmosis; how to solve a quadratic equation; the names of the Bennet sisters in "Pride and Prejudice"; who wrote the famous poem about daffodils; the use of a conjunction or the number of continents in the world, "I Used to Know That" will provide all the answers. A light-hearted and informative reminder of all the things that we learned in school but have since become relegated to the backs of our minds, "I Used to Know That" features hundreds of important snippets of wisdom, facts, theories, equations, phrases, rules and sayings.It is a practical guide to turn to when an answer is eluding you, when helping a child with homework or preparing them for the new school year, or maybe just to brush up on trivia for the pub quiz. "I Used to Know That" covers English Language and Literature, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, History, Geography and General

Let's give a warm welcome to Dean Mayes, author of The Hambledown Dream. Please check out his website , and let me know what you think of it when you are done. 1. Please tell readers about your current book. Thank you Freda for welcoming me here today. The Hambledown Dream is best described as a contemporary love story which has very subtle paranormal undertones - chief among these is the notion of reincarnation. The story introduces two young men - an Australian, Denny Banister who has had the world at his feet; a successful career, a passion for the guitar and he is in love with Sonya – who his best friend and soul mate. Tragically for Denny, however, he is struck down with inoperable cancer & he is destined to die. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world Andy DeVries has almost nothing; he is alienated from his family, he moves through a dangerous Chicago underworld dealing in drugs, battling addiction & now he’s gone and overdosed - jeopardizing the only thing that ma

He lurks in the shadows, waiting and watching . . . And once he has you, all you can do is. . . BEG FOR MERCY. Megan Flynn thought she was falling in love. Cole Williams wasn't just handsome and passionate, he was one of the good guys. Or so she thought, until he arrested her brother-the only family she has left-for a murder she knows he couldn't have possibly committed. Now, with her heart broken and her brother's life hanging in the balance, Megan will risk everything to prove his innocence. Even if that means throwing herself into the path of a sadistic killer with a hauntingly familiar MO. Seattle Detective Cole Williams had given up on making Megan see reason where her brother is concerned. But when she insinuates herself into the most shockingly brutal case Cole has ever worked, he can't stand idly by. Plunged into a secret world where the city's elite indulge their darkest desires, Cole will do whatever it takes to bring down a madman who has made Megan his m

Welcome to Week 29 with me! Rules: *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to page 56. *Find any sentence that grabs you. *Post it. *Add your (url) post below in Linky. It's that simple. Enclave - Ann Aguirre PAGE 56: Fade dug into his bag and produced a little tin. Unlike the one that had nearly gotten us in trouble with the Wordkeeper, this one was silver and faded.

Synopsis & Book Info: Follow young Sarah Tillbrook as she struggles with love, grief and heartache. Caught between her racial parents and in love with a man they would not accept, Sarah's world spins out of control when devastation strikes. What she endures and survives meets her with her greatest fears, questions her faith and dares the unimaginable, to dream and believe and to never give up hope. An emotional rollercoaster of plot twists, with an ending you won't soon forget or have seen coming. Paperback: 270 pages Publisher: PublishAmerica ISBN: 9781451219258 Purchase at Amazon Author Bio: Charles Soto lives in northern Minnesota with his wife of twenty-one years and his two daughters. His sole purpose in his writing is to incite reaction and make readers think and feel the entire story for themselves by expelling hard-driving emotion in his plots. Continuing to deliver storylines that boil to an explosive conclusion and draw strong reactions, he proves himself a master

HOST * Grab your current read. * Let the book fall open to a random page. * Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12. * You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from…that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given. * Please avoid spoilers! My Teaser: The biography and poetry book go into the thrift store stack, then I briefly consider the Carnegie. I read How to Win Friends in college, but perhaps I ought to brush up on the basic principles. ~ Page 130, The Fine Art of Insincerity - Angela Hunt (Tours June 1st)

READ MY REVIEW HERE OPEN TO US & CANADA Thanks to Katie and Lovemode , I have a $25 gift certificate up for grabs to one lucky duck! Fashionable duck though. Mandatory Entry: (Answer this question in the comment section, along with your email.) What kind of dress are you, casual, formal or evening wear? Additional Entries (Leave a separate comment for each): +1 tweet, blog or facebook - leave link +1 Follow on Networked Blogs (sidebar) - leave name you follow as +1 GFC follow (sidebar) +1 Email subscriber (sidebar) +1 Facebook fan (sidebar) CONTEST ENDS MAY 30, 8PM EST

Lovemode sells trendy juniors clothing at affordable prices. Some of the items that we carry are clubwear and trendy juniors clothing for the fashion forward girl. Our mission is to help girls look the best that they can by providing them with cheap juniors clothing that are still fashionable and trendy. Lovemode carries a wide variety of dresses, tops, denim, and sale items for girls. ©2011 My Opinion: I have a new favorite dress place! Yup! Every time my hubby has extra money, I will hit him up for one of the many fantastic dresses I saw on Lovemode's website. No kidding! I was nervous the dress I picked would be too small or not work just the way I like, buying over the net you don't have the option of trying things on, but let me reassure you their measurements are exactly correct! So what you see or read is exactly what you get! Got to love that! So a huge recommendation from yours truly! Me, in my new Lovemode dress. 5/5 Recommend? Most definitely!!! I received one

Synopsis & Book Info: Ari can’t help feeling lost and alone. With teal eyes and freakish silver hair that can’t be changed or destroyed, Ari has always stood out. And after growing up in foster care, she longs for some understanding of where she came from and who she is. Her search for answers uncovers just one message from her long dead mother: Run. Ari can sense that someone, or something, is getting closer than they should. But it’s impossible to protect herself when she doesn’t know what she’s running from or why she is being pursued. She knows only one thing: she must return to her birthplace of New 2, the lush rebuilt city of New Orleans. Upon arriving, she discovers that New 2 is very...different. Here, Ari is seemingly normal. But every creature she encounters, no matter how deadly or horrifying, is afraid of her. Ari won’t stop until she knows why. But some truths are too haunting, too terrifying, to ever be revealed. Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Simon Pulse ISBN: 97814

Synopsis & Book Info: The story is one that is envisioned by many: a relative, an old woman who has lived in the same home for a lifetime, passes away, her death prompting the inevitable task of sorting through her effects by her surviving family. But in the attic in this particular house, a treasure trove of historic importance is found. Rarely does this become an actuality, but when Helene Elias died, no one could put a price on what she left behind. Helene Elias was born Helene Frank, sister to Otto Frank, and therefore aunt to Anne Frank. Ensconced upstairs in the house she inherited from her mother, and eventually passed on to her son, Buddy Elias, Anne’s cousin and childhood playmate, was the documented legacy of the Frank family: a vast collection of photos, letters, drawings, poems, and postcards preserved throughout decades—a cache of over 6,000 documents in all. Chronicled by Buddy’s wife, Gertrude, and renowned German author Mirjam Pressler, these findings weave an indel

Welcome to Week 28 with me! Rules: *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to page 56. *Find any sentence that grabs you. *Post it. *Add your (url) post below in Linky. It's that simple. Treasures from the Attic: The Extraordinary Story of Anne Frank's Family - Mirjam Pressler PAGE 56: Then Uncle Bernhard told the girls about how Uncle Moritz had gotten married, which had turned out to be rather difficult, since the Stattigkeit stated that only fifteen Jewish weddings per year were permitted in Frankfurt.

Synopsis & Book Info: Look Now is a spellbinding picture of our world and its people conveyed through info-graphics. The five exciting chapters-Earth, People, Power, Industry, and Connections-examine the physical world and different spheres of human activity, and present facts, figures, graphics, illustrations, and photographs in a way that tells the interconnected stories of the modern world. Half encyclopedia, half almanac, and 100% awesome, the book delivers the information with a stunning array of graphic and visual tools that encourage the reader not only to understand the world we live in, but to see it in a brand new light. Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: DK Publishing ISBN: 9780756662868 Purchase at Amazon ©2010 My Opinion: It's hard for me when I wasn't blown away by a book. I struggle for the right things to say. This was one of those books. I don't want to hack it apart and say bad things, it had great content, I just thought it was too much one each page. Li

Synopsis & Book Info: Willow is nineteen, naïve, and Mormon. She genuinely sucks at having relationships with the opposite sex, thanks to her daddy issues—as in she has a dad and wishes she didn’t. Her only perfect relationship is with her best friend, Jo. But when Willow and Jo fall for the same guy, Willow finds herself friendless and falling in love with a drug addict. Feeling confused, guilty, and alone, she turns to cutting herself as a way to cope. Snowflake Obsidian is a memoir about one girl’s transformation from being naïve due to living in a protected religious culture, to understanding the many faces of love in this paradoxical journey. As Willow steps into the world outside her religious ideals she finds herself in situations she’d never imagined: getting a body piercing at a parlor full of sex-toys; purchasing the morning after pill for a friend who had been raped; attending a support group for co-dependents; putting all her faith in a snowflake obsidian stone when she

Synopsis & Book Info: A clever, fast-moving plot propels Howell's third mystery to feature L.A. fashionista Haley Randolph (after 2009's Purses and Poison). Haley really hated Tiffany Markham, her arch-rival in the purse party business, but she didn't shoot Tiffany and stuff her body in the trunk of a Mercedes belonging to Ada Cameron, the grandmother of Haley's boyfriend and department store owner, Ty Cameron. Discovering who did is a challenge, ditto snaring this season's totally hot Sinful handbag. Can Haley do both and stay out of jail? While Haley's hyperventilating first-person voice can be too much at times (I perked up in my seat, beyond excited, way past thrilled, bordering on crazed), the action is smoother than the butter-soft leather of a Prada bag, and the gritty details of working retail are spot-on. Airhead Haley displays appealing grace under fire as she also deals with her stalking nemesis and former boss, lawyer Kirk Keegan. Hardcover: 304

Let's give a warm welcome to Christine Amsden, author of The Immortality Virus. Please check out her website, and let me know what you think of it when you are done. 1. Please tell readers about your current book. The Immortality Virus In the mid-21st century, the human race stopped aging. Those who know why aren’t talking, and the few who are brave enough to ask questions tend to disappear. To an elite few, The Change means long life and health, but to the ever-increasing masses, it means starvation, desperation, and violence. Four centuries after The Change, Grace Harper, a blacklisted P.I., sets off on a mission to find the man responsible for it all and solicit his help to undo The Change ― if he’s still alive. To complicate matters, Grace’s employer is suspected of murdering his father, and when the police learn of their connection, they give her a choice ― help them find the evidence they need to convict Matthew Stanton, or die. But if they discover Grace’s true mission, th

HOST * Grab your current read. * Let the book fall open to a random page. * Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12. * You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from…that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given. * Please avoid spoilers! My Teaser: And she'd done that for Doug ? Dull Doug ? ~ Page 178, Shoulder Bags and Shootings - Dorothy Howell

Please check out my interview with author, Christine Nolfi, from yesterday. She was courteous enough to offer an ebook of her new book Treasure Me to one of you lucky ducks! Synopsis: Petty thief Birdie Kaminsky has arrived in Liberty, Ohio to steal a treasure hidden since the Civil War. She’s in possession of a charming clue passed down in her family for generations: Liberty safeguards the cherished heart. The beautiful thief wants to go straight. She secretly admires the clue’s author, freed woman Justice Postell, who rose above the horrors of slavery to build a new life in Ohio. According to family lore, Justice left South Carolina at the dawn of the Civil War. Heavy with child, she carried untold riches on her journey north. As Birdie searches for the treasure, she begins to believe a questionable part of the story: a tale of love between Justice and Lucas Postell, the French plantation owner who was Birdie’s ancestor. If the stories are true, Justice bore a child with Lucas. Some

Let's give a warm welcome to Christine Nolfi, author of Treasure Me. Please check out her website, and let me know what you think of it when you are done. 1. Please tell readers about your current book. Treasure Me, the first book in the Liberty series, is a blend of comedy, romance and mystery. Petty thief Birdie Kaminsky arrives in Liberty, Ohio to steal a treasure hidden since the Civil War. She’s in possession of a charming clue passed down in her family for generations: Liberty safeguards the cherished heart. The beautiful thief wants to go straight. She secretly admires the clue’s author, freed woman Justice Postell, who rose above the horrors of slavery to build a new life in Ohio. As Birdie searches for the treasure, she begins to believe a questionable part of the story: a tale of love between Justice and Lucas Postell, the French plantation owner who was Birdie’s ancestor. If the stories are true, Justice bore a child with Lucas. Some of those black relatives might still