Freda's Voice

Welcome to the May edition of monthly news! This has been an eventful month for me personally. My daughter is home from college for the summer, so we have been doing lots of family activities together. Next weekend the four of us head to Medieval Times. We are all excited! Have you started your family summer activities yet?? BOOKS: The Mysterious Doll by Linda Weaver Clarke (recommend) Amish Firefighter by Laura V. Hilton (recommend) Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter (recommend) When I Was The Greatest by Jason Reynolds (recommend) Soldier by Julie Kagawa (recommend) Detectives Don't Wear Seat Belts by Cici McNair MOVIES: Ride Or Die 2   Yearly Total:   41  Books, 1 Product & 5 Movies Book of the Month: Book of the Year: BLOGGER /MONEY-MAKING RESOURCES:   1.  SwagBucks  (earn gift cards) 2.  GiftHulk  (earn gift cards &

Growing up in Mississippi, Cici McNair was always more the tomboy her mother supported than the Southern belle her father demanded. She escaped her suffocating upbringing the first chance she had to travel the world. Whether working at the Vatican in Rome or consorting with a gunrunner in Haiti, she lived a life of international adventure. When Cici finds herself in New York, divorced, broke, and fashionably starving to death in a Madison Avenue apartment, she impulsively decides to become a private detective . But, as Cici soon learns, the world of P.I.s is tight-knit and made up almost exclusively of former law enforcement officers. By nature, they are a highly suspicious group and are especially wary of a newcomer with an untraceable past. Diligently working her way through the Yellow Pages, doggedly pursuing the slightest lead, Cici is finally hired by a private investigator willing to take a chance. The next day she's working side by side with a pair of seasoned detectives a

Welcome to Week 275! Rules: *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to page 56 or 56% in your  eReader (If you have to improvise, that's ok.)  *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) *Post it. *Add your (url) post below in Linky. Add the post url, not your blog url.  *It's that simple. Or join The Friday 56 on  Instagram ! Rules: * Grab a book and find a creative way to showcase your 56. It can be a photo of the book and the 56 in comments, or whatever you come up with. Make sure to use the hashtag  #Friday56 *Add your Instagram url to the Linky. AMAZON 56% on Kindle After she stuffed a muffin in my hand, I took a small bite. It tasted decent but it wasn't in the same universe as the muffin I ate yesterday. A novella for this week's #Friday56 A photo posted by Freda Mans (@fredasphotos) on May 26, 2016 at 6:11pm PDT                                     ONLY FRIDAY 56 PARTICIPANTS MAY USE THE LINKY. Book

When forced to choose between safety with the dragon organization Talon and being hunted forever as an outcast, Ember Hill chose to stand with Riley and his band of rogue dragons rather than become an assassin for Talon. She's lost any contact with her twin brother, Dante, a Talon devotee, as well as Garret, the former-enemy soldier who challenged her beliefs about her human side. As Ember and Riley hide and regroup to fight another day, Garret journeys alone to the United Kingdom, birthplace of the ancient and secret Order of St. George, to spy on his former brothers and uncover deadly and shocking secrets that will shake the foundations of dragons and dragon-slayers alike and place them all in imminent danger as Talon's new order rises. Kindle:  3210 KB Print Length:  384 pages Publisher:  Harlequin Teen (May 1, 2016) ASIN:  B01B1KQQAA AMAZON US   |   AMAZON CA   |   AMAZON UK Author Bio: Born in Sacramento, CA, Julie Kagawa moved to Hawaii at the ag

Jack H. Bailey,  author of  Orchard , descended from gold miners and grew up in and around the locales frequented by Harry Orchard. It was while living in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho that his fascination with Orchard began. Jack joined the navy at seventeen and served in WWII aboard the aircraft carrier  USS Lexington  until she was sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea. He graduated from USC with a BA in English and spent sixteen years in aerospace during which time he wrote two critically praised novels,  The Number Two Man  and  The Icarus Complex . Jack wrote prolifically until his death in 2010. Most notably, Jack was an annual participant in the prestigious Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and was one of only a handful of writers to have advanced in the competition seven times. Follow his author page on  Facebook ,   GoodReads  or  Facebook . This much is true. It's 1899. Harry Orchard is a member o

Welcome to Week 274! Rules: *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to page 56 or 56% in your  eReader (If you have to improvise, that's ok.)  *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) *Post it. *Add your (url) post below in Linky. Add the post url, not your blog url.  *It's that simple. Or join The Friday 56 on  Instagram ! Rules: * Grab a book and find a creative way to showcase your 56. It can be a photo of the book and the 56 in comments, or whatever you come up with. Make sure to use the hashtag  #Friday56 *Add your Instagram url to the Linky. AMAZON Page 56 I sat at my desk and stared into my open spiral notebook. A neat, tied-up-with-a-ribbon ending. Chapin's daughter didn't realize it then, but she was lucky. A memoir for this week's #Friday56 A photo posted by Freda Mans (@fredasphotos) on May 19, 2016 at 7:54pm PDT                                    ONLY FRIDAY 56 PARTICIPANTS MAY USE THE LINKY.

In Bed Stuy , New York, a small misunderstanding can escalate into having a price on your head—even if you’re totally clean. This gritty, triumphant debut that  Publishers Weekly  calls “a funny and rewarding read” captures the heart and the hardship of life for an urban teen. A lot of the stuff that gives my neighborhood a bad name, I don’t really mess with. The guns and drugs and all that, not really my thing. Nah, not his thing. Ali’s got enough going on, between school and boxing and helping out at home. His best friend Noodles, though. Now there’s a dude looking for trouble—and, somehow, it’s always Ali around to pick up the pieces. But, hey, a guy’s gotta look out for his boys, right? Besides, it’s all small potatoes; it’s not like anyone’s getting hurt. And then there’s Needles. Needles is Noodles’s brother. He’s got a syndrome, and gets these ticks and blurts out the wildest, craziest things. It’s cool, though: everyone on their street knows he doesn’t mean anything by it. Ye

Kevin Hart and Ice Cube lead the returning lineup of Ride Along 2, the sequel to the blockbuster action-comedy that gave us the year’s most popular comedy duo. They are joined in the film by Ride Along co-stars Bruce McGill and Tika Sumpter, as well as those new to the series, including Ken Jeong, Benjamin Bratt and Olivia Munn. As his wedding day approaches, Ben heads to Miami with his soon-to-be brother-in-law James to bring down a drug dealer who's supplying the dealers of Atlanta with product. AVAILABLE NOW! Rated PG 102 minutes AMAZON US   |   AMAZON CA  |   AMAZON UK REVIEW: Not bad. Had lots of action and quite a few laughs, so it felt like the movie went by fast. Kevin Hart is a bird though. He's what I call, 'annoyingly funny'. You definitely have a love/hate relationship with him, but Ice Cube is who I watch it for anyway. Love him! This is a typical cop gets drug lord movie, so don't expect too much from it in t

Sisters. Strangers. Survivors. More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia’s teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the horror and heartbreak of their shared loss—a devastating wound that's cruelly ripped open when Claire's husband is killed. The disappearance of a teenage girl and the murder of a middle-aged man, almost a quarter-century apart: what could connect them? Forming a wary truce, the surviving sisters look to the past to find the truth, unearthing the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago . . . and uncovering the possibility of redemption, and revenge, where they least expect it. Mass Market Paperback:  592 pages Publisher:   William Morrow ; Reprint edition (April 26, 2016) ISB