Bensin, a teenage slave and martial artist, is just one victory away from freedom. But after he is accused of a crime he didn’t commit, he is condemned to the violent life and early death of a gladiator. While his loved ones seek desperately for a way to rescue him, Bensin struggles to stay alive and forge an identity in an environment designed to strip it from him. When he infuriates the authorities with his choices, he knows he is running out of time. Can he stand against the cruelty of the arena system and seize his freedom before that system crushes him?
Category: August 2021 Reviews
Review: Mayhem
Don’t mess with Deal…. Mayhem will follow.
At the funeral of two of his hit men, Mike Russo, capo of the New Jersey Mob puts out a contract on Detective Matt Deal for his part in the killings.
At the same time another funeral is taking place in Florida. Deal will soon learn just how badly his world is broken…and it’s about to get worse.
The long awaited sequel to book one in the series – Mercy.
Fans of Jack Ryan or lethal killers like Reacher or Scot Harvath will devour this novel.
Review: Mercy
His daughter was taken. He’ll never get her back.
Set in the near future, Matt Deal is a British businessman married into a wealthy Florida family.
Mercy, his fifteen-year-old daughter, is the glue in his rocky marriage to Lorey. His life is changed forever after Mercy is brutally sexually assaulted on a Destin beach leaving her in a persistent vegetative state.
Trusting the local detectives to bring the rapists to justice, mixed martial arts expert Deal concentrates in vain on his Florida gym business, only to have his world further explode on learning the men responsible for his daughter’s injuries may escape justice. Deal is isolated and at his wit’s end after his rich father-in-law sends death threats blaming him for all these ills.
Who can he turn to? Where can he go? What will he do? Who can he trust?
Will he return to a post-Brexit Britain or ultimately will he seek revenge?
*** Trigger Warning ***
Contains a scene of sexual violence and some scenes of explicit consensual adult sex. (less)
Review: Siren Rises
When darkness descends, devouring all light and life from the world, what hope is left?
The scales have been tipped, someone else’s blood has been used to rise Ares, and the war between The Gifted has arrived. Now, there are Fae hunting Evangeline. Their only goal is to sacrifice her to their one true leader.
Forced to flee the academy, she must embark on a hunt of her own to acquire a scythe. A long lost weapon that will not only strengthen her powers, but is the only hope she has in defeating Ares. However, she is not the only one searching for it.
She must learn to combine and control the darkness and light within her. If she doesn’t, she risks being consumed by the very darkness she was born with. Putting not only her own life at risk, but also those of the ones she loves.
The apocalypse is spreading, with the presence of evil growing stronger with it.
Review: Siren Dreams
You can’t escape reality, when your enemies haunt your dreams.
All her life, Evangeline dreamed of finding her purpose. Now that she has, she is certain that she doesn’t want to fulfil it. Especially not when it could tip the scales in the war, that’s brewing between The Gifted.
Evangeline must travel to the Fae communities to convince them that, although there is darkness within her, she is on the side of light. Tensions rise, trust is betrayed, and those closest to her might not have her best interests at heart. The very darkness that she wields seeps its way into her dreams throughout her travels. This time, someone new enters them. Someone that seems to be trying to communicate with her. Is it a warning of danger to come, or simply an unending memory of her failure to rid the world of The Veils leader?
Review: Siren Calls
A search for answers. A long-held secret. A call to destiny.
If you knew your life was about to change for better or possibly a lot worse, would you still go looking for answers?
Evangeline is an orphan, with no memory of her life before she wound up in a children’s home.
Now at 18, she is free in the world, with a burning desire to unravel the mysteries of her past. What she unlocks changes her life forever.
The Fates take her out of the only world she has ever known and into the lives of the gifted.
Is it all she ever dreamed of, or were the nightmares that have plagued her for the past 10 years about to become all too real?
Review: Black Jade
Could an old-fashioned ballgown be used to commit murder?
Daiyu Wu is aware that fear of the Yellow Terror has made her nationality a rare breed in the Lone Star State. Being Chinese and blind makes her doubly unique in 1930 Dallas. Despite these impediments, anyone who dismisses her for either fact does so at their peril.
One day, at her family-owned laundry business, Dai detects the scent of burned garlic. With the help of her companion, Jacques, the source is soon discovered. It is a green ballgown. The gown has money pinned inside it to pay for the cleaning, but oddly, it came with no address label to identify its owner. Her extensive knowledge leads Dai to believe someone has committed murder using arsenic. The perpetrator is trying to use White Laundry to hide the evidence. But no mention of foul play turns up in the newspapers, and there’s not enough proof to convince the police there’s been a crime.
Her curiosity and intellect stimulated like never before; Dai ignores the possible consequences and sets out to solve the mystery with the help of her canine companion, Prince Razor, and her confidant, Jacques Haskins. It’s either that or let the killer get away with it – assuming a spoiled popinjay, his jealous self-appointed girlfriend, and Dai’s overprotective parents don’t get in her way.
Review: A French Quarter Violet
Officer Violet Babineaux is called to the scene of a suicide where she finds her childhood friend Charlotte Labarre lying on a blood-soaked couch with a gun in her hand. Violet believes she could have prevented her suicide with a simple call. While placed on administrative leave, guilt drives her to investigate on her own, starting with Psychology Professor Daniel Russo who had an inappropriate relationship with Charlotte, his student. Violet portrays a vulnerable facade to entice his interest, however she falls for his charms. And Dr. Russo’s news of Charlotte’s secret diary threatens to blow the case wide open.
Unsure about Dr. Russo’s involvement, Violet presents a bold conspiracy theory involving cops to her partner Lenny Blake, but he and Homicide Detective Walter Wild dismiss her despite the evidence. When Violet finally acquires an elusive piece to the puzzle, the answers are far worse than not knowing.
Review: An Unkindness of Ravens
A serial killer from her past; an FBI agent with a personal agenda, and an investigative journalist determined to get the story at any cost.
While she was out enjoying her senior prom, Sarah Brighwater’s mother was murdered in their home. The serial killer was known to the police but never caught. Now, 15 years later, Sarah is an FBI agent in the Behavioral Science Unit tracking down killers like the one who killed her mother.
When a new string of murders begins and bodies are dumped near her old home town, Sarah wonders about the reemergence of her lifelong tormentor. Could it be him?
Tyler Ford is a respected investigative journalist working for a less than respected newspaper. He too sees the links to Sarah’s past and wonders. He knows he has to keep close to her to find out the real story. But when the killer contacts him, Tyler finds that she needs him more than he needs her.
The pair races against time to find the killer before he disappears once more into the dark underworld that hides him so well.
Can two people with opposing goals work together well enough to bring down a serial killer? Listen to find out!
Review: Auditory Viewpoint
Gloria Rank has lived her entire life in the dark. Blind since birth, she has made a name for herself as a respected talk radio show host in New Jersey. When her younger sister, Anna, has her identity stolen and a man is murdered outside her apartment, Anna becomes the prime suspect in an FBI investigation. But when bodies begin piling up around her, the FBI has to admit that she is being stalked by a murderer.
With the FBI focused in the wrong direction, it is up to Gloria to teach Anna to use her other senses – hearing, touch, taste, and smell – which she never really had to completely rely on before to help uncover a ring of identity thieves and stop the killer from taking her life, and perhaps Gloria’s as well! Their only hope for survival is an experiment in perception that will unearth heartbreaking secrets and catapult Gloria into a darkness of the heart beyond any that she has ever known