Sixty Minutes

Author – Tony Salter.

Tony’s latest thriller, Sixty Minutes, was released on 29th August 2019. Tony is the author of bestselling psychological thriller, Best Eaten Cold. He writes pacy contemporary thrillers which explore different themes, but all share Tony’s thought-provoking plots and richly-painted characters. Sixty Minutes is his fourth novel. His second novel, The Old Orchard – a gripping family thriller – was published on the 7th of November 2017 and the sequel to Best Eaten Cold, – Cold Intent – was published in November 2018. Highlights of his early career include (in no particular order) three years as an oilfield engineer in the Egyptian desert, twelve years managing record companies for EMI Music in Greece, India and across Eastern Europe, running a caravan site in the South of France and being chauffeur to the French Consul in Sydney. Having survived the Dotcom boom, he went on to be a founder of the world’s largest website for expatriates, a major music publisher and a successful hotel technology business. In amongst this, Tony found the time to backpack around the world twice (once in his twenties and once in his fifties), learn six languages (including Norwegian and Greek) and to find a beautiful Norwegian wife. He now lives in Oxfordshire and writes full-time. He has recently turned sixty and is married with three children and five grandchildren.

Social Media Links –

You can find out more about Tony at www.tonysalter.com

Tweets by TonyOxford

https://www.facebook.com/tonysalterauthor/

https://www.instagram.com/tonysalter2017/

Publisher – ETS Limited

Pages – 262

The Blurb –

Five different people. Five separate lives. Sixty minutes to bind them for ever.

Hassan, Jim, Shuna, Dan and Nadia come from very different worlds. If life were straightforward, their paths would never cross. But our lives are rarely that simple and, as the clock ticks away the minutes of a single hour on a July morning, fate draws all five together in a headlong rush towards disaster.

Who are the heroes and who are the villains?

Tony Salter’s latest novel leaves us guessing right up to the last page.

Today is my stop on the Sixty Minutes blog tour. Many thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources for the chance to read and review.

My thoughts – I really enjoyed the unique angle of this book. The book covers one hour of five different people’s life and how they all end up intersecting with each other.

Five people who would never normally meet, end up thrown together due to a twist of fate.

The book is really written as we discover the back stories of these characters and learn more about them and why they have ended up in this position.

Highly recommended.

Author Giveaway –

Giveaway to Win 5 x PB copies of Sixty Minutes (Open INT)

*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome.  Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below.  The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data.  I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

To enter click here

Purchase Links – Sixty Minutes

The Bus Ride

Author – Joanie Chevalier.

Joanie Chevalier is a multi-genre Indie Author; Founder & Editor of RAC Online Magazine: Promoting and Encouraging the Reader/Author Connection; and Founder of Our Indie Author Room FB Group, a place where writers in all stages of their career go to learn, inspire, and teach.

Joanie loves the outdoors and nature, reading and supporting fellow indie authors. Her writing is a blend of everything she likes to read: suspense, horror, crime, psychological, non-fiction, and a good short story. She thinks her two Chihuahuas look adorable in sweaters.

Joanie Chevalier

Social Media Links –

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Joanie-Chevalier/e/B00P1946MS 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoanieChevalier  

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/JoanieC

RAC Website: https://readerauthorconnection.com/

Pages – 135

The Blurb –

The Bus Ride: A Zany Busnapping Adventure is a character-led novella. “I feel if an author creates rich characters, the story will propel itself.” – Joanie Chevalier, Author.

“As quirky as the story is, the diverse characters are definitely the main driving force for Joanie Chevalier’s The Bus Ride.” 5-Star Review by Lit Amri, Readers’ Favorite

Devon, the busnapper, decides to give each passenger a nickname: “We won’t be using our real names here. I want each of you to come up here and I’ll choose a nickname for ya. Cuz if I have to call on you, I don’t want to say ‘Hey, you.’ That’s not personal, and kinda rude. I like one-on-one personal stuff.” 

Here, I’d like to introduce you to passenger LonelyBoy aka Frankie. LonelyBoy is a tween and wants his family back to the way it was, which is impossible. Facing a sudden opportunity, he impulsively decides to run away, to get far away from his mom and her new boyfriend.

Excerpt –

He continued to pace until he came in front of the safe and noticed it was still open. Frankie used his knuckles to push the door open all the way; he had watched too many cops shows to leave fingerprints. His eyes widened when he saw the stacks of money. 

He stood up and argued with himself. He could take the money and start a new life. Just him and his mom. No, it was wrong, his conscience told him. 

Frankie cocked his head to listen. No noise came from the other room. He grabbed a gym bag sitting next to the desk and thinking no more about it, he stuffed the gym clothes into the bottom drawer of the desk and hid the tennis racket behind the plant in the corner. After glancing over his shoulder to the door, he crouched in front of the safe and began stuffing the bag with banded stacks of hundreds, fifties, and twenties. He then threw in wads of loose bills. 

When the bag was full, he zipped it up and closed the safe. Maybe Lance would forget he had it opened and wouldn’t discover the missing money until tomorrow. Frankie planned to be long gone by then. After that, well, he couldn’t think of what would happen after. He didn’t have the energy. 

Frankie heaved the heavy bag strap over his shoulder. He stumbled from the weight and stood still as he restored his balance. He tiptoed to the door and leaned his ear against it. Nothing. He was careful not to make any noise as he turned the knob and opened it a nudge, peering through the gap with one eye. Lance and his mom were embracing. 

He put his hand over his nose and mouth so he wouldn’t shout with disgust. The only thing he regretted at this moment was he didn’t have his notepad so he can tell his dad about this. His dad would be sickened about this situation as much as he was, he was sure of it. 

He closed the door and took a deep breath. It was now or never. He was getting out of here. His mom could have Lance, she was welcome to him.

Frankie somehow forgot he was only a twelve-year-old boy as he crept down the hall, past the embracing couple, hiding behind the couch when the cook passed by on her way to the kitchen. He opened the front door, walked through, and closed it. His finger shook as he pressed the elevator button, looking over his shoulder. 

When he walked out the front door to the sidewalk, he turned right and began running, the heavy bag bumping against his thigh. It was an awkward trot, but he knew where he was going. To the bus depot, to wait for any bus out of here. “…I think I liked Frankie’s story the best because it felt like it came from a very real place for some people that I know…” 5-Star Review by K.C. Finn, Readers’ Favorites 

Author Giveaway –

Giveaway to Win a Signed copy of The Bus Ride: A Zany Busnapping Adventure (Open INT)

*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome.  Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below.  The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data.  I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

To enter click here

Purchase Links – The Bus Ride

A Messy Affair

Author – Elizabeth Mundy.

Elizabeth Mundy’s grandmother was a Hungarian immigrant to America who raised five children on a chicken farm in Indiana. Elizabeth is a marketing director for an investment firm and lives in London with her messy husband and two young children. She writes the Lena Szarka Mysteries, featuring a Hungarian cleaner as detective. 

Elizabeth Mundy

Social Media Links –

Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @ElizabethEMundy

www.elizabethmundy.com

Publisher – Constable

Pages – 288

The Blurb –

The only way is murder…

Lena Szarka, a Hungarian cleaner working in London, is forced to brush up on her detective skills for a third time when her cousin Sarika is plunged into danger.

Sarika and her reality TV star boyfriend Terry both receive threatening notes.  When Terry stops calling, Lena assumes he’s lost interest. Until he turns up. Dead. Lena knows she must act fast to keep her cousin from the same fate.

Scrubbing her way through the grubby world of reality television, online dating and betrayed lovers, Lena finds it harder than she thought to discern what’s real – and what’s just for the cameras.

Today is my stop on A Messy Affair blog tour. Many thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources for the chance to read and review.

My thoughts – This is a brilliant read and although I was not familiar with character, having not read the first two in the series, this does not detract from this book.

I love the character of Lena, and the genius of making her a cleaner. A profession that can give her access to lots of areas and the invisibility that is sometimes needed for someone trying to solve a crime. She is a feisty protagonist and works the mysteries out well.

This book sees her enter the world of reality television when her cousin is put in danger. The story is well written and contains humour and pop culture references. I can’t wait to read Books 1 and 2.

Purchase Links –

UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Messy-Affair-Lena-Szarka-Mysteries/dp/1472126394

US – https://www.amazon.com/Messy-Affair-Lena-Szarka-Mysteries/dp/1472126394

Her Last Goodnight

Author – Michael Scanlon.

Michael Scanlon is a civilian employee of the An Garda Siochana (the Irish police force), but a life threatening undiagnosed illness that struck while travelling in Spain in 2014 has rendered him on long term sick leave. He is married to Eileen and has a daughter, Sarah. He lives in the countryside outside the town of Ballina in County Mayo. The town has arguably the best salmon river in Europe, called the Moy.

Michael Scanlon

Social Media Links –

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MScanlonAuthor

Publisher – Bookouture

Pages – 334

The Blurb –

Eddie stands at his door anxiously waiting for her to arrive, touching the box in his pocket for luck. He doesn’t hear the footsteps behind him until it’s too late…

Detective Finnegan Beck is called to a violent crime scene – a remote house near the rural Irish town of Cross Beg – where a dog lies whimpering beside his beloved owner’s body.

At first it looks like a burglary gone wrong. But Beck spots something his colleagues didn’t. The victim, Eddie Kavanagh, was wearing his smartest clothes. He’d brushed his hair. And, on closer inspection, a small velvet box containing an engagement ring is discovered in his pocket, along with a letter to a nameless woman, which seems to suggest she’s in danger.

Those who knew Eddie have no idea about a female friend though – there’s been no one in his life since a girl who he’d loved and who’d broken his heart decades before.

So who was the woman Eddie was waiting for? And did his connection with her ultimately lead to his murder? When a beautiful young woman is then found beaten to death, murdered exactly as Eddie had been, Beck has to ask – is the danger over? Or is it just beginning?

An absolutely addictive and atmospheric crime novel that will leave you gasping for breath. If you love gripping thrillers from Rachel Caine, Robert Dugoni and Kendra Elliot, you won’t be able to put this one down.

Today is my stop on the Her Last Goodnight blog tour. Many thanks to Bookouture for the chance to read and review.

My thoughts – Although this book is part of a series, it can easily be read as a stand alone.

DI Finnegan Beck is called in to unravel the murder of Eddie Kavanagh, an elderly man who is found dead in his own home. The case gets more puzzling when the man is found to have no known enemies and the initial thought of a burglary is dismissed.

This is a fast paced read that has you guessing all the way through. DI Beck is a complicated protagonist but his troubles add to the story. I really like him as a character and look forward to going back and reading the other books in the series.

Purchase Links –

Amazon: https://geni.us/B081576NZBSocial

Apple Books: https://apple.co/32sAaZN

Kobo: http://bit.ly/2JZ96ea

Googleplay: http://bit.ly/2oXmkAQ

The Operation

Author – Dylan Young.

Dylan Young grew up in a mining village in South Wales before boarding a train for London. A 35-year career in the NHS followed, the last 27 as a consultant ophthalmologist. Three dark psychological thrillers for Random House emerged in the late nineties and over the last decade, under different pseudonyms, he’s written children’s books and an adult contemporary fantasy series. But retiring from the NHS has allowed Dylan to spend (even) more time in his writing office—a shed in the garden. After publishing a three book crime series with Bookouture, Dylan has now found a new home in the Bloodhound kennels where he writes standalone psychological thrillers with a trademark medical flavour.

Dylan Young

Social Media Links –

Website: www. https://dylanyoungauthor.com/

Twitter: @dyoungwrites

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dyoungwrites/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17290016.Dylan_Young

Publisher – Bloodhound Books

Pages – 372

The Blurb –

If your life was on the line, how far would you go?

Surgeon Jacob Thorn isn’t worried when the police interview him over nurse Katy Leith’s disappearance. She is a co-worker, nothing more. 
But when a leaked video of him and the missing woman arguing goes viral, the social media reaction is vicious. 

When harrowing images of the kidnapped woman start to appear on his phone, along with a demand from her abductor that Jake confesses to a crime he has no recollection of committing, he is forced to act or face terrifying consequences. 

He needs to delve into the past for answers. But time is running out for Katy. 

Will he admit to his failings and lose everything, or plead ignorance and let an innocent girl die? 

Today is my stop on The Operation blog tour. Many thanks to Sarah Hardy BOTBS Publicity for the chance to read and review.

My thoughts – Wow this is an excellent read. You work your way through life, building your reputation and in one instant your whole life falls apart.

Jacob Thorn is well respected surgeon so when a nurse at his hospital goes missing, he doesn’t realise the consequences it will have on his life. Her colleagues are interviewed by the police and he too gives a statement.

When a video surfaces of him and the missing nurse arguing, he quickly becomes the prime suspect. The hospital distance themselves from him and the press go to town. If he thought this was bad, he is about to find out his life is about to get much worse.

This is a brilliantly written book and reminded me of the fate of Christopher Jefferies when Joanna Yeates was murdered in 2010.

In the book Jacob fights to prove his innocence but it isn’t as easy as he thinks.

Purchase Links – The Operation

A Million Eyes

Author – C.R Berry.

C.R. Berry caught the writing bug at the tender age of four and has never recovered. His earliest stories were filled with witches, monsters, evil headteachers, Disney characters and the occasional Dalek. He realised pretty quickly that his favourite characters were usually the villains. He wonders if that’s what led him to become a criminal lawyer. It’s certainly why he’s taken to writing conspiracy thrillers, where the baddies are numerous and everywhere.

After a few years getting a more rounded view of human nature’s darker side, he quit lawyering and turned to writing full-time. He now works as a freelance copywriter and novelist and blogs about conspiracy theories, time travel and otherworldly weirdness.

He was shortlisted in the 2018 Grindstone Literary International Novel Competition and has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Storgy, Dark Tales, Theme of Absence and Suspense Magazine. He was also shortlisted in the Aeon Award Contest, highly commended by Writers’ Forum, and won second prize in the inaugural To Hull and Back Humorous Short Story Competition.

He grew up in Farnborough, Hampshire, a town he says has as much character as a broccoli. He’s since moved to the “much more interesting and charming” Haslemere in Surrey.

C.R. Berry

Social Media Links –

Website: https://crberryauthor.wordpress.com

Technology that learns you

https://gregoryferro.home.blog/

Tweets by CRBerry1

https://www.facebook.com/CRBerry1/

Publisher – Elsewhen Press

Pages – 355

The Blurb –

How do you fight an enemy who has a million eyes?

What if we’re living in an alternate timeline? What if the car crash that killed Princess Diana, the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower, and the shooting of King William II weren’t supposed to happen?

Ex-history teacher Gregory Ferro finds evidence that a cabal of time travellers is responsible for several key events in our history. These events all seem to hinge on a dry textbook published in 1995, referenced in a history book written in 1977 and mentioned in a letter to Edward III in 1348.

Ferro teams up with down-on-her-luck graduate Jennifer Larson to get to the truth and discover the relevance of a book that seems to defy the arrow of time. But the time travellers are watching closely. Soon the duo are targeted by assassins willing to rewrite history to bury them.

Million Eyes is a fast-paced conspiracy thriller about power, corruption and destiny.

Today is my stop on the Million Eyes blog tour. Many thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources for the chance to read and review.

My thoughts – Wow this is a great read. Imagine everything you learned in history at school was wrong. How would you view the world now? This book reads like a Dr Who episode.

Gregory Ferro was a history teacher, so when he learns that something he has believed his all life, may not be true, he decides to investigate. His digging leads him to time travel and the belief that people can move through time and space, altering the past.

What I loved about this book is the going back to different periods of time, I always love a different take on history. I also loved the suggestion that something very recent has been changed.

An excellent read and highly recommended.

Purchase Links –

http://bit.ly/Million-Eyes

Trailer

Annie Beaton's Year of Positive Thinking

Author – Mink Elliott.

Mink Elliott’s always been into writing – mainly about the ups and downs of family life. Her first novel, The Pissed-Off Parents Club chartered the first year in the life of an older new mum and the toll a baby takes – sorry, the joy a baby brings – and her second novel, Just Another Manic Mum-Day, dealt with trying to find yourself again amongst the chaos and clutter created by a wilful toddler when you’ve got another one on the way. Born in Manchester only to be teased mercilessly about ‘jam butties’ when her family moved to Adelaide when she was seven years old, Mink now lives with her daughter, son and bonkers Irish Setter in a small village in Berkshire. Like Annie Beaton, she tries to practise positive thinking and mindfulness, but is more likely to be found mindlessly Hoovering up a packet (or two) of Tunnock’s Tea Cakes than square breathing.   

Mink Elliott

Social Media Links –

Twitter – @minkelliott

Publisher – Hera

Pages – 319

The Blurb –

THIS YEAR I WILL:

Get a new job

Get a new man

Get a new LIFE!

It’s Annie Beaton’s 50th birthday! But instead of getting roses and perfume, she gets sacked, her son, Ben, tells her she’s growing a beard and her husband Joe tells her he wants a divorce.

Moving to the countryside to stay in her eccentric aunt’s house, Annie must find her mojo again – and fast. So when she discovers a stack of self-help books, Annie vows to use their advice – from Chicken Soup for the Soul to The Secret – to get her life back on track. Never mind that her 9-going-on-19-year-old daughter, Izzy, is currently engaging Annie in psychological warfare and her adorable 6-year-old son, Ben, spends more time wetting the bed than making friends at his new school…

But now, armed with a load of affirmations/inspirational quotes/positive vibes, Annie’s determined to kick her Crappy Old Year to the kerb and have a brilliantly Happy New Year. Just as soon as she’s had her chin waxed…

A hilarious, laugh-out-loud feelgood read – fans of Gill Sims, Sophie Ranald and Tracy Bloom will be hooked!

Today is my stop on the A Year of Positive Thinking blog tour. Many thanks to Sarah Hardy and BOTBS Publicity for the chance to read and review.

My thoughts – This is the perfect read for January blues. If you have started the year full of good intentions but are faltering already, sit down with this book.

Annie is turning 50, she is married with children and for her birthday, her husband wants a divorce! At this stage of her life she thinks she should be sorted but what with her family and husband everything is turned on its head.

This book really made me laugh as Annie hits the self help books to try and turn her life around.

I think everyone cab take something from this book, it is a lovely read.

Purchase Links – Annie Beaton’s Year of Positive Thinking