Lesley A. Diehl - A Sporting Murder - Review & Giveaway

About the Book

It's smooth sailing for Eve Appel and her friend Madeleine, owners of Second to None Consignment Shop in rural Florida's Sabal Bay, land of swamps, cowboys, and lots and lots of 'gators. Eve and her detective boyfriend Alex have joined Madeleine and her new beau David Wilson for a pleasure cruise on his boat. But cloudy, dangerous waters lie ahead. A near fatal encounter with Blake Reed, David's supremely nasty neighbor, is soon followed by a shooting death on the dividing line between David and Blake's land. Both men run sport-hunting reserves, but Blake imports "exotics" from Africa and promotes gator killing, while David stays within the law, pointing clients toward the abundant quail and turkey as well as the wild pigs that ravage the landscape. Nevertheless, when a mutual client is killed, it is David who is arrested and charged with murder.

Blake's nastiness is only exceeded by that of his wife, Elvira, who forces Eve and Madeleine out of their shop, intending to replace it with a consignment shop of her own. It seems that bad luck looms over them all, even Eve's brawny and hard-to-resist Miccosukee Indian friend Sammy, whose nephew has disappeared. As the case against David grows stronger and his friends' misfortunes multiply, Eve and her strange and diverse group of friends, including her ex, a mobster, her grandma, and Sammy's extended family, band together to take on the bad guys. But the waters are getting muddier and more troubled, and Eve and Madeleine may end up inundated in every sense of the word.

My Review

I'd love to introduce you to Eve Appel, but I think she'd do a much better job introducing herself.

"I find chasing down killers more exciting than selling fashionable used clothing." 

"Crying is not something I often give into; I'm more of a 'turn your troubles into anger and blame someone else' gal." 

"Nobody ever accused me of having generous thoughts about those I don't like."

In A SPORTING MURDER, Eve is often described as insensitive, a bully, and immune to the needs of others whenever she wants her way. Not exactly the most flattering traits one usually associates with a main character, but Eve's sense of humor redeems her in more ways than one.

"There's no worse romance spoiler than peanut butter breath." 

"How many killings can one sassy gal stumble into?" 

"There's nothing like work to take your mind off murder. Well, there are other things too. Like sex, food, dancing…"

She can be a tad self-absorbed, but her best friend and business partner, Madeleine, is the selfless balm to her constant dose of assertiveness. They run a consignment clothing shop together, but aggressive just isn't Madeleine's style. She's a petite redhead to Eve's tall, sexy blond. She worries about the money while Eve always assumes that thinks will work out. Madeleine is clumsy and naive, but she holds fast to her principles, refusing to let Eve talk her into asking a mob boss for a small business loan they so desperately need.

But when Madeleine's boyfriend, David, is convicted of first-degree murder, Eve tries to protect her from all of the ugly details related to the case. But this only angers Madeleine more when she feels that Eve doesn't think she can handle the truth, that she's too much of a wimp. Eve tries to help Madeleine by investigating what clues they do have, but she feels guilty leaving her BFF out of the loop.

"I should be a better friend to her instead of running all over, trying to play the tough little sleuth."

Alex, Eve's PI boyfriend, couldn't agree more. But Eve hates seeing others in action while she's forced to sit on the sidelines. Even when for the most part her plans never work out, she still dives in, headfirst. She thinks chasing clues will bring her and Alex closer together as a couple, but it really doesn't. Instead, she quickly turns into a problem for him, getting in the way, and endangering herself in the process.

"He wanted me to stay out of this murder investigation/possible abduction more than he wanted me naked between the sheets. Well, he couldn't have it both ways."

And that's when things start to get complicated, because there's another man, waiting in the wings, ready to take Alex's place.

Sammy is a Miccosukee Indian with dark skin and long black hair. He looks like a warrior. Eve readily admits, "I liked Sammy's understated handsome looks and rugged style." When she takes off with him to investigate and doesn't come back until morning, she knows she's in a heap of trouble.

"Alone with a handsome Indian. Talking? Who would believe that?"

Namely, Madeleine.

Eve knows she can con her into not telling Alex that she was out all night with Sammy, even though their friendship is already pretty strained.

"I waited for her anger to pass. It did. It always did between us. Nothing, but nothing could sever our bond."

But Eve's secrets soon catch up with her, putting both of their lives in danger. And as the action reaches its epic conclusion, Eve finds herself in quite a quandary.

"Here I was fashionably dressed with nowhere to go except my own death."

Will Eve and Madeleine both survive this harrowing ordeal? You'll have to read this page turner of a mystery to find out!

***

A Sporting Murder can be purchased at:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble

Formats/Prices: $4.95 ebook, $13.95 paperback
Genres: Cozy Murder Mystery
Pages: 250
Release: July 15, 2015
Publisher: Camel Press
ISBN: 9781603819398
Click to add to your Goodreads list.


About the Author

Lesley retired from her life as a professor of psychology and reclaimed her country roots by moving to a small cottage in the Butternut River Valley in upstate New York. In the winter she migrates to old Florida—cowboys, scrub palmetto, and open fields of grazing cattle, a place where spurs still jingle in the post office, and gators make golf a contact sport. Back north, the shy ghost inhabiting the cottage serves as her literary muse. When not writing, she gardens, cooks and renovates the 1874 cottage with the help of her husband, two cats and, of course, Fred the ghost, who gives artistic direction to their work.

She is the author of a number of mystery series and mysteries as well as short stories. A Sporting Murder follows the first two books in the Eve Appel mystery series, A Secondhand Murder and Dead in the Water.

Links to connect with Lesley:
Web Site
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads
Blog
Blog Tour Site


About the Giveaway

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Kathleen M. Rodgers - Johnnie Come Lately - Review & Giveaway

About the Book

Would life have been different for Johnnie if she'd been named after a woman rather than her dead uncle? Or if her mama hadn't been quite so beautiful or flighty? The grandparents who raised her were loving, but they didn't understand the turmoil roiling within her. And they had so many, many secrets.

Why did her mama leave? Would she ever return? How did her Uncle Johnny really die? Who was her father? Now Johnnie Kitchen is a 43-year-old woman with three beautiful children, two of them grown. She has a handsome, hardworking husband who adores her, and they live in the historic North Texas town of Portion in a charming bungalow. But she never finished college and her only creative outlet is a journal of letters addressed to both the living and the dead. Although she has conquered the bulimia that almost killed her, Johnnie can never let down her guard, lest the old demons return. Or perhaps they never went away to begin with. For Johnnie has secrets of her own, and her worst fear is that the life she's always wanted--the one where she gets to pursue her own dreams--will never begin.

Not until her ghosts reveal themselves.

My Review

Bulimia is a disease often associated with teenage girls, but for Johnnie Kitchen it's something she's been struggling with almost her entire life.

Growing up, the temptation to binge and purge constantly surrounded her since the grandmother who raised her bakes mouth-watering cakes for a living. Now her son mocks her, trivializing what she's going through. Even her husband who pays for her treatment wants to know why she's not better yet.

But Johnnie knows:

"Even when you think you've won the battle, you can never let your guard down."

Because the cause isn't physical, it's psychological.

Her mother took off when she was eight when the problems at home became too hard to bear, and Johnnie ended up blaming herself for the reason she disappeared. While her friends' moms get all dolled up to drop their daughters off at ballet and tap, Johnnie's mom was off God knows where turning tricks for a living. Her mom didn't even keep a baby book about her. All she knew about her birthday was that it fell in 1964 somewhere between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Later when she looked up her birth certificate online, she found her paternity simply listed as "father unknown."

"I spewed you out, Mama, along with gallons of ice cream, bags of potato chips, leftovers I'd rescued from the back of the fridge. Cast you out like a bad demon. All your excuses, all the times you left me high and dry."

The harsh reality that a bulimic faces is unflinchingly portrayed. From shoving the bristles of a toothbrush too far down her throat in order to make herself gag to getting caught by her husband scarfing down an entire skillet full of hamburger meat, a bulimic's shame and humiliation are ever apparent.

And the disorder continues to follow Johnnie through all stages of her life.

At eight, she is pudgy and unsure of herself, hiding under a winter coat to pretend to be thin. As a teenager, she's a lonely girl who just wants to shed fifteen pounds in order to have a boyfriend. In early adulthood, Johnnie looks at someone like the singer Karen Carpenter and how she died of anorexia and wonders:

"If someone rich and famous can get sick how can a nineteen-year-old college girl get well?"

It's only when after she gets married and her husband takes an interest in her condition that she starts to make strides in her recovery. For years, she never understood why she does what she does, choosing to view it as a dark, evil thing taking over her body.

But as she reaches middle age, she has a breakthrough as she starts to grasp the foundation of her illness.

"When I binged, I stuffed all emotions down, not just food. And when I threw up, anger and rage spewed out, too. For years, I internalized these normal human feelings—and I acted them out through bulimia."

After going back to college in her forties, she meets another woman suffering with bulimia in one of her classes. Her teeth are rotten from constant vomiting. Her eyes are bloodshot and her face sallow. She asks Johnnie for the magic pill, telling her how to quit. But Johnnie explains, it's not that easy. It's only going to work if she wants to stop bad enough. There's no other way around it.

It's a fitting message to bulimic women out there who might be reading this book—who are just as desperate to make a change, but don't know how. Johnnie's story shows them to never give up, living a healthy life with this disease can be done.

***

Johnnie Come Lately can be purchased at:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
BAM

Special $2.99 ebook sale!
now through July 31, 2015

Formats/Prices: $4.95 ebook, $9.75 paperback
Genres: Military Family, Women's Fiction, Literary Fiction
Pages: 292
Release: February 1, 2015
Publisher: Camel Press
ISBN: 9781603812153
Click to add to your Goodreads list.


About the Author

Award-winning author Kathleen M. Rodgers is a former frequent contributor to Family Circle magazine and Military Times. Her work has also appeared in anthologies published by McGraw-Hill, University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books, Health Communications, Inc., AMG Publishers, and Press 53. She is the author of the award-winning novel, The Final Salute, featured in USA Today, The Associated Press, and Military Times. Deer Hawk Publications reissued the novel in e-book and paperback September of 2014.

Her second novel, Johnnie Come Lately, released from Camel Press February 1, 2015. Barnes and Noble in Southlake, TX hosted the official launch on February 7, and Kathleen signed copies of both novels for three hours straight. In 2014, she was named a Distinguished Alumna from Tarrant County College/NE Campus.

She is the mother of two grown sons, Thomas, a graduate of University of North Texas and a working artist in Denton, TX, and J.P., a graduate of Texas Tech University and a former Army officer who earned a Bronze Star in 2014 in Afghanistan. Kathleen’s husband, Tom, is a retired fighter pilot/commercial airline pilot, and they reside in Colleyville, TX with their rescue dog, Denton. Kathleen is working on a new novel titled Seven Wings to Glory and is represented by Loiacono Literary Agency.

Links to connect with Kathleen:
Web Site
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads
Blog
Blog Tour Site


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