perfect

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Post Script: The Summer That Melted Everything – Tiffany McDaniel

the summer that melted everything Scribe

The Summer That Melted Everything

Tiffany McDaniel

Scribe Publications  (Paperback)

9781925321302

Description:

Fielding Bliss has never forgotten the summer of 1984: the year a heat wave scorched Breathed, Ohio. The year he became friends with the devil.

 

Sal seems to appear out of nowhere – a bruised and tattered thirteen-year-old boy claiming to be the devil himself answering an invitation. Fielding Bliss, the son of a local prosecutor, brings him home where he’s welcomed into the Bliss family, assuming he’s a runaway from a nearby farm town.

 

When word spreads that the devil has come to Breathed, not everyone is happy to welcome this self-proclaimed fallen angel. Murmurs follow him and tensions rise, along with the temperatures as an unbearable heat wave rolls into town right along with him. As strange accidents start to occur, riled by the feverish heat, some in the town start to believe that Sal is exactly who he claims to be. While the Bliss family wrestles with their own personal demons, a fanatic drives the town to the brink of a catastrophe that will change this sleepy Ohio backwater forever.

 

 

My View:

Sublime, poignant, lyrical, touching…

 

This book will quickly draw you in and mesmerise you with its beautiful prose. It will enchant, it will enthral, it will make you shake your head in disbelief and then you will reflect a little and sadly  have to agree…this could happen, this or something like it has already  happened…. somewhere, to someone…be careful what you say, words once spoken cannot be unheard.

 

This is a book that will have a profound effect on the reader (aside from the awe you will feel for the delicious prose). There are words, there are sentences, there are paragraphs and pages you will just want to highlight or underline and shout YES!!!  When you read this book there are two particular passages that stand out in my mind, analogies with leaves and another with roses, let me know if these spark brilliant illuminations in your mind, they did for me; beautiful descriptions, searing moments of brutal honesty and perfect understanding.

 

The writing here is remarkable…I predict…awards, awards and more awards for this incredibly wonderful and talented author. And did I mention that this is Tiffany McDaniel’s debut work? Seriously amazing!!!

 

 

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Post Script: Monday’s Lie – Jamie Mason

Your cup will be filled to the brim with tension and menacing atmosphere.

Monday's Lie

Monday’s Lie

Jamie Mason

Gallery, Threshold, Pocket Books

Gallery Books

ISBN: 9781476774459

 

Description:

From the acclaimed author of the “ripping good” (The New York Times) debut novel Three Graves Full comes a new thriller about a woman who digs into her unconventional past to confirm what she suspects: her husband wants her dead.

 

Dee Aldrich rebelled against her off-center upbringing when she married the most conventional man she could imagine: Patrick, her college sweetheart. But now, years later, her marriage is falling apart and she’s starting to believe that her husband wants her gone…for good.

 

Haunted by memories of her late mother Annette, a former covert operations asset, Dee reaches back into her childhood to resurrect the lessons and “spy games” in which she learned memory tricks and, most importantly, how and when to lie. But just as she begins delving into her past to determine the course of the future, she makes a discovery that will change her life: the money that her mother left behind. Now, Dee must investigate her suspicions before it’s too late and untangle conspiracy from coincidence, using her mother’s advice to steer her through the blind spots. The trick, in the end, will be in discovering if a “normal life” is really what she wanted at all.

 

With pulse-pounding prose and atmospheric settings, Monday’s Lie is a thriller that delivers more of the “Hitchcockian menace” (Peter Straub) that made Three Graves Full a critical hit. For fans of the Coen brothers or Alexander McCall Smith, this is a book you won’t want to miss.

 

My View:

What a great read! I recommend pencilling an appointment in your diary (give yourself a few hours, you deserve it) and read this fast paced and addictive thriller – you won’t be disappointed. This has all the elements that I love in a thriller – characters that could become your friends (I especially loved the echo of the mother’s voice, instructing her children, showering them with love, teaching them how to be safe…). The prose is engaging and tense, with a hint of mystery and drama that keeps you turning the pages. There is no gratuitous blood shed or forensic analysis here; this narrative relies on its plot, is well developed characters, its fast pace and sense of misgiving and foreboding to engage the reader- perfect! Read and enjoy.