Sand by Lili Tufel My rating: 3 and 1/2 of 5 stars

Book Blurb:
Dallas is a Special Forces Lieutenant who is driven by his promise to protect the Colonel’s daughter Abby from an opium drug lord. He is torn between duty and his love for her and when he discovers that the drug lord's charming—murderous son has befriended Abby, there's no limit to how far he is willing to go to protect her.

Guest Post by Donna Brown author of Double-take Tales

Tales with a twist in the tail

I am not an organised writer.  I don’t sit down for a set number of hours each day.  I don’t keep carefully documented notes of ideas or potential projects.  You are more likely to find a screwed up napkin covered in scrawl on my desk (i.e. wherever I happened to drop it) than carefully written cue cards or Post-It notes.

So, how do I write?  I write entirely as and when ideas hit.  As long as it’s physically possible, of course!  I wrote the majority of my story, Round Trip, on the bus on the way to see my parents.  My scrawl was barely legible by the end of the journey but I was pleased to rescue a – decent? I hope so! – story in

Doing Max Vinyl by Frederick Lee Brooke My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book Blurb:
Earth first. Okay, maybe second. Third? She'll KILL you!

Max Vinyl’s type of success story can only happen in America. Rising from humble beginnings, he has reached the height of the computer recycling racket. Problem is, he’s using Lake Michigan as his own personal profit center. Even that wouldn't have been a problem if his environmentalist girlfriend Tris hadn't found out his dirty secret. And while Max is devastated by his love crashing down around him, he’s about to learn that the rage of a woman scorned packs far more firepower and potential for destruction than he had ever imagined.

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Justice For Emily by Sandy Wolters My rating: 3 and 1/2 of 5 stars

Book Blurb:
Rachael Merchant is on a cross country trip running from the tragic images of her last case that are embedded deep in her soul. She is a City of Phoenix Homicide Detective that is trying to deal with the freak show her life has become.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Book Blurb:
Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss's family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding. 

The Biocide Conspiracy by Ann Massey My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book Blurb:
A young adult thriller rated by mature readers who hunger for some serious controversy - The Biocide Conspiracy' is a story about two Australian Teenagers who find wreckage from the International Space Station and evidence it has been used to manufacture a deadly biocide - the most lethal weapon of mass destruction in the history of the world.

Catching Fire (The Hunger Games #2) by Suzanne Collins My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book Blurb:
Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol - a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

A Tiny Bit Marvellous by Dawn French My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Book Blurb:
This first novel by Dawn French is told through the eyes of a mother and her two teenage children. There's seventeen-year-old Dora, a stroppy teenager who's just come out of her first

Winwithebooks contest has ended now.

Lucky winners were Entry #2442 Anita who won the Kindle Fire or $200 Amazon gift card, and Entry #1325 Michelle who won the $10 Amazon gift card. We'll be doing another in March so keep an eye here for contest details. No purchase necessary to win, but twenty great books available for just $.99. Each purchase gets you extra chances to win! You can pick up some of the fabulous books I've talked about here for just $.99 during this Winwithebooks event! Click on the Winwithebooks badge on the right to learn more. You know you wanna!

Doxology by Brian Holers My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book blurb:
After a lifetime of abuse and loss--from fights with other boys staged for his father's entertainment, to the death of his only son-- sixty one year old Vernon Davidson is angry. He's ready to get back at God, his paper mill coworkers, and everyone else in his north Louisiana town.

Guest Post by Brian Holers - author of Doxology

Good Stories for Everyone
One of the beauties of self publishing is that the gatekeeper has been fired. In this new world of books made possible by the internet, no one is left to guard the door.

Amador Lockdown by Coral Russell

Coral Russell talks about her book Amador Lockdown:
You believe in ghosts, right? With Ghost Hunters, Paranormal State, Ghost Adventures, and Most Haunted on TV every week and the popularity of the low-budget movie and its sequels Paranormal Activity, it seems everyone believes in ghosts. According to Google, the subject of ghosts in books peaked around the 1930s then dropped off. Starting in 2000, 'ghost stories' have been gaining in popularity again.

Win a Kindle Fire or Amazon $200 Gift Card

Winwithebooks.com is giving away another Kindle Fire (or $200 Amazon Gift Card) Feb. 12-15! Sign up for the newsletter at winwithebooks.com or ‘like’ the Winwithebooks Facebook page to be reminded to enter.

*no purchase necessary to win*

Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book blurb:

'As I sleep, my mind will erase everything I did today. I will wake up tomorrow as I did this morning. Thinking I'm still a child. Thinking I have a whole lifetime of choice ahead of me ...' Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep?

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book blurb:

Sookie Stackhouse is a cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana, but she keeps to herself and doesn't date much because of her "disability" to read minds. When she meets Bill, Sookie can't hear a word he's thinking. He's the type of guy she's waited for all of her life, but he has a disability, too--he's a vampire with a bad reputation. When one of Sookie's coworkers is killed, she fears she's next.

My review:

After hearing all the hype on both this book series and the True Blood tv series for quite some time, I finally decided to see what all the fuss was about.

H10N1 by M. R. Cornelius My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book Blurb:

A deadly influenza virus rages out of control. There is no easy-fix vaccine. No eleventh-hour containment. Only death.  With no workforce, power plants are unmanned so there’s no means of communication; police and fire departments have collapsed so no one is safe; looters are scavenging everything from big-screen TVs to canned peas.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Book Blurb: 

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Guest post by J.C. Andrijeski

J.C. Andrijeski author of

Rook: Allie's War (Book One)

AND

The Culling (The Slave Girl Chronicles #1)

and her character Allie of Rook: Allie's War  

have both joined us today to share a little of their lives with us!

Allie (Primary character of Rook: Allie's War) talks coffee:

Coffee isn't just that thing that makes it easier for me to get up in the morning...I don't know if I would get up, to be honest, if it wasn't for coffee. I know Jon would say that's because I drink too much or spend too much time out late with Jaden or Nick...or these days, Cass. But the truth is, I've always had this thing where I wake up in the middle of the night..partying is actually one of my ways to prevent that. Usually I just get up and draw, for hours sometimes.

The Truth About Us by Dalene Flannigan My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book blurb:

What happens when the past catches up to the present and the truth surfaces? Three women, roommates back in college, find their lives forever altered when one of them feels compelled to confess the secret sin of their past.