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Retail price: $16.99
302 pages
Genres: young adult fiction, adventure, travel adventure
Perfect Gift for: mature teenagers 15-19 (female and male), anyone visiting
France or China, those seeking an adventurous read
Who should pass: Those seeking a slow-paced sensitive coming-of-age tale
set in a quiet English flower garden. (These girls use throwing stars.) Parents
of young teens should read the book first to judge if it is appropriate.
Sex/violence level: some martials arts, a few kisses; threatening situations
and occasional sexual innuendo.
Sixteen-year old Claire, overprotected her entire life by a hardworking worry-wart
Mom, must now find the father she never knew in Paris, France, and soon, or she'll
never have the chance: he'll be dead.
What starts out as a simple summer visit to
Paris with her best friend Camden and their guardian, Claire's spinster aunt May,
quickly splinters into multiple mysteries: where is her father? What did he do
to make such tenacious enemies? The silver ring he sent her--can it really protect
her? What do the ring's Chinese characters mean?
Claire and her plucky friend
Camden are soon up to their eyebrows in predicaments no one could possibly
predict, each one more impossible to escape than the last. With the aid of
a peculiarly skillful friend they make along the way, Claire and Camden end
up fighting for their lives--and for Claire's wayward father's freedom--in a
shadowy Shanghai and an underground Paris few ever see--or would want to see.
The first chapter.
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Claire's Great Adventure (amazon.com)
Kindle edition: $2.99
Claire's Great Adventure (download)
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Retail price: $12.99
192 pages
Genres: humor, zany adventure, social satire, crime/Hollywood/media send-up
Perfect Gift for: Anyone seeking a few hours of escapism,
a light read/laugh with delicious doses of satire and sex.
Who should pass: Anyone offended by the Kama Sutra, absurdist humor,
spoofs of sacred cows and the occasional firearms accident.
Sex/violence level: a few shootings with a tiny .22,
sexy suggestiveness in adult situations (for mature audiences)
After his last one-night stand--a new baby and a crushing mortgage came hand in
hand-- the last thing Hollywood has-been Hayward West expected was to fall in
love.
But as 19-year old Valentina, fresh from a border crossing, wolfed down
four tamales in a row, he was wildly, uncontrollably, passionately in love. She
needed $25,000 to save her father, and he needed $250,000 to stave off bankruptcy.
There was a way to raise the cash and win the woman he desired, but it required
a marriage--a marriage of many things...
The first chapter.
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Kama Sutra Cadillac
Kindle edition: $2.99
Kama Sutra Cadillac (download)
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Retail price: $13.99
288 pages
Genres: "Thinking persons espionage adventure," travel adventure, spy thriller
Perfect Gift for: Readers who favor spy/adventure stories with some
humor, sharp male and female characters and a dash of techno-gadgetry,
anyone visiting Europe for the 1st time, those seeking light/fun escapism/intrigue.
Sex/violence level: Occasional pain and suffering, two suggestive
romantic scenes (for mature audiences)
Garrett Trask needed a job, badly--and this weird one would do.
If only he knew ....
"At some point you're willing to take a job, any job, just to break the
dispiriting cycle of looking for work: hopeful application, positive
interview, anxious wait, polite rejection, numbing disappointment.
Getting tipsy and wandering onto the Golden Gate Bridge in a deep
fog was an optional step six, and then it was back to step one again."
So begins a tale of espionage, betrayal, treachery, exotic locales, and
events too outlandish to give away here. Both a thriller and a gentle send-up of
that genre, this will appeal to fans of "thinking persons spy tales"
and realistic sci-fi. The first chapter.
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Of Two Minds
Kindle edition: $2.99
Of Two Minds (download)
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Retail price: $13.99
272 pages
Genres: contemporary romance, contemporary women's fiction, literary romance
Perfect Gift for: Any young male seeking insight into the complexities
of adult romance, any female reader who is drawn to a 29-year old mixed-race
libertine who does not think of herself as a libertine.
Who should pass: Anyone offended by non-graphic sexy love scenes,
guys who hate complex/sensitive women, anyone offended by sex/affairs/adultery
Sex/violence level: no violence, large doses of flirting,
sex play and adultery in adult situations (for mature audiences)
Verona Uyeki is in a romantic pickle she never expected; three men claim to love her,
but she only loves one. Two want to marry her, but not the one she is mad for.
Beset by family pressures and precarious finances, Verona must respond by Sunday to
a suitor's sudden ultimatum.
On the weekend she must decide between the three, her first love pays her a
surprise visit in San Francisco. What a young woman from Hawaii remembers, and
discovers about herself, is also unexpected....
"A line from Mimi's last letter came to her—"how did such a smart girl like you get
in such a pickle?"—and she thought, you don't know the half of it.
The Genet quote which she'd buried in her journal came to her, and its sweet-sour
taste of exalted imprisonment struck her anew: "Anyone who hasn't experienced the
ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all."
Excerpt from first chapter.
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Verona in Spring
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Retail price: $12.99
228 pages
Genres: action/adventure, war, spiritual quest, family drama
Perfect Gift for: Anyone drawn to a
tale of The Desert War's aftermath on a seemingly lightly injured National
Guard soldier; readers who seek an adventure story of romance, wrenching combat,
and the overcoming of shattering spiritual and marital crises.
Who should pass: Anyone offended by death, small-arms combat,
non-graphic sex/love scenes, pilgrimages, funerals and spiritual renewal.
Sex/violence level: Graphic depictions of combat, killing and death.
Non-graphic depictions of sex/love scenes. (for mature audiences)
Not everyone who served in the Desert War returned home untroubled.
When all the other cures for a wounded soul have failed, then action may be
the only cure left.
"My Dear Collette:
I considered setting this aside for your 25th or even 30th birthday, but realizing
you might marry young, as your mother and I did, I want you to know all this
before you marry.
It is the fondest wish of any parent that their child might learn from their own
painful mistakes rather than from the harsh school of experience, and as foolish
as this hope may be, I have held nothing back in the belief that unadorned
honesty is more likely to be of value to you than half-truths."
The first chapter.
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For My Daughter
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Retail price: $20.00
263 pages (The Permanent Press, NY, 2006)
Kindle Reader version $8:
I-State Lines (digital download)
Genres: road trip, coming of age, humor, spiritual quest
Perfect Gift for: Anyone interested in smart-mouthed young Hapa
(mixed-race) guys cruising across country in an
old Dodge Lancer. Anyone
who finds "On the Road" interesting but dated, those who enjoy U.S. travel
Who should pass: Anyone offended by slang/vocabulary they don't (yet) know,
readers who prefer a strictly linear story-telling, those offended by youth
and their annoying desire to skewer sacred cows--even cellphones (gasp).
Sex/violence level: One scene each of fisticuffs violence and
suggestive sex. (for mature audiences)
"Alex says it’s me, but it’s him. It’s got to be him, because this kind of weird
griff never happens when I’m alone.
Take our bus ride from Kansas City. It should have been the snooziest cruise
in the Universe to get to Alex’s uncle’s farm in Liberty. But no, everybody
else on the bus makes it to Iowa except us. Why? Alex."
The first chapter.
Excerpted stories from the book:
Adventures of Daz and Alex.
Additional material--ideas for homework papers, a cryptological puzzle
and other bits: More about ISL.
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I-State Lines
I-State Lines (Kindle edition)
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