Lione Services

Top Ten EBooks from Yesterday and Today, week ending October 21, 2011

cwbybrick — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:43:28 +0000

Top Ten EBooks last 7 days from www.Gutenberg.org:

Top 100 EBooks last 7 days

1. The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Vatsyayana (6401)
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (4542)
3. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (3922)
4. How to Analyze People on Sight by Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict (3550)
5. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (3508)
6. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (3382)
7. Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm (2952)
8. Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (2898)
9. Beowulf (2841)
10. Ulysses by James Joyce (2525)

Top Ten EBooks last 7 days from www.Amazon.com:

1. 94 days in the top 100 The Mill River Recluse › Darcie Chan Kindle Edition

2. 1 day in the top 100 A History of the World in 6 Glasses › Tom Standage Kindle Edition

3. 72 days in the top 100 The Abbey › Chris Culver Kindle Edition

4. 19 days in the top 100 Steve Jobs › Walter Isaacson Kindle Edition

5. 29 days in the top 100 The Best of Me › Nicholas Sparks Kindle Edition

6. 17 days in the top 100 Last Breath Michael Prescott Kindle Edition

7. 48 days in the top 100 WIRED › Douglas E. Richards Kindle Edition

8. 2 days in the top 100 Fun and Games › Duane Swierczynski Kindle Edition

9. 59 days in the top 100 Can You Keep a Secret? › Sophie Kinsella Kindle Edition

10. 8 days in the top 100 Zero Day › David Baldacci Kindle Edition

› See all Best Sellers in Kindle Books

Best Sellers Kindle Store : All Kindle Content Updated hourly

1. 94 days in the top 100 The Mill River Recluse › Darcie Chan Kindle Edition

2. 1 day in the top 100 A History of the World in 6 Glasses › Tom Standage Kindle Edition

3. 71 days in the top 100 The Abbey › Chris Culver Kindle Edition

4. 19 days in the top 100 Steve Jobs › Walter Isaacson Kindle Edition

5. 28 days in the top 100 The Best of Me › Nicholas Sparks Kindle Edition

6. 16 days in the top 100 Last Breath Michael Prescott Kindle Edition

7. 47 days in the top 100 WIRED › Douglas E. Richards Kindle Edition

8. 2 days in the top 100 Fun and Games › Duane Swierczynski Kindle Edition

9. 59 days in the top 100 Can You Keep a Secret? › Sophie Kinsella Kindle Edition

10. 4 days in the top 100 Zero Day › David Baldacci Kindle Edition

Book Review: “Heart of Evil” by Heather Graham

cwbybrick — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 21:44:29 +0000

Heart of Evil (Krewe of Hunters)

Heart of Evil

Synopsis from Amazon.com:

Emerging from the bayou like an apparition, Donegal Plantation is known for its unsurpassed dining, captivating atmosphere, haunting legends…and now a corpse swinging from the marble angel that marks its cemetery’s most majestic vault. A corpse discovered in nearly the same situation as that of Marshall Donegal, the patriarch killed in a skirmish just before the Civil War.

Desperate for help traditional criminologists could never provide, plantation heiress Ashley Donegal turns to an elite team of paranormal investigators who blend hard forensics with rare—often inexplicable—intuition. Among the “Krewe of Hunters” is an old ï ¬ ‚ ame, Jake Mallory, a gifted musician with talent stretching far beyond the realm of the physical, and a few dark ghosts of his own.

The evil the team unveils has the power to shake the plantation to its very core. Jake and Ashley are forced to risk everything to unravel secrets that will not stay buried—even in death.…

My Review:

Heather Graham is fast becoming one of my favorite writers. If you love mystical mysteries, then “Heart of Evil” is for you.

Heather manages to take us to Donegal Plantation in both form and fiction. You feel as if you are there, walking the grounds with the characters, that it in and of itself becomes a live character. The people Heather creates are fully human, that is, they have foibles just as you and I do yet are capable of carrying out their duties. The theme that Heather uses is widely seen in this effort, a ghost controlling humans, taking advantage of a decades (century’s?) old vendetta from one family against another. Even though we’ve seen this in the trilogy before, it’s still refreshing to see.

Back at the Biz Blog

cwbybrick — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:37:33 +0000

After a few weeks of changes, I’m back at the Lione Services biz blog.

I moved three whole blocks to a bigger, cheaper apartment in downtown Seattle. I’ve got a real bedroom now, rather than a one-room studio apartment. I’ve unpacked, arranged and admired the apartment, view and ambiance. I was ready to write!

Then I had massive and major computer issues with my trusty old TC1100 and Nokia communicator. Sudden reboots, lagging issues and so on. I knew it was time to replace and upgrade. After a fortunate series of events, i was able to buy a new tablet and phone! Now i’ve got an Asus Transformer and a Samsung Exhibit and have joined the 21st century, tech-wise.

I’ll be posting several book reviews this week to make up for the lack of posts.

In other news, i’ve started writing two new series! Book one of “The Rose Petal Wine Murder Mysteries” is being professionall edited after I re-wrote parts of it.I’ll be uploading the new, revised book to Smashwords, hopefully before Christmas, complete with new book cover! Book two is in the ‘creative phase’ at the moment.

So, without further ado

Top Ten EBooks from Yesterday and Today Week Ending September 30, 2011

cwbybrick — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:50:02 +0000

Top 10 EBooks last 7 days via www.Gutenberg.org:

TOP 10 EBooks Last 7 days via www.Amazon.com:

	1. Ranking has gone up in the past 24 hours 1 day in the top 100 Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut series) ›Kurt Vonnegut Kindle Edition $0.99
	2. 65 days in the top 100 The Affair: A Reacher Novel (Jack Reacher) ›Lee Child Kindle Edition $13.99
	3. 73 days in the top 100 The Mill River Recluse ›Darcie Chan Kindle Edition $0.99
	4. Ranking has gone down in the past 24 hours 30 days in the top 100 The Saint (Kindle Single) ›Oliver Broudy Kindle Edition $1.99
	5. 51 days in the top 100 The Abbey ›Chris Culver Kindle Edition $0.99
	6. 668 days in the top 100 The Help ›Kathryn Stockett Kindle Edition $9.99
	7. Ranking has gone up in the past 24 hours 79 days in the top 100 The Hunger Games Trilogy ›Suzanne Collins Kindle Edition $17.85
	8. Ranking has gone down in the past 24 hours 4 days in the top 100 Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed… ›Martin Dugard … Kindle Edition $12.99
	9. Ranking has gone up in the past 24 hours 27 days in the top 100 Chasing Amanda ›Melissa Foster Kindle Edition $0.99
	10. Ranking has gone up in the past 24 hours 504 days in the top 100 The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins Kindle Edition $4.69

Monday Book Review: “Fire Sale” By Sara Paretsky

cwbybrick — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:41:50 +0000

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/045121899X/ref=sib_dp_pop_bc?ie=UTF8&p=S0BW#reader-link

Amazon Synopsis:

From Publishers Weekly

Private eye V.I. Warshawski takes a break from tony Lakeview to fill in for her old high school basketball coach on Chicago’s South Side in her 12th adventure. Vic starts her volunteer stint looking for a team sponsor at megadiscount store By-Smart, whose founder, Buffalo Bill Bysen, is a fellow alum. Of all Bysen’s cutthroat, cost-cutting family, only idealist 19-year-old Billy shows any interest in helping the team. When he disappears, his frustrated father hires Vic to find him. The mother of a high school basketball player also hires Vic to investigate sabotage at the flag factory where she works—an investigation cut short when the factory blows up before Vic’s eyes. Things go no better at school or at home, and clues pile on but they don’t add up. Vic takes her lumps as she makes her way from a fundamentalist church, where the pastor goes to extremes for his flock, to the city dump, where villains try to bury their secrets.

My review:

While reading about V.I. Warshawski, I could not help comparing her with Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone. While both are fully realized characters, with foibles alike, Warshawski comes across as a tad more than super-human. She takes direct gunshots, shuns off beatings and escapes billowing flames and speared by falling debris, kidnapped in a conveyor belted freezing semi. She just shakes it off with only minor complaints then continues on her investigation, doggedly all the way. It’s a bit of a turnoff and completely unrealistic that this woman would still be able to function after just one of these ‘mishaps’, let alone four or five in a row.

The storyline itself is a bit over-crowded. ”Fire Sale” really could have been broken into two separate Novels. The reader is left a bit confused with all the running around and two or three different parallel storylines. Luckily Paretsky doesn’t have her protagonist jumping between plots every other page. Then there is Warshawski’s love life, equally as unbelievable as her super-human feats. She has two..no, is it three?…men after her at the same time. Where does she find the time to investigate? And where are these men with such virulent patience in the real world?

Still, the plot is exciting with non-stop action and the characters entertaining to read. There are the minor characters, such as the foreign war correspondent who is super-human herself, all the while being a superslut after Warshawski’s man. She gets almost skinned alive in the said conveyor belt freezer semi. She lives, of course.

Would that we all could be super-humans.

Top Ten EBooks from Yesterday and Today Week Ending September 23, 2011

cwbybrick — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:34:37 +0000

Top 10 EBooks last 7 days from www.Gutenberg.org:

TOP TEN EBOOKS LAST 7 DAYS FROM WWW. AMAZON.COM:

	1. Ranking has gone up in the past 24 hours 2 days in the top 100 Pig Island Mo Hayder (Author) Kindle Edition $4.80
	2. Ranking has gone up in the past 24 hours 63 days in the top 100 The Mill River Recluse Darcie Chan (Author) Kindle Edition $0.99
	3. Ranking has gone down in the past 24 hours 658 days in the top 100 The Help Kathryn Stockett (Author) Kindle Edition $9.99
	4. 41 days in the top 100 The Abbey Chris Culver (Author) Kindle Edition $0.99
	5. Ranking has gone down in the past 24 hours 3 days in the top 100 House Rules: A Joe DeMarco Thriller Mike Lawson (Author) Kindle Edition $4.62
	6. Ranking has gone down in the past 24 hours 41 days in the top 100 BLIND FAITH CJ Lyons (Author) Kindle Edition $0.99
	7. Ranking has gone down in the past 24 hours 20 days in the top 100 The Black Ice (Harry Bosch) Michael Connelly (Author) Kindle Edition $1.99
	8. Ranking has gone up in the past 24 hours 494 days in the top 100 The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins (Author) Kindle Edition $4.69
	9. Ranking has gone down in the past 24 hours 37 days in the top 100 Kill Me If You Can James Patterson (Author) … Kindle Edition $12.99
	10. Ranking has gone up in the past 24 hours 2 days in the top 100 Lying (Kindle Single) Sam Harris (Author) … Kindle Edition $1.99

Bonus Book Review: Forbidden Mind by Kimberly Kinrade

cwbybrick — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:45:42 +0000

http://www.amazon.com/Forbidden-Mind-1-ebook/dp/B005LSDIYG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1316529364&sr=1-1

Amazon Synopsis: Sam thinks she’s months away from freedom. After spending her life in a secret school, rented out to the rich and powerful as a paranormal spy, she is ready to head to college like any normal eighteen-year-old.

Only Sam isn’t normal. She reads minds. And just before her big going-away party, she links to the mind of a young man who changes everything.

Drake wasn’t raised as a ‘Rent-A-Kid.’ He was kidnapped and taken there by force. But his exceptional physical strength and powers of mind control make him very dangerous, especially to Sam.

When they meet, Sam is forced to face the truth of her situation, and to acknowledge that not all is as it seems in her picture-perfect world. For what awaits her on her eighteenth birthday isn’t a trip to college, but an unexpected nightmare from which she may not be able to escape.

To survive, they must work together.

But will their powers be enough to save them before it’s too late?

My Review:

AN ARTFUL AND SUSPENSE-RIDDEN TALE!

Usually YA (Young Adult) fiction isn’t on my list of must-go-to books to read but this week I’ve read and reviewed two (See Next Monday’s Book Review). Kimberly’s book, “Forbidden Mind”, is the other. Once I started reading, I had to finish to find out what happens to Sam, an otherwise wholesome teenager, coming of age, in an “X-Men” type of institution. How do young teens come of age with special, extraordinary powers? Kimberly manages to create a world and characters where both exist simultaneously and marvelously, at that.

If teenagers feel different and out of the loop with their peers, they are surely to identify with Sam, the twins and the rest. They will see themselves as the smacktalking but for a good cause that Sam finds herself in at the beginning of the Novel. They’ll see the house/estate rules that forbid contact with the outside world in their parents’ home (because I said so, you’ll do as I say, etc) that teens, as angst-ridden as they are, will be nodding in accordance.

“Forbidden Mind” is somewhere between “Romeo and Juliet” and “Paradise Lost”, where a heart-breaking ending is but a new beginning.

Monday Book Review: Regarding Ducks and Universes by Neve Maslakovic

cwbybrick — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:00:14 +0000

http://www.amazon.com/Regarding-Ducks-and-Universes-ebook/dp/B003WQAZ3Q/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1316368133&sr=8-2

Synopsis:

On a foggy Monday in 1986, the universe suddenly, without warning, bifurcated. Fast-forward to 35 years later: Felix Sayers is a culinary writer living in San Francisco of Universe A who spends his days lunching at Coconut Café and dreaming of a successful career penning Agatha Christie-style mysteries. But everything changes when his Aunt Henrietta dies, leaving Felix a photograph of his father and himself—dated ten days before Felix was born. It can only mean one thing: Felix has an ‘alter’ in Universe B. In a panic that his mystery novel may have been written already, Felix crosses to San Francisco B and proceeds to flagrantly violate the rules of both worlds by snooping around his alter’s life. But when he narrowly escapes a hit-and-run, it becomes clear that someone knows he’s crossed over… and whoever it is isn’t happy about it. Now Felix must uncover the truth about his alter, the events of one Monday, and a wayward rubber duck before his time in both worlds runs out.

My Review:

Science fiction/fantasy really hasn’t been my area of interest, however, a friend suggested I read this split-universe book. I was wary at first but quickly became enamored with Mila Maslakovic’s two worlds. An almost-identical version of the one but with minor differences. Different foods in the same restaurants, a bridge missing due to earthquake in one, complete in the other. Mila does a great job creating the two worlds and their ‘alters’, as the duplicate universe people are called. Since this is science fiction, one can give the plot and it’s directives leeway, without rolling one’s eyes. I quite enjoyed the sameness or equal quality Mila gives the characters and dual universes; the quirky differences make the novel.

Top Ten EBooks from Yesterday and Today week ending September 16, 2010

cwbybrick — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:57:49 +0000

Top 10 EBooks last 7 days from www.Gutenberg.org:

TOP 10 EBooks last 7 days from www.Amazon.com:

	1. 654 days in the top 100 The Help Kathryn Stockett (Author) Kindle Edition $9.99
	2. 59 days in the top 100 The Mill River Recluse Darcie Chan (Author) Kindle Edition $0.99
	3. Ranking has gone up in the past 24 hours 32 days in the top 100 The Way of Shadows (The Night Angel Trilogy) Brent Weeks (Author) Kindle Edition $1.99
	4. 37 days in the top 100 The Abbey Chris Culver (Author) Kindle Edition $0.99
	5. 37 days in the top 100 BLIND FAITH CJ Lyons (Author) Kindle Edition $0.99
	6. 18 days in the top 100 New York to Dallas (In Death) J.D. Robb (Author) Kindle Edition $14.99
	7. Ranking has gone up in the past 24 hours 1 day in the top 100 A Thousand Tomorrows Karen Kingsbury (Author) Kindle Edition $1.99
	8. Ranking has gone down in the past 24 hours 490 days in the top 100 The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins (Author) Kindle Edition $4.69
	9. Ranking has gone down in the past 24 hours 16 days in the top 100 The Black Ice (Harry Bosch) Michael Connelly (Author) Kindle Edition $1.99
	10. Ranking has gone down in the past 24 hours 33 days in the top 100 Kill Me If You Can James Patterson (Author) … Kindle Edition $12.99

About Commenting

cwbybrick — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:28:00 +0000

If you are going to comment, please talk about the content of the post and not about your website, just to bring up your ranking in search engines. Those comments will be deleted. My book blog is about books, authors, publishing, MY Writing Business and/or Books/Novels/Writing and whatever I choose to blog about.

Also, i’ve noticed alot of searches for www.thetechgadget.com and www.encouragehealthyhabits.com. These were blogs I had for years but due to lack of advertisers/incoming money, I removed them, being unable to afford hosting fees. I’ve always said, if someone can figure out the free hosting sites, i’ll be glad to put them back up.

Thank you for understanding.

Brick ONeil