Simply Stacie and I have an AWESOME giveaway for all you readers out there!

Up for grabs is a brand new Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6″ Display, Graphite – Latest Generation!

Along with the Kindle, one lucky reader is going to win some eBooks!

Click here to enter! The giveaway is open worldwide and ends on October 4th.

Reviewed by Denise G.

As The Life O’Reilly begins, we meet Nicholas O’Reilly, a young and very capable attorney. Nicholas is on the fast track at a New York law firm which specializes in corporate law. As such, he has all the perks: six figure salary, lavish corner office, access to all the movers and shakers in the city. The one thing he doesn’t have is a life, as he spends all his waking hours working.

The firm, looking for good PR, decides to offer some Pro Bono work, and Nick is chosen for the project. Enter Dawn Nelson and her young son, Jordan. Dawn needs help getting out of an abusive relationship with a guy who has connections everywhere and deep pockets to fight the divorce. Nicholas is deeply affected by the experience and begins to question his life choices up to that point. The author takes us through a series of unexpected twists and turns that keep us riveted to the action in the story and wondering what will come next for Nicholas. Haunting and emotional, the book will also make you think long and hard about the choices you make everyday.

With a series of short chapters a la James Patterson, Brian Cohen’s writing style can better be compared to Nicholas Sparks, though it is much more matter of fact. The book compares favorably to many similar works that I’ve read, and the author’s writing is engaging and keeps you wanting more.

Overall, this is a great first effort. A page-turner that leaves you wanting more – I cannot wait for Brian Cohen’s next book!

With a diverse but unsatisfying career background, Denise made the decision to pursue what she loves: writing! Her first novel, of course, is in the works. More info about her is available at her blog http://makemoney-writingonline.blogspot.com.

This book was provided free of any obligation by Brian Cohen. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received

Welcome to the Simply Reading Kindle Giveaway hosted by Luxury Reading and Simply Stacie! We have an AWESOME giveaway for all you readers out there!

Up for grabs is a brand new Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6″ Display, Graphite – Latest Generation!

Here are just a few features:

- All-New, High-Contrast E-Ink Screen – 50% better contrast than any other e-reader

- Read in Bright Sunlight – No glare

- New Sleek Design – 21% smaller body while keeping the same 6″ size reading area

- Battery Life of Up to One Month – A single charge lasts up to one month with wireless off

- Double the Storage – Up to 3,500 Books

Along with the Kindle, one lucky reader is going to win some eBooks! Now, how could we give you a Kindle and leave you with no books to read?

The Winner will also receive:

Crisis by Design: The Untold Story of the Global Financial Coup and What You Can Do About It by John Truman Wolfe

A Life Revealed by Suzi Katz

Free Six Month Subscription to Safari Books Online- an on-demand digital library that delivers thousands of books and videos from a variety of technology and business authors associated with publishers like O’Reilly Media, Microsoft Press, and Peachpit Press.

Five E-Books of the winner’s choice from Tribute Books.

To Enter:

Mandatory: Follow Luxury Reading on Google Friend Connect and comment on this post with your e-mail address.

Bonus Entries: (please post each entry separately)

- Enter the Simply Reading Kindle Giveaway at Simply Stacie
- Subscribe via e-mail or subscribe to the feed. You must verify the subscriptions (1 entry)
- Follow me on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway. Leave a link to your tweet here. You can tweet once per day.
- Enter another current giveaway (1 entry each)
- Share this giveaway on a social network of your choice. Click the “Share/Save” button at the end of this post (1 entry each)
- Follow Luxury Reading on Facebook (2 entries)
- Add the Simply Reading Kindle Giveaway button (located on right sidebar).

Open to worldwide (please make sure that Amazon will ship to your country).

Make sure to visit Simply Stacie and enter the giveaway over there too! It means MORE chances to win!

Giveaway ends on October 4, 2010 at 11:59 pm EST. The winners will be selected by random.org from all the entries on Simply Stacie and Luxury Reading and will be notified by email and will have 48 hours to reply back before a new winner is selected. Please note that we are not responsible for any duties or Customs fees that your country might charge you. Good luck!

Reviewed by Abby A.

She’s So Dead to Us by Kieran Scott immediately appealed to me simply because of the author’s name. As a faithful reader of the Private series under her pen name of Kate Brian, I knew that I had to look into her other works. Her style of writing is one that I feel appeals to almost everyone. From her in-depth descriptions of the novel’s characters to the vivid imagery she paints of the situations at hand, She’s So Dead to Us was a clear example of Kieran Scott’s intelligent sense of writing.

The teenage focal characters of the book, Jake and Ally, take us through a community bound together by wealth and elitism in suburban New Jersey, and display just how exclusive and unforgiving it truly is. Ally, a former member of said community called “the Crest”, returns to reclaim her friends and lifestyle that she had to forcibly leave behind. Jake, her male replacement over the years Ally had been away, is left to decide whether to join in his new friends’ collaborative cold-shoulder or befriend the excommunicated member.

She’s So Dead to Us was a fun read that kept me anxious for more after every section, which ended with a page of short gossip that preluded the drama in the next chapter. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel and once it was finished, I actually hoped that it was not going to have a sequel. Kieran Scott’s cliffhangers are so clenching that you are almost compelled to go out and read the next novel, leaving you addicted to every book in the series. But for this book, the fixation is well worth it.

Abby lives in coastal New Jersey and spends her free time writing anything from short articles to multi-chapter novels. She loves to read and her favorite book genres are Young Adult, Chick-Lit, and How-To/Guides.

This book was provided free of any obligation by Simon & Schuster. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

Reviewed by Claudia R.

“I don’t know what my booze bill was for that time, but I’m sure it was big. I had good reason, though: I had to kill my parents. They asked me to. Actually, they asked me to help them with their suicides, and I did.” – John West

Assisted Suicide is the common term for controversial actions by which an individual helps another person die upon their wanting to do. This is a concept almost always reserved for people who are terminally ill. In the United States, only three States “allow” assisted suicide: Oregon, Washington and Montana. Even then, there is a mountain of red tape and legalities that must first be dealt with, rendering the entire process a living nightmare.

When John’s ailing father asks his son to aide him with his suicide, John does not hesitate. His father, a prominent doctor, understood what would happen to him as the cancer progressed, and John was sure of his father’s mental faculties at the time of the request. Together, they schemed and plotted the last goodbye. In his book, The Last Goodnights, John details the days leading up to the final moments, the aftermath, and the inevitable consequences, first for his father and then again for his mother.

In journal form, John takes the readers through the experience, describing a unique and personal perspective in the lives of all involved, offering a different opinion of death with dignity, driving home the point that each situation is intimate, and should never involve government intrusion in the first place. Having to dance around the legalities of assisted suicide during such a grievous time is like adding insult to injury. The government should not have any rights over our bodies and the choices and decisions we make with them at any time during our lives.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Death is as natural as life, and should be sweet and graceful”. I agree. We should ultimately all have the choice to leave this earth when and how we see fit. Unfortunately, at this time, most of us do not.

Unfortunately, many do not see it this way and John’s book brings the controversial subject to the forefront in his memoir. Definitely a conversation piece, this book is sure to make you think about your own d-day and the choices you can or can’t make. Simple, tender, honest, brutally honest, The Last Goodnights will linger in the back of your mind long after you’ve finished reading it.

For more information, please visit The Last Goodnights website.

Claudia lives on Cape Cod with her husband and two children. She entertains her passion for reading in between being a full-time Mom, aspiring writer, avid photographer & volunteer for Missie’s Closet, an emergency food & necessities pantry for the low-income in her area.

This book was provided free of any obligation by John West. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

A copy of Waxed is going to:

#156 Louis

2 copies of The Disappearing Spoon are going to:

#114 Andrea I

#44 Ekta

The Louder Than Words Book Set is going to:

#4 Autumn

A copy of Rae is going to:

#173 Melanie

A copy of What We Have is going to:

#75 Sue

All winners have been contacted and have 48 hours to respond before a substitute winner is selected.

Reviewed by Jennifer J.

After embarrassingly bombing an interview, down-on-her-luck Nikki Lanier spontaneously agrees to pose as a handsome stranger’s wife in her Canadian hotel’s lobby. Nikki isn’t quite ready to face her mother after her recent humiliation, so she turns what was supposed to be a short introduction into a lunch date with her pretend husband “Jim” and his prospective business partner, Jirair Sarkassian.

Selling cosmetics for the Carrie Mae Foundation isn’t exactly the brilliant career move that Nikki had in mind, but she’s desperate for some income and all too eager to please her overbearing mother. Her first attempt to sell the Carrie Mae products ends in disaster, leaving Nikki in need of a lawyer. Mrs. Merrivel, the founder of the Carrie Mae Foundation, bails Nikki out of the slammer and reveals to her that Carrie Mae is about more than just makeup: it’s really a top secret spy organization designed to fight and preserve the rights of all womankind. When a mission to find a do-gooder’s kidnapped daughter brings her to Thailand, Nikki unexpectedly runs into “Jim” (whose real name is Z’el) and Sarkassian. Thinking their presence in Thailand is more than just a coincidence, Nikki begins to suspect that Z’el is not the lawyer that he pretends to be, and that both of these men are somehow connected to the missing girl.

Bulletproof Mascara by Bethany Maines is a mix of James Bond, Charlie’s Angels, and a lot of girl power. This fluffy chick-lit spy novel is the perfect companion for the beach or on an airplane. Maines has come up with an adorable idea for a series, but I found the main character to be just a little too ditzy for my tastes. Though she is constantly mucking up her career ambitions and her romantic life, she somehow makes for a brilliant top secret agent. In future books in this series, I hope that Maines will do a little more research into spies, their technology, training, and even their income; an offer of $75,000 a year for Nikki’s position seemed to be too little compensation for the tasks her job would entail.

Though her writing style is easy to read, the chapter structure of the novel is hard to follow and a bit sloppy. The chapters are not chronological, and might cause some readers to pause and backtrack to find out where they are at in the story. Each chapter is labeled with the city or country where the action is currently taking place, but sometimes even that was unhelpful. In some chapters, flashbacks were revealed in past tense, further adding to my confusion and frustration. This wasn’t my typical preferred read, but with minor gripes aside, it’s a promising first in series.

Jennifer graduated from the University of Utah with a BA in English. She occasionally dabbles with her own fiction writing, particularly with the Young Adult and Paranormal genres. She currently resides in Utah with her husband and daughter.

This book was provided free of any obligation by Atria. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

I’m sure many of you have seen photos of my cats, but for those that haven’t – I have two cats, Gucci and Bella. When we adopted Gucci, we were told that he was around 2-years-old, but we soon found out that he was closer to five. Either way, he’s a very affectionate and friendly cat and we love him to death, but he’s too big and lazy to do much playing of any kind. Now, on the bright side, his laziness (and the fact that he is front-paws declawed) also means that he does not damage anything.

Bella, on the other hand, is a completely different story! We adopted her as a kitten and she’s as playful as they come. She leaps from furniture piece to furniture piece, climbs the canopy on our bed, does running jumps onto window blinds, and the list goes on. All her antics are very fun to watch, but when she gets to work on our leather couches, the fun stops.

When CSN Stores gave me an opportunity to try out any product from their site, I jumped at the chance to get a scratching post for Bella and hopefully ward her off the couches. I bought the SmartCat Ultimate Scratching Post and waited (impatiently) for it to arrive. I picked this particular scratching post based on the customer reviews that CSN Stores conveniently offers. The ordering process was very easy; the post arrived quickly and in very secure packaging. Assembly was also a cinch.

Now, getting Bella to actually use the scratching post was a project, but it’s been completely worth it. The post came with some suggestions which came in useful (at one point, my dog actually peed on the post thinking it was a tree, but that’s been taken care of). I pretty much rubbed it down with cap nip and propped a feathery toy off the top to attract her. What really worked to get Bella to stop using the couches and transfer her scratching to the post was using the Sticky Paws Sheets for a few days. These sheets are sort of like large pieces of double sided tape that can be attached to furniture (and come off easily). When Bella went to scratch the couches, she got stuck to the sheet. It only took a couple tries before she stopped going there altogether.

She’s now happily using her brand new scratching post and loves perching on top of it! Every cat is different, and you have to play around with different things to find out what works for your cat. Be persistent!

Giveaway:
1 winner will receive a $25 gift certificate to CSN Stores!

Mandatory entry: Please comment on this post with your e-mail address. I’d love to hear your pet stories, but it’s not required!

Extra entries (please post each entry separately, i.e. 2 posts for subscribing):
- Subscribe via e-mail, follow or subscribe to the feed. You must verify the subscriptions. (1 entry each)
- Enter another current giveaway (1 entry each)
- Share this giveaway on a social network of your choice. Click the “Share/Save” button at the end of this post (1 entry each)
- Follow Luxury Reading on Facebook (2 entries)

The gift certificate will be sent electronically, so the giveaway is open to anyone with an e-mail address. Deadline to enter is midnight on September 20th.

Gift certificate is provided courtesy of LuxuryReading.com. The SmartCat Ultimate Scratching Post was provided for review by CSN Stores.