Saturday, April 13, 2019

I want more! Scam Chowder by Maya Corrigan: A Five-Ingredient Mystery.


Scam Chowder cover with soup tureen, clams in shells, onions, potatoes, chowder in a bowl

You know? I love a good bowl of clam chowder. If the restaurant has air conditioning, I can even enjoy it in August. The title Scam Chowder caught my eye since my husband and I had to endure a constant parade of robocalls for back braces and for booking rooms in "resorts".

What's the book about?

In the second Five-Ingredient Mystery, Val prepares chowder for Granddad to serve at his dinner party. He doesn't tell her that he plans to expose one of his guests as a financial scammer targeting retirees. When the suspected scammer dies after eating the chowder, Granddad is the chief suspect. In trying to prove his innocence, he and Val uncover a variety of scams against retirees.

Retirees aren’t the only people victimized by financial scams. Bernie Madoff swindled a lot of people who weren’t retired. But scammers target older people in particular for good reasons. Retirees have nest eggs to invest. They want their money to grow so they have enough to last as long as they live and to leave something for their children. The lure of a high return on investments is hard to resist, particularly when interest rates are low. So older people, like younger ones, fall for too-good-to-be-true investment schemes. However, older people aren’t as quick to report such swindles.

Once they realize they’ve been defrauded, they are often reluctant to tell anyone about it. They’re ashamed at being taken in and afraid they’ll lose control of their money if their relatives find out about the fraud. Even if victims report the fraud to the police, it’s unlikely they’ll get their money back or that the con artist will be charged with a crime. Financial fraud can look like bad investment advice, and you can’t punish someone for bad advice. In cases where the fraud is blatant enough for a criminal charge, the con artist counts on older victims being bad witnesses whose memories are hazy.

​If you want to know more about financial scams against retirees, visit Top Ten Financial Schemes at the National Council on Aging site and How to Avoid Elder Fraud on the comparitech site.
Here is Maya Corrigan's website for Scam Chowder and other Foodie Lit (as I call it affectionately): 



Saturday, April 6, 2019

I have a taste for some Culinary Lit: How about On the Chopping Block?


Kindle Edition

This is Book 1 of the Callie's Kitchen Mystery Series. Business is picking up for Calliope "Callie" Costas, a newly single Mom running a Greek-meets-Midwest from-scratch restaurant in Crystal Bay, Wisconsin. But her luck is about to change when fate gives her love life a fatal blow; she is now a suspect in her boyfriend's murder.  And then there's that ex-pat Brit detective who is watching every move she makes.

Who really killed her boyfriend? Can Callie save her restaurant and her name? Read on and enjoy the recipes that come with the book which is only $2.99 on Amazon Kindle. If you like what you see, author Jenny Kales has three more books in the series for you to enjoy.

Amazon link: https://amzn.to/2Ullk8b

Check out her website: https://jennykales.wordpress.com/




Sunday, March 31, 2019

Coven Rescue: A heavy responsibility for one so young.

The Coven Rescue (The Coven Series Book 3) by [Luchesi, Lily ]

The Book 3 in The Coven Series, Coven Rescue features an almost twenty year-old Harley Sinclair who has three impossible things to resolve: Paranormal law enforcement has thrown her boyfriend in prison; rescue her coven; and foil a very dangerous, sinister plot masquerading as light. (How many times are we running into this in current events today?)

The links:

Coven Rescue http://bit.ly/2FO3pOM

Do you want to read The Coven Princess for 99 cents?

http://bit.ly/2HPwTxW

Lily Luchesi has another exciting series out - The Paranormal Detective Series:

https://lilyluchesibooks.wixsite.com/lilyluchesi/books




Monday, March 18, 2019

Initiation in Paradise: Their biggest challenge yet? #NewRelease

Initiation in Paradise (Paradise Series Book 17) by [Brown, Deborah]

Madison and Fab lead really interesting lives; if you mean facing danger nearly every day.

Margaritas, mangroves, murder. Just another day at the office. 

One minute, Madison Weston and her bestie, Fab, are tailing Creole and Didier to figure out what they’re hiding. The next, a hail of bullets sends them swamp slogging for their lives. So much for cute shoes. 

Eventually, Creole and Didier come clean: Bodies are turning up in shallow graves, and they didn’t want their women catching wind of it. Too bad, boys, this mystery is too juicy to pass up.

Not for the faint of heart!

Like what you see?
Click here: 
Kindle: https://amzn.to/2JkYVTA
Paperback: https://amzn.to/2u60A4H.

There's more where that came from....
http://deborahbrownbooks.com/titles/




Saturday, March 16, 2019

My Sunshine Coast: All about that beautiful place!


Australia itself is a popular destination for vacationers whether you want to go boating in Sydney harbor, sailing off the coast of Perth or camping across the island continent. Just the name Sunshine Coast sounds friendly and inviting. Author Anne Moorehouse tells about the history of the area and more.

Anne shares a handful of stories from the local residents and regular visitors. If you can't afford an airline ticket, this book is the next best thing to a getaway.

You can order it here and check out Anne's other books on her website: http://bit.ly/2TShYbI

Friday, March 8, 2019

Look what I found at the Ren Faire: The works of Bruce Cuddy!


Bruce Cuddy
Author Bruce Cuddy

Last Saturday, my husband Dan was in his Franciscan Friar's robe with his staff and I was dressed as a gypsy. I passed Bruce Cuddy's tent  and saw printed copies of his short story, The Goodbye Song in binders.

I just read it and enjoyed it. It's about singer Hayley Dalton who makes it big with Cloverleaf records. She promises to appear in a hometown concert and go to a lunch date, but people are worried and upset that she won't show. Has her rise to fame left her family and hometown friends in the dust?

Bruce Cuddy has much more to offer! You can hear more about Hayley's hometown of Huckleberry Falls by clicking here:

www.huckleberryfalls.com




Saturday, February 23, 2019

What a cold world it could be: Cold World by P. Mattern and M. Mattern.

Cold World by [Mattern, P., Mattern, M.]

With the volatile political climate we have plus the state of the environment, a Cold World type future is not that unrealistic. After a series of volcanic eruptions, an all out nuclear war and an ice age, how do the survivors live?

Here's more:

“Born into a world of ice...on fire to expose the truth”

The Scriptorians write that we knew it was coming thirty years before it actually happened.

There were scoffers, and differences of opinion in the global scientific community of course. In the end, with substandard funding of energy alternatives, a U.S.Congress that responded to the greatest emergency in the history of Humankind with the speed of a lame snail swimming through treacle, and no concrete plan among the masses to deal with the fallout, only about a tenth of the world’s population was remotely prepared for what happened.

The ring of fire, volcanoes that hadn’t erupted in centuries, all erupted within weeks of each other. That was the natural disaster part, and all by itself would have changed weather patterns for decades.

On top of that , the most powerful country on the planet, the Russian Federation, reached its bear claws out toward it’s only clear rival, China, and decimated them with a nuclear strike, ushering in a new Ice Age.

After that, the earth went cold.

I was born in the tenth year after the New Ice Age began in earnest, on the diamond shaped continent that used to be the United States, but was renamed Naris by the governing body known as the Collesium.

My name is Billy Zhine. A frozen earth is the only world I have ever known.

This is my story.

Cold World is available for pre-order at the price of 99 cents.

You can do that here: https://bit.ly/2T7q3cg

And by the way, I found out about Cold World here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/243199719356829/