Monday 29 September 2014

PAULA PERUSES: Blowing My Own Trumpet - a year in The Review




Well, it's been a really busy first year for our blog and actually the Facebook group has been going for longer than that - since April last year I actually believe. The idea came about when I was contemplating an idea of how one could sort of blow one's own trumpet so to speak, but in such a way that it would engage others and create a forum that was interactive, supportive and fun. I had joined lots of writer groups that allow you to do this. It seemed that most of these groups were all about sharing Amazon buy links, one after the other, several times a day, with several authors posting the same link over and over again. There was hardly any interaction, no one acknowledged one another and it just seemed pointless.

Of course when one tootles their own trumpet, one wants someone to take notice, so I set about thinking what was needed and I think it happened when I was sharing a review that I had received and was very pleased with; suddenly I realised that I had my idea. I was going to start up a group where people could share the heartwarming reviews that they were bursting to let everyone see in a place where the theme was all about exploring books and literature through the medium of the review. Yes! That's what I was going to do!

Our first banner


It would give authors a chance to advertise their book, not just by saying "Buy my book it's fantastic", but by showing people in a positive way what others thought of their books, a testimonial of their work and their talent. I would be more likely to buy a book if someone had told me what they liked about it rather than by someone telling me their book is fantastic. I guessed it was the same for most people, especially when it is by an author who is unknown to them and writing in a genre they don't normally go for.



And so I decided to test my theory out. I opened the group and soon I found that people were joining in, glad of having a place where review sharing was welcome. I also encouraged everyone to share each other's reviews. To be supportive and promote discussion among each other. After all, we learn more about a book by discussion and this creates a millieu where book lovers, reviewers and readers alike can feel safe and free to talk about what excites them most in the literary world. We all understand the foibles of a book lover. I imagined my group would become a feast, where copious amounts of  knowledge would be  shared and consumed over dinner, as well as sharing a love of books of any genre. I did  not want this to be exclusively historical fiction, although we tend to lean toward that essentially, but I made it a mission to invite and engage as many different types of story writing as possible.


I was also keen to broaden the group's awareness of books by encouraging the sharing of anyone's review, and today that still stands though is not often done. I want people to share reviews they have done of other people's books, not just what others have done of theirs and I wanted us to look for fascinating reviews that make us want to buy books. Reviews that intrigue us and urge us to seek books that touch our souls in such a way that we have to share it.

Then of course I had to look for some admins and I asked for volunteers. Jayne Smith and Marsha Lambert joined straight away - two lovely ladies who have also been so supportive of me and other authors. Then Stephanie Moore Hopkins of Layered Pages and BRAG joined and finally my friend from down under, Lorri Lynn, joined. Out of all the original Facebook group, only Jayne is still an admin; the rest have gone onto work on other things.



Well, in the beginning, we kept it to our Facebook group, thinking of ways to engage people and promote healthy discussion about books and different genres. We kept coming up with ideas on how to keep the group lively and our brains were going to eventually explode if we didn't take it further. We toyed with the idea of a blog and that's when we started to grow, recruiting more members.
Once we got the blog designed and it was ready to roll, we launched ourselves as The Review blog, onto the world one year ago this month. We started with a blog launch event on Facebook which was full of games, quizzes discussions and giveaways for a whole two weeks!!!

It was the most fun I think I'd had in ages! The fantastic posts, interviews, reviews, special guest posts, and special features were totally unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. We knew then that we were on to something rather spectacular!




Well, that's how it all began a year ago and now, my main aim is still to help authors promote and sell their books, help readers to find their ultimate reads, to expand knowledge and encourage diversity of genre and to provide reviewers with books they wouldn't normally be able to read and opportunities to improve their own writing processes and analytic skills.

If you would like to become a reviewer for us, please send an email to reviewgroup2014@gmail.com

We are waiting to hear from you! One can never have enough reviewers for so many books!
Watch out for Part Two of this post later this week!


Lisl Reviews: The Life and Demise of Norman Campbell

The Life and Demise of Norman Campbell
By Norman Campbell/Compiled by Diana Jackson

25%  of proceeds from the sales of this book are donated to the local Kingston on Thames branch of Age Concern and Cancer, UK, Mr. Campbell's chosen charity

I have a great love for the ordinary, perhaps largely because so often it translates across history or events as extraordinary, rendering otherwise lesser details worthy of great note. Objects become artifacts, experiences awe, and so often people in later eras feel some link to those of times past; connections bond them despite the enormous differences of their environments that they may nevertheless both relate to so closely.

So it occurs within The Life and Demise of Norman Campbell, in which we the readers are given a firsthand glimpse into life in the earliest years of the 20th century, on through to the end of that era and into the 21st. Narrated by Campbell in a conversational style, the commentary seems to be directed at readers, and parenthetical laughter occasionally pops up, as it would when people are sitting together remembering.

Campbell starts with his parents’ marriage, followed by his birth in 1909, then continues on in linear fashion, through two world wars, his adventures to and in Australia, the advent of radio and television, his passion for music and perhaps surprisingly, his interest in surfing the Internet.

His words, so like the spoken words they actually are as recorded by Diana Jackson, revive for us memories of memories, perhaps stories heard from relatives about an era in which ordinary goals are reached by exhausting and extraordinary means. They then transition us with great succinctness to the present. Campbell does this with the fluidity of a born historian who in just a few sweeping words provides a glimpse of something that was and how it became something else.
Young Norman

Under the stairs was the coal cellar in those days. You could still find coal dust down there today but I’ve put a bit of carpet over it now. The coal man used to come in here with the coal on his back and that’s where he used to shoot the coal. All the dust would fly up in the hall. Schewww! You can imagine.
Most people have taken this cupboard out to give more room and maybe have a telephone or something under the stairs. I have filled in the banisters though, and put in a false ceiling because it was far too high up to paper.
Illustrated throughout, the pictures take on a new dimension of fascinating when we recall a passage from the acknowledgements:

This book, Norman’s memoirs, is also illustrated by photos and pictures from his multitude of albums and scrap books, squirreled away over more than a century.

For most people scrap books initiated 100 years prior, even if they ran for only a few seasons and indeed are exhilarating to take in, typically come from an older relative or, in some exciting instances, are discovered in attics or lofts. That these were held in reserve and collected for so long (100 years!) and by the same person, is nothing short of stunning.

Examination of the pictures reveals our own past, in people, places or items recognizable or not, and one finds their breath at times drawn in to realise the forebears of some of what we know today. This isn’t just about seeing a quaint-looking label on, say, laundry soap, though that is charming as well, but also to reflect about the conditions under which these products came to be or operated. Sunlight soap, for example, was created in 1884 using palm oils as opposed to the heretofore utilised tallow seen in depictions of early sculleries in which the maid’s hand would dip into a jar, emerging with a palm full of goop used for washing up. Sunlight was manufactured into a bar for the sake of convenience and the product came with a £1,000 guarantee.

Interestingly, such advert artifacts appear only at the start of the autobiography in close proximity to family photos. In fact, the Sunlight ad is the first image not of a family member, and subsequent clippings—one for linoleum, the next from an outraged citizen offering to pay £100 to anyone who can prove true the rumor about his consumption of horse meat—given Campbell’s age (toddler) at the time they are dated, points to a collection, perhaps of his mother, that inspired his own continuity of the habit.

Spencer and Annie Campbell
Did Annie Campbell have a sense of history that she perhaps passed on to her son, encouraging him by word or deed to preserve his present for the future? While it may seem an extravagant or extraneous question, its exploration makes other inquiries, of the Campbells as well as ourselves. How many of us today clip and retain product adverts? Do many people now see these even as worthy of retention? While the labels were mass produced in Annie Campbell’s day, now they are produced in mind-boggling numbers, awareness of which perhaps makes them truly unspecial in the eyes of many today. Annie Campbell, perhaps aware of the import of the product’s ingredient transition and maybe with a keen sense of the changes occurring in her world, might have kept them for others. “She was a bit of a clairvoyant. She used to dream of the future,” Campbell says, “and tell fortunes with the cards and tea leaves[.]” Perhaps she looked to the future and wondered what we might make of the people of her time, and wished to provide some answers. If so, she must have known there are clues sprinkled throughout her artifacts.

In addition to this glimpse into perspective, we see notation for images in a font resembling handwriting, much like people did when they pasted photos into the black pages of the old-time albums. When we see, then, the placement of some images at angles, rather than always straight and flush with the same sides of the pages, it brings the realization that the entire autobiography is itself the album. Campbell has not only invited us into his world, but also his time, and over the course of his lifetime has gone to great lengths to ensure we get an extended view. The chapters being headed by the years and a title facilitate the album presentation as it allows readers to peruse from beginning to end or to flip through, much the same way we flip through an album, skipping, going backwards for a second look, comparing the people within at the end to how they appeared—or what they did—at the start.

Compiled by Diana Jackson following Campbell’s death, the inclusion of an occasional address to Jackson herself does not take away from this album being meant for others to share in, and in fact shows a greater depth to Campbell’s invitation for us to participate in his life’s experiences, for indeed he must have realized the connection between readers and himself simply by knowing even portions of what he knew, such as television: Most have seen it, and he reaches out to add to our awareness of the space it occupies in our lives. When television is developed in 1953, and Campbell witnesses on one the wedding of Princess Elizabeth (current Queen Elizabeth II) he sees himself as a pioneer, and later contemplates a purchase.

I thought about it and since I was spending so much in the Kinema and so much in the Elite and so much in the Empire, I thought that all of it could go to pay for the television instead and then we didn’t have to go out.
We’d have all our entertainment indoors; magic. But that was the worst thing that could ever happen. All our social life went. I’ve never been out to the pictures since. The other thing is that everyone is scruffy these days. No one ever dresses up anymore. And then many of the picture houses were turned into Bingo halls when television took over.
As it turns out, Campbell’s wary observations were very keen indeed, for like the labels that are nowadays cast off as ordinary and of little importance for the eyes of the future, activities that once were central functions in people’s lives also transitioned into the ordinary. The processes that got people to those events--saving money, planning for, dressing up—were eliminated as something that once was magical sunk into the insignificant.

In this sense Campbell’s compilation might also serve as a cautionary tale as well as a memorabilia that enables us to cherish our own forebears. In displaying to us the charm of the ordinary, he also discreetly advises us—in his way of saying much with so few words—of the danger of the reverse, of becoming nonchalant in the face of the remarkable. It is here we see that he, too, might have been “a bit of a clairvoyant,” drawing from his mother more than he—at least on the surface—lets on, and presents to us this brilliant autobiography that could be read on a number of levels.

This amazing man continues his story, with clarity and dignity even explaining the pattern of his days with carers, not just for physical assistance but also to help him bear the loneliness around him. At 102 years of age, those from his generation are gone, he is widowed and, living in the home he grew up in, is surrounded by their memories. He finds joy in the Internet and reaches out to his extended family who live, literally, all over the globe. His story is written in a simple manner, but it is by no means simplistic and, as mentioned earlier, he presents it to us with many layers to peel back and discover that beneath it all is great complexity, which is, as Campbell himself might say, “as simple as that!”

To the end, Campbell displays that bright spark, a telling humor that makes us want to dig deeper to understand what else it is he knows, what is he trying to tell us, or even just share with us. Diana Jackson:

I saw Norman in hospital three days before he passed away and he said[,] ‘I’ve got it Diana! The name of my book. The Life and Demise of Norman Campbell!
‘You can’t call it that,’ I spluttered. ‘You’re still with us.’

Indeed he is.





Norman at 102 years of age
He passed away just two months later
Editor's note: This post has been edited to reflect a correction re: the charity, which has been specified. A link to Diana Jackson's blog has also been added.

(All images from The Life and Demise of Norman Campbell.)

Thank you to Mr. Norman Campbell, for sharing your remarkable life with us!

For more from Diana Jackson, see her blog, where you can also read more about Norman Campbell. 

To purchase this fantastic book, please go to Amazon or Amazon UK.

Lisl is a contributor to Alaska Women Speak and Naming the Goddess. She can also be found at before the second sleep. If you would like Lisl to review your book, please see our submissions tab above. 

Sunday 28 September 2014

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE REVIEW!



The Review is one year old this month! 

Yes! That's right! 

ONE YEAR OLD!

Okay! Okay!

I'll wait while you all finish singing Happy Birthday!


THANK YOU ONE AND ALL !

Paula Lofting wrote the very first Review post, which was a 'Welcome' blog, and went out on 1st September 2013.

Then next post was by Lisl, who did a book review and author interview with Sarah Bruce Kelley. This was followed by Lisl's Bits & Bobs chatting about The Adventures of Merlin


Following on Lisl's heels came Paula Reads: The Handfasted Wife by Carol McGrath, and Paula's People: Helen Hollick Talks about her Foray into Writing. 

We then had a review by Marsha of Medieval: Blood of the Cross by Kevin Ashman. 


Bernard Cornwell



Paula Lofting interviewed the esteemed author, Bernard Cornwell,in December 2013! And in the same month his book, The Pagan Lord, was reviewed by Mark Thistlethwaite, of The Historic Novel Society, for The Review.






Manda Scott
This month - September 2014, Paula has interviewed yet another esteemed author, Manda Scott. Manda chats about her book The Emperor's Spy and about her Boudica Books. It's a most engaging, and interesting chat, and one not to be missed.

The Review Group has gone from strength to strength. Since day one we have had an amazing 54,922 views of our pages across 249 posts. Our posts have been reviews of books, interviews with authors, and special blog posts from some of our members. We are a diverse bunch, working well together, each one of us having something special to bring to the group.


As the year has progressed, we have added more interviews with Louise's special posts called, The Review Group Author Interview. The interviews give the authors a chance to reach out to our readership, and in turn, the posts generate lively interactions between the author and those who drop by to read the interview.

OUR BOOK LAUNCH EVENTS are special events where we pull out all the stops and showcase one particular author and the book that is being launched. The event includes an interview with the author, and a review of their book. It is an interactive event where people ask questions of the author, talk about the book, and generally have a brilliant time! These events also serve to place the author in the limelight for the duration of their event.

Wendy J. Dunn
Our latest Book Launch Event was for Australian author, Wendy J. Dunn, whose book The Light in the Labyrinth was about to become available. Wendy's event interview can be read here, and author Anna Belfrage reviewed Wendy's book.
I know Wendy will agree that we all had a fabulous time!

We also offer free giveaways for books that have been reviewed. This is very popular both with authors and readers. A lucky winner is drawn from the 'hat' from those who have left a comment about the book on the blog or The Review Blog Page. It's always exciting announcing the winner, and exciting being on the receiving end too!

We have a strong and enthusiastic book review team, who regularly read and review the books on our reading list. The list is updated every month, so there are always books to choose from. The reviews, in turn, highlight that author and their book for one week.

We have great new ideas coming to fruition in the coming year. Great and exciting times ahead! For example, The Review has recently started yet another exciting development. A Review Group on Goodreads. So please come and join us there too!




So everyone! 

Please raise your glasses and join me in a toast!




TO THE REVIEW! 

HERE'S TO AN EVEN GREATER SUCCESS NEXT YEAR!


Monday 22 September 2014

Dollywagglers by Frances Kay - Reviewed by Rob Bayliss

                                           Please see below for giveaway information!



"After the plague, most of us are dead, and some of the survivors aren't behaving very well. But we can still have a laugh, can't we? Letting go is for softies. I'm alone--delightfully and comfortably alone. I don't do crying. . ."


In an all too near dystopian future the world has been devastated by a flu-like epidemic. The survivors of the “eppie” stumble through the ruins, as food and security become rarer commodities. Survivors are split between those who accepted a libido destroying vaccine and those who refused it. “Refs” were forced to bear a tattoo on their forearms declaring their status. Most people have “parped” (died) and society has broken down into a lawless land of gang warfare.


Through this bleak wasteland shuffles our main character, the androgynous Billie. We follow Billie as she employs her strategy for survival; she is tall, dresses in men's clothes and seldom speaks to avoid revealing her gender. When she does speak she can entertain and tell a tale because, before the eppie, she had been a puppeteer, a Dollywaggler.


Billie is embittered and seeking redemption as she embarks on a journey from London to the Suffolk coast, where once she plied her craft. During her fraught travels she faces vengeful gunmen, gangs of lawless teens and is almost forced into a harem. She seems to have found a paradise of peace before her journey’s end but the brutal horror of her world snatches it away.


Meanwhile back in London, Sally stays in a house and strives to survive any way that she can, trading herself for food. While in the shadows, the depraved predator Rodney indulges his wicked tastes; that is until he discovers he is a puppet himself, a puppet called Leon. Those who pull his strings have a plan, a plan to rebuild the world to their design as has always been their wont.


Dollywagglers is an extraordinary book; the tale is as dark as night and yet interspersed with a good deal of humour, especially as Billie observes the world with a knowing and wickedly dry wit. A Dollywaggler herself, she sees how people and events are manipulated.


Frances Kay creates some great characters and the story draws you in without compromise. At times it made me laugh even though (this being a dystopian tale) I knew my smile would be brutally snatched away soon enough. It is beautifully written and descriptive, such as how the author describes the band of ransacking brigands - "... as they move across from Swansea to Bristol to Birmingham to Luton to Norwich, a spinning, dizzy ball of noxious gases, they attract, they magnetize, they pull the surviving world into their field of gravity."  I loved the way the disaster has its own developing mythology and terms such as parped, eppie and refs had so easily slipped into the everyday lexicon of the survivors. As soon as I had finished Dollywagglers, I wanted to read it again just in case I had missed something. It’s on my Kindle and I will return to it very soon.


Does Billie find her redemption? Without giving too many details away, yes and no. When all seems lost a glimmer of hope for the future emerges. Dollywaggler she may be but Billie refuses to be a puppet...

Dollywagglers is available as an ebook and paperback at Amazon.

For a chance to win a copy of Dollywagglers, simply comment below or on this review's associated Facebook thread.

Frances Kay is a full member of the Irish Playwrights & Screenwriters’ Guild and of the Society of Authors, UK, with an impressive background in screenwriting, and published by both Picador and Crimson Romance.
Once upon a time, Frances was the voice and puppet of Cosmo in the BBC’s You and Me programme






This review was written by Rob Bayliss. Rob is currently working on his Flint and Steel, Fire and Shadow fantasy series. Part one, The Sun Shard is available at Amazon.

Saturday 20 September 2014

Dr Babus Ahmed's Book Surgery - Dr Sleep by Stephen King


Doctor Sleep by Stephen King





The long-awaited sequel to the critically acclaimed The Shining sees Danny at ordnance grow into a middle-aged man who works in a care home. Daniel Torrance has faced his demons figuratively and literally as a responsible member of society in a small town. During the course of his work in the care home he provides comfort to those who are dying and for this reason is nicknamed Docto r Sleep, as he encourages those who are near death to go to sleep.

However, Daniel's life is complicated by Abra Stone, a young girl who also has the shining but more powerfully so. Abra contacts Daniel as a baby and infant and again as a 10-year-old when she comes across a group of travellers called The True Knot, who are responsible for the disappearance and deaths of many children. This sinister group targets Abra and Daniel is called in to protect her.

I found the book chilling in places but not really terrifying in the way I found The Shining. Read as a continuation rather than a book to rival the horrors we encountered in the first book of this series, Doctor Sleep is more about developing and introducing old and new characters respectively. My curiosity about the Torrance family and Dick Halloran was satisfied and I became mesmerised by the magical Abra. The True Knot are heinously despicable as villains led by the ruthless yet beautiful Rose, who is a worthy adversary to our two protagonists.

Doctor Sleep challenges our perception of people, as 10-year-old Abra befriends a middle-aged man to help her; in the current state of our society this is very taboo and suspect, even though Daniel would never dream of harming a child. Yet The True Knot are a group of friendly travellers you may see and not even think about as a source of danger to anyone. King tries to show us the hazards of judging a book by its cover in Doctor Sleep and he couldn't have made those grandmas and grandpas in RVs more sinister, but they don't have the scare factor of the ghosts we have met in The Shining. This could be because the villains in this book have to hide in plain sight and aren't found in shadowy, unoccupied hotel rooms where malevolence is more easily imagined. I did feel at times that the villains were too easily outgunned, but this didn't detract from the story or characters on the whole.

I loved reading Doctor Sleep. I was engrossed in the powers of Abra as a baby and her family were wonderful characters too, especially her great-grandmother. It was sad to see Daniel Torrance go through rock-bottom in his life but heartening to see him turn things around and build a life with friends and support. I enjoyed reading the characters so much I hope there is another book in the series, just so like Danny Torrance, we find out what happens to Abra and an elderly Daniel Torrance perhaps?

Paula Lofting says: Babus has been a reader for The Review for a couple of months now and has become a valued member of our team

My Bio


I am a Bengal cat enthusiast in the UK, who retired from a career in General Practice on health grounds some years ago. I suffer from pulmonary hypertension and OCD, which I am very open about and I have a voracious appetite for books, particularly good thrillers of any description. I blog my reviews regularly on my blog: http://www.ajoobacatsblog.com, but my reviews also appear on other excellent book review blogs occasionally. 


Thursday 18 September 2014

PAULA READS: ROME: THE EMPEROR'S SPY BY M.C. SCOTT.



Rome is burning. Only one man can save it.






See bottom of page for the details about the giveaway



The Emperor: Nero, Emperor of Rome and all her provinces, feared by his subjects for his temper and cruelty, is in possession of an ancient document predicting that Rome will burn.

The Spy: Sebastos Pantera, assassin and spy for the Roman Legions, is ordered to stop the impending cataclysm. He knows that if he does not, his life - and those of thousands of others - are in terrible danger.

The Chariot Boy: Math, a young charioteer, is a pawn drawn into the deadly game between the Emperor and the Spy, where death stalks the drivers - on the track and off it  Rome  The Emperor's Spy (Rome, #1) by M.C. Scott

 Sebastos Pantera, the Leopard, such a wonderful name - has returned to Gaul after working under cover in Britannia, that wild and untamed province of the Roman empire. There he had become absorbed into the lives of the Britons, living a double life for 5 years before tragedy ends that phase in his life and he is transported back into the service of Nero, his lord. Nero has a job for him; he must stop an ancient prophecy from being fulfilled, or Rome will burn, a little boy he loves will die and many other lives will be in jeopardy.



Math, as the boy is known is drawn to Pantera who becomes his mentor and in drawing Math into Nero's world, he also embroils other characters in the plot: Hannah, the exotic beauty from Alexandria with a secret so dangerous, it could destroy them all; Ajax, the scarred charioteer whom has looked after Math since he was born and Shimon,the Hebrew who knows Hannah's secret. Somehow the characters are all destined to meet and each have their part to play in finding a way to destroy the prophecy.



But none of them could count on the evil that watches them; silent,hidden and unexpected. It will eventually catch up with them and when it does, there will be no telling what horrors await them.

M.C. Scott is a new author that I have discovered. She has the ability to turn  a sentence into a work of art. during my time reading this novel, many a time I found myself drawing breath at her talent for crafting words that will mesmerise you with its erudite beauty.

         "For the barest fraction of a heartbeat, those river-water eyes looked straight at Math.
         who looked away, and was left shaking as if he had the ague. When he dared to look
         again, Pantera was gone, threading his way through the heaving crowd, stepping lightly
         over the dog dirt and the coiled ropes, and evading the running children with an unconscious
         ease..."
          

Scott's characters are both colourful and alive with realism. They bounce of the pages in a way that will have you thinking of them day and night. You care about them, you know them like your friends, your enemies and your loved ones. As each chapter ended, I was ready for the next, desperate to know what happened next until only sleep stopped me from reading more. The plot is carefully laid out and nothing is left to the imagination.

I'm not a great Roman scholar, but Scott appears to have done plenty of research and writes with confidence but adds an author's note at the end. Her chariot racing scenes were fantastic and I got a real sense of being there in that arena, driving a team of horses in a race of death, leaving me with no doubt  that she could craft the details of them as if she had actually been there.  This book in my opinion is a literary masterpiece.



Pantera is my favourite character. He returns to northern Gaul from Britannia having experienced terrible tortures - his broken body and mind still in the process of healing. He plans to go into anonymity, to live out the rest of his years away from the toxic atmosphere that surrounds Nero. But Pantera's plans are thwarted; Nero will never let him go.  Pantera must embark on the task bestowed upon him by the narcissistic emperor Nero and soon becomes aware that his mission will take a dark course - one where he and the lives of the friends he has made will face increasing danger from the terrifying Saulos,  a creature who will stop at nothing to see the prophecy fulfilled. Pantera is a wonderful dark, brooding and enigmatic character with a tormented past. Math is the young boy who is sent to follow his every move and becomes both frightened and fascinated in the subject of his quest. Soon Math comes to love Pantera and despite Pantera's efforts to rid himself of another responsibility, Pantera is also drawn to the boy and Hannah who looks after him. Ajax is also another of my favourite characters, and his identity is a mystery but revealed at the end. this book will take you on a journey that will cover two continents. It will mystify you, excite you and make you long for more and Pantera will stay with you for ever.


         "His eyes,  should you ever see them, are green-brown, like the shimmer of sun on river                  water. At first glance, he looks through you - unless he wished to kill you. Then he looks                  straight at you."

You can find this book on Amazon US and Amazon Uk

IF you would like to win a copy of this book leave a comment here on the post pr on the relevant post on our Facebook page