Who is Diana Rivers and what she’s about to get embroiled with?

Today marks the launch of Faith Mortimer's new book, Children of the Plantation. She has graciously allowed me to present to you this piece on Diana Rivers, the feisty sleuth from Faith's novel, The Assassins' Village. So without further ado, I now present, Diana Rivers.

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Murder She Said ~ Diana Rivers, sexy, feisty sleuth.

After solving the truth concerning the bloody murders in, The Assassins’ Village, our sexy, feisty sleuth and heroine, Diana and her partner, Steve decide they deserve a holiday. On their arrival at their luxurious palm fringed plantation hotel in lush, tropical Malaysia; things don’t quite work out as they imagined.

Diana is asked by the hotel owner, the inscrutable Miss Chalcot, titled, imperious and secretive, to take a look through some old family documents. Miss Chalcot possesses a burning ambition to put right a dreadful wrong that occurred over forty years ago – and Diana is given free rein to pursue the mysterious past of the family and discover what lies behind the dark stories.

Diana enters into a dangerous world of the 1950’s and 1960’s, where lies, deceit, illicit love, jealousies and perhaps murder all feature.

What really happened all those years ago? Who was Paul, Hermione and the beautiful but selfish Eleanor? Who was responsible for events that shocked the whole family and plunged it into despair? And what is the real story behind all the façade?

Will Diana triumph against all odds yet again?

Children Of The Plantation

Prologue

Opening the kitchen door, she spotted a vixen standing near the refuse bin. Hermione clapped her hands, and it shot through the hedge at the bottom of the garden.

Hermione's heart was thudding in her breast as she considered what next to do. Casting a look around, she gave thanks that the clouds scudding overhead made it a dark night. This had to be done in complete privacy.

Giving herself a mental shake, she crossed the damp grass to the shed and picked up a spade. A clod of earth still clung to the sharp blade from where she had been digging in her vegetable patch earlier that afternoon. It seemed such a long time ago now. She paused, still not completely certain she was doing the right thing. Making up her mind, she walked over to the newly turned earth.

The air smelt fresh after the rain shower, and a light breeze blew the mixed garden scents her way while she dug. The hole was to be small but deep, especially as she had just driven the fox off. Satisfied, she stood back and peered down into the soft loamy material, a sorry place for such a pathetic bundle.

Sick at heart, but knowing they had no choice, Hermione laid down her spade and walked back into the kitchen. She picked up the tightly wrapped package and carried it outside; it weighed no more than a couple of pounds as she gently laid it down into the hole.

Covering it with fresh earth, she scattered pebbles around and knelt on the grass. Had there been any other choice? Whatever were they going to tell him when the time came?

About the Book. Children of The Plantation will be first published as an eBook and later as a paperback by Topsails Charter. As a special lead-in price (eBook) and a Thank You to my friends and followers it will be offered to you first for $0.99c for the first month. All I ask is (when you've bought your copy) for you to please write me a fair review. Here are the links to purchase:
Amazon.com
U.K. Amazon


Thanks!

About the Author. Faith Mortimer was born in England. Her father was in the Royal Air Force and from the tender age of five, Faith learned the meaning of travel and living in different parts of our beautiful world. Faith now spends her time between England and Cyprus where she lives with her husband. She’s filled her life with different careers, Registered nurse, entrepreneur and writer. She loves the outdoors, acting and writing. She has written two other bestselling novels and a short story collection. Visit Faith Mortimer’s website http://www.faithmortimerauthor.com/for more information.

More places to find Children of the Plantation and the feisty Diana Rivers today!


Diana Rivers does it again!

Diana Rivers pulls it off & she gets more than she bargained for!

Hola Miguel

In the fall of 1998, Hurricane Mitch destroyed much of Honduras. 1/3 of their highway system was totally gone, isolating 1.5 million people out of a total population of 6 million. 6,000 died, 8,000 were missing, 1/2 million were left homeless, and in the case of a little 70 family village, they were left without a town. Much of Honduras is unstable and prone to mudslides in extreme rain. And the town of El Porvenir was washed away, down the mountainside and into the river. 


When I went to Honduras in November 1999 on a Church World Services sponsored work trip, we were assigned to help the townspeople of El Porvenir rebuild their homes in the "new" El Porvenir, downstream a few miles and across the valley in a flat land. We couldn't get all the way there in the van that carried the 14 of us. The road was gone, and we had to walk the last few miles through the mud. It rains a lot in Honduras and it was raining the day we arrived and the day we walked out to go home again.


I'm not going to bore you with the details about how there was no water fit to drink or bathe in without boiling, or how livestock wandered around the mud bath that was the town and that we worked every day in a mix of ankle deep mud and animal feces, or how they had no town dump until we arrived because they made no trash, or how the kids made toys out of our trash because they had no toys of their own, or how their temporary homes were sticks driven into the mud and wrapped in Tyvek, or how I couldn't eat in the common area they made for us knowing they were themselves starving from a one meal-a-day life. That would be boring.


I want to talk about Miguel. He's the little kid in the photo I took back in 1999, the kid who was always covered in mud because everything there was covered in mud all the time, including us. His hair, a light brown is all wrong. He's a Mayan. His hair should be black, but malnutrition does that. I gave him most of my food. I tried to be friends but I didn't speak much Spanish other than hello and goodbye and he spoke no English. I keep his photo in a place I can see from my desk here in the office at home. 


When I got back home, I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, and I couldn't  be who I was before I went to Honduras.


So, Miguel, I was just thinking of you today and wondering how you were doing. I hope that you've put on some weight and that your hair is black again. I wonder if you still have that Special-K cereal box I gave you that you made into a toy.


Maybe someday I'll find out.


Your amigo,


Larry

Bled - making the ordinary extraordinary

I am excited about bestselling author Jason McIntyre's new novella, Bled. He has graciously taken time out of his busy schedule to visit with me and share the details of his new release. 


Here is the link to purchase  BLED on Amazon 
Or check Here for Jason's site .
So without further ado, take it away, Jason!

My new book ‘Bled’ makes the ordinary extraordinary

Scary things happen in the most ordinary of places.

Bled, my latest novella, takes readers inside the Highliner Cafe in a small island town called Dovetail Cove. Nothing noteworthy has ever happened here except maybe Tony Labret’s oldest kid breaking a tooth on a bite of their famous cobbler (a fake gemstone from one of the baker’s rings meant that cafe owner Dabney Saum would have his staff make their own cobbler thereafter).

But it’s a pretty mundane place. The windows haven’t been washed in a couple of seasons at least. Neither has the deep fryer. Miguel the fry cook hasn’t washed his shirts since some time last year and the grease pails are stacking up out back.

So, it’s not unusual to think this mundane existence will continue for patrons and staff at the Highliner Cafe.  Why wouldn’t it? This is just another small-town grill with stale coffee and spotted cutlery.

But it just so happens that on this Friday in May, wheels are going to be set in motion that defy this tragic brand of boring.

When Frank Moort comes in for his regular chicken salad sandwich and coffee, it sets certain things in motion that will play out over the next few weeks -- and, in fact, the next thirty years.

But right here and now, in the next few weeks, Teeny McLeod and Frank Moort will have a run-in that’s sure to shake things up for the tiny Main Street cafe. In the long run, it will shake things up for the whole island and all of Dovetail Cove.

Bled: About the Novella

She only wanted to leave. But he took that option from her. Now she wants it back.

Set on the same island as the reader favorite Shed, the latest literary suspense novella from bestselling author Jason McIntyre picks up the Dovetail Cove saga with this story of one lonely woman...trapped.

Tina McLeod is on the cusp of a new life. Extraordinary change is rare in her world but this newsflash means she can finally leave her small island town for good. No more pouring coffee for townsfolk in Main Street’s greasy spoon, no more living under the weight of her born-again mother. That is, until Frank Moort comes in for his usual lunch and dessert on an ordinary Friday in May.

Bled sees things turn backwards and upside down for each of them. Their encounter is prolonged and grotesque, the sort of thing splashing the covers of big city newspapers. Both are changed. And neither will come out clean on the other side.

A story about taking what’s not yours, Bled explores pushing back when you’ve been pushed too far. It paints in red the horrors from our most commonplace of surroundings: right out in the open where nothing can hide behind closed doors and shut mouths.

About the Author

Jason McIntyre has lived and worked in varied places across the globe. His writing also meanders from the pastoral to the garish, from the fantastical to the morbid. Vibrant characters and vivid surroundings stay with him and coalesce into novels and stories. Before his time as an editor, writer and communications professional, he spent several years as a graphic designer and commercial artist.

McIntyre's writing has been called darkly noir and sophisticated, styled after the likes of Chuck Palahniuk but with the pacing and mass appeal of Stephen King. The books tackle the family life subject matter of Jonathan Franzen but also eerie discoveries one might find in a Ray Bradbury story or those of Rod Serling.

Jason McIntyre’s books include the #1 Kindle Suspense, The Night Walk Men, Bestsellers On The Gathering Storm and Shed, plus the multi-layered coming-of-age literary suspense Thalo Blue.

Bled: Teaser Trailer

A King in a Court of Fools

Today is the day! My new novel, A King in a Court of Fools launches.

Is this the book that launched a thousand quips and spurned the thoughtless glowers of idioms? Or, is this a funny, heart-warming tale of a bunch of kids who stick together through thick and thin and solve a mystery in the process? 

A King in a Court of Fools begins with a book — The Book of Tom — a journal writing assignment from Tom Ryan’s sixth-grade teacher, Sister Jeanne Lorette. That’s what she called it. Tom called it punishment. In it, he chronicles the adventures of the Caswell Gang, a group of siblings and friends with two things in common — their love of adventure and their allegiance to Tom, their king.

The 1950s book was misplaced a long time ago, and all the children have since grown up, but Harry, Tom’s youngest brother, still remembers it and retells for us one of its stories in a nostalgic, heartwarming, and humorous way that will have you wishing for adventure, too.

I encourage you to read the sample, the first five chapters, and decide for yourself. First published as a weekly serial from April through August 2011, each chapter is designed to be a joy unto itself. My site also has the audio I recorded each week if you prefer to just listen. The audio is free for now.

Here is the link -> Larry's website

My hope is that you will enjoy reading A King in a Court of Fools as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Larry