"Hard Cache" by Charles B. Neff (Suspense)--Giveaway

It’s all here in this story:  love, decency and old, bone-crunching evil.  Neff weaves them all together brilliantly in a memorable page-turner.” –Roger Wilkins (Pulitzer Prize Winner) (quote from the back cover)

Hard Cache by Charles B. Neff is a short romantic thriller involving a murder, the Russian mob, the Black Market and four men who fought together in the Russian-Afghan war but whose lives are still intertwined years later.  One of the things that makes this book stand out from other suspense mysteries is the cross cultural facet of the book. 

Mangus Torval, a former Swedish detective, discovers a dead body while fishing alone while visiting Washington.  The investigation leads to an exciting confrontation in the mountains at a cabin where Greg Takarchuk and Mangus realize their love for the women in their lives, Olga and Mariela and secrets all come to light. 

There are a lot of different characters that I had a bit of trouble keeping straight so found myself often referring to the list of characters at the beginning of the book.  This was very helpful.  The story itself was a bit complicated to me but I liked the suspense during the confrontation at the cabin.  The killer of Dmitri, the antique store owner and Greg’s father, was revealed fairly early on but I never did understand exactly why the murder was committed. 

I didn’t think the ending was very believable—can you really expect seven people (two of which were women, one Pastor, one ex-journalist, one a police officer, an FBI agent and a former detective) to all agree to a fabricated story to cover up what really happened at the cabin?  With short chapters and an interesting story line, Hard Cache is a quick read. 

(We received a free copy of Hard Cache by Charles B. Neff to review so will gave it away in a drawing on Sat., November 20 limited to the U.S.  The winner was Carol in Texas who said "You had me at the Russian mob! I love suspense mysteries. If there are a lot of characters, I make a list that includes some note about the character to help me remember.")

Have you read this one? What did you think of it?

"You Already Know How To Be Great" by Alan Fine (Giveaway)

You Already Know How To Be Great by Alan Fine is a model for performing at your full capacity and helping others do the same.  The author, Alan Fine, has served as a performance coach to corporate executives, top athletes and musicians.  He shares his very practical method for improving performance by increasing one's faith that they can do something, one's fire (desire) and one's focus by decreasing the interference (obstacle) that is hurting the performance.  Sometimes we know what we want to do and even how to do it but we are lacking in at least one of those areas; thus, not performing to our full capacity.  You Already Know How To Be Great has questions at the end of each chapter to help you apply the principles plus even a cute picture of an on-line community reminder.

I really liked the examples he gave to illustrate how his model can be used in parenting, teaching, sports.   Alan Fine gives the reader dialogue of specific training sessions.  I felt like a little mouse getting to listen in.  In this book you can learn the G.R.O.W. method to use in reaching decisions quickly and making meetings meaningful.

I recommend You Already Know How to Be Great as a reference book to anyone who wants to improve their performance in any area of their life or who is in a leadership position and seeks to help others improve performance. 


Want to find out more?  Here  is a video of Alan Fine talking about You Already Know How To Be Great which includes some illustrations from the book:

Alan-fine.com

Blog: alan-fine.com/blog

Twitter:  twitter.com/Alan_Fine

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FineAlan 

To enter our giveaway for an autographed copy by Alan Fine of You Already Know How To Be Great, just leave us a comment stating you would like to win along with an email address so we can contact you if you are a winner.  We will choose a total of FIVE winners on November 25, Thanksgiving Day!  Winners will be notified by email and will have until Nov. 28 to give us their mailing address or someone else will be chosen.  (This giveaway will also be promoted on Blog Jog day coming Sunday, November 21 so you could enter then too.)


(We received a free copy of this book for review.)
Have you read this one? What did you think of it?

Teaser Tuesday: " Hard Cache," "The Confession"

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should  Be Reading. Anyone can play along, so I thought  I  would play for fun! Just do the following:          

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on  that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away!   You don’t  want  to  ruin the  book for others!)
• Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can  add the book to their TBR  Lists  if they  like your teaser. 

Karen's::

At that moment, Greg heard the thin, unmistakable sound of a muffled scream. His mother's face, her mouth wide open, was framed in the triple-paned kitchen window. Insulation muffled the sound, but did nothing to hide her look of terror.

p. 61 of The Cache by Charles B. Neff

Gerard's:

     And so it had all come down to this: a drunk Joey Gamble confessing his sins and baring his soul in a strip club to a man with a concealed mike that produced a scratchy audio that no court in the civilized world would take heed of.
     The fragile life of Donte Drumm would depend on the eleveth-hour recantation b a witness with no credibility.

p. 156 of The Confession by John Grisham

Meet Us On Monday

Here are the questions:

1. What is your favorite kind of pie?
Gerard's: Pumpkin
Karen's: Lemon Meringue with Pumpkin very close

2. Have you ever ran out of gas in the car you were driving?
Gerard: No.

Karen: Yes. Actually, I took some teens to a park and ran out in the parking lot. One of them went and brought back some gas and put it in for me too. They all got a big laugh out of it.

3. How many languages do you speak?
Gerard: Just English
Karen: Just English, although, I did take German for 9th and 10th grade.

4. Do you take daily vitamins?
We both do.  Centrum Silver for both.  (Click on the link to read about the funny story about my dad and Centrum.)  Karen also takes Citracal and Glucosamine Chondroitin.

5. What is your worst eating habit?
Gerard: Never eats any vegetables.
Karen: Eats pizza usually three meals a week, sometimes four. I only have two pieces though at each meal.

Now go meet some more over 40 bloggers at Never Growing Old.

"Facebook Me!" by Dave Awl

Facebook Me! by Dave Awl is a good reference book for learning to use Facebook to its full capacity.  I've been on Facebook for a couple years now I think so most of the things in this book I already knew by just exploring on my own.  Had I read this book first, it would have saved me some time.  It does explain how to set up a fan page which is something I didn't know how to do.  Another helpful thing was that it pointed out how I can blog app requests like silly gifts and games that I am not interested in.  It's actually very simple, there's a "block this app" option in  tiny letters under the app request that all I had to do was click on.  

I recommend this to anyone considering opening a Facebook account or who just is kind of lost when they go into it and would like to have a better understanding of it.

Have you read this one? What did you think of it?