Quilts and Books

There are times when I read a book and I marvel at the mind behind the words. A mind that’s able to evoke so many different ideas and emotions that I continue to think about the book long after I finished reading it. I am left unwilling to start another book because I want to continue to enjoy what I just read, by thinking about it or going back to re-read various sections. This is what happened to me after I read this month’s TBR installment, Tapestry by Karen Ranney.

I’ve gushed over Ranney’s books before. And it is worth noting that she has a new book out on Tuesday. I am so all over that one. It’s already available to pre-order on Fictionwise. But back to Tapestry. Here’s the blurb:

Tapestry is the story of first love/only love. Laura Blake has been in love with her next door neighbor, Alex Weston, ever since she was a child. The Seven Years War separated them, however, and in the intervening years, Alex lost his youthful enthusiasm for life while Laura grew into a woman--more certa…

This month I read some good ones. But my 5 favorites were:

5. Fairyville by Emma Holly. Hot. Very hot. It is Emma Holly after all. But a delightful story that includes a world that was fun and interesting. Great characters. And hot. Very, very hot. Let's move on, shall we?

4. Tall Tales and Wedding Veils by Jane Graves. A very humorous story about 2 people who are as different as night and day. They are from the same town in Texas, but meet in Las Vegas where they end up getting married, only to regret it the next morning. Once back home they decide to maintain the fiction of the marriage for a month (the reasons are good ones). And of course in the process they fall in love and discover how to live with their differences. I laughed and I cried. I love a book that can make me do both.

3. Embraced by Love by Suzanne Brockmann. This is an early one by Brockmann that I found at the library. An unusual story in that it begins 5 years into the h/h's marriage. Their lives are turned up…

Jill Sorenson's debut novel came to me (free!) when I won a contest over at HelenKay Dimon's blog last month. I can't remember reading anything out of the Silhouette Romantic Suspense line before, so I was looking forward to giving this one a try. Here's the blurb:

All her life Sidney Morrow had tried to repress her disturbing psychic visions. Until a vision of murder shattered her fragile serenity. She had to go to the authorities—make them listen. But Lt. Marc Cruz didn't trust her one bit. In fact, the sensual homicide cop treated her like a suspect. And sent her senses haywire.…

The dark-haired beauty knew something about the serial killer Marc was after. But he was certain "visions" had nothing to do with it. Determined to be her constant shadow, Marc wasn't prepared when desire blindsided him—and put them both in the path of a relentless killer.

This one had a really interesting premise which made the heroine, Sidney, appealing to me. Sidney has …

This post is just making it under the wire. Whew. But I did it.

This month's book is a bit of a departure. Most of the books in my TBR pile are historicals, because that's what drew me back into reading romance in the first place. At some point several years ago I read Judi McCoy's "heaven" trilogy and liked it well enough to order her "wanted" series from Amazon (aka Starlight trilogy). I've been meaning to read them ever since. It seemed time to pick a contemporary out of my TBR pile, and this was one of the few available.

Wanted: One Perfect Man is the first book telling the stories of 3 women sent to earth to find specific men and become impregnated by them. These women come from a planet of humans with advanced technological skills, but suffer an inability to give birth to healthy male children. Zara is the heroine of this story. She is sent to a backwater town in north Texas to find the potential father of her baby. She has to adapt to living o…

Sisters, Oregon, USA--home of the premier outdoor quilt show in the country. Set in the high desert of central Oregon, Sisters is a quaint little town that pulls out all the stops to make thousands of quilt lovers feel at home for one day each year in July. And this year I got to go!

I'm doing a block exchange with a couple of friends and here is my first set of blocks. The pattern we're using uses a free-form piecing technique. It's very fun, although it wastes a lot of fabric. Because it's free-form, the blocks look slightly different from one another, although they were pieced all at the same time.

The pattern is called It's a Riot! from the April 2008 issue of BH&G American Patchwork & Quilting and it can be found here. My friends and I are pretty much following the color choices in the original pattern. But if you go to the AP&Q web site there's an alternate color option with the flowers done in soft blue & pink. Very pretty, too.

You can usually count on Linda Howard to write something outside the norm and she's clearly done it again. Her latest book, Death Angel, is a romantic suspense novel that seems to ignore most of the genre conventions, yet succeeds very well.

For example, in your typical romance, it is assumed that the hero and heroine will spend quite a bit of the book in one another's company. That doesn't happen here. Typically, we'll also know the names of our protagonists. In this one, the hero is known simply as the assassin until about 1/4 of the way through the book.

As far as suspense goes, while there's a lot of tension generated by Drea/Andie's story of being on the run, I was really drawn in by her transformation from frilly, mob boss' mistress to independent, self-sufficient woman.

Death Angel is primarily Andie's story. When we meet her, she's Drea Rousseau, a woman who has allowed herself to become a whore for financial security. She's acting a par…