Quilts and Books

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. Sidn...

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 liv...

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 actin...

OK, in an effort to discipline myself to blog more, I'm going to try a monthly feature where I'll let you know what my favorite books of the previous month were and why. Some I'll have blogged about, others not. In order, least to most: 5. Rock Star by Roslyn Hardy Holcomb . Ms. Holcomb left some comments in a discussion at SBTB about AA romances which led me to seek out this book. I found it at the library and thoroughly enjoyed this contemporary IR romance. I believe this is Ms. Holcomb's debut novel. I found the characters interesting and their story really drew me in. There's a nice little "mini-sequel" available as a free download on the author's web site. 4. One with the Shadows by Susan Squires . Ms. Squires' first book in this paranormal series about vampires who are created because of a symbiotic parasite in the blood is one of my favorite paranormal books. The book previous to this one was disappointing and I almost decided not to read...