​P.S. Winn

5.0 out of 5 stars The mystery, murder and fun race on!
Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2017Verified Purchase
Laura and Gerry Fitz have tied the knot and are in Florida for their honeymoon. If you haven't read a novel with these two in it yet, you are going to love the characters, and should know that Laura has a tendency to get caught up in a mystery, usually with a murder linked to it. This time the first dead body just happens to be Laura's ex-husband Lou. When Laura is given Lou;s belongings she finds herself stuck in the center of the mystery and the danger, This book, like the others in the series is written with a humorous slant that makes the read enjoyable and of course, the mystery is to die for.

​Archbishop Figurant gazed down the extended maple table, luminous from layer upon layer of bee’s wax. Soon they would be arriving. It was going to be a hard hitting but necessary meeting, long overdue. Abandoning protocol, he would be going against the Church’s hierarchy to expose a long-lived charade of denial and hypocrisy. No longer was he going to ram his head up his self-righteous ass. He was going to act.
 
Lanita entered the room with a large tray of chicken sandwiches and fruit pastries. “Oh, ‘cuse me, your Excellency. I didn’t know you were already here. I’ll be out of your way in no time.” Her words hummed with the rhythmic cadence of a Caribbean island. Neat as a pin in a freshly starched uniform and hair tucked away in a plain white turban, she slipped from point to point, smooth and efficient.
 
“You’re fine, Lanita. I’m trying to get my thoughts in order. You’d best put out some ashtrays. I anticipate Monsignors Flannigan and Murphy will burn up a field of tobacco when they hear what I’ve got to say.” She laughed out loud. “Maybe I should put out the whiskey, too, yes?
 
“No, they’ll have to survive on coffee or water today.” He smiled at her. “Be good for them.”
 
He and Lanita had a comfortable relationship. She had been his housekeeper for six years. He knew some of her secrets and she knew some of his. Late afternoons he often watched her from the upstairs window as she rode her bicycle home, hair fanning out in an Afro halo and a colorful skirt billowing in the wind.

Her timing was perfect. As she rounded the corner, daily Mass had ended, and the Archbishop was standing outside the ornately carved doors of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
His followers were tiered below him on the steps. He turned and allowed his eyes to trace the contours of her body and she felt the thrill of power. A sheer white muslin shift clung to her black swim suit, still wet from morning exercise at the community pool. Despite the heat and the humidity from the Gulf of Mexico, she strolled by as if it were a cool spring day in Vermont.
 
Elaine Chauvier was a stately woman, aware of her long legs and enticing figure. Some said she was a snob and she would have agreed with them. After all, she was from aristocracy. Her great grandfather and General Robert E. Lee had been close friends, and her family had owned sections of plantation land and nearly a hundred slaves. No one could give this woman a passing glance without being momentarily transfixed. Soft black hair, always a bit ruffled to give a false impression of casualness, framed a face of classic perfection. Piercing dark eyes conveyed the superiority she felt over everyone.
 
Archbishop Andre Figurant gave hardly a thought to the man who knelt to kiss his ring or the mother holding up her baby for a blessing. His focus was across the street, beyond the wrought-iron fence surrounding the Cathedral’s property. The gliding presence hypnotized as well as beguiled him.

Lee Broom
 
5.0 out of 5 starsSouthern suspense at its finest!
June 18, 2019
Format: Kindle Edition
Very intense book! Shadow's Way is a suspenseful, amazing story that centers around an antebellum home on the Gulf Coast that is the life's blood of Elaine Chauvier, a woman of aristocracy that boasts of ties to Robert E. Lee. It's a multi-layered story that seems to be a history of the house and its inhabitants, who have many secrets and obsessions. It turns it to be a horror story of a crazy woman who is out to kill anyone who gets in her way or who tries to take her precious home, Shadow's Way. It's a story of ghosts and sordid pasts, and a shameful history of the local catholic church. The people in the town who are related to Elaine or acquaintances are unaware at first of all the twisted plans and goings-on of the main lady of the house, but they soon find out when unexpected things start happening. It's a vivid, startling tale that I highly recommend, because I just couldn't stop reading this one until the very last word. 

​Visit World War II Germany, but this won’t be a pleasant holiday when two brave soldiers face dire circumstances against heavy odds – can a mystical owl lead them to safety before it’s too late?

​An amazing story of survival
Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2020
Verified Purchase
It is world War II, Soldiers are getting diploid to join the war in Germany.
So was Tom. He had to go just before Christmas. His family hoped he would be back by Christmas.
But tragedy happens. Tom was separated from his platoon, while running to safety.
Hiding he knew he had to come out and go to and find the border to Switzerland, to safety. But not really knowing where to go, an owl found him and helped him. Not really believing, but he still followed it.
Did the owl really guided him to safety? And was he found before he starved to death? Could he spent Christmas with his family?
A very inspiring story. I recommend it to everyone.

​Going without power can put a dampener on the way you live. An ordeal Grace had to endure. For Trevor, changing his status overnight was a rash decision. You never know what you are missing when you haven’t had it before. Being in the dark might be beneficial after all.
Grace arrived at her new property prepared to take on the challenge of turning her house in to a home.

Things didn’t go as planned. Having paid her deposit, the power wasn’t connected. Delaying everything. She endured being in the dark for a week. Grace took matters into her own hands and the entire town bore the brunt.

Trevor watched Grace day in and day out. He could not make head or tail of her and the two children who called her Gran Grace. She looked far too young to be their gran. The day he pulled over and spoke to her his outlook on life took a dramatic turn.

​For 25 years France Hunter has been studying owls, and has discovered five new species around the world. Her work has kept her busy and she never had time for a relationship. She travels with Jason “Doc” Bradley, a former paramedic, and his cousins Tony and Andy Bradley. Now, on her last outing she is joined by a magazine writer, Cathy Birch, and a world famous angler, John Sinclair, who has also dedicated his life to his field. As the small caravan travels to the Amazon river France falls and severely injures her left arm. Against Doc's recommendation to turn back, she pushes on. This is her last trip and she wants to go to the place where she found her first new owl. While fishing a blue-ringed owl lands on John's canoe and looks down the river to where France's group is, and then looks back at him. This alerts John. He gets the satellite phone and tries to reach her to no avail. He decides the fishing can wait and, with Mark in another canoe, begin the journey back to France. At France's camp two jaguars attack one of the boatmen severing his left leg. The other two boatmen, they all have rifles, shoot at the jaguars killing one. The other escapes with the boatman's leg. Doc and the others wake to the noise and he and Tony go to where the boatmen are camping. In the ruckus the canoes become untied and go eastward down the shore and the sat phone is destroyed. Now they have no way to get help and will have to wait for John's team to come back, which could take three or four more days. Will help get there in enough time?

​Martha A. Cheves
VINE VOICE
5.0 out of 5 stars Her family planned camping trips here in the past and she just loved it. Now that she graduated from the University ...
Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2016France Hunter was excited about her first trip to the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee. Her family planned camping trips here in the past and she just loved it. Now that she graduated from the University of Michigan, with a degree in ornithology, she was more than ready to study her favorite bird: owls. That is until the black bear decided to show up making her trip short in the wilderness and a bit longer in the hospital.

27 years later she finds herself in the Amazon where she is in search of her first new species of owl - the blue-ringed owl. What she didn't expect were the feelings she soon started to feel after meeting John Sinclair who was the host of the television show 'Sinclair's Adventures'. Rounding out the group was Cathy Birch who was gathering information for her latest magazine article.

Author Viv Drewa brings the search for the blue-ringed owl, the dangers of the Amazon and two people who have just met and their feelings for each other. This was a page turner which I actually finished in 2 nights. Very enjoyable.

​Take one beautiful vindictive woman....she's 1 part bimbo and 2 parts lethal gangsta- gun moll.
Watch her try and hold onto her 84 year old husband by having his octogenarian paramour knocked off. Sometimes greed and jealousy lead to the last resort ……MURDER!
Laura, Gerry and Gibbons try to stop her from also killing her husband, without getting them selves knocked off in the process!

​​A MURDER MYSTERY TO DIE FOR!!!!
Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2019​Karen Vaughan has once again given us a dynamite murder mystery in book two of her Laura & Gerry Murder Mystery series.
Take one trashy, gold-digger, psychotic woman, with a mob boss for a daddy, and a jealous streak that would make any normally insane woman look like a saint. Throw in flying melons, baseball bats, and a sweet, gentle, rich elderly man, and Laura (corpse magnet) soon to be Fitz, and you have a masterpiece of crime, insanity, murder, and yes romance.
It takes a lot to write a great murder mystery, but even more one with humor wrapped into the package.
Kudos to Ms. Vaughan for once again giving us a class act book to blow away the cobwebs from our minds and entertain us while doing so.
HIGHLY RECOMMEND this read.

Have You Ever Made A Mistake That Keeps Coming Back To Haunt You?On the run from her ex-boyfriend’s powerful criminal family, Sara Jones hides in Billings, Montana. When she receives a mysterious package containing a hidden spider, people around her start dying from poisonous spider bites and she fears that the family has found her. Is it possible to escape their reach?
˃˃˃ From its gut-grabbing prologue to its explosive conclusion, Goss’s debut story gives new meaning to the phrase “a blood-curdling adventure.”Life takes an even more bizarre turn when Sara seems to be not only immune to the spider venom, but also surrounded by a sinister group of people using spiders to incapacitate their prey. Even her new boyfriend starts acting suspiciously. Who can she trust?
To make matters worse Sara's twenty-fifth birthday approaches, and her dark heritage begins to emerge. She is forced to make a life-or-death decision. And somehow, she must find a way to deal with the crime family.


˃˃˃ An Imaginative Fantasy-Thriller That Will Stimulate Your SensesGoss immerses the reader in a gripping tale in which spiders are trained to kill. To some, the story may seem far-fetched, and cult members eating the flesh of cadavers may seem abhorrent, but Dracula set that table long ago. Tegen Cave is sure to thrill anyone predisposed to the fantasy genre.

​SKY08

5.0 out of 5 stars Meet Laura in this fun first book in the series
Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2017Verified Purchase
Great first book in this fun series that I read out of sequence and still enjoyed very much. Corpse magnet, Laura, is on her own in this first book written before Gerry joins her on her misadventures. She's a funny, sarcastic, unpredictable character who takes up sleuthing when a dead body turns up in her apartment. More than a little motivation, that's for sure! Several secondary characters add interest along with more than a little sleaze as Laura sets out alongside Detective Inspector Jeff Gibbons to find out whodunit. I'm not going to tell you that, of course, or reveal how Laura figures it out. You need to read this book and have the fun doing that for yourself

​M. M. Bishop Award-winning author and poet

5.0 out of 5 stars DEATH TAKES US ALL
Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2013Verified Purchase
Dead on arrival, a Laura Hamilton murder mystery by Karen Vaughan is a must read for anyone who loves a mystery with a bit of twisted humor.

Ms. Vaughan, brings us a brilliant and funny character in Laura Hamilton. This book is a definite keeper and will find a place in my reread list through the years. Truly who cannot love a book whose main character is full of charm, wit, and adventure.

A highly recommended murder mystery.

​5.0 out of 5 stars True story of adversity and courage
Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2015
Verified Purchase
Viv Drewa’s “From the Pages of Grandfather’s Life” presents us with the harrowing escape of the author’s grandfather, Lucjan, from Russian-occupied Poland. Lucjan is not alone and fortunately can rely on his friends, Franciszek and Andrzej. But their dangers are very real and the reader is held in suspense until the end. “From the Pages of Grandfather’s Life” is an excellent encounter of what many immigrants may have experienced, making it a gem not to be missed.