THOUGHTS ON THIS 'n THAT

  A solitary woman’s inspiring, moving, surprising, and often funny memoir about the transformative power of her unusual friendship with a wild fox, a new window into the natural world, and the introduction of a remarkable literary talent. Catherine Raven left home at fifteen, fleeing an abusive, disdainful father and an indifferent mother. More comfortable in nature than among people, she worked as a National Park ranger, eventually earning a PhD in biology. She built a house on an isolated plot of land in Montana, teaching remotely and leading field classes. One day, she realized that the mangy-looking fox who had been appearing on her property was now showing up e very day at 4:15 p.m. She had never had a regular visitor before. How do you even talk to a fox? So, she brought out her camping chair, sat as close to him as she dared, and began reading to him from  The Little Prince . Her scientific training had taught her not to anthropomorphize animals, but as she grew to kno...

  I'm sure most of you have received the books you've won by now. Here's a roundup of latest winners!  Anne C., Melissa N., Nina W., Elena Y., Patricia C., Marcia J., Elizabeth R., Mari HP, Liv M., Suzie R., Linda M., Sandria W., Carla S., Beth C., Sharon P., Kristi L., Michelle L., Melissa A., Linda U., Sylvia CB., Ann F., Josephine KH., Mary C., Jen T., Nicole V., Diane S., Lori Z., Abby F., Kathy S., AnnMarie N., Nancy H., Krisiti FL., Donna S., Katherine H., Diane C., Toni L. REMEMBER to post a picture of you holding your book when it arrives to  Facebook: BluePointPress Keep checking back for more chances to win books. FYI: Leave your email address with your comments at  THOUGHTS ON THIS 'n THAT Happy 4th of July Holiday!

  Author Ann Garvin is back with another one of hilarious novels. This time we're going on a road trip in I THOUGHT YOU SAID THIS WOULD WORK (LakeUnion).  A road trip can drive anyone over the edge—especially two former best friends. Widowed Samantha Arias hasn’t spoken to Holly Dunfee in forever. It’s for the best. Samantha prefers to avoid conflict. The blisteringly honest Holly craves it. What they still have in common puts them both back on speed dial: a mutual love for Katie, their best friend of twenty-five years, now hospitalized with cancer and needing one little errand from her old college roomies. It’s simple: travel cross-country together, steal her loathsome ex-husband’s VW camper, find Katie’s diabetic Great Pyrenees at a Utah rescue, and drive him back home to Wisconsin. If it’ll make Katie happy, no favor is too big (one hundred pounds), too daunting (two thousand miles), or too illegal (ish), even when a boho D-list celebrity hitches a ride and drives the road ...

It's the influencer's golden rule: know your niche. In INSTAMOM (KensingtonBooks) by Chantel Guertin, Kit Kidding knows her audience. Kit promotes living and enjoying a childfree life in her instagram account hashtag #childfree. Kit believes women who choose not to become mothers and not to have children should not be judged or feel guilty.  But things change when Kit meets a smart and sexy dad with a daughter. She's smitten by Will MacGregor and his whip-smart darling eight year-old daughter, Maddie. Kit's picture perfect childfree life faces being turned completely upside down. You know where this is heading so I won't tell you anymore. Except to say, that INSTAMOM is about love and making life choices. It's about being true to yourself and being able to change, even though it may modify everything you once thought was true. It's a fun romcom you'll want to put in your summer bag and take to the pool or beach. Remember to always wear sunscreen. Chantel...

  I remember watching ER religiously when George Clooney was on the show. Yes, that was a long time ago. In PULSE (64Squares), the first book in the new "Vital Signs Series, readers are taken into an emergency room filled with professional adrenalin junkies. All can be quiet and then, BANG, the sick, injured, drug addicts and crazies are all coming in. Dr. Bobby Jackson is a doctor all the staff respect. The nurses and orderlies will do anything for him.  The book opens with a young drowning victim being wheeled into the ER and the child ends up being the Dr. Bobby Jackson's son. He's unable to save him. There are questions surrounding why the boy was alone while his wife was home, especially by the pool.  His wife is a sociopath he married because the "sex was so great." He hides his horrors at home from all of his colleagues. I almost couldn't finish the book despite liking it, because Dr. Jackson's pycho wife, Jaqueline is so flawed and evil. My stomac...

  Best-selling author, David Bell's new novel, KILL ALL YOUR DARLINGS  (Berkley) takes plagiarism to a new level. When a professor’s student disappears and is presumed dead, he passes off her manuscript as his own—only to find out it implicates him in an unsolved murder in this new thriller from the USA Today bestselling author of The Request. After years of struggling to write after the deaths of his wife and son, English professor Connor Nye publishes his first novel, a thriller about the murder of a young woman. There’s just one problem: Connor didn’t write the book. His missing student did. And then she appears on his doorstep, alive and well, threatening to expose him. David Bell is the  USA Today -bestselling author of eleven novels from Berkley/Penguin, including KILL ALL YOUR DARLINGS, THE REQUEST, LAYOVER, SOMEBODY’S DAUGHTER, BRING HER HOME, SINCE SHE WENT AWAY, SOMEBODY I USED TO KNOW, THE FORGOTTEN GIRL, NEVER COME BACK, THE HIDING PLACE, and CEMETERY GIRL. Hi...

  In the outdoors thriller, WOLF KILL (AdventurePublications) the investigation of a bizarre wolf attack leads to evidence of murder, conspiracy, and shocking family secrets. We're heading up to the north country of Minnesota where you'll feel chills not only between the pages.  A decades-old promise haunts Sam Rivers, but the wildlife biologist refuses to return home—not with his abusive and estranged father still there. Rivers left the family farm some 20 years ago. He found solace in nature and built a respected career as a special agent for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. His experiences have given him a penchant for understanding predators—a skill he’ll need, now, more than ever. After his father’s mysterious death, Rivers is lured back to his hometown of Defiance, in northern Minnesota, to fulfill his mother’s dying wish. But all is not as it seems. Rivers breaks into his childhood home during a howling winter storm and discovers something sinister. His suspicions ...

  How do you housebreak a dog in a  hurricane? Find out in  Barking at The Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble by humorist,  Tracy Beckerman. When Tracy Beckerman and her husband bring home a puppy for their two young kids, they realize that they got a lot more than they bargained for. From tracking wet cement through the house to shredding the family’s underwear, Riley is a one-dog wrecking ball. Yet, this lovable retriever also brings joy, laughter, and a renewed sense of wonder into the household. At times hilarious and heartwarming, "Barking at the Moon" speaks to life’s challenges, and to mothering children both human and furry. With Beckerman’s trademark wit and heart, she reminds us that no matter what stage of life we’re in, we can learn a lot from the dogs who teach us how to stop and enjoy the ride. TRACY BECKERMAN  is an award-winning author, speaker, and syndicated humor columnist who has appeared on NBC’s Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, and...

  WHAT'S DONE IN DARKNESS (Penguin/RandomHouse) is my first Laura McHugh thriller and it certainly won't be my last. It's a tight pithy book that sucks you in at the very beginning. It's told in alternating time lines, I really got to know the Sarabeth character and her family of zealots. 17 year-old, Sarabeth Shepherd's family left one cultish Arkansas church for a more rigid one. The family doesn't believe in books, television or movies and the women wear their hair to their waist and long dresses. Everyone works on the farm. Her family regards her as the problem child and Sarabeth dreams of turning eighteen so she can runaway. She's working at the family farm stand one day when a truck pulls up and what appears to be a man wearing a mask gets out, chases her down and kidnaps her. A week later she's found uninjured on the side of the road in a bloody slip. Her family doesn't believe she was kidnapped. They think she ran away for attention. Once she...

  It is the year 1847 in the elegant city of Bath where 18yr old Genevre Stratton is treated more as a servant than a daughter in the elegant house where bills are not paid, and the rent is in arrears.  Appalled by the dishonesty and overriding social ambition beneath her parents’ veneer of respectability, only her love for her younger brother and sisters keeps her there. Left to cope alone when their false world falls apart, she fights to keep her siblings together, until poverty forces her to yield them to the care of their half-brother, George Coleman. Handsome, wealthy and charismatic, he is the enemy who becomes her lover.  To surrender all to her passionate desire for him, or to keep the independence of a new-found musical career on the London stage? This is her is her choice to make, until an unexpected call of duty takes her to Paris. Must the old, dark secrets she discovers there alter the course of her life forever?  ALISON TOOK SOME TIME TO ANSWER OUR QUES...

  It's Italy, 1911 in Hilary Hauck's novel, FROM ASHES TO SONG (SunburyPress). Pietro’s life on the family vineyard is idyllic. He has at last captured the melody of the grape harvest on his clarinet and can’t wait to share his composition with his grandfather, but before he can play, news arrives of a deadly disease sweeping the countryside. They have no choice but to burn the vineyard to stop its spread. The loss is too much for Pietro’s grandfather, and by morning Pietro has lost two of the most precious things in his life—his grandfather and the vineyard. All he has left is his music, but a disastrous performance at his grandfather’s funeral suggests that music, too, is now beyond his reach. Adrift with grief, Pietro seeks a new start in America. He goes to work in a Pennsylvania coal mine where his musician’s hands blister and his days are spent in the muffled silence of underground. When the beautiful voice and gentle heart of a friend’s wife stirs a new song in him, Piet...

    Sloane Ford was raised by Hollywood―with A-list celebrity parents, she was quite literally born to be a star. Now an out-of-work actress in her 30s, Sloane’s next gig lands her on the set of a film written and produced by her own family. But what her darling relatives don’t tell her until day one of filming is that the male lead is none other than Sloane’s worst nightmare: Joseph Donovan, Irish heartthrob and horrible former co-star.   Joseph Donovan may be a Hollywood sweetheart, but he’s no dream to work with, judging from past experience. His impressive good looks and sexy Irish accent don’t earn him redemption in Sloane’s book. But, the show must go on, and so Sloane rolls her eyes and gets on with production. But everything that can possibly go wrong on this project, does―and it’s not long before the film finds itself without its leading lady.   As Sloane steps up to take on the starring role, she’s forced to confront her long-standing hatred for Joseph Dono...

  I was so excited to read a copy Soraya M. Lane's new novel, THE SECRETS WE LEFT BEHIND (LakeUnion). Much like her previous novel, THE LAST CORRESPONDENT the cover is absolutely breathtaking and the story is based on real events that happened during WWII. It's France 1940, the evacuation at Dunkirk where thousands of British troops are being rescued from the beach by different countries, as the Nazis push forward, but many more will be left behind. Doctors, orderlies, nurses are still working at a hospital while more injured soldiers are being brought in. They know they will become prisoners of war or killed by the Nazis. THE SECRET WE LEFT BEHIND is a fictional multi point of view account of a nurse and injured soldier who escapesduring the evacuation, two British soldiers who survive the massacre of the Royal Norfolk Regiment at Le Paradis and two French women who hide them in their home, risking their own lives. Her main women characters are always strong and committed to t...

One of most hotly anticipated and hyped novels this summer is debut author, Brittany Ackerman's, THE BRITTANYS (Vintage). You'll find yourself looking back to those high school years and literally cringing ... in a good way? Remember how important it was to be in the most popular clique? I do. In ninth-grade it was who you are and in THE BRITTANYS t hey're not the most popular freshmen at their Florida prep school, but at least everyone knows their name(s).  The Brittanys. Brittany Rosenberg: drives her golf cart around her subdivision to meet boys. Brittany Gottlieb: insists you can't lose your virginity if you haven't gotten your period. (She  heard  it somewhere!) Brittany Tomassi: is from  New York . Brittany Jensen: once threw her tampon into a stranger's swimming pool. A brash, bold, unapologetic tomboy. And the greatest person in the whole wide world. At least as far as the fifth Brittany--our narrator--is concerned. Even within their friend group, she an...

  A young woman agrees to star in a filmmaker's latest project, but soon realizes the movie is not what she expected in this chilling debut novel. Melissa Larsen's novel, SHUTTER (Berkley) asks how far would you go for the role of your life? In the wake of her father's death, Betty Roux doesn't allow herself to mourn. Instead, she pushes away her mother, breaks up with her boyfriend, and leaves everything behind to move to New York City. She doesn't know what she wants, except to run. When she's offered the chance to play the leading role in mysterious indie filmmaker Anthony Marino's new project, she jumps at the opportunity. For a month Betty will live in a cabin on a private island off the coast of Maine, with a five-person cast and crew. Her mother warns against it, but Betty is too drawn to the charismatic Anthony to say no. Anthony gives her a new identity—Lola—and Betty tells herself that this is exactly what she's been looking for. The chance to ...

  In her new novel, bestselling author Susan Mallery pens a love story of a different sort…a heartfelt tale of friendship between two women who used to be sisters. Once upon a time, when her dad married Sage’s mom, Daisy was thrilled to get a bright and shiny new sister. But Sage was beautiful and popular, everything Daisy was not, and she made sure Daisy knew it. Sage didn’t have Daisy’s smarts—she had to go back a grade to enroll in the fancy rich-kid school. So she used her popularity as a weapon, putting Daisy down to elevate herself. After the divorce, the stepsisters’ rivalry continued until the final, improbable straw: Daisy married Sage’s first love, and Sage fled California. Eighteen years, two kids and one troubled marriage later, Daisy never expects—or wants—to see Sage again. But when the little sister they have in common needs them both, they put aside their differences to care for Cassidy. As long-buried truths are revealed, no one is more surprised than they when fri...