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In the Spotlight: Moses & Mac by Franca Pelaccia

MOSES & MAC by Franca Pelaccia, Action/Adventure/Mystery/Women's Fiction, 303 pp., $14.99 (paperback) $3.99 (Kindle)

Title: MOSES & MAC
Author: Franca Pelaccia
Publisher: Solstice Publishing
Pages: 303
Genre: Women’s Fiction/Adventure/Mystery

On her dismal 30^th birthday, unassuming Victorian scholar Mackenzie Braden receives a mysterious package from her Aunt Sara, urging her to locate Moses’ rod. The most powerful weapon in history will start global chaos if it lands in the wrong hands. Sara was an agent for the top-secret Vatican Archaeological Service. She has also been dead for 30 years and the agency dormant for just as long. Mackenzie’s only clue is a souvenir figurine of Moses, and except for hunky ex-military pilot Eoin Reilly, her allies are as inept as she is.

But nothing is going to stop Mackenzie from recharging her lacklustre life, fulfilling her mission, finding answers about her aunt, and making Eoin her birthday present. Armed with the figurine, Mackenzie sets off with Eoin for the Middle East. There she has to fend off a Ph.D. candidate turned terrorist, a dysfunctional family of treasure hunters, a fake Mossad operative, a manic former VAS agent, the underground tunnels of the Gaza Strip, and a whole lot of rocket launchers. But this is training for the ultimate confrontation with her aunt’s and now her greatest foe, a charming deposed Saudi prince with world domination on his mind.

ORDER YOUR COPY:

Link to book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1625268602 (Print)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KPK56HK (ebook)

A birthday no one remembered was outright unforgivable. A birthday that would change all those to follow was downright insane.

It was a changing of the guard birthday. The one when everything went thicker—face moisturizers, waistlines and mindsets, and the absence of a credible man in my life was tossed around me, over me, behind me, and in front of me by all my loved ones. But, instead of a “Happy Birthday, Mackenzie” call from a mother who was never supposed to forget. Or a “You thought your old man forgot, didn’t you, Mackie?” from a father who pretended to forget. Or some form of birthday sympathy from any of my three older sisters, I got a call from ancient Father Somerville.

Father Somerville saw through my god-forsaken soul, or made me believe it, even now in my supposedly all-powerful thirtieth year of life. In his sixty-year-old seasoned pulpit voice, he declared I had received a package from my Aunt Sara. A package from her would have been great on a birthday no one remembered, if Aunt Sara hadn’t vacated her office and neglected her duties as lecturer of biblical archaeology over thirty years before and been declared dead twenty years ago.

Aunt Sara was my father’s youngest sister. She was also my godmother. Along with my Uncle Tony, she had held my tiny head over the baptismal font thirty years before. She had posed for pictures with every relative on the Irish side of the family and wisely followed that up with everyone on the Italian side. She enjoyed the seven-course meal at my Uncle Gianni’s restaurant, left to catch a plane to Cairo and was never heard from again. Unless there was delivery from heaven or as both rosary-touting grandmothers would say, from that other place that can’t be named, the package had to be a joke from one nasty person.

But, heck, it was my big 3-0 birthday. Maybe this was some ploy, although on the dark side, to get me to a big birthday bash.

Franca Pelaccia is the author of Moses & Mac, a fast-paced and lively action/adventure/mystery and the first book of the Vatican Archaeological Service series published by Solstice Publishing. The second book is tentatively entitled Mac & the Crusaders. Under the pseudonym of Kirsten Paul, Franca is the author of two romantic comedies for the Calendar Men of King Court series. The first book, The Hockey Player & the Angel will soon be published by the Wild Rose Press. The second book, The Detective & the Burglar is in progress. Writing as Francesca Pelaccia, Franca self-published The Witch’s Salvation, a historical paranormal novel, which won the Beck Valley Reviewers’ Choice Award for 2013. An avid reader, Franca reviews novels for the Historical Novels Society.

Website Address: https://francapelaccia.com/
Blog Address: https://francapelaccia.com/blog/
Twitter Address: https://twitter.com/FrancaPelaccia
Facebook Address: https://www.facebook.com/pg/FrancaPelacciaAuthor/posts/?ref=page_internal

Website Address: https://francapelaccia.com/

Blog Address: https://francapelaccia.com/blog/

Twitter Address: https://twitter.com/FrancaPelaccia

Facebook Address: https://www.facebook.com/pg/FrancaPelacciaAuthor/posts/?ref=page_internal

Chapter reveal: 'Shirtless Men Drink Free' by Dwaine Rieves

Title: Shirtless Men Drink Free

Genre: Literary Fiction

Author: Dwaine Rieves

Website: http://dwainerieves.com/

Publisher: Leapfolio/Tupelo Press

Amazon

In Shirtless Men Drink Free, Doctor Jane Beekman has seen her dying mother’s soul, a vision above the bed—a soul struggling with a decision, some undone task, something in this world too noble to leave. The question that lingers—why?—prompts a shift in the doctor’s priorities. In this election year, Jane must do what her mother, an aspiring social activist, would have done. Soon, Jane is embroiled in the world of Georgia politics, working to make sure her dynamic younger brother-in-law Jackson Beekman is selected the next governor, regardless of what the soul of the candidate’s dead father or that of his living brother—Jane’s husband—might want done.

Indeed, it is a mother’s persistence and a father’s legacy that will ultimately turn one Beekman brother against the other, launching a struggle with moral consequences that may extend far beyond Georgia. Set amidst 2004’s polarizing election fears—immigrants and job take-overs, terrorists in waiting, homosexuals and outsider agendas—Shirtless Men Drink Free makes vivid the human soul’s struggle in a world bedeviled by desire and the fears that leave us all asking—Why?

Engaging, beautifully written and resplendent with realism, Shirtless Men Drink Free is a standout debut destined to stay with readers long after the final page is turned. A meticulously crafted tale that showcases an outstanding new voice in Southern fiction, Shirtless Men Drink Free has garnered high advance praise:

“This is brilliant and rare work, as attentive to an absorbing plot as it is to a poetic, chiseled cadence."—Paul Lisicky, award-winning author of The Narrow Door: A Memoir of Friendship

“These characters are all too real. Rieves, as Faulkner, McMurtry and Larry Brown, writes people and story that will worm, burrow into you. Change you even.” —Adam Van Winkle, Founder and Editor, Cowboy Jamboree

“Vividly sensuous, this novel is full of textures, sounds and smells. Rieves tells a terrific story with the sensitivity of a poet.” —Margaret Meyers, author of Swimming in the Congo

About the Author

Dwaine Rieves was born and raised in Monroe County, Mississippi. During a career as a research pharmaceutical scientist and critical care physician, he began writing poetry and creative prose. His poetry has won the Tupelo Press Prize for Poetry and the River Styx International Poetry Prize. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review and other publications.

Links:

www.dwainerieves.com

EXCERPT:

A Fact

If pressed, she just might someday describe the experience as a vision, but that word alone would be insufficient, if not false, for what she had seen above the bed was more than apparition, more than a visual thing. There, sitting beside her dying mother, she’d sensed another presence, a new being, energy membrane-bound, translucent and hovering, alive in the air. The sense was volatility, the struggling with a decision, a choice—most definitely a choice—more why than when, more God than science. There, fibrillating above the bed was a soul. It was her mother’s soul, the very soul of her mother deliberating its only options: whether to stay or depart, this world or another. And in the instant before it abandoned its literal form, whatever her mother’s soul accepted or denied had to have been better than the body below, the face still puffy from chemotherapy, that halo of resurrected hair.

Something else must have mattered in this world, some undone task or rethought decision, something noble in the making, for her soul clearly wanted to stay. But it couldn't. It simply couldn't.

Perhaps revelation would eventually prove a more credible label. Or insight. Regardless of what she might ultimately call it, she wanted to believe the whole episode was a lesson for the scientist within her, a gift for the daughter who had to make sense of the inexplicable she’d seen. No. No one would ever believe she had witnessed such agony above the bed, the struggle between what the body demands and the soul needs.

Such thoughts she knew she must keep to herself, that vision or revelation or insight from a few months back, the soul of her mother wrestling with the air.

Tonight, Doctor Jane Beekman is alone. She sits on the back porch at home, a rocking chair helping to hold her there. The sky is closing in yellow, the world that was almost gone. She is motherless now, the backyard calm in disbelief. In the wake of her mother’s final breath, in the air that struggle―why? The question will never disappear and the more she stares, the more the world before her eyes darkens any possible answer.

The air is unsteady, too uncertain. It trembles as if still above the bed, as Jane saw it and forever will. That odorless instant when decision turned gunmetal thin, she will smell it always. The distance between struggle and release, its clamor breathed clean. That morning her husband held her mother’s hand, but never did Price waver, never did his eyes leave the body. Her mother’s soul had battled the air and Jane, she alone was the witness.

Her body demands a reason. Her soul needs more gin.

Chapter One

Leap

Never had she given much thought to politics, never had she pictured what a brief speech might come to. But to understand that trajectory as she ultimately came to follow it, you must first step back a few months, take a determined breath and stand with Jane before a plateau of silvery eyes. The titans have gathered, gawkers shoulder to shoulder, a certificate framed on a tripod far stage right. The words have power, authority—2004 Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year. Lights are low, God and the crowd focused. The podium is all Jane’s, the first slide at her back. On the canvas, a ladder of DNA coils ten-foot-high in Christmas colors. Five-carbon sugars twinkle for emphasis. Base pairs stiffen then jitter like ill-tempered brothers. Finger the laser pointer’s bump and the hot red dot jumps. Control goes with accomplishment. Smile.

Jane is on the stage because she and her husband Price accomplish great things. She is proud of this. Atlanta is proud, no doubt all Georgia. But this award is not about her or Price, she tells the crowd. It’s about their baby, CellSure. It’s about the company’s birth and maturation, teamwork in translational science. She uses that word translational and thinks transcendent. They know what she means. “People, CellSure is a company that can take less than a nanogram of genetic material and in a matter of hours match the specimen to a criminal, a fraud, a father.”

More than once Jane says “genetic material” and each time she sharpens the syllables. “Yes,” she proclaims, “with less than a snippet of tissue CellSure can even diagnose—” She pauses for air, for the air to settle. “Yes, we can even diagnose cancer.” Applause comes. The great polynucleotide pulses. People stand. They point. Jane has become one with her company. She can even diagnose cancer.

“And with more CellSure innovation, I have little doubt that the same tissue indicating a cancer will also identify a treatment. Yes, my friends. The CellSure technology that pairs a precise diagnosis with a precise therapy will make most cancers curable and the few incurable ones truly treatable conditions.” She thrusts a decisive finger into the air. She is transcendent. “Mark my words—as CellSure pairs ingenuity with our city’s fine medical research institutions, Atlanta will become the nation’s go-to hub for hope, a city where the word impossible never crosses a lip.”

People whoop and stomp their feet. They slap shoulders. Strangers hug. The air vibrates, every face catching the glow of the great iridescent molecule, the image secured by the clicker Jane controls with a single finger.

Book Blast: The Employee Millionaire by H.J. Chammas

Title: The Employee Millionaire

Author: H.J. Chammas

Publisher: PartridgeSingapore

Genre: Business/Economics

Format: Ebook

When the financial crisis erupted in 2008, thousands of people lost jobs they thought theyd always have to sustain their standard of living. For H. J. Chammas, it was a wakeup call to escape struggling to make ends meet. It was time to take charge of his life and stop acting like a lab rat following a set program. In this detailed guidebook to buying, owning, and managing rental properties, he gives readers a plan that you wont find in other books. Instead of promoting foolish risks, he helps you leverage your position as an employee to achieve financial freedom. Learn how to: evaluate the current state of your finances; overcome limiting beliefs about money and investing; set personal objectives to achieve financial freedom; and think and operate like a seasoned real estate investor. Chammas shares real-life examples that will help you build a personalized investment blueprint to build your rental property portfolio and become wealthy. From identifying and closing deals, getting approved for loans, renting out properties, dealing with tenants, and capitalizing on opportunities, this book will challenge how youve always looked at life, finances, investments, and real estate.

PURCHASE HERE

H.J. Chammas is a self-made "Employee Millionaire" who has achieved financial freedom by investing in rental properties throughout Asia, Dubai and Europe. With over 10 years of real estate industry and investing experience, as well as property management, he brings forward a blueprint for real estate investing in a simple and clear manner.

He is the founder and CEO of the Employee Millionaire, a company that empowers employees to achieve financial freedom and become millionaires with real estate investing.

To emulate Chammas' success in single family real estate investment, sign up for his program on www.employeemillionaire.com to learn the sound investing principles and avail of free templates and worksheets that makes rental properties investing almost on autopilot.

New release: One Taste To Many, by Debra H. Goldstein

Genre: MYSTERY (COZY MYSTERY)

Author: Debra H. Goldstein

Website: www.debrahgoldstein.com

Publisher: Kensington

Find out more on Amazon

A culinary cozy unlike any other, One Taste Too Many introduces Sarah Blair, a culinary-challenged, recently-divorced woman adjusting to her new status as “single,” her new studio apartment—which she shares with her Siamese cat, RahRah—and her new job as a law firm receptionist. When her ex-husband gets murdered and her twin sister becomes the top suspect, Sarah will have to add “solving crimes” to the list of challenges she’s taking on in her newly single life.

About One Taste Too Many: When Sarah Blair’s sister, a trained chef, is suspected of murdering Sarah’s ex-husband with one of her award winning dishes, Sarah mourns the rat’s death but leaves the sleuthing to the professionals until she realizes that she and her sister are their only suspects. Sarah’s efforts to find whodunit are complicated by her twin’s refusal to help—and a glitch in the rat’s will that forces Sarah to relinquish her beloved cat, the only thing she got in her divorce, to the woman who broke up her marriage.

Compelled to discover the true killer, Sarah soon finds that for a woman whose good china is floral paper plates, getting too close to the heat in the kitchen may be scorching. As a cook of convenience, Sarah will have to come up with just the right recipe to save her sister and avoid her own worse than death fate—being in the kitchen.

A fun, fresh twist on the culinary cozy mystery, One Taste Too Many stands out with its charming heroine: Sarah Blair, a cook of convenience. Moreover, One Taste Too Many is informed by Goldstein’s career as a former litigator and US Administrative Judge and her unique perspective on the inner workings of the perfect crime. A to-die-for tale with an irresistible plot and wholly relatable cast of characters, One Taste Too Many heralds the advent of a delicious new series.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Debra H. Goldstein is the author of the Sarah Blair Mysteries as well as Should Have Played Poker, a Carrie Martin and the Mah Jongg Players Mystery and the 2012 IPPY Award-winning Maze in Blue, a mystery set on the University of Michigan’s campus. Her short stories, including Anthony and Agatha nominated “The Night They Burned Ms. Dixie’s Place,” have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies including Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and Mystery Weekly. A Judge, author, litigator, wife, step-mom and mother of twins, Debra is an involved community volunteer, MWA member, and serves as a national board member of Sisters in Crime, as well as being the SinC Guppy Chapter’s President.

Connect with Debra on the web:

https://www.debrahgoldstein.com/blog/

https://www.debrahgoldstein.com/

https://www.facebook.com/DebraHGoldsteinAuthor

https://twitter.com/debrahgoldstein

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/debra-h-goldstein/